by Cynthia Sax
He’d left her.
Without a backward glance, without a word.
Her legs collapsed under her. She fell silently, numb, lifeless. Her knees hit soft ground and a cloud of dust puffed upward. She had been willing to give up everything for him. He wasn’t willing to delay his adventure for her.
He might have said the words, might have believed them himself, but he hadn’t loved her, not truly, not enough.
A part of her, a small silly irrational compartment in her heart refused to believe this truth. It was unable to accept the facts, even though she’d seen his departure with her own eyes, had heard the roar of the ship.
She waited for him to return, to tell her it was all a mistake.
Because she loved him. He had to love her back. This was Green. He didn’t lie. He couldn’t. He was a cyborg, one of the most honorable males she’d ever met.
She couldn’t lose him, couldn’t lose everything, not again. She wouldn’t survive.
Shelby bowed her head. A teardrop trickled down her cheek. She gazed unseeingly at the ground.
“Are you damaged, my female?”
That sounded like… No. She shook her head. It couldn’t be. He was gone.
“My Shelby?” Her grief-spawned hallucination persisted.
“You’re.” She looked upward and her words stopped. Green peered at her, his rugged face creased with concern, his energy-infused blue eyes glowing. “You’re not gone.”
How was that possible?
She lifted her gaze skyward. “But the ship departed. I saw it ascend.” She glanced at him. She hadn’t imagined him. He remained on Earth Minor, standing before her. “Why are you here?”
His forehead wrinkled. “You’re here. Windy is here. Where else would I be?”
She brushed her fingers over her moist cheeks. “Your friends approached you, needing your help.”
“My friends didn’t require my help. They were concerned that their extended absence might put our homeland at risk.” Green grasped her shoulders and pulled her upward, gliding her body along his. “We’ll no longer have access to our ship’s monitoring of the surrounding space. We won’t know if a threat approaches our planet.”
“Our planet?” She was confused. Which planet was he referring to?
“Earth Minor.” Red bloomed across his cheekbones. “I’m aware that I should have discussed this with you, my female. I was waiting for the proper time. But Barrel and Zip want to claim your planet also.”
“They want to live here?”
He nodded. “They have an emotional bond with Windy, with me, and now with you. When they find their females, they plan to build their own domiciles and raise their offspring here.”
They’d choose isolation also. She looked around her at the greenery, the blue sky, the bees buzzing from flower to flower, letting this new vision of the future sink into her mind.
Green hadn’t left her. He was here. And his friends would return, perhaps with females. They’d live close, visit often, be part of their lives.
That future wasn’t dark or frightening. It felt good, right.
“Zip claims the planet can sustain the additional beings.”
“It can,” she confirmed.
Another silence stretched.
“What are your thoughts, my female?” Green grasped her hands. “Your happiness is my number one priority. If you want the planet to remain ours alone, I’ll tell them to settle somewhere else.”
“You’d do that?” She tilted her head back and gazed up at him. “You’d choose me over your friends, males whom you’ve fought with, escaped with?”
“You’re my female,” he said that as though it explained everything. “I would do anything for you. I’d die for you.”
His cyborg meant every word he said. Anything she asked of him, he’d do. His power was hers. Warmth spread across her chest. “I love you.”
Energy surged in his eyes, lighting them a brilliant blue. “You love me?”
“I love you.” She smiled. “I’ve loved you for planet rotations, but I was scared to say the words, to believe.” She cupped his face, her fingers golden against his gray skin. “Then I thought you were leaving me and that scared me even more.”
“I’d never leave you.” He turned his head, pressed a kiss in the center of her palms, his lips firm. “Parting from you would be like parting from my arm or my processors. You’re a piece of me, essential for me to function, required for my soul’s peace, my heart’s beating, my—”
She pressed her breasts against his chest and he stopped talking, his body hardening, his muscles flexing. Shelby grinned. He wanted her. She rolled her hips, brushing them against his.
“My Shelby.” Green swooped downward, captured her lips. She gasped, surprised by his enthusiasm and he filled her mouth with his tongue, taste, nanocybotics.
This was what she craved—his kiss, his touch, the feel of his body against hers. She pushed closer to him, cradling his tongue with hers. He threaded his fingers through her messy curls, holding her tight.
Her parents, much loved and never to be forgotten, had once planned a great future for her, the stewardship of two prosperous agri lots, the joining of two families, a lifetime with a boy every being liked and who she considered her best friend.
After that had been taken from her, she’d thought there was nothing left. She had retreated into the safety of the past, hiding her loneliness under the burden of responsibility.
Then the universe had set her free, sending her this wonderful male, a battle-weary warrior with a gentle heart and an ill plant, and she’d found a future even brighter, even more joyous than her parents could have imagined.
They would have loved Green. She stroked his broad face. He would have earned their approval as he had earned her love—patiently, steadily proving himself, by being the best, most genuine, most generous male she’d ever known.
She kissed him until her lips hummed and her brain spun. Then she kissed him some more.
When they broke apart, they both breathed heavily, their gazes unfocused.
He looked down at her, love and lust reflecting in his eyes. She looked up at him, allowing all of her feelings to show.
“You asked me my thoughts,” she whispered.
“Did I?” Green lifted his eyebrows.
