Serafina and the Virtual Man (Book 2 of the Serafina's Series)

by Marie Treanor

  “Damn it, I don’t want the bloody thing to go back into hiding…” she began in frustration, just as something crashed onto the floor above their heads.

  “I don’t think it’s hiding,” Blair observed, running for the front hall and the gallery stairs.

  “Which room?” Sera panted as she leapt up the steps two at a time, Blair at her side.

  He didn’t need to answer. The door of Dale’s study banged shut twice.

  “Ready?” Blair said as they stood on either side of the doorway. She nodded, and Blair shoved the door in with enough force to send him flying across the room.

  Dale’s large desk was slammed against the wall. One of the computer monitors was on the floor, another on its face on the desk. Objects—Sera made out several pens, sheaves of paper, books, a calculator, an entire printer, and two small pictures from the wall—flew through the air, hurling themselves in a continuous stream at the open door to the testing lab.

  “Fuck,” Sera said wonderingly. “Does it sense Adam in there when we couldn’t?”

  “Looks like it. Only why would it suddenly feel him now and not before?”

  “And why doesn’t it just go in?” Sera wondered as a picture flew back past her ear and almost immediately forward again, bouncing in through the doorway to shatter on the other side.

  “It can’t,” Blair said softly. “It’s tied to the parts of the house it knew when it was alive. Killearn might have cased the rest of the house, but he’d never have got in there.”

  “And that’s really hacking it off,” Sera agreed, ducking to avoid the whizzing laptop. “Shit, Dale’s going to be so pissed off about this…”

  But the flying objects were slowing. Instead, Sera could actually hear the rushing of air like a howl as the poltergeist threw everything it had at the doorway like some invisible, rhythmically wielded pickax. Worse, the air began to shimmer.

  “It’s getting in,” Sera said in panic. “And Jilly’s in there!” God knew what would happen to her if the controls were shattered by the poltergeist.

  “Then you’d better get rid of it,” Blair said calmly, walking right through the shimmering air and into the room. “Quickly.”

  ****

  Jilly didn’t want to move. It was weird, but she’d never felt this close to anyone, even Sera. Of course, she and Sera normally kept their clothes on during their infrequent heart-to-hearts, but even in childhood, they’d been so careful of bolstering their own or each other’s pride that secrets were told, sympathy and understanding dispensed, advice given and plans made, all with partial explanations and careful reading between the lines. It was how they’d both got by. With Adam, she felt there was nothing she couldn’t say, nothing she couldn’t hear. Not now that he’d made love to her and given her this exquisite, almost cleansing joy she’d never even imagined before.

  Even now, sprawled naked in bed with him, his arms around her, she could feel the throbbing ache inside her, so different from the sheer pain she’d known before that she welcomed it, hugged it to herself like a secret gift.

  “So how was that for you, Ms. K?” he drawled.

  “Most acceptable, Mr. A.”

  He loomed up on his elbow to bend over her. “Just acceptable? I rather had the impression that you liked sex with me.”

  Her body heated, flushing her face. She touched his lips with two fingers, then reached up and kissed them. “I did.”

  “Good. Because I loved it with you.”

  “That’s probably because we’re in a computer program,” she said regretfully.

  “Oh no. You did everything you wanted to. That’s what made it so good.”

  She couldn’t help smiling. “Really?” Another thought hit her. “So anyone who came into the lab in the real world would have seen me wriggling and grinding and screaming?”

  “Some of it,” he admitted. “But since it’s all going on in your brain, your body doesn’t have time to make all the movements. The brain seems to adjust to that, and the longer you’re in VR, the less obvious movements you seem to make in reality.”

  She frowned. “And would we really have had sex?”

  “You mean, if we were both alive, entered the VR together, and had sex there, would we be having sex in the real world too? I suspect we’d do a bit of bumping and grinding together but only with our clothes on. The clothes we took off weren’t real; the actuality of sex was in our minds.”

  “Then we haven’t really done it?”

  His eyes scanned hers. “Does that bother you? Do you want to have done it?”

