“The pregnancy was going well and our relationship appeared to be returning to solid ground. Until, that is, one day when I came home early and caught him screwing the maid.
“That very day I lost the baby.” Tiana paused for a few seconds, unable to get the words out, “It was a little girl. I had failed.”
Her tears spent, Tiana sat there in sad, poignant retrospection. She wondered what Derek would say. Life had dealt her a tough hand to play out and no one could do anything to change that.
After a few seconds of silence, Derek simply reached out and cupped her face tenderly. “Tiana, I am so, so sorry. Please know that you are not responsible for Tom’s cruelty, jealousy or infidelity. That is all on him. You are a beautiful and intelligent woman. You are loyal, committed and caring. I feel compelled to say that you are exactly the kind of woman a man would be blessed with the fortune of Midas to be with.”
“Then why, at twenty-nine years of age, don’t I feel like a blessing waiting to happen? Why don’t I feel beautiful or relationally capable?” Tiana sobbed, baring her frustration and self doubt. Why am I so comfortable sharing my wounded heart with this AI?
His strong and masculine hand was comforting. Tiana marveled at the soothing power of his touch. Why couldn’t Tom have been more like Derek? Why couldn’t she have married Derek instead? Whoa! I’m doing it again. Of course he’s perfect; he’s a figment of someone’s imagination. He, it, is a program, not flesh and blood. This isn’t real. I’m not in Paris. I’m in a damn holographic suite, in a starship that is in the middle of nowhere, running a program.
Forcing herself to calm, she pulled away from his comforting hands. “You’re not real. Don’t confuse me!”
“I am with you, right here, right now,” he stated quietly, almost in a whisper. “I am as real as you want me to be and I will take care of you. On my honor, I give you my word.”
His words crumbled her weakened defenses, causing Tiana to discard all logic and consigning her remaining cares to the wind. Emotions that she would rather have forgotten surged, taking control of her mind. Why couldn’t real men be this caring? Why did she feel so safe at this very moment?
Caressing her face with one hand, his other lifted her hand to his mouth. Kissing her palm, the searing heat shot through her blood, igniting long dormant emotions, branding her heart, awakening her mind and firing up sensual passion.
He steadied her as he brought her close. As she leaned into his chest, her hands were driven to touch, to caress and to express desire. Through his shirt she could feel his hard, tight muscles. Her hands wandered down his taut torso, reaching the bottom of his shirt, sneaking underneath to retrace their steps up, past his stomach and on their way to his nipples. The reality of the warmth of his skin fought with the knowledge that he was an AI. Tiana gently traced the nibs with the tips of her nails, bringing them to life.
Lost in a haze, she looked up at his eyes. They were alive and seemed like they could look right through her and into her soul. It was as if she had always had a special bond with the soul behind the eyes. Tiana helplessly watched as his mouth, moved down aiming for hers. She was entranced and there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t take looking into his gaze anymore, it was hypnotic and intoxicating.
Closing her eyes, she waited expectantly for the feel of his kiss. Seconds ticked by until her patience was rewarded. She felt the soft caress of his lips as they gently brushed past hers, teasing. He came back for another pass, this time, still light as a feather, searing all along its path. It was like an out-of-body experience. She wasn’t herself; clearly she was sensing what someone else was doing. The tip of his tongue gently teased her upper lip. She felt herself responding, pursuing his tongue right back into the warmth of his mouth, the same mouth that had voiced his concern, his support and his comfort. How could he feel so real? Gentleness turned to passion as his tongue ravished her mouth, taking what she gave and returning it fourfold.
Her eyes remained closed as Derek smoothly undid the belt of her robe, allowing it to open, exposing the naked front of her body to his gaze.
Tiana couldn’t remember ever feeling more beautiful or cherished.
His hands entered her robe at the waist, touching and feeling their way up the soft flesh of her sides. As he reached the curves of her breasts, he gloried in them, taking his thumbs and gently massaging her now fully aroused peaks. He took his time, kneading her breasts as, eyes closed, she drowned her sadness in a sea of sensation. As his thumbs continued torturing her engorged breasts and nipples, with a swift move of his other fingers he pushed the robe over her shoulders. She felt it fall past her arms, dropping at her feet, leaving her exposed in all her glory, as bare as the day she was born. She could feel the gentle breeze of the Paris program washing across her nakedness.
“Computer, run ‘Victorian Bedroom’,” she heard him say.
Curiosity getting the best of her, she opened her eyes. She was standing in a bedroom unlike anything she had ever seen before, except, to a lesser degree, in movies, an old style of entertainment she had discovered during her college days. Curtains of deep red velvet highlighted a large room with floors that appeared to be made of wood. She ran her bare toes across it to get an idea of what it felt like. It was smooth, but textured at the same time. With trees being an endangered resource, wood was no longer used for construction and decoration purposes, but for the first time in her life, she understood what the attraction to its use had been centuries before.
Against the center of one wall stood an old mattress-style bed with lots of lacy, fluffy pillows and a bright, airy comforter depicting a selection of spring flowers that she recognized from her botanical history books as having been extinct for years. Aside from the visual differences, this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill anti-gravity bed like she had grown up with. Gently, Derek led her to the old-fashioned bed and laid her down on it. This bed didn’t fight gravity, but rather used it to full advantage. She felt herself sink into the comfort and softness of a mattress and closed her eyes to feel these new and delicious sensations.
Hey, mattresses aren’t bad. Guess that’s the end of my breakfast … or is it the beginning?
“Close your eyes,” she heard him whisper in a deep, guttural tone that sent shivers across her exposed flesh.
She was his for the taking, yet she knew not why. She waited, wondering what would happen next. She felt the mattress give as he lay down beside her and took her into his arms. She placed her head on his chest and listened to the beating of his heart, not questioning its presence in a hologram, as he gently stroked her hair. Tiana felt all her worries, all her problems, melt away. There was comfort and protection in the strong arms that held her. She kept her eyes shut, as if fearing that opening them would take her away from the moment.
She had been ready for him and, in fact, wanted him to have his way with her more than she had ever wanted anything else. Much to her surprise, however, he just held her, caressed her and lulled her to sleep with his warmth and compassion.
Chapter 7
The Friend
It was late afternoon Earth time before Tiana woke from her nap, still cradled in Derek’s arms. She was confused and not a little upset with herself. She had been willing to give herself physically to a computer program, an artificial intelligence unit not unlike her Legal-Bot. Thankfully, Derek had, well, respected her? She