Burning Up Flint (5 page)

A grin split his face. Dark blue eyes sparkled with amusement. “We have sex.”

She bit her lip and couldn’t help but grin at how damn cute he looked when he was in a teasing mood. “I know that now.”

His grin faded as he reached up, brushing his fingers along her cheek while he studied her eyes. “I didn’t hurt you at all?”

“You didn’t hurt me,” she told him softly. What she didn’t say was that inside she was a mess of emotional confusion. “And…call me Mira.”

Chapter Four

Mira finished her meal and studied the silent Flint. He’d left her in his room for a few hours after showing her the foam cleaning unit so she could bathe. He’d also left her a large, soft shirt to wear. She’d cleaned up and donned his shirt. He’d returned with two covered plates of food.
Cyborgs
liked meat judging from the abundance of it and the few vegetables on her plate. They ate in silence.

“You are watching me.” He glanced at her.

“I didn’t mean to stare or anything. I just have so many questions.”

He frowned. “Do you wish to know how much of my body is artificial and how much of me is real flesh?”

“No. I don’t care about that.”

He didn’t look as though he believed her. A suspicious glint was in his eyes. “Ask your questions then.”

“You don’t look about my age but
cyborgs
weren’t made after the laws were passed to destroy your kind. That was about twenty years before I was born so that was over fifty years ago.”

“You are correct. Earth stopped creating my kind when we were deemed failures.”

“So you’re older than you look?”

He nodded. “I am.”

“How old are you?”

He chuckled. “I wasn’t created on Earth. I’m forty-three of your years.”

“If you weren’t created in the lab then…”

“Where was I created?” He smiled at her. “I was born on a space vessel.”

Shock tore through her. “You were?”

He nodded. “Another so-called failure was that we were able to correct their birth control measures so
cyborgs
can breed. We aren’t born with our implants. Those are added after birth.”

She was dumbfounded. “But why would they add implants to you if you were born human?”

“I never said we were born human. We are born flawed and we need cybernetics to fix that.
Cyborgs
from Earth were not born. They were grown in artificial wombs with a lot of cloning technology so our blueprints and donor DNA are human. We’re part human but not completely, which creates flaws that we fix with cybernetics.”

“Wow. My mind is reeling with questions.” She paled suddenly. “I’m not on a birth control implant. I wasn’t in a relationship so when my old one expired I wasn’t implanted again. Can you get me pregnant?”

He shook his head. “No.” He studied her face closely. “Do you feel relief?”

“I really haven’t thought about having kids yet, so yes. I’m too young to have children. I decided I’d consider them when I hit forty.”

He nodded.

“Do you have any children at home?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t found a female I want to be a unit with.”

“A unit?”

“You’d call it marriage or a life contract.”

“So there are female
cyborgs
who survived?”

“Yes. We protected the women and got them to safety when the law was first passed. They were our priority. They are smaller and weaker than we are so it was logical to remove them from danger first.”

“So
cyborgs
left Earth to settle on another planet?”

“Not at first. We stole the Genesis Space Lab.”

Shock hit her again. “But it crashed into the moon due to a thruster problem that caused it to careen out of control…” At his shaking head and raised eyebrow she nodded. “They lied about that too.”

“Your Earth Government lies about a lot of things. We stole Genesis and we also took control of the
Discovery Moon
ship.”

“But it wasn’t completed when they found major flaws with the construction—” She stopped talking when he smirked at her. She sighed. “They lied about that too. That project wasn’t dumped, was it?”

“They lied about that too. The
Discovery Moon
was fully operational and was just undergoing final testing when we stole it. Earth probably didn’t want to create a panic by telling everyone that hundreds of
cyborgs
had taken both vessels to escape. They were afraid, with our superior fighting skills, that we’d start a war. Their fears weren’t logical since it was more practical to find another habitable planet to create our own society than to lose massive numbers of lives trying to belong to the existing society that didn’t want us. We had already lost tens of thousands of our kind who couldn’t escape Earth so a war would have drastically cut what few numbers we had left.”

