Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Lara bit down on the cucumber to hold it in her mouth.
Leaning forward, she placed her hands on the edge of Ronin’s worktable and pushed it to the other side of the main room, directly before the wide front window.
Climbing atop it, she drew her legs up and draped a forearm over her knees.
The cucumber crunched when she took a bite.
Its fresh, mild flavor—with just a hint of bitterness—burst over her tongue.
She looked out the window as she ate, past the short wall of shrubs surrounding Ronin’s home to the field across the street. Ronin called it a park. The sun was bright today, shining through the trees to cast dancing shadows over the lush grass beyond.
In the distance, strangely shaped bots tended the park. Some of them looked a lot like the cars in the book upstairs. They seemed to be trimming the grass. Others that were more human shaped moved amongst the bushes and trees scattered around the grounds, clipping and watering.
Lara envied the bots their purpose. Damn it, she needed one, too!
She’d never been idle for so long. Three weeks in this house with nothing to do but stare out the windows was driving her crazy.
Yeah, it was a roof over her head, food in her belly, and clothes on her back, so she would’ve been stupid to screw it up…
but boredom was harder to deal with than she’d imagined.
When Ronin was around, it wasn’t nearly as bad.
It was still hard to look at him after her dream, but their conversations broke up the tedium of her days.
While he was gone—whether resupplying at the market or searching the bot district for signs of Tabitha—she wandered the house, as though she’d suddenly find something new in the mostly empty rooms. She’d even untangled the knotty mess of fishing lines on her chime and hung it in the kitchen beside the pots suspended from the ceiling.
If Lara were honest with herself, part of her was grateful when Ronin was gone. Though nothing had been as vivid as that first dream, he remained in her thoughts every night, their bodies intertwining in the depths of her sleep. She saw flashes of that too-real dream whenever she looked at him.
Weren’t dreams supposed to fade over time? The clarity of this one had only intensified as the days passed.
Today, lethargy had taken root in her, and she’d lounged in bed far longer than normal.
It wasn’t until midday that she’d dragged herself out of her room.
When she’d stepped into the hallway, Ronin’s door had been closed.
After her usual routine in the toilet room, he still hadn’t emerged, so Lara had gone downstairs to get something to eat.
She’d danced for him each night, sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes here in the main room.
Never the same moves, never quite the same rhythm or flow.
Ronin, however, was unchanging. He sat and stared, expressionless and without comment.
His answers to her questions afterward remained infuriatingly brief and evasive.
And, despite that, she still couldn’t look at him without thinking about his body atop hers, his hands all over her, his cock—
No. Stop it, Lara!
She took another bite, chewing quickly in her annoyance. These thoughts had to stop.
When she finished the cucumber, she wrapped her arms around her legs, locking them in place by grasping her wrist. She tapped her feet on the table and hummed softly to occupy her mind. Soon, she was swept up in the song. She swayed her shoulders and rocked side to side, hair brushing her back.
Something moved at the edge of her vision. Lara jumped, releasing her legs. Her toes hit the wall, and she hissed in pain.
Rubbing her sore toes, she glared at Ronin, who stood a few feet away, dressed in his fatigues and a gray, short-sleeved shirt that showed off his biceps. “Damn it, Ronin, can’t you ever say something when you walk into a room? Or do you always have to do it silently like some creep?”
He stared back at her. “Am I required to announce myself in my own residence?”
“Yeah. You are. You don’t just sneak up on people like that.”
Eyes narrowing, he cocked his head. “Why are you sitting on the table?”
She glanced down, ran her palm over the table’s surface, and looked back at him. “Why not?”
Ronin lifted a hand, extended a finger, and pointed to the chair she’d left near the other wall with his tools piled on the floor next to it.
“What about it?” Lara tossed her hair back over her shoulder.
“That’s a piece of furniture designed specifically to be sat upon.”
“So?”
“That”—he gestured at the table—“is not.”
Flattening her palms on the tabletop to either side, Lara bounced her ass and wriggled her hips, settling down. “Works just fine for me. Benefit of being human, I guess. You’d break it if you sat on it.”