  She nodded, throwing her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. Even in the real world, he wasn’t real; he was a spirit in a computer program, but she wouldn’t think of that while he held her so strongly, rocking her. “We did it,” he murmured through her hair. “If we felt it, we did it. And we’ll always have it.”

  Jilly laughed a little shakily into his shoulder. “Do I get a badge? ‘I fucked Genesis Adam’?”

  “No. You can have one that says ‘I fucked Genesis Adam twice.’”

  Her breath caught. She took her face out of his shoulder, and he kissed her mouth with exciting thoroughness.

  “Only this time I’m going to do you in the bath,” he said, grinning. “Come on.” He slid off the bed and pulled her with him. Hand in hand, they walked naked into the opulent en suite bathroom. Part of Jilly was stunned that she could do this so easily. Somewhere in the sexual interlude, she seemed to have lost the self-consciousness that was so much part of her. And of course, there was the heady distraction of Adam at her side, long and lean, muscle and sinew rippling gently as he walked, his naked hip brushing against her hand.

  The bath was huge with gold-plated fittings, and the sight of Adam’s sexy backside bending over it as he turned on the taps was enough to make her mouth dry and elsewhere decidedly damp. But he didn’t wait for the bath to fill. He climbed in and drew her with him, sinking down into the shallow, splashing water with her in his lap, facing him.

  “Hey, there’s plenty of room,” she said breathlessly.

  “Yes, but this way, no one has to sit on the plug.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that.” She gasped as he shifted her legs so that she straddled him and the head of his hardening cock nudged against her entrance. She gazed at him, then deliberately reached down and adjusted her position and his. He slid just a little inside her.

  He wiggled his eyebrows, and she felt him twitch inside her in a teasing sort of way. When she gasped again, he held her by the hips and gave a deliberate thrust that pushed him the rest of the way in.

  “That’s better,” he said huskily. “Now we can wash in comfort.”

  “Wash,” she repeated with derision while she savoured the feel of him just being there inside her.

  “Of course,” he said and splashed water up over her head.

  “Agh,” she exclaimed, reacting in kind, and the ensuing water fight was short-lived, for every movement caused a positive cascade of delicious sensations inside her, and his breathing told her he was not unaffected either. In the end, he leaned right into her, paused to kiss her mouth, thus stilling her splashing hand with derisory ease. Then he reached beyond her to the corner of the bath and leaned back again with an elegant crystal bottle in his hand. He poured the pale green liquid into his palms and began to massage it into her wet head.

  Which was when she suddenly realised what water and washing really meant. “Shite, I must look like a clown,” she said in dismay, splashing water all over her face and scrubbing to get rid of all the running makeup she was sure must be there. “And then there’ll just be me, with no face…”

  He caught her hands in his. “Hey, stop, you’ll get soap in your eyes.”

  She blinked at him through the drips, tried to turn her face aside because no one, no one saw her without her war paint. Why had she agreed to the bath? It would spoil everything.

  Worse, his face followed hers, insisting on looking
right at her. His lips were curved into a smile, and, amazingly, his eyes were still warm. “This is virtual reality, remember? No running mascara here. Besides, you’re beautiful whatever you put on,” he added softly. “I like you best of all like this.”

  She shook her head. “No, you don’t,” she managed.

  His lips quirked, and he moved suggestively inside her. “I’ve got proof.”

  She couldn’t prevent the slightly choked laugh that escaped her. It gave her the courage to meet his gaze.

  Slowly, he lifted his hands and began to rub the shampoo into her hair. At the same time, he dropped kisses on her eyelids and cheeks and mouth. After a moment, she twisted to pick up the crystal bottle and poured some shampoo into her own hands before smothering his hair in it too. While they washed each other, he began to move in a gentle, rocking motion that she could only respond to. Gradually, the movements changed to more obvious thrusts. Having soaped his chest, loving the feel of his skin under all the slippery suds, she teasingly turned her attention to her own breasts.

