by Regine Abel
“I want to reunite as quickly as possible with my remaining pod brothers,” Loreus said.
“Do you even know where they are?” Haelin asked.
“Yes, they are safe,” Loreus responded. “They are aware I have been restored.”
“You connected through the Mainframe?!” I exclaimed, horrified.
“Relax, Major,” Loreus said in an appeasing voice. “We have an agreed code, a single symbol in the oddest location. If you can assist me in establishing a secure connection with them, I would be extremely grateful.”
Haelin cast a sideways glance at Lanish.
“I’ll take care of it,” Lanish said. “We can discuss the details once we’re done here.”
Loreus nodded gratefully. As much as I rejoiced for him, my chest constricted with sadness and envy. I had hoped to be able to do the same with Caylan. However, seeing Loreus fully operational after the neural processor damage he had sustained gave me hope. For the past eleven days, his pod brothers had seen his presence in their closed neural network the way I was seeing Caylan’s. Maybe somewhere out there, someone would do for my brother what I did for theirs.
“Very well,” Haelin said, looking in turn at me and then at Loreus. “Unless you two need some time to talk, I will take you to Claudia, our doctor. She will make you a prosthetic similar to the one Jarog and Tamryn are wearing to cover that brand.”
“The prosthetic would be great,” Loreus said with gratitude, before turning towards me. He held my gaze with an unreadable expression. “We’ll talk later.”
I nodded, feeling oddly dismissed. And yet, it had been the logical response on his part. What could we possibly discuss right now? Until he had a better understanding of the situation with his brothers, everything else was up in the air.
Repressing a sigh, I rose from my chair alongside the others and went down to the suite I shared with Tamryn. By now, the call with her uncle would be over, if only for security reasons. The minute I stepped inside, I knew things hadn’t gone well. She was sitting on the couch, arms wrapped around her folded legs and chin resting on her knees. I circled around the couch to come stand before her. She lifted her face to look at me, unseeing for a moment. Then something seemed to give inside of her.
Tamryn didn’t cry or fall apart. She merely stood up, approached me, and wrapped her arms around me. Cheek pressed against my chest, she closed her eyes while I returned her embrace. I rested my head on top of hers while gently caressing her hair and her back. I didn’t speak, knowing Tamryn would when she was ready.
She eventually pulled away from me, studied my features for a few seconds, then led me by the hand to the couch. She coaxed me to sit down before settling on my lap. My woman gave me a summary of the conversation she’d had with her uncle.
“So, you’re going to be the new barmaid?” I asked teasingly, to try and lighten the mood. “The current one doesn’t know how to make a proper stiff drink.”
Tamryn snorted and playfully slapped my chest. “I will if you take on that secretary position Haelin is eyeing you for.”
I smiled and gently caressed her cheek. “That’s the one job I’ll never settle for,” I said softly.
“Right. You don’t fit the profile of a pencil pusher,” she said in a resigned voice. “How did the meeting go with Loreus?”
I gave her the highlights of what went down.
“I don’t know that Grellik guy, but I agree with you that he’s going to be mightily pissed,” Tamryn said with a frown. “Maybe it’s for the best then that Loreus will be leaving soon to rejoin his brothers.”
I nodded slowly. She gave me an uncertain look then started fiddling with the seam of my shirt, appearing suddenly quite fascinated by its craftsmanship.
“I’m guessing you’ll be leaving with him when he does?” Although Tamryn worded it as a question, her tone implied far more of a statement.
My heart lurched, but I kept my emotions in check. We’d been avoiding the topic for days, more or less dancing around it. But now was finally the time. When I didn’t answer right away, Tamryn’s beautiful eyes snapped up to lock with mine.
“Is that what you want me to do?” I asked in a soft voice.
Tamryn slightly recoiled, and she frowned, pondering her response. “That’s not up to me.”
“That’s not the question I asked you,” I replied.
