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

something to close the wound, and sterile gauze,” she said absently.

The brunette got up. Her conscience smote her. He was wounded, too, but then she didn’t know where anything was and she needed to close the chest wound as quickly as possible to stop the bleeding. The brunette returned after a few moments, settling her bag of medical instruments—her bag—on the bunk beside them. Her files and now her bag, too? Had they taken everything from her office? She flicked a censorious glance at him, but she was relieved, too. She knew she would find everything she needed inside.

“You need only to cut the dead flesh and close the wound,” the man she was working on said, his voice harsh. She didn’t doubt pain had a lot to do with the roughness. She flicked a glance at him as she moved between his thighs and bent over to examine the upper area of the wound. “Maybe you actually like pain, but I don’t like inflicting it. I’ll feel better if I deaden the area, and I’ll certainly feel better making sure it isn’t likely to get infected,” she added as she disinfected her hands with the solution she unearthed from her bag.

To her surprise, his lips curled in the faintest of smiles. Amusement gleamed in his eyes. It disappeared so quickly, though, she wondered if she’d only imagined it. “I am a machine,” he growled.

“Meaning you feel no pain?”

He neither denied it nor admitted it.

“Liar,” she said softly and then felt a chilling rush at her unthinking remark, wondering if it would anger him. “What’s your name?” she added quickly to change the direction of his thoughts.

“Why would you think a machine would have a name … beyond its function … cyborg?”

Bronte sucked her lower lip into her mouth uneasily, but she felt a pang of empathy, too. She had gone into medicine as much because she felt a need to soothe the hurt and heal the sick as to impress the father she had admired so much, but there were times when she thought it was a mistake, that she was not cut out for this business of trying to heal. She felt the pain of others too deeply, and her instincts told her, whatever he had begun life as, he hurt, deeply, because his existence as a living, breathing, thinking being had been denied by his creators.

Her hand was shaking as she finished trimming and cleansing the wound along his breast. Lifting a hand, she brushed the beads of sweat from her brow and the hair that had clung to the dampness. After trying unsuccessfully to hold the wound closed and use the instrument to seal the flesh together, she reached down to catch his hands and had him press the wound closed. “I’m not your enemy,” she said quietly.

“You are human,” he pointed out.

She paused, staring at him in dismay. “So I can not be anything else?”

His gaze flickered over her as she stood between his thighs, leaning over him. His gaze lingered on her breasts for a long moment. The faint smile curled his lips again. “I am a superior model … designed to kill quickly and efficiently. But I was programmed to be a pleasure bot, as well. If you have a need …?”

Hot color flashed in Bronte’s cheeks. A chaotic flood of anger, fear, and--loath though she was to admit it—desire went through her.

She dragged her gaze from his. Her back had begun to burn from bending over to reach his wound. Pointedly ignoring the evidence that he had certainly not lied about being well equipped to function as a sex droid, she dropped to her knees and focused on the wound slashing across his torso. It was a shame to see such perfection marred by such a vicious wound. It was bound to make a terrible scar no matter how carefully she closed it.

“It will not make an unsightly scar. The nanos will mend it well enough.”

Bronte bit her lip, realizing she’d spoken her thoughts aloud. It was a very bad habit she’d developed—talking to herself.

“I am called Gabriel,” he murmured as she finished trimming the last of the scorched flesh away and used the gauze to carefully wipe as much of the blood from his belly as she could, trying not to notice the warmth of his skin beneath her fingers or the way he tensed infinitesimally at her touch. She glanced up at him in surprise. A faint frown drew her brows together as she pondered the familiarity of the name. Finally, she smiled. “From the ancient mythology of demons and angels. They were … heavenly beings of such beauty mankind was stuck with awe to look upon them. It suits you.”

He did something then that stunned her. He blushed.

He rose so abruptly when she’d finished sealing the wound he nearly bowled her over. She caught herself, watching as he strode across the room and touched a panel. A door slid open and she glimpsed the fixtures of a bathroom before the door closed behind him. Dragging her gaze back to the man who still needed attending, she rose to her feet, pressing her hand to the small of her back to relieve the strain. “If you could just lie down?”

He complied, stretching out full length on the bunk. Oddly enough, he looked bigger lying down than he had before, far more imposing, possibly because he seemed to take up the entire bunk? Suppressing the quiver that went through her without examining it too closely, she settled the bag of instruments beside the bunk and took his injured arm, struggling to lift it. He lifted it for her. Perching her buttocks on the edge of the mattress, she caught his arm and settled it across her lap. It was less of a strain on her shoulders and back to work seated, but she found she was almost more conscious of the man than she had been when she’d knelt in front