Kissing her must have damaged his processors. Shelby smiled, flattered by his response. “You wanted to know what I thought about your friends living with us on Earth Minor.”
“Ahhh…” He nodded. “And?”
“And.” She glanced around them. “We’ll need their help clearing the boulders from the field. We’ll have to plant more potatoes if we’re going to feed three large cyborgs and one human female.”
“One beautiful human female.” Green swept her upward into his arms, boosting her lush form easily as though she weighed less than his poppy. “I love you, my Shelby.” He grinned, his happiness melding with hers.
“I love you, my Green.”
He swung her around, in a circle. Trees, rocks, her mother’s roses blurred into a continual stream of color and scent. Shelby threw back her head and laughed, her joy spilling out of her.
This was home. He was her present and her future.
There was no female in the universe happier than she was.
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Other Books by Cynthia Sax
Cyborg Sizzle Series
Releasing Rage
Breathing Vapor
Being Green
Crash and Burn
Defying Death
Here is an excerpt from Breathing Vapor, the second story in the Cyborg Sizzle series:
Breathing Vapor
(Cyborg Sizzle #2)
Excerpt
Mira turned a corner
and stopped.
A familiar silhouette, shrouded in shadows, blocked her path.
“You smell like him.” Vapor’s deep voice flowed down her spine, along her arms and legs.
“Are you recording this?” It was a struggle to maintain her cool persona. She burned for his touch, her need wild and barely controlled.
He paused for one heart pounding moment. “No.”
She relaxed. Cyborgs were unable to lie. “Which him are you referring to? There have been so many different males.”
There had been. Once. Solar cycles ago, she had tried to lose herself in sex. It hadn’t worked so she had given up on relationships, focusing on her mom’s favorite causes—freeing the suppressed, feeding the hungry, righting the wrongs the Humanoid Alliance had created.
“You lie to me, female.” Vapor stepped into the light. The cyborg was hard—hard eyes, hard face, hard body. His tall, broad form was encased in black battle armor. His fingers rested on the hilts of his daggers. He could kill her before she made a sound and she couldn’t stop him.
That aroused her.
She was truly fucked-up.
“There haven’t been many males.” His dark eyes glittered. “I smell only one on you.”
Could he smell what K017282 had done, what she’d allowed the baby cyborg to do? “Why are you out of your cage?” Mira covered up her embarrassment with aggression.
“I had the urge to kill.” Vapor caressed his daggers, drifting his fingertips over the metal, his hands moving up and down, up and down. “The Designer frowns on us killing other cyborgs.” He leaned over her and lowered his voice. “Would any being miss you, I wonder?”
No being would. She tilted her head back, meeting his gaze. “Kill me and you’ll be decommissioned.”
Vapor extracted the daggers from their sheaths. “It might be worth it.” He brushed the flat of the blades over her cheeks. The metal was cool. His touch was slow and surprisingly gentle. “I hear every doomed cyborg gets a visit from Mira the Merciless.”
Those visits were another risk she took. Decommissioned cyborgs remained conscious while dissected, given a prolonger, so they felt everything. Her father’s explanation was that it ensured the parts harvested worked.
Mira couldn’t change that process. She’d tried and failed.
But she could save as many cyborgs as she could from that fate. When that wasn’t possible, she could ease their trauma. She visited the doomed cyborgs, under the pretense of taunting them, and injected the males with pain suppressors.
Their deaths remained horrific. She remembered the last decommissioning, the look on the cyborg’s face and flinched.
“Careful, female.” Vapor slid his daggers down her neck. “You don’t want to damage your soft white skin. Humans don’t repair quickly.”
“You don’t care if I’m damaged.” Her breathing turned ragged.
“Not caring is in my programming. I was designed to hurt, to kill.” He traced the M design on the bodice of her fabric wrap. His nose twitched. “You were designed to deceive, to tell lies with that pretty mouth of yours.”
Those lies benefited his kind. Mira studied his grim face, yearning to tell him the truth. She was tired of being alone, of no one knowing her true self and she needed his participation for her plans next planet rotation.
But Vapor could betray her. If asked a direct question, he would have to either tell the truth, revealing her secrets, or stay silent, risking reprimand, possibly death.
He wouldn’t die for her. No being would.
“Why do you smell like that cyborg you sold?” Vapor leaned closer to her.
“I don’t smell like a machine,” she lied
His nose wrinkled. “You do.”
Vapor surveyed her body with his blades. He was careful, not making a single incision, his weapons being an extension of his hands.
“You told me a lie. Now, tell me one thing that’s true.” He skimmed the metal over her breasts, encircling her taut nipples. “That is, if you’re capable of truth.”
About Cynthia Sax
USA Today bestselling author Cynthia Sax writes contemporary, SciFi and paranormal erotic romances. Her stories have been featured in Star Magazine, Real Time With Bill Maher, and numerous best of erotic romance top ten lists.
She lives in a world filled with magic and romance. Although her heroes may not always say, “I love you,” they will do anything for the women they adore. They live passionately. They play hard. They love the same women forever.
Cynthia has loved the same wonderful man forever. Her supportive hubby offers himself up to the joys and pains of research, while they travel the world together, meeting fascinating people and finding inspiration in exotic places such as Istanbul, Bali, and Chicago.
Sign up for her dirty-joke-filled release day newsletter and visit her on the web at www.CynthiaSax.com
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