by Cynthia Sax
She discarded his words and focused on the torment in his tones. He hurt. Horrifically. Her fingers twitched, the urge to reach out to him, to comfort him, tremendous. Judging by the flex of his powerful biceps and thigh muscles, by the anger radiating from him, he wouldn’t appreciate that response.
He also wouldn’t listen to any command she issued. A reprimand, verbal or physical, would add to his hostility. Some being had already tried to restrain him and failed. The reportedly unbreakable wrist and ankle cuffs attached to the frame of the uploading dock had been shattered, rendered useless.
Joan discarded four solar cycles’ worth of theory on how to handle malfunctioning cyborgs, realizing now that the academy experts knew nothing.
Her late father, however, had taught her how to deal with wild beasts.
“I would never touch you without your permission.” She lowered her gaze, showing submission, recognizing C899321 as the dominant male he was. He’d seek to harm any aggressor, to protect himself and his territory. If she wasn’t female, she suspected she’d already be dead.
“I also would never hurt you.” Joan stuffed a couple of cleaning cloths into her pockets and dropped to her knees, into a puddle of red. The moisture soaked through her flight suit. “I’m here to serve you, to clean you.”
She slowly crawled forward through the liquefied remains of the previous engineer. Having lived on an agri lot and spending the last solar cycle in the waste processing chambers, guck no longer fazed her.
“You don’t want to be dirty.” Joan kept her head bowed, her voice calm and soft. “That would interfere with your mechanics.”
She filled the silence with a flow of reassuring words, telling him she meant him no harm, that she was there to help him. Joan kept her gaze lowered, concentrating on his feet. He stood with them braced apart, preparing for an attack, ready to defend himself. His feet appeared human except much, much larger, his metal frame concealed with skin. When not covered with blood, that skin would be gray.
The current J models could pass for human, designed not to frighten the general population. The C models were clearly cyborg, from their giant stature to their unnatural skin tone. Some engineers found them to be scary and primitive. Joan didn’t. She associated C models with safety, with caring, with C345925’s unexpected act of kindness.
Joan knelt in front of C899321. Her heart pounded so loudly, she suspected with his superior senses, he could hear her.
Moments passed. She remained motionless, allowing him to look at her, to smell her, to become accustomed to the sound of her voice.
He shifted his weight from his right foot to his left, signaling his readiness and she spoke. “I have a cleaning cloth in my pocket.” She held up her hands, showing him her empty palms. “Can I remove it?”
She waited and waited and waited. He said nothing.
“I told you I wouldn’t take action without your consent.” She wasn’t foolish. Touching a wild thing without permission resulted in death.
“Yes.” His voice was impossibly deep.
“Thank you.” Joan slipped her fingers into her pocket, slowly as to not spook him, and extracted a blue cleaning cloth. “I value your trust.” She opened the enhanced fabric, stretching it tight, allowing him to examine it. “May I clean your feet?”
There was another long pause.
“Yes.”
“Thank you.” No male should have a voice like that, like an endless night filled with decadence and sin. She resisted the urge to wiggle her ass, her pussy moistening, her nipples tightening, and focused on her task, cleaning his ankles, heels, every toe, talking as she did so. The cyborg lifted first one foot and then the other, allowing her to swipe the cloth over his soles.
The fabric sucked up the blood, rearranging the molecules into air. His skin was soft, warm, surprisingly scarred. Joan frowned. “Your nanocybotics must have been suppressed when you were damaged. There should be no marks.”
She traced a long slash on his right foot. It was an old wound. “The enemy found a way to do this.” That alarmed her. This flaw in his defenses put her cyborg at risk. “Why wasn’t this development covered in any of the information bulletins I’ve viewed?” Engineers should be working on a countermeasure.
“Are you mentally deficient?” His tone was harsh. “You must be if you volunteered to breed with a C model cyborg.”
Joan gritted her teeth at his assumption about her role. “I’m your engineer, not a breeding female.”
“You lie.” He snorted softly. “Your uniform is gray, not blood-red, and if you were truly my engineer, as you claim, you’d know my damage was inflicted by my previous handlers.”
“I was positioned in the waste processing chambers. That’s why I wear a gray uniform.” Signaling to everyone her lowly status. “And why would a handler hurt you? Our job is to ensure you operate at optimal efficiency.”
“Why would they hurt me? Because they’re cruel humans and I’m a disposable cyborg. Because I operated outside specifications. Because they wished to duplicate my kill rates. Do you need more reasons?”
They’d experimented on him. She gazed at his toes, absorbing this knowledge. Blood had dripped down his legs, coating them with crimson once more. “May I clean your legs?”
He sighed, his muscles flexing and releasing. “You clearly need to be told everything. I must be cleaned from the top down.”
She knew that. “You’d agree to me cleaning your face?”
“Do I have a choice?” His words were bitter.
“Yes.” Joan looked upward, meeting his gaze. “You know how best to maximize your kill rates. Within these chambers, I serve you.”
His eyes flashed with blue currents of energy. “Stop with your lies. I won’t believe them.”
“You’re bigger, stronger, think you’re more intelligent.” She lifted her chin. “Why would I lie to you?”
“I’ll test you, little engineer, and if you fail, you’ll die.”
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About Cynthia Sax
USA Today bestselling author Cynthia Sax writes contemporary, SciFi and paranormal erotic romances. Her stories have been featured in Star Magazine, Real Time With Bill Maher, and numerous best of erotic romance top ten lists.
She lives in a world filled with magic and romance. Although her heroes may not always say, “I love you,” they will do anything for the women they adore. They live passionately. They play hard. They love the same women forever.
Cynthia has loved the same wonderful man forever. Her supportive hubby offers himself up to the joys and pains of research, while they travel the world together, meeting fascinating people and finding inspiration in exotic places such as Istanbul, Bali, and Chicago.
Sign up for her dirty-joke-filled release day newsletter and visit her on the web at www.CynthiaSax.com
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