“Exposure’s a risk.”
“Yeah.” She sighed.
The night fell like a curtain and the noises turned to unfamiliar sounds, made more unnerving by the lack of light. In the distance, the moon glimmered like a pale warning.
He was fucking cold. But if she wasn’t complaining, no way in hell was he—
She shivered.
He wrapped his arms around her waist and rested her between his knees. His arms cinched around her soft middle, seatbelt style, pulling her back against his chest.
She resisted. “What are you—”
“Cold weather bivvy,” he said. “Can’t have either one of us suffering from exposure.”
“We’re not really—”
“Shivering burns calories,” he said. “You’re healing and don’t have them to spare.”
His reasons reached her. After a long moment of silent protest, she eased back, resting against his chest, took a deep breath, and let it out in a long sigh.
That was when he realized his mistake.
She felt like a fucking dream.
Her cold biceps pressed into his, seeking warmth, and her own cold hands curled over his bare forearms. Her shoulder blades flexed against his pecs. That was all normal, like anybody would feel on a cold weather bivouac, even though hell, it was her.
But her feminine scent, of damp sweat and exertion, and the divot between her breasts rising and falling that he could see from looking over her shoulder even if he didn’t mean to—and so long as it was there and he was here, he was going to look—and the sensual curve of her bare neck that he wanted to nip with his teeth to hear her moan, and her heart-shaped ass pressed right against his slowly-pounding-to-life cock. That was the real problem.
Back when his stents first shut off around her, he had to run out whenever she entered the gym. He was always in there off-duty, doing about a hundred extra sets to force his mind off her and back on his pay out target, and in she’d come with some skimpy workout shit. She’d bend over to pick up a set of weights, and fuck her clothes would stretch tight against that heart-shaped ass, and he had to drop his sets and get out of there right fucking now before his loose workout pants advertised what he really thought.
He was supposed to be unable to summon an erection, but whenever she got that close, his mind went to hell and his cock followed.
He shifted, edging that dangerous part sideways before she got a nudge in the kidneys.
She nestled against him, letting her head rest under his chin.
Her delicious scent curled under his nostrils.
He was going to fucking hell.
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in. Don’t think about how she feels, how she’d feel writhing, how she’d feel wet with his sweat—
“What are you going to do after you pay out?” Her question, innocent enough, made him twitch like she’d fired off a pistol. “Oh. Er, sorry. I’m still suffering hearing loss from all of the close-range explosions.”
“Nah, it’s fine.” He brushed aside her hair. If they had a bigger med kit, they could put in restorative cotton and repair her injury, even in this darkness. Her ear felt small and soft.
She stilled.
Fuck. He was forgetting himself. This was unwelcome. He clasped his other wrist. “I don’t know.”
“Get a cold beer on a hot beach?”
He smiled into her hair. “That’s Sirus.”
“Not you?”
“No.”
“Then.” She traced a tendon on his forearm, drawing a sensual line from elbow to wrist that pulsed heat into his cock. “What about you?”
“I haven’t really thought about it.”
“Aren’t you paying out after this mission?”
He shrugged, unconsciously squeezing her tighter at the hint that she finally believed him. She shifted, and he realized what he’d done, and eased off. “I could stay on, make a little coin. Have something to start with when I got out.”
“Saving up for someone special?”
“No one yet,” he said lightly, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest like he’d run a goddamned marathon from the base to right here. “But, yeah, the usual stuff I guess.”
“House, health, and kids?”
Yeah. That was the usual. “This job is the only one I was ever any good at. Might as well stick with it as long as I can.”
“This isn’t exactly an easy civilian life.”
“Civilian life wasn’t that easy on me.”
“Better to get a job with benefits where, if you die, they resurrect you for free.”
“I’m not exactly a good risk for employers like that.”
“Why not?” It legitimately seemed to take her a moment to remember. “Oh, because of the stents? You could get them covered. A skin graft takes five minutes. No one would know.”
He wished they could be dug out. Not deactivated, but removed completely, even though it would mean scooping out the fragile neurons that had grown around them and dug in like a tree root wrapping around a water pipe.
Another deeper, more important thought reached him.
He lowered his lips to her ear. “You really don’t think I’m dangerous, do you?”
She eased up a shoulder, as though she were ticklish. “To who?”
That alone was his answer. She looked up at him, her profile so sweet in the pale moon. Her eyes were full of faith. “You.”
“I don’t think you’re going to kill me now,” she said, as though he were an idiot. “I’ve been in your clutches for hours.”
He pushed it. “You don’t worry about what I’ll do when they deactivate the stents.”
“They’re already malfunctioning. Once they’re shut off, you’ll be free to feel things.”
His chest squeezed.
Fucking hell.
He leaned close, until their cold noses almost touched, until her breath caught and she swallowed. “I already feel things.”
She blinked and licked her lips. Arousal pulsed in his blood. “Physiological things.”
He nuzzled her. “Mostly.”
