Girl From Above #4: Trust by Pippa DaCosta Read Free Book Online

seen the look of horror on their faces, and then watched them leave my allocated room. Chen Hung is a synthetic. The truth was out. I no longer warred with myself. And yet, unease and suspicion undermined my hard processes.
    I didn’t trust these people to do what was necessary. I didn’t trust anyone.
    And then Caleb was there, dressed head to toe in a hood and cloak, caked with mud and dust, smelling of blood, sweat, and sex. He was real, unlike those who looked at me as though I were empty. Caleb looked at me and saw me. And in return, I saw the man he was: torn, confused, angry, but underneath all of that, hopeful. He had hope and trust for me.
    While the shower hissed in the adjacent room, I shrugged on a tank top and stepped into a pair of sweatpants and then cracked open the bathroom door a few inches. I’d watched him like this before. Some of the times he’d known, but most times he hadn’t. Inside the steam-filled shower cubicle, water pummeled his upturned face and washed the red dust down his back and over his childhood scars in rivulets of red, like blood. I had scars too, inside as well as outside. Did everyone have scars, some more visible than others?
    His eyes flicked to mine and held my gaze for a few pertinent moments, and then he continued to lather soap over his shoulders and down his back. He’d gained a few angry red wounds, one on his thigh that wept a little blood as he dragged his fingers across his skin.
    His body displayed signs of arousal. Was it from being watched, or because I was watching him? A skitter of curiosity urged me forward, but I locked it down. Count the stars.
    I’d been betrayed. That sting still burned. I had no intention of opening myself up to that attack again. What I felt for Caleb—those curious needs and redundant urges—were distractions, and distractions were dangerous.
    He turned off the shower, ran his fingers through his hair, and flicked water from their tips before sliding open the door and stepping out. Steam rolled off his skin and water droplets glistened on the ripples of his abdominal muscles. He reached for a towel, allowing me to observe every inch of him. He had no fear. No anger. While his body clearly communicated arousal, his expression was one of mild amusement. His eyes appeared to ask: Do you want something?
    Do I?
    My need, it wasn’t sexual. I had no evolutionary protocol to reproduce, and if I did, it wouldn’t be via a method as inefficient as copulation. But to connect with someone beyond the apparent, on a level that required mutual need—for someone to see me as a living entity, as real? That was a human desire, and I owned that feeling, or it owned me. What would it be like for his hands to touch my skin? The few times he had—the touches fleeting—data had sparked alive, flooding my processes with delicious sensations. For him to want to touch me—the same as I ached to touch him, feel him, and willingly drown myself in those sensations—that was what I needed. It wasn’t Haley’s memories of the young Caleb Shepperd she’d loved; this curious and fascinating need for the older, harder Caleb Shepperd was all mine.
    “Keep staring, One, and you’ll make me blush.”
    He roughly dried his hair with the towel, dragged the damp fabric over his shoulders, and then tied it around his waist. I could have watched him for hours. Something in the architecture of his movements, in the unpredictable play of muscle and flesh, fascinated me.
    He gathered up his clothes and moved as if to slip by me. I blocked his exit, still reliving the evocative images so I could file them away and keep them close. Life was fleeting in the nine systems. I didn’t intend to miss a second of it.
    His eyes narrowed, just a fraction. He didn’t like to be trapped. “You goin’ to move or do I have to say the magic word?”
    I swallowed and stayed rigid, deliberately pushing—challenging—testing him.
    He stepped in closer, close enough that I could