“All right,” he said.
He was giving in that easy? A thrill spiked through her whole body so hard, she had to bite her lip to contain the quiver. Bet he felt it, though.
For a few seconds, it didn’t seem like he was gonna follow up. He didn’t move much, just sat there all frustratingly calm. Then, in his calmest calm voice, “Sit up, Mari. Take off the dress.”
Just like that, huh? Well, okay. She did like he asked, one butterfly-clasped shoulder at a time. The sleeves shushed down her arms, dragging the bodice in their wake. She needed to tell Chloe it was exactly like whispers, the way this dress slid off. Hot, desperate whispers. And all the while, she grumped. “I don’t see how my getting nekkid’s gonna show how much control you got back—” She made the mistake of looking up.
Caught him looking back.
Holy batfuck, his face. His eyes were black fire, alight and licking her top to toes. Mari’s innards sizzled like she was made of bacon.
“On the contrary,” he said. “I would say I’m exercising something approaching superhuman control, observing you nude and yet not fucking you into the floor.”
Odd. The phrase “So do it, cowboy” surged right up into her mouth, but it died a silent death there, choked by the possibility that he might actually do it. If she goaded him, he might push her back against the bamboo and drill right in. This wasn’t comforting-her Heron, the gentle guardian angel who made a living out of pillowing her wild-hare crazy. This was something she’d never seen before, unnaturally still and excruciatingly focused, exactly the sort of creature who would cause a whole crew to snap to attention when he came on board. Somebody a queen might fear.
Want hooked her core-deep, but she just knelt there and let him burn her through with that look.
He leaned forward slightly. “Do you realize that I receive input through the sense-tips on my fingers, much like the gloves you use when you’re shooting?” He reached one hand to her shoulder but didn’t quite touch. So close. Why wouldn’t he touch her? “The chief difference is that mine are I/O.”
“What’s that mean?” Her voice was barely a whisper, backed by the thundering whump of her heartbeat.
He did touch her then. One fingertip only, on the far edge of her bare shoulder. The most innocent of caresses, yet a sudden surge of something invisible and hot and honey and ghost peppers poured over her arm. No, not over. Inside. All through her body, soothing in toward her breasts, her throat, pooling in the tips of her fingers. She had been leaning forward, but now her legs were apparently made of water. Couldn’t hold her up anymore. She tried to melt into the floor, but he wouldn’t let her. His patient stroke on her arm demanded that she stay up. She leaned her face against his chest again, pressed her eyelids closed, and mewled like a kitten. “Fucking god.”
“No, you’re fucking a post-human. Keep up, querida.” He drew that slow touch over her upper arm, and suddenly, she wasn’t just mewling anymore.
She was shaking. God, shaking. She had to stop doing that. Her whole identity was based on being steady, on being certain. Cool under pressure, reliable on the squeeze. But she freaked out completely when this man touched her, and she couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. She ran hot, then cold, then scorching, short-cycling and near to dissolving into a pile of wibble, and he wasn’t touching anything naughtier than her shoulder. “What are you doing to me?”
“I’ve initiated a biofeedback loop and am probing various of your systems in a stochastic approach to inducing sexual pleasure.”
She groaned. “I shoulda never told you how the big words turn me on.”
He cricked a finger—just one—and a million tiny fire feathers dusted her arm. “Right now, I’m stimulating the muscles that elevate your hair follicles. The effect is called piloerection.”
She hadn’t been lying about the big words. They really did. “Oh. Okay. That just sounds dirty.”
“Certainly better than what you call it.”
“Whaassat?”
“Goose bumps.” The hard muscles in his chest tightened beneath her mouth as he shifted, rising over her. His hands dropped to her thighs, and instantly, the tingly hot thing he’d been percolating her with dissipated.
Boo. She missed it and wanted it back. Right now.
“Lie down.” When she moved to obey, he corrected, “On your stomach.”
