“Shhh… I know. I can see the pain on your face. Don’t try to speak anymore. You’ve been through hell today. Just rest for now… and yes, that’s an order. I’m going to go look for something to help with your headache.”
She went instantly silent at his command not to talk, her body relaxing as the fire in her brain finally ceased burning so hotly. She hoped that sizzle she detected in her chips didn’t mean she would require being completely shut down.
What could she say to convince the male in charge of her that she would recover sufficiently without him taking such extreme measures?
Among her protocol phrases, she found no appropriate response. Determined to speak again, she did her best to latch on to something.
“Fuck you,” she said softly.
She noted he laughed at her words, but didn’t seem angry at her choices. Had she not phrased herself well?
“I know, Lucy. I hate this too,” he replied.
His answer didn’t seem right to her somehow, but at least there was no disgust in his tone.
She had meant to reassure him of her intentions where he was concerned. Instead of being irritated by her failure to do so, his hand lightly brushed back her dripping hair. He gently stroked her temples which further eased the pain in her head. She must have moaned or made some inappropriate noise because the man beside her laughed again.
“You just keep fighting your way out of every mental cage they put you in, Hellcat. I’m not worried about what you’ll become. You’ve been in my head so you know I’ve seen more scary shit than most people. Now I’m going to go find you a painkiller. Stay in this bed and rest.”
Lucy Hellcat. It was not the softest of endearments, but she found it reassuring. His softly spoken words were accompanied by signs of caring.
Because no other action was physically possible, she lay immobile as her caretaker rose and disappeared into the hallway. She wanted to call him back to sit with her again. It was a strange response, and one she certainly hadn’t felt about any of her males before him… at least not that she could find in her memory storage.
Mostly she had always been glad when the others had elected to put her into hibernation. It activated a short term memory flush and allowed her to find oblivion for a while.
Her eyes closed wearily as all remaining past service data promptly flooded her mind with images and acts. Had she done something to call it forward from the flushing area? None of that was supposed to exist anymore.
Diagnostics took over to find the problem. Conclusion—All data indicated she was malfunctioning. Using the last of her fleeting energy, she managed to stop the rush forward of recordings that would not help her service the needs of Eric 754. Using the last of her mental strength, she forced the information ruthlessly back into storage.
Her whispers were nearly silent as she sought to console herself.
“My name is Lucy. Lucy Hellcat. Lucy My Beloved. Lucy My Darling. Lucy My Love.”
She felt the security monitor’s presence, but could not tell if it was active. She hadn’t taken any special note of it before. Some men like to make recordings. This was allowed in her protocol. She had a special place to store them for later retrieval and downloading.
Eric 754 had ordered her to rest though, and for now she would comply with his request. Though he hadn’t spoken the proper commands, she would just have to trust he had meant she was to enter a restorative, human-like sleep.
Her body could not seem to do anything else anyway. Her organics were extremely stressed.
***
Eric came back to find Lucy exactly where he left her. The towel had come undone as she had settled in which had put her nude body on full display to his gaze. Every glorious inch was as well-shaped and perfect as any female could ever hope to be. Like all cyborgs, electrical pulses had kept Lucy fit and sculpted, and he’d seen for himself that her muscle tone was optimal.
But Lucy’s perfect body was also covered with telltale scars of torment and torture. They were something all too familiar to him because Marcus was covered with similar marks as well.
He’d watched helplessly as most of his friend’s wounds were being administered. The knife swipe across Marcus’s stomach, the one nearly gutting him, was the visual that had broken him. Eric had blindly turned away as Marcus hung from chains dying. He had wept and screamed over not being able to stop it from happening. Their captors eventually repaired Marcus and he’d always suspected it was because of his extreme emotional reaction. They might have repeated the near death torment later if Peyton and King hadn’t set them free before it could happen.
Despite his tormented past, he could have ignored Captain Lucille Pennington’s scars if they had been from atrocities committed during the war. But that explanation didn’t fly with him. There had been no wartime abductions listed in Lucy’s records. The injuries to Lucy had been inflicted in the decade since, and obviously repeated often enough that her cybernetics had ceased trying to heal the repetitive wounds.
Like in Marcus’s case, over time her cybernetics had simply adjusted to the scars as being part of her reality. It would take a lot of energy and a lot of will power to convince her cybernetics to heal them now.
“No wonder you want to kill Bradley Smith so badly. Personally, I think the bastard needs to be put through the same hell you’ve gone through. Nothing else is ever going to be true justice.”
Holding his breath so he wouldn’t breathe in her pheromones any more than he could help, Eric placed the painkiller plunger behind Lucy’s ear and depressed it. She sighed as the medicine hit her bloodstream. A few seconds later she stretched out her tense limbs and then relaxed. Satisfied that he’d managed to help her a little at least, Eric tossed the empty injector on the table beside the bed, glad it had acted so quickly.
