She closed her eyes and just lay under him, regretting that she’d put herself out there since he hadn’t said a damn word. It hurt. Steel’s rejection of her was painful in so many ways.

“Rena?” His voice was soft.

“What?” She refused to look at him.

“I’m considering.”

“Forget it.” She wished she could roll away from him, put distance between their bodies, but he held her under his big body, effectively pinning her there.

“I’ve wounded your pride?”

That got Rena to open her eyes. “No, Steel. Not my pride, but I’m done reaching out to you.”

A frown marred his features. “You confuse me. I’m trying to think logically but you aren’t logical.”

“I’m all human and not a cyborg, remember?”

“I can’t forget it. Just looking at your pale skin and your small size reminds me of our differences. We are not the same and we will never be equal.”

“I know. I’m comparable to a chair, right? That’s what Blackie said. Please get off me. I’ll sleep on the floor and try to not bother you for the remaining time we have to spend together. I’ll try to be a better piece of property to you until you let me go.”

“I didn’t say no to your offer of sharing my bed.”

Anger flared. “You didn’t say yes either. Get the hell off me and let me up. I’m going to go shower and then I’ll eat some of that food you had brought to us. Maybe the next time Fusion or Wire come in here you can take them up on their offers to have sex with you. I bet they are logical to you and your equals as well.”

“Your anger isn’t logical either. I was weighing the cons and pros of what you offered.”

Pushing on his chest, she fought the urge to smack him. “Get off me.”

Steel didn’t budge as his gorgeous eyes watched her, studied her, and his full lips were curved downward in a frown. Frustration rose in Rena as she helplessly pushed against his wide chest, not able to move him an inch. It was like trying to lift a car off her.

“There is no need for you to get emotional,” he finally said. “I’m not the same as your males. I was just running scenarios in my mind while I evaluated the relevant facts.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “Why? You either want me or you don’t. It’s that damn simple, Steel.”

He shook his head. “It is anything but simple.” He paused. “What do you know of my kind?”

“Just what my father and his friends told me. After my mother left he had his buddies over all the time so it was like having a dozen fathers, so someone was always with me.

They all hated cyborgs and told me chilling stories about how you were brutal killers.”

A muscle in Steel’s face twitched. “When we were created they kept us in a kind of stasis until we were physically the size of a human teenage male, our growth accelerated so from Petri dish to the time we were awakened was just a matter of months. They thought we’d be blank slates, mindless brains they could program.”

Rena hadn’t known that. She was horrified and sympathy welled inside her over the image of waking up to life in a teenage body without parents, without love, without any of the things she’d had.

“We evolved into what they were not expecting. We had thoughts and emotions.” He paused. “They put chips into our minds that would shut off access to parts of our brains but we worked around those blocks, learning how to turn them on or off at will, to secretly hide that we were more in control of ourselves than they realized. They said we didn’t have souls but we did.”

“That’s why they wanted to destroy your kind. They realized they couldn’t totally be in command of you and make you the way they wanted you to be.”

Steel took a deep breath. “Yes, that is why. Did you hear me? I can turn off parts of my body, Rena. I can deaden my arm, for example, so we can’t be tortured effectively.

An enemy couldn’t make me suffer enough pain to tell them what they wanted to know if they cut off fingers because I would just block all sensation to that arm.”

Speechless, Rena didn’t say a word.

“When I awoke to being restrained on the bed with you on top of me I could have turned off sensation to my lower body.”

Shock seeped into her mind as she realized what he was saying. Steel had grown hard under her when she’d straddled him and tried to seduce him. Gene had said he was resisting his body when he’d held her to detect if she was telling the truth or not, but when he’d admitted it was difficult to control his body and had stopped, he’d gotten an instant erection. She swallowed.

“I don’t know why but I found you appealing, and the fact that you had me restrained turned me on. I chose to allow myself to experience the sensations and respond.” Steel cocked his head. “When you cried I could have deactivated my emotions but I chose not to. I held still and allowed you to find comfort with me. I lay there without fighting to break free any longer because I liked you sleeping on top of me and I felt protective of you. It isn’t a logical response and it disturbs me that something about you draws me, Rena.”

Staring into his eyes, thoughts ran through her mind. Why is he admitting this? Why hadn’t he just shut himself off? He wouldn’t have gotten hard and we wouldn’t have been able to have sex. Afterward he lay still and just allowed me to cry myself to sleep, stopped pulling on the bed or trying to break the frame. Her mouth opened.

“That is why I hesitate to answer you without giving it some thought and consideration,” he said quickly. “I’m acting in an irrational manner and it disturbs me. I don’t know if spending more time with you will make me more irrational or if it will give me the answer to why I’m so drawn to you so that I can no longer have you in my thoughts constantly. You are a mystery to me.”

“What is the worst that can happen if we continue to sleep together until we reach Outpost Five?”

Steel hesitated. He lifted off her, separating their bodies as he climbed from the bed.

Rena thought he wasn’t going to answer her as he started to head for the bathroom but then he paused by the door, turning slowly to gaze at her with his beautiful eyes. “I could change my mind about giving you your freedom and keep you.” He took a deep breath.

