by A. Payne
Zoe rolled her eyes then she lifted up on her toes to silence him with a light kiss. A simple and chaste brush of her lips over his did the trick. “Next time, just go with it and say yes.”
“Sorry. I babble when I’m…” Her kisses made him nervous for reasons he couldn’t describe, but her attractive game qualities made him critique and silently compare every difference. The real Zoe wasn’t quite so short, and he preferred her dark-hair and ethnic skin tone. Her true smile featured a slightly crooked tooth unworthy of dental correction. The sylph avatar lacked her flaws and the minor imperfections that made her lovable and real.
“You don’t have to be nervous around me. I’m just the squishy nymph who tags along with your group sometimes. Now you just happen to know my work schedule.”
Overcome by impulse, Victor dragged her close against him and kissed her with all of the passion he could muster. Zoe’s softer lips and fragile frame molded against him, her every curve as authentic in digital form as it had felt as she lay beside him the previous night.
Her fingers crept slowly up his arms, coming to rest on his shoulders.
“Come on. Let’s have some fun,” he whispered against her lips.
They came to the mutual decision not to share the evening with their military friends, although Zoe sulked when Victor refused to reveal the identity of his two guild mates. He told her it would ruin the fun, especially after she erroneously guessed O’Reilly to be the player behind Ethan’s character.
A sudden message popped up from Trevor as they stepped outside into the digital sunlight.
Alexander Solo (to you): Hey, we’re going to raid the banshee citadel in Avalon. Finally got about two dozen good players to pull it off. Wanna come along? Oh, and here’s the 5000 gold I borrowed from you. Made it back like I promised. Thanks, mate.
Juan Sebastian: Go without me, I’m going to do an event in NYC area.
Alexander Solo (to you): Yeah? I heard about that event. It’s only a stupid haunted house event in Manhattan zone.
Juan Sebastian: So?
Alexander Solo (to you): Testy, this evening, aren’t you? All right, I’ll keep an eye out for anything you might want.
Victor shot a glance at Zoe. She had bent to interact with a few of the digital pixie NPCs. The programmed creatures flitted around the garden, occasionally landing on players with friendly auras. “Sorry. Just a second.”
“No rush,” Zoe assured him.
Victor sighed and typed out another hasty message to Trevor.
Juan Sebastian: I’m grouped with someone who has a high faction rating with Avalon. I’ll hang out with you next time.
That seemed to end it by satisfying Trevor’s curiosity. For her patience, and because he simply wanted to do it, Victor kissed Zoe again at the conclusion of his messaging.
“Okay, all yours.”
Supposedly, the game designers had done their research by pulling information and scenes from popular horror movies of the time. Between a burned man wearing double razor gloves and a bulky zombie wearing a catcher’s mask, Victor and Zoe ran more in one night than they’d ever run during military training. Fortunately, the sylph’s natural ability to control the wind translated into a powerful haste spell. Victor practically flew down the poorly lit halls of the dilapidated house.
“Are there rewards for completing this?” he demanded once they stopped breathlessly in a quiet hallway. The realistic loss of stamina made him lean against her. “I don’t know if I’m having legitimate fun or if I’m too terrified to believe otherwise.”
It was definitely fun. With Zoe, he enjoyed an exhilarating freedom denied to him as a kid, since he’d had stolen his childhood from him and had to grow up too fast.
“Are you going to need a teddy bear tonight?” Her playful taunt accompanied a laugh. She gazed up and down the hallway warily. “We’re almost to the top floor anyway. That’s the goal.”
“Almost,” he repeated. “If another clown chases me through a room of torture devices, I’m holding you responsible,” he teased lightheartedly.
“I will humbly accept my punishment.” She reached over and took his hand.
“It’s not as bad as I’m making it out to be. That last level with the running doll was kind of fun. You know, once you stopped shrieking.” Victor grinned and intertwined their fingers together during the walk. Despite the avatar’s perfect nymph anatomy and airbrushed facial features, he could see hints of the real Zoe beneath it. In the way she smiled and her throaty chuckles. How she fidgeted sometimes when she thought he wasn’t looking.
