by Aurelia Skye
Raven grinned. “That’s a good idea. For now, I guess we should talk to this Michael?”
At his affirmative nod, she walked beside him when he started moving again. She had the urge to reach out and put her hand on his shoulder, but it wasn’t in an attempt to comfort him as the gesture had been with Elle. Instead, it was simply because she wanted to touch him, to feel the muscles under his skin, and to have a closer connection. Instead, she kept her hand balled into a fist at her side to resist temptation as they moved through the facility.
“We should find Michael in the aquaponics room. He was due to plant seedlings this morning.”
Raven walked along beside him as she nodded, quickly downloading JSN42’s report about fixing the aquaponics room. She saw the room through his eyes and winced at the outdated machinery.
It was no better in person when they stepped through the room a few moments later, and she wondered how they could continue to produce food with the outdated equipment they kept limping along. She knew from JSN’s report that it had been broken for an entire season until his arrival, so she was certain they had a lot of food to grow to catch up for the enclave’s needs.
With that in mind, Michael should have been busy, but there was no sign of anyone. She frowned as she looked around before sharing a glance with Leith, who looked annoyed.
“He was supposed to be here. He knows how important the food is to all of us.”
“Maybe he just took a quick break?”
Leith sighed as he scrubbed a hand on his face. “Yeah, I hope so. I guess we’ll give him a few minutes to see if he shows up before we have to track him down.”
Raven nodded and moved away from him to examine the fruit and vegetables that were starting to grow. Mostly, they were just seedlings, but there was one section of plants that were blooming nicely and already had small red fruits forming. She bent closer to examine them. “What is this? I’ve never seen it before.”
Leith’s chair hummed as he moved closer to her and bent his head to see. “Those are Jenner strawberries.”
As he identified them, she accessed her databanks for a more in-depth explanation. They were genetically modified strain of strawberries that could reach maturity within a month. They looked slightly different from the strawberries she had seen in the atrium at the base, and she couldn’t tell if that was because they were still growing, or because they had been modified. “They do grow quickly.”
Leith nodded. “That’s why we picked them. A lot of our crops are hybridizations or were genetically crossbred with other varieties to grow faster with increased yields.”
She reached out to touch one, and at the same time, Leith reached too. Their fingers brushed against each other, and she froze. Her gaze caught his, and there was a flare of heat in his green eyes. It fanned the flames inside her, and she suddenly felt overly warm as her face flushed, and her breathing escalated.
It was simple contact, just her forefinger against his, but was enough to send her heartbeat skyrocketing and urge her to move closer. She would have, but the sound of the door opening distracted both of them, and she quickly stood up as Leith righted himself in his chair. They turned to face the new arrival, and Raven didn’t miss the sneer on his face when he looked at her. She shivered slightly at his expression before it became carefully neutral. It wasn’t soon enough to hide his true reaction to her.
“Michael, we’re here to talk to you about Patrick.”
Michael nodded his dark head, which was liberally laced with strands of gray. “I’m not surprised. Word has spread that you’re interrogating everyone.”
Leith let out a strangled chuckle. “It’s not an interrogation. We’re just trying to figure out if there’s any truth to Patrick’s words that they’re others who want to prevent a truce between the humans and the cyborgs.”
“I’m sure there’s a ton of us who do, but none of us are actively plotting. You won’t find yourself welcome here, cyborg,” he said with a dismissive sneer at Raven, “But that doesn’t mean that anybody’s going to try to hurt you. Patrick was acting alone as far as I know.”
“Elle mentioned something about mysterious meetings,” said Leith. “What do you know about that?”
Michael shrugged. “Not a damn thing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do. I’m running late this morning.”
Leith and Raven shared a look, and she was certain he was asking if she wanted him to continue pressing Michael. She gave a subtle shake of her head, and they left the aquaponics room. There was no point in pushing him at the moment. If he knew more, he wasn’t going to tell them, and Raven’s presence would likely stifle any attempt Leith made to get to the truth.
“I’m sorry he was like that.”
Raven shrugged. “JSN warned me to expect a cold welcome from a lot of the humans. I wasn’t expecting to make new friends, though I’m hopeful that your people will accept me eventually.”
Leith gave a ghost of a smile. “That makes it sound like you plan on staying for a long time?”
Raven shrugged as she struggled not to blush with embarrassment. She couldn’t tell whether he disliked the idea of her staying, and that left her flustered. “I’m here for as long as the general tells me to stay.”
His expression changed slightly, becoming more aloof. “Yes, you’re here on assignment, and that’s the only reason you’re here.”
She frowned at his odd tone. “Yes, of course it is. Once we get to the bottom of all this, I imagine I’ll be returning to the base.”
His expression was impossible to read. “I’m sure that will be for the best. You must miss your friends and family.”
She shrugged. “I don’t have any biological family, but the other cyborgs are like my family. I do miss them, especially Carrie and Penny.” And Penny’s puppies, who she had watched grow every day with fascination. She missed them all, but she was also excited to be at the enclave and doing something different besides mining.