“They killed everyone you couldn’t take with you.”

He hesitated. “Not all. We were able to go back and pick up more after we found Garden.”

“Garden?”

He nodded. “It is what we named our planet. When we offloaded most of our people to start building a city we knew we needed more resources so we returned to Earth. We realized, when we contacted supportive humans to help
us, that
a lot of
cyborgs
had survived but were in hiding.” Flint smiled. “Humans like you, who didn’t hate
cyborgs
, were feeding them and keeping them safely out of sight. We managed to save hundreds more on each returning trip to Earth for more building materials.”

“So you have a city on Garden?”

He nodded. “We’re still building. It is going to take hundreds of years for us to colonize the planet as we plan. It is almost the size of Earth but we only claimed a small part of it for our own.”

“Is it like Earth? I mean, does it look like it?”

“In some ways it is but in other ways no. There are two moons and the sun is smaller but closer. It is livable but the water content is more.”

“The air is breathable and the water is drinkable?”

He nodded. “It’s got slightly higher oxygen content but nothing significant. Do you have any other questions?”

“Millions.”

He laughed. “Right now we have somewhere to be.” He stood up and motioned to her. “Let’s go.”

“But…” She glanced down at the oversized shirt she wore. “I’m not dressed.”

“That is where we are going. You need clothing that fits and I’m taking care of you so there’s no property question.”

That made her eyes widen. “What does that mean?”

He eyed her. “Let’s go.” He held out his hand.

She put her hand in his. “My shoes—”

“Are flimsy and useless.
I’m getting you a pair of boots.”

Flint led her out of his room and down a hallway.
Living quarters, judging by the many doors.
He took her to a lift and she clenched her teeth. She looked up at him and braced her hand on the wall. A draft blew up the shirt as the doors
closed,
reminding her that she wore nothing under the shirt that fell to mid-thigh. She locked her thighs together so she didn’t feel totally exposed.

“I hate these things.”

He grinned as he activated the lift. It jerked upward a level and stopped sharply. The doors opened and she was shocked at seeing more
cyborgs
in a large room—a converted cargo area that had been turned into some kind of workout space. She counted nine
cyborgs
, most of them strangers. The redheaded
cyborg
with the long braid was fighting with Ice in a corner on thick pads. They were both bootless and shirtless.

The male voices silenced and the room grew totally quiet as Flint led her out of the lift. Some of the men had been lifting weights—very old school, but still effective—but they stopped to turn their attention on Mira. She glanced toward the two men who had been fighting to see that they too had stopped and were staring at her. She inched closer to Flint to grip his hand tighter in fear. She was almost naked except for the shirt that revealed too much of her legs.
Her other hand inched lower, tugging the shirt as far down as it would go and holding it there.

Flint sighed. He ignored the men as he walked her through the massive room to the corner. She saw that they’d used that corner to set up some kind of medical area with two med beds. A man sat on one of them. She was shocked when she realized he was human. He was an older,
mid-fifties
, white-haired man in good shape and he had a reading tablet on his lap.

“Doc?”
Flint’s voice was deep.

The white-haired man jumped and turned his head, a grin instantly appearing. “Flint.” The grin died when he spotted Mira as shock hit the man’s features. He turned to study her and she saw a scar on his cheek. It was a deep grove that ran from his ear down under his chin. “Who is this?”

Flint turned and glanced at Mira. “Her designation is
Mirasia
Carver but you may call her Mira.”

Doc climbed off the med bed and frowned at Flint. “I heard we intercepted a shuttle. Was it damaged? It wouldn’t support the crew?” The man turned his eyes on Mira again. “Are you a pilot, young lady?”

“She was a passenger but now she’s mine. I want you to examine her for a tracker device and then I want her branded as mine so there’s no doubt that she belongs to me.”

Mira’s heart missed a beat at his words. She swallowed and looked up at the big man gripping her hand. “Branded?”

