Touching Ice (12 page)

Government trained cyborgs to use to take a life painlessly while the target slept but I

can’t do it.” He suddenly spun, slamming the tray on the table. “I don’t want you to die

but an order has been issued. I can’t disobey a direct order from the council but I find

myself unable to comply either. We’re both in a hell of a lot of trouble, Megan.”

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Touching Ice

The reality of Megan’s situation stunned, horrified, and kept her mute while she

stared at Ice. The cyborg council wanted her dead, she had been deemed a threat to his

people, and Ice had been given orders to kill her.

“Blackie lied to me about setting me free.”

“He did. It was his version of kindness to lure you into a sense of false security that

your life had been spared so I could say goodbye to you without your tears or pleading

for your life.”

“What an asshole. I mean, I guess for him it would be considered almost sweet but I

don’t appreciate it.” She had to fight to think through the panic.

“Agreed. If it were up to me I would prefer to believe you and drop you off with

the bots on Hixton Station just the way we originally planned but it is not in my

authority to give you that. The safety of my people is at stake and the risk is too great to

allow you to go free.”

“I don’t want to die,” she whispered.

“I can’t kill you.” He paused. “Blackie will most likely come here since I’m unable

to do it. You will not die at my hands.”

She stared at him, fighting tears, and managed to hold them at bay. “Is that

supposed to comfort me?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t.”

“I apologize. I can only stall for time before he comes to make certain the council’s

orders were followed.”

“May I talk to this council? Maybe I can change their minds.”

“The decision has been made and nothing you could say would affect them. We

have to follow orders or my ship will be in violation of the council.” He sighed. “We

would both die then.”

Her brain struggled to take it all in but underneath the panic, she wondered at Ice’s

inability to kill her. She had to know. “So why can’t you kill me yourself? Why not just

shoot me or something? You’re strong enough to kill me in a hundred ways I can think

up with your bare hands alone.”

He hesitated. “You fascinate me and I find myself feeling strangely protective of

you. I am unable to carry out their order. They will be very displeased with me.”

“Thanks.” She wondered if he could pick up on sarcasm. When he frowned at her,

she assumed that he could. “If this is how cyborgs are—they can just order women to be

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murdered—I can see why Earth Government wanted them dead. Apparently most of

you are heartless bastards.”

He nodded. “We were made this way by them.”

“Don’t your leaders know the difference between right and wrong? Doesn’t this

council have any compassion? Doesn’t it bother them just a tiny bit to kill an unarmed

woman?”

“I do not know. I can only speak for myself, Megan.”

“But you’re going to allow someone on this ship to kill me?”

“I have no choice but I won’t allow anyone to cause you pain when they follow the

order.”

“Don’t you see something seriously wrong with that?”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t do it. Just drop me off with the bots.”

“I have to follow orders even if I do not agree with them. They are the Cyborg

Council and it is my duty to do as they demand even if I find it highly distasteful. I

really don’t want you to die, Megan. I am attempting to think of a solution where you

can be freed but I am coming up with nothing so far.”

She watched him while he stared back at her. In a lot of ways he was similar to the

bots if he was compelled to follow orders and would be destroyed if he wouldn’t do as

he was told—if he’d told her the truth about them killing him if he disobeyed a direct

order. The programmer inside her understood the complexities of machines and how

they kept within their guidelines. She swallowed the lump that formed in her throat.

“What are your orders exactly?”

“To kill you.”

“Today?”

“An exact time wasn’t specified but it’s implied that the order be followed quickly.

It is our way. Cyborgs aren’t known for procrastinating. The council deemed it too

dangerous to allow you the opportunity to contact Earth Government.”

It might be something she could work with, a flaw in their programming, as it were.

She hesitated. “What if I were to stay on this ship?”

His eyebrows arched. “And what would be the point of that? You can’t stay in my

quarters indefinitely.”

She hesitated. “Why not? I can’t contact anyone if I’m locked in your room, correct?

That’s logical. If I’m no threat then there’s no reason to kill me.”

He said nothing.

Her gaze drifted around the small room. It would be cramped with the two of them

sharing it. Her gaze landed and held on the handsome cyborg in front of her. She’d had

plenty of fantasies about him and figured she could find lots of ways to keep amused if

she were living with Ice. Life could be worse and he sure beat death.

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Touching Ice

She got to her feet. “You visited
Folion
five times in the past three months that I’m

aware of.”

He frowned. “What does this have to do with stating your plan to stay on the ship

to avoid the council’s sentencing?”

Would he go for it?
She’d never been an overly forward type of woman. As a matter

of fact, she enjoyed it when men pursued her, until she’d seen Ice. He’d had her tossing

her old-fashioned thinking but she wanted him, had for a long time, and he could keep

her alive if he’d agree to allow her to stay in his room.

“You like sex and you seemed to enjoy it with me the few times we’ve been

together.”

He said nothing but his eyes narrowed.

“If you allow me to share your room with you then you get sex any time you want

it.” She paused. “I know your quarters are small but we could have a hell of a lot of fun

sharing your bed.”

His reaction was swift and unexpected. He growled low in his throat. “No. I will

think of something else.”

“No?” Megan gaped at him, stunned. “Did you hear what I said? Free sex, as much

of it as you can handle, and all you have to do is allow me stay here so you don’t have

to kill me. You said you didn’t want that to happen to me so here’s a loophole for us

both.”

