“Calling me impatient is not an accurate assessment of my character. You don’t know me that well yet. I would say my patience level depends on what I am patiently waiting for,” Peyton declared. Since she refused to look up at him, he found himself watching Kyra’s bent head as her fingers flew across the virtual keyboard. They never stopped for long. What the hell could the woman be writing?
“Assessing your true character is going to be a risky theory to test, but since we may have to relocate soon, I’m going to have no choice but to take that leap of faith with you. Tomorrow we’ll do some psychiatric testing. If that goes well, I’ll let you out of the cage,” Kyra said.
Peyton sat and leaned back on the bed. That was mostly good news. So one more day in the cage, instead of two. He could deal with that.
“Let’s talk about something other than me. Do you really think you’re being watched by the mysterious UCN?” He noticed his stoic mad scientist didn’t even flinch at the question before nodding. A quick scan of her vitals told him the truth before her words could. Damn it. She was being honest. He had hoped she was exaggerating.
“I don’t just think I’m being watched, Captain Elliott. I know I am.”
Kyra connected the final disk to the console unit and set the copy process into motion. Then she drew in a relieved breath and blew it out.
“Let’s use your UCN query as a segue. To preserve what I’ve done, I need to leave the UCN’s investigation team something to find when they break the codes on my lab security. For that, I need your help—if you’re agreeable.”
“What’s agreeable feel like? Right now I’d much rather go punch the hell out of someone’s face. But I admit that little hesitation in your voice intrigues me. What are you nervous about?”
He listened as Kyra snorted, wanting to snort himself when she didn’t look at him. Her skin temperature rising was a direct giveaway, but he didn’t comment on her blush.
“I see you’ve re-established full access to your Cyber Husband chip. You’re interpreting my vocal signals very well,” she said.
Peyton snickered. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m utilizing a very human talent called ‘paying close attention’. I’m a damn Captain in the Marines, or at least I was for a large part of my real life. Paying close attention was part of my officer training, and that happened long before the cybernetics were installed.”
Kyra still didn’t turn around, but mostly so he wouldn’t see her blushing. “No. I hate to disagree with you, but I must. What you’re doing is listening for changes in my voice modulation and all men have to be taught to do such a thing. Almost no male does that innately. The average man doesn’t think what a woman says is important enough.” She barely stifled a long-suffering sigh when she saw Peyton grin at her irritated tone.
“My ability to pay attention to you doesn’t sound very romantic when you talk about it that way, Dr. Winters. My brain thinks you’re pretty damn interesting for a sexy mad scientist bitch. The rest of me doesn’t seem to care what you do for a living.”
Kyra let the frustrated breath escape. “Didn’t we just have a discussion about your flirting and decide it was a bad idea? That goes double now that you hate me. However, I hope you can set your hatred aside to aide me in the process of keeping your restoration a secret until it’s one hundred percent completed. To buy us some time, I want to make a video to convince any investigation team I was tweaking your Cyber Husband programming to suit my aggressive sexual needs.”
“Aggressive sexual needs? Sounds very kinky, Doc. Why the hell would you do that sort of tweaking to a former Cyber Husband? I was sexually trained, remember? I can already tell you’re not that kind of woman.”
“My sexuality is irrelevant to the ruse. Just answer my question, Captain Elliott. Are you willing to help me or not?”
Peyton picked up the reading device to hide his smile. How could you like a person who might be trying to kill you—or worse? His lower man parts certainly seemed to think Dr. Winters was worth the risk. But what did they know? His dick might be pointing her way every time they talked, but it couldn’t advise him what to do about trusting her.
“So let me see if I understand this right. For the sake of fooling some imaginary investigative team, that may or may not be actually investigating you, I’m supposed to let you take advantage of me after all. I guess I should have known you were going to turn out to be like all the other women who paid millions of dollars to sleep with me.”