Flint didn’t even glance at her, instead keeping his full attention on Doc. “Then I need her sized for clothing because it’s your job to be impartial. I thought you could do it since I don’t want another male to touch her.”

Not wanting to be ignored, she gripped Flint’s wrist above their clasped hands, with her free hand. “Flint? You’re going to have me branded?”

He sighed and looked down, his gaze slightly annoyed. “You saw my markings. You will get markings that are exactly like mine so it marks you as mine. You will be much safer once you are marked clearly so there will never be a doubt of ownership.”

“But…” She was at a loss for words. “I don’t want tattoos.”

He looked irritated. “Notice that I did not ask your permission. You do not want there to be a property dispute over you.”

“I don’t even know what the hell that means.”

He turned fully to face her. “It means that until you are clearly branded as mine that someone could steal you and brand you as theirs. I would have to track you down if I could even find you to get you back from wherever you ended up. I would not like to have to do that and I know you would not like being stolen. You could be severely damaged, if not killed, in the process. This protects both of us.”

“Damn it, Flint. She’s not something to own. She’s a woman.”

Flint shot a glare at Doc. “Doc, she’s human and on Garden she is property. If you will not do it then I’ll have
Yarger
do it. He doesn’t have access to your meds that would numb her from the pain. I do not want her to feel pain so I’m asking you to do it.”

“Son of a bitch,” the white-haired man cursed, slamming his reading tablet down.
“Fine.
Do something with all of them or do you want all of them watching me undress her?”

Mira turned her head and realized that she was still the focal point of the room. Even more
cyborgs
had appeared. She did another head count—eighteen now. She saw the third man from the shuttle as well as most of the men from the control room. She swallowed hard in uneasiness at their intense stares and moved so close to Flint that she walked into the front of him, putting his large body between her and most of the men.

Flint turned his head to eye the men and sighed again. “Don’t any of you have something better to do?”

No one moved but a few of them laughed. Flint shook his head, turning to the doctor. “They will not leave. Let’s get started. I know it must be done here for your scanners.”

Horror hit Mira. “You expect me to undress in front of all of them?”

Flint climbed up on a med bed and straddled it with his back to the men. He patted the med bed in front of him. “Climb up.”

“But—”

His voice deepened and his eyes narrowed. “Climb up now. Obey me.”

“Shit,” she cursed, carefully climbing up on the med bed.

She had to be careful not to flash Doc since she wasn’t wearing underwear. Once she was perched on the edge of the bed she gasped as Flint gripped her hips. He placed her in front of him so she faced Doc.

“Spread your legs now and straddle the table like I am.” Flint’s voice was husky in her ear as he bent his head forward.

She started to spread her legs, feeling dread, knowing she was about to flash Doc her privates for sure. She gasped as Flint’s hand suddenly slid around her waist and slid under her shirt to cup her mound. He kept his hand there, covering her sex as she spread her legs the way he’d indicated.

His other hand reached for the shirt to tug it over her head. She held still, not fighting, though her cheeks burned from embarrassment since Doc was seeing her breasts. If she fought Flint he might move and the men behind him would see her too. His large body was effective in blocking her from the room of
cyborgs
watching from the other side of the cargo bay. Flint curled around her more so his chest pressed against her back as he dropped the shirt at the end of the table. His other arm wrapped around her, hugging her chest so his arm pressed over her breasts firmly, covering them. He then told the doctor, “Proceed.”

Doc chuckled. “Nice. Exposed but covered.” The man turned and reached for a scanning device. He flipped a switch and a monitor on the wall turned on. Mira watched as the doctor started at her head and ran the scanner down her body very slowly. She watched as she was sure Flint did as the doctor scanned every inch of her that was not being covered by Flint.

“No devices but I need to check her backside.”

“Bend forward,” Flint ordered, sliding his hand out from between her thighs as she leaned forward. His hands gripped her breasts, cupping them in his large palms as she stretched out on the med bed on her stomach and lifted her chin to see the screen. The device ran over her back and paused at the fleshy part of her ass near her hip where she saw something round on the screen.