beaten him thoroughly. The bruising was especially dark over his groin. Malice was repairing but it must have hurt him.
She verbally noted each visible dark stretch of skin. His abs rippled under her palms. He was appealingly warm, almost melting the ice inside her.
Three beeps echoed in the chamber. She removed her hands from his form.
Malice opened his mouth as though to speak. His body convulsed, silencing whatever he was planning to say. The cyborg became still once more, stunned into immobility.
Only his eyes moved. They were devoid of all organics and they glowed with emotion, expressing his frustration, his anger, his unwanted need.
Illona leaned over him to look closer at his face.
“The skin over your jaw and chin is very dark.” The impact of those strikes would have broken his bones if he had been human. She caressed Malice’s jaw back and forth, back and forth.
A rumble rose from his chest. Energy flashed in his eyes.
“The skin covering your cheeks.” Her hands shifted higher. “Your nose.” She traced his primitive profile. “Your brow.” She smoothed his black eyebrows. “Your forehead is also dark.”
His lips had flattened into a grim white line.
She wanted to kiss that flesh. Badly.
When she was first assigned to him, she told herself she desired him because she was lonely, because she was hungry for touch, for contact with another being.
Before the beings on her planet had lost their battle against the Humanoid Alliance, before she’d been taken prisoner, she’d enjoyed brief encounters with male medics, with others. She loved sex, loved kisses and caresses and having a hard cock inside her.
But her attraction to Malice had been extreme, had made her previous wantings seem shallow by comparison. And she didn’t feel any connection with Valor, the E Model cyborg.
Malice was the only male who interested her. She lifted his head, felt along the back of his skull, searching for injuries. His warm breath wafted against her flight suit-covered breasts, permeating the fabric, spreading over her skin.
Stars. She yearned for him.
Her toes curled in her boots.
She released him. Their gazes met.
His eyes were excitingly wild. His nostrils were flared.
Could he smell her need? Her face heated and she lowered her gaze.
Her eyes widened.
The cyborg was fully erect now. His long, thick cock jutted from his hairless base.
She swallowed. Hard. “Your breeding programs are functioning properly.”
It wasn’t the first or the three hundredth time she’d seen him in that state. Yet it always left an impact on her. She dreamed of him over rest cycles, woke needy and wet.
It was shameful. A medic shouldn’t react that way.
She yanked her hands away from him and straightened. “The repairs should temporarily decrease the nanocybotics count.” She extracted her handheld from her pocket again. “I’m performing a scan to verify this.” She gazed down at the handheld’s small screen, using the moment to control her unseemly desire. “The nanocybotics count has decreased.”
Malice glowered at her.
If she stayed where she was, she’d kiss the fury off his handsome face. That would be wrong, wrong, wrong. She hurried to the bottom of the sleeping support.
His feet were bare, were as large as the rest of him. The Humanoid Alliance kept the cyborgs naked when they weren’t fighting. She’d never seen Malice don the body armor and boots stored for him in a nearby chamber. Yet there wasn’t a single scar or callous on his soles.
“I’m testing range of motion.” That could be done with simply running diagnostics on him. He was a cyborg. His systems tracked that information.
But that would be completed quickly.
She set the handheld on the sleeping support by his right leg. The moving of the device was deliberate. If the Humanoid Alliance beings were accustomed to her putting her equipment down often, they might not notice, in the future, when she didn’t retrieve it.
Illona had spent almost a solar cycle planning the cyborgs’ escapes, had tried to think of everything they might need, everything she might have to supply to them.
They would only be given one opportunity. She couldn’t bungle it.
“I’m testing your largest toe on your right foot.” She clasped the tip of his toe between her right thumb and index finger. “I’m bending it as far as possible downward.”
The range of motion tests, if she was thorough, should eat up almost half a shift.
That was time she wouldn’t have to spend inflicting pain on Malice.
Chapter Two
Over his solar cycles of imprisonment in the Humanoid Alliance’s hidden laboratory, enduring endless planet rotations of torture, Malice had ranked beings