When Kyra swiveled in her seat and glared full-on at him, everything below his waist drew tight as he waited for her response. Stand down, Peyton ordered, lowering his gaze to his lap. In addition to all the other shit he was learning, now he was fighting the urge to laugh at his nearly out-of-control body reactions. He had gone from wanting to throttle the politely scientific Dr. Winters to wanting to fuck the woman until she didn’t remember who or what she was.
Yes—indeed. The woman was lucky he was still in the cage.
“So am I right?” Peyton demanded, unable to keep the grin off his face as he asked.
Kyra shook her head firmly, then swallowed a couple of times until her temper cooled. His snarky summary hurt, but she didn’t have to react to it.
“No, Captain Elliott. I’m not going to take advantage of you. I just want to fake that sort of relationship to create a cover story. I have no footage of Marshall touching me, but I have a modest tape of me and Alex. If I leave that one to be found, plus one of you and I kissing, that should be enough data to create suspicions. I want the UCN to believe I’m doing sexual research instead of restoration work on you.”
“Did you have consensual sex with the Alex cyborg? Tell me the truth, Doc. I want to know.”
“What I did with Alex is separate from what I am asking of you. It has no relevance to our discussion.”
“That disclaimer still sounds like a yes.” Peyton frowned as he suddenly imagined her hotly kissing someone else the way she had him. If such a thing had happened, it would have been well before their lip lock, but imagining the scene still pissed him off. His mental pictures typically did not cause him anxiety. Maybe he just needed more data about what she described. “Tell me the truth, Doc. I don’t know why I care about your relationship to him, but I do.”
Kyra turned back to her notes. For a minute she ignored Peyton’s pleading and started typing again. But being touchy was not going to win her points with the man in the cage. “Rather than simply repeating it’s none of your business, I will say politely that I see no reason to answer your query at this time.”
Peyton shrugged even though she wasn’t watching him. “Maybe I just want to hear how far you’re willing to go for the sake of your mad scientist scheme.”
“I’m fifty-two years old, Captain Elliot. What I do with a man is no one’s business but mine and his. And I saw Alex as a man, not just a cyborg. It is a matter of discretion to keep my interactions with him private.”
When the computer showed her task completed, Kyra swiveled around in her chair to glare at Peyton again.
“Your libido should level soon. After that, the sexual urges you have for me will likely pass. Until that time, keep in mind I wear the controller remote for your restraints. I will gladly use it if you get out of line.”
Peyton snorted, then chuckled at her snit. “Well, you already know that’s going to happen. Isn’t that why all those other millionaire women sent me back? You were right about them not having any complaints in the bedroom though. It’s amazing what kind of miracles cybernetic pulses can inspire.”
Kyra didn’t answer his taunt. Pocketing the last of the data disks, she got up and walked to the lab door. “I’ll be back shortly. I need a break. You can take some time to think about my request while I’m gone.”
Peyton stared at the lab door after it closed, listening for her receding footsteps. He stood and walked to the door of his cage. Scratching an opening in the artificial skin of one finger of his cybernetic hand, he used some ele
ctrical current siphoned off his cage to magnetize it. Reaching his arm between two bars as far as he could, he pointed his magnetized metal fingertip at the cage key she had carelessly left on the desk in her haste to evade his questions.
The key fob, obviously some low metal alloy, unfortunately remained unaffected. But nearly every other metal object on the work table came flying his way.
Peyton laughed and swore as he raked porta-disks and rapid drives off his magnetized finger and onto the floor. It should be entertaining to hear what the easily irritated doctor would say when she saw the mess. He tossed back a metal pen she’d been using as a chew toy and congratulated himself when it landed in nearly the same place it had originally been.
“Oh well. Escaping was at least worth a full cyborg try,” Peyton said loudly.
Then he smiled up at the camera recording his every movement and winked as he pulled the already healing skin of his finger back over the metal still showing.
Chapter 8
Nero glanced at the single room sweeper turning rapidly on the counter next to him as he studied the video in silence. He waited for the color on the sweeper to change from red to green before speaking.
