Kissing Steel (4 page)

hands fisted at his sides when she reached back to unfasten her bra even as heat flamed

her cheeks. She wasn’t the type to ever strip for a stranger but desperate times called for

desperate measures. It had been a long time since she’d been touched. The idea of him

being the one to lay his hands on her made her a little excited, urging her to keep

undressing.

He didn’t say a word or move as she dropped her bra. She reached for her pants next

and quickly shoved them down her legs, taking her panties with them. Totally naked she

straightened up to meet his stunned gaze.

“What are—” His voice broke and he cleared it. “Why have you stripped?”

“I’m intelligent. I can’t escape so I’m here for the duration until a real possibility of

escape happens and that means I need to survive.” She took a step toward him. “You

don’t like to share women, you’re the biggest cyborg that I’ve seen and I know you don’t

want me dead. That means that I want to stay with you.”

He blinked but didn’t move. Rena didn’t have that problem, inching forward until

she stopped within a few feet of him. “You said you haven’t had a woman in a long time.

I’m a woman, I’m willing, I’m here and I plan on remaining with you instead of being

given away to someone else. I thought we could come to an understanding. If you protect

me and keep me safe from the other cyborgs then I’ll do almost anything to keep you

happy. I don’t have a lot…well, any…experience in seduction but I’ll try.”

His eyes were wide and utterly stunned. “Are you a virgin?”

She laughed. “No. I’m married actually.”

His face hardened and his mouth turned down in an angry expression. “You belong

to another man but you’re so eagerly offering your body to me?”

“I haven’t touched my husband in a very long time and I never had an affair, too

afraid he’d find out and he’d put me on the street. I married him thinking he was someone

he wasn’t.” She paused. “He has a mistress. Do you know what that is?”

He shook his head.

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Kissing Steel – Laurann Dohner

“A mistress is a woman he pays for sex and is exclusively his to use. He couldn’t

marry her because he has an important job with a father he has to impress to gain more

money when his father dies. He never loved me, he lied about that and let me think he

did. I was naïve but I found out soon enough that he barely tolerates me. He sleeps with

other women as much as he can, so I stopped sharing a room with him and live on the

other side of the house we share. He won’t let me divorce him because he says it would

embarrass him and he likes having a respectable wife in order to garner his father’s favor.

He’s my boss, so if I left him he said he’d fire me and make sure no one would ever hire

me again. On Earth, without a job, I’d be without a home and do you know what they do

with homeless people? They force women into pleasure-worker jobs or they make us

grunt government employees. I’d end up picking up trash and living with dozens of other

people in a small room. It’s…hell.”

His anger melted away. Steel was still frowning but he unclenched his fists as he

reached for her. Rena tensed a little but forced her body to relax when his hands curved

her hips. They were large and warm as he gently gripped her. He took a deep breath.

“How many men have you had?”

“Two. I lived with a man I worked with for six years but he was killed when he tried

to save me when we were trying to recover stolen property. I was devastated and Chuck,

that’s my husband’s name, used it to his advantage to get me to marry him.”

His hands dropped. “Get on the bed.”

“Do we have an understanding then?”

His gaze lowered down her body and then lifted to meet her blue eyes. “Yes.”

She still hesitated. “I want to be clear that I’ll just have sex with you. Do you

promise me that you won’t let other men touch me?”

“If I take you as mine no other man will touch you.”

“If?”

“You’re not on the bed yet…unless you want me to take you standing up.”

She turned around quickly, her heart pounding in her chest as she moved for the bed.

What kind of lover would the big cyborg be? She prayed he was nothing similar to

Chuck. Her not-so-loving husband was damn selfish in bed. If she’d ever slept with

Chuck before the marriage there wouldn’t have been a ceremony. He was a “two-minute

not so wonder” who didn’t believe in foreplay, not even liking to face Rena when he’d

taken her. She climbed on the bed and stretched out on her back.

She turned her head to stare at the cyborg when he didn’t immediately join her. He

hadn’t moved from where she’d left him, his gaze was watching her silently. She stared

back at him, waiting for him to do something, anything, not sure what else to do.

“You are frightened of me.”

She could lie but he seemed pretty intelligent. “I am. You’re really big and obviously

strong. I heard all about cyborg enhancements. You could snap my bones without even

straining a muscle. You’re stronger, faster, and bigger than regular men so of course I’m

a little afraid of you.”

“What do you know of cyborgs?”

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Kissing Steel – Laurann Dohner

She hesitated and then sat up and she crossed her arms over her breasts to hide them,

feeling uncomfortable sitting naked on the big bed. “I know why Earth tried to kill your

kind off and what they were afraid of. I know that you’re fighting machines and that you

have implants throughout your body and in your brain.” She paused, not sure what he

was looking for in her answer.

“Have you ever met my kind?”

She shook her head. “No. Cyborgs were gone from Earth by the time I was three

years old unless they were prisoners.”

“So you read about us in your history files?”

She hesitated. “I knew someone who was a military guard for the few cyborg

survivors captured after the order went down to stop the cyborg program. Before they

were executed.”

He blinked a few times. Steel finally moved, closing the distance to stop at the side

of the bed. His gaze ran over her body before he settled for staring into her eyes. “I don’t

want you. You’re too small, too frail, and you’re not my type. You may sleep on my bed

tonight but in the morning you’re going to go with my engineer.”

Shock rolled through her. “I’m not unattractive.”