“Twat. C’mon, we can finish this and then…Well, if you don’t have to go to sleep right away maybe we could watch a movie?”
“We had this talk before, hon. I don’t sleep much.”
“I didn’t wanna presume that you’d want more of my company.”
“I did tell you to call me today.”
The top and final floor featured a maze of spider webs they had to navigate. Victor had the final laugh upon the discovery that Zoe was fine with zombie clowns but absolutely petrified of tiny arachnids. He refused to let her quit and dragged her through.
Maybe they couldn’t enjoy a traditional date away from the Jemison, but in a way their virtual videogame had given the very thing they both needed: a night together away from their military responsibility.
***
Victor removed his darkening goggles and set aside his headset, but he remained reclined in the chair with his eyes closed.
Once he sat up, Victor primed the movie player and waited for her.
Eventually, the door chime announced her arrival, and he found her on the other side dressed in standard ship coveralls with a mild case of bedhead mussing her short hair. Victor fought back the urge to smooth down the dark strands at the nape of her neck.
“Sorry. I had to listen to Angela’s chatter before I could slip out,” she said after the door slid shut behind her.
“About?”
“Actually…” she laughed quietly and glanced upward. “It was about you. You’re sort of the dreamboat of the ship. I just nodded and said ‘uh huh’ and ‘I guess’ a lot.”
“Yeah, I sort of gathered. I spent my first three days bogged down by frivolous medical requests before Oshiro caught wind of it and put out word that any unnecessary sick calls would be visiting him personally in his office.”
“Yeah, see, I never heard the reasoning behind that. I just thought medical here ran a really tight ship. Made me nervous when I came in about my arm.”
“From that, I gather this means your roomies don’t know where you’ve gone to? Did they ask about last night?”
“No. I’m always taking off anyway since I’m a night owl. Besides, last night was personal and none of their business.”
“Sorry for leaving in the morning. I…” Couldn’t face you if you awoke regretting everything. “Anyway, I have snacks ready, too.”
She touched his forearm gently. “Thank you for leaving the note, Victor.”
Victor smiled easily. “I found a good movie on Cineweb in their Classics section. It’s only about 200 years old but recently remastered for the Holovision.”
“Only?” Her hand drifted away from his arm after a last passing sweep of her thumb. “Mind if I kick off my boots? I didn’t want to make a habit of coming to your quarters in my casual gear.”
“If you don’t, I’ll feel overdressed.”
Zoe left her boots by the door and lowered her coveralls, tying the sleeves around her waist. The cotton shirt beneath failed to hide the lack of an undergarment and was far from standard issue. Stylized flowers decorated the lower half of the soft, white cotton. Victor swept his gaze over her with appreciation, then patted the bed beside him.
The movie itself was an interesting mix of family values and romance filled with awkward sexual tension. The heroine’s family became overprotective jerks as the story’s main plot device, while the young lover floundered and failed in every effort to
please them.
Story of my life, Victor thought wryly. Before Ylona, he’d dated Hannah for years prior to popping the question. Her father, an admiral in the military, hated him on sight, and Victor had no doubt that her parents popped a bottle of expensive champagne to celebrate the end of the relationship.
Throughout the movie, Zoe and Victor engaged in idle chatter. Their friendly banter seemed to distract from the unspoken questions between them. After a time, Zoe nudged him forward to sit upright with his legs off the bed and then scooted around behind him to resume the massage she had started the night before.
“I’ve always wondered if this sort of behavior is common in real families.”
“What behavior?” she asked. She turned her head slightly, bringing her nose in a light skim against his neck. “Oh. Boyfriends sleeping in separate rooms before marriage?” Zoe laughed, and the huff of breath feathered across Victor’s cheek. Her closeness would have weakened his knees if they were standing. “Some do, yes. My folks did when my brother’s fiancée came to visit from across the country. Not that it mattered much, since I remember hearing them in the room next to mine in the middle of the night. They hit it off. It was like love at first sight for them.” She chuckled at her own memories. Her busy fingers stroked over his thigh until her thumb slid over the waist of his sweats.