She understood the need to mine the minerals for terbium, and it was important work, because it kept all the cyborgs alive, but it was also tedious and made it hard to feel truly useful. This assignment was different, because there was a lot riding on the cyborgs and humans making a truce. It was exciting to be here with Leith, who she was certain was the human Freydon Rote had intended to be her mate. She just couldn’t tell him that. The idea of doing so flooded her with discomfort, and she shifted on her feet as she imagined the humiliation of his rejection.
“Let’s plan to follow Boris this evening if he leaves his quarters. I’ll have someone keep an eye on him, and I’ll contact you if we have somewhere to go.”
It was a dismissal if she’d ever heard one, so she nodded. “Of course. Should I return to my quarters?”
He shrugged. “Feel free to move about the enclave, but stay safe please.”
She didn’t have to ask from what she should stay safe. She was certain he wasn’t referring to the possibility of earthquakes, but rather his own people. It was unlikely any of them would be able to hurt her, at least in a permanent way that wouldn’t heal quickly, but they could inflict emotional damage by shunning her. She was too tenderhearted and had too little experience with irrational dislike to be able to shrug it off as easily as JSN had.
4
Raven had spent the rest of the afternoon discreetly moving around the enclave, exploring the rooms and their different functions as she made a concentrated effort to stay in areas where there were few or no humans to avoid the possibility of an antagonistic encounter. Her comm had beeped a few minutes earlier, and it had been Leith asking her to meet him. It was past dinnertime, and apparently the enclave was settling in for the night, except for Boris. Whoever was watching him must’ve contacted Leith to let the leader know the other man was leaving his quarters.
She found Leith at the designated meeting spot less than two minutes after receiving the comm and paused beside him. “What’s going on?”
“Boris went down thi
s corridor a few minutes ago. I was waiting for you before we follow him.”
“I can hear voices.”
Leith frowned. “I don’t hear anything.”
“One of my ears and part of my entire ear canal is cybernetic, so I have sensitive hearing on that side.” She tapped her left ear unconsciously. “I can hear several voices farther down the corridor.”
“Do they sound angry?”
She tilted her head, searching for the best angle to hear. When she found it, she listened for another moment. “I can’t make out the words, but they sound mellow. I don’t think anyone’s angry.”
He squared his shoulders and moved his chair forward, as Raven fell into step beside him. The closer they got, the more she could pick out the words, and when they stood outside the door where the meeting was likely happening, she could hear just about everything. She pressed her ear against the metal and eavesdropped.
She caught various words, and it soon became obvious that if it was a meeting of like-minded individuals, their shared belief was a belief in gambling, not doing away with cyborgs or preventing the treaty. She grinned as she turned to face Leith, kneeling down so she could speak quietly so as not to be overheard—though it was doubtful anyone in the room on the other side would hear through the metal and the rock of the cave in which the enclave was built. “They’re playing some kind of card game and wagering on the outcome.”
Leith frowned. “Why the secrecy?”
She shrugged. “Seems like someone named Jim just lost to…William or Willem? He’s complaining about having to hand over two rations of peas.”
Leith scowled. “That’s the explanation. They’re gambling with supplies—supplies to which they shouldn’t have access.”
“How do you know?”
He sounded disgusted. “We haven’t served peas in the enclave since the aquaponics room faltered last season. They are part of the stored reserves we put back in case we couldn’t get the aquaponics room to work again. Someone’s been pilfering from the stockpile, so no wonder they didn’t want us to know.” He was angry for a moment, but it seemed to drain away. “At least they aren’t plotting acts of terror. I’ll have to shut it down, and they’ll all be reprimanded, but it’s relatively harmless in the scheme of things—other than the fact that they’re stealing supplies from everyone in the enclave for their card game.”
“Do you want to handle it now?”
He hesitated for a moment before shaking his head. “Tomorrow’s soon enough to deal with it. We know Jim, Willem, and Boris are involved, and I’m sure they’ll reveal the names of anyone else participating. Jim, in particular, has a big mouth and a low capacity for pressure, so I think I can deal with this and have it all shut down within a short amount of time.”
She nodded as she walked beside him when they moved down the corridor again, this time away from the mysterious meeting that wasn’t so mysterious. “Where does that leave us?”
He let out a bitter laugh. “Hell if I know. I don’t have any other leads or ideas at the moment.”
She quickly realized they were heading back in the direction of her quarters, which happened to be near Leith’s. “Maybe we’ll have a better idea tomorrow. We can sleep on it and try to come up with some other options.”
He sighed, looking weary. “Yeah, I guess. Then we can check Patrick’s quarters again, though they’ve already been searched thoroughly.”
He just looked so worn down that she couldn’t resist the impulse to stop walking and turn toward him. His chair stopped moving as he looked up at her with a puzzled expression. Rather than speaking, she simply leaned down slightly and hugged him. “We’ll figure this out.”
To her surprise, he stiffened, but didn’t pull away. After a moment, his arms wrapped around her, and they shared a tight embrace.
