Baring Grudge

by Cynthia Sax

  His female stomped toward her freighter. Her boot heels rang against the floor tiles.

  Grudge didn’t try to stop her from leaving him. He merely stood there, with his booted feet braced apart and watched her.

  Her hips swayed. Her head was held high.

  She was magnificent and she was his.

  He didn’t want to part from her. The mere prospect of spending planet rotations without seeing her beautiful face, hearing her voice, touching her, tore his soul to pieces.

  Searching for a connection with her, he slipped his hand into the holster and touched the cute little explosive she had crafted.

  That wasn’t enough, not nearly enough.

  His female opened the doors to her ship, and he inwardly howled. It took all the strength he had to stay where he was, to not rush to her, sweep her into his arms, carry her back to a chamber and strip her bare.

  The ramp extended. She took one, two, three steps up the incline, and paused.

  Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. He silently repeated that command.

  “You don’t have to watch me, cyborg.” She didn’t turn her head. “I’m carrying your tracking device.”

  “I enjoy watching you, my female.” He could gaze at her for the rest of his long lifespan and never tire of the view. “You have a great ass.”

  His words resulted in the response he desired.

  She glanced over her shoulder, looked back at him. “You are a great ass.”

  Grudge grinned at his female, not hiding his need, his admiration, his triumph.

  She frowned at him.

  Their gazes remained locked. Emotion snapped in the air between them as the alarms on her ship rang and the lights flashed.

  “You don’t want to leave me either.” He communicated that truth.

  Red bloomed under the darkness of her cheeks. “You’re delusional.” She scowled, looking so adorably fierce he wanted to lick her all over. “You might want to have someone look at your fuckin’ programming.”

  “You can look at my fuckin’ programming when we meet again.” He’d show her everything she wanted to see. Nothing would be hidden from his female. “My breeding databases are extensive. We’ll try any act in them you desire.” He winked at her. “I look forward to bending you over a horizontal surface and pounding into you with my big—”

  “That’s enough.” Her gaze flitted to the entrance to the ship and returned to him. “The kid is fuckin’ listening, and that won’t ever happen.”

  “That will happen. Multiple times. And you’ll enjoy it.” He was 98.1247 percent certain of that. His female was as adventurous and as physical as he was. “The kid is situated on the bridge of your ship. She is humanoid and has her kind’s inferior auditory system. The alarms will block her from hearing us.”

  “It doesn’t matter what she hears.” His female’s shoulders lowered slightly, that action belying her words. It did matter to his enhanced human. “We’re not doing anything in your breeding databases.”

  She took one, two more steps up the ramp.

  Then she paused once more. “How extensive are those databases?”

  “There are 32,425 documented variations between a male cyborg warrior and a human female. Thus far.” One of the couples, Zip and Ryssa, had been vastly expanding the databases with their use of breeding objects from different cultures. “There will be more variations when we next meet.”

  “32,425.” Wonder softened his female’s voice. The scent of her arousal strengthened in the air, taunting him. “Fuck.”

  “I’ll relay the specs on some of my favorites.” That would be easy to do. He had already given himself access to the handheld clipped to her waistband.

  “I’m not communicating with you.” She rolled her eyes. “Goodbye, cyborg.”

  She marched into her ship.

  He waited. The doors remained open.

  His grin widened, creeping across his face. She didn’t want to part with him either. “I’ll track you down, my female.” He sought to reassure her…and himself. It wouldn’t be a permanent goodbye.

  “Fuck you.” She stuck her beautiful face out of the ship. Her eyes shone with heated emotion.

  “You can fuck me when we meet again.” He laughed. His little female amused him.

  “Aargh.” She shook her head, drew back.

  There was a smack of leather against a hard surface. The doors closed.

  Her scent was immediately muted. Grudge’s mirth evaporated. The inability to see her was agonizing. The separation from his female hurt him more than losing his arm and his leg.

  But he didn’t show his pain.

  He stood straight, giving his female the solace of his strength, his determination. She could rely on him and on his vow. He would find her, claim her, wouldn’t fail her.

  The alarms stopped. The silence was ominous.

  The rumble of her engines was more unsettling. As that sound intensified so did his trepidation. His female was leaving him.

  Her ship lifted off. The manufactured air rushed over him.

  He remained where he was. Her lifeform appeared on his scans.

  The freighter eased out of the docking bay.

  He tracked its progress with his visual system, with his scans, with all of his being. His heart ached. Both his machine and his organics screamed at him to not let her go.

  Grudge fought the impulse to hold onto her. He battled it with everything he had. Her departure was for the best. She would be safe. He would see her soon. She—

  Frag. He couldn’t do this. It was beyond his capabilities.

  He discarded his honor and stepped forward, intent on preventing her escape.

  Her freighter zoomed out of monitoring range. He could no longer detect her on his scans.

  She was gone.

  His female was gone.

  Devastation hit him like a missile to his gut. The jabs of a thousand pieces of emotional shrapnel pierced his skin, his frame, the very foundation of him.

  He’d never projected he’d find his female, the being genetically designed for him.

  Yet he had located her.

  And he had let her go.