Her breath caught again. He nuzzled along her silky jawline, teasing her creamy skin. There, the pulse of her body heated to match his. He pressed his lips to that hollow. She moaned.
It was the sweetest sound, and it laced his blood like alcohol.
He followed the sweet, hot flavor to her lobe. Taking the flesh between his teeth, he delicately tugged.
She moaned again and eased back into his embrace. Releasing him to do as he wished. Opening herself to his hot invitation.
He sought her mouth.
She opened to his hungry kiss.
Her mouth was blazing hot, wet, and slippery as their tongues touched and caressed. He squeezed her. She teased him, nibbling on his trembling lips. Making promises about what else her mouth could take in. Fucking hell. His tongue plunged into her, plumbing her secret depths. She grabbed his head and urged him on.
Her breasts brushed his forearms. He rubbed the heated globes. They were cool on top, leading to a pebbled point, and beneath where they rested against her ribs, they burned with a secret fire.
He palmed the soft flesh. She gasped and arched her back, pressing her hot flesh into his hands. His thumb brushed the pearl. She made a soft, inarticulate cry. He did it again, following her lead, bringing her to a hot, gasping edge of desperation.
He dipped below the collar of her suit.
She grabbed his hand, stopping him. “No.”
He stopped immediately.
They both stopped, gasping. His heart thumped, his cock pulsed, his blood roared. Beneath his hot palm, her heart fluttered in her chest.
He pulled her back against him, hard.
She resisted, but then melted into his embrace, sealing their sudden flare of heat into the warmth between them, warmth to carry them through the cold night.
He understood her wanting to stop. They were in the middle of the fucking jungle. And she still had a head full of
doubts.
The other part of him pulsed, telling him yes, they were in the middle of the fucking jungle, and he better do something about her doubts now, now, now, before he lost the chance.
No. He was protecting her now. There would be another chance. Many more chances. He held her close, rested his chin on her head, and breathed the sweet warmth of her silky brown hair. His hands squeezed her.
She shifted and let out a long sigh. “Your hands are cold.”
“So are yours.”
She let him thread their fingers together, trying to conserve warmth. “Hey, Logen?”
“Yeah?”
“If your cybernetics get deactivated, will your physiological reactions go away too?”
The chill of the night walked across his arm like foreign insects.
He shook it off. “No.”
“No, I guess they would only get stronger. And you’d have reactions for other women, too. Or, wait. You said you already did.”
She slowly stiffened. Then, she leaned away.
Fuck. “Talia, I swear to you, I’m not a dangerous—”
“Sure you are,” she snapped. “It’ll be great when the stents are deactivated, and you can have these ‘physiological reactions’ with whoever you want, and not just be limited to someone convenient like me.”
“You’re not convenient.”
“Great, I’m not even convenient. I’m just who you’re stuck with right now.”
“Talia...” He tried to pull her stiff back against him and melt her once more. “You’re the only one I want.”
“Right now. We covered that.”
“Not just right now. Trust me.”
“The last man I trusted blew my brains out.”
How to convince her? If it weren’t so dangerous, Logen would probably take off and let her anger cool, but he didn’t dare let her go in this deadly cave. He had to face her glittering anger and draw it closer to him.
“You,” he said unsteadily, “know me.”
“I thought I did, but all you’ve done since I woke up is lie to me.”
“You want it this way. Trust me.”
“You don’t trust me, so why should I trust you?”
“I do trust you.”
“What happened that night on Base Two?”
Damn.
“See?” She hunched away.
“It was nothing,” he insisted. “There’s nothing to say.”
“Fine.” She stopped him with one question. “What’s happening to us right now?”
Chapter Seven
Logen refused to answer her. “Nothing. It’s not important. You don’t want to know.”
She knew it.
And until he could trust her enough to tell the truth, she wouldn’t trust him. Not really, not deep down.
Not with her heart.
The night passed and dawn arrived. They drank from the dripping cliff-side pools and shared the exoskeleton again. Logen climbed down the cliff and up the other side.
She squinted into the burning sun and stifled her yawn.
“You can sleep,” he told her, sweating as he maneuvered up the cliff.
“That’s poisonous,” she pointed to the slimy lizard he was about to brush away from his next handhold.
He paused.
It opened its mouth and revealed a poison-tipped blue tongue.
He moved sideways, giving it a wide berth. “After we reach the treetops.”
In the sunny open air, it was easier to hope that Vi, Navina, and Iren had fought off the incoming ships and were returning to rescue them.
It was easier to believe Logen’s silence in the past was stiff-necked pride rather than unwillingness to trust.
Overall, it was easier to forget the things she disliked and concentrate on the things she liked. Such as a man’s steady heartbeat thudding against her hand where she rested against his broad chest. The last time she had been able to rely on that sound had been holding her baby brother to her chest.
She took a deep breath, shaking herself back to the present. “I don’t want to miss the Supply Depot.”
“It’s a huge clearing,” he said. “No one could miss it.”
They almost missed the Supply Depot.
