| |
Raven had spent the rest of the afternoon discreetly moving around the enclave, exploring the rooms and their different functions as she made a concentrated effort to stay in areas where there were few or no humans to avoid the possibility of an antagonistic encounter. Her comm had beeped a few minutes earlier, and it had been Leith asking her to meet him. It was past dinnertime, and apparently the enclave was settling in for the night, except for Boris. Whoever was watching him must’ve contacted Leith to let the leader know the other man was leaving his quarters.
She found Leith at the designated meeting spot less than two minutes after receiving the comm and paused beside him. “What’s going on?”
“Boris went down this corridor a few minutes ago. I was waiting for you before we follow him.”
“I can hear voices.”
Leith frowned. “I don’t hear anything.”
“One of my ears and part of my entire ear canal is cybernetic, so I have sensitive hearing on that side.” She tapped her left ear unconsciously. “I can hear several voices farther down the corridor.”
“Do they sound angry?”
She tilted her head, searching for the best angle to hear. When she found it, she listened for another moment. “I can’t make out the words, but they sound mellow. I don’t think anyone’s angry.”
He squared his shoulders and moved his chair forward, as Raven fell into step beside him. The closer they got, the more she could pick out the words, and when they stood outside the door where the meeting was likely happening, she could hear just about everything. She pressed her ear against the metal and eavesdropped.
She caught various words, and it soon became obvious that if it was a meeting of like-minded individuals, their shared belief was a belief in gambling, not doing away with cyborgs or preventing the treaty. She grinned as she turned to face Leith, kneeling down so she could speak quietly so as not to be overheard—though it was doubtful anyone in the room on the other side would hear through the metal and the rock of the cave in which the enclave was built. “They’re playing some kind of card game and wagering on the outcome.”
Leith frowned. “Why the secrecy?”
She shrugged. “Seems like someone named Jim just lost to...William or Willem? He’s complaining about having to hand over two rations of peas.”
Leith scowled. “That’s the explanation. They’re gambling with supplies—supplies to which they shouldn’t have access.”
“How do you know?”
He sounded disgusted. “We haven’t served peas in the enclave since the aquaponics room faltered last season. They are part of the stored reserves we put back in case we couldn’t get the aquaponics room to work again. Someone’s been pilfering from the stockpile, so no wonder they didn’t want us to know.” He was angry for a moment, but it seemed to drain away. “At least they aren’t plotting acts of terror. I’ll have to shut it down, and they’ll all be reprimanded, but it’s relatively harmless in the scheme of things—other than the fact that they’re stealing supplies from everyone in the enclave for their card game.”
“Do you want to handle it now?”
He hesitated for a moment before shaking his head. “Tomorrow’s soon enough to deal with it. We know Jim, Willem, and Boris are involved, and I’m sure they’ll reveal the names of anyone else participating. Jim, in particular, has a big mouth and a low capacity for pressure, so I think I can deal with this and have it all shut down within a short amount of time.”
She nodded as she walked beside him when they moved down the corridor again, this time away from the mysterious meeting that wasn’t so mysterious. “Where does that leave us?”
He let out a bitter laugh. “Hell if I know. I don’t have any other leads or ideas at the moment.”
She quickly realized they were heading back in the direction of her quarters, which happened to be near Leith’s. “Maybe we’ll have a better idea tomorrow. We can sleep on it and try to come up with some other options.”
He sighed, looking weary. “Yeah, I guess. Then we can check Patrick’s quarters again, though they’ve already been searched thoroughly.”
He just looked so worn down that she couldn’t resist the impulse to stop walking and turn toward him. His chair stopped moving as he looked up at her with a puzzled expression. Rather than speaking, she simply leaned down slightly and hugged him. “We’ll figure this out.”
To her surprise, he stiffened, but didn’t pull away. After a moment, his arms wrapped around her, and they shared a tight embrace.
It had started out simply as a way to comfort him, but it quickly changed to something else. She tightened her arms further around him, nuzzling her face against his neck as his hand stroked her hair while the other clasped her back. It felt perfectly natural to move forward and sit on his lap, and he didn’t push her away. She ran her fingers through his hair as she kept her face pressed against his neck. Finally, with a deep breath for courage, she lifted her head and looked into his eyes.
