“This is.”
Her robot whispered doubts. He wouldn’t trust you. He’ll lead you to a false security center or demand to know why.
But Aris dumped her into the heart of his command center with access to the entire government dome complex. She knew because she had already cased his complex and broken in here herself.
Her hands flickered across the familiar controls, comprehending their use with the logic of her processors. Discomfort flared across her consciousness. Without a thought for his own safety, he had given her control of the whole residence. She could open any door or lock any window, flood any room or siphon out all the oxygen. He shouldn’t trust her. He shouldn’t.
He was watching her paused hands.
She met his eyes.
So blue. Dark blue, threaded with black navy and lightened with threads of fine baby gossamer, and irrefutably human. He met her without the playboy’s smile. Knowing that he had just opened his trust to her, and equally knowing that she could have found it herself. Both silently acknowledging that she would use it against him.
“It’s not like you couldn’t kill me where I stand,” he said.
The truth sliced through her.
She struck the emotion from her body, aided by her inner robot. Yes, she could kill him where he stood. No, neither of them needed a reminder of it.
He noted her manipulation of one camera to the street gardens. “What are we looking at?”
“A street sweeper.”
They watched its mindless patrols. Controlled by a carefully constructed algorithm, it should never vary.
But this one did. Every two hundred thousand turns, it shifted unnaturally. Human directed. Or robot.
“It’s demonstrating intelligence,” she said, for his benefit. “Surveillance of some kind.”
His eyes narrowed a fraction. “And it’s not one of yours?”
“Not under my personal direction.”
He checked the ornate pendant chronometer, his face reflecting displeasure. The staff chimed; some guests had already arrived, and more would be coming soon.
“Fine. You can stay here.”
Elation at the depth of his trust gave way to a strange disappointment. It couldn’t be that she actually wanted to put on one of the dresses and attend his party? Pretend herself an invited guest, entirely human, let into a rich inner circle for the one and only time of her life?
She shoved the unfitting envy aside. “Thank you, boss.”
His lips flattened. “That doesn’t mean you can let me get offed in my own house.”
He tapped the screens, bringing up not one or two cameras, but every camera in the entire house, filling the walls with hundreds of images, constantly changing, constantly updating.
“If you see anything suspicious, come and get me right away.”
She took a deep breath. “Demanding.”
“What? Can’t you handle it?”
Although keeping watch on every monitor in the house simultaneously would take all of her concentration, she most certainly could. “I was commenting on your manners. I thought humans prefer to say please.”
“Don’t let my lack of pleasantries hurt your nonexistent feelings.”
She rested her wrists on the control panels. “Don’t let my nonexistent feelings hurt yours.”
He paused in the doorway.
She lifted her chin. Challenge accepted and volley returned.
He returned to her side as though drawn by a magnet to her controlling iron.
She opened her mouth to question his movement when his palm cupped her cheek.
Her whole body froze.
Let him touch you. It means nothing.
Her robot was wrong.
A hundred thousand unmistakable feelings rushed through her, but they all held the same signature. His palm felt rough and masculine and real. It bypassed all of her defenses and touched her straight in the center of her chest. Just like his blue, blue eyes saw straight through the glass lenses into the core of her soul. Which she didn’t have. Until he was looking at her, and then she did have it, lit like a rose-entwined party lamp, shining from within.
“Stop it,” he said.
She licked her lips. The movement drew his gaze down, on hers, magnetic. “Stop what?”
“That.”
His thumb stroked the crease of her lips. They parted beneath his gentle touch. His eyes darkened to a smoky blue smolder. Pounding awareness flushed between her legs. A thousand signals passed between their too-close bodies. His face tilted at the perfect angle to cover her mouth, and hers tilted up, ready to receive him.
Let him. Use his weakness—
No. She craved his dangerous touch. Giving into her pounding desire threatened all of her tight controls to the breaking point.
Guest arrivals jangled. Summoning him back to his playboy world, and shuttering her into the safety of the control room.
That same thought seemed to flicker across his mind.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and physically stepped back. The fires between them banked as coldly and deliberately as though extinguished with liquid nitrogen. When he opened his eyes again, he was cool as business.
“Keep watch on me.” He wheeled at the door and lanced her with his accusation. “Don’t look at me like that again.”
“Look at you like wha—”
The control room door sealed on her question.
She looked down at the controls and prepared to take over observation.
Someone had broken into the security booth and re-enabled all of the settings she had spent the morning disabling.
Aris was losing it.
He strolled between his guests, pleasant and attentive, but all he could think about was the passion boiling beneath his robot assassin’s icy crust in the security room.
Her sweet lips had parted as she looked up at him with her liquid brown eyes, begging him for a kiss. Innocent, as though she didn’t even know what she did to a man. And she begged it from him, the man, and not the idealized public figure. Her body cried out wishes her mind didn’t seem to hear, and he had almost forgotten himself and given in to her unspoken wish. Would a sensual kiss her body cried for have broken his arm? It might have been worth it.
