Laughing at his embarrassment, and feeling as wicked as Meara for once, Aja turned and ran out of the door.
When his visitor notification chimed, Will ignored it. He’d used a good chunk of his Army back pay to buy the entire top level of this building. It was supposed to come with an increased level of privacy. Only one person could have gotten through those without setting off the alarm system Marcus had designed for every level.
“Go away, Meara. I don’t want to talk to you again today,” Will yelled from his chair.
He didn’t bother to get up when the door opened. Instead, he swore internally and turned the half-empty bottle up for another drink.
He’d never stood a chance of keeping her out. Her new neural processor—one just like his—could bypass any electronic lock.
He’d have to kill her to keep her out. It would probably be best to be drunk when he did it.
Maybe he could plead insanity and Peyton wouldn’t have him put down.
“I don’t blame ya for wanting a respite after seeing yer ex today, but yar not going to find much in that stuff yer drinking. I ended up throwing up the excess all over the bathroom last night before I could sleep the rest off. King’s Happy Cyborg Juice is wicked stuff.”
“Haven’t you fucked up my life enough for one day?”
Meara took the chair across Will. “It’s not my fault yer wife couldn’t handle the truth of what ya had to do to survive. But I do understand yer need to grieve her loss. Cassandra is beautiful.”
“I’m not grieving.”
Meara snorted. “Goddess, no. A stoic man like ya would never admit to being sad or depressed.”
“I’m not depressed either,” Will said, turning up the bottle again.
“Well, I am. Yer reaction depresses the hell out of me. It means ya still love her. That sort of dashes my hopes for more from ya.”
Will put the bottle on the table beside him. “Why in the fuck does anything about me depress you? You don’t even know me. I could be the biggest bastard that ever lived. Probably am.”
Meara glared. “Hell, yeah, I know ya are… and it’s like looking into a fecking mirror. Ya think all ya’ve done is unforgivable. Ya think yer a monster. Ya think no decent person is ever going to want to be in yer life. Every truth that poor woman ya married shared today validated those conclusions ya refuse to turn loose of. I wouldn’t be a real friend if I didn’t come here and call bullshit on yer unproductive brooding.”
“Meara,” Will said, leaning elbows on his knees. “If you truly want to be my friend, fucking leave me alone. That’s all I want from you.”
She nodded. “Sure. As luck would have it, yer wish is about to be granted. I’ve got to go away for a bit. Hopefully, I’ll be back soon, but what I’ve got to do could take a while.”
“Go? Go where?” Will asked, surprised by the news. Then he finally noticed Meara was dressed all in black. She looked like a ninja. “Why are you dressed in stealth gear?”
“No wonder yer wimpy wife traded up. Don’t ya know a woman doesn’t need a reason to change her clothes? Maybe I was feeling in a black mood today.” Meara sighed as she looked down at herself. “I’m really glad Nero didn’t throw these away when he did my original restoration. This is what I was wearing the day we finally found Lucy. I’m a shorty as ya know and this is the best-fitting shinobi shozoku I’ve ever owned.”
Will lifted a hand to his head. As usual, her chattering was giving him a headache, but the drink was making his confusion worse. Apparently, there was no escaping Meara’s particular brand of crazy. “How in the hell did you drink a whole bottle of this, Meara? My head feels like it’s going to fall off.”
Meara laughed at Will’s spontaneous question. “Alcohol was medicine in my household when I was a child. My tolerance came naturally and translated over to my cyborg self. It’s not exactly something I’m proud of, but the occasional bender still seems to calm me down a bit when I get restless.” She rose from her chair and walked to Will. “How drunk are ya?”
“I don’t know. I’m still hearing you, so obviously not drunk enough,” he said morosely.
Laughing at his misery, Meara bent her head and lightly kissed his lips. “Yar such a sweet talker, Will. Did ya feel that zing between us just now?”
“Why are kissing me again, Meara? I didn’t ask you to kiss me. Maybe I don’t want you to kiss me. Do you ever stop to question your actions before you do them?”