Then sighing with dread over what he had to do next, he leaned down and pressed a second plunger against her human arm. Firming his mouth over the task, he forced himself to depress it. The sedative it contained would make Lucy sleep for a good long time and then keep her cybernetics groggy for a while after she woke.
The med was the same one used on all cyborgs after they had been apprehended. Nero said the sedative would make it harder for Lucy to think, and therefore less inclined to try to figure out what was happening in her brain. They didn’t want her reverting to the more violent Evelyn 489 before they figured out how to handle the shift.
Not wanting to disturb Lucy’s newly found relaxed state any more than necessary, Eric fetched an extra covering from a storage cylinder across the room. After removing most of her nakedness from his sight, he fastened an old wrist com of Rachel’s onto Lucy’s cybernetic arm.
He hoped Lucy would see it when she woke and believe it was there for tracking time. He hoped she would not figure out it contained a device to constantly track her location should she escape.
Enough invasive shit had been done to Lucy’s body. He couldn’t bring himself to install the internal tracers Nero had recommended. And if her cybernetics were like those of Peyton’s and the other officers he’d known, the internal tracers would be rendered useless anyway.
Lucy escaping was the least of his concerns. Judging from the level of devotion she consistently showed him, she wouldn’t be leaving his side unless her other processor took over again. The return of Lucy Hellcat would signal an end to many things, but he’d worry about all of that when it happened—if it happened.
Sighing at the enormous guilt he felt for what he’d done to her today, Eric swiped at the front of his pants and adjusted the constant erection he couldn’t seem to help having in Lucy’s presence. Being away from her made his arousal fade to a manageable level so he picked up the empty injectors and trekked back down the hall to the monitoring room.
He could safely watch over her from there and talk freely with those helping him.
Chapter 4
When Lucy woke up six hours later, Eric heard her call out his name through the monitor, or rath
er she called out his cyborg ID. He’d really prefer it if Lucy would just call him Eric because hearing her use his ID bugged the shit out of him. It was a loathing he secretly shared with Rachel.
Marcus had recently reported that his cyborg girlfriend was so damn cheerful these days he wasn’t ever allowed to be in a bad mood. From what Eric could tell, Marcus rarely was in a bad mood since Rachel had started warming his bed. The two of them were good for each other and had managed to carve a life out of the craziness. Eric thought it probably helped that Rachel wasn’t a cyborg in the truest sense… or at least she had never been a soldier. Not that her mental baggage wasn’t just as heavy.
Eric wasn’t sure how he’d survived what he had and remained mentally stable. Most days he didn’t even think of himself as a cyborg so hearing “Eric 754” from Lucy meant little to him. Sure, it was a bit like being slapped across the face with an ugly truth he wanted to deny, but it wasn’t like he wanted to kill people who called him that. He was unsure if Lucy’s new programming would let her be informal enough to just use his first name, and it was the safest course of action not to ask. Maybe one day… maybe one day they could be normal.
At the moment, Lucy’s reactions were unpredictable and brought consequences he couldn’t fathom. Her human name had collapsed her into having to follow her companion programming again. Her Lucy Hellcat side had been poking around in his head just before the switch. No telling what she’d picked up from that invasion.
No. It was probably better for them both if he left as many of her defaults in place as they could both stand tolerating.
By the time he walked from the monitor room to where he’d left her, a stark naked Lucy was emerging from the bathroom. When she saw him, a welcoming smile instantly lit her face, just like every other time he came into view.
“Greetings Eric 754. According to my latest diagnostics, I am eighty-two point five seven percent recovered. May I service your needs now?”
His heart thudded hard several times over her happy and excited welcome speech. Lucy with a smile on her face was nearly irresistible. His physical reaction to her offers to service him was wearing him down. They had done something to her voice… he was sure of it… not to mention she reeked of a scent he couldn’t ignore.
The sight of her scars from other men who hadn’t turned her down finally gave him the strength to turn his head and lower his gaze. Cyber science was presented at its worst in Lucy’s handcrafted allure. But then he’d also found her sexy as a ragged woman throwing a temper tantrum behind electrified bars. There was just something about her… something he’d never encountered in any other female.
He didn’t need his logical chip to analyze his primary issue with her. Peyton could never have stopped him from going to see her and telling her what he’d found out. He’d been obsessed with the woman smiling at him, long before he’d accidentally activated her companion code.
The version of Lucy walking toward him looked determined to make his fantasies a reality at the first opportunity he gave her. Now he understood the seduction hell the ancient author Homer had been warning mortal men about in his books. His mythical Ulysses had suffered when confronted with the irresistible allure of the legendary sirens. A completely human male would have caved to Lucy’s intentions already—Eric had no doubt.