“Come get clean with me and then we’ll share a meal. I know we both are hungry.”

As he disappeared out of her sight into the bathroom, Rena sat up slowly, swallowing the lump that formed in her throat. Steel even saying that he might keep her should have made her want to avoid his touch since right now he was set on letting her go. The thought of saying goodbye to the tall, sexy cyborg made her heart squeeze in her chest. No man she’d ever met made her feel anything close to the way he did.

She moved to get off the bed, following him almost eagerly. The Vontage had real water showers, a rarity on spaceships but it had been built to be a luxury hotel. The water tanks on the ship have to be huge, she thought, walking toward the bathroom. If I have a brain in my head, I’ll avoid Steel to make sure he doesn’t change his mind about letting me go. She stepped into the bathroom to see Steel bent over, filling the large tub. Her focus fixed on his rounded, firm ass, watching muscles flex there as he straightened to turn his head. Her gaze lifted to his, her heart pounding when he smiled at her.

You’re not the only one being totally irrational, Steel, her mind whispered, as she moved toward the big cyborg.

Chapter Eight

The planet wasn’t similar to Earth one bit. Rena inched closer to Steel wondering again why the hell he had made her go down to the surface with him. She glanced up at his face where he stood next to her but his attention was focused on the cyborg women surrounding them, a deep frown on his face.

Peering at the hundreds of cyborg females was a shock to Rena’s system. The women looked similar to ancient Amazons with their warrior-sized muscular bodies covered in tattered clothing that barely hid their girl parts, not much else, and they were all about six feet tall, their skin tones were darker shades of gray than the cyborg men from the ship, probably made that way from all the exposure to the sun.

The few cyborg males were barely dressed as well, wearing loincloths, their large, muscled bodies also darker from the sun. They looked barbaric and some of them carried swords that were obviously fashioned from metal scraps.

They stood at the edge of a large camp surrounded by woods. The trees were big blue cottony things resembling weird weeping willows. The homes the women had built were mostly constructed from metal pieces that they’d salvaged from the ship they’d crashed into a nearby moon and had shuttled to the surface of the nearest planet, the one they stood on now. It was as if Rena had stepped back in time as she looked around her at the very basic living conditions of the camp, the only difference was that these were cyborgs.

A redheaded cyborg woman, who looked to be about six-foot-four, stepped forward, gripping one of those homemade swords, an angry expression on her face, her bright green eyes fixed on Rena. “What is that?”

“My human. Hello, Fiona. I assured you that I would return within a few days. Are your people packed? The repairs will be done in a matter of days. We want to start transferring your people within the next forty hours to slowly settle them aboard your ship where life support and basic functions have been reestablished.”

Fury gripped Fiona’s features. “You dared bring a human near us?” She took another step forward, gripping her sword in her fist. “We hate humans. We had to leave Earth and we were marooned here for all these years, too afraid to use the last of our fuel to venture into space seeking help for fear of them discovering us to finish us off like they tried to do on Earth.”

Steel stepped in front of Rena, putting himself in the path of the enraged cyborg female, protecting Rena. He tensed and his hands fisted at his sides. “Back up and lower your weapon.”

“She’s a human.” The woman turned her head and spit on the ground.

“She’s mine.” Steel nearly growled the words. “You will respect my property. You have humans here.”

“Five of them but they were strong supporters of us.” Fiona stepped back, lowering her sword. “Is she a supporter?”

“She has no animosity for cyborgs.”

“Then why is she your property? Human supporters are our friends and comrades but you said she was your human.”

Sighing, Steel relaxed. “On Garden all humans are property, but you wouldn’t know that since you’ve never been there and are unaware of our laws. It doesn’t mean they are a danger to us or that they are a threat. It just means they have that status.”

Fiona didn’t look happy as she returned her attention back to Rena, curling her lip. “I never trust them, even the supporters.”

Still frowning, Steel tilted his head. “She can’t harm you.” He paused. “I’ll protect you from the fearsome little human.” Sarcasm nearly dripped from his lips as he spoke.

Dark green eyes narrowed in response while Fiona handed off her sword to another large female who stood behind her and then faced Steel head-on as she took a step toward him and then another until they were just a foot apart. The redheaded cyborg woman glared up the few inches into Steel’s handsome face. One hand rose to place it on Steel’s chest.

“I heard you are no longer contracted to a woman.”

Steel’s body tensed. “How did you hear about that?”

“Word travels and crew from both ships have been going back and forth to the surface.” She inched closer. “We would make a great match. You know I’ve wanted you since you discovered us and now you no longer have a reason to deny me.”

Fury overwhelmed Rena. She opened her mouth and then slammed it closed, knowing she had no claim on Steel and that they weren’t in a relationship so she couldn’t exactly tell the Amazon bitch to take her hand off her man. It burned though and when Steel didn’t jerk away from the woman’s touch that anger turned to pain. A horrible thought struck her as she stood there tense and waiting to see what would happen next.