“Hold onto Eros for me, my sweet, while I check how wet you are for me?”
Excitement coursed through her veins and moisture flooded the tiny bit of lace masquerading as her underwear this evening.
“Elliot, we can’t. Someone will see.” She whispered the words, desperate to make him stop, or was that continue. Elliot ignored her. He curled her fingers around Eros’s arm and, with a sinful grin in her direction, kicked her legs apart.
She had no choice but to hang onto the statue’s arm, lest she’d fall. As it was she teetered precariously on her heels. Elliot dropped on his haunches and kissed her quivering tummy through the silk of her dress. His hands slid slowly up her inner thighs until they met at the sodden little triangle covering her slit. Hooking his thumbs under the elastic he pulled it out of the way and parted her labia. Cool air danced across her sensitive flesh, and Beth groaned.
“Elliot, we ca–an’t.”
He smiled up at her and held his fingers up for to see. They glistened with the evidence of her arousal, and she closed her eyes and let her head fall back when he used the thumb of his other hand to stroke her clit in lazy circles. Her whole body tensed and shook with the intense feelings he wrung out of her. The fact that mere yards away there was a whole room full of people just added to the delicious naughtiness of it all.
Elliot pushed his fingers into her tight channel and thrust in and out, pushing her to the brink of insanity. She rocked her hips onto those clever fingers, desperate for him to go faster, deeper.
“Elliot, please…”
He withdrew his fingers and she moaned, only for him to slide those wet digits into her mouth. Beth tasted herself mixed in with Elliot’s unique brand of crazy, and he grunted when she wrapped her tongue around his fingers and sucked hard. The scrape of his stubble across her neck awoke more of her oversensitive nerves, and he nibbled her earlobe, his voice a husky and urgent whisper in her ear.
“I’m going to fuck you now, and I want to hear you scream for me.” He bit down hard and Beth whimpered. Stepping away just far enough to adjust his clothing, he was back in an instant. He lifted one of her legs by the knee, opening her further for him, and he ran the thick tip of his cock along her slit. Without any further warning, Elliot thrust deep, filling her to the hilt, and he caught her scream of need in his mouth. One hand buried in her hair, the other on her thigh, he fucked her hard, angling his thrusts so that every move rubbed her clit. Beth yanked on Eros’s arm with such force she was surprised she didn’t break it. Not caring where they were or who might see them, she met him thrust by forceful thrust until they came together in one of their most explosive orgasms yet.
Beth did scream, the sound muffled by Elliot’s kiss, and he reached his own release with one last thrust hard enough to make the statue wobble.
“Beeeth. My sweet Beth.” His lust-filled groan settled perilously close to her heart, and she let go of Eros and hugged him close to her. If only she was his Beth.
“You lucky bitch.”
They both froze at the not-so-gentle tones that could only belong to Samantha. Sure enough when Beth opened her eyes she looked straight into Sam’s ice-cold glare, and Beth hastily lowered her leg. Embarrassment heated her cheeks when Sam’s husband appeared behind her and took in the scene with a smirk.
Beth pushed against Elliot, who was still deeply lodged inside her cunt, his dick pulsing with the last spurts of his release, and Elliot chuckled into her neck. His broad stature shielded her from exposure, but nonetheless it was obvious what they had been doing, the air around them filled with the unmistakable musk of sex. Elliot adjusted both their clothing and then turned around with a rueful grin in Beth’s direction.
“Enjoyed the show, did we?” he asked.
Beth wasn’t at all sure she had, because Samantha blinked rapidly. The woman looked on the verge of tears, in fact, and Beth almost felt sorry for her. Clearly all was not as it should be in her marriage to Oliver. Sure enough, Sam flinched when her husband said something to her. Without a word or even a glance in their direction, she turned about heel and tottered back to the ballroom, the click-clack of her heels an uneven staccato on the crazy paving under their feet.
“I would appreciate if you left with as little fuss as possible,” Oliver said. He enunciated each word with careful control, and it was only the tick in his jaw that gave his irritation away. “I do believe you have made your point quite succinctly this evening, Beth.”