“What does that have to do with it not being intended for sitting on?”
“Nothing. I can do whatever the hell I want.”
His eyes widened, just a tiny bit, and he dropped his hand to his side. Time crept past. Distantly, the buzz of the bots working in the park faded into the silence.
“Can you?” he finally asked.
“Can’t you?”
Ronin frowned.
Had she gone too far? He hadn’t touched her yet, but she’d seen him moving his fingers as though he wanted to more than once. Bots did what they said, and he’d said he wouldn’t…
But Ronin wasn’t like other bots.
Lara forced that thought aside before it could lead her back to the dream.
“I can, but I limit my actions by considering the potential consequences. For example…” He crossed the room toward her, boots thumping on the wooden floor.
I knew that bastard sneaks around on purpose.
He stopped beside the table.
This would be it. He’d grab hold of her and make her hate bots all over again because she’d sat on his fucking table. But that was what she wanted, right? To have her hate back, to end her conflicting emotions?
Lara looked up at him. “What are—”
Before she could finish, he grasped the edge of the table with one hand and tipped it up. Her stomach lurched as she was lifted. She pushed away from the table and, somehow, got her feet beneath her before she could tumble to the floor.
She spun to face him. “What the hell did you do that for?”
He eased the table back onto its legs. “Because I can do whatever the hell I want.”
“Oh, you wanna play it that way, huh?” With her fists balled at her sides, she stalked across the room and stopped beside the chair. She turned, met his gaze, and kicked the chair over. The sound of it hitting the floor was thunderous in the relative quiet.
Ronin didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. He simply stared. “Do you feel better now?”
She hated the genuine curiosity in his voice. “I’m bored.”
“I would appreciate it if, in the future, you tell me such things sooner. I’d rather spare the furniture undue abuse, when possible.”
“I’m sure the chair will survive.”
“How do we relieve your boredom?”
The image of his hand under her shirt, slowly sliding up to her breasts, blasted to the forefront of Lara’s mind. She forced it away as quickly as it had come.
“I don’t know.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I just need something to do. I’m used to scavenging during the day or helping the neighbors with repairs. Not just…sitting around.”
“Is it more bearable if you stand?”
Lara tilted her head. It took a moment, but when the joke hit her, she narrowed her eyes at him. “Smart ass. Why is it you only have a sense of humor sometimes?”
“Memory damage. Leaves me terribly inconsistent.”
Lara smirked. “You can say that again. Not literally!”
He snapped his mouth shut.
“I just need something to do, Ronin. Something to keep me busy. Teach me something, anything, just so I’m not counting the minutes.”
“All right,” he said, looking toward the window. “Tables are for sitting at, not on. Have you learned something?”
“Yeah. Will I obey? Probably not. I’m serious, Ronin.” Lara pressed her palms together in front of her. “Please! I need something to do. I don’t…I don’t have a purpose here.”
He raised a hand and scratched his cheek, eyes still on the window. “I’ll see what I can find.”
“There’s nothing here. I’ve looked.”
“I mean when I go out again. I’m leaving tomorrow. Going into the Dust.”
Lara straightened, eyebrows rising. “I can go with you! We’ll look for Tabitha together.”
His gaze snapped to her. “No.” There was a sharp edge in his voice that she hadn’t heard from him before. “It’s too dangerous, Lara.”
“I’ve scavenged for most of my life. I know the dangers.”
“You know nothing of the dangers out there. Have you ever been beyond the ruins of Cheyenne?”
She threw her arms out in frustration. “You can’t expect me to just stay here!” With a heavy sigh, she let her arms drop to her sides. “How long are you gonna be gone?”
“Depends on what I find. If I push it, maybe two or three weeks.”
“What?” Lara gaped at him before shaking her head. “Tell me you’re just testing out that sense of humor. For the record, that’s not funny. I am not gonna stay here by myself for three weeks with nothing to do.”
He turned his body toward her. It was an eerie, inhuman movement; his head remained fixed in place while the rest of him shifted. “I’ll make sure there’s plenty of—”
“I’m not kidding, Ronin.” Cold dread clawed up her spine. She’d be trapped, alone. Surrounded by bots. “You can’t leave me here that long.”
