Chapter Two

It was a strange response and left Amanda with the sense that they would have ignored her if they hadn’t decided she was too hurt to pretend they hadn’t seen her.

Uneasiness slithered through her.

Had she landed in the lap of a group of smugglers after all? Were they connected to the bastards that had damaged the shuttle so badly she’d had to ditch in the middle of nowhere?

It had crossed her mind, but she’d, basically, dismissed it since they hadn’t finished her off.

Maybe, though, they had something else in mind?

Ransom?

Or maybe they were up to something else illegal?

Or running from the law?

She struggled to put it from her mind since there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it at the moment and tried to think of a response—or something else she might say. “It suits you,” she murmured finally.

He sent her a strange look. “My name?” He frowned, clearly turning it over in his head. “In what way?”

She felt her face redden. “It just sounds … strong.” And handsome, and he was.

Both actually.

He still looked puzzled, but he turned and reached for her med kit. “You are warm. You may be getting an infection. There are antibiotics here.”

He seemed … well versed in medical things. “Are you a medic?”

He shrugged absently, clearly more focused on his search. “I have the programming.”

A jolt went through Amanda. The programming? Not the training? Not the education and experience?

He took a pill out for her and handed her the pill and the water. “I believe your name also suits you,” he murmured when she tossed the pill into her mouth and took a large sip. “It sounds like it would be a beautiful woman and you are.”

Amanda strangled on the gulp of water and coughed and sputtered for several minutes. When she’d finally caught her breath she was past embarrassed. She managed an appreciative smile. “Thank you. That’s especially sweet considering I can imagine I look like hell.”

“You are battered and bruised, yes, but I can still see the beauty. I would enjoy fucking you, I am certain, if you were not damaged at the moment.”

A shockwave went through her. She gaped at him, wondering if she’d heard him right. “What?”

He frowned, certain from her reaction that he had not expressed himself very well. “I only meant to say that your injuries would not allow you to enjoy any sort of intimacy, I would not think, since you are human. But I would very much like to fuck you when you are better.”

That explanation was enough to make her hair stand on end.

It was perverse of her that she also found it … oddly charming that he was so handsome and yet so completely inept in seduction and that it warmed her that he found her desirable even in her current condition.

Which was stupid!

Every word out of his mouth suggested that he was not human. She didn’t know what he was, but she knew what he wasn’t.

“You aren’t … uh …? You aren’t …?”

He frowned. “Human?”

“Um, are you?”

He seemed to wrestle with it. “I am part human—my biological part.”

She’d been within a hair’s breadth of asking him if he was a half alien hybrid, but that answered that with a responding no. “Your biological?” she asked faintly—because, really, she felt more than a little faint.

Mayhap it had not been a well thought out plan to just go ahead and confess, Kameron thought uneasily? But it had seemed the best path forward since he could not think that they would be able to maintain the illusion that they were human if they began to woo her. “We were not programmed to woo a woman,” he explained apologetically, “and I do not think we can find the programming now. I thought, mayhap, it would be better if you explained what you would need?”

“What I would need?” Amanda asked weakly.

He nodded. “To convince you to be our woman.”

Amanda instantly envisioned a scenario where she was able to leap to her feet and run, but no amount of fear, she knew, could get her on her feet at the moment let alone sustain her for a long run. And she had a bad feeling that it would be a very long run.

She pasted a look of pleased surprise on her face—not because she was, but she thought that might appease him. “I … uh … well, I think I will need to give this some thought. It isn’t anything I would want to rush into—although I will say that I’m flattered. You are very handsome and your friends, too.”

He looked as if he was trying to decide whether to be pleased or not. “You think I am handsome?”

Discomfort wafted through her. “You are handsome,” she said firmly.

He frowned. “That is not the same as desirable, is it?”

Poor baby! “Uh … what sort of … uh … programming did you get?” she asked a little uneasily.

His expression closed. He focused on replacing the lids on the bottles of medicine and placing the bottles in her bag. She could see he was wrestling with something.

“I was designed as a CS—a cybernetic soldier. I am programmed for warfare,” he said when he met her gaze again.

“A CS …,” she echoed. “You’re a …. You’re saying …?” Well! He couldn’t be! They’d all been destroyed …. At least as far as anyone knew.

“Cyborg,” he said flatly and rose to his full height while it crossed her mind that he might be about to kill her on the spot, and then he turned and left.