In the mild afternoon, something orange flashed in the distance, off to the left. A marker from one of the collection sites she had missed while resurrecting? She puzzled over it while Logen continued on his way.
And then it hit her.
“That’s it.” She pointed into the wall of foliage, now requiring him to go back and see. “We’re a few degrees off.”
He swore and back-tracked.
“Amazing,” she said. “You should’ve been a Nav, not a Gun. Did you always have this good a sense of direction?”
He snorted. “No.”
“What happened?”
He grew edgy and shut his lips tight.
More secrets.
More lies.
“Glad to see our trust issues are behind us,” she said dryly.
“I trust you with my life.”
Interesting. Even without her oculars, she could see his clear-eyed gaze was telling the truth.
“But not anything else,” she guessed.
His jaw tightened.
He reached the edge of the clearing, which from this distance did not look clear, and began his descent. Reaching for the branches, breaking through layers of foliage, disturbing surprised and deadly creatures as they dropped from the open skies to the closer knit mesh of alien jungle life. They evaluated the building from the air. No movement.
And then they reached the mossy muck at the base of the Supply Depot.
Twenty paces away stood the concrete shed. It stood like a single tooth in a bare earth mound. Its mouth gaped, shell bleached white, with dark, lurking shadows.
Logen extricated himself from the exoskeleton and crouched in the fronds, which reminded her to get the hell down too. They were still in shadow, and no sign of the androids or other enemies.
Or friends either.
“It looks quiet,” she murmured. “Too quiet.”
He nodded, his eyes cold. When evaluating threats, they were always on the same page. “We don’t have many options.”
They didn’t.
A hostile jungle surrounded them and an eerily silent Supply Depot sat in front of them.
She reached for the gun. “I’ll cover you.”
He stopped her. “I run in, grab whatever gear I can find. You stay out of sight.”
Sounded like he was going to get himself killed. “What about the androids?”
“Not concerned.”
“Why the hell not?”
He pointed to a dismembered metal foot resting against the side of the supply depot. Fuck. If they had already reached here, they could be anywhere.
But his point was that someone else had already been here too, fighting them off. Possibly one of the Bad Company mercs. She silently hoped it had been Daz. It could have been anyone.
Anyone except one.
Rest in peace, Chaelee.
Her gut tightened. “I’m going with you.”
“No.”
“Anyone could be watching. Or they could have set up a trap inside the Supply Depot. The only thing we can be certain of is that no one is watching us from orbit.”
He followed her glance up at the white sky. A continuous layer of impenetrable, high fog blocked out the sun, but didn’t diminish the watery heat.
“That’s why you stay here.” He evaluated the eerie depot.
“Logen—”
“Come and get me if something goes wrong.”
Damn.
“No stupid chances,” she pushed. If he died, she’d be all alone. “We all go home.”
He nodded once, short.
And although Chaelee would be resurrected, again, she wouldn’t have the memories of sitting with Talia in the officers’ room, scanning holos and joking about the myth of enhanced satellite images.
/> If Logen died, he’d lose all the memories of rescuing her, of taking beatings for her, of fighting his own fight for her.
Her throat closed.
“I’ve got you.” She patted his back twice. His rippling, masculine back. A soldier going to war for her, entering a situation that could be deadly. She let her second pat linger too long, then released him.
He caught her hand.
She steeled herself to apologize.
He pulled her hard against him and met her lips for a deep, soul-filling kiss.
Pulsing heat coursed through her, bringing her to instant awareness. Her hard nipples pebbled against his masculine chest. She cupped his cheeks and melted into him.
His tongue plunged into her mouth. Sweet desire twisted in her center. She needed him. His trust, his faith, his strength. She nipped his lips and nuzzled his rough, masculine cheek.
His wide palms spanned her hips, pressing her softness to his hard erection.
“Physiological reaction?” she asked, catching her breath.
His eyes darkened and he rubbed against her. “Like a sneeze.”
Her body slicked, ready for him. “Bless you.”
His lips curled. He kissed her forehead, squeezed her once more, and released her gently. So careful, for all of his lithe power.
Yes. His kiss filled her with strength, with power, with confidence. She was a fighter. She was going to survive. They both were.
He looked just as revitalized.
And deadly determined.
He checked their positions, ensured she was ready, and disappeared into the brush.
She deactivated the hovers and crouched in the mud. Her skin still smelled like him, soaked in his scent. She wiped her mouth.
Fuck. She’d forgotten the gun.
He reappeared at her side and held out the weapon.
She took it.
His cheeks were still a little tinged and his eyes seemed darker than usual, and more wild. “Cover me.”
“I already am.”
He disappeared again. She watched for his movement against the foliage around the edge of the Supply Depot, but he was good. And there was no movement within it, either.
She squatted on the wet grass, her heart thumping hard against her chest. His kisses blew away her doubts and shone light in all the dark places. Another century in the mercenaries would be bearable if they could remain together like this.
Resurrection Heart: Robotics Faction - Cyborg Mercenaries Page 9