“Damon!” Jared spat furiously the moment he’d scanned the corridor and discovered that the only body that wasn’t sprawled tiredly around him was the fucking sexdroid. “Thatsnakeused the diversion to make off with her!”
The moment he made that announcement, the others began to struggle to sit up and look around.
Reuel shook his head at them. “I am no expert in these matters, but I am fairly certain the five of you defeated one another in this particular battle. You are too battered now to try another assault. I would suggest that you fall back and consider another strategy.”
Jared stared at him for a long moment, trying to wrap his mind around what Reuel had said. “What matters?” he asked finally.
Reuel shrugged and pushed away from the wall he’d been leaning against. “I have not figured that out yet. I thought, mayhap, that you had some idea of what your objective was … beyond beating your comrades into submission, that is.”
Jared considered it for a few minutes after Reuel had left but finally decided that he was too tired to unravel the puzzle at the moment, if indeed there was any sense that could be made of it. Deciding he had rested long enough that he could get to his feet, he focused on that until he’d managed it. It seemed to him, however, that the moment he straightened every blow he’d caught from someone’s fist began to pound more painfully. Dizziness swept over him, weakness he’d rarely felt. He paused until it began to pass and then looked around, trying to decide where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do.
He wanted to find Damon, beat the fuck out of him, and then fuck the hell out of Chloe, he thought almost instantly. It only took a few moments to assess his status, however, and make it abundantly clear that he wasn’t presently in any condition to do either. Somewhat lower on the list of current desires was the urge to find something softer to land on than the floor if he happened to pass out.
He glanced around in search of a bed or a chair and realized he was still in the corridor … and therestillwasn’t a fucking bed handy. Sucking in a pained breath, he stepped over Sebastian’s leg, paused to gather himself, and stepped over Lucien’s foot and then Thor’s head. Having successfully negotiated the minefield of body parts on the floor, he lifted his head to study the corridor. A round half dozen of Reuel’s troops had moved to the door, apparently to watch the melee, and a couple of them still lingered.
Mess hall, he noted, summoning a map image of the ship’s layout and discovering he was within twenty yards of the crew quarters. Another ten or fifteen feet beyond that, give or take, was the crew’s latrine and bathing facilities. His cabin, if he could make it that far, was a good five yards beyond the showers.
He stopped to rest on one of the bunks in the crew quarters for a few minutes and then heaved himself up and made his way to the showers. Deciding that was far enough for the moment, he went inside, dragged his flight suit and boots off and stood under the water. The heat and pounding spray hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, pinpointing everything on his body that was raw, but also seemed to draw some of the pain out of his battered muscles. He decided to stay a little longer.
Kane and Sebastian arrived at the showers shortly behind him and then, a few minutes later, Thor and Lucien. He studied them broodingly, trying to decide if he felt like renewing the fight and finally decided he would wait a while after he tested his hands and saw he still couldn’t make fists without a great effort.
He was too pissed off, still, to leave it at that completely. “What the fuck was that all about?” he growled at Kane.
Kane glared at him. “Why do you not explain what the fuck you were doing with Chloe?”
Jared thought about it. “I was kissing my woman, gods damn it!”
“That was not kissing,” Kane shot back at him. “I do not know what you were doing, but I do know that there is nothing like that in the gods damned pleasure droid programming! And she is notmoreyour gods damned woman than she is mine, so do not say that to me as if you have some claim upon her that I do not!”
Jared glared at him, trying to untangle the accusations. At the same time, he found himself struggling with the images flickering through his mind of what hehadbeen doing and trying to fit them into any of the myriad of images from his sexdroid programming. It did not make him feel any better when he discovered Kane was right. It was not in the digital manual.
Then again, he could not recall that he had made any attempt to access the manual beyond trying to figure out how he was going to fuck her when he had no gods damned bed!Thatwas essential, he knew—comfort and then pleasure. It occurred to him after a few moments that he had gotten his entire programming skewed. He should have gotten her into a bedbeforehe had begun to kiss her.
“That is beside the point!” he said stiffly. “I was pleasuring her, gods damn it!Igot her first! If you wanted to pleasure her, then you should have waited!”
“Sheaskedyou to pleasure her?” Kane demanded, disbelief evident in his voice.
Discomfort wafted through Jared when he recalled that she had not only not requested it, he did not have a fucking clue of whether or not he hadgivenher any pleasure. He had been consumed withtakingpleasure.
“I did not think so!” Kane growled with a touch of satisfaction and then added angrily, “She wanted that fucking fuck droid for that!”
Chapter Seven
Kane hated like hell to admit that, but there was no point in trying to deny it when Chloe had suggested as much herself. She had not said it outright, and he would have liked to think that that left room for doubt, but even if that had, her behavior once they had found the dick was difficult to ignore.
It pissed him off every time he recalled the way she had spoken to him, the way she had behaved. She had not behaved that way with him! No, and not Jared either, for all that the stupid fuck had gotten it into his head that she was his!
He was damned if he understood it. There was no logic to it that he could see.Hehad a dick, gods damn it! Jared had a cock if came to that! And they had been with her for many months. If she had wanted to fuck, he did not see why she had not mentioned it.
Of course, she did not know that they had the same programming that Damon the dick had. She had not known that until Jared had decided to tell her, but still …. She was always chattering about something when she was around them. Why not mention that?
It should have been on her mind, gods damn it! It had been onhismind even before he had fully recovered from his battle wounds and he had had a great deal of pain to distract him at least part of the time. Actually, he did not suppose that was completely accurate. He had wantedsomethingof Chloe. He had not been entirely certain of what it was that he wanted beyond her attention, but he had wanted that.
And he had gotten that, although it had not entirely pleased him.Then, she had always looked … disturbed when she looked at him. He had known that he looked like hell. He had thought, at first, that it was disgust and that had seemed reasonable even though he had not liked it. After a while, though, he had realized that she did not feel disgust of him. She felt shame each time she looked at him. He had thought he must be mistaken about that because it had not seemed logical, but he had finally decided from a few things she had said that she felt as if some part of the blame for his condition was hers because she was human and it was humans who had been responsible for the disaster.
That also did not seem logical, but he was fairly certain that that was a good part of it and he had already begun to realize that it was very hard to understand humans because their emotions were often so complicated. It was not that he was deficient in processing, or logic. It was that the emotions they felt were never one thing but many things—or at least Chloe’s were.
He still had not entirely followed that line of thinking to completely understand it, but he was reasonably certain that he was right because she seemed to feel less guilty and less uncomfortable around him and Jared when they had recovered and did not look like they would expire. He was not certain he would have figured that out except that she had begun to smile. She still seemed a little uneasy when they were around. She still did not look directly at them very often, which was why he had decided that it was not that he was so ugly that she had not before—not entirely anyway.
