“I had dreamed of owning a design studio. One day.”
She moved to the next dress. Shimmering glass and precious stone affixed to a wire corset. “Had?”
“This job afforded me much less freedom than I originally believed.”
She jerked up but stopped herself from meeting his gaze. “How unfortunate.”
“Yes, well, at least I can still dress pretty women.”
Resa selected five dresses, as per his instructions, including the ferns and glass. Apparently she liked natural fibers, golden black animal spots, and delicate feathers of the teal eye-bird. He dressed her in a stunning beaded rainbow that combined all of them—glass stone tiara, teal eye-bird feathers sculpting her feminine buttocks, animal spots at the fringes. In the tiara and along the eyelets at her waist and collar, he threaded through strands of honey-scented orchids.
Dressing her was a profoundly sensuous experience, from the slide of the silks across her nude skin to the unmistakable flush spreading across her body, as her inhumanity fell to the playfulness of the dress they had selected. It was hard and changeful like her, and also yielding and infinitely strong. The beads, made of the toughest, lightest interlocking jewels, could repel bullets. He admired her as a model.
And, as she allowed herself to stroke the soft fur when she thought he wasn’t looking, he admired the woman.
The rogue had warned him off, and until this very moment, he would have said he was way ahead of her.
Too bad his cock, hard as a rod and pulsating furiously against his uncomfortably tight robe, hadn’t gotten the message.
She noted his attention and carefully curled her hand into a fist like a child caught indulging herself in a forbidden snuggle with a banished toy. “Will you apply makeup?”
The image of her, mouth parted and eyes open, trusting herself in his hands—fuck, he wouldn’t trust himself. His cock strained the fabric. “If you wish.”
A brow rose as if to ask if there had ever been any doubt that she needed additional war paint to face the night’s crowds. “Now I’m fit to be seen with you in public.”
“You have always been fit.”
Disbelief twisted her features. She looked at herself in the mirror.
“Now everyone will wonder what I did to attract you.” He shook free the edges of the gown, smoothing it against the dais so she seemed to float in the air. “And they’ll wonder what they can do to get you for their own.”
She colored.
That innocent blush would be the death of him.
She smoothed the iridescent stones at her waist, the skin beneath the white wire. “How many other women have worn this dress?”
“Not one.”
Resa paused.
Aris couldn’t look at her, suddenly, as the truth seemed to pour out of an overfilled cup held deep behind his chest. “I show no one these dresses. They’re from another life, one that has passed. Except for tonight.”
She waited.
He returned to his usual careless smile. The one he wanted the public to buy, and which he usually sold well, even to his bitterest enemies. “They might as well clothe a beautiful woman at least once in my lifetime.”
A beautiful woman.
The words shimmered over her warm skin like the iridescent stones, like the luxuriously soft feathers, like the sweet, lovely honey.
She didn’t recognize herself in the mirror. Didn’t recognize this woman who enchanted a man, who seemed capable of seducing even a beloved governor. He could have any woman on the planetoid, and probably plenty in any other solar system.
But the scent of his arousal, mixed with the orchids, had been growing, in fact, since the moment she loosed her true desires and allowed herself to touch the beautiful things. Dresses such as she had never seen adorned with luxuries she had never imagined.
Her past might be false, her memories implanted or fabricated or worse, but she knew it had been barren. Barren as the rock below, hardscrabble as the lowest yielding mines, and empty. Isolated as the Robotics Faction factory in which she had reawakened, alone but for the companion within that called itself her robot, and assured her they were together, despite seeming so separate.
The man’s gaze dropped to her lips. His nostrils flared—another hit of arousal—and then he returned to arranging her gown, his creation, to make her yet more beautiful.
He had full control of himself. Despite being human.
Curiosity flashed across his features.
“What is it?” she asked.
He glanced up, surprised, and then seemed chagrined. How amusing. She had unsettled the governor. Her sense of power, knocked into the darkest hole after last night’s shocking discovery of her powerlessness against the Faction, unfolded a little more in his sunlight.
“I was thinking that I’ve seen most of you now. And although every part of you looks human…”
He wondered which part actually was.
“It’s not a part that you can see,” she told him again.
A brow rose.
“That is not a come-on,” she said, even as her body swelled in preparation. Her breasts, curious about how it would feel to be palmed in his large hands. The feminine place between her legs, curious of the same thing.
“I wouldn’t expect one from you,” he said dryly. “I suppose my curiosity will die with the rest of me.”
She smoothed the dress. Her identification as a z-class robot was, itself, classified information, and he had known it before ever meeting her. He knew plenty of other classified secrets from the rogue. Probably that was one of the many reasons her superiors intended to kill him, to end the transmission of their secrets.
Her robot complained about not being able to reach her. Its voice echoed, as though from a distance, and she could barely hear it chastising her.
Good. The last thing she wanted from the betrayer right now was its judgment. Just when she was starting to feel alive and under her own control again, free of the terrors from the night.
He took her hand and applied teal eye-feathers and beads to match the rest of her outfit.
“All physical parts of me are robot,” she said, from her human-looking toenails to hair atop her head. “But the zero class consciousness is formed around a human’s ‘seed memory.’”
