Cyborg Nation (31 page)

Bronte frowned. Somehow she thought the lack of a house was only part of what had unsettled him. “Where will we live until then?”

He gave her that same strange look, but this time he smiled and moved closer. Lifting a hand, he cupped her cheek. “We will find a place.” He paused. “It seems … strange to think of having a home. I had not thought beyond convincing you to sign with us. I do not think I really believed you would or I would have planned. I do not ordinarily overlook such important details.”

Bronte smiled and moved closer, settling her cheek against his chest. “It wouldn’t have helped if you had planned. We would still have to find a place to live,” she said, turning her head to kiss his chest.

He ran his hands over her back, molding her against his length. For a moment, he merely held her. Finally, he caught her shoulders to steady her and stepped away. “I am not certain that I can manage only affection at the moment,” he said huskily, then seemed to think it over. “I can. My cock can not.”

Bronte chuckled, but his comments stirred desire within her, too—for the second time that day. Undoubtedly, she thought wryly, she was getting
much
better. After a moment’s hesitancy, where she wavered between the urge to tempt him and the realization that she wasn’t in any shape to be having sex even if she did want it, she returned her attention to scrubbing herself the best she could with her hands and then wet her hair and scrubbed her scalp. When she’d rinsed it out the best she could, Gideon moved around her until he was behind her, urged her to tip her head back and used his fingers to sort the tangles as her hair floated in the water. It was not only surprisingly effective in bringing order to her wild locks, the water made it easier to untangle the snarls.

She was shivering by the time they reached the beach and, as Gideon had said, grateful for the blanket even though it didn’t smell particularly appealing.

“Tomorrow,” Gideon said as they finally settled to eat. “We will leave.”

Chapter Nineteen

Bronte woke to the sound of the men packing the gear that they’d recovered from the crash. Seeing her stir, Gideon separated himself from the others and approached her. She saw he was caring a garment such as they wore and blinked at it sleepily before sending him a questioning glance.

“It is not much, but better, I think, than nothing,” he said gruffly. “We tore the uniform from you to attend your injuries.”

Smiling her thanks, Bronte took it and struggled to get to her feet. She saw his hand clench as he watched her and sent him another questioning glance when she’d finally managed to stand. “It bothers you, doesn’t it?” she asked uncomfortably.

He lifted his brows.

“That I’m … such a mess now.”

He frowned, a flicker of uncertainty flashing in his eyes.

“That I’m … awkward and scarred.”

“Yes,” he said. “It … disturbs me a great deal that you were hurt. And more that you do not want my help.”

The hurt that had pricked her eased. “You don’t think I’m ugly?”

He sent her a startled look. “No. I think you are beautiful.”

She smiled at him tentatively then, wondering if he was only saying it to make her feel better. But then she realized Gideon didn’t lie. He withheld the truth. He might say only a partial truth, but he’d never lied to her. “It’s not that I don’t want your help, you know,” she said more easily as she focused on trying to figure out how to put the loincloth on. “I just need to do as much as I can for myself.”

He knelt when he saw she was having trouble figuring it out, took the loincloth from her, and put it on her, adjusting it so that it fit snugly around her hips. “I know this … to regain your strength, but also because you are strong willed and want to do things yourself.” He frowned. “It made me feel … necessary when you needed my help, and not so much now.”

When he looked up at her, his gaze snagged on her breasts. He reached to cup one in each hand, massaged them gently and then withdrew his hands. “We need to cover these pretty things, as well,” he said, his eyes gleaming with both amusement and desire. “Else Gabriel and Jerico will be tripping over their feet.”

Bronte lifted her head to look at them when he said that. Both men were glaring at Gideon. “And you would not?” Jerico finally said, irritation evident in his voice.

Gideon slid an easy grin in their direction. “Nay! I am more surefooted than either of you. I would stop to look, and then I would step.”

He frowned as he straightened and looked around. “I think we must sacrifice a piece of the smelly blanket unless either of you wish to donate your loincloth and go about with your cock and balls swinging.”