And now she was watching him. On the security cameras, from every angle.
His cock throbbed.
His smiles widened, his gestures became more grandiose, and his display impressed his guests beyond all previous performances.
Even the census bureau director noticed.
“I’m glad to see you so fully recovered.” She smiled shyly behind a glass of violet liquor, the gentlest and mildest party drink. “We were all horrified that something might have happened to you on our very steps.”
He laughed and nudged her in the ribs. “I don’t suppose guilt inspired you to look into your files again and find the information we discussed?”
She tightened her arms and her smile. “I would help you if I could, Governor.”
“I know you would.” He sighed through his forced smile. “I don’t hold it against you.”
She slowly relaxed again and sipped her liquor.
Honestly, he knew she spoke the truth.
His rivals had gotten to her first.
A decade earlier, just after the last promotions, when he took over from his father as the new governor, he had heard whispers. Sons and daughters with the right friends, from the right families, in the right districts, could stumble into power while others who toiled day after day reached only as far as the import/export desk or the shuttle maintenance crew.
He hadn’t cared.
But as the years passed and the injustice befalling his equally “unimportant” half sisters gnawed into his lazy, entitled mind, he began to care. And to research. And to save reports.
So strange that in the last few years, certain districts should have incredible turns of fortune not attributable to any obvious mechanism. Hundreds of family members s
uddenly winked out of existence in one district and emerged in another, week after week. The domes allowed for such movement, but didn’t jostle nearly so often as the census data suggested. He had checked the historical satellite footage.
No one owned the Hyeon family.
And yet, someone with deep pockets and deeper motives clearly did.
Everyone knew the Robotics Faction was harmless. For the right price, any piece of technology could be bought. They held no human notion of good or evil, right or wrong, just or unjust. They craved nothing for themselves.
Except a few seemingly unimportant things. Random minerals. Access to interdict mining zones. His half sisters’ lives….
“I can’t help but notice your lovely historical portraits,” the census director ventured when his silence finally forced her to fill the conversation. “All the former governors.”
“Indeed.” He strolled with her to the portraits on the far end. “The first governors were elected fairly, by popular agreement.”
She deflected his gambit. “So different from your father, who illegally held the governorship and the solar system seat until you ascended, preventing your uncle from securing one of those positions for your cousins.”
He steered her away from recent governors, every one of whom had ascended under a cloud of scandal. “I imagine returning to our origins.”
“Nostalgia is the sweetest liquor.”
“I hope I am not drinking alone.” He plucked a gorgeous blood lily and handed it to her.
She held the flower to her nose, enchanted yet still sparkling with clarity. “Your hangover would find you voted out of office.”
He turned at the end of the gallery, at the marble doorway to his private gardens. “Would that really be so bad?”
She licked her lips. Silhouetted by rose-scented lamps, the gentle seduction of the night nudged away such practical questions.
He set her half-drunk liquor on the windowsill, wove the blood lily into her soft, short hair, and took her cool hands in both of his. “Help me. We will create a new government based on our efforts, fair and honest.”
She patted his hands and stared him straight in the eye. “It is a lovely dream.”
And he knew their discussion was over. He had failed. The secrets of how his cousins had manipulated census data with the Robotics Faction remained locked in her head. He would not have it tonight.
He could work harder. Ply her with more exotic liquors and desserts, stroll with her under romantic lamps, entice her to step into the fantasy that she was governor and he her adoring fan.
But her clear-eyed gaze convinced him that he didn’t have it in him tonight.
It was the accident. He was still sore and tired. It was the accident, and not the woman watching him on the cameras above. Sweet and innocent, and firing his imagination with all sorts of delicious impossibilities and hot-blooded desires.
He squeezed the census director’s hands. Business-like. “Every great dream starts with a single citizen.”
She nodded cautiously, clearly having expected something different. “I’m only a worker. I see census data, nothing else.”
“A single miner once stopped an invasion of pirates.”
She laughed aloud.
Others turned and looked at them, and the whispers started behind hands and furtive glances. They assumed he had chosen his lover for the night. And he had, so to speak. Unfortunately, she hadn’t chosen him back.
She modulated her mirth. “I hope you aren’t likening the upcoming promotions to a raid by ruthless pirates. For a hundred generations, the governor seat has been controlled by the night district. You can’t want to lose.”
He fully expected to lose without her assistance. “Maybe it’s time for a new dawn.”
For one long moment, her expression wavered again. Longing, hope.
Her brows folded into sadness. “I have children to consider, Governor.”
“Give them a future they can be proud of.”
“I want to ensure they live to see that future.”
“So do I.”
She smiled sadly. Once again, he had the sense that he could ply it out of her with food and wine. But in the morning, she would go back to everyone she had betrayed. And he knew exactly what it was like to lose beloved ones.