“What does it matter what I—”
Her voice trailed off when I gave her a hard stare. She pinched her lips, displeased. She had reasons to be. In a way, I was copping out by putting the burden on her to state her feelings instead of expressing mine first.
“No, I don’t want you to leave,” Tamryn said, her voice somewhat clipped. “I would like for you to stay here with me instead, and then to come with me wherever the rebellion will rally once things are safer. But you leaving with Loreus and joining with your other Cyborg brothers is the most logical choice. And no one is more logical than you are.”
Although she tried to lighten her tone towards the end, to sound more casual and matter-of-fact, the sadness that had seeped into it didn’t go unnoticed.
“Yes, there is great comfort in logic,” I said nonchalantly. “It is a reassuring approach, but it can also be a cowardly one.”
Tamryn stiffened, and her eyes widened upon hearing those words. She studied my features with confusion, trying to figure out where I was going with this.
“Over the past couple of weeks, since our arrest, my world has been turned upside down in far more ways than you realize, Tamryn,” I said in a tired voice. “The Cyborg Military Elite had become my entire life. It was what defined me. Emperor Shui dismantling it and exiling us has been traumatic. To then feel my pod brothers die one by one has been a devastating blow. But these events forcing me to truly look at myself in the mirror are crushing what’s left of me.”
“Jarog, what do you mean? What’s going on?” Tamryn asked, her voice filled with worry as she slipped a soothing hand over my short-cropped hair.
“My self-righteous cloak of loyalty and honor, of discipline and logic has just been the shield of a coward,” I spat out with self-contempt.
“You’re not a coward!” Tamryn exclaimed with outrage.
“I am!” I snapped back in a tone that brooked no argument. “I hid behind my oath so that I wouldn’t have to make the painful decisions everyone else was making. My so-called word and logic allowed me to traipse through difficult situations without having to shoulder any responsibility. Thanks to that, my questionable actions weren’t me being cruel, selfish, or immoral, but the result of the oath I had taken or the path of logic.”
“Things aren’t always that black and white, Jarog,” Tamryn said in a soothing voice. “You’ve got to give yourself some slack.”
“No, Tamryn! I need to stop burying my head in the sand,” I replied firmly. “That day when our escape pod landed here on Xyva, I never should have abandoned you to what was an almost certain death.”
“Well, as much as I hated your arguments, they were fair,” Tamryn countered. “I saw the speed at which you took off that day. I never would have been able to keep up. And you accompanying me to Eraka would have just gotten both of us in shackles. The choice you made allowed you to meet with those mercs sooner than if I’d been holding you back. But more importantly, you came back for me and have looked after me ever since.”
“Yes, but rather than just leaving you, I could have tried harder to come up with—”
“STOP! Jarog, stop!” Tamryn said sternly. “Woulda, coulda, shoulda is a fool’s litany, and you are no fool. Whatever happened in the past, whatever choices we made, good or bad, are irrelevant today. The only thing that matters is who we are now.”
My woman cupped my face in her hands, her thumbs gently caressing my cheeks while her eyes flicked between mine.
“I know you’re beating yourself up about remaining loyal to Shui,” Tamryn continued. “You’re whipping yourself over Loreus’s question about wh
ether or not you would have ratted out his pod brother had he approached you about turning on the Emperor.”
“What kind of monster am I that I can’t even say with certainty what I would have done?” I asked, shame burning in my gut.
“I can,” Tamryn said with a conviction that left me reeling. “You wouldn’t have ratted them out.”
“You can’t be certain,” I argued.
“And yet, I am. You wouldn’t be this tortured otherwise,” she said matter-of-factly. “That you feel this horrified at the thought that a single word from you could have gotten these men executed confirms to me that you couldn’t have gone through with it.”
Her words gave me pause. Could she be right or was this just wishful thinking on my part because I didn’t want to accept that I could have chosen the alternative?
I heaved a deep sigh. “I want to believe you are right. Either way, I haven’t answered your question. The answer is no, I will not leave with Loreus.”
