Cyborg Nation by Kaitlyn O'Connor (english readers TXT) 📗

would have appalled her if she’d even considered it before. She decided to get even with Gideon by allowing one of the others to seduce her.

It wasn’t as if he actually cared, or would be hurt by it, after all. None of them had any inkling what caring was.

In any case, they had made it clear that they considered her their enemy. It wasn’t as if she could wage war on them in any other way, and if fucking them resulted in the three of them trying to kill each other … well, she didn’t have a pilot’s license, but she was fairly certain she knew enough about computers to turn the ship around and retrace its path.

If she could get the chance to get to the controls, which she couldn’t as things stood because there was always one, and usually two, on the bridge, carefully monitoring the ship’s progress.

In any case, they were closing in on her like stalking predators. Sooner or later, she knew one of the three was going to catch her with her guard down and pounce. The air fairly crackled with sexual desire. It was more a matter of allowing it to happen than making it happen.

She gave it a little push anyway. What they didn’t seem to realize as they were watching her was that she was also watching them. It didn’t take long at all to learn their routines. Just like their human counterparts, these males rarely varied.

They prepared meals six times per thirty hour period, which constituted a ‘day’ cycle. When one disappeared from the main area of the ship into the sleeping quarters, he was gone precisely eight hours. They bathed and changed before they returned, however, which meant it was impossible for her to sleep in the bed alone unless she wanted to try to sleep in two or three hour intervals. She tried at first, but she discovered very quickly that her internal clock was still set on earth time. And if she fell asleep any where besides the bed, one or another would scoop her up and take her to bed.

She could either be passive and not move away the next time she felt a hand stray over her while she was trying to sleep, or she could be more blatant about it and time her bath so that she was in the right place at the right time.

She opted for the bath. Subtlety was not one of their strong suits. If she wanted to really piss Gideon off, and she did, she had to make sure he knew she hadn’t been caught in a sneak attack like the one he’d sprung on her. It was still hard to decide which one, besides Gideon, she most wanted to get even with.

Gabriel panted after her as much as the others, or maybe more, and he had been the most outspoken among them with his bigotry over humans.

Jerico, on the other hand, was the one who’d looked at her that first day as if he wanted to devour her and then told her it was a shame she was human and not cyborg! He was just as big a bigot as Gabriel was—and probably Gideon, too.

Finally, she decided to just leave it to fate. Whoever fell into her net was fair game. They were all assholes and if she couldn’t beat them senseless herself, she could at least try to play them against each other and watch the fireworks!

It turned out to be Jerico’s day—which meant it was and it wasn’t—she hoped.

She didn’t know that it would even bother Gideon. After all, it had been Jerico that had started the fight with Gabriel. Gabriel and Jerico were more volatile. Gideon actually seemed fairly laid back—most of the time, anyway.

It wasn’t actually a matter of choice when it came right down to it. She placed herself in ‘harm’s’ way, and control over the situation went right out of her hands.

She had just stepped beneath the shower spray when Jerico came in to bathe. He froze when he saw her, and even though she was at great pains to pretend she had no idea he was there, she felt suddenly weak with fear about what she’d plotted, instantly regretted it, and yet couldn’t think of any way at all to get herself out of the mess of her own creation.

Panicking, she was still trying to decide if she pretended to suddenly notice him and covered herself if he would take that as a rejection and leave when he swarmed into the shower and pinned her to the wall. Her breath left her in a rush as he compressed her body between his and the chilled surface. Before she could catch it back into her lungs, his mouth settled with such savage hunger over hers that she felt as if she was falling into a deep, dark, fiery hot pit. She hadn’t counted on her reaction to him, hadn’t considered that she even could fall as deeply under his spell as she had Gideon’s.

She shouldn’t do this, not for any of the reasons that had seemed perfectly sound before, she thought dimly, grasping at the panic that was rapidly vanishing beneath the flames as the last stronghold.

It winked out as Jerico filled his need to explore her mouth and moved on to fresh territory, scouring her flesh with the heat of his mouth and the rough caress of his tongue. She was already aching with need before he reached her breasts. The moment he sucked one turgid tip into his mouth, she inhaled a harsh gasp and nearly passed out at the heated, weakening pleasure that engulfed her.

She was shameless, she thought a little wildly, groaning at the fire that collected in her belly as he traced a path from the breast he’d been tormenting with his tongue and plucked at its twin, because she realized in that moment that she wouldn’t have felt anything she was feeling if she hadn’t wanted Jerico