He paused at the door and turned to study her for so long that she thought he might say something. When he left without a word, she was even more confused. She was still trying to figure out how she felt, beyond stunned and confused, when she heard the retreating tread of his boots stop suddenly and then the sound of distant voices.
She couldn’t make out what was being said. Abruptly, the conversation ceased. The sound of many feet, coming in her direction, followed.
They didn’t pass the door. They halted outside. Amaryllis had just leapt from the bunk when the door flew open. Within seconds, the room was filled with cyborgs.
Chapter Nine
Reese stood at the forefront, wearing the uniform of the cyborgs. His gaze swept her from head to foot. “Leave us,” he said without turning.
After the briefest of hesitations, the cyborg guards behind him backed from the room and closed the door behind them.
Amaryllis was too stunned even to think. He looked like Reese. He sounded like Reese. But was it her partner?
“Reese?”
Something flickered in his eyes. “Get dressed.”
Unconsciously, Amaryllis glanced toward the garments Dante had left in a ruined pile on the floor. When she looked at Reese again, she saw that his gaze had followed hers. Before she could think of anything to say, he strode to the clothing and lifted it to inspect it. His head whipped toward her, his gaze capturing hers. “He forced you?”
Amaryllis blushed to the roots of her hair. Not unless climbing all over someone and moaning ‘fuck me’ constituted force. There was something in his expression, however, that told her that wasn’t something he wanted to hear.
He saw the answer in her eyes. His face hardened.
Amaryllis took a step back when he straightened and surged toward her, catching her upper arms in a painful grip. “Bathe,” he said through gritted teeth, thrusting her in the direction of the facilities.
She merely gaped at him when he released her and moved to the door. Opening it, he spoke to the men outside.
Belatedly, it occurred to Amaryllis that the facilities might be her only hope of escape and it still took an effort to force herself to move. Reese, or the cyborg who looked like Reese, caught the door before she could close it, following her inside.
“There is nowhere to run to, Amy.”
The comment stopped her in her tracks although she wasn’t even certain by that time if there was even any point in trying to escape. It also added considerably to her confusion. No one called her Amy except her family. She’d thought she’d imagined it before when Reese had called her Amy. Maybe she had. The plain fact of the matter was that no one, including Reese, should even know her real name, much less the name her family had called her. She was fairly certain she didn’t want to ask him how he knew, though. “I don’t … understand … any of this.”
“You do. You just don’t want to,” he responded coolly, taking up a position by the door.
Reluctantly, Amaryllis moved to the shower and turned it on. She felt as if she was living the bizarre reality of a nightmare. The man watching her so coldly looked and sounded like Reese, her partner, the man she’d had secret fantasies about from the time he’d joined the hunters, even before he’d become her partner. “You’re not … you aren’t….”
He lifted a brow. “The same man who worked beside you for the past eighteen months? I am.”
“You’re a … cyborg?”
His lips flattened into a thin line. “I would say that we are the same, but we both know that isn’t true, don’t we? You were born of woman, born with a soul. While I … I was cooked up in Robotics, Inc.’s labs.”
A wave of dizziness washed over Amaryllis. “They said we were all the same,” she said through lips that felt strangely stiff and uncooperative.
This couldn’t be happening.
He couldn’t know that. No one had access to that information except Robotics, Inc..
Unless Dante had told them?
Nausea followed that thought.
Hehadturned her in. He’d come to her, fucked her six ways from Sunday, and then fucked her over.
Christ! She wassucha fucking moron!
And she’d been feeling all maudlin over the fact that Dante hadn’t even made an attempt to convince her that there was affection involved in the act.