“Shush now with yer lectures,” Meara said, pushing back his hair with one hand. “Yar tired and hurting and not able to be yer best self. It was unfortunate timing that yer ex came so soon after our redefinition. Yar probably still assimilating yer pissed-off, pent-up emotions about what ya endured all those years. I know I have been. And ya have a right to feel sad about all that too, ya know. Anger doesn’t have to be the only emotion ya allow yerself.”
She was beautiful and contrary. She was the light to his dark. Will swallowed and fought the urge to drag Meara down into his lap for a hug. It was the most irrational thought he’d had about her yet. Needing her strange brand of comfort made him feel vulnerable, which he recognized as a very human reaction to all the stress of the day, but also one he’d promised himself never to feel again under any circumstances.
“What I feel is none of your damn business and never will be,” he said, hoping his harshness would push her away.
Meara ran her lips gently over his again. “Too bad, Captain Serious. I’m making ya my business for now. I’m probably going to be a rebound fling for ya, but I’ve had worse relationships. Yer leveling out from this shit is what matters to me, so there ya go. I can’t have my perfect cybernetic match drowning in despair over a fecking woman. Yar still alive, Will. Ya need to start living like it.”
Will hissed in awareness as Meara slid off the chair arm and straddled his lap with her compact body. She was warm and sexy and smiling at him. “What the ever-loving fuck did you just say? Most of the time I can’t understand you at all,” he said.
Giggling, Meara reached between them to his lap, where Mother Nature was being helped along by cybernetic pulses to create a form of male magnificence. Running her hand over his growing and now throbbing interest, she kissed his jaw, his temple, and behind Will’s ear. When he didn’t push her away, she smiled and kissed his neck too, nipping the skin there to make a place to inject the sleep aid stored under her fingernail. She pressed it lightly against the skin she’d broken.
“Feeling better?” she asked as she slid down his body to kiss his chest. “Ya feel pretty good to me.”
“Go away, bad girl. No good can come from you flirting with me… or doing anything else,” Will said harshly.
Meara laughed as she quickly unfastened his trousers and worked her prize free of his pants. “Looks like I’m going to have to disagree with ya again. I think this is very good and I’m happy to be the one who caused it to happen.”
Despite the heavenly promise she was making with her actions, Will put his hands on her shoulders to push her off. “I don’t know what game you’re playing but… Jesus,” Will said loudly, hissing when she slid her body down and her mouth over him in one smooth motion.
The rest of his body was suddenly as weak as he could ever remember being. Her strong grip held his knees spread and one hand kept him at attention while she had her way. Her name was on his lips at the end which didn’t take her talented mouth long to bring about. His heart raced as she’d finished. He nearly screamed with his tormented release.
“Meara…” he whispered when she finally raised her face to his.
“Ah, don’t look at me so sadly, Will. This is nothing ya have to worry about or make up for or even give a second thought to. Over the years, I’ve done this for hundreds of men because I was programmed to do it on demand. Yer the first man I’ve wanted to do it for in quite some time.” Meara tucked him away and patted his lap. “There now. Ya can even pretend it didn’t happen if ya like. I won’t take it personal what
ever ya decide, but I do hope I showed ya that yer sex life isn’t over just because yer wife left ya for another man.”
“Meara…” Will said more clearly. He was tired, dizzy, and stunned to have his manhood handed back to him with so little fanfare. The sexual release had drained him, but it had also cleared his mind. He wet his dry lips to talk to her but what could he say? Thanking her seemed crass. “You said you were leaving. Where are you going?”
“To do a little job with Aja,” Meara said casually, climbing back up him to perch on one of his knees. “But I can’t have ya tracking me down so I drugged ya just a little. It should wear off once I get good and out of range. Of course, that half bottle of Happy Cyborg Juice ya drank might make the effects take a wee longer to leave yer system.”
“I don’t understand,” Will said, starting to lean forward. Instead, he fell back, weak as a baby. “What did you do to me? I’m too tired to move.”
“Sleep now, Will. This hellish day is nearly over. Ya’ve earned a good rest.”