Bronte chuckled. “That might distract me.”

Gideon, who’d just reached down to snag the blanket, looked up at her and grinned. “In that case, mayhap we will all donate.”

She laughed but shook her head. “I wouldn’t want
your
pretty things to get sunburned.”

“There is that,” Gabriel agreed, sounding mildly disappointed as he turned away at last and focused on stirring up the fire from the night before to heat food to break their fast.

Gideon held up the blanket and studied it a moment and finally tore a section from one end. Removing his sword, he cut a slit in the center of the piece and helped her slip it over her head. Bronte stared down at it doubtfully. It covered her, but it wouldn’t long if the wind caught the open sides. Using her teeth to start a tear, she pulled a couple of narrow strips from the bottom edge, tied them together, and then tied the piece around her beneath her breasts to hold the sides together.

While they ate, Gideon outlined the plan. “You will take point, Jerico, since Gabriel was last to watch and will not be as alert. I will carry Bronte and you, Gabriel, will bring up the rear. We will make better time if we follow the beach as long as possible, but it is more narrow here than I had thought because of the cliffs. We will most likely have to climb the cliffs when the tide comes in.”

He looked at Jerico questioningly when he’d finished.

“I did not have much time to study the terrain,” Jerico said. “But I am certain you are right. We will have to climb. The rocks extend mayhap fifteen or twenty clicks southward from this point.”

“How long do you think it will take us to get to the city?” Bronte asked.

Jerico frowned and sent Gideon a questioning glance.

“We do not know this area well,” Gideon said. “We have spent far more time building our city than mapping this world. There is more of this world unknown than known to us.”

Uneasiness settled in the pit of Bronte’s stomach. She’d suspected they must be a long way from civilization or someone would have found them by now—it’d been a full week by her reckoning since they’d crashed. But she’d been certain it still couldn’t be that far. They’d recognized the sea. “We could be a half a world away,” she said numbly.

“We could,” Gideon agreed, “but we are not. The ship entered the atmosphere only a little off course.”

“Five degrees,” Gabriel supplied helpfully, earning a glare from Gideon.

“ … And drifted more as we came down.”

“But … five degrees! So high up that could be thousands of miles!” Bronte exclaimed in dismay.

Gabriel looked uncomfortable.

Bronte glanced from one man to the other. “You needn’t be glaring daggers and poor Gabriel!” she said tightly. “Don’t you think I would have noticed anyway?”

Gideon’s lips tightened. “We do not have precise calculations.”

“Are we even on the same continent?”

“Yes,” Gabriel, Jerico, and Gideon said almost at the same moment.

Bronte studied their expressions for a moment. “How many continents are there on this planet?” she asked suspiciously.

Gabriel glanced at Gideon and decided to hold his peace.

“One,” Gideon finally admitted with great reluctance.

Bronte stared at him for a long moment, but finally subsided with the reflection that knowing before wouldn’t have changed anything anymore than knowing now did. She was still irritated that they hadn’t told her. She supposed it might be their idea of ‘protecting’ her.

She swallowed her irritation with an effort. “So if we follow the coast we’re bound to find the city, right?”

“We do not need to follow the coast to find our way. We will follow the coast because it is less likely that we will be attacked by the trogs. You may have noticed from their smell that they are not fond of water.”

“It doesn’t mean we’ll be safer by the water just because they stink,” Bronte said testily.

“We will,” Gideon said implacably. “They can not swim and they are terrified of the water.”

“You know this because?”

“We are soldiers. We are too far from the Confederation to concern ourselves with them beyond maintaining a small army to defend ourselves from the unlikely possibility of a random attack. Unless we have business that takes us into their territory there is little need for our services in that respect. We are no more welcome to the natives of this world, but we have taken what we need and now we must defend it from attack. Many times now, we have dealt with them.”

Bronte stared at him in dismay as it sank home that she hadn’t completely appreciated their ‘livelihood’. She’d only been thinking in terms of the dangerous lives they
had
led, hadn’t considered that that wasn’t something in the past that, while awful, was no longer a threat. She was going to be worrying about them every time they left on a mission—forever. How did women deal with the uncertainty of never knowing when their man left if he was coming back? “Are they crazy?”