The muddied memories of his parents warred with years of watching ideal families in movies. Victor remembered enough to know that he was loved, but he had missed out on the best parts of family life. Bringing home his first girlfriend. Learning to shoot from his dad. His mother and father watching him graduate medical school.
“Close your eyes, Victor,” she whispered against his ear, lips brushing the delicate curve of flesh.
Zoe’s capable hands slid over his thighs, down to his knees then back upward to his hips. Her fingertips skimmed and danced across his waistband but never breached their confines, stroking a light path over his burgeoning erection.
According to Ethan, it was the sort of stress relief Victor needed.
“Zoe, I don’t…” He wanted to warn her that she was wasting her time and that the inevitable panic attack would bring an abrupt end to her plans. If he’d known what was on her mind, he would have taken one of his anxiety pills. Given himself a stim shot. Something.
“Shhh…” she soothed, her hand dipping into his pants.
His abs tightened in anticipation, body stiff and tense against her, yet so very still that his chance to deny her passed by harmlessly. He had pride. So much of it, even if it had been shredded time and time again by Hannah over the course of their two year relationship. His anxiety attacks led to two incidents of failing to perform to her standards, but his ex-fiancée never allowed him to live it down. She told everyone who would listen.
“I can’t–” Her fingers felt warm against cool flesh, cupping him with such a welcoming touch that he shivered in delight and barely contained desire.
Victor couldn’t bear to speak the words out loud, to tell her that her effort was in vain, that he’d never be able to provide her what she wanted. He broke out into a cold sweat.
“Allow me to try,” Zoe pleaded softly. “I want to do this for you, but if you don’t we can stop. No questions asked.”
With enduring patience and rhythmic, gentle strokes, Zoe coerced Victor to stiffen under her tender ministrations. Her other hand freed his trapped cock, exposing him to the cool air. With another upwards stroke she lingered, swirled her thumb over the tip, and stroked back down again.
“Zoe… you’re wearing too much.”
“Would you like me to get undressed?” Her lips closed around his earlobe. Zoe’s kiss elicited a tremble from him, a shiver down his spine that seemed to race along every electrified nerve. The muscles of his body tensed in a wholly different way.
“Don’t tease me, Zo…” He wanted to admire another view of the body that had haunted his thoughts. It seemed like more than a day had passed.
“Would you like to undress me?” The slow pumping motion from her natural hand ceased and her moving weight shifted the mattress. Zoe stood up from the bed.
Victor closed his arms around her waist and drew her close, burying his face into the small valley between her full and perky breasts. “Why are you so kind to me?” Women of Zoe’s caliber came few and far between, littered amidst a history of selfish females. Maybe he attracted users like moths to a flame, drawing them to his gentle and sensitive personality. They saw past the shaky confidence that was his protective cover and honed in on the damage beneath.
“I’m rather sweet on you, Doc. Being mean isn’t in my general nature.”
“But you care,” he pointed out. He considered the flirtatious crew members who found a greater interest in his career choices than his actual personality. Leaning back again, he gazed up at her to hold eye contact.
“I do,” she replied in the same quiet tones. Her fingers threaded through his dark hair, trailing down to his nape then around to his jawline. “You’re remarkably easy to like. Anyone who doesn’t see that doesn’t deserve you.”
He unknotted the tied sleeves around her waist and let her coveralls slide down over her hips. Gravity took them the rest of the way, revealing the peach, lace-trimmed shorts beneath. The girlish color reminded him of her videogame avatar clothed in her colorful silks. He caught Zoe’s shirt by the hem and drew it smoothly upward.
“You’re beautiful to look at,” he told her in earnest. The peach shorts peeled down as easily as the rest of her clothes, so Zoe kicked them aside to join her shirt and coveralls.
“You make me feel beautiful.”