A shiver of unease went down Beth’s spine, and suddenly she didn’t feel proud of herself at all. What must he think of her?
“I didn’t… I mean.” Her words faltered under the steady regard of Samantha’s husband, and Elliot grasped her hand.
“A point that was long overdue, I believe. Perhaps your wife needs a lesson on how to treat another human being. You seem to have her on a short leash, not short enough, clearly.”
“Elliot!” Beth pulled on his hand, willing him to just shut up. What had gotten into him tonight? There was no need to antagonize the other man further, but Elliot shook her hand off.
“It’s all right, my sweet. I’ve got this.” He turned his attention back to Barnett. “As it happens, we are leaving, and not because you order us to. We were leaving anyway. Thank you for an interesting time.”
The other man laughed—a short bark of a laugh that increased Beth’s uneasiness tenfold. He snapped his fingers, and two burly men appeared either side of him.
“We will see about that, won’t we? The rain in Spain does shine on the plane.”
Beth gasped, hearing the set of words that only Brian ought to know, and Elliot tensed. His head dropped, and he swayed before he seemed to recover. Beth rushed to slide an arm around his waist, amazed that he was still standing. The other Man-Droid had dropped like a sack of potatoes when Brian had uttered his set of safe words. Barnett had clearly expected Elliot to do the same, because he frowned and stopped his advancing goons with a wave of his hand.
“Elliot, are you okay?” Beth whispered the words into his ear, mindful of the intense way Barnett was watching Elliot’s reaction. “Elliot? Talk to me, what the hell is going on?”
She glared at Barnett when Elliot grunted in answer. He leant heavily on her, and Beth prayed they would make it out of there before he collapsed. There was no way she would be able to hold him up, unless he helped her, and somehow she just knew that having Elliot collapse in front of Barnett would not end well for either of them.
“Do you need some help there, Beth? Your boyfriend seems unwell all of a sudden.” Barnett’s smile didn’t reach his eyes, and he rocked back on his heels with a thoughtful expression on his face. Beth’s fingers itched to wipe that smirk off the other man’s features, but she had her hands full, just stopping Elliot from toppling them both onto the ground.
Help came from an unexpected quarter. Samantha reappeared and propped up Elliot’s other side, and Beth murmured her thanks. Her gaze locked with her old nemesis, and Sam nodded at her.
“Let’s get him out of here. My driver can take you both home.”
“Keep out of this, Samantha. You don’t know what you’re dealing with here.” Barnett barked his order, and Sam tensed but ignored him.
“Neither do you, and you’re making a scene. We can’t have that now, can we, dear husband?” She flicked a glance in his direction, and Beth held her breath. It was perhaps fortunate that some of the other guests had by now filtered out into the garden and were watching the unfolding scene with undisguised interest.
Barnett’s hands clenched into fists, but he didn’t do anything else to stop their slow and torturous process past the bystanders.
Samantha laughed in her best irritating manner, and for once Beth didn’t mind being the butt end of her jokes.
“It seems Bethany’s boyfriend here can’t hold his drink. Trust her to pick a lightweight. Coming through, coming through. Move it. We don’t want him to redecorate now, do we?” A ripple of laughter went through the as
sembled crowd, and a couple of the men offered their assistance to get Elliot to the driveway.
Beth didn’t dare look at him too closely for fear of what she would see. He was barely breathing. His skin had an unhealthy ashen tone, and he felt so damn cold. Somehow they managed to get him into the back of the car, and Sam pulled Beth close.
“Get him home as fast as you can. Oliver’s goons will be out soon enough. I’ll try and keep him busy, but you won’t have much time. I can’t believe he’s still alive. Call Brian and get him to sort him. He needs to disappear.”
Beth drew back in surprise.
“You know Brian?”
Sam smiled and drew herself up to her full height, her usual smirk back in place, as she looked Beth up and down.