Digging for more willpower than he normally exercised around a sexy woman, Eric held up a hand and said, “Stop. Don’t come any closer.”
Lucy’s frown and glare of displeasure acted like a bucket of ice water being thrown in his face. Which was good because he damn well needed to cool down.
“Do not approach me until you are one hundred percent functional,” he ordered, saying the first stupid thing that popped into his head. “To ensure your recovery, I have sent for a cyber scientist to check your programming. She will arrive tomorrow. I will not require you to service my needs until after you have been checked.”
At her puzzled look, Eric lifted an agitated hand and ran it through his hair. It was a frustrated human mannerism he’d never felt the need for previously, but it was useful today because it kept his hands from reaching out to her.
“Get dressed, Lucy. We’ll see if we can find some food and then an activity to pass the time while you are healing. Consider all these things my orders.”
“Very well, but companion protocol requires me to inform you that you can place me in a hibernation state to conserve my energy consumption. No need for further activity is necessary. I exist only to service you. It is my primary directive.”
The dulcet, musical tones used to deliver her response couldn’t quite hide the dread hidden in her hesitantly offered words. Lucy was scared of the hibernation state, but so was he. He was scared of evoking any other changes in her.
“I don’t know how to make you hibernate and wouldn’t even if I did. I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do, no matter what happens or doesn’t happen between us. Now get dressed for both our sakes. I’ll return for you in a few minutes. If you can dial down your pheromones, do so.”
“Forgive me, Eric 754. I have no programming to comply with restricting my hormonal output. I regret that I do not have access to the source of your displeasure with me.”
“Okay. Just get dressed then. Be as conservative in your clothing choices as possible.”
“You truly wish me to cover myself as much as possible?”
“Yes—as much as possible. Try to cover as much skin as was covered by the clothes you were wearing in the cell. This is how you can best service my needs today.”
Silence fell between them. She appeared to be considering whether he had spoken the truth or not. He would bet all his credits that it was the first time any male had made such a request to her.
“Very well. It fulfills my every wish to please you.”
“Thank you, Lucy.” Eric turned on his heels and ran like hell from the relief he’d seen in her gaze.
For the first time, he was wishing he had some of Marcus’s iron self-control with women. Marcus had seen Rachel every day for more than nine months and never touched her at all. It was Rachel who’d eventually erased the physical distance between them. He had waited for her to make the move.
Lucy’s vulnerability threatened his resolve to keep her out of his arms more than her raging pheromones did. He was glad Kyra was coming tomorrow. He didn’t think he could last much longer than that.
Now he hoped Lucy complied with his clothing request because he didn’t want to have to use another dose of the heavy duty sedative stowed away in his pocket.
Chapter 5
Eric had to look away when he first saw the outfit Lucy had chosen. His inclination was to laugh, but who knew what kind of response that might provoke.
Apparently Rachel’s slim young hips hadn’t left behind a skirt or slacks that Lucy could squeeze her more rounded figure into. She looked as strange in her current outfit as Marcus had in dress clothes.
At some point she had managed to sanitize the clothing she’d worn while in her cell. He saw now she’d opted to put on her old slacks and pair them with what probably would have been a dress on someone Rachel’s size. Only the bare tops of Lucy’s more ample breasts peeked through the large circular opening located just above them.
As he had requested, the clothing covered almost all of her, but it didn’t help him deal with his torment as much as he’d hoped. His mind kept presenting memories of a naked Lucy that he’d evidently stored away involuntarily. If they were stored in his human recall, there would be no removing them or how they had made him feel. Every cyborg he knew had learned that the hard way. And he was hard now remembering the body that was under those ugly clothes.
Like before, Lucy smiled in welcome when he appeared in her line of sight, but she couldn’t quite hide all her nervousness. Plus, her alluring scent was mixed now with adrenaline, a telltale sign of fear and agitation. She had no reason to be concerned, but she couldn’t help her programming for
cing her to be.
Eric was someone who preferred comfort over what was fashionable, though he tended to pick clothing that served both purposes well. After choosing clothing he liked, he never thought much about what he looked like to others when he wore them. He drew his fair share of interested women when he had a mind to do so. Clothing on a man or woman was just brightly colored feathers on a bird, wasn’t it?
Really… what else did any human have to be concerned about? Not much, he decided, letting his gaze sweep from her still wildly messed up hair down to her canvas covered feet and back up to her now mostly hidden breasts. She looked like a ragged version of Lucy Hellcat playing dress-up. He let his mouth quirk at the thought, but didn’t laugh. He didn’t want to have to explain to Lucy why he found her amusing.
“Is this clothing acceptable?” she asked hesitantly.
Eric nodded. “Yes. It is perfectly acceptable. Thank you for complying.”
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