Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
With most of his skin gone, Ronin’s ability to register touch was limited to basic pressure and temperature readings, both providing only estimated measurements.
Despite that, Lara’s embrace felt warm and strong.
It wasn’t a gesture of fear or uncertainty, but one of relief.
She hugged him like she might’ve never had another chance to, like she wasn’t ever going to let him go, and he knew she’d been right.
He might not have returned.
How could he have been so blind to what he put her through whenever he left her alone?
“Doesn’t do us any good to dwell on what might’ve been,” he said, slipping his arms around her with great care.
Without the more precise sensors in his skin, there was too great a chance for error.
A slight overapplication of strength could crush her bones.
“This is what happened, and it’s all we have. ”
“You owe me an apology.”
“I’m sorry I left.”
“No.” She tipped her head back and looked up at him with those bright, emotion-filled blue eyes. “For thinking it matters to me what you look like.”
Her words swirled through his processors, settling deep in his memory bank as he contemplated their meaning. His appearance did matter to her, but not in the way he’d assumed. She didn’t care if he was a bot or a human, only that he was…himself. She cared about his wellbeing.
“Which is like a mess right now, correct?” he said, unable to articulate his more complex thoughts.
“That’s putting it mildly.” She chuckled, though the worry lingered in her gaze. “You kinda look like shit, Ronin.”
“Noted,” he replied, mouth plates ticking up on one side. “I’m sorry, Lara. I misjudged you. Are you going to apologize to me, now?”
“I have nothing to say sorry for.” When he opened his mouth to reply, she cut him off. “I missed. And you could’ve just called my name when you came in and avoided all of that, instead of scaring the shit outta me.”
“Shit. Quite a versatile word…” He lightly touched his forehead to hers. “I am sorry, Lara Brooks. This was not my intention.”
“I know.” She drew back and looked him over, that hint of humor vanishing from her expression. “What can I do to help?”
“The clinic is the only facility that can repair this damage, but you can help remove some of the shrapnel and damaged skin. At least then we can trade some of it to the scrapper and make a bit of profit from this.”
She scrunched her nose. “That’s morbid.”
“I am more than the sum of my parts.”
Lara tilted her head.
Ronin couldn’t explain the thoughts behind his words, wasn’t sure of their origins, so he rerouted back to the matter at hand. “It’s practical. The technicians at the clinic are likely to keep any such materials they remove for reuse, without offering compensation.”
He released his embrace and put a hand on the staircase railing, stabilizing himself. With his single optic, he looked up to the second floor. He’d have to handle this like he had the stairs in that basement—slowly, one step at a time.
“I moved my tools into my pack. Bring them upstairs, and get the spare pliers out of the chest. I’ll meet you there.”
“Okay,” she said, and immediately went to retrieve his pack.
Ronin waited for her to go up before beginning his journey. The upward climb was slow, but rhythmic. The creak of the banister, the groan of a step, the thump of his damaged leg, over and over, until he finally reached the top one minute and twenty-two seconds later.
He kept his head angled down as he walked toward his bedroom, staring at the metal planes of his chest and abdomen, at his charred clothing and melted skin.
Ronin currently bore little resemblance to a human, but Lara had thrown her arms around him and held him.
She wouldn’t have done the same that first night he’d brought her here.
They’d both changed so much in such a short time.
Lara had the tools spread out on the storage chest when he entered the room. Some of them were smudged with soot or singed, their grips warped from the heat.
Standing next to the bed, she gestured toward it. “Lie down and tell me what to do.”
Despite his best efforts, his right leg dragged as he moved to the bed. The sheet was rumpled, the blankets tossed aside.
Was she sleeping here when I came home?
Ronin shifted the focus of his right optic to Lara.
It was only then that he realized she was wearing one of his shirts instead of the clothing he’d purchased for her.
Though it was smeared with soot from their embrace, he couldn’t ignore the allure of seeing it on her.
The hem hung to her mid-thighs, leaving those long, tantalizing legs on display, and if it were to be drawn up just a little bit higher…
No. This is not the time for such thoughts. Not the time for such…temptations.
The springs creaked as he sat, and he recalled the many sounds the bed had made during more pleasant activities.
He raised his left leg, unlaced his boot, and removed it, dropping it to the floor before swinging that leg onto the bed.
His right leg proved somewhat more problematic.
Lara allowed him only a moment’s struggle before she took off his other boot.
Grasping his ankle, she helped him move his damaged leg onto the bed.
“Lie back.” She pressed her palms to his chest and guided him down onto the mattress.
“You’ll need to pull out the shrapnel. Use the pliers.”
Lara went to the chest, retrieved the pliers, and returned to him.
Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she looked over Ronin.
Without a word, she climbed atop him, swinging a leg over his hips to straddle his abdomen with her back facing him.
The hem of her shirt slid up her thighs.
Her bare skin was warm against his casing.
She looked over her shoulder. “So…just pull them out? It won’t hurt you, right? Won’t do any more damage?”
“I’ll be fine. Just take out whatever you can.”
The heat of her ass and legs pulsed through his pants. He knew she wasn’t wearing anything beneath the shirt, and with her position…
He focused his attention on the points of damage. This wasn’t a sexual act. She was simply assisting in the first step of repairing his casing.