He concentrated on her nails, giving her the space she needed to speak. “Your seed memory is from a human?”
She nodded. “I don’t really remember my past. Only a few isolated scenes. Not even scenes—fragments.”
Each memory fragment glistened, separate and unique, unable to knit together or ever come to life.
His thumb stroked the back of her hand.
She needed to tell him, and was glad that her robot considered it unimportant enough not to stop her. “I lived with my brother, on a barren planet, in some kind of a military complex, I think. He was a soldier. Or, at least, he carried a gun.”
Her brother rested his gloved hand on the cold barrel, thumb on the safety. Behind exposure suit glass, his brows cocked. “Resa—”
“I’m sure I was just a worker. Maybe a communications officer.”
She scrambled for the switch. “North Frontier Outpost, um, reporting.”
“North Frontier Outpost, we’re glad to finally hear from you. Status report.”
Aris laid down the beads, sealing them to her fingers with delicate motions, ticklishly gentle.
“We were attacked.” The memory hit her hard, powerful, in the gut where she had saved it. Saved it and obsessed over it, reliving it over and over. It was the part of her that was real. It was the part of her that was human. It was the part of her that was her.
She pushed herself to her feet and ran to the door. It canted on its hinges. Through the cracked fist-thick glass dome ceiling shreds revealed billowing sand and a star-studded, no-atmosphere-crisp sky.
Oh no. No, no, no.
Bodies strewed the floor, some arching and gasping, others unmoving. Her brother…. Yes! Her brother
gripped the reprocessor platform. He held the emergency rebreather to his mouth. He survived.
White-clad foreigners stormed into the shredded dome, heat lasers blasting.
“I took his gun to fight off the invaders.”
She clutched the spare batteries, gripped the gun, and backed into the farthest corner of the tiny bunker, her aim on the vulnerable door.
The memory pieces trembled in her hands. All the fragments, everything she possessed. A few flashes. Not even a single, complete scene.
How did they fit together? Were they even from the same day? The same decade? She had no idea, and not knowing scraped her raw.
But the truth was buried in the same black pit as her predecessor’s more evil memories. To get to one, she would have to wade chest-deep into the other. Maybe deeper. And the fear of losing herself in that ultimate blackness, for the hope of uncovering a full memory that might not even be there.
Aris knelt at the dressing dais to finish her body art and quietly held her hands.
“That’s it,” she said, not acknowledging the strength his simple gesture gave her, holding her up with his touch the way her robot usually propped up her fragmented mind. “That’s all I have to make my human persona. What happened? Who was I? How did this memory of me go into the Robotics Faction? Will I ever know?” She shook her head, the unanswered questions hot and painful as uncried tears. “I am not a complete person.”
“You are—”
“I don’t have anything to deal with this type of interaction, Aris. And the Faction expects it to be that way. My human persona isn’t enough on its own. During training, I should have been given rules, taught and conditioned for every possible situation. But there wasn’t time. Even robots must learn new electro-synaptic pathways to grow.”
Aris lowered her from the dressing dais to the floor.
She started to step off.
He stopped her. “I’ve figured out why I can’t take my eyes off of you.”
Her breath lodged in her throat. Her heartbeat, out of rhythm. His seductive heat curled into her, drawing her breathless under his mesmerizing spell.
He brushed her hair away from her dry lips. She licked to wet them. He flicked to that gesture and then traced her features. Grand smiles were gone; only sober gentleness, mixed with a sweet liquor of melancholy sadness, remained.
“You remind me of my half sisters.” He traced invisible lines in her face. “They are kind and generous and loyal. Either of them would also take my gun against unstoppable hordes and make their final stand trying to defend my dead body.”
His hand cupped her cheek.
Desire streaked to her center.
She stilled, holding even her breath, as though the slightest movement would remind him of their antagonism and frighten him away.
But even no movement was too much.
He rested his thumb across her lips as though barring it from himself. Conflict melted into sorry resolution. He unwound the MAC pendant from his neck and closed it into one of his many jewelry boxes. “I only wish I could say I behaved the same.”
His pain, so lightly dismissed, only ground the truth more deeply. He wore his scars beneath his smile, beneath his dress, beneath his easygoing nature. It hurt her. Perhaps her brother would have bowed beneath the same sense of failure, the same heartbreaking loss.
But she could not articulate it aloud.
“Now I hope that we don’t have to rely on found weapons tonight. My father will be in attendance. If you don’t kill me first as part of your assignment, he very well might.”
“You love hyperbole,” she said. “I think a straight sentence might kill you.”
He smiled and opened his mouth to retort.
His dressers announced themselves at the door, and he stepped back, sweeping a grand gesture. “Shall we, my love?”
My love.
She had no words, and his words were just for their audience.
“Yes.” She preceded him from the room. She was used to grasping onto fragments and creating a whole life for herself from almost nothing at all.
Chapter Nine
Aris wanted to kiss her.
In the flashing shadows that whipped past, the lanterns redefined her face, lightening as they traveled from night into twilight.
