Resa leapt from the dome to a party light, landing on the fragile glass with perfect balance. The glass remained silent and intact. She leapt off it again, crossing the garden overhead, a silent shadow across an empty landscape.
Her brother had taught her the value of a spartan military life. A life of logic independent from crippling emotion, such as the Robotics Faction now promised her. They hadn’t had much, but they hadn’t wanted much either.
At least… she thought so. She couldn’t remember.
What she did remember was that she would give everything, her metal body and undying soul, to be back with her brother, in the past, together once again.
Resa slammed her inner door closed on those jagged memories before the pill crawled up her throat and choked her.
Control, her robot soothed, responding to the unnatural influx of feeling.
She gave herself over to the robot gratefully. It cut off her emotions like a knife to a nerve ending, slicing straight to numb. Serenity floated over her mind and over her garden. Here, Aris’s imprint pressed upon her his luxurious taste in beauty. A beauty he strangely claimed she, too, possessed—
She needed to stop thinking about Aris.
What was he doing, trusting her with all of his security? Sure, he said that she could kill him anytime she wished. But just because she was capable of biting didn’t mean he put his hand in her mouth and baited her.
Of course, he seemed to enjoy baiting her.
Against her desire, her robot forced her to review the events in Aris’s bedroom.
He stepped apart from the widow and, after a few angry words, saw her to the exit. Resa traced the woman’s departure. He ran a hand through his hair, looking wrecked like a severely injured man should. Was he just tired? No, he had seen through the widow’s black lace to the spider underneath. Which meant he would seek his satisfaction elsewhere.
He looked directly into her security camera.
Her heart thumped in her chest. Warmth caressed her hidden places, unleashing teasing desires. He didn’t see her—saw only the lens—and yet, the pure shot of his sexiest disheveled intensity stole her breath and screamed for her to go to him, now.
Control, her robot reminded her.
Resa deliberately turned away from the bedroom, where she knew he was lying down to rest, and instead threw herself into securing his complex.
Thoughts like these must have broken the last z-class android’s controls and loosed her torrents of rage, rage that turned like red pinwheels through the swathes of her victims. No sane creature could have created the six hundred years’ worth of revulsion lodged deep in Resa’s belly, where she buried the memories.
There are many acceptable ways to complete an assignment, her robot said.
She had learned about them in the initial training, before being sent here. Say her target was a man walking his exotic pet land octopus. She could shoot the man. She could drive the land octopus crazy so it killed the man. She could blow up the park. All were acceptable ways to complete her assignment.
But according to the black morass of memories buried in the deepest pit of Resa’s robotic stomach, Zenya’s favorite way to complete such an assignment was to drive the man crazy, make him barbecue the neighbor’s exotic pet, and then blow up ten city blocks.
Her human was weak. She wanted to disobey, like you, her robot explained, calm and oblique. She needed to release her emotions while she completed her assignments.
Resa shuddered and buried those memories deeper.
She was not like Zenya. Resa did not have feelings.
When she finished her training, she would keep control of her emotions. She wouldn’t turn into that.
Good, her robot said. The Faction abhors waste. We will accomplish our goals based on logic.
Resa picked her way across the external complex walls spraying anti-climb “slick,” an oily coating that dried to an untouchable slippery surface. Not even robots could sneak into Aris’s complex now.
Not that she was deliberately trying to secure Aris from Faction agents. No, that would be going against her assignment, which was impossible. Her robot assured her. Other Faction agents were watching and would take over if she failed, no matter how much she might wish it.
She catwalked past the street sweeper. One too-early turn, another. Stalking her, following her. Her skin crawled.
She liberally coated that wall with slick.
In the morning, although the sky still sparkled with eternal darkness, she dropped into Aris’s window for his rousing. He looked bruised and battered, but better rested. The smile teased her with rich and powerful promises, promises she longed to make him keep.
“I assume you were watching out for my interests,” he said, mocking her absence.
“Voyeurism wasn’t in your job description,” she returned.
“Well, lucky for you, you are about to become an active participant.”
She didn’t like the new sparkle in his too-charming eyes or the curl of smile that said she was about to have more “activity” than she desired.
“I have new information on who is trying to kill me.”
“Since I left? How resourceful.” She did not respond to the uncharacteristic stab of jealousy. Even though she knew he had spent the night alone. “Who is it?”
“Someone who can’t be caught by any deterrence or enforcement on this planet. We’ll do reconnaissance at the performance reviews today.”
“Have you considered avoiding the places your killers will congregate?”
His jaw clenched, but his smile covered over the slight gesture so quickly she had to replay it in her mind to be certain she saw it. “No one wants to affect the bottom line. The one place I’m safe from family assassins is in the conference rooms.”
“Not from jealous lovers.”
He raised a brow. “I have no lovers. Everything I do is work.”
“In that case, you redefine taking your work home with you.” He enticed it into his bedroom and seduced it there, keeping it captive to wave after wave of pleasure.
Or so she imagined.
