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

even more. “If you could find a safe place to leave me, you could travel faster without me,” she said, tentatively voicing her thoughts aloud.

Gideon sent her a look that questioned her sanity.

“I’m just saying—if you look at it purely from a logical standpoint it would make more sense to leave me—go quickly to find help, and then come back for me.”

Gideon’s lips tightened. “No.”

Bronte looked at him indignantly. He was in his ‘unyielding’ mode and once he reached that plain his reasoning was the only one that counted. “It’s just something to consider….”

“It is not.”

“Why not?”

“There is no safe place to leave you,” he said tightly.

“One could stay with me and the other two go on.”

Gideon expelled an irritated breath. “I do not care how reasonable it may seem to you—or even if it is logical. I will not leave you. You may argue all you please. I will not change my mind.”

Bronte huffed. “It will take a lot longer to make this trip if one of you has to carry me all the way.”

He gave her an indecipherable look. “It could take forever, Bronte, and it would not matter. Without you there would be no reason to journey.”

She ruminated over that for several minutes, trying not to allow herself to take that the way it had sounded. “Oh,” she said finally as it dawned on her that she had misinterpreted the remark, “the mission. I forgot.”

“You are my woman now. Protecting you is the only ‘mission’ of any importance to me. I will allow no other consideration to take precedence over that.”

Bronte blinked at him in surprise. A smile curled her lips as it sank in that he really had meant his remarks the way she’d thought. Tightening her arms around his neck, she dropped her head to his shoulder. “That is … so sweet!” she murmured.

She felt a frisson of surprise ripple through him.

“Which part?” he asked curiously.

She nuzzled her face against his neck and then gave him a light peck there. “All of it.”

His cheek creased in a smile. “Then why were you giving me your stubborn face?”

“Because I thought you were just being unreasonable.”

“And now I am not?”

“No, you still are. I just like why you’re being unreasonable.”

He chuckled. The sound warmed her as much as his comments had. “I will be certain to make such remarks as often as possible if they please you so much.”

“Only if you mean them.”

“I would not say something that was untrue.”

“I know. That’s one of the things I love about you.”

He almost missed a step, but recovered quickly. She was a little disappointed that he didn’t ask her to elaborate. A good thirty minutes passed in silence before he broke it.

“There are other things?”

Bronte couldn’t prevent a smile, but since she still had her head on his shoulder she knew he couldn’t see it. “What?” she asked, pretending she had no idea what he was asking.

“You said that it was ‘one’?”

Resisting the urge to chuckle, she made a point of thinking it over. “Mmm,” she finally responded. “Yes, definitely one of them.”

“But there are others?” he persisted.

“Mmmhmm,” she made the sound of agreement, thoroughly enjoying teasing him by that time.

He was silent for several moments. “What?”

She was tempted to pretend incomprehension, just to see how long it would take to provoke his temper, but she decided she’d teased him enough. “Pretty much everything.”

“You can not name anything,” he said, his voice so carefully neutral she realized with dismay that he didn’t believe her and he was disappointed because he didn’t. Oddly enough, though, when she settled to study it over, she realized she couldn’t think of anything specific. It defied a break down into a list. It was just the way he made her feel and that was too nebulous to put into words. Everything he said or did made her feel safe, special, desirable, or beautiful, or all of those things at the same time. The only specifics that came to mind sounded far more like lust than affection, and she didn’t want to give him that impression. It finally occurred to her, though, that it wouldn’t just be easier to give him that kind of list, it would be easier for him to understand.

“I think you’re handsome,” she offered finally.

He twisted his head, trying to see her expression and she lifted her head from his shoulder to look at him. Doubt seemed to war with relief in his eyes as his gaze flickered over her face. “You do?”

She smiled faintly. “Very handsome.”

He looked pleased.

She lifted her head until her lips were near his ear. “And you have a beautiful cock.”

He stumbled again.

“It feels … wonderful when it’s inside of me.”

He ground his teeth. “Stop it, Bronte.”

She chuckled huskily. “Or what?”

“Or I will throw you down and fuck you senseless.”

She laughed. “Promises, promises.”

“It is a promise, woman … When you are better.”

That couldn’t be soon enough to suit her. She was sick of being an invalid. As much better as she felt, she was still so far from completely recovered it had begun to feel as if she would never feel the same again.

It was exhausting and uncomfortable to be carried. She shuddered to think what misery she was inflicting on Gideon. His strength and endurance were nothing short of amazing, but as strong as he was, as stoically as he endured, she knew he had to feel the strain and he felt pain just as she did.

Climbing the cliff was a nightmare. She couldn’t climb it herself and Gideon couldn’t climb carrying her in his arms as he had been. She had to loop her arms around his neck and hang on his back and she didn’t even want to think about how hard that made it for him to climb, quite aside from the fact that his arms and shoulders must feel as if they were going to fall off already from carrying her for hours.

He didn’t object when she suggested that maybe Jerico or