“No,” he repeated. “If this is your plan, it is not a good one. I will think of another

plan to save your life.” He paused. “I will not allow them to kill you if I can help it.”

She admitted it really stung that he’d said no as pain burned a little inside her chest.

The guy she’d gone to great lengths to have sex with, the cyborg she’d spent months

having sexual fantasies about, had just rejected her outright over the concept of having

a longer relationship with her.

“The sex is good between us, Ice.”
It is for me anyway
, she thought, hoping he could

say the same. If it hadn’t been, he was a world-class actor because it had sure sounded

as though he enjoyed being inside her
.
“Why don’t you want me now?”

He backed up more and leaned against the wall next to the door. “It was one thing

to spend a short period of time with you but you’re asking for a lot more than that. I

prefer bots to real females. As much as I would wish to spare your life, it wouldn’t work

between us. I’ll come up with another way to protect you.”

Her eyebrow arched in disbelief. “I thought you only visited
Folion
to use them

because they weren’t a risk to telling anyone you existed.”

“Bots do as they are told, there is no emotional connection, and they don’t expect

things from me. Humans and cyborgs are not a good match.”

“Why not?” Curiosity had her asking. She’d seen him have sex plenty of times, had

sex with him, and he didn’t do anything a human guy didn’t. He’d never damaged a

bot and hadn’t done her any harm. She wasn’t about to mention any of that to him but

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Laurann Dohner

maybe he didn’t know those things. “You are bigger than me but you’re not going to

break me unless you’ve really been restraining yourself every time you’ve touched me

or a bot.”

“How would you know if I’d ever damaged a bot?”

“I told you that I’m the programmer, and though I rarely do hardware repairs, I

read the reports. You’ve never so much as scratched one of them.”

She hoped that was a good enough answer because she sure wasn’t admitting her

voyeurism concerning his sex life on
Folion
. He’d get pissed off over that violation.

“My concern is not damaging you.” He pushed away from the wall. “You don’t

understand my dilemma.” His expression showed emotion…anguish.

“Tell me what you have against having sex with me.”

A frown marred his lips. “We discovered a ship of ours that had been thought lost

forever and with it, a large group of cyborgs who had survived.”

“Okay. And that means what exactly?”

He took a deep breath. “My coloring is unique.”

She stared at him. “I can see that. You have those beautiful eyes and your hair is

just gorgeous. I’ve never seen someone with streaks like yours without them putting

them there. I assume it’s natural to you?”

He nodded. “I’ll make this simple so you can understand.”

Megan arched her eyebrow at him. “Okay. You know I’m a programmer though

and not a nitwit, right?”

“I am not questioning your intelligence, Megan. Cyborg laws are complicated.

When we escaped Earth, we stole ships to flee to safety and one of them contained the

majority of our females. Their ship was lost. When we settled on our new home world

the council’s first priority became instilling laws that made sure that the much larger

population of males had equal opportunity to the limited supply of females.”

“You make it sound as though women are objects.”

He frowned at her. “Their number-one objective became setting up family units and

making sure we had a future as we began to build Cyborg City. That meant that our

females had to form family units with multiple males. Every cyborg was given the

responsibility of having a child each to make certain our race continued to thrive and

grow. Two children were preferable but having at least one per adult is mandatory.”

Children?
Megan gulped. She didn’t want any of those. Her life wasn’t stable

enough, she had never stayed in one place for long, and it wouldn’t be right to drag a

child around in her nomad way of life. She knew from firsthand experience how

messed up they could be. Her father had been a traveling salesman, home had been a

space shuttle, and she’d grown up really lonely.

People didn’t stay, everyone left her, and she’d learned to never get too attached to

people after having her heart broken time and time again when she’d allowed herself to

care for someone. Her mother had abandoned both her husband and her child and her

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Touching Ice

father had ditched her the day she’d been old enough to fend for herself since he

considered her a nuisance. She’d sworn off any future that involved marriage or kids.

Ice continued. “Most male cyborgs were created sterile but we found a way around

that with drugs that reverse the process temporarily but it isn’t effective for all males.

With that factor added into the numbers, breeding pacts with a dozen males in each one

was implemented.”

“What is a breeding pact?”

“Will you let me finish without interrupting?”

“Sorry. Go ahead.”

He took a deep breath, blowing out air. “It meant that if a male wasn’t able to

impregnate the female in his family unit to have that one mandated child, he could call

upon one of the other males in his breeding pact who had viable sperm to donate it.”

He paused. “Before you ask, artificial insemination proved highly ineffective so the

males actually have intercourse with the female to get her pregnant. It is less stressful

on her that way and more enjoyable.”

Megan had no words, too shocked to speak. Ice didn’t have that problem. He

watched her closely though, his eyes narrowed.

“I avoided joining a family unit because I need to be in control of my own life as

much as possible. Cyborg females tend to be very aggressive because of their value—

they are aware of it. They are…” He paused. “Assertive with males.”

She understood. “They rule the roost.”

“I don’t understand that wording.”

“They tell you what to do and you have to do it.”

His features tightened into a grimace. “Yes. If a male joins a family unit and he

doesn’t make that female happy, she can file charges with the council and have that

male deemed unsuitable. No other female will touch a male with that on his record. I

probably would have been dismissed from all breeding pacts which tempted me

because I found it difficult to donate so many times but I didn’t want all my options to

be forever closed in case I ever did want to form a family unit sometime in the distant

future.”

“You had to go to bed with a lot of women?” She wondered how many cyborg