“You’re not the only one who needs to scratch an itch. I should have known you wouldn’t actually manage to find yourself an actual man.”
She shoved Beth into the back of the car, and with a thump to the roof, they were on the move. Elliot slumped against her, and Beth burst into tears. He had stopped breathing.
Chapter Eight
“Well? What’s wrong with him? Tell me, dammit!” Beth glared at a puzzled-looking Brian. The drive back to her place had been the longest ever, and she had never been so grateful to see another human being in her entire life, when she’d spotted Brian waiting for them by the front door.
Lifeless as he was, Elliot was incredibly heavy and they’d had a devil of job maneuvering Elliot up the stairs to her flat. It was indeed fortunate that Timothy, Sam’s driver, was an ex body builder. Without his help they never would have managed it.
Elliot seemed locked in place, completely unresponsive. Brian had exposed his circuitry and reared back in surprise. The chip was so deeply embedded he couldn’t even tell where it had originally been. He couldn’t seem to remove it, or do any of the adjustments he needed to.
After half an hour of fiddling inside Elliot’s arm and head—seeing the top of his head come off was a sight that would haunt Beth forever—Brian had to admit defeat.
He sat down with a thump and took his glasses off, looking utterly dejected.
“I don’t know what to do, Beth.”
“What do you mean you don’t know what to do? You must know. He’s your…” Beth stopped, unable to bring herself to call Elliot an android. He was so much more than that, damn it. “He’s Elliot. Brian, this is Elliot. You have got to do something. Anything, please?”
Beth fought the tears, and she took Elliot by the shoulders and shook him with all her might. He was so very cold, and he looked… he looked like a corpse. She released him with a sob, and Elliot’s body slid sideways in slow motion, until he lay half on, half off the settee.
Brian pulled her into a hug.
“I’m sorry. He has a habit of getting under your skin, and that was even before I inserted the emotion chip.”
Beth sniffed and pushed Brian away. He smiled and continued.
“Something happened to the chip. I can’t even begin to explain what. It’s now so integrated into his system, there is no way I can extract it. Tell me exactly what you were doing before this happened.”
Beth fought the blush creeping into her cheeks, and Brian smiled.
“I see. You were intimate, I take it? At the party?” He smiled at her tiny nod. “Certainly sounds as though he was in top form. Elliot has always had a mischievous streak. Something that I didn’t program into him. He just developed it. I should have foreseen that giving him actual emotions would cause problems, but I was fond of Elliot, and he so wanted to be more like a human.”
Beth didn’t like the sound of that was.
“Was? What is that supposed to mean? Was? You can fix him, right? You’re not giving up on him, are you? Brian, answer me.”
Brian turned to face the window, and the defeated slump of his shoulders turned her heart to stone.
“You can’t just give up on him. There must be something you can do. You’re like a genius at this. Everyone says so.”
Brian gave her a weak smile, and Beth threw a cushion at him. “Damn it, be all genius like and fix it. I want him back. I want my Elliot.”
She clamped a hand over her mouth in horror at what she had just said, and the quiet understanding in Brian’s eyes proved her undoing.
“Oh, Beth, I am so sorry,” he said. “You’ve gone and fallen for him, haven’t you? I was afraid this might happen, but Jerry was adamant you wouldn’t. We have so fucked this up for you. I have fucked up. Me and my stupid ideas.”
Beth opened her mouth to argue, but the words wouldn’t form past the lump of misery clogging her throat, so she sat next to Elliot instead and cradled his head in her lap. A tear splashed on his face, followed by another, and Beth sniffed and wiped them off his face.
“There must be something you can do?”
Brian shifted from foot to foot looking even more uncomfortable.
“I would need him in my lab for that, and we haven’t got the time to get him there. They will be here soon.”
“Who the fuck are they, and come to think of it, why did Oliver Barnett know Elliot’s safe words? What haven’t you told me, Brian?”
“It’s a long story and I don’t think we’ll have the time for it.”
