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

no … and she felt that she did. Gideon had seduced her, but he certainly hadn’t forced her. She had set out to seduce Jerico and become the seduced, but despite the way they had watched her almost from the first, none of the three had assaulted her and taken what he wanted. It distressed her that they didn’t actually like her, or rather, saw her as an enemy not to be trusted because they knew humans hated and distrusted them, but she didn’t trust them either.

She had to admit, as scary as it was to think in those terms, she was completely at their mercy. Orders or not, they were a long way from their commanding officer. They could have done whatever they pleased … even killed her if they were concerned about her complaining about her treatment and no one would’ve been the wiser.

And if they really hated humans, couldn’t she have expected them to behave that way? After all, they were soldiers. They made no bones about the fact that brutality and discipline were all they had ever known, all they really understood beyond the flip side of that that had been programmed into them … they could kill and fuck with the best—were the best, but they didn’t have social skills because they hadn’t been given them, didn’t understand them.

It made her feel a good deal better to think she understood them and the situation she’d found herself in. It made her feel far less threatened to think that she wasn’t completely powerless, that she understood how to behave to protect herself.

Since it was meal time and she was suddenly hungry, had more appetite than she’d felt since she’d been captured, when they’d dressed she led the way as they left the bathroom and crossed the cabin. As he opened the door for her, she tipped her head and smiled at Jerico tentatively. She hadn’t gotten through the doorway, however, when a hand clamped around her arm and she was snatched from the room and shoved roughly to one side.

Stunned, she gaped at Gideon’s set profile as he met Jerico at the door with a fist to the face. The thunderous, meaty thud of a very large body hitting the deck followed, and then a roar of rage and pounding footsteps as Jerico regained his feet and charged, slamming in to Gideon full tilt. Bronte screamed as both men shot through the doorway and landed in the middle of the floor in front of her, skidding several feet on the slick floor before they came to halt. Their hands locked around each other’s throats, they rolled, almost knocking her feet from under her. Uttering another shriek, Bronte leapt over their thrashing legs and looked around wildly for a place to hide. Gabriel, watching the fray from the other side of the galley, leapt over the two men on the floor, landing within a few feet of her and scaring her silly. Before she could decide what his intentions were, he hooked an arm around her waist, swung her through the cabin door, and closed it behind her.

Shaking, covering her ears with her hands to try to block out the crashing noises from the mid-section, Bronte scurried into one corner, more than half expecting the fight to join her as someone slammed against the panel on the other side of the door.

The crashing and growling and grunting of effort, meaty thuds of fists to flesh, and duller thuds when someone swung and missed, connecting with the wall or floor instead, seemed to go on forever and Bronte had begun to worry that they were actually going to kill each other. Finally, though, the fight began to die down to an occasional smack of flying fists or the crash of something being turned over or broken.

And then there was silence.

Chapter Eight

Bronte was afraid to find out what the end result of the fight had been. The longer she sat with her ears pricked trying to figure it out by the little she could hear, though, the more anxious she became to know. Finally, when she thought she heard sounds indicting clean up, she got up and went to listen with her ear against the door panel.

The door opened at the precise moment she leaned to put her ear against it and she fell through, stumbling against the man on the other side. He caught her, steadying her, and Bronte looked up uneasily to discover it was Gideon.

The expression on his face made her go weak all over. Even as she tried to push away from him, he cinched her more tightly against his chest with one arm and caught her face with his other hand, dipping his head down and capturing her lips with all the tender gentleness of a battering ram breaching a stone wall. The sheer possessive savagery of his mouth and tongue as he claimed her mouth in fierce assault took her breath. The heat of his mouth, the fire he sent coursing through her veins sapped what little strength she had left.

She’d forgotten, she thought, dizzy, intoxicated by his drugging kiss, just how devastating his kiss was to her senses, wondering how she could possibly have forgotten anything so powerful that it annihilated brain function and muscle tone all in one fell swoop. She wasn’t aware of anything beyond the fire and dizziness until she bumped against a hard surface at her back.

“Let her go, Gideon.”

He ignored the threatening growl for a handful of heartbeats but finally lifted his head. Bronte had to struggle to lift her eyelids. She discovered when she had that Gideon had waltzed her back into the cabin and up against one wall. Both Jerico and Gabriel stood just behind and to either side of him, gripping his arms and trying to pry him loose from her.

Gideon swung his head to fix Gabriel, who was the one who’d spoken, with a threatening, narrow eyed glare. “Go to hell,” he