She scrambled around, her feet and knees slipping on the polished bamboo. Was she sweating? Maybe. Maybe. She felt like she was running a thousand degrees, especially the patches on her body where his gaze rested. So basically all over. Air circulators created eddies she could feel, but they weren’t doing a dadblamed thing to cool her superheated skin.
She lowered herself to the floor, pressing her cheek against the smooth wood, pointing her toes so the tops of her feet met the floor.
“A human person can be altered in any number of ways,” he was saying, though Mari only heard every fifth word or so. Her heart was thundering so hard she could feel her chest thump against the bamboo. “I should apologize. My alterations weren’t explicitly intended for sexual performance.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
He was touching her again, dusting her hair to the side, stroking the line of her jaw until it curved into her neck. Outlining her shoulder blades. Everywhere he touched, those flame feathers dappled her skin with want. “Doubtless a pleasure model would have had you on your back, but I’ll be honest, even with the queen’s halo liberating my processors, I could not have drawn this out long with your breasts beneath my hands.”
Good to know. “Something we have in common,” she confessed. “Touch. It drives me crazy, not just having somebody else touch me, but putting my hands all over you. Last night…” The satin-like texture of his hot skin beneath her tongue. Salt weight of his balls in her mouth. “Well, holding back wasn’t as easy as it looked.”
His thumbs met at her spine and followed the line of it down. Heat extruded on both sides, wrapping her, soothing her. She closed her eyes and sighed.
Wait. Sighed? Yup. She’d never had it like this before, this stillness and quiet, building inexorably and patiently, when the whole time, her body was screaming for the fuck. But her voice wasn’t. She was content to let him take his time, do his thing, ’cause every brush, every precise tactile caress linked to the next, painting her in patterns of desire. She felt like a masterpiece in process.
His hands curved over her ass, and her breath caught in her throat. She couldn’t keep herself from pressing against the floor, pushing herself back and into his palms. Her hips moved slightly, and he kneaded, separating the twin globes, exposing her even more. She whimpered.
“Shh.” He waited for her trembles to stop. His thumbs, still together, still painting a thick seam of lightning down her center, pushed in between her thighs. She spread her legs wide, hoping, hoping…oh yes. He did. Right there. “I can also,” he said, moving his body in between her widespread legs, “interface with convection patterns and raise temperature to specific areas, stimulating blood flow to erectile tissues.” His long hands held her thighs wide while those conjoined thumbs slid along the slick ribbon of want, pushed up, past one entry point, then the next, bypassing the sockets most men imagined contained her infinite pleasure. Heron knew her truth.
He paused over the exposed bulb of her clitoris, his thumbs jammed in between her most sensitive flesh and the hard, slick floor. She held her breath. The tips on his thumbs sparked.
Exploded.
She exploded.
Into a gazillion fire-tipped pieces of wow.
She couldn’t help herself: she bucked, slammed her pelvis down, grinding herself against the lightning storm of his hands and hollering like a drunk at a football game.
Didn’t give a single fuck if the whole space station heard her. Let ’em. She was wholly, completely beyond control, as if something giant and el
ectrical and cosmic had been plugged into her spine and all she could do was lie there and take the onslaught of sensation.
She slammed her eyelids shut, but the universe was still too bright. Sweet and perfect and agony and… “Please.”
Was that her voice?
In an instant, the hurricane-force waves of pleasure slaked. Mari tried to find him in her periphery, and he leant down, kindly moving into her field of vision. Heron’s face, smiling. Which was about the gorgeousest thing in ever. His dark hair had fallen over one eye. Mussed. Loved. Hers.
“Don’t make me endure all this alone. Please.”
He opened his mouth, closed it again, obviously confused. “I wanted to bring you pleasure,” he said.
It dawned on her that this was, in fact, his tech demo; he was putting all his control on display for her benefit. And though she totally felt benefitted, she wanted nothing so much in that moment than to have him just lose it, let fly with the control, and pound out raw monkey sex on this here floor.
“Oh, you have. Are you not feeling how much? ’Cause, holy gophernuts, I am goo right now, and all you’ve done is give me a fucking massage.”