“They are of low intelligence, extremely territorial, and ferocious.”

She nodded absently, her mind still wrestling with fresh anxieties. She might’ve been half dead at the time of the attack, but she hadn’t been so out of it that she hadn’t noticed the trogs were fierce to the point of insanity. Their stupidity in attacking cyborgs might have been understandable in the beginning, before they’d had the chance to figure out what they were dealing with. Obviously they
did
know by now, though. They were just laboring under the impression that they could still take them if they threw enough bodies at them.

The banter that had lightened her spirits only a little earlier hadn’t lifted them enough to combat the thoughts the conversation had stirred up in her mind and she didn’t feel nearly as hopeful as they gathered their belongings and headed out. She had to be carried. As much as she hated the fact that she was an added burden, it wouldn’t help them for her to be hobbling on her crutch. She would’ve slowed them down traveling on her own steam if she’d been whole. As it was, they would have to travel at a snail’s pace with her walking.

Knowing that didn’t stop it from chaffing her. Knowing they could have traveled much faster, probably wouldn’t be in nearly as much danger without her, wore on her spirits even more. “If you could find a safe place to leave me, you could travel faster without me,” she said, tentatively voicing her thoughts aloud.

Gideon sent her a look that questioned her sanity.

“I’m just saying—if you look at it purely from a logical standpoint it would make more sense to leave me—go quickly to find help, and then come back for me.”

Gideon’s lips tightened. “No.”

Bronte looked at him indignantly. He was in his ‘unyielding’ mode and once he reached that plain his reasoning was the only one that counted. “It’s just something to consider….”

“It is not.”

“Why not?”

“There is no safe place to leave you,” he said tightly.

“One could stay with me and the other two go on.”

Gideon expelled an irritated breath. “I do not care how
reasonable
it may seem to you—or even if it
is
logical. I will not leave you. You may argue all you please. I will not change my mind.”

Bronte huffed. “It will take a lot longer to make this trip if one of you has to carry me all the way.”

He gave her an indecipherable look. “It could take forever, Bronte, and it would not matter. Without you there would be no reason to journey.”

She ruminated over that for several minutes, trying not to allow herself to take that the way it had sounded. “Oh,” she said finally as it dawned on her that she
had
misinterpreted the remark, “the mission. I forgot.”

“You are my woman now. Protecting you is the only ‘mission’ of any importance to me. I will allow no other consideration to take precedence over that.”

Bronte blinked at him in surprise. A smile curled her lips as it sank in that he really had meant his remarks the way she’d thought. Tightening her arms around his neck, she dropped her head to his shoulder. “That is … so sweet!” she murmured.

She felt a frisson of surprise ripple through him.

“Which part?” he asked curiously.

She nuzzled her face against his neck and then gave him a light peck there. “All of it.”

His cheek creased in a smile. “Then why were you giving me your stubborn face?”

“Because I thought you were just being unreasonable.”

“And now I am not?”

“No, you still are. I just like
why
you’re being unreasonable.”

He chuckled. The sound warmed her as much as his comments had. “I will be certain to make such remarks as often as possible if they please you so much.”

“Only if you mean them.”

“I would not say something that was untrue.”

“I know. That’s one of the things I love about you.”

He almost missed a step, but recovered quickly. She was a little disappointed that he didn’t ask her to elaborate. A good thirty minutes passed in silence before he broke it.

“There are other things?”

Bronte couldn’t prevent a smile, but since she still had her head on his shoulder she knew he couldn’t see it. “What?” she asked, pretending she had no idea what he was asking.

“You said that it was ‘one’?”

Resisting the urge to chuckle, she made a point of thinking it over. “Mmm,” she finally responded. “Yes, definitely one of them.”

“But there are others?” he persisted.

“Mmmhmm,” she made the sound of agreement, thoroughly enjoying teasing him by that time.