Freaks Under Fire by Maree Anderson Read Free Book Online

of you.”
    Jay nodded. “Three of them.”
    “Three?”
    “He correctly estimated it would take three specifically designed projectiles to completely incapacitate me and render me insensible of my surroundings. I regained conscious awareness as the third projectile—” she covered his hand with her palm “—the one that cause this wound, was being extracted.”
    He didn’t respond, and his silence grew heavy.
    Jay had believed she knew Tyler well enough by now to accurately gauge his emotional state at any given time, but clearly she was mistaken in that assumption. Right now, the physical cues he was giving off were contradictory in the extreme. He radiated textbook symptoms of anger, frustration, concern
and
desire, and she found herself unwilling to make an educated guess as to his current state of mind for fear that she was wrong.
    Best to wait until she had gathered more data.
    Too, her own responses surprised Jay. Beneath Tyler’s hand, her skin prickled. The fine hairs on her arms and nape had responded by rising. Her breathing had quickened, and even though she knew her heart wasn’t literally fluttering in her chest, “fluttering” was an accurate description of the strange sensation. Her salivary glands had increased production of saliva, moistening her mouth, and some instinct prompted her tongue to dart out and lick her lips—a gesture that drew Tyler’s gaze. And then the heat of his gaze enveloped her, flushing her body with still more warmth.
    Jay didn’t have any issues regarding nudity. As she had informed Allen when he’d interviewed her for the position of nude life model, it was just a body: Every human had one. She’d concluded during her first day at Greenfield High that young human males considered her form and facial features pleasing, despite making no effort whatsoever with her grooming, nor exuding appropriate pheromones to attract such attentions. In fact, the attention her physical form had garnered back then had been most inconvenient.
    Now, having interacted more freely with humans, she understood that by today’s standards her physical form fell into the category of “unconventional beauty”—a quality that was sometimes considered desirable precisely because it
didn’t
conform to the social norms. This knowledge pleased her—not because her evolution from unfeeling machine to one capable of an ever-increasing range of emotions gave her the capacity to embrace vanity, but because she knew that
Tyler
appreciated the unconventional beauty of her physical form.
    Just as she appreciated his. The width of his shoulders, the expanse of his chest, the lean musculature of his belly, the narrow hips and powerful thighs of a young, physically fit human male.
    Tyler could be described as a typical “jock” but for his hands—large and strong, yes, but with long, sensitive, talented fingers that coaxed songs from the strings of his guitar fit to make angels weep. Despite modern-day reluctance to use the word “beautiful” to describe a male, to Jay, Tyler was beautiful. To her, he was precious, not only for his physical form and his unique talents, but for the way he made her feel alive and cherished—so much more than a cleverly crafted machine conceived and designed by one brilliant, flawed man.
    She had never felt more alive, more cherished than now, when Tyler had inched close enough that each of his exhalations was an exquisite torture—a tantalizing near-kiss from phantom lips hovering above her skin. And then the phantom kiss was reality, for he bent his head and pressed his lips to the scar above her left pectoral.
    Jay’s inhalation sounded loud and harsh and demanding—a stark contrast to the smooth, gentle, petal-soft pressure of Tyler’s lips as he kissed the second scar.
    The palm resting on her abdomen moved, skimming upward, coming to rest on her ribs, below her breast and oh, how she yearned for… for… something she was at a loss to define, as though some