Alarm skittered across his face. “You consider this a massage? Cabana boy masseuses in Cabo finger you to orgasm? Is that part of the hospitality?”
His unapologetic jealousy was lights-out sexy. “You should know. Don’t you have hidden cameras on me all the time or somethin’?”
“No,” he said way too soberly. “You are entitled to privacy.”
“Well, that sucks,” she said. Her breath wasn’t completely even yet. She was panting a little. And his hands were still there, knotted at a pressure point way too delicious to pass up. She dragged her clit across his knuckles and groaned deep. “When I pay for a massage, I get a massage. When I pay for a fuck, I get a fuck. Right here, I think we agreed on a tech demo. You still got stuff in that tricked-out body to show me or what?”
“As you wish, querida.”
Unerringly, as if he knew exactly what she needed, Heron spread his hands beneath her, fanning them over her pelvis and raising her. Cool air nipped against her belly, but she scooted her knees up, arched her back. He wanted her ass-up, did he? Oh goody.
She bit hard, pinching blood from her lower lip.
“Yes,” she breathed against the polished bamboo.
Sense-tips in his fingers could very well be the end of her, but she suspected his useful alterations didn’t end there. In fact, she had a sneaking certainty he was wired all over, right down to the end of that gorgeous cock, because when he moved in behind her, pushed into her—slow, gentle, controlled—she lit up every single place they touched. And they touched freaking everywhere. Inside out, she was made of light. Heat. Torment.
And so was he.
They fused, coalesced, and she didn’t fight it, didn’t rush it. God no. This didn’t seem a place or time to rush. It seemed like a moment made for always. Permanent. Static. The kind of together that meant something.
She slid to the floor, and he came down with her, synchronized to her movement. With each orgasm, her body unfastened, and tiny cyclones of awesome drilled into the fissures, securing her hardpoints.
She wallowed in bone-echoing, never-ending agony, and it was fantastic.
Also a touch exhausting. How long did he plan to keep this going? If she counted the little peaks, she’d come…what? Four times? Five? Girl could wear herself out. Not that she wasn’t loving it, but damn. She didn’t want to hog the bliss.
Come for me, Heron. Her eyes were closed, relaxed, when she thought it. She didn’t move her mouth but to breathe. And she hadn’t put the com back on this morning, so there was no way he could hear her thoughts. Not even if the queen somehow gave him a ginormous power boost. No way. None. But damn if he didn’t just know. Another alteration, another superhuman ability? She’d take it.
With something like awe, she felt climax build in his body, tense, hold, and finally overtake him. His exhalation rolled over the back of her neck like sunrise on the beach. That’s it, baby.
Followed by, Oh my God, can he just do that at will? Whenever he wants and never when he doesn’t? Jesus. But her mind was too sizzled to break that realization down into meaning.
He settled onto his elbows, pressed a hot kiss below her left ear, and allowed the rest of his body to relax over her, inside her. It was hard to breathe with his weight all on her like that, but she didn’t want him to move. Like, ever.
Finally, her voice sloshed out. “Okay, you sold me.”
“Eh?”
“Yer tech demo rocked my socks.”
He rose on his forearms and rolled to the side, breaking their connection. Mari was all set to complain, but he pulled her with him, against him and both on their sides. Now face to face, Heron burned a look down at her. “So it’s okay, fucking a robot?”
“Okay isn’t the word I’d use.” She snuggled closer to his warmth, tucking her face beneath his chin. “More like spectacular.”
“Can you stand another confession?”
“Sure. Why not?” She was gonna need some time to process all the other ones anyhow. What damage could one more unraveled secret cause at this point?
He nuzzled into her hair and said, “Big words do it for me, too.”
Oh really? Mari swore to herself she was gonna download a dictionary and read the whole damn thing.
“I wish I hadn’t waited so long. I thought you’d hate being with somebody like me. Guess I seriously underestimated your tolerance. Your goodness. I’m sorry. Your socks are not the only ones that got rocked.” He pressed a kiss against the top of her head. “But for right now, it’s nearly ten. Kellen’s just come up the lift and will be here presently, and unless you want to see a cowboy blush, we should probably get dressed. Also you need to eat. Did you see there’s bacon?”
