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

Gabriel gave him a look. “Not with the heat of battle still upon you, Gideon,” he ground out. “Let her go.”

Bronte thought for several moments that he would either ignore the warning demand or turn on Gabriel. After what seemed an internal battle for self-control, however, his arms loosened and he released her. He did not move away. Instead, he stood staring down at her, breathing raggedly. “She is playing us against one another,” he said coldly.

Guilty color flooded Bronte’s cheeks. Triumph flickered in his eyes, as if he had only been fishing for that bit of information and her expression had confirmed it. Uneasiness moved through her. She couldn’t seem to tear her gaze from Gideon’s to assess the reaction of the other two, but she had a bad feeling that the ‘brilliant’ plot she had hatched had seriously backfired. “You think, just because I had sex with Jerico, that I was hoping the two of you would try to kill each other?” she asked, trying to sound both indignant and outraged, though she thought the shaky squeak of her voice probably made it sound more like the confession of guilt it was than indignation that he could believe she would even think that way.

His eyes narrowed. “I think so, yes,” he growled.

Bronte averted her gaze with an effort. “You are certainly entitled to think what you damned well please!” she said with more surety. “But it just happened, and there was no reason why I shouldn’t have … And I enjoyed it!” she added for good measure.

“Loudly,” he ground out.

Bronte sent him a startled look, casting around in her mind, and finally realized that she had been very vocal. To make things worse, they’d been in the shower, which had no doubt magnified the sounds. It had seemed to at the time, but she’d been too caught up to worry about the fact that the walls of the cubicle seemed to have a megaphone effect on every sound. She reddened with discomfort. “Whatever you think, I was not trying to be heard!” she said testily.

“You just couldn’t help yourself?” he asked coolly.

She glared at him. “NO, I couldn’t!” she snapped, too angry now herself to even want to try to explain that it was the acoustical effects of the shower and probably the water, as well.

She slipped away from him then. Retreating to a safe distance and setting her jaw, she looked at the three men studying her with bravado born of fear. “You kidnapped me,” she said tightly. “Stole me away from my home, my life, and … everything. You’ve made it abundantly clear how you feel about humans in general … and me in particular. I don’t owe you a damned thing! Any of you. I can’t be unfaithful by having sex with whoever I feel like having sex with because I have no ties to bind me to any of you—not legal, and certainly not emotional!

“I didn’t make you fight. You decided to do that on your own, and while you’re accusing me of wanting it to happen, or manipulating you to make it happen, you might want to consider how well you’re going to get along if nobody is getting pussy … or if I decide to chose just one and ignore the other two!”

The three men exchanged looks of discomfort. Gabriel frowned, seemed to hesitate and finally spoke. “Does that mean you would or would not consider a legal binding?” he asked finally.

Bronte stared at him blankly, feeling real anger. If that wasn’t just like men, damn them! They hadn’t heard one damned word she’d said beyond the part they were really interested in.

“Not now, Gabriel,” Gideon growled, a warning note in his voice.

Jerico caught his arm, jerking his head toward the other end of the room. Gideon rolled his eyes, but they moved a little way away from Bronte—for all the good that did! She could hear them perfectly well despite the lower pitch of their voices.

“We are running out of time,” Jerico pointed out.

Gideon sent him a look of disgust. “I do not think discussing a contract will constitute courtship,” he said through gritted teeth.

Jerico glared back at him. “It may have escaped your notice, but we have made no progress at all in that direction that I can see beyond the fact that she has stopped hiding whenever we come to blows and now only looks at us as if we are mindless brutes instead of monsters! At this rate, we will be home and it will be a moot question!”

“Jerico is right,” Gabriel, who’d joined them, put in. “We do not have time to figure out how to go about it, develop any skill at it, and overcome her distrust. If someone else had captured her … maybe. But I have a very bad feeling that being our prisoner is not going to make her feel at all kindly toward us … or receptive even if we were very good at courting, which you know we are not. She is very reasonable, to my thinking, for a woman. Why not just ask her to contract?” He turned to study her for a long moment. “To consider a contract,” he amended.

Gideon’s lips tightened. He sent Bronte a hard, assessing look. “She will only throw it our faces if she knows what we want, and use it against us.”

“I am a man of action. I know what to do in battle,” Gabriel pointed out. “In this situation, I do not, and I am becoming convinced that I will not figure it out, either. We do not have the intel to properly assess the situation, nor do we have the time to collect it and evaluate it. You did not consider that when you decided upon this plan!”

Gideon narrowed his eyes at him. “I did consider that,” he said coolly. “It is sometimes necessary to improvise, however, when you are in the field and can not assess needed supplies, intel, or equipment!”

“Mayhap,