He squeezed her fingers. “Enjoy your evening. Walk along the fountain path. A nature-lover like yourself will appreciate it.”
She started to turn away.
Then she turned back. “It’s nice to be able to talk to you directly.”
Everyone went through his security, which was why choosing a trustworthy replacement for Joensen, his former intermediary, consumed him. “Yes. I invest heavily in my security.”
“Your security, as well as your secretary.”
“My secretary?”
“The secretary we confirmed your itinerary with yesterday, as instructed.”
But he hadn’t taken a secretary to the census bureau yesterday.
Someone in his secretarial pool fed his movements to his enemies. And then his enemies planned his assassination.
She touched his hand, the blush high in her cheeks for the secret she had just knowingly slipped. “I hope that you sleep well. Someday, I would like to share your dream.”
He held her hands in his. “Thank you.”
The census director startled all of the partygoers by turning from the irresistibly sexy governor, entering the gardens she had long admired, and walking away.
He stood, stunned, where she had left him. His empty hands fell to his sides.
Son of a fucking bitch. One of his secretaries, who he trusted as closely as his handpicked security team, who overheard all of his secrets and transcribed the records of his most classified meetings, was working against him.
And that secretary was working against him with the assistance of someone in his security team.
Darvin couldn’t have plotted so successfully. He didn’t have the patience.
The noose tightened a single notch around his neck.
Maybe he was working with a new associate. A smart department head hoping to elevate her line and inch herself a little closer to the government seat.
Either way, Aris would not let this betrayal go unpunished. And he had the means to do something about it.
He stared up at the nearest camera. Its cold, clear lens recorded his fury. He would identify the culprits within his house. They would face justice. And he would trace a line back to the enemies bankrolling his betrayers. His cousins, or someone else. Whoever they were.
His personal robot would help him. Or else.
Resa watched the party unfold with mixing emotions.
No. Not emotions. She caught her error before her robot did. She watched the party and experienced mixed sensations. Sensations such as hunger, jealousy, and disgust.
The excess of the guests disgusted her. Exotic drinks knocked from tables, expensive food mashed into the carpet, and overt advances on Aris filled her with scorn. Scorn for the pitiable who threw themselves at a man who looked down on them. Scorn at the arrogant peacock who created a worshipful altar upon which he invited their worthless adulation.
Why should she care who caressed his strong jaw or wove their fingers into the silken locks she longed to examine? She certainly didn’t care that he rewarded their impudence with a rich laugh and a teasing kiss of those same fingertips.
She turned to the cold logic of her job: dealing with the break-in, once again disabling the Faction recordings and reverting the governor’s security to her commands.
Who had broken in? How was it possible?
It doesn’t matter, her robot told her. You must give the Faction control of the planetoid as soon as they can connect.
Once the Faction placed a satellite booster in the upper atmosphere and connected it to their nearest hub, the central mainframe would assume control of Aris’s complex instantly via a faster-than-light relay. The mainframe would drill deeper i
nto his defenses than Resa could plumb. If the rogue had put her slippery fingerprints in his residence, the mainframe would find them.
But it would take a few hundred sleepless hours to initiate. The Faction had never infiltrated so far into human space. Why bother to place an FLT relay? Now, the rogue’s criminal actions made their incursion necessary.
It still didn’t explain who had broken in under her nose. Deeply unsettled, she installed unbreakable security and recording measures. Now the only one who could touch anything was her.
Resa returned her attention to the party.
Guests dispersed to the garden walks, the art galleries, the kitchens. One would-be thief modeled the dresses Aris had shown her earlier; she activated a subtle anti-theft light to remind the courtier to change back into his clothes before leaving. Others she wished would remain clothed instead dispensed with every scrap and yielded to base urges with mindless abandon.
Aris, ever the perfect host, flitted between groups and inspired ever greater heights of excess.
Honestly, she saw nothing attractive in him. Whatever confusion controlled her circuits in his presence, she broke free of her interest at this safe distance, behind a soundless screen.
Tracking his night exhausted her mind nearly as much as it obviously exhausted his injured body. After the last guest disentangled and began to depart, Resa swept the rooms for secreted listening devices or conveniently “lost” implants.
Aris was kissing cheeks and trading smiles with the sloppy, satisfied guests when he saw her.
Electricity raced over her skin. Her heart thudded in her chest.
She sucked in a breath and forced herself to calm.
He continued his farewells. But she knew he had seen her. And the slight redness tingeing his high cheekbones burned his awareness of her just as strong as she was aware of him.
Then the last guest had departed with the household staff, his bedroom stood empty, and she didn’t know what to say, but the pulsing awareness of his eyes on her forced something, anything, out her mouth.
“Your parties are unnecessarily extravagant.”
His expression shifted to playboy arrogance. “I planned it to impress you.”
“I would be more impressed with the location of the rogue.” She righted a fallen urn and moved toward a broken vase.
Liberation's Vow (Robotics Faction #3) Page 7