  He watched her avidly, especially when she lingered on her nipples. His breath hitched. “Let me rinse that for you,” he murmured and simply held them and caressed them, and then put his mouth to one nipple and sucked hard. Instinctively, she thrust onto him, and the exciting, thrilling push and pull intensified. He held her hips, increasing the speed until orgasm tore her apart for the third time. She fell backward into the water, with Adam on top of her, still pushing into her. The wildly splashing, rolling water seemed like a cocoon, enfolding her body in warm, all-consuming rapture. She held on to his bottom, loving the feel of it bucking and pushing, and then he was still, gazing into her eyes as he came, and nothing she’d ever seen or imagined had ever been so beautiful.

  I did that, she thought, awed. I made him come. I gave him that pleasure…

  “God, I feel smug,” she whispered, and Adam’s shoulders began to shake.

  “Not half as smug as me. Did I drown you?”

  “Don’t you have a safety mechanism for that kind of thing?”

  “In theory,” he said cautiously. “Not sure it works.”

  He shifted his weight off her, easing out of her, and propped himself half sitting against the back of the bath. Jilly twisted around to sprawl between his legs with her back against his chest. She said reluctantly, “I should go back. See if Sera’s dealt with that damned poltergeist.” Except that it was too pleasant lying here, watching his hand lazily knead her breast and feel the slow-building ache of new desire form from the afterglow of what they’d just done.

  “You probably should,” he agreed and tugged her head back gently by the hair so that he could kiss her mouth. “Your other lover’s about due to charge in the door and find you with me.”

  “Will he mind?” Jilly asked, finding it hard to care.

  “I can’t believe he wouldn’t, but I don’t know. One of the teams developed most of this one. But at the very least, it would interrupt my mission.”

  She reached behind her to touch his cheek and lifted her face again. “Better save it and get out of here, then.”

  “Better had,” he agreed and kissed her. When he lifted his head, they were still in the bath. She smiled and so did he, and they kissed again.

  “Maybe,” he said, “if there are no signs of Sera breaking down the door for need of you, I could fuck you again in the test lab.”

  “Quick and dirty on the hard bench?”

  “That would work,” he said breathlessly.

  “You really want my badge to be impressive, don’t you?”

  “Hell, yes.” His hand slid down her stomach and cupped between her legs. She gave a little moan of pleasure. “Or maybe we could fit just one more in here first. I don’t really want to move.”

  She stroked the length of his arm down to his hand between her thighs and left it there, holding him to her. “Neither do I,” she whispered. There was another kiss, long and sweet, but his hand remained still on her pussy. It was curiously comforting as well as sexy.

  “I’ll be good,” he said ruefully. “Try not to look too abandoned. Just in case Sera’s waiting for us.”

  “I’ll try,” she said.

  There was a pause. He frowned. A loud knock sounded at the hotel room door, making Jilly jump.

  “That’ll be your lover, on cue,” Adam said. “Do you think you could try wishing to be somewhere else?”

  “I don’t want to be anywhere else,” she admitted.

  “Neither do I,” said Adam on the ghost of a laugh. “Which leaves us a bloody big problem getting out of here.”

  A second knock sounded at the door, louder and more peremptory. “Madeleine, are you in there?”

  “We could just leave him and go back to bed,” Adam suggested.

  “Won’t he break the door in?”

  “Let him watch.”

  “Is there a program for that too? You really are a dirty bastard.”

  “It’s up to us. We can do exactly as we like. There’s even a machine gun in the plant pot.”

  Jilly began to laugh. “You mean we can shoot our way out?”

  “Of course. It’s a computer game.”

  “Naked?”

  “If you want to.”

  She sat up and turned to face him, and his eyes began to sparkle.

  Chapter Fourteen

  If Adam had imagined that being shot at by an angry lover and a bunch of ruthless gangsters would make it easier to wish himself out of the game, he was doomed to disappointment.