He tilted his head. “You are correct. You are very appealing but you aren’t my type.

My unit female was six-foot-four with a rounded, solid frame.” His gaze lowered down

her body and then lifted. “You’re not sturdy enough for someone like me and I like

aggressive females. You will be much better suited for another male.”

“So you’re just turning me down?” Rena was shocked. She had men hit on her all the

time when she was clothed but now she was naked in this man’s bed yet he was rejecting

her. That burned and was insulting as hell. “You said you haven’t had a woman in a long

time. You’d rather go without sex than have it with me?”

He paused. “There are cyborg females on a planet we will arrive at in the morning.

Many of them have shown an interest in forming a family unit with me but I had thought

I was still contracted to a woman. Now that I know I am free I can contract with another

cyborg female so I won’t be without sex for long.”

Biting her lip, she glared at him. “Please don’t give me to someone else.”

He sighed. “You will be treated well.” He turned away to walk to a dresser. In less

than a minute he returned, tossing a large gray shirt at her. “Put that on.”

Her hands shook as she put his big shirt on to cover her body. He was going to give

her away, her life was going to be pure hell, and the thought of attacking him even came

to mind. If she attacked him he might kill her, but she reasoned that dying would be

preferable than becoming a ship whore.

“Do not take it personally,” he said softly. “I was a prisoner after it was declared

cyborgs should be decommissioned.” He took a deep breath. “I spent six years in prison

on Earth until I escaped when they had a system failure after a blizzard. I don’t hate

humans but I don’t want to get involved with one. The years I spent locked up made me

never want to trust your kind again.”

Shock rolled through her. “You were in a detention center on Earth?”

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Kissing Steel – Laurann Dohner

He nodded. “They had a use for me but when they were done I was slated for

execution within sixty-four days.”

Hope hit her hard and fast. He’d been detained, which meant he had been subjected

to the same procedure as the cyborgs her father had guarded.
Did he know what they’d

done to him? Had he gotten reprogrammed? Had the extra chip been removed from his

brain?
Her father said they didn’t tell the cyborgs what had been done to them when they

processed them into the detention centers for fear that they’d try to operate on each other.

Her thoughts went into overdrive.

“Could you please sit down on the bed so we can talk about this?”

He regarded her uneasily. “You wish to seduce me? It won’t happen. I’m not an

Earth male.”

“I wouldn’t dream of doing that,” she flat-out lied. “I’d like to hear more about this

engineer. I’m scared. Please sit down and at least tell me what you know about him so

I’m less terrified. I didn’t do anything to you when you were on Earth. I’m too young to

have been a part of that.”

He hesitated, studying her, but he finally moved to the bed and sat all the way at the

bottom, away from her. The bed dipped as the mattress took his impressive weight. He

took a deep breath and turned his head to look at her. “I am tired but I will answer a few

of your questions. Go ahead and ask, but do so quickly.”

Swallowing hard, her heart pounding, she stared into his beautiful eyes. “Are you

listening to me, Steel?”

He nodded. “Ask your questions. I will give you five minutes but that is all.”

Terrified, she blurted out the words her father had told her so many times as a child

that she’d never forget them. “Spectrum three-three-three-six!”

Steel opened his mouth, probably to ask her what that meant but then his eyes

widened as his body went totally limp. Rena lunged for the big cyborg as his body started

to slump forward. She wanted him on the bed, not on the floor or she’d never get him

back on the mattress. She grabbed his shoulders and tugged hard, grunting as she fought

his slack weight but then winning as he fell back toward her, on the bed. As his body

landed, the bed bounced a little, almost knocking her on top of him.

She stared down at his closed eyes. “Oh shit. It really worked.”

Her father had told her that cyborgs had been reprogrammed to shut down for ten

minutes and he’d given her the code that triggered the defensive program. The chip had

been added in case they ever tried to revolt, escape, or if a guard was trapped in a room

with one trying to kill him. Cyborgs were super soldiers and their keepers had been afraid

they were too damn smart to keep contained, even locked in detention centers, so they’d

embedded a chip that shut them down when those words were spoken, sending a jolt to

all their hardware, forcing them to totally reboot.

She had ten minutes before the big cyborg’s brain came out of shut-down mode and

she could guess that he was going to be killing mad when he realized what she’d done.

She released his shoulders and turned her head, staring at the chains wrapped around the

bed frame. Her gaze returned to Steel.

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Kissing Steel – Laurann Dohner

She was in deep shit if this didn’t work but hell, he was giving her away regardless.

What did she really have to lose? She stood up on the bed, carefully moving around his

limp body to walk to the posts. Time was ticking away and she had a lot to do.

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Kissing Steel – Laurann Dohner

Worry made Rena bite her lip after more than ten minutes had passed. She checked

the pulse at his throat again, feeling relieved when she found a strong, steady one. His

heart was good, his breathing was fine but he hadn’t woken up the way he was supposed

to. Her father had said ten minutes but it had been closer to fifteen and Steel still wasn’t

coming out of it.

“Steel? Wake up, please.”

She hesitated and then straddled his waist as her hands flattened on his chest. His

skin was warm and she noticed again how damn big he was. Her knees barely touched

the mattress with her sitting astride him. She knew her weight wouldn’t hurt him. She

rubbed him, letting her hands glide over his ribs, feeling his muscles even though he was

relaxed under her palms and fingertips. They were easy to feel since he had so many of

them.

“Steel? Damn it, wake up! Please?”