Amanda settled back against the pallet, struggling with the fear that threatened to overwhelm her at the discovery that she was laying in a hut occupied by not one, but three, of the most dangerous weapons ever designed in the history of mankind.

Cyborgs.

No wonder they were giants, she thought absently.

They were built to demoralize the enemy as much as anything else and that meant—like tanks—powerful, fearsome, and virtually unstoppable.

She was a little hazy about the details, but she knew they’d been built for a war of aggression by the government and turned loose on the aliens on a world far, far away.

And then … something had happened to them. They’d gone off the rail and completely out of control.

Of course, they’d been designed to be autonomous. They had AI, but they’d also been programmed to follow orders without question.

And they had inhibitors to prevent them from going rogue—supposedly.

It hadn’t prevented it and the company had had to go after them and destroy them.

So they claimed.

But she was looking at three that seemed very much alive.

And it dawned on her abruptly, that she’d seen three others just recently.

Two had been passengers on the colony ship Anna Marie and one had been a security guard on the ship.

At least she was convinced of it now. She hadn’t thought so—well, it never would have crossed her mind, she didn’t suppose, since she’d accepted, like everyone else, that the cyborgs were all destroyed. And the cop—that didn’t compute.

She supposed, by that criteria, it also didn’t make sense that her security officer was cyborg.

She’d thought they were human—maybe a little strange—but still human.

Because she’d expected them to be and she’d explained away the things that made her doubt it.

And ditto the trio that she realized really had been discussing ‘keeping’ her as their woman.

She’d thought that was part of the really bizarre dream she’d had. Now, she wondered if that wasn’t what had prompted the dream to start with.

Part of it, anyway.

She didn’t want to speculate on what had prompted the wet dreams about them.

Well, that wasn’t really that complicated.

She hadn’t been laid in forty forevers. She’d just Captained a colony ship for a very, very long trip, and she hadn’t felt comfortable taking a lover on the trip. And besides the drought, these guys were heart throbs, enough to make any woman think with downstairs Suzy instead of their brain.

She supposed her weakened state had made her more vulnerable rather than less.

Not that it mattered, she reminded herself. She could excuse it, but that didn’t mean it was ok to entertain any ideas now that she knew how very dangerous they were and how precarious her situation was.

But maybe it would be safer to pretend to entertain the idea than to flatly deny any interest, she thought uneasily?

She didn’t know how she was going to escape from three cyborgs—one would have been enough. But she was in no condition even to try until she could get around better.

Who was she kidding? They were cyborgs! Better wasn’t going to be even nearly good enough.

* * * *

The next time Amanda awoke she had a problem. She didn’t know how serious it was, but she was going to have to do something about it fairly quickly.

Girding herself, she struggled for a few moments and finally managed to lever herself about halfway to a sitting position.

The approach of heavy footsteps—as in shook the building—redirected her attention from her dilemma to the giant that had come to stand beside her. He crouched when she looked around and she was still shorter, but close enough for a really good look at his face.

It wasn’t Kameron.

But he was every bit as intimidating, and good looking didn’t begin to describe him. She was stunned.

Especially when he smiled at her. “I am Trinity. Do you have need of something?”

She felt her face light up with discomfort. “I … uh …. She had never in her life had to ask for assistance to the bathroom. It sucked big time that the only ‘nurse’ available looked like a movie star heart throb. She dragged in a sustaining breath. “I have to go ….”

Thankfully, he wasn’t slow on the uptake. “I will take you.”

There were quick footsteps behind him. “I will take her!”

Darkness fell across the angel face—a scowl that made her heart jerk. He surged to his feet. Turning as he straightened, he punched the man—cyborg—behind him hard enough he staggered back and slammed into the far wall hard enough he almost went through it.

He crouched down again and very gently and carefully scooped her up and lifted her as he straightened again.

“That is Caleb,” he told her, nodding toward the one he’d just knocked into yesterday.

Caleb sat up and grinned at her a little sheepishly.

Or maybe that was just her imagination because she thought he might be embarrassed by the exchange?

Trinity carried her across the cabin and opened a narrow door. There was nothing inside but a primitive latrine that bore no resemblance to an actual toilet beyond the hole in the middle of the bench and the actual toilet seat attached to it.

It flushed, though, thankfully—at least she thought that was what the lever was for.

He carefully sat her on the bench and stepped back.

She looked up at him. “Thank you.”

He nodded and bestowed a smile upon her that really wowed her.

She frowned at him. “Shut the door!”

