Page 7 of True As Steel

“Yep,” I said, heading over to the second man, whose face she had blown up, to search him. “You are now thinking that I didn’t come back here to rescue you, but merely because I want to take advantage of your contact. Tell me I’m wrong?”

I turned to face her, locking eyes with her. She held mine unwaveringly.

“You’re spot on,” she replied defiantly. “Is that why?”

“Nope,” I said, retrieving the man’s weapons, including the care package knife, before getting back on my feet and approaching her. “I genuinely came to rescue you. I may be a Cyborg, but I’m not a machine. Our emotions are muted, not non-existent. I do have a conscience. I took no pleasure leaving you here. If you wish to part ways, I will proceed with my initial plan to go to Kuryn. But whatever decision you make, I still recommend you do not travel with this vehicle. The speeder is faster and will allow you to navigate narrower spaces like forests, and glide over bodies of water. That buggy? Not so much.”

“Fair point,” she said with a nod while eyeing my speeder.

“If we make haste, we can go back to where I encountered the idiots I took this speeder from. There are two more. You can take one and decide what you want to do,” I explained. “It’s less than a ten-minute ride from here. I would rather not stick around here too long. We might get more company.”

“Sold,” she said. “Hang on.”

Tamryn made a beeline for the dune buggy and quickly searched it, retrieving a bag that she shouldered with a grin.

“Let’s go,” she said, coming back towards me. She gestured with her head at the bag. “Some water, food, and a couple of other trinkets.”

I smiled approvingly. Self-sufficient, skilled, and able to make quick decisions based on facts—the woman was growing on me. I headed towards the speeder. As soon as I sat down, I sent the snitch ahead to scout our destination while Tamryn settled behind me.

The softness of her breasts and the heat of her chest pressing against my back stirred long forgotten emotions. It unsettled me. When her slender arms wrapped around my waist, my abdominal muscles clenched, and a pleasant heat ignited in the pit of my stomach.

“Hang on tightly,” I said before starting the speeder.

Tamryn tightened her hold around me. It felt almost possessive, especially the way her palms lay splayed on my stomach. I didn’t understand my physiological responses to this stranger. Sure, she was an attractive female, but I had seen plenty of them before my transformation, and many more afterward without getting aroused or feeling this drawn. Granted, the emotions weren’t overwhelming, but in my muted state, that I responded like this spoke volumes about the extent to which she affected me.

I forced myself to ignore it and started speeding ahead.

Chapter 4

Tamryn

Iheld on to Jarog’s muscular body, feeling far more relieved than I’d ever admit it aloud. With my military training, facing off against two men was usually cakewalk for me, but not today. After smashing my head on the ship and getting trampled by a stampeding mob fleeing, I still required some recovery time. The headache that had mostly faded while I tinkered on the escape pod was flaring up again—my body clearly expressing its disapproval of that little fight.

But beyond my weakened state, and despite my hesitation about his trustworthiness, the wretched Cyborg made me feel inexplicably safe. It wasn’t his strength and elite combat training, but the man himself. There was no logic to it either. However, I appreciated the bluntness with which he stated facts. No sugar-coating, downplaying, or bullshitting. He spoke his mind. If your feelings got hurt, tough titties.

I liked knowing where I stood.

I alsoreallyliked that he had come back for me. I’d never know if he’d only done so for my contact, but my gut told me he’d been sincere when he said that had not been the driving factor. The only downside about not traveling in the dune buggy instead of speeders was that it made conversation a bit more challenging. Now wasn’t the time for us to have a heart-to-heart, but I needed to know who I was dealing with and what his intentions were.

Aside from getting my butt to a safe place, my priority was finding out whether my relatives and the other members of our rebel organization had survived the explosion. We’d been separated after our capture. While being led to my cell onboard the transport ship, I thought I’d glimpsed Damian in the distance, but I couldn’t have sworn to it. The last I’d seen him was right before the Emperor’s guards had branded my cheek with that wretched R.

I refused to believe the worst could have happened to my brother. If I’d managed to make it, I had to hold on to hope that he, and many of the others, had made it as well. Too many dark thoughts swirled through my mind, threatening to increase the headache lurking at the back of my head.

I pressed my cheek against Jarog’s muscular back and inhaled deeply. I had simply meant to try and relax, but his earthy scent filled my nose instead. Just like that, my brain registered the fact that I was wrapped around his hard body. My fingers twitched with the sudden urge to explore the grooves of the chiseled abs beneath my palms. My reaction all but gave me whiplash. I had never been this close to a Cyborg before, let alone been this intertwined with one. It usually took far more than a hot body—and his most certainly was—to turn me on. Judging by this unusual reaction from me, I’d clearly hit my head a lot harder than I thought.

Thankfully, we reached our destination before I had too much time to dwell on it. With surprising reluctance, I released Jarog and got off the speeder as soon as it came to a stop. Once I did, the way he stared at my hands and then at my face threw me for a loop.

Does he miss my touch as much as I didn’t want to let go?

That was obviously a ridiculous thought, and yet it wouldn’t leave my mind now that it had entered it.

“Good job,” I said nonchalantly while gazing at the corpses on the ground to lessen the odd tension that had suddenly settled between us.

“Sharp rocks can be quite effective,” he retorted smugly.

I snorted. “So I see,” I replied, genuinely impressed.

I stood for a second, eyeballing the two remaining speeders before settling for the bigger one next to the remains of a brawny man. Although it would require a bit more effort to navigate than the other one, it looked in much better condition and to be of superior quality.

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