It had started out simply as a way to comfort him, but it quickly changed to something else. She tightened her arms further around him, nuzzling her face against his neck as his hand stroked her hair while the other clasped her back. It felt perfectly natural to move forward and sit on his lap, and he didn’t push her away. She ran her fingers through his hair as she kept her face pressed against his neck. Finally, with a deep breath for courage, she lifted her head and looked into his eyes.
She saw desire there, and she was positive her own eyes reflected the same emotion. She licked her lips, and his gaze darted downward to follow the motion of her tongue. He was stiff underneath her, his muscles frozen, and he was tense. She wanted to encourage him to relax, so she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his.
It was a shy and tentative kiss, the first one she could recall. Surely, she had been kissed as a human, but those memories were gone forever. As a cyborg, she was generally regarded as everyone’s little sister or someone to protect, so none of the other cyborgs had ever come to her for sexual relief, and she had been too shy to seek out any of them.
His mouth fumbled against hers for a moment, and their noses brushed awkwardly before they found just the right angle. Once they were in position, his lips molded to hers, and she flicked her tongue out to lick at the seam of his, eliciting a groan from him.
Abruptly, he stiffened further, as though the sound of his own pleasure had broken the trance. He pushed her away, and she slid off his lap onto the ground with a slight jarring vibration that made her tailbone ache. She looked up at him with surprise, hurt flooding her at the rejection she saw in his expression.
He didn’t speak. He just stared down at her for a moment, looking stricken, before he turned his chair and moved away from her. She watched him go, disappearing into his own quarters, before she finally stood up and dusted off her black pants and moved toward her room. She managed to keep her expression neutral until she slipped into the quarters reserved for her and the door had closed behind her.
Then, she allowed her unaffected veneer to fade away as tears flooded her eyes, and an aching sensation filled her chest. Being rejected by him was even worse than she’d imagined it would be, and she regretted reaching out for him. No matter how much she might feel the urge to, she would have to stifle it and be all about concluding the investigation so she could return to the base.
It was obvious Leith didn’t want her, and she lost all faith in the Celestial Mates agent at that moment. Freydon Rote might’ve been right about Carrie and Davis, and he might have had something to do with JSN and Gwen getting together, but he was clearly wrong about her and Leith. They weren’t meant to be together, and if she tried to fool herself about that, she’d only end up with a broken heart.
Leith stared at the wall for a long moment before he allowed himself to punch it. It didn’t do anything to soothe the angry need inside him, but it helped distract him from his thoughts as pain flared in his knuckles. “Idiot,” he said aloud, and he wasn’t certain if he was chastising himself for punching the wall or for allowing the kiss.
Just thinking about that made him squirm in shame as he recalled the stricken look on her face when he turned and left her after shoving her off his lap and unceremoniously dumping her on the floor of the enclave. That had been a shitty thing to do, and he knew it. He’d known it as he was doing it, but hadn’t been able to make himself stay and face her.
How could he explain or justify his actions? Caught up in the heat of the moment, it had felt natural to hold her, to touch her, and even to kiss her. It was only when her tongue touched his lips, and the feeling of desire suffused him, that he realized where they were headed. She would want something he couldn’t give her.
As much as he ached to have her, he had no physical response to her sitting on his lap—at least not the crucial response required that would allow him to make love to her. She was bound to be disappointed, and then she would turn away from him. In the frenzy of the moment, all he could think of was being the one to leave first. He had acted like a bastard, leaving her there on the floor, and he knew he should go apologize.
Instead, he was staying in his quarter
s. He needed time and space, and the ability to formulate a plan to deal with her. It would be wrong to encourage her in any way when he couldn’t have a full physical relationship with her. That was why he shied away from the women in the enclave. It was true there weren’t that many in his age group to start with, but from the time he had started noticing girls, when he was already in the wheelchair, it had been a harsh fact of life that he couldn’t have a normal relationship with them like those around him.
He had grieved and gone through a period of anger, and he truly thought he had accepted his lot in life until Raven arrived. She’d upset everything, and now he had to figure out how to make it all fit again, and how to reach the same state of contentment he’d enjoyed before her arrival.
Most of all, he had to teach himself all over again not to long for what he couldn’t have, because heartache was inevitable if he gave in. Raven could break his heart, but even worse, he would probably break hers too, and the idea of causing her any more pain left him breathless at the dart of agony that shot through his chest. He would have to be aloof and withdrawn, to make it clear there was nothing between them, and could be nothing, even if it was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
5
“Good morning,” said Raven in a tone cool enough to send a shiver down Leith’s spine.
He struggled to match her tone, though he wasn’t sure he came across as aloof when he repeated the greeting. “I thought we could talk to Elle again. She might know more than she thinks, since she spent so much time with Patrick. Maybe we can mention the gambling ring, and that will help her connect some dots or something.”
She nodded, looking impassive as she walked beside him. She was clearly all business this morning, and it should’ve been a relief. Instead, he was slightly miffed at her ability to withdraw from him, though he certainly couldn’t blame her for doing so. He had literally dropped her on her ass and ran away. Since he’d already decided the best thing he could do was to maintain distance between them, it was ridiculous to feel put out that she was clearly thinking the same thing and acting on it.