“Okay, I can do this,” she muttered as she faced forward, leaned down, and tore his pants open around his knee. There was no pain when she clamped the pliers on the shrapnel, only pressure and the sound of metal scraping metal when she wiggled the tool and tugged.
“It’s in there good.” She shifted atop him. “But I think I can get it.”
If only he could feel her properly…
Lara leaned back, and Ronin’s internal sensors registered the force she exerted on the shard in his knee. Electric sparked up his leg.
The pliers’ teeth snapped together suddenly, and Lara jerked back.
He placed his hands on her sides to steady her, but her torso fell atop his, her hair covering his face.
His olfactory sensors detected its fresh, clean scent.
He lamented that his bare face plates weren’t sensitive enough to feel the delicate brush of the strands.
At least he could feel her weight and the pleasurable warmth she emitted.
“I almost had it,” Lara said.
He dropped his hands to her hips and helped her sit up. She grasped the shrapnel with the pliers again, but Ronin’s focus moved to her bare legs, to her thighs squeezing his hips. He was her anchor. Given the situation, it seemed an odd place for his thoughts to roam.
Why was the play of her leg muscles so fascinating, so alluring? Why did her touch mute the concerns that should’ve been the foremost of his processes? He should’ve gone directly to the clinic when he’d reached Cheyenne, should’ve had himself repaired before returning to her.
He should have spared Lara all this worry.
Thoughts of her had carried him back across the uneven landscape. His worry had not been for himself or the damage he’d sustained, but for her. He’d needed to see her.
How would she have reacted to my deactivation?
It was a foolish thought-chain to pursue.
If he were to have met his demise in the Dust, the chances of her ever learning about it were extremely small.
But he couldn’t stop himself from wondering what she would’ve done without him.
She’d survived on her own before they met, and he knew she would’ve carried on, knew she would’ve used her resourcefulness to escape the bot district.
But Ronin didn’t want Lara to have to survive on her own. He wanted her safe. He wanted her…happy.
Metal groaned as Lara pulled on the shrapnel. Her legs tightened around him. “Almost…”
Ronin exerted gradual pressure opposite hers, pushing his leg down while she tugged upward. She leaned back once more, her hair draping over his blackened chest-casing, and released a guttural growl from her chest.
With a metallic pang, she fell backward again.
“Got the bastard!” She straightened and raised the pliers, showing Ronin the jagged, deformed chunk of metal gripped between the teeth.
Lara slid off him to kneel on the bed as he sat up. He drew his right foot toward his rear, slowly bending his knee. Internally, the actuator whined and vibrated, giving diminished returns for the power it drew, but it was a significant improvement over the joint being locked.
“Thank you,” he said, turning his undamaged optic to Lara.
“We ain’t done yet.” She tucked a wild mass of hair behind her ear, extended her hand, and gently touched a finger to a piece of shrapnel embedded in his chest casing. “What happened, anyway? Your upper half is burned and torn to shreds, but your bottom half looks mostly fine.”
“Found an old house out there. There were blankets and sheets hung up all over the basement.”
She wrenched one of the pieces from his chest. His sensors registered a tiny flare of pain, a ghostly echo of what he’d suffered in that basement. It wasn’t nearly as haunting as the corpses.
“Keep talking,” she said, moving the pliers to the next bit.
“By sheer chance, I missed the tripwire when I worked my way to the back. There was a workbench there. Picked up the reloading press and some cans—”
Lara’s hand jerked back, pulling another shard free. She dropped it over the side of the bed and kept going.
“—and decided it was time to head back,” he continued.
“I’d already searched the other rooms. As I pushed through the hangings, something caught on my leg.
Heard the device arm, but I wasn’t fast enough.
The man who lived there rigged up an explosive, probably his final line of defense, and I triggered it. ”
She frowned as she rocked the pliers to loosen a larger chunk of shrapnel. “There was a man there?”
“A man and his family. Think they lived there during the Blackout. Probably been dead at least as long as I’ve been awake.”
After what had happened to her sister, Ronin couldn’t bring himself to tell her the details of that family’s end. Of what that man had done.
“Seems like a long time for a trap to stay active,” she said.
“Guess you could say I had shit luck on that one. I’m pretty sure the dust down there sparked the fire.
My coat went up immediately, and I stumbled into sheets that were already burning.
Got tangled up in it. Tore all that off, but it wasn’t until I tripped over my pack and fell into more sheets that the fire was snuffed out.
” He glanced down at his arms and brushed the last bits of his ruined coat’s sleeves onto the floor.
Lara frowned, resting a hand on his chest over where a human’s heart would be. “I’m glad it wasn’t worse.”
“So am I. Wouldn’t have complained if it had been a little less intense though.”
Her gaze rose to his damaged eye, and a crease formed between her brows. “Do you…want me to try to get that one out?”
“No. The risk of further damage to my optical system is too high.”
“What else can I do, then?”
Ronin hesitated. She’d called it morbid, but it was a necessity, and it would earn a little credit in the market. “Need to get the damaged skin off. I had to disable the entire interface due to the shorted sensors.”
Her eyes widened, falling to his abdomen, where most of the blackened, melted skin clung.