  From the moment he and JK burst butt naked from the hotel bedroom into the wide hallway full of stunned, armed men, he knew it was just going to be too much fun. He blessed his team of programmers for working even this unlikely scenario into the game, for he and JK really did have the element of surprise, which enabled him to get the first shots in, sending the hoods diving for whatever cover they could find behind pillars and flimsy, decorative tables.

  JK, in the meantime, seized the machine gun of the nearest gangster, kneed him in the groin to make him release it, and then forward rolled toward the stairs through a hail of bullets aimed far too high to hit her. Adam, not unreasonably distracted by the sight of her deliciously naked, tumbling bottom, left it a shade too late to leap for the stairs and felt a burning sensation in his arm. Ignoring it, he jumped over the rail onto the sloping banister just in time to meet JK, whom he hoisted up behind him. As they careered down the wide, polished banister, they fired wildly at the ceiling, dropping chunks of wood and rubble and a phenomenal amount of dust on the heads of their enemies.

  Inevitably, though, the gangsters had left a watchman in the lobby below, and amid the screams of the respectable patrons, Adam felt the jolt of JK twisting and firing behind her before she hit the floor. Adam landed with a thud, narrowly missing her. He rolled backward and came up shooting at the hoods now running down the stairs after them. A few fell. He aimed at the chandelier and, with what turned out to be pretty good timing, let rip a burst of fire that brought it crashing down on top of several of their pursuers.

  JK let out a low, delighted laugh as she jumped to her feet beside him and hand in hand they bolted for the nearest door. It wouldn’t budge, but Adam recognised it. This was the carefully guarded door to the speakeasy. “Show your face,” he breathed, just as the blind moved. Since she was their star performer, the door opened immediately, and Adam burst in, punching the door thug in the jaw—which bloody hurt—before he and JK dived as one under the roulette table just in time to avoid a renewed hail of bullets.

  There followed a short, hilarious game of hide-and-seek among the tables.

  JK said breathlessly, “The cops are bound to come now and catch or kill the bad guys. Must be points for us in that.”

  “So many I’ll get a really deadly mission next time.”

  The shooting was deafening, as were the screams of the patrons trying to get away, and there was glass and debris and carnage everywhere. This, Adam thought happi
ly, was what computer games were all about. Sheer escapism, exorcising aggression and secret desires for dangerous situations without any of the actual risks. Apart from the sluggishly bleeding, barely noticeable graze to his arm, neither of them was hit. And he couldn’t remember ever having quite so much fun in any game as he did bolting around that room, avoiding bullets and planning their escape. Of course, it all had an extra edge because they were totally naked throughout. When he dived behind an upended table where a young woman was already sheltering, she averted her eyes in even more horror. He grinned and winked at her, and by the time he scrambled out to rejoin JK closer to the back door, the woman was cramming a piece of paper into his hands and saying huskily, “Call me.”

  Adam laughed aloud, then landed in a heap behind the bar with JK. The barman already had his hands up. “I’ll have a gin and lime,” Jilly told him and let loose another barrage at the thugs closing in.

  The barman’s jaw dropped, but he rushed to obey with shaking hands, grabbing glasses and bottles and ducking with them below the level of the bar counter.

  “Two, if you please, my good man,” Adam said cheerfully. “Hell, have one for yourself—you need it.”

  The barman didn’t have to be told twice. In seconds, he came up with three glasses of pale green liquid. JK stopped shooting for long enough to grin and grab hers, and clink with both Adam and the barman.

  Then the cops burst in through the door. “All right, nobody move!”

  The barman said, “We can get out the back door. Come on.”

  He crawled through first, just as someone started shooting again. JK rolled through, treating Adam to another close-up of her gorgeous bum, and then, without warning, it all vanished. No shooting, no speakeasy, no JK.

  ****

  It was a good opportunity. The poltergeist was so focused on breaking through whatever barrier kept it from the room beyond that it barely noticed Sera or even Blair until he walked right through the ripple of air it was creating. His hair actually stood on end. Only then did the poltergeist back off, and by that time, Sera already had her psychic teeth in it, pushing and tearing it apart.