  He was every type of fool, wasn’t worthy of her. She could be flying into danger. His female had taken great risks landing in the Humanoid Alliance space station. She might put herself in peril again.

  She could become damaged, could die. And he wouldn’t be with her, couldn’t keep her safe. His female was human, was fragile. The nanocybotics he had transferred to her might not be sufficient to repair her, as, many solar cycles ago, they hadn’t been sufficient to repair him.

  He could lose her permanently. That was a possibility. He could have gambled away his one chance at happiness, at companionship, at caring.

  And for what—honor? Honor couldn’t embrace him, kiss him, tease him.

  Only his female could do that.

  Grief, anger, frustration, concern clawed its way up Grudge’s chest. He tilted his head back and howled, releasing that fervent mix of emotions.

  His fingers curled into fists. His body shook with the ferocity of his feelings.

  He bellowed and bellowed, damaging his simulated vocal cords.

  Then he stared silently at the place where he’d last viewed his female’s ship. The void inside him expanded, killing every shred of hope.

  Darkness fell upon him. Its weight was crushing.

  The handheld secured in a holster on his left thigh hummed.

  He extracted the device, looked at the screen, blinked once, twice, unable to process what he was seeing.

  The message remained visible, intact, unchanged.

  My Female: When the fuck did you hack my handheld?

  His fingers swept over the words. They didn’t vanish, were real.

  His female was communicating with him, was thinking about him. She must have seen the communication he’d left for her.

  The great sorrow within Grudge lifted. Flickers of optimism took its place.


  His connection with his enhanced human might be stretched frighteningly thin. It had been subdued by duty and by distance.

  But their link wasn’t broken. It endured and he would strengthen it. His resolve firmed.

  He tapped on his device, sending his reply.

  Your Warrior: I’m a cyborg.

  Hacking her handheld, as she called it, had been done with a swipe of his fingertips, had taken less than a heartbeat to accomplish.

  My Female: I’m jettisoning it.

  That wouldn’t stop him. Grudge’s lips lifted. He’d already accessed her ship’s systems.

  She hadn’t secured her communication lines, hadn’t relayed them through multiple sites as he had done. He had infiltrated her vessel.

  Your Warrior: You can’t escape me.

  He displayed that message on all the screens within her ship.

  My Female: Fuck.

  He chuckled and strode back into the main section of the space station.

  His female amused him. She was passionate about everything…including him. And, while she communicated with him, he could be assured she was safe.

  My Female: Keep the messages to this handheld, cyborg. The kid can read, and the multiple displays are straining my ship’s systems.

  He immediately erased the messages from the other screens.

  Your Warrior: Your ship is unworthy of you. Don’t jettison the handheld.

  He had placed a tracking device on that communication tool also. Grudge accessed his monitoring systems for the units, studied the coordinates of the signals.

  There was one less location than he’d expected to see.

  He reached out to his female.

  Your Warrior: Did you jettison the tracking device I gave you?

  His Taelyn’s response was fast…for a human.

  My Female: Fuck you. I keep my word. I’m holding it right now.

  There was no signal from that tracking device.

  He evaluated the possibilities for the malfunction. It was a new device. He’d tested it before handing it to his female.

  A being who viewed him as her enemy.

  Your Warrior: Did you damage it?

  He waited for her answer.

  My Female: It dropped to the floor. I might have stepped on it…multiple times.

  Grudge laughed. His female was a clever being. She had kept her vow, hadn’t discarded the tracking device yet she’d rendered it useless. It couldn’t transmit her coordinates.

  He would have the challenge he sought with his little enhanced human.

  Your Warrior: You miss me.

  He missed her also.

  My Female: Your programming is fucked-up again. I’m ending communications.

  She no longer had that capability. And he projected she didn’t have the willpower to sever their link. She was as drawn to him as he was to her.

  He entered the space station’s control chamber, sat in one of the chairs, placed her disarmed pretty little explosive on the console before him. Her scent lingered on the small bomb. He displayed the signals from her tracking devices on the main viewscreen. His female hadn’t yet left the sector.

  If he commandeered one of the warships, he could rendezvous with her within mere moments.

  He wouldn’t do that. His directive was to stay on the space station. But it was a possibility.

  His handheld vibrated.

  My Female: Didn’t you have something to send me?

  He’d promised to share some of his favorite breeding variations with her.

  Joy gripped him. They would spend the duration apart learning about each other. He would uncover her preferences, would better be able to please her when they met again. And he would process if she was in danger, if she needed his assistance.

  They should both survive the separation.

  Chapter Six

  Two damn beings had now attached themselves to Taelyn.

  Nine planet rotations later, she sat on the bridge of her freighter and silently fumed about that unexpected occurrence.

  The fuckin’ cyborg constantly communicated with her. He planned to kill her and must have decided his choice of weapon was to bother her to death. Her handheld was always humming with his random and often erotic thoughts.

  He was keeping her in an eternal state of arousal, and it was damn irritating.

  Especially since she couldn’t pleasure herself as often as she’d like.

  Once she exited her private chambers, she was never alone. The kid constantly shadowed her, watching her with her big green eyes, her expression frequently troubled.