Clothed in his dress and revealing a quiet fierceness unlocked by his unintended openness in the dressing chamber, Resa poised like any other woman, and he wanted to rip away all of the things that concealed her and taste the sweetness of her innocent lips. He wanted to delve into her mouth, trace the firm line of her teeth, and draw her tongue out with his teasing wetness.
He wanted to crush her, moaning with pleasure, naked, losing herself in ecstasy against him. He could picture their clothes in disarray, her body riding his with her head tossed back, or pressed into the padded luxury by the ancient rhythm of their shared desire.
Fuck. The images pounded into his brain, prodded by the piece of rebar masquerading as his cock, straining against his robes.
He hadn’t lost himself like this since…
…since ever. He shifted in his seat, angling to look out the window, staring over the familiar cityscape that Resa studied fully for the first time. Women threw themselves at him or they didn’t, and he accepted their delectable offerings or he didn’t. They enjoyed themselves either way. He couldn’t give less than that and still consider himself civil.
But hardening at the thought of the woman who tempted him like a beautiful web trapping food for a spider… who scorned his existence one moment, and blushed at his compliment in the next.
That was something new.
Too bad it couldn’t be permitted. Distraction, right now, was deadly.
“I have two goals at this event,” he told her, to get his mind off the way she turned her gorgeous liquid brown eyes on him. “Find out who bankrolls our assassin, and speak with my father about our planetary defenses.”
“I believe you could ask Poyo directly about the assassin,” she said. “His reaction will betray him.”
“Or exonerate him.” Aris tapped his lips. Poyo had never been skilled at hiding his true feelings, which infuriated his uncle and the upper echelons to whom he refused to submit. “That is a good idea. But perhaps not in Darvin’s home. I’ll request a private appointment sometime later.”
Assuming they had a later.
“Also, look out for a governor’s locket. If Darvin does have it, it will certainly be lying around, easily visible for casual, ostentatious display.”
They alighted at the foot of his cousin’s gold-crested dome. Resa’s eyes flicked over the streets, creating a mental map of the region, its security, and any threats.
The vast doors opened under the power of gold-draped security personnel, and they entered the mirrored house. She walked confidently, casing each room as they passed it, and drawing all the eyes. He tugged her back with a casual finger looped in a hole of her dress. Her cheeks warmed from his casual touch.
Fuck.
He fit her slight frame under his loose arm. “Am I safe?”
Her blush deepened. “No. You are extremely dangerous.”
He chuckled. “Remind me to give you a raise.”
“Is the dress a perk of the position?”
“You can have all of them.”
She stilled, although her steps continued to match his on the long walk. Before he could pursue that look, they arrived at their destination: matching gigantic ornate doors. Two doorpersons greeted them both by name and bowed as they opened the doors.
“Welcome to Darvin Antiata Hyeon’s pool party.”
Intimate rooms shaped as stone tents opened into a glorious central palazzo with the ceiling a hundred feet into the air. Fountains gurgled, mineral baths steamed, and spotless dry tile wound serpentine between intimate nooks and marblestone statuary. Barely dressed bathers stepped out of bubbling crystal pools, their clothes and body drying instantly as they emerged from the water onto tile. The pala
zzo itself sank under the crystal waters like ancient wreckage from a distant storm.
Cousin Darvin lay on a gold bier in the center.
Aris paused at the edge of the tents and studied the upper windows.
Resa matched him. “Who are we looking for?”
His father would be in a private room befitting his station. “The one person at this gathering who matters.”
“Cousin Aris.” Darvin’s voice emerged from the statue in beside him. “How inevitable of you to come.”
He lifted his hand; the cold marblestone burned. Darvin’s soulless, indulgent mockery had been given life via a hidden speaker.
“Darvin, congratulations on successfully delaying the promotions.” Aris stretched his lips in as much as he could force himself to pretend to smile. “If not for you, we’d be celebrating today.”
“I had no choice. You were the one to delay us with your insane claims.”
“You had to hijack the meeting with a ridiculous impostor claim.”
His cousin’s tone sharpened. “You’re so unbelievable, Aris, and only I have the will to call you out on it.”
“I rise to any challenge.”
“I do hope you won’t ‘rise’ out of your clothing here. My guests from off-planet certainly won’t appreciate being forced to view things which had rather better remain restrained.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Rage burned in his gut. He hadn’t hated Darvin right away, but soon after meeting, the feeling lodged deep in his belly. “They might appreciate the consolation prize for being called to an expensive, pointless party celebrating your failure and incompetence.”
His cousin choked. “Your reign of embarrassment is ending. And when it does, you can go join your mother’s poor, loony family.”
Aris’s knuckles whitened. His brain churned for a response, but he couldn’t grope beyond his stabbing hatred.
Resa touched his robe. Touching him without actually touching him.
He met her steady gaze. Clear-eyed, cold. He could understand the attraction of being a robot.
He released the column and wrapped his hand around her waist, drawing her close to him. Although his words were spoken to her, they were meant for the asshole on the dais, preening all alone. “Thanks, Darvin. When the Robotics Faction ‘loses’ your restore point and sends you on a one-way trip to hell, I’ll be thinking of your well-wishes from the safety of my mother’s loony escape ship.”
Liberation's Vow (Robotics Faction #3) Page 13