Not that she should imagine anything.
He tossed her a devilish grin. “Sleeping with the enemy is the best way to learn about them.”
A flicker of interest lit along her body. His flirtation unnerved even a robot.
She killed the sensation. “Or it’s just foolhardy.”
“If fear rules me, my enemies have won.” He cut his idealism short. “Anyway, I don’t fear an assassination, but I am certain the people behind it will be present. We may catch which department head sponsored it, manipulated by one of my cousins.”
“They’re unlikely to speak where they might be so easily overheard. Especially if you’ve brought your head of security along.”
“You’re exactly right.” He cocked his imaginary pistol at her. “That’s why you’re about to be upgraded to my private secretary. Now strip.”
Aris tossed the secretary’s gray uniform on the floating glass table and called up the other accoutrements. The clothes were easy, simple and well cut, with a minimum of fuss. He had always understood clothes, unconsciously memorizing textiles with one touch.
The functional equipment was more a mystery. Did secretaries record the proceedings on clear oculars or scrolls? He reviewed images of the last promotions and sent for a folder.
He turned around, and Resa was still standing in the same spot, in her flight suit, expressionless.
Not entirely expressionless. A vague sense of something crossed… not her face, but her body. A flicker of disappointment.
Disappointment? No, he projected the emotion from his illicit desires. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not certain of your strategy.”
“You put on the uniform,” he held it out to her, “and follow my car to the star chamber, and trail behind me all day until you hear someone discussing specific plans to make me dead. Then you report those plans to me, and we prevent it f
rom happening.”
“I can easily do so as your personal security officer.”
“As much as I enjoy you guarding my body,” he smiled at her flattening expression, “weaponry isn’t allowed in the grounds and people have a tendency to clam up when security is around while they say practically anything in front of head secretaries.”
“An oversight,” she noted.
“Perk of the uniform. It matches half the decor.” He held it out to her again.
She still neglected to take it. “The last assassination attempt occurred in your vehicle.”
“My greatest risk will be whatever terrible idea my detractors concoct to challenge my authenticity.”
Every time he survived a near-fatal “accident,” his cousins declared him an imposter and spent half a meeting attempting to reverse his recent “questionable” actions.
“I thought that was why you broadcast your survival.”
“Yes, that was the basis of their last authenticity claim. ‘Why didn’t you immediately broadcast your survival? Only an imposter would forget to do that.’ I’m sure if I give the gubernatorial seat to one of my cousins on my first breath, the challenge would, miraculously, never cross their lips.”
“And what do you expect me to do about it?”
“Identify if either of my cousins are actually not trying to kill me.”
She blinked at him.
He sighed. “I can dream. Identify which of my secretaries is working with my cousins so we can use his double-cross to spread lies.”
“I can do that without impersonating a secretary.”
“I want to see you in the uniform.”
She hesitated. “Why?”
“Why not?” He grinned because he knew it made her uncomfortable, and he enjoyed every chance to shake her impervious shell. “Any actual security threat, I am sure you can handle even if you were stripped naked.”
She took the uniform and held it to her chest.
He waited for her to put it on.
She stared at him. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Do you always watch your head of security change clothes?”
“Rarely.”
She held the uniform without moving.
Realization burst upon him. She guarded her modesty.
He turned his back on her and moved to the power chair, lifted a mug, and waited for the nanobots to make him a coffee. The slight rustle of fabric indicated she had finally acquiesced to his plan. Good.
Her modesty struck him like an unusual tease. Modesty was such a quaint, ordinary reaction between two virtual strangers. The guests who entered his bedrooms practically threw their clothes at him on entry.
Her shyness shot him back, almost against his will, to the time when things in his life were ordinary. His schoolwork projects on topics of his choosing, his mother and stepfather inviting him into their comfortable home, and his adorable little half sisters who loved him like all the moons and stars.
In return for their kindness and love, he had betrayed them.
He set down his coffee untasted and turned back.
She was just sealing up the front breast and collar. Supple, creamy skin disappeared beneath the starched exactitude of the secretarial mien.
Resa lifted a brow. Silently chastising him, as though to ask if he were incapable of waiting. Such a normal response. Such an ordinary, normal reaction to being interrupted while getting dressed.
“Here, your knot.” He adjusted the epaulet almost without thinking.
She froze.
He was about to apologize, but her next reaction stopped him. Her blush. Creeping up the delicate lines of her neck, flushing warmth across her cheeks, tingeing even her ears. A flush opened up her pores, seeming to waft a scent of pheromones that hooked under his skin and dragged him to her.
So tempting.
And such subtle curves, almost hidden by the blocky lines of the stiff collar. The length of her neck, the gentle curve where it intersected her small shoulders. The swell beneath her chest cordage, and the shapely narrowing at her waist. That was a woman’s waist, not overly showy, but defiantly feminine.
His cock reacted. Fuck. And he had been so tired up to now.
She was not a human, no matter what she looked like.
Although she had said that one part of her was human.
