Page 156 of Dustwalker

Those eyes studied his features as though searching for an answer upon his face, and a small crease appeared between her brows. She shifted, moving her arms out from beneath her to lie upon the bed, and pressed her palm to his cheek. “Why?”

“Because your life is too great a price to pay for their freedom.”

She looked away, frowning, and the crease between her brows deepened. Her lower lip quivered.

“I don’t want to die, Ronin. After finding you, after everything we’ve been through… I want tolive. More than ever, I want to live. With you.” Tears had gathered in her eyes when she looked at him again. “But my life is a flicker compared to yours. You’ll keep going on, and I’ll be dead in fifty years, or thirty, or ten. Or tomorrow. And so will all those people. They deserve a chance to live on their terms before then, too.”

Before meeting Lara, Ronin had been directionless. A wanderer. His actions had often defied logic, and the rewards he’d pried from the dusty, skeletal grip of the dead world had rarely been worth the risks he took to get them. Yet despite his illogical behavior, he never could’ve comprehended why she was so determined to return to Cheyenne after what she’d suffered. Not until now.

He smoothed back the hair from her face and wiped away her falling tears with his thumb. “Your life is my purpose, Lara, and I think I understand why you’re willing to risk it. I disagree with you putting yourself in danger, but because it’s important to you, I will go, and I will do whatever is necessary. I will fight for them...for you.”

Ronin leaned his forehead against hers. “So long as I function, you will not die tomorrow, nor any other day, for many, many years.”

Lara exhaled shakily and embraced him. “I’ll try to keep out of trouble.”

Ronin smiled. “Don’t lie to me, Lara Brooks. You’re going there specifically to cause trouble.”

“Okay, out ofunnecessarytrouble, then.”

Withdrawing one of her arms from around him, she slipped her hand beneath his shirt, fingertips grazing his abdomen. The sensation danced across his sensors. Her eyes and cheeks were wet from her tears, but she’d never looked as beautiful as she did at that moment.

“What will we do after all this?” she asked.

His processing power had been so devoted to the countless possibilities for tomorrow that he hadn’t thought about the day after that at all. Their success, their survival, was too uncertain.

“I don’t know,” he said, after a long pause.

“I want to go back to your house.”

Ronin tilted his head. “After all this, you still want to return to Cheyenne?”

She flattened her palm against his stomach. “The place was never the problem, Warlord was. Without him, Cheyenne can be rebuilt into something better. For everyone. Your house…it became a home for me, a real home. And it’s where I fell in love with you.”

The frantic simulations slowed as Ronin’s processors shifted toward the present. Toward Lara.

Death wasn’t an issue for bots. As he’d once told her, there was on and off. Despite his core programming’s drive to err on the side of self-preservation, he did not fear his eventual deactivation. Hell, he’d been through it at least twice already.

But the idea of Lara’sdeath, of a future without her…that sparked true fear inside him. Irrational fear, the kind that whispered in distant corners of his consciousness, preying upon his inadequacies. She’d changed him, fundamentally and forever. How could he revert to a directionless life after she was gone?

“Then that is where we’ll stay,” he said. “Though…if you still want to go, I promised I would take you to the ocean.”

“Yes. I want to see the endless waves, like in that book.” Her hand slid higher, sweeping over his chest and brushing his nipples. She shifted her hips, skirt falling to reveal her thighs, and smoothed her foot along his calf. “We can see the ocean and then go back home. We could even tell the neighbors about it, but most of them probably wouldn’t believe us.”

Electric tingles of pleasure pulsed through Ronin as she caressed his skin. Holding himself up on one arm, he placed a hand on her thigh and skimmed it toward her hip, bunching the fabric of her skirt around his wrist. She shivered beneath his touch and released a soft, shuddering breath.

“It won’t matter what they think,” he said, focusing his optics on her lips.

“Not even a little.” She spread her knees wide, opening herself to him.

“You’re all that matters, Lara Brooks.”

She smiled. Her hand stopped at the center of his chest, directly over his CPU. “Love me, Ronin.”

He eased over her, nestling his hips between her thighs. “Long after the Dust claims me.”

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Lara had spent countless nights huddled beside Tabitha in their drafty shelter, desperate for warmth and comfort. They’d suffered through frigid winters and blistering summers, ravaged by hunger, exhaustion, and pain. Together, they’d survived the worst Cheyenne could throw at them for more years than should’ve been possible.