Zoe slid to her knees in front of him and curled her fingers into the waist of his disheveled sweats. Her eyes flicked up to him again, as if gauging his reaction. Victor struggled to retain his relaxed demeanor despite the hammering of his heart.
“Go ahead, hon.” Discreetly, he wiped his sweaty palms against the cotton sweats before Zoe tugged them to his ankles. She nestled her own naked body between his legs afterward and gazed up at him with affection.
“Zo, you don’t–”
“I know.” Her mouth grazed his inner thigh and Victor’s breath caught in his chest. “But I want to and if at any time you want me to stop, I will. No pressure, Victor.” Zoe’s lips whispered along his hard shaft before the moist heat of her mouth enveloped him. She placed him at the mercy of her lips, and he gladly surrendered to it.
With his head tilted back, a low groan passed Victor’s lips. Zoe’s mouth and tongue worked downward, nearly taking in his full length. It resulted in an involuntary thrust of his hips. In so few movements, she had drawn something from him so foreign, so uncharacteristic of his usual shying nature, that he felt inexperienced beneath her fingers.
Victor’s left hand fisted in her hair, the other hand grasping a tight handful of the silken bedsheets beneath him. She drew him to the brink with controlled movements, sliding her mouth up and down, only to slow each time his body rippled with tension.
He didn't rush or plead for her to go faster or deeper, and he didn't take matters into his own hand by guiding Zoe’s pretty face. Shyly, he lowered his eyes to her parted lips.
“So close,” he warned out in a gasp.
Her mouth slid off of him with a pop. “Don’t force it, Victor.” She nibbled the sensitive underside, where the beat of his heart thrummed. A teasing, eerily familiar nibble that set his body aflame with desire.
It was Victor’s undoing, the act that unraveled the remnants of his tightly held control. Her talented rhythm encouraged him to move in a subtle tempo matching her own. She seemed too intuitive of his needs to be true, hastening her touch, knowing always when to linger and when to tease, cradling his cock just right. Victor groaned out another unintelligible sound that could have been her name.
Their gazes held until he reached the pinnacle, when his head tilted back with his eyes squeezed shut in ecstasy. The pulse of orgasm seized him, tightening in his
loins to release in a sudden rush.
Tender kisses replaced the loss of her mouth, pressed to his rigid flesh. Her care and affection reduced him to putty in her hands.
Victor felt whole again. For as long as he could remember, he’d struggled with intimacy, and only a single woman displayed the patience Zoe freely gave him. Ylona. It felt wrong to think of her now while another woman’s lips pressed intimately against his inner thigh, but in that moment, he also realized one thing; Ylona would have approved of Zoe.
Elorans didn’t believe in Heaven, Hell, or any traditional afterlife, but they believed a surviving loved one deserved the chance to resume a happy existence. And Victor wanted so badly to be happy again.
He was definitely happy now. His climax was a pleasure and a triumph, a silent victory that he enjoyed as his chest heaved for air. He didn’t dare to move.
“Betcha sleep real good now,” Zoe said with a smile, her cheek pressed to his leg.
“Y…yeah,” he answered in a thick voice. The moment of urgency passed, leaving him blessedly spent. “Just a little drowsy.”
“You should rest then.”
“I will.”
But he’d rest more comfortably with her alongside him. When Zoe rose to her feet before him, standing nude in the sensual glow of the dimmed lighting, he wrapped one arm around her waist and drew her near. His lips pressed against her plump breast, then he turned his face to nuzzle her soft skin. “Stay tonight, Zo?”
“Will you be here when I wake up? I…” She kissed the top of his head and stroked her hand up his back. “I don’t have assignment tomorrow.”
“I do, but I think I can swing something.” Victor tugged her easily into the bed alongside him and arranged the blankets over them. He lay against the strong female marine, feeling her breathing, the shift of her body, and inhaling the scent of a woman who defied everything he had once thought regarding his female crew members. “Our chief medical officer sort of loves me, and I think this time, I don’t mind using a connection or two.”