She saw desire there, and she was positive her own eyes reflected the same emotion. She licked her lips, and his gaze darted downward to follow the motion of her tongue. He was stiff underneath her, his muscles frozen, and he was tense. She wanted to encourage him to relax, so she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his.
It was a shy and tentative kiss, the first one she could recall. Surely, she had been kissed as a human, but those memories were gone forever. As a cyborg, she was generally regarded as everyone’s little sister or someone to protect, so none of the other cyborgs had ever come to her for sexual relief, and she had been too shy to seek out any of them.
His mouth fumbled against hers for a moment, and their noses brushed awkwardly before they found just the right angle. Once they were in position, his lips molded to hers, and she flicked her tongue out to lick at the seam of his, eliciting a groan from him.
Abruptly, he stiffened further, as though the sound of his own pleasure had broken the trance. He pushed her away, and she slid off his lap onto the ground with a slight jarring vibration that made her tailbone ache. She looked up at him with surprise, hurt flooding her at the rejection she saw in his expression.
He didn’t speak. He just stared down at her for a moment, looking stricken, before he turned his chair and moved away from her. She watched him go, disappearing into his own quarters, before she finally stood up and dusted off her black pants and moved toward her room. She managed to keep her expression neutral until she slipped into the quarters reserved for her and the door had closed behind her.
Then, she allowed her unaffected veneer to fade away as tears flooded her eyes, and an aching sensation filled her chest. Being rejected by him was even worse than she’d imagined it would be, and she regretted reaching out for him. No matter how much she might feel the urge to, she would have to stifle it and be all about concluding the investigation so she could return to the base.
It was obvious Leith didn’t want her, and she lost all faith in the Celestial Mates agent at that moment. Freydon Rote might’ve been right about Carrie and Davis, and he might have had something to do with JSN and Gwen getting together, but he was clearly wrong about her and Leith. They weren’t meant to be together, and if she tried to fool herself about that, she’d only end up with a broken heart.
***
LEITH STARED AT THE wall for a long moment before he allowed himself to punch it. It didn’t do anything to soothe the angry need inside him, but it helped distract him from his thoughts as pain flared in his knuckles. “Idiot,” he said aloud, and he wasn’t certain if he was chastising himself for punching the wall or for allowing the kiss.
Just thinking about that made him squirm in shame as he recalled the stricken look on her face when he turned and left her after shoving her off his lap and unceremoniously dumping her on the floor of the enclave. That had been a shitty thing to do, and he knew it. He’d known it as he was doing it, but hadn’t been able to make himself stay and face her.
How could he explain or justify his actions? Caught up in the heat of the moment, it had felt natural to hold her, to touch her, and even to kiss her. It was only when her tongue touched his lips, and the feeling of desire suffused him, that he realized where they were headed. She would want something he couldn’t give her.
As much as he ached to have her, he had no physical response to her sitting on his lap—at least not the crucial response required that would allow him to make love to her. She was bound to be disappointed, and then she would turn away from him. In the frenzy of the moment, all he could think of was being the one to leave first. He had acted like a bastard, leaving her there on the floor, and he knew he should go apologize.
Instead, he was staying in his quarters. He needed time and space, and the ability to formulate a plan to deal with her. It would be wrong to encourage her in any way when he couldn’t have a full physical relationship with her. That was why he shied away from the women in the enclave. It was true there weren’t that many in his age group to start with, but from the time he had started noticing girls, when he was already in the wheelchair, it had been a harsh fact of life that he couldn’t have a normal relationship with them like those around him.
He had grieved and gone through a period of anger, and he truly thought he had accepted his lot in life until Raven arrived. She’d upset everything, and now he had to figure out how to make it all fit again, and how to reach the same state of contentment he’d enjoyed before her arrival.
Most of all, he had to teach himself all over again not to long for what he couldn’t have, because heartache was inevitable if he gave in. Raven could break his heart, but even worse, he would probably break hers too, and the idea of causing her any more pain left him breathless at the dart of agony that shot through his chest. He would have to be aloof and withdrawn, to make it clear there was nothing between them, and could be nothing, even if it was the hardest thing he’d ever done.