  “One of your mate’s arms was shiny.” Jasny had been talking about Grudge since they left the space station. “It was badass.”

  Taelyn made a mental note to have a shiny silver-colored arm crafted for the kid. It would be one last gift to her…because she doubted she could shake the cyborg. The male was tenacious.

  “Get your boots off the console.” She nudged the girl’s footwear. “You’ll set off the alarms again.”

  The kid’s face turned bright green.

  She should be embarrassed. Taelyn’s lips twisted. She could have killed both of them. If Grudge hadn’t known of their presence, the wailing alarms and flashing lights would have notified him of it.

  And he would have ended both of their lifespans…as he planned to end hers.

  “The cyborg isn’t my mate.” He was her enemy. “We’ve discussed this.”

  She’d told Jasny that at least ten times. The kid wouldn’t listen.

  “He was holding your hand.” The kid gave her the you’re-full-of-bovine-shit look that girls with her number of solar cycles seemed to have perfected.

  “He did that to annoy the fff…fuselage out of me.” She was trying her damnedest to cut out the fuckin’ cussing. That would be another gift to the girl. “He has that skill. As you do.”

  Jasny grinned. For some reason, she seemed to take that observation as a compliment. “I think he’s like us in other ways too. His shiny arm is fake.”

  “The word is mechanical.” Taelyn corrected her. “I can beat an enemy into the ground with my mechanical arm. There’s nothing fake about that.”

  She wouldn’t have the kid looking at her arm as being fuckin’ inferior.

  “And I suspect he was designed with that purely mechanical arm.” The silver was damn hot. She shifted in her seat. “The enemy knew it would give him an advantage over his foes.”

  “It won’t give him an advantage over us.” The kid curled her arm. Her expression was smug.

  “Ffff…freakin’ right.” Taelyn bent her matching arm. “He won’t have an advantage over us.”

  They were both wearing their comfortable and casual brown travel arms this planet rotation.

  “But if you see him or one of his kind, you are to run the other way.” She also wouldn’t have the kid taking on a warrior of his caliber. “Cyborgs are some of the most skilled fighters in the universe. They’ll whup any humanoid or human’s ass.”

  The kid crossed her twig-like arms in front of her still too-thin form. “They wouldn’t whup your ass.” Her voice was edged with hero worship.

  Taelyn didn’t have the heart to tell her Grudge had whupped her ass. Embarrassingly easily.

  The male would hunt her, find her, kill her.

  She had to plan for her end.

  “It’s time to step up your training.” She would take care of the kid. “I’m contacting a warrior I know.” It tormented her that this had to be done. “Kutta is a former Humanoid Alliance retriever, is one of the most skilled beings I know. She’ll take over from me.”

  The kid’s face darkened. “You want to get rid of me.”

  The pain in her voice shredded Taelyn’s heart. Too many beings had abandoned Jasny in the past. The girl was traumatized.

  “If I wanted to get rid of you, I’d jettison you out of a ffff…frothin’ airlock.” She covered her own distress with a scowl. “I’m setting you up to be traine
d by one of the best warriors I’ve ever met, using a hard-fought favor to do so, and I expect you to work hard, to show her you’re worthy of that honor.”

  “Does she have a fake…a mechanical arm?” The kid scowled back at her. “Because if she doesn’t, she won’t understand. She’ll look at me with pity, like I’m weak.”

  “You trained with me. She knows you’re not weak.” Guilt coiled around Taelyn. She was familiar with those pitying looks.

  “She won’t understand.” Jasny grumbled that truth.

  Taelyn could say nothing because Kutta likely wouldn’t fully understand the girl’s issues. But there was no one else to leave her with.

  Medic Neidan, her former guardian, didn’t have the time or energy to train her, and Jasny had no interest in healing. The girl had too much anger, too much resentment in her.

  Kutta was gruff and blunt talking, but she had honor and a kindness she hid from most others. And the Silan warrior was alone like they all were. Her kind had fated mates and she hadn’t found hers.

  The handheld buzzed. Taelyn glanced down at it.

  It was the damn cyborg again.

  Your Warrior: I’m replaying the images of me breeding with your mouth.

  Her lips flattened. She continued to bubble from that encounter, needed no reminders of it.

  My Female: Fuck off.

  His treatment of her as a fuck buddy, not a target, was messing with her mind. The damn cyborg was her enemy. She had to view him as that.

  Your Warrior: I am fucking off. My fingers are wrapped around my cock and I’m stroking myself, projecting my hands are yours.

  Stars. He made her hot. She wiggled in her chair.

  My Female: I’m with the kid.

  It wasn’t the right time for the sexy games he insisted on playing with her.

  Seeking to get her inappropriate arousal under control, she ignored the explicit description of the cyborg’s jerk-off fest scrolling across the handheld’s screen and instead looked at the view of open space before her.

  They were traveling closer and closer to Antares II, the planet she’d claimed as her temporary home. Medic Neidan resided there. That was where she’d met Jasny.

  They would return to its surface. She’d transfer the medic packs and the devices to her former guardian, would meet with Kutta, assign the responsibility for the girl to the Silan warrior. Then she’d leave before the duration she’d negotiated for freedom expired.