“This is very promising, Kyra. Peyton 313 prowls the cage restlessly and has already tried to escape more than once. His disrespectful, yet humorous attempts to anger you are what a normal person might do in his captive circumstances. You’d never identify the man as cyborg unless you saw him use his prosthetics to try and obtain the key.”
Nero restarted the video for a third time, watching the action again, including the man’s wink at the camera. Captain Elliot was pretty sharp for someone who’d had a good part of his brain rewired yesterday.
“I have Peyton’s general schematics, but the military aspects of his prosthetics were not in the original information I pulled on him. Since I left all his secondary chips in place,
“My military clearance was just renewed. I’ll pull Captain Elliott’s full file so we can have the details of everything that was done to him. Based on his irreverent wink at the camera, he’s handling his captivity fairly well. He probably had above average intelligence even before his cybernetic modifications.”
Kyra sighed and huffed. “Don’t let that Zen act of his fool you. Peyton’s been super angry off and on since he woke from the initial assimilation. I was distracted when I left the lab but I can’t believe I left the cage key just lying on the desk like that. He likes to torment me with sexual suggestions. I swear I don’t see any indications that his libido is leveling out at all. Do you think the pulse effect of a cyborg’s prosthetics might make him more interested in sex than the average man?”
Nero chuckled at the irritation in Kyra’s voice as well as at the odd question. “A cyborg with an amped up libido would be far too aggressive to constrain physically. I would venture that Captain Elliot’s testosterone level is probably the same as mine. However, the man has had ten wives, so chances are he’s been getting laid on a steadier basis than most. Could be he’s just having withdrawal. Or it could be that he really does have the hots for you, like his teasing indicates. I think you must consider both possibilities as equally feasible.”
Kyra rolled her eyes at Nero’s automatic support of another male. With the exception of her years with Jackson, she had been alone most of her life. Nero Khalid Bastion—child prodigy and now impressively handsome geek—was her longtime assistant. He had been assigned to her when the Cyber Soldier program was in full swing. He was twenty years her junior and technically young enough at thirty-two to be her child, even though she’d never thought of him that way. Instead, Nero was more like the younger sibling she’d never had, and often as annoying as people said such younger siblings were.
“Sure, Nero. All the cyborgs I rewire get the hots for me afterward. Unfortunately that passion tends to fade really fast once they realize I’m part of the reason they’ve been enslaved for years.”
Kyra had been trying for sarcasm and sighed when it came out sounding wistful. She winced at Nero’s chastising look. It was one he seemed to use often with her lately.
“Captain Elliot is not the typical cyborg you have been trying to restore. The other two were modified toward the end of the war, but Peyton 313’s design is one of the originals. Despite all his software upgrades, the core programs are likely still the original delta level he received because his unique prosthetics require them. That could easily explain why he rebelled against taking housekeeping orders from his wives. As a Marine Captain, he was programmed to be the giver of orders, not the receiver. I would love to see an EEG image of what happened in his brain every time he refused to do something. It would probably look like a pyrotechnical explosion inside a blast chamber.”
Kyra shook her head and laughed. “Wow. That’s quite a defense of a man you haven’t met in person yet. Are you seriously trying to hook me up with a guy who now hates me enough to want to kill me? I thought we were much better friends than that, Nero.”
Hearing her tone finally hit sarcasm level alleviated her nervousness about the subject matter. She never bothered filtering herself for Nero and had no intentions of starting. Instead, she walked calmly over to silence the dancing teakettle from its insistent screaming.
She loved the ancient artifact she had rescued from an antique store. Sure, there were easier and more efficient ways to boil water, but she preferred the old-fashioned ritual of heating it slowly in the device. Waiting the time it took gave her something to do while she calmed her mind.
Lifting the teakettle and its boiling contents, Kyra felt deeply satisfied as she poured steaming hot water over the powdered green tea she’d spooned into each cup. The bubbling froth promised both taste-bud delight and a little mental boost. As she stirred, she decided that it was definitely all the little rituals that made it a pleasure to be alive.