Tamryn’s eyes widened in shock. For a split second, a glimmer of joy and hope flitted over her face before she took on a suspicious expression.
“Why not?”
“Well, first, he hasn’t offered for me to tag along,” I replied with a dismissive gesture. “Which isn’t surprising under the circumstances.”
“That’s silly,” Tamryn argued. “He hasn’t offered yet because he needs to run it by his pod brothers first.”
I nodded in concession. “Yes, I have considered that, as well.”
“On our way back from Tarkis, Loreus pretty much told you that he forgave you for having been a loyalist, that his brother wanted you with them, and that you would be welcomed, now that your eyes were opened,” Tamryn said.
“I… I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, but your arguments hold a certain ring of truth,” I replied cautiously. “But the fact that he hasn’t offered is only one of the reasons I will not leave with him.”
This time, Tamryn appeared to hold her breath.
“If I leave with him, it will be for all the wrong reasons,” I explained. “It would be about falling back into the routine where I’d feel safe. I would belong to a pod again, play my role to the best of my abilities, and be the voice of logic. I wouldn’t go with him because it’s where I truly want to be, but because it felt like what I should do.”
“What do you want to do, then?” Tamryn asked in a whisper.
“I want to stay with you, whatever you decide to do.”
Tamryn’s breath hitched, and she stared at me, her lips parted in shock.
“My parents were right when they expressed their fear that, by becoming a Cyborg, I would lose myself,” I said, my gaze going out of focus as I reminisced. “I did. In all the ways that mattered, I became a machine. In the few days we have spent together, you have reminded me how to feel, how to make jokes—terrible though they are—and how to smile.”
A powerful emotion crossed Tamryn’s face, and she chuckled at my comment. “Your jokes are indeed terrible. And yet, the way you deliver them still manages to crack me up.”
“You see? You get me,” I said. “In the six years since my transformation, you are the first woman to stir my interest, to make me want more. Unless I’ve completely misinterpreted your responses to me, I believe you also have feelings for me that go beyond sex. I don’t need to tell you how socially challenged I am, and yet, around you, there’s never that awkwardness, those uneasy moments of silence that we feel obligated to fill. I can enjoy peace and quiet with you, and still feel comfortable.”
Tamryn smiled and nodded. “We do get along pretty nicely, don’t we?”
“We do,” I replied. “I’m not going to insult your intelligence with words of eternal love. However, I feel a strong bond with you, and I want to see how far it will go. In all the ways that count, you and I are already a couple. You are a warrior, like me, and we both want to obliterate Shui. We could try to build a future together while plotting his demise.”
She let go of my cheeks, her arms wrapping around my neck as her face took on a tender expression. “I’m liking the sound of that.”
A bolt of fire exploded in my chest. Eyes locked with my woman, I leaned down and captured her lips in a passionate kiss. Although sex between us had always been off the charts, this time, there was something different in our kiss. Affection, hope, commitment, were some of the words that came to mind as our tongues mingled with an intensity devoid of the all-consuming lust that often dominated our couplings.
When the kiss ended, I rested my forehead against hers, and Tamryn gently rubbed her nose against mine, making me smile.
“I’m still not doing any secretarial job,” I deadpanned, and she burst out laughing.
Chapter 14
Tamryn
Eyes locked with my lover—well, my boyfriend now—legs wrapped around his waist and arms around his neck, I let him carry me back to our bedroom. We still hadn’t baptized every surface of the room. Truth be told, I didn’t think that we would, and it didn’t bother me. Although we’d be deemed fairly vanilla, sex with Jarog was amazingly wild. My man was a beast in bed, pun very much intended.
Aside from his insane stamina, Jarog was an extremely attentive lover. I suspected he used his cybernetic assets to analyze my responses to his ministrations and adjusted accordingly. His ability to touch me just the right way, at just the right time, and with just the perfect amount of force or sweetness was almost supernatural.
