Danger That Is Damion by Lisa Renee Jones Read Free Book Online

said. “I’m GTECH. Remember?”
    “I remember,” he said. “Do you remember? Because you act like all of us are assholes and bastards, and simply tolerate being like us. Physiologically, GTECHs are different from humans, but we choose right from wrong. Good from bad. All of us, including you.”
    “That’s like comparing humans to butterflies, GTECHs to lions, and saying both are as likely to attack and kill their prey.”
    “Humans are far from butterflies,” he said. “And if I’m a lion, so are you.”
    “It takes a lion to kill a lion.”
    “Is that what you want?” he asked. “To kill me?”
    “Like you don’t intend to kill me when you’re done with me,” she accused.
    “I want to save you from Adam,” he assured her. “But you have to want to be saved. And you have to talk to me. Make me understand why you would work for a man who’s a seed of destruction. If you truly hate all GTECHs, then I have to assume you were forced into becoming one and forced into fighting as one. Do you hate all GTECHs? Or do you just hate the Renegades?”
    “I know what Adam is,” she said, cutting her gaze. She pulled her feet into the chair, with her dress and arms over her knees, giving him a glimpse of the fast-healing bruise smudging the pale ivory of her cheek.
    She hadn’t given him a direct answer, but then, he didn’t need one. Emotions rolled off of her and slammed into him. Pain. Resentment. No one faked this kind of raw hurt. The soldier in him—who did everything by the book, who had no room for emotions—urged him to use this moment of weakness in her to push her for more, but he found the man in him could not. She’d shut down anyway, he could see that, and done so in a way that screamed insurmountable wall. She was angry and with reason, if she’d been abused in Adam’s sex camps, and then forced to fight for him when she didn’t find a Lifebond.
    “Let me look at your head,” he urged softly.
    Her gaze shifted to his, eyes flashing stubbornly, a bit of that fight of hers returning. “I’m fine.”
    He rolled his chair closer. “You’re not fine.”
    “I am,” she argued.
    Before she could stop him, he pulled her legs to the floor, not allowing himself to think about the short, tempting path up her tiny dress. She was hurt, physically and emotionally. He knew that now, and it changed everything, even if it should not. He could have her, he knew, and she’d willingly give herself without much encouragement. But he was pretty sure she’d feel raped in the aftermath, which meant that right now, he couldn’t have her, no matter how tempting she might be. Still, holding her knees steady, he ached to touch her, to allow his fingers to caress the smooth skin of her leg beneath his palm. “Put your hard head in your lap, so I can see,” he ordered. “I’m checking your wound one way or the other.”
    Rebellion flashed in her bright green eyes, and her gaze collided with his in a silent clash of wills, a battle she simply wasn’t going to win.
    Charged seconds ticked by until her lips thinned, her expression shifted. There was a tiny flash of vulnerability in her face—a hint of what was beneath her façade of toughness—before she bent her head to her lap and allowed him to see her wound. With gentle fingers, he brushed her hair away from her scalp and studied the six-inch cut that would be gushing blood if not for her GTECH healing abilities. “Now that’s what I call a gouge,” he said with a whistle. “And despite your claim of being ‘fine,’ you aren’t. You’re going to need several hours of sleep to heal this one.”
    He rolled his chair back. “You can lift your head.”
    She peered through the mass of dark brown hair covering her face. “What happened to your cleaning my wound,” she lowered her voice to imitate him, “‘one way or another’?”
    Though being mocked wasn’t something he enjoyed, her attempt to make her distinctively feminine, almost youthful