Will’s eyes couldn’t stay open. He had to sleep. His body was giving him no choice. It surprised him how much he missed Meara’s warm weight in his lap when she sighed and climbed off his knee. Why couldn’t she stay so he could hug her? Maybe she could lay down with him until he fell asleep.
He blinked and blinked and then his eyelids refused to lift.
Meara watched Will’s face soften as the drug settled in. It made her kind of sad. She’d enjoyed his look of gratitude and the sexiness of his voice when he’d said her name just after.
Sighing over her feelings for him, she pulled Will up into a fireman’s carry. “Lord, you’re bigger than ya look. One inch taller and I’d have had to drag yer heavy metal arse across the floor. With my luck, I’d give ya a concussion and then ya would be hating me for yet another reason. I swear, there’s no winning with ya, Captain Serious.”
She carried Will to his bed and rolled him down on it. She pushed his face over to the edge and put a trashcan within easy reach in case he got sick. He probably would. Will had been looking pretty green around the gills when she arrived.
Kissing Will’s forehead one last time, Meara treaded lightly as she left the room without a single regret for what she’d done.
Now she had something to remember and so did he.
If she died trying to free the New World Companions, maybe Captain Serious would at least think kindly of her.
In the hallway outside Captain Talon’s apartment, Aja paced and waited. She exhaled in relief when Meara finally opened the door. “About time, Irish. You were in there for over thirty minutes. What took you so long? We’ll be traveling mostly in the dark now.”
“The man was harder to blow than I expected him to be. Turns out William’s got staying power,” Meara said with a grin.
Aja crossed her arms. “Stop teasing. I know ya didn’t do that while you were in there. You gave him that sleep aid I made though, didn’t you?”
Meara snorted over Aja’s assumptions and shrugged. It was none of her friend’s business what she did with Will anyway. Every woman had boundaries. “Yes, Aja. I gave Will the sleep aid. He was half-way through a bottle of Happy Cyborg Juice when I arrived so I had to fecking talk him down from drinking the rest.”
“Oh… I see. Was he super depressed then from seeing his ex-wife?” Aja asked as they jogged down the stairs. Meara had said the stairway cameras were the easiest ones for her to shut down.
Meara nodded as they descended. “Yeah, but Cassandra Talon was nice actually… and just as lost as Will about everything. Even lusting for the man as I do, I still feel sad for both of them. I think I feel worse for Will though because he’s got a lot of bad shit to accept before he can move on. I told him differently, but I don’t there’s any saving what they once had.”
“How can you know for certain that his previous relationship is not salvageable?” Aja asked.
Meara’s jaw tightened. “Because those UCN bastards showed his wife a recording of Will killing someone. She asked him about it and he admitted to her it was true. I didn’t see her face during their discussion about it but I read her vitals and they were plummeting as he confessed. Then the woman stepped as far away from him as she could manage in the room. Seeing the recording shocked her, but hearing Will admit it sounded the death knell on their relationship.”
Aja’s jaw clenched. “Every soldier is a killer. It’s part of the work of war, but killing an enemy should never be glorified or used for evil as the UCN has done. May the gods I honor have no mercy on those UCN bastards.”
Meara nodded, her mind returning to Cassandra Talon. Or was it Sanchez now? Nero mentioned Will’s visitor shared his last name. If Cassandra had kept Will’s last name, that had to mean something was still there between the two of them. Right? Goddess, but she was being daft about the whole thing.
“I share yer sentiments, Aja. When we free the New World Companions, I will return to the search for Rio Sanchez. Neither Will nor Cassandra will have closure until he’s found.”
“You and closure,” Aja said with an eye roll.
“Yes… me and closure. We can’t all walk away and never look back. Emotional pain can destroy a person. Lucy almost didn’t come back to us. Will is suffering like Lucy did when she first came around. At least Lucy had Eric to help her through it. Will has only me… and he doesn’t want me. Or at least not for more than a bang or two. Ya know how men are.”
“There’s no need to be crude, Meara. I understand what it means to have no one,” Aja said as they stepped out into the falling darkness.
“Yeah, but ya could have Nero if ya wanted. Will’s as far out of reach to me as any man I’ve ever known.”
