Page 61 of Bred

“Luca, it’s been a year,” I say. “I have something to tell you. Stand up and prepare for data.”

He does as he is told, looking at me with the quiet expectancy of a well programmed cyborg.

“Lyra has returned,” I tell him. “She is well, but she lost her memory of this ship, and all of us, so you as well. You will have to compensate for that when you see her.”

“She doesn’t remember me?” He is smiling broadly due to the good news, I assume. Not because he has been forgotten. Nobody likes to be forgotten, not even cyborg males designed to watch misbehaved human females.

“No.”

He nods. “This time, Captain, may I make a request?”

“What is that?”

“Don’t tell her I’m... this. Let her think I am a man.”

“What good would that do?”

“Yeah, what good would that do?” a female voice pipes up behind me. I roll my eyes with irritation and turn around, snapping her name in a loud growl.

“Lyra!”

“Sorry,” Shank says as he strides in. “She got loose and ran after you. I tried to catch her, but she overturned a cart of specimens bound for the laboratory and two of the samples began to copulate...”

* * *

Lyra

I let Shank explain himself to the captain. Four arms and I still managed to give him the slip. I’m feeling pretty proud of myself as I come face to face with Luca, the guy they said they had to awaken to deal with me.

He’s not what I thought he’d be. He is gorgeous. He looks like a model crossed with a warrior crossed with a god crossed with a movie star. He’s also not wearing basically anything aside from a loincloth. He looks like Tarzan crossed with Batman crossed with... I could be naming hot archetypal men all day.

“So you’re the one they’re threatening me with. You don’t look very scary.”

“Scary isn’t really my modus operandi,” he says. Big words for a man in his underwear.

“You’re human. Like me. You don’t have extra bits.”

He opens his mouth and then closes it again, as if he doesn’t know what to say.

“What do you to do me to keep me under control then, if you’re not scary?”

That, he does have an answer to. There is no hesitancy as he walks right up to me, wraps his hand around my neck, his fingers curling through my hair, his mouth descending on mine. My head spins as our tongues dance. It feels like perfection, another coming home. I felt so out of place on Earth, but whatever small part of me remained after being wiped from my own memory brought me back to my true home, my place with these men, each of whom loves me in a different way.

“Wow,” I say, my head spinning as he breaks the kiss. He has to steady me so I don’t topple over. I’m suddenly feeling giddy and silly and excited, with a rush of that youthful lust that is overwhelming.

I take a deep breath to try to clear my head. “Why has it taken a whole week for me to meet you? Why did they talk about waking you up? Do you sleep a lot or something?”

Luca’s eyes fill with an emotion I can’t quite read. It might be pain, or maybe fear. I’ve touched a nerve, though I don’t know how. It seems like an innocent enough question to me.

“Tell her, Luca. She’s too smart to be deceived, and it never mattered before,” Talon says.

“What never mattered?”

“I am not human,” Luca admits. “I am a cyborg human analog, and I was developed for the purpose of being a companion to you when the captain and the first officer were unable to be present.”

“You were made for me?”

He nods.

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