Rogue Cyborg. Grace Goodwin
get in there.” Kristin had a little one, a beautiful baby girl and two doting mates who treated her like a goddess.
But she was allowed to go on missions. To hunt for the Hive. Her mates had to be the only reasonable aliens on the whole damn planet.
And she wasn’t even a cyborg. She was one-hundred-percent human. A volunteer. An Interstellar Bride sent from Earth when she’d been matched to her primary mate, Tyran, a tough as nails Prillon who had about the same amount of cyborg tech as I did. Tyran was strong. Super strong. One of only two warriors on the planet I wasn’t sure I could best in a fight.
And he already had a mate. Kristin. My thoughts shifted away from him. Not that I’d go after a guy who was mated, but he definitely wasn’t interested. He only had eyes for Kristin. And that was how it should be.
The other male on The Colony who melted my butter? Well, he was a loner. Quiet. Massive. Everyone I’d asked said he was an Atlan, but there was something different about him. Something that made my body clench with heat and my pussy ache with emptiness. Of all the males I’d met since being denied a return to Earth and basically left out here to rot, he was the only one who interested me in the slightest.
Makarios.
So, of course, he was one of the few who’d shown absolutely no interest in me. None. Not one stolen glance. No eye contact. Nada.
Big fat zero.
The only thing that saved my shattered ego was that he didn’t seem to talk to anyone—male or female—except the two other Atlans he’d been with when the trio had escaped from the Hive. Braun, Tane and Makarios. The three Atlan Musketeers. All three of them were gorgeous, I had to admit it. But there was something about Makarios that put me on edge.
The others called him Mak, but when I looked at him, I pretty much just stopped thinking. Even his name was erotic. I wanted him. I wanted him to unleash some of that restrained control all over me. I didn’t want forever, just long enough to scratch an itch or two. My sexual dry spell extended all the way back to Earth. Too long to go without a man-induced orgasm. Or two. Hell, with Mak, it would be at least three, I was sure.
It was well known that he didn’t want a mate. The rumor-mill claimed he’d recently tried to escape The Colony—obviously, that hadn’t worked—and that he wasn’t even Coalition, but one who was cast out from Rogue 5. Maybe he was part Atlan and part whatever sexy beast roamed the Rogue 5 moon’s home planet of Hyperion. All I’d ever heard about Rogue 5 was that they were a bunch of pirates and smugglers who belonged to very strict gangs. No loyalty to anyone but each other. The talk I’d heard said that originally, Mak had only been captured by the Hive because he was sitting in the brig of a Coalition ship when the Hive attacked. That he was nothing more than a Rogue 5 criminal with really bad luck. Wrong place, wrong time and he ended up with Hive integrations and a life stuck on The Colony.
But when I looked into his eyes, I didn’t see a criminal. I saw a restlessness and rage I understood all too well. We were the same, me and Makarios. Trapped. Prisoners.
Freaks.
I swung the hammer. Harder.
The section of wall burst into a cloud of dust...
…and the ceiling splintered out in a web of hairline cracks above our heads.
“Holy shit, woman. That’s enough!” Kristin closed the distance and took the hammer from me. I grinned when she was forced to drop it with a loud oomph. “How the hell did you even lift that thing?”
“Superfreak, remember?” I’d broken into her quarters to take care of the wall for her while she was out. Her idea to have it torn down was one she’d shared in a late-night gab fest over a cup of Atlan wine, one of the few true pleasures to be found on this God-forsaken planet. And knowing she was off somewhere fighting while I resorted to breaking and entering to keep myself occupied somehow made the destruction less satisfying than I’d hoped. Still, it was better than going back down to the governor’s office and arguing with him again. And a hell of a lot better than going down to the cafeteria and being eye-balled like the prize broodmare at a horse show.
“Stop saying that. If you were such a freak, every male on the base wouldn’t be trying to get your attention.”
“Couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that I’m the only single female within light years of this place, could it? Last two people on a deserted island. Remember that game?”
Kristin laughed. “Oh, yeah. I always chose Detective Amaro.”
I nearly choked, but coughed instead, waving at the cloud of dust settling around me to cover my reaction. “Seriously? From that crime show?” The detective was a very popular character on an Earth crime drama on TV. At least it had been when I left Earth. He was a badass who always got the bad guy. And I knew Kristin used to be FBI. But still. “Really? Why?”
Kristin’s eyes closed and a dreamy expression came over her face. “His eyes were so intense. You know? And he had that uniform, and those handcuffs. The gun. He was just strong and sexy and—”
“Bossy and dominant and just like Tyran and Hunt.”
Kristin opened her eyes, laughing now. “I guess so.”
I tilted my head toward the bedroom. “Do I need to ask if all the bindings on the corners of that bed are for you or your mates?”
“I’ll never tell.” She looked back down at the mess on her floor but I couldn’t miss the blush on her cheeks. There was no doubt she was well-satisfied by her mates, with or without restraints. “But I think you might need a little bit of attention from a special investigator of your own, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not going to happen.” I pointed at the rubble on the floor. “You wanted this little remodeling done and I needed to work off some steam,” I replied, inspecting what used to be a wall. The whole thing was broken to bits.
The sturdy wall hadn’t stood a chance against my strength. My cyborg strength. The Hive had turned me into a certified bad-ass. The Bionic Woman. Whatever building material was used crumbled beneath the swing of the sledgehammer like a dried-up gingerbread house under the destructive glee of a toddler’s foot. Yeah, being strong, like wicked strong, was a good thing. I didn’t have to worry about some guy getting handsy—if I didn’t want it—and I could completely take care of myself. At the same time, it was the reason I was so pissed off, taking out the wall between my friend’s living room and dining room areas.
Kristin sneezed. “Steam? Let’s call a spade a spade, sister. What you need isn’t going to be found in here.”
I frowned. “Yeah, well, it got you the big room you wanted.” I pointed to the almost completely demolished wall.
“True.” She nudged a larger piece of refuse with the toe of her boot. “I’m guessing you’re not going to clean up the mess?” she asked, tapping her finger to her lips.
I laughed. “No way. I’m just the demo team. You’ve got two strong men who can haul away the debris.”
She rolled her eyes, but she was grinning. “They are so not going to be happy about this.”
I didn’t care. I’d needed to break something, and she gave me the opportunity I needed to smash and destroy without getting in trouble with the governor.
Again.
“Look, I’ve been trying to mind my own business,” she said in a rush.
“You have?”
“Yes, I have. But, seriously, what’s the real reason for all this?” She waved her finger back and forth, pointing to the fifteen-foot-long pile of rubble. There was no judgment or expectation in her gaze, just pure curiosity. She was a woman. FBI. She was still a soldier, the armor she wore and weapon on her hip proof of that. If anyone would understand, it would be her. Not Rachel, the freakishly brilliant scientist, or Lindsey, the writer. There