Chapter 11
Mari concentrated on the nanopaper tablet and tried not to hear the sounds of Heron’s brain being ripped apart. After she’d eaten and cleaned up—and passed her dress through an organics removal unit, which had to be one of the most bizarre things she’d ever laid eyes on—Kellen had allowed her to come sit in the med lab, on the condition that she stay quiet and out of his way.
He’d said it polite, of course, being Kellen, but Mari still felt it best to do as he told her. She’d crept in and logged in her com on an unsecure port, hoping nobody noticed her. She certainly didn’t want to cause a distraction or make Kellen’s surgeon hands slip.
Heron was sitting up on a low chair covered in antistatic paper. He had input surfaces beneath either hand and wires hooked into subdermal ports Mari hadn’t even known existed, despite the study she’d been making of his body recently.
He’d told her he was looking to hunt down the signal source digitally while Kellen examined the physical damage. Chiba’s halo of hired free-fae scrubbed most transmissions around the station proper, so whatever he was transmitting wasn’t zatting back down to earth. He’d even gotten back most of his processing power—especially his, um, control, which she had experienced already this morning. Shit yeah, she had.
She snuck a glance across the room. Kellen was bent over the back of Heron’s head, his arms blood-flecked and a glower the size of old Dallas on his brow.
Heron saw her looking over and smiled reassuringly, though his hands never dropped a glyph on those surfaces and he was careful not to move his head.
“Hey, querida. Looks like you survived the chem shower. Trust me, it’s only disconcerting the first time. You found everything you needed in there?”
“Yeah, though I do miss your contraband shampoo. That stuff smells fine, like almonds and oranges. Makes me want to lick myself.”
Kellen made a grunting noise. “Ma’am, you might want to hold off on saying those kinds of things until after I got my razor out of Dr. Farad’s brain. H
is electricals just went all haywire.”
“Did they really? Yay me. I’d wondered, of course, but you’re usually so stoic, partner.”
“Define ‘stoic.’”
“Oh, you know: keeping all those come-hither thoughts locked up in your brain instead of sharing. Found this morning very informative, for instance.”
This time, Kellen’s grunt was a mite louder. “Ain’t joking. Y’all can leave off those innuendos and sly looks. I got work here.”
Heron frowned and pinched just one side of his mouth up in a grimace, the equivalent of an eye roll.
“You boys get to it, then,” Mari said. “I’ll just sit over here and watch.”
She could tell by the twitch beside Heron’s mouth that he was itching to say something in response to that, especially as he’d gotten a gander at her eyebrow waggle. She could almost even guess what it was. Took a good bit of self-discipline for Mari to obey Kellen this time, but she managed. She deliberately looked down at her nanopaper.
She’d set up search bots for A. R. N. Farad, for one thing, and she’d gotten pings all over the place. He hadn’t just been a nearsighted postdoc fellow. When she’d first seen him, he’d already hung two PhDs on his wall, both in nanotech areas with words so long, Mari didn’t even want to pronounce ’em.
An archive from the university site showed a cute picture: floppy-haired and wearing a tweed jacket. A kid trying too hard to look grown up. Article didn’t give an age, but he looked young.
Something Kellen adjusted made a god-awful, grinding, wet metal sound. Heron didn’t say anything, but Mari winced.
“Can’t you give him something for the pain?” Mari didn’t dare look over. Wasn’t like blood in general worried her. Just Heron’s blood.
“No, but you don’t need to worry. There aren’t actually any pain-sensing nerves inside the human brain, and I slapped a local on the scalp before I cut in. Besides, I need him awake. The captain here put most of this gadgetry into his own head, and now he needs to guide me through it if we’ve got any chance of shutting down this signal. He’s got to be coherent for this part, even if I would dearly love to knock him out right about now.”
Wanted and Wired Page 19
