Twisted Metal Heart - Eve Langlais Page 0,37
be taught.
“There’s magic, and then there’s what she did. It’s bloody genius,” Zara grumbled. “Makes my stuff look amateurish in comparison.”
“I’ll take you and your skills over hers any day.” A halfhearted flirt that Zara didn’t even bother to respond to.
She was at least a decade older than him, her skin a naturally darker color. Her eyes dark and her long hair black. She claimed she learned everything she knew about fixing machines from her husband. A husband long dead. The Wasteland wasn’t an easy place to live.
“If anyone gets to have Zara, it’s me and Nikki,” Vera declared, walking into the room, although room was a bit of a misnomer. The term cubbyhole being more apt, given it was created by stacked crates. It served as a communication area, impromptu meeting place, and now examination room.
“As if Nikki would share you with anyone.” Zara snorted.
“She’d made an exception for you.” Vera’s flirt came with a wink.
Titan shook his head. “If Nikki heard you flirting…” Her jealousy was renowned.
“I know, she’d carve me and feed me my own tits.” Vera sounded quite pleased by her promised mate’s vicious side.
Titan wished at times he could find someone that evoked the same feeling.
“I take it you’re here for a reason other than getting in my pants?” Zara asked.
“Yeah, I wanna ask tin man here why he didn’t go on the ambush with Axel and the others.”
They’d gotten a tip about a sudden and unscheduled transport of something precious. Axel and the crew would lie in wait and appropriate the shipment.
“If I went, I’d only be in the way.” One month since his escape and his limbs at times proved erratic, only working when he heard the voice or didn’t think of them. But he did think of them, too much.
What else was there to do? If only he could find something to take his mind off it that didn’t involve fighting. He’d been sparring with the dummies as much as he could. Hitting things helped the frustration. But he feared he’d progress from hitting dummies to real people soon. His temper had been sullen of late.
“Jeez, even Old Gordie doesn’t look as pathetic as you. Have you been practicing your woe-is-me face?” Vera said with a grimace.
“It’s very similar to his ungrateful-to-be-alive one,” Zara added, not helping at all with her sassy reply.
It only served to make him feel even more of a failure. “You can both fuck off. You’re not the ones who had body parts chewed on.”
“And survived,” Vera remarked.
“With fake parts.”
“Installed by a woman who turned out to be a princess of the Emerald queen. Blah. Blah.” Vera waved a hand. “Still don’t see why you’re so bent. Sounds to me more like the makings of a romance story.”
“Never,” he swore, even as he recalled the passion in her gaze.
“He’s mad because he’s only seeing it from his perspective,” Zara replied.
At the statement, Titan’s lips twisted in confusion. “Because it’s the only perspective.”
“Really? How about we look at the reasons why she hesitated to save your whiny ass.” Zara held up her fingers and began ticking off points. “One, you’re a stranger, which automatically means danger. There are many who would have left you out there and never bothered to waste the ammo.”
“I guess.” He begrudgingly gave her a point.
“Two, you’re a man; she’s a woman. That automatically makes us hesitate even harder.”
“I would never force someone.”
“She doesn’t know that,” Zara reminded.
“We tend to assume any guy who’s not part of Haven is gonna try and jump us,” Vera stated as a matter of fact.
“And die.” He knew the women who lived here enough to know they wouldn’t tolerate any kind of abuse.
Vera smiled. “Well, yeah, we’d kill, but we don’t warn them it’s coming. Best to get rid of the bad ones before they hurt anyone.”
“Which brings us to the third reason she would hesitate,” Zara said. “Are you a minion of the queen?”
“No one would ever mistake me for a soldier.” Titan snorted.
“Spies don’t wear the metal suits. Don’t be so stupid. You lost an arm and leg, not your wits,” Zara snapped.
The rebuke stung. He glowered. “Fine, so maybe she had her reasons for leaving me out there.”
“And then deciding those reasons weren’t good enough, she saved you and gave you replacement limbs,” Vera declared.
“That only work part of the time.”
“Which is better than none,” Zara said quietly. “I would have given anything for Leroy to come back, even if he had metal parts.”
In that moment