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  “They will? But what if what they were feeling at the time they got the implant was bad?” Mei-Li asked.

  Malak shrugged. “Then it will feel three times as bad. It is not a pleasant prospect but such is the price for emotional freedom.”

  “I guess I can see why they would want to keep their implants in good working order in some cases, then,” Mei-Li said, thinking again of Six. What emotions would he have to deal with times three if his implant failed? Judging from the way he’d reacted to her looking at even his happy memories, she was certain they wouldn’t be good.

  “Actually, that is very rare. Most of us are grown in tubes. But those of us with pure Kindred DNA often choose not to have our implants replaced or fixed when they go bad. Of course, we cannot get our other enhancements fixed either if they break.” He nodded at his own cracked ocular scope.

  “Oh, because if you go up to the medical barges they’ll see that your implants are broken and want to fix those too,” Mei-Li said, understanding.

  He nodded. “Of course, what we would like to do is get them removed completely. No male with an emotion damper implanted—even a broken one—can bond with a female, which is what we all wish for.”

  “But…there aren’t any females here, I thought,” Mei-Li said.

  “No. But if we could rid ourselves of our implants, we could take a ship and chart a course to another planet—one with females to care for and bond with.” Malak sighed wistfully. “Ahh, it is only a dream. The Tollegs would probably help us—they are a sympathetic and feeling race. But the Collective would never allow it.”

  “So…does the Collective know that this happens? That the implants go bad?”

  “They have an idea,” Malak said grimly. “Why do you think they told the Tollegs to stop mixing pure Kindred DNA some years back? And why else would they have the Purge Squads?”

  “Purge squads?” She knew she’d heard that before.

  “Teams that go around to find people committing Feel-crime.” He looked suddenly worried. “My lady, you will not tell Twelve…I mean Six, the details of our conversation, will you? I fear my tongue has been much loosened by your beauty and I spoke too freely.”

  “Don’t worry,” Mei-Li said quickly. “Your secret is safe with me. I think everyone should have a right to their own feelings. I know I wouldn’t want to give mine up!”

  “Oh, thank you, my lady.” Malak looked relieved. “It used to be that longer hair was all one needed to hide a bad implant and the fact that one was having emotions or “committing Feel-crime” as the Collective and their agents call it. Now, of course they have other methods of finding us. They have the sniffers.”

  Mei-Li frowned. “I’ve heard that term several times. What are ‘sniffers?’”

  “Mechanoids with special sensors that smell pheromones—the chemical scents one’s body emits. They grow stronger with strong emotions,” Malak explained.

  “I met a man on the medical barge that claimed to be able to smell those too,” Mei-Li exclaimed. “He had the most awful, metal…” Her voice trailed off as something just past Malak’s broad shoulder caught her eye.

  Standing there, not ten feet away, was the man with the metal teeth she had met on board the medical barge. He was dressed in the same long, black leather coat that buttoned at his boney throat and went down to his ankles. At his feet were two things that looked to Mei-Li like some kind of weird robot Doberman pinschers. He was looking away from her at the moment, with his head raised high in the air as if he was sniffing for something.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered softly. “That’s him.”

  “What is it, my lady?” Malak turned his head to look at what she was staring at and turned back, his faded blue eye wide. “That’s Two, my lady—the Eyes of the Collective. He is on the Purge Squad and he has sniffers with him!” He took her by the arm. “Come, we must get away before he sees us!”

  But it was too late. Even as he spoke, the man with the metal teeth turned his head. When he spotted Mei-Li, that wide, frightening grin she remembered so well spread across his mouth showing every single one of his steel teeth.

  She was trapped.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Six strode back to his domicile with a swift, steady pace. After a day of work, his mind felt calm and clear and the sensations he had been troubled with earlier were all but eradicated. He was well prepared to deal with Mei-Li now, he thought to himself and his strategy was simple. He would simply keep his distance as he had the night before. He would eat with her, as the Claiming Contract demanded but he would not sleep in the sousa with her. He wouldn’t technically be sleeping at all—he would be spending his night in his recharging station. Six felt this neatly sidestepped the issue of sleeping every night in the same bed. If one of them wasn’t sleeping, the contract technically had not been violated.

  He wasn’t sure how he would deal with the Tasting Week, which would begin tomorrow evening. Part of him—a part he had endeavored to bury—still longed desperately to part Mei-Li’s lovely thighs and taste her pussy. That part thirsted for her sweet honey, longed to feel her pull his hair and call his name as he made her come again and again with his tongue and fingers…

  But Six feared the sensations such an act might cause. Once he had thought he could touch her and still remain cold and unmoved. Mei-Li had proved that he was wrong about that the moment she showed him the meaning of a kiss. An act she had refused to repeat no matter how often he had asked for it. If only he could taste her sweet lips and feel her body pressed to his once more…

  No! Six shook his head. Enough of such thoughts. Now he was wiser. He knew that he needed to keep his hands off her—to keep as much distance between them as possible—if he didn’t wish to experience the troubling sensations that his emotion damper had so much trouble handling.

  Though he didn’t like to admit it, even to himself, Six knew he was in dangerous territory here. The small, seemingly helpless Earth girl he had claimed was like a bomb—one which would trigger an emotional explosion in him if handled incorrectly. Or no, maybe she was more like acid—eating away at his self-control and restraint, making him want her even when he knew she was the one thing he should never have.

  Well, either way he was determined to leave her alone. And he would deal with the problem of the Tasting Week when it came. Thankfully even though he was tempted, he couldn't taste her tonight—it was against the rules of the contract to do any of the proscribed erotic activities early unless the female specifically consented to them and agreed to bonding sex. In fact, forcing early contact of any kind before the contract allowed it was grounds for immediate termination of the Claiming Period.

  It would have been an easy way out of their contract and Six might seriously have considered such a thing but he couldn’t bring himself to actually hurt Mei-Li, no matter how…disturbed he had been by her actions the night before. Also, One wanted the Claiming Period to run its normal course for some still undisclosed reason which he had promised to divulge soon.

  Six would have liked to disclose some of the difficulties the claiming was causing him—in a very understated and careful way, of course—but One and the five males highest in the rubric were very busy just now. Six wasn’t sure, but he thought there might be a conquest on the wind—some small nearby planet with natural resources the Collective wished to harvest. Probably One would be more communicative when it was accomplished.

  Musing on this, he opened the door to his domicile and went in, expecting to see Mei-Li using the nature emulator. She wasn’t in the living area, however. Walking further into the domicile, he looked for her in the food prep area. She wasn’t there either, though the bag of tresh was over half gone and a large pile of strange garments was sitting on the counter. She was also absent from the sleeping room and his recharging area. Though he searched and called her name, Mei-Li was nowhere to be found—not even the fresher.

  She’s gone.

  A strange sensation started in th