Read Online The Change (Unbounded) by Teyla Branton - Free Book Online Page B

lost your kidney or your heart, your gallbladder—”
    “They’d grow back.”
    I wanted to tell him he was nuts. They were all nuts. Yet I’d seen my arm, and unless they had a way of manipulating memories, I was living proof of these claims.
    “What if I’d burned so much that the tissue between my focus points burned away?”
    Ritter shook his head. “Unlikely. Dimitri could explain it better since he’s a physician, but in a trauma situation, the Unbounded body protects that link. The only way, really, is to sever it.”
    With something really sharp, I was betting.
    “What’s the second way?” I hoped it didn’t get any worse.
    “Starvation.”
    “But we’re absorbing from the air constantly, aren’t we?”
    “Hard to do if you’re in a sealed metal room or a cement room over two feet thick. Food molecules can’t get through.”
    “How long would it take to starve?”
    He thought for a moment. “Double or triple what it takes a normal human body to rot to pieces. Depending on the temperature, it could take years.”
    I shivered. What a horrible way to die.
    Worse than being hacked to pieces? The world of an Unbounded was much darker than I’d suspected. No wonder Ava was so cautious.
    Ritter downed the rest of his beer and tossed it into the garbage. I set my glass in the sink. “Let’s work on a few kicks and handholds,” he said. “Ways to get away if someone grabs you.”
    I was glad to leave the staff behind. Muscles I didn’t know I had ached, and my lungs still felt tight.
    He was waiting for me on the mat, and I walked toward him with trepidation. I wasn’t sure I wanted to work so closely with him, especially when he wasn’t wearing a shirt. The staff at least allowed me to keep some distance.
    “Grab me,” he said, holding out his hands.
    He had good hands, with long, well-shaped fingers, and strong wrists that curved gracefully into muscled arms. Not bulky enough to be ungainly or grotesque, but powerful and all man. Not a scar on him, of course—at least not on the outside. He was whole and untouched, not a man who had apparently been stabbed and left for dead.
    “Go ahead. Give it all you got,” he urged.
    I hesitated.
    “Grab my wrists!”
    I did as he asked, and at once my hold was thrown violently off, my arms protesting at the abuse.
    “Now you try.”
    I did without much success. We repeated the movements several times until he was satisfied. Then he grabbed me from behind and told me to break free. I could feel the warmth of him, the moistness of his skin, his heart beating against my back, his arms heavy and strong around me. My heart thundered—and not just because of the workout. I didn’t know him well enough to be comfortable with this kind of intimacy, but at the same time I craved it. Craved him.
    We went over every single hold I could imagine and then some. Next, we worked on kicks and punches. Rivulets of sweat ran down my neck and between my breasts. Before long I was too exhausted to notice when his body touched mine. Besides, his manner had no room for me as a person, as a woman, and I wondered if his life’s experiences had created a monster, a killing machine that survived only to train more killers. More than anything I wanted to quit, but something about his cold determination forced me to continue.
    At last he nodded and said we were finished. I gently ran my hands over my arms and they came away smeared with traces of blood. My skin felt raw everywhere, but especially my arms.
    He saw the blood and the hardness left his face. “You should have told me you were hurting.”
    “It wasn’t important.”
    We were standing close. I could smell his sweat, feel my own dampening my entire body, mixing with the blood on my arms. Neither of us moved away. Tension sprang between us like something with a life of its own. Against my will, I thought of him touching me, of gliding my own hands over his sweaty chest. I ran my tongue along my parched bottom lip,