Rena sensed the threat as the other woman left, knowing damn well that if Fusion had access to her, other cyborg women might as well. She thought of the medic, Wire.

She walked over to the entertainment system and shut down the movie, no longer in the mood to watch. She walked over to the tray, wondering if Fusion had poisoned the food, then discarded that idea. According to the cyborg woman, she was irreplaceable, valuable property and harming her would cause severe punishment. She lifted the tray and walked to the bed to sit there waiting for Steel as she picked at the food.

Four hours later the door opened to admit Steel. He was wearing his black uniform and he looked irritated as his gaze landed on Rena, lying across the bed. She sat up slowly, staring at him as he glanced at the tray by the door. He looked back at her.

“You didn’t eat much.”

“Fusion delivered the food and after her discussion with me I kind of lost my appetite.”

“Did she threaten you?” Anger simmered in his eyes.

“No. She did mention that if she threw me out of an airlock that you could do the same to her so she must have thought about that option.” She got off the bed and slowly moved toward him. “How was your day, honey?”

His small smile disappeared as fast as it had flashed. “Honey? Another endearment?”

Rena stopped before him and reached for the front of his uniform shirt, her fingers making quick work of the buttons to open it wide to reveal his muscular chest and abs.

She pushed the material apart and had to go on her tiptoes to shove it off his broad shoulders, tugging the shirt down over thick biceps. Steel’s eyebrows arched but he didn’t try to stop her as she removed his shirt. She went for his belt next, flicking it open and slowly drawing it from the loops. She dropped it on the floor and looked down at his boots.

“Kick those off for me.”

“What are you doing, Rena?”

Looking up at him, she blindly reached for his zipper, easing it down. “What does it look like I’m doing? I was thinking about how much I missed you today while you were gone. I want to be on top this time.”

Strong hands gripped hers to halt her attempt to strip him of the rest of his clothing.

Rena tried to tug her hands out of his but his grip tightened, holding onto her and he refused to let her go. She watched his face closely as she waited for him to say something or tell her why he was stopping her from undressing him.

“We’re ahead of schedule and the engineers believe we can lift the Moonslip from the surface where it crashed as early as fifteen hours from now. I just returned from the surface after informing Fiona and the other survivors that they all need to transfer to their ship within seven hours so we can get them settled for travel.”

Dread settled in the pit of Rena’s stomach. “But you said—”

“No one expected the repairs to be done that quickly and the damage was less extensive than we first believed. Taking the females to Garden is much anticipated and my orders are to get underway as soon as it is possible.”

“That means we’re going to lose a day together, right?” She wanted him to confirm it.

“Yes.”

I’m going to miss him. “I see.”

“I am still going to drop you in an escape pod when we get within range of Outpost Five and I’ve ordered one of my men to notify them so they know to hold a ship if one passes there heading for Earth. You won’t be stranded there for any longer than necessary. I also had one of my men take money out of our ship safe so that you’ll have no trouble paying for your passage home.”

She just stared up at him, not sure how to react. Part of her was glad that he was going to keep his word about giving her freedom back but she’d be returning to Earth without the Star, without her recovery bonus, and Chuck would be waiting there along with her shitty life. Her boss, Joe Emmit, would make her life a living hell at work, now that she’d failed her mission. He hadn’t wanted her going on the recovery mission in the first place. Chuck was going to be incensed that Demco had paid out money to the recovery team that had failed and given their lives trying to take the Star.

“I believed this would make you content knowing that you are just two days away from being released.”

She wasn’t sure how to explain to Steel the kind of hell her life had become in the years since she’d made the mistake of marrying Chuck. Before Joe Emmit had become her supervisor she’d had her job to escape to but now, with the boss from hell, that had turned into a nightmare too.

She had no home life except to stay as far from her cold husband as she could, which meant staying in her bedroom on the other side of the house, trying to remain invisible, fearful of drawing his unwanted sexual attention. A drunk, horny Chuck was a nightmare and she’d spent more than one evening locked in her bedroom to keep him from coming in after her, with him yelling at her that it was her responsibility to bend over for him and take it.

Chuck was never going to allow her to divorce him without destroying her work reputation so no one would ever hire her and she’d end up homeless and at the mercy of the cruel system that Earth Government had become for the unemployed. She knew her husband wouldn’t hesitate to destroy her. Swallowing hard, she realized that Steel was watching her very closely.

“You don’t look content at all, Rena. Why is that?”

“It’s hard to explain. I thought when I returned to Earth I’d be taking the Star back with me and it was going to buy my freedom from having to work and live where I do.”

He sighed. “I am not giving you the Star and you aren’t going to be able to take it from Flint no matter how many mercenaries you hire at a future date in an attempt to go after it. You will just get more humans killed and you would be captured again.”

“I wouldn’t do that now that I know who has her, and hell, after I return I won’t ever be given the chance to recover anything again. Demco paid out a lot of money to the Bridden crew so their failure will be counted as mine.

