Chapter Sixteen

“Here, try this.” The woman handed him a tiny red thing. She kept one for herself and put it in her mouth.

Fury took the object out of her hand. It was small and red, bigger on one end and tapering to a point on the other. Numerous tiny dots studded the outside of it, each perfectly spaced. She had told him it was food, and the idea rang bells in the most distant part of his brain, but it didn’t make the red object seem any more familiar. He copied the woman’s actions, put the object in his mouth, and moved his teeth up and down.

An explosion happened on his tongue. There was moisture, texture, and flavor. He had tasted this before. Fury felt his eyes widen with surprise. He reached out for more.

The woman laughed as she handed him one from the box in her hand. “They’re called strawberries,” she said. “Do you remember them?”

“Remember” was a word Fury couldn’t find in his database. He had heard Natasha say it several times. At first, he thought she was talking about the information in his computer system, though she used an unfamiliar term. Eventually, Fury realized she meant the flashing pictures and loud noises that were flooding into his brain from somewhere else. He didn’t like these data sets. They were uncomfortable and confusing. What good did it do to concentrate on information that was incomplete?

“Don’t eat too many of them at once or you’ll upset your stomach. I love the way the word sounds. Strawberry.” She popped another one into her mouth. Natasha’s lips wrapped seductively around the fruit before it disappeared.

Fury shook his head again. He hoped she wouldn’t make him say anything. No matter what she said, he was the leader here. He had proven it with his actions earlier when he had dragged her to the floor and fucked her.

Since the upgrade, it had become impossible to look at the female without recalling the experience. Fury had played it over and over again, seeing it multiple times from his perspective. He had felt her body tense in his arms and around his cock, squeezing the release out of him. The cyborg wanted to do it again, and his cock strained against his pants every time he replayed the memory.

For now, he was content to let the woman flutter around. Her fingers felt soft and gentle as they checked his heartbeat, looked into his eyes, and touched the sensitive area on his back where the life support system once connected with his body. Her scent made Fury want to bury his face between her breasts and inhale. It was the aroma of something deep and inviting, the smell of what they had done together, but she hid it underneath other essences that were easier to detect. The cyborg knew it was there, and he wanted more.

“Can you say my name yet?” Natasha tipped her face to look at him sideways. She tried to encourage Fury to speak with her big blue eyes. She had been trying to get the cyborg to say her name ever since she had asserted herself as his commanding officer.

Fury knew it wasn’t part of the rehabilitation program, but he let her play the game. “Yes.”

“Okay, do it then,” she encouraged. “Natasha.”

“Na-tasssh-ah.” The word was difficult for him to pronounce. He didn’t want speaking a word to make him look weak; that was why he had refused thus far. He was the alpha, and it was only a matter of time before she submitted to his will.

The redhead clapped her hands and squealed with pleasure. She moved in her chair, breasts bouncing enticingly. Fury wanted to make her squeal again but didn’t want the reason for her cries to be a feeble attempt at saying her name. Fury reached out to put his hand on the curve of her waist. He wanted to curl his fingers around the curve of her body and press his palm against the flat of her stomach.

She slapped his hand away. “No! I’ve told you that’s inappropriate.”

He slowly pulled his hand back, letting her know that the decision to withdraw was his, not hers. “You say no now, but you’ll say yes later.”

Fury’s biometric display indicated that Natasha’s pulse was quickening. The temperature of her body had instantly risen, especially in the places he wanted to touch most. They lit up in a dazzling display of red on his infrared sensors, making him want her even more.

“Just no,” she argued. “We have work to do if you want to control your emotions and become something resembling a human again.”

Natasha kept repeating the phrase like it would make a difference in his actions. The woman wanted him to be “human again.” He didn’t understand what she meant. Fury recognized her as human and recognized himself as something that was not. He complied even though he didn’t understand her. When he was human, would she let him put his cock inside her again?

As Natasha reached for another box of food, sharp pains flooded his head. Fury clutched at his skull with his hands, wanting to rip out whatever was causing the sensations. The pain came every day ever since the download. Sometimes it was worse and other times the feeling was only mild discomfort, but a flood of information always followed it. After the incidents, he saw the pictures Natasha wanted to discuss.

He sat in a machine holding a wheel in his hands. Around him, glass and metal flew through the air as the machine spun around again. A woman sat next to him. She had black hair and equally dark eyes, and she would have been beautiful if she weren’t screaming and flinging her arms in the air. The machine stopped with a dull thud, landing upright. Fury felt a stabbing pain in his torso. He looked to the woman in the seat next to him, but she was still. Blood dripped down the side of her face, and her eyes stared blankly in front of her. She was dead.

“Are you still there? Come back to me, Fury.”

Blinking, the cyborg found that he was still in the laboratory with Natasha. She leaned forward and put one hand on each of his shoulders as he clutched his belly. Her hair tickled his cheek, and her shirt had gaped open on top, but he was too distracted to pursue anything. Gingerly, Fury pulled his hand back from his stomach, waiting for a gush of blood to rush out. But his palms were clean. There was no trace of the blood he had seen only moments ago. Fury looked up at Natasha and automatically wiped a bloodless hand on his pants.

“It’s okay,” she said in a high voice, a purr of vibrations that always seemed to flow right into him. “It’s just a memory from a long time ago. Nothing will hurt you now.”

The cyborg stared into Natasha’s eyes. She looked sincere. Whenever he saw Natasha, he usually wanted to do things to that sweet mouth, but not this time. When she brought him back from the broken place in his mind, he wanted only to look at her beauty and use it as an anchor.