“How would you know?” Amaryllis shot back at him, still too angry to consider the foolhardiness of provoking her captor.
An expression of frustration flickered across his features. Abruptly, he caught her, jerking her fully against his length. “If you are so certain I do not, prove it—human.”
Chapter Four
A coldness washed over Amaryllis. “You said I wasn’t human, that all the hunters were cyborgs—just as you are,” she said stiffly.
“Idid not. It was Kiran who spoke, but I suppose we all look alike to you humans.”
He knew. Amaryllis suddenly realized that with perfect clarity, knew she should have realized it immediately and would have if she hadn’t been in such a state of turmoil. What had been his purpose in bringing her here, then? Why hadn’t he simply denounced her, dragged her before whoever was leading this band of rogues? Or simply slain her on the spot? He didn’t need privacy to kill her. He would only have had to announce that she was human and no one would have even questioned his actions.
When she remained locked in shocked silence, he shifted his grip on her, freeing one arm. His hand settled lightly on the bare skin of her waist, then skimmed upward, settling just beneath one breast.
Amaryllis swallowed with an effort, fighting a surge of panic, and something else she didn’t even want to think about. She wasn’t helpless. She’d been well trained. Unarmed, she might stand little chance against him, but she still had her wits and her strength.
Her wits had deserted her, though, and taken her strength with it.
She felt dwarfed by his size and the sensations that evoked wasn’t just fear.
With an effort, she gathered moisture into her dry mouth. “If you believe that I’m human, not cyborg, then why did you bring me here?”
He frowned. After a moment, some of the tension seemed to leave him. His grip loosened fractionally, not enough to allow her to escape, but sufficiently that she could drag a deep breath into her laboring lungs. To her surprise, a faint flush colored his skin.
“Perhaps so that you would consider me favorably.”
The tone was almost flippant, seeming to belie the suggestion, but his body language said otherwise, and she realized with a touch of surprise that he was telling the truth, that the bath had been in the nature of an offering. Courtship? He’d said they were looking for mates, but then she had been so acutely aware that she was the only one among them that was human, and therefore not compatible, that it simply hadn’t occurred to her that he would decide he wanted her and she wondered if that was the reason he’d singled her out in the field to begin with. “I don’t … look upon you as an enemy,” she lied. She would’ve been willing to suggest something far warmer except that she didn’t think for a moment he would believe her.
His lips tightened into a thin line. “No?” He tilted his head, studying her appraisingly. “Because you consider that I am no more than a machine and a machine cannot be an enemy? It is merely a thing.”
She couldn’t think of a response to that that wouldn’t just piss him off more. At the moment, she definitely didn’t—couldn’t –think of him as a machine. The body pressed so closely to her own felt as real as any other man, but far better than anything she’d ever touched, and her body certainly didn’t know the difference.
After a moment, when she didn’t deny the accusation, he slipped his hands along her arms, tugging them behind her back and manacling both slender wrists in one of his large hands. He pulled her closer, dipping his head toward the crook of her shoulder and breathing deeply. “But I smell the perfume of your flesh and it sends pleasure through me.” He slid his free hand in an exploratory caress up one arm and cupped her face. “I feel the softness of your skin and it begs the touch of my mouth and tongue so that I can bring your essence inside of me and savor it.”
He rocked against her so that she could feel his lower body pressing into her belly, feel the hard erection that told her he wasn’t lacking in any of the parts that made him a male. “I want to bury myself so deeply inside of you that you cannot think, can only feel … so that you know I am no machine, but a living entity … just as you are.”
Amaryllis swallowed with an effort, trying to fight the pounding of her heart. Her lips tingled with the nearness of his mouth to hers. She could feel his heat.
She realized suddenly that she wanted to feel his lips on hers. She wanted to ignore every protest screaming at the back of her mind and yield to the promise his heat offered. It took more strength than she would ever have thought possible to deny the desire welling inside of her.
With an effort, she lifted her gaze to meet his. “Why would it matter to you—what I think?”Howcould it matter? Unless Robotics, Inc. had lied to them—which wouldn’t be a great surprise considering their penchant for it—and there was far more to their creation than they wanted credit for.
Frustration clouded his features. After a moment, he relaxed his hold on her, stepped away.
“You should … leave me here,” she said a little desperately. “You know I don’t belong. If you take me, they will discover, eventually, as you did, that I’m human.”
He shook his head slightly, but she wasn’t certain what the denial was—a refusal to release her or a refusal to believe that she would be exposed for what she really was. He had to know that the longer she stayed, the greater the chance that someone else would figure it out.
“I would not leave you if I could. When we leave this place, all trace of our presence will be removed.”
Therewasno hope of escape then. She could either take her chances with the cyborgs, or have no possibility of survival at all.
“What will they do with me when they discover?”
He frowned, apparently considering, and finally shook his head. “It will be better not to know.”
He grasped her arm then and pulled her from the facilities, walking her quickly down one passageway after another. As they progressed deeper into the ship, they nearly ran afoul of other groups of cyborgs, striding purposefully about the ship as they went about preparations for departure. Each time, he pulled her into a cabin off the main passageway before they were seen, leaving her in no doubt that he had something in mind that didn’t include turning her over to her captors. They came at last to a narrow corridor and turned down it. Doors opened off of it more regularly than any of the others and Amaryllis realized that this area must contain smaller cabins for the cyborg crew. About a quarter of the way down, he pushed a door open and thrust her inside, following her.
“You will be safe here … for now.”