“Damn it, Brian, then make time. I deserve to know what has been going on. I signed up to this stupid trial, and I was supposed to get an uncomplicated fuck buddy, not—”
She couldn’t continue, she just couldn’t. To say it out loud would make it real, and what was left of her heart would splinter into too many pieces to ever find their way back to each other.
“Robots can’t die, and that’s what he is. You just have to fix him.” If she said it often enough then surely it would become true. It had to. She’d only just found Elliot, and she never even told him how she felt, too hung up on the issue of his not being human.
“You’re right—robots can’t die, but Elliot is not a robot. He is a feeling, sentient, self-evolving Man-Droid as close to human as I could ever hope for him to be. He has free will, and I’m afraid he has chosen to self-destruct, rather than fall into the wrong hands.”
Beth looked from Brian to Elliot in disbelief.
“Why would he do that? What the fuck are you going on about?”
There was the screech of car tires out on the street, followed by several thuds, as car doors opened and shut. Brian glanced out of the window and paled.
“They’re coming. I haven’t got time to explain, and it’s probably best that you don’t know the full story. Even Jerry doesn’t know it all. It was safer for her not to. Just stick to what you know. You signed up for the sex-android trial, and you don’t know anything else, because—”
The front door popped off the hinges, and the room filled with smoke, interrupting Brian mid-sentence. Acrid smoke filled Beth’s lungs, and her eyes streamed and swelled until she couldn’t see much past dark shapes filling her living room. She fought against the hands pulling Elliot’s lifeless body from her grasp. She kicked and screamed, but it was useless. There were too many, and they were too strong. Something hit the back of her head and the world went black.
* * * *
Beth groaned against the bright light, forcing her eyes open. She tried to swallow past the thorns stabbing her throat, and winced at the brass band which seemed to have taken up residence in her head.
“She’s waking up. Get her some water.” The deep voice seemed to boom around the room, and Beth gagged on the water seemingly being forced down her bruised throat. She had no choice but to swallow, and the ice-cold liquid did soothe the fire in her gullet.
A strong arm round her shoulders pulled her up into a sitting position, and Beth’s stomach heaved at the rolling sensation. Again her eyes were pried open, some sort of cooling salve was applied, and then that annoying bright light blinded her vision again. Some more prodding and poking followed, by the end of which Beth was ready to commit murder, but her vision had cleared and the pound
ing in her head receded to a more manageable level.
“How are you feeling now?” She squinted up at the owner of that voice, a short, round, balding man with glasses, who she presumed must be some kind of doctor. At least he wore the white coat and had the required stethoscope dangle from his thick neck. He cupped her chin and ran his other hand over the back of her head. Beth winced as he hit a sore spot, and he clucked his tongue.
“When will they learn to not be so heavy-handed? Would make my job a damn sight easier.” He released her and signed a form attached to a clipboard, and Beth got a chance to take in her surroundings. She seemed to be in some form of holding cell. Bright artificial light filled the small space. It contained nothing but the bed she’d been lying on, a table and chair, and a toilet and sink in one corner. Instead of bars she was surrounded by glass like some sort of damn goldfish. Beth couldn’t see out, but she was pretty damn sure whoever had her, and it had to be the mysterious they, Brian had been so worried about, would be able to see in.
It was enough to make her blood boil. How bloody dare they?
“Where the fuck am I, and what gives you lot the right to burst into my home and abduct me? There are laws against kidnapping.”
The man in front of her took a step back, and she could have sworn he was about to laugh, when a disembodied voice intervened over the intercom.
“Excellent, the lady seems fully recovered to me. Bring her to the interview room, Doc.”
Doc sighed and offered Beth his hand to get up. She ignored him and scrambled to her feet by herself. The stone floor felt cold under her bare feet, and she realized with a start that she was still in the little black dress she had worn to the reunion. Thoughts of the party brought Elliot to the forefront of her mind, and she swallowed the threatening tears away.
Somehow she knew she had to hide her affection for the Man-Droid, Brian’s dire warnings still ringing in her ears.
Man-Droid the Orgasmatron (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 6
