Page 94 of Dustwalker

“It’s in there good.” She shifted atop him. “But I think I can get it.”

If only he could feel her properly…

Lara leaned back, and Ronin’s internal sensors registered the force she exerted on the shard in his knee. Electric sparked up his leg.

The pliers’ teeth snapped together suddenly, and Lara jerked back. He placed his hands on her sides to steady her, but her torso fell atop his, her hair covering his face. His olfactory sensors detected its fresh, clean scent. He lamented that his bare face plates weren’t sensitive enough to feel the delicate brush of the strands.

At least he could feel her weight and the pleasurable warmth she emitted.

“I almost had it,” Lara said.

He dropped his hands to her hips and helped her sit up. She grasped the shrapnel with the pliers again, but Ronin’s focus moved to her bare legs, to her thighs squeezing his hips. He was her anchor. Given the situation, it seemed an odd place for his thoughts to roam.

Why was the play of her leg muscles so fascinating, so alluring? Why did her touch mute the concerns that should’ve been the foremost of his processes? He should’ve gone directly to the clinic when he’d reached Cheyenne, should’ve had himself repaired before returning to her.

He should have spared Lara all this worry.

Thoughts of her had carried him back across the uneven landscape. His worry had not been for himself or the damage he’d sustained, but for her. He’d needed to see her.

How would she have reacted to my deactivation?

It was a foolish thought-chain to pursue. If he were to have met his demise in the Dust, the chances of her ever learning about it were extremely small. But he couldn’t stop himself from wondering what she would’ve done without him. She’d survived on her own before theymet, and he knew she would’ve carried on, knew she would’ve used her resourcefulness to escape the bot district.

But Ronin didn’t want Lara to have to survive on her own. He wanted her safe. He wanted her…happy.

Metal groaned as Lara pulled on the shrapnel. Her legs tightened around him. “Almost…”

Ronin exerted gradual pressure opposite hers, pushing his leg down while she tugged upward. She leaned back once more, her hair draping over his blackened chest-casing, and released a guttural growl from her chest.

With a metallic pang, she fell backward again.

“Got the bastard!” She straightened and raised the pliers, showing Ronin the jagged, deformed chunk of metal gripped between the teeth.

Lara slid off him to kneel on the bed as he sat up. He drew his right foot toward his rear, slowly bending his knee. Internally, the actuator whined and vibrated, giving diminished returns for the power it drew, but it was a significant improvement over the joint being locked.

“Thank you,” he said, turning his undamaged optic to Lara.

“We ain’t done yet.” She tucked a wild mass of hair behind her ear, extended her hand, and gently touched a finger to a piece of shrapnel embedded in his chest casing. “What happened, anyway? Your upper half is burned and torn to shreds, but your bottom half looks mostly fine.”

“Found an old house out there. There were blankets and sheets hung up all over the basement.”

She wrenched one of the pieces from his chest. His sensors registered a tiny flare of pain, a ghostly echo of what he’d suffered in that basement. It wasn’t nearly as haunting as the corpses.

“Keep talking,” she said, moving the pliers to the next bit.

“By sheer chance, I missed the tripwire when I worked my way to the back. There was a workbench there. Picked up the reloading press and some cans?—”

Lara’s hand jerked back, pulling another shard free. She dropped it over the side of the bed and kept going.

“—and decided it was time to head back,” he continued. “I’d already searched the other rooms. As I pushed through the hangings, something caught on my leg. Heard the device arm, but I wasn’t fast enough. The man who lived there rigged up an explosive, probably his final line of defense, and I triggered it.”

She frowned as she rocked the pliers to loosen a larger chunk of shrapnel. “There was a man there?”

“A man and his family. Think they lived there during the Blackout. Probably been dead at least as long as I’ve been awake.”

After what had happened to her sister, Ronin couldn’t bring himself to tell her the details of that family’s end. Of what that man had done.

“Seems like a long time for a trap to stay active,” she said.