His brows rose, but he took the broad hint, stepped out, closed it, and apparently leaned against it.

To guard her from the other one?

It was a job, but she finally managed to wrestle her clothes out of the way to relieve herself and then struggled to put them on again.

“Do you need assistance?” he asked through the door panel.

“No, I do not!” she snapped, panting and trying to catch her breath. Finally, she got everything put back together and sat down weakly on the bench again. “Could you … let me out?”

He grinned at her when he opened the door, scooped her up, and carried her back to the pallet she’d been given. Loathe though she was to admit it, even to herself, she was weak from the effort.

“Feel better?” he asked cheerfully.

She gave him a look.

He frowned. “It is time for the pain meds. Do you wish me to give you some?”

She considered her pain level and decided she might as well. It wasn’t as if she was going to get better any faster not taking it. She was sure the bone cracked if it wasn’t broken and it seemed to her like she could recall one of the guys realigning it—which meant months before it grew back together—even with the healing accelerator in the antibiotics.

Not that she’d broken anything before and had personal experience, but she had a friend that had.

He got the pain meds out and gave her one with water.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

Amanda smiled at him with a little more charity. “Yes … to both.”

“I will feed her,” Caleb volunteered.

“I will beat the fuck out of you,” Trinity snarled. “It is my time with her, gods damn it!”

Amanda’s eyes widened.

Thankfully, Caleb didn’t argue with him. He went back to his cot and sat down to sulk.

Kameron returned from wherever he’d been just about the time Trinity had settled with her and situated her to feed her. She’d just been on the point of insisting that she could feed herself.

“I will feed her.”

“She does not like it when we discuss these things in front of her,” Trinity growled, “and it is my turn to take care of her.”

Kameron’s eyes narrowed, but when he saw that Amanda was looking at him, he wiped the glare from his expression and headed to the stove where the food awaited. He stared at it for several moments. “Who cooked?”

Not the same person who’d cooked the last meal, Amanda discovered. Either that or she wasn’t nearly as hungry as she’d thought because it wasn’t good. It wasn’t horrible, either, but it certainly didn’t taste like the food she’d had before.

“It is my day to cook,” Caleb said testily. “You know very well who cooked.”

Kameron studied him for several moments and turned to look at Amanda and then got a bowl and fixed himself a helping.

Apparently, that was what everyone was waiting for—his arrival.

Caleb got up and fixed a bowl for himself and settled across the table from Kameron.

Amanda decided not to wrestle Trinity for the spoon. Considering the competition between them, she thought it might only create more tension.

Despite everything, she was able to eat more than she had the night before and she actually felt a little better.

She hurt, naturally enough, and it wasn’t just the broken leg. She’d gotten pretty banged up all the way around and she felt it with every movement.

She’d emerged from the shock of the accident, though—pretty much—and at least had begun to feel more like herself.

Enough so that she was way more conscious of Trinity than she had been Kameron the night before when he’d held her and fed her.

Trinity was as fair as Kameron was dark and more classically handsome/featured with high cheekbones an aquiline nose, a jutting, cleft chin and sharply etched lips. He looked like he could have been a Viking—except clean shaven—right down to the long, flowing golden hair.

He was big and tall and muscular just like Kameron and she didn’t think there was much difference in their sizes. Caleb on the other hand—although he possessed clearly defined muscles—looked thinner than the other two and maybe a little shorter. He was almost as dark as Kameron, though his hair looked more brown than black.

None of the three was ‘average’—not even close to average or a little better than average. They were all so amazing looking she thought that should have been a clue that this was not a naturally occurring event.

And yet she was willing to bet that everyone that looked at them was just so stunned it didn’t occur to them that they weren’t looking at men.

It hadn’t occurred to her—when she’d met Sebastian or Chance.

Cole—she was still on the fence about him. He was as big as the other two or didn’t miss it by much, but he was more ruggedly handsome and maybe he wasn’t a cyborg at all—just big.

So what were the odds, she wondered, that at least five of the cyborgs that had supposedly been destroyed a decade or more ago all just happened to land on the same rock?

And what were the odds that not a single one of them fit the company’s description of berserkers? Even though, supposedly, that was why they’d destroyed them.

Wouldn’t it be a total shock to discover the company had lied to everyone to save their asses—from something immoral that they’d done that might cost them money or something outright illegal?

Like, maybe, the cyborgs were way more real than they were supposed to be?

Because, even knowing they were supposedly cyborgs, she was having a really hard time convincing herself that they were.