He kissed me as he laid me down on the bed then straightened. As he kicked off his boots and unbuttoned his shirt, his gaze never strayed from my face. The possessiveness of it all had a swarm of butterflies fluttering away in the pit of my stomach. Having already ditched my own shoes back in the living area, I kneeled on the bed to get rid of my shirt, then crawled to the edge on all fours. Reaching a hand forward, I grabbed the waist of Jarog’s pants and yanked him forward. My man complied, advancing a couple of steps until he couldn’t come any closer.
I stared at the face that had grown so dear to me while undoing his pants. I freed his cock at the same time that Jarog tossed his shirt to the corner of the room. He was half-erect but quickly hardening as I began to stroke him. He took in a hissing breath when my mouth joined the fray. He was too long and thick for me to take all of him in. However, my deep throat was fairly impressive. I bobbed in front of him, reveling in the sexy sounds he made, his breathing accelerating as his hand slipped through my hair.
I loved that he never tried to take charge when I was pleasuring him, or to force me to perform in a specific fashion or pace. Jarog was definitely an alpha, but not a control freak. He was a formidable force of nature with the strength to snap me like a twig. And yet, he was putty in my hands. Nothing made me feel more powerful than to see him fall apart for me, as he was about to do.
I accelerated the movement of my hand on his shaft, squeezing tighter as I took him even deeper into my mouth. My tongue massaged him, and my teeth gently scraped the soft skin of his length. Jarog stiffened. My hand on his hip immediately slipped to the round globe of his left butt cheek. I sank my fingers into the fleshy part, preventing him from pulling away as he often did—or at least tried to—every time he was about to climax in my mouth. I wouldn’t do it for just any man, but I genuinely enjoyed swallowing him. Too bad his semen didn’t transfer to me any of those badass healing nanobots of his.
I loved the way Jarog slightly wavered on his feet from the pleasure I’d just given him as I squeezed the last drop from him. He stepped out of his pants, which had dropped to his ankles while I’d been blowing him, then pushed me onto my back. He kissed me, not minding the taste of his own essence on my lips. My man gently undressed me while covering my body with kisses. Once he had me naked, Jarog joined me on the bed. But first, he returned the favor.
In the most exquisite torture, he licked my slit and folds, dipping his fingers in and out of me, but always snubbing my clit while it throbbed and ached from neglect. At first, I believed it was
because he enjoyed hearing me beg and seeing me writhe helplessly beneath his touch, while being denied what I wanted. But over the past few days, I’d realized he was just building up the tension. And then, the moment the wet heat of his mouth finally settled on my engorged little nub, lightning would strike, sending me tumbling into a vortex of bliss.
I cried out, my back arching off the bed and my head rolling from side to side as he sent me over the edge. Not for the first time, I growled in frustration at Jarog’s short hair. I wanted to fist it while he feasted on me. I had to content myself with rubbing my palm over the short but soft bristle of his hair while coming down from my orgasm.
I welcomed my lover with open arms when he climbed back on top of me. Even though it no longer burned as much going in, Jarog’s cock still made me feel incredibly full. I sank my nails into his back, moaning loudly as each stroke of his length inside me propelled another wave of liquid fire through my veins. His slow and tender movements were setting my skin ablaze. As much as I loved the sensuality of this moment, my man had awakened the volcano deep within me, and it needed a bit more to be able to erupt.
I began to lift my pelvis, meeting him thrust for thrust. Always attentive to me, Jarog picked up the pace, taking me deeper, faster, and harder but still without falling back to the wild and unbridled romps that often took place between us. Today, we weren’t fucking; my man was making love to me.
Our voices became one as we climaxed together.
As was his wont, Jarog slammed himself deep into me as his seed erupted inside of me, his bruising hold on my hips keeping me still. Then he resumed moving in and out of me, his lips worshiping my face and my neck as he gradually hardened again, picking up the pace until he was once more pounding into me.
He wrested one more orgasm from me before collapsing on the bed and collecting my feverish body into his arms. I pressed myself against him, gently rocked by the erratic beating of his heart in my ear, slowly settling down.