Cyborg Nation Kaitlyn O'Connor (books to get back into reading TXT) 📖

didn’t make it alright. On the other hand, she was obliged to admit that, if she’d been in the same position they were, worried about the health of her child, and she’d had no choice but to let the child suffer or take whatever steps necessary to see that it didn’t, she would’ve at least been tempted to do the same thing.

She still felt that she should’ve hated them for it. She still thought she shouldn’t have been able to empathize with them, let alone feel, more and more, a compulsion to heal their ‘wounds’.

She knew part of that growing need to give was linked to the physical attraction she felt toward them. If she had found them unappealing she would’ve been less inclined to be receptive to anything else.

Unfortunately that was so far from the case that it was downright embarrassing. Physically and sexually, they blew her mind. The fact that they seemed so emotionally needy was just the banana peel to complete her downfall.

And the thing that really distressed her was that she couldn’t figure out which one of them was going to be the tank that flattened her. From one day to the next, sometimes from one hour to the next, she teetered between them, drawn from one to the other like a bee that couldn’t make up its mind which blossom was sweetest.

Or maybe she was the flower and couldn’t decide which bee she most liked sipping at her nectar?

She felt horribly guilty about avoiding poor Gabriel, but she was already in enough trouble from giving in to Gideon and Jerico. If she had sex with him, too, and he had anything approaching the effect Gideon and Jerico had had on her—and she strongly suspected he would—then she would only be that much worse off, that much more confused, and that much closer to having a nervous break down. It was hard enough trying to back track and put a safer distance between her and the two she’d already been intimate with because she was having to fight her own needs and desires, not just theirs.

She couldn’t look at either Gideon or Jerico without remembering what they’d done to her, how they’d made her feel. She didn’t think she could’ve done so even if not for the fact that any time she met their gaze she saw it in their eyes that they were thinking about it, too. And even when she refused to make eye contact, the way they looked at her was enough to arouse her by itself.

The only self-defense she could devise, however, was to continue to avoid them as much as possible in the confined area of the ship. They made that easier on her by erupting into violent conflict more and more readily. The longer they were in space, the less it took to set one of them off.

By her best guess, they’d been in space for nearly a month, earth time, when she abandoned the cabin one day because Gabriel had gone in to sleep and discovered there wasn’t a sign of either Jerico or Gideon. The noises from the hold quickly answered the question of where they’d gotten off to. They’d been ‘arranging’ and rearranging the supplies in the hold for weeks, every few days at first and then almost every day, and then sometimes two or three times a day. As quickly as they healed, most of the time they went around looking like prize fighters.

They would vary their explanations for what they were doing in the hold. Sometimes they were ‘securing’ the supplies or ‘rearranging’ the load, sometimes they were ‘inventorying’ supplies, and sometimes they were ‘exercising’ or ‘practicing’ hand-to-hand combat to stay sharp.

She wouldn’t have thought it was possible to get used to them pounding the daylights out of each other at the drop of a hat, but, little by little, she’d stopped being totally unnerved by it. She still didn’t like it. It still set her teeth on edge and upset her besides because she hated to see the evidence of, not just their frustration, but their pain. She began, slowly, to accept, though, that it was in integral part of them, something that was unlikely ever to completely change.

She’d already settled on the bench to read when it abruptly dawned on her that it was the first time she’d found herself completely alone and unwatched. More importantly, it was the first time she’d been any where near the bridge without one or more of them standing between her and the controls.

The moment the thought jelled in her mind her belly twisted with fear and her heart began to pound so frantically she felt like she would suffocate. Her body seemed to go into rigor mortis, but her mind went wild with possibilities. Uneasily, she cut her eyes toward the hatch.

It was closed, as it usually was whenever they went below to ‘work’.

She glanced toward the cabin, wondering how deeply Gabriel was sleeping, or if he was still alert enough to put two and two together and realize that she was alone. Evidently, Gideon and Jerico were too preoccupied to realize she could be rambling around unattended.

Without consciously making a decision, Bronte set her book aside and slipped off of the bench. Her legs felt as if she had tied lead weights to them. Actually, her entire body felt as stiff and heavy as if it didn’t belong to her at all. Flicking darting glances between the hatch to the hold, the unattended bridge, and the door of the sleeping quarters, Bronte inched a little closer to the bridge.

By the time she finally reached it, she was weak and faint and ready to collapse from the adrenaline pulsing through her. Wilting into one of the seats, she turned to stare at the hatch again, trying to listen over the pounding in her ears. It didn’t particularly relax her when she finally identified enough banging around to ascertain that the battle was still in full swing,