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“Point taken.” Axe grinned at the hawk. “You’re plenty dangerous, bird.”
Veth. She was in trouble. He wasn’t even looking at her and his smile still melted the edges of her brain and made her pulse trip like a hammer. Rin reminded herself that she needed to stay focused and professional. Axe might be the hottest man she’d ever met, but he was now part of her project, and that meant he was off limits.
She was the hawks’ best chance at a good life—one free from the IAF and its desire to weaponize the animals. She couldn’t do anything to jeopardize the study, and that included flirting with the hot and grumpy cyborg.
4
This day kept surprising him. All he wanted to do was get home, enjoy a hot shower, eat a good meal, and then get back to work on a number of projects he needed to finish. His customers knew he worked on his own schedule, but he couldn’t start anything new until he completed a few of the larger projects to make room.
Now he had Amun in his head and a distractingly lovely human woman seated beside him, offering to check on his wounded shoulder and explaining that he now shared some kind of psychic link to a fraxxing bird. Both situations demanded his attention, and he had no idea which one to deal with first.
Amun sent him a brief pulse of amusement accompanied by an image of Rin.
Great. Now the bird was giving him advice. Worse, he was inclined to take it. If Amun wanted his attention, he would let him know. That meant his focus should be on Rin, the temptingly pretty scientist who didn’t consider him a threat. Not that he was still stung about that or anything.
“Speaking of Amun being dangerous, I’d still like to take a look at you,” Rin said. Then her eyes widened and her cheeks heated. “I, uh, I mean, I should look at your injured shoulder. I feel responsible for what happened.”
Damn, she was even prettier when she got flustered. It made her look sweet and vulnerable—two things he never imagined would appeal to him in a female. Until now.
He meant to tell her he’d be fine. What came out instead was, “It wasn’t your fault. Amun surprised us both. If you need to see for yourself, though. I won’t argue.”
“Are you doing this?” He sent the thought to Amun without saying it aloud. Communicating this way was a lot like speaking to his fellow cyborgs on their internal comm channels. If Amun didn’t need to hear his words to understand him, it would be easier, and no one would wonder why he’d started talking to himself.
Amun sent back a thought Axe interpreted as a negative. If the bird wasn’t messing with him, he’d either lost his mind or Rin was affecting him in ways he didn’t want to contemplate.
“I’d feel better if I knew you were healing up,” Rin said as she got to her feet.
He pulled his shirt over his head before his brain had time to process what was happening. It was a good thing he’d stopped to bathe and swim in the river this morning or even Rin’s unenhanced senses would have suffered.
Rin crouched down behind him and swore. “Holy fraxx. He really made a mess of your shoulder. I’ll bring you a pauldron and a gauntlet so this doesn’t happen again.”
“I’d appreciate that.” He doubted she’d have a glove that would fit him, but he had friends who could copy the design and produce something in his size.
The gentle touch of her hands on his back surprised him. He hadn’t expected the contact at all, never mind the soft and careful way she stroked his skin.
“You have so many scars,” she murmured. “No wonder you’re not concerned about your new injury.”
“I was a scout during the Resource Wars. I spent most of that of time alone in enemy territory, and I got shot at a lot.” He shrugged. “My medi-bots kept me alive and combat capable. The scars are just reminders of the wounds that didn’t kill me.”
She ran her fingertips over his scars, careful not to touch the still-healing wounds on his shoulder. The touch triggered a wave of goose bumps up his spine as his cock surged to life.
“Judging by all of these, you must be immortal.”
“I’m a cyborg,” he reminded her. “We’re designed to be hard to kill.” That was the point of their entire existence. They were created to be the perfect soldiers—human enough to circumvent the laws against waging wars with machines but enhanced and altered enough to be bigger, stronger, faster, and more obedient. They were meant to be programmed to kill without remorse and never question orders. Only the corporations screwed up. Given time, the cyborgs overcame their programming and became fully self-aware. Then, they rose up and demanded their freedom. Most were freed. Some, like him, were captured and experimented on to see what went wrong.
“I should get my kit and clean up these wounds. I know the medi-bots can handle it, but there’s a lot of blood. When it dries, it’s going to itch.”
Axe was shocked into silence again. She worried he’d be uncomfortable? No one ever worried about his comfort. This woman kept surprising him, and he didn’t like that she somehow managed to make him feel vulnerable and off-balance.
Amun and Hera shrieked a warning and took to the air a second later. His hawk filled his head with a sense of danger accompanied by an image of an angry human male dressed in military garb.
Axe shot to his feet and pulled Rin behind him as he scanned the woods for whoever Amun had warned him about.
“Dammit. They found me,” Rin muttered and tried to move in front of him. “Douglas! I know you’re out there. Show yourself.”
Axe dragged her back behind him. “Who is Douglas?” he demanded.
“Lieutenant Douglas is in charge of this project. Well, the military aspects of it, anyway.”