Aja reached out and put a hand on Meara’s shoulder. “Then we will find you someone suitable when we return from this task.”
Meara smiled. “I prefer to do my own man-hunting, Aja, but I love ya for offering.”
They paused to pull on their face coverings. They couldn’t risk their pilot revealing their identities. Their rented air transport waited for them a short twenty-minute run from where they stood. Anyone that saw them in the falling darkness would only see a streak of black as they ran.
Stealth in doing what they weren’t supposed to be doing was like old times for them. The difference today was that they knew more people than Lucy would be looking for them.
7
“Where the fuck did they go, Lucy?” Peyton asked, hoping to find out and develop a rescue plan before Kyra got there. His too-smart wife was running on empty these days. First chance he got, they were taking a real vacation away from broken cyborgs and labs.
Lucy turned to meet Peyton’s stare. “I don’t know where they are, Peyton. I haven’t checked their locations today nor do I intend to.”
“Care to share why you’re not looking for them?”
Lucy lifted an eyebrow as she glared. If Peyton wanted to play leader, she could fucking play as well as he could. “Many reasons come to mind, Captain Eliot, but let’s start with this one. To the best of my knowledge, they’re not prisoners here. Or was that only a lie you told all of us to gain our obedience?”
Eric cleared his throat as he entered the room, hoping to disrupt the tension he had picked up on when he walked in. “Kyra and Captain Talon will be here shortly. You might want to argue in a slightly lower decibel range after he arrives. It seems Captain Talon’s not feeling well this morning. Kyra’s looking at him now to make sure he’s okay.”
“What’s wrong with Will?” Peyton asked.
Shrugging, Eric avoided glancing at what he knew would be a grinning Lucy. “He’s…” Eric glanced around the room and saw Nero staring at the wall. He felt bad about delivering the news, but it couldn’t be helped. “Will’s former wife showed up to see him yesterday. Afterward, he went home and drank half a bottle of King’s Happy Cyborg Juice to drown his human and in-human sorrows.”
Nero threw up a hand and started talking low to himself in
his native language.
Peyton sighed heavily at the news. “Poor bastard can’t catch a break, can he? What else is going on, Eric?”
Eric made a face at his former captain. It was hard to keep anything from a man he would always see as his leader. “Why are you looking to me for all your answers, Peyton?”
“Because Aja and Meara are Captain Pennington’s people and she’s not going to tell me shit,” Peyton said.
Eric grinned as he walked to Lucy and sat in the chair next to her. “Peyton, you know I would go to hell and back for you, but I’m not betraying the woman I’m sleeping with. I’m sure you understand my divided loyalties in the matter.”
“If I understood anything about what was going on, I might not be so pissed. Why don't you enlighten me for shits and giggles?” Peyton directed.
Lucy leaned forward to glare. “Stop badgering Eric. Meara and Aja left to do a job we promised ourselves to do, no matter who tried to stop us. No, their departure wasn’t on my orders but they go with my blessing for the task. You can trust they’ll do what they need to do and then they’ll be back. If they need help to do it, they’ll be in contact. I would have gone with them myself, but until I can get an upgrade like Meara’s, I would be more of a hindrance. With Creator Omega still on the loose, no broken cyborg is safe to be out in the world.”
“Meara’s not ready to be out in the world either,” Nero said angrily as he waved his hand in the air. “Dancing—that’s Meara’s idea of how to use her new neural skills on AIs. And damn it, Aja Kapur lied to me. She didn’t say Meara was going with her when she left. In fact, I assumed she was leaving with you,” he said, pointing at Lucy.
Lucy’s jaw tightened. It took a lot to shift her into captain mode these days. Nero’s whining did the job in seconds. “You’re wrong, Nero. I’m one hundred percent sure Aja never said anything more than she herself had to go and would return. They would never betray each other, not even in small ways. You should be damn grateful Aja even bothered to inform you about her leaving. That’s a fucking first for Aja as far as I know.”
William 874X_Book 5 of Cyborgs_Mankind Redefined Page 8