The only downside of her tea ritual today was that it, like nearly everything else, was making her feel even more guilty because Peyton Elliott had been blocked from this kind of enjoyment for years. Since his awareness of his past was growing, she was sure she was going to hear more about his deprivation before his assimilation was finished.
Nero glanced from his screen to Kyra’s blushing face. “I’m not encouraging you to do anything with the man. Actually, I think it’s a bad idea for you to get physically involved. I’m just warning you to be aware of probabilities given what I’ve heard so far.”
“Your concern is appreciated, but totally not necessary. I’m hardly the kind of high-end woman Captain Elliott is used to servicing. I’ve had no lifting or tucking work done at all. I guess I’m in fairly good shape for the most part, but you know I look every bit of my fifty-two years. I admit the man had me convinced he liked me before the assimilation. Sure, I never felt that conflicted with the other two cyborgs I bought, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to forgo my scientific goals for a chance to sleep with a sexually trained cyborg. I’m not that desperate for companionship.”
Nero raised his head to look at her again. “You’re human, Kyra. And so is Captain Elliot. He’s just human plus. Isn’t that how you always describe the Cyber Soldiers? It would not have been a crime if something intimate between you had happened. Now you have made me curious. What exactly did happen between you two?”
Kyra shook her head. “Nothing happened. Or at least nothing important. Peyton can be very charming, that’s all. I didn’t let him get to me. His friendly manner just made me sincerely regretful to turn his cybernetic programming completely back on.”
Nero put his gaze back on the screen. “Maybe you should have let yourself live a little with the human part of him when it surfaced. Have you even let a man into your life since the asswipe died?”
“You know damn well there hasn’t been anyone since Jackson. It wouldn’t have been good for my cover story of why I needed to buy a Cyber Husband,” Kyra declared, sipping her tea. “Since we’re talking about our sex lives—how about you? Any good prospects latel
y?”
Nero shrugged. “There’s a new lab tech over in the prosthetics department that I had dinner with last week. She seems nice enough, but isn’t as sharp as I would like. We’re catching a movie at the Plex this weekend. I’ll know after that if she’s worth the trouble of sleeping with her.”
Kyra sighed in defeat. Nero’s man parts were hard-wired to his brain. She never knew whether to feel sorry for him or to admire that he was vastly different from men like Jackson. Her ex-husband had obviously thought happiness came with every piece of strange ass he conquered.
She carried the tea to Nero as she glared at his smirk. “Tell me you’re not taking that poor unsuspecting woman to see that awful gamer movie that just came out. I heard they decapitate nearly every character in it before the end.”
Grinning, Nero took the cup from Kyra and lifted it to his mouth for a sip. “Okay. I’m not taking her to the gamer movie.”
“Yes, you are. You’re lying to me, Nero. Your pupils are dilated and your pulse is jumping at your neck,” Kyra declared.
Nero laughed. “I’d be a happy man to find a woman half as sharp as you, Dr. Winters.”
Kyra huffed. “Right. You just want someone to be responsible for curbing your childish tendencies.”
Nero nodded and smiled. “Absolutely. Isn’t that what women are for?”
“No wonder you haven’t found someone to love you yet. No woman wants to mother the man in her life as well as his children.”
Nero grinned as he smoothly changed the subject. “The sweeper is running low on power so let’s get back to discussing Captain Elliot. When are you letting him out of the cage?”
Kyra took another sip. “Today—probably right after you leave. I was trying to wait until tomorrow, but. . .something is urging me to move this along quickly.”
“Today is a little soon, isn’t it? He’s still pretty angry at you.” Nero sipped his tea and watched Kyra over the edge of his cup.
“It can’t be helped. Just hours before he arrived, I turned down twenty million to go back to work in the cybernetics lab. They know I spent the last of my funds on Peyton. I expect the investigation to ramp up to the speed of a mag-train shortly.”
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