She pulled away and adjusted her last button. “Thank you.”
He cleared his throat. “Sure.”
His security arrived at the door. She collected her secretarial accoutrements and followed him down the halls.
“I want you with me all day,” he told her, his voice as uncharacteristically rough as his confusion-eating strides. “When I call, you come.”
She nodded behind her clear oculars. The day’s schedule printed backward, facing her, on the inside. She looked more like a secretary than his secretaries.
He needed all his wits to force fair promotions and to find out who was behind the effort to kill him. And all he wanted to do was press her up against a wall and see how low that blush extended.
Fuck.
He shoved out into the star-spattered darkness. “Our one goal is to finish the promotions today. Any delay hurts the entire family’s profit and gives our would-be assassin more opportunity to kill me.”
“Don’t you find it odd that you’re expecting an assassin you know will kill you to protect you from someone else who might?”
“You seem to forget exactly how much time I spend surrounded by people who are actively plotting to make me dead.” He grinned with all his teeth.
She regarded him with that sexy coolness that told him his clever performance was better saved for a sweet, naive damsel who fell victim to it. “What’s the phrase? Oh yes. ‘You’ve got a lot of balls,’ Aris Hyeon Antiata.”
“You should see my cock.”
She raised that sweet, delicate brow. So unimpressed. So incredibly, intensely distracting.
Fucking hell. This was going to be a long day.
Chapter Six
Palatial, gold-limned, and iridescently bejeweled, the head office of Seven Stars glimmered in its own starlight. Columns disappeared into waterfalls that tinkled into marblestone fountains, glittering its wealth in lush defiance of the barren surface.
Resa’s hover car followed the governor’s car into the dazzling entrance, and her cohort trailed the governor’s detail to the packed conference arena.
Her robot brain analyzed threats.
Her human persona gaped in awe at the magnificence.
The founders’ images, stylized in rare metals and brilliant paints, glimmered in a solar system of precious imported stone and encrusted the ceiling. The floor beneath glowed with a later-added holograph of the corporation whose reach in trade agreements had largely benefited them: the Antiata family crest, a fist erupting a sun.
Aris faced his private secretarial booth as his personal fitters finished attaching a ceremonial cape over his gold robes. “You are all here today because I trust you.”
The words traveled like a signal along her arms. Trust her? Lies. She wasn’t the only one in the secretarial booth actively betraying him.
And yet, she longed to make his words truth. Why couldn’t she let him go and pursue the rogue? Why did the Faction insist on his death?
It is the assignment.
Those words fomented a silent revolution. A revolution she successfully hid from her all-powerful, all-controlling robot. A revolution that lodged, deeply and permanently, in her heart.
But they would not distract her from protecting Aris today. She smoothed her plain, woven suit.
“I trust you to take note of anything, anything at all, significant to the proceedings. We’re deciding lives today. Make your decision count.”
The governor turned away.
One of the secretaries shifted, unconsciously tugging at his collar. Resa focused on that movement. He saw her notice, colored, and looked away.
; With so much money involved that people were willing to assassinate the top officials, lesser lives held no significance.
With the Faction pursuing a secret agenda, all lives—hers, the rogue’s, and certainly Aris’s—held no significance. She curled her hands into fists. Unless she fought Faction orders and made their lives matter.
Aris climbed to the raised dais in the center of the conference arena and assumed his seat at the head of the conference table; department heads claimed the chairs around him; and the rest of the representatives squished into the gigantic arena below. Twin empty seats showed his murderous cousins had slept in. Nothing interrupted the morning’s consecutive presentations delineating the economic state of the planetoid.
Between presentations, Aris glanced at the secretarial booth. One secretary edged away from his notice. Aris narrowed, accurately identifying her selection for a traitor, and shifted to her to confirm it.
They locked eyes.
A strange, burning heat kindled between her breaths. Sexual, slick, sweet. She shouldn’t feel it, and yet she couldn’t stop feeling it. Heat crashed over her body in a wave that stole her breath.
Don’t give in to emotion, her robot warned.
She wouldn’t give in. Clenched fists promised control.
Not while she still had a job to do.
At the lunch break, the nervous secretary stopped Aris and slipped a small note into his hand. He cupped the sweating secretary’s face. She couldn’t hear the words from her distance, but lip-read that Aris thanked the man sincerely. The man swallowed and nodded, eyes a little too bright, chest puffed. Aris let his hand drop and turned away.
The secretary averted his face from a department head, who was watching their interaction with murderous intensity.
She shadowed Aris to the lush hallway, close enough to protect him from violence, far enough to pass unnoticed.
Or so she thought.
He whirled suddenly and reached out to her, as though preternaturally aware of her presence. Shock flashed through her, and the forbidden heat. She stopped.
He reached out. His crowd parted and he caught her. His public smile was edged with devilish mirth his somber, blue eyes did not reflect. “Share a drink with me, beautiful?”
Liberation's Vow (Robotics Faction #3) Page 9