“What’s an acceptable timeframe for you?” he asked after a long silence.
“A day. Maybe two. Though I don’t understand why you can’t just take me along.”
Ronin shook his head. The motions accelerated too quickly and stopped too abruptly, giving it an unnatural look.
“It’s too dangerous. The first storm without shelter…
” He held his hands out in front of him, palms up, and dropped his gaze to them, curling his fingers.
“Three days. There’s little chance of me getting far enough to find anything of value in less time than that. ”
She stared at him, clenching her jaw. “Damn you.”
“I have to uphold my part of the bargain. That means I need to earn credits. I can only do that with scrap.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets.
“So take me back to my shack, and the deal can be over.”
“No,” he said too quickly, unexpected finality in his tone.
“Why? What do you—”
Someone—or something—knocked on the front door. Lara snapped her mouth shut as she and Ronin turned their heads to look toward the noise. When their eyes met again, he seemed to have regained his composure. He tipped his head to the side, gesturing for her to go into the kitchen.
“All the more reason why you should take me,” she whispered, walking past him. In the kitchen, Lara pressed herself to the wall beside the entryway, keeping out of sight but not out of earshot.
The locks clicked before he opened the door.
“Good afternoon, citizen,” a bot said in a flat voice. “I am here to c-c-complete your regularly scheduled home appliance m-maintenance.”
“Not a good time,” Ronin replied. The door creaked, but the sound cut off with a dull thunk. She could almost imagine the metal foot that had stopped it.
Lara’s heart thumped like distant, rolling thunder in her ears. What if it was a gearhead, here because they knew who she was? What if Warlord wasn’t done with her yet…
“It is my o-o-obligation to inform you that it has been s-s-s-sixty-five days since your last appliance inspection,” the maintenance bot said, voice dropping to a deep slur as it stuttered. “Regular maintenance is integral to the continued f-f-f-functioning of your home appliances.”
“Another time.” Was that edge back in Ronin’s tone?
“It is m-m-m-my obligation to—”
“Come back next month.”
“N-n-next month, okay! P-p-p-please have a w-wonderful afternoon!”
The door closed, and the locks clicked into place. Ronin was halfway to the kitchen when Lara, forcing her breathing to slow, stepped into the entryway. They looked at one another for a time. His expression wasn’t entirely blank, but she couldn’t read it.
“Give me a few hours,” he said. “I’ll try to find you something to do while I’m gone.”
“What if they come back?” Would she have to hide out in the attic, like the last human who’d lived here? The undisturbed dust suggested that the maintenance bots never went up there.
“They won’t.”
“How can you be sure? If not them, what about the gearheads?”
“There’s the attic, and a crawlspace hatch under the stairs. If you get frightened, hide. Keep the pistol with you.”
She growled. “I wouldn’t be frightened if you’d just take me back to my shack. And what good is that pistol, anyway?” She gestured toward his abdomen. “Guns don’t seem to do shit to you.”
With his pointer finger, he tapped beneath his eye. “Aim for the optics if you need to shoot. That’s the most vulnerable point on most bots.”
“Fine!” She strode past him toward the stairs. “I’m just some expendable human, anyway. So, if you find me dead when you get back, don’t say I didn’t tell you so.”
His hand darted out, catching her upper arm before she could reach the first step. His grip was firm, but not painful, and his skin was pleasantly warm. He spun her to face him.
“If you feel as though you’re not safe here, consider this”—his gaze dipped to his hand—“grounds to end our agreement. But we both know there’s nothing waiting for you back there. No one to go home to. No food or clean water. I’m not your Tabitha, but I’m doing all in my power to keep you safe.”
With each of his words, her anger cooled, and sorrow swept into its place. Her eyes stung with gathering tears, and the sting intensified when she blinked them away.
She knew he was right, but that didn’t make it hurt less.
“Bastard.” Lara yanked her arm out of his hold and hurried upstairs. She made sure to slam her bedroom door behind her.