“Have your pal Flint deactivate Pod 3 because it’s transmitting to Earth the Star’s location and that’s how we found it to track them. I’m sure Demco will be sending out other recovery teams, just not ones led by me. The Star is far too valuable to them to just write it off. As long as they have a way to find it, they will just keep sending more teams to retrieve it.”

“Why share this information with me?” He frowned.

“I don’t want the Star taken from your people.” She shrugged her shoulders, turning away from him to pace. “It’s better off in your hands than it would be in Demco’s any day. They will just auction it off, trying to recoup their money and then you’d run the risk of someone getting word out that so many cyborgs survived.” She turned to face him. “I don’t want any harm to come to any of you.” Especially you.

Steel leaned down and removed his boots, dropping them on the carpet. When he straightened, he said, “I need to get clean and then I want you in my bed waiting for me without your clothes.”

Suspicion gripped her and so did pain at his words. She was married to a cheating bastard and one thing he’d always done was take showers before coming to her bed to clean away the scent of whatever woman he’d been with. It hurt her to think Steel must have had sex with Fiona and wanted to cleanse her scent from his body. It made sense now why he’d halted her from taking him to bed.

Steel studied her expression closely, his hands going to his hips. “What is wrong?”

She turned away from him. “I’ll sleep on the floor from now on, Steel.”

“I thought you wished for us to have a sexual relationship while we were together.

What changed your mind?”

Rena refused to look at him as she leaned over the bed to remove the top cover. It really hurt that he’d f**ked another woman but she knew they didn’t have commitments to each other. She was the one who had insisted on them getting physical. The night before had meant a lot to her and she’d become close to Steel—too close, she realized.

She felt things for him that she knew couldn’t amount to anything. She was a human, he was a cyborg, and he wanted a cyborg woman to form a family unit with.

“Rena?”

Her back stiffened at hearing him right behind her, so close that she turned very slowly for fear of touching him. She was right when she saw that he was just a foot from her, his big frame so close to her that she had to tilt her chin all the way up to meet his confused look.

“My husband always had to take showers too when he came home to me in the early days when we still had sex. He was afraid I’d know he was just with another woman.”

She turned away and moved around the bed. “How is Fiona?”

A hand clamped down on her shoulder and spun her around to face him. He glared into her surprised eyes. “I did not have intercourse with Fiona or any other female. It was hot on the planet and my uniform made me warm enough that I allowed my body to sweat so I didn’t get overheated. I wished to remove the sweat from my body and that is the only reason I wanted to cleanse myself before I climbed into my bed with you.”

“I want to believe you,” she admitted. “But I married the world’s biggest liar and cheater.”

“I do not lie and I couldn’t cheat on you since that would imply I had made commitments to you that we do not have in place, yet I still refused offers today from six different females who wished to share their bodies with mine in an attempt to test our chemistry.”

She wanted to believe him desperately and that in itself made her a little sad. Steel’s significance to her was too much, too fast. She knew she was lonely and she loathed admitting that she’d spent years wishing to be close to another person so she was guessing that maybe she’d latched onto the sexy cyborg too quickly. She hesitated and then reached for the front of his pants. This time Steel didn’t stop her, just released her shoulder to stand there staring down at her with a tight expression, his eyes hooded.

Unfastening his pants, she eased them down his hips, shoving them down his thighs where they pooled at his feet. He didn’t move or lift a leg to help, just regarded her warily as he stood still for her. She gave her full attention to his briefs, her fingers working into the waistband and lowering them down his h*ps too. Steel wasn’t aroused as she freed his c**k from the fabric but when she went to her knees that changed quickly as his blood surged to his cock.

“What are you doing?”

She reached for him, one hand sliding between his slightly parted thighs to brush her knuckles along the underside of his scrotum, feeling the soft, hairless skin there. Steel’s c**k twitched as it stiffened, straightened, and enlarged as he obviously responded to her touch and her position on her knees before him.

“I asked you what you are doing.” His voice was low and deeper than normal.

“What does it look like?”

“You’re inspecting me to make sure I did not have intercourse? Proceed, Rena. I do not lie but if you need proof, there it is. You will smell sweat and male but you won’t find the scent of a female on me.”

Guilt ate at her a bit as she realized he was right and that she’d been doing just that, inspecting him and making sure he hadn’t had sex, which he hadn’t. Gazing up at him she saw the tense expression he allowed her to see, not trying to shield his emotions from her.

She licked her lips just to have Steel’s body respond to the sight of her tongue darting out of her mouth. She inched closer, her other hand gripping his rigid sex and opened her mouth, letting her tongue touch the crown of his shaft.

“You won’t taste another female on me either,” he groaned. “I do not lie.”

Taking Steel into her mouth, she worked him with her tongue and lips, almost smiling as another groan of satisfaction came from Steel. His hand brushed her cheek, pushing back her hair and she looked up at him as she sucked on his excited flesh. With his guard down, Steel’s passion was there for her to see—his lips were parted, his cheeks a little darker from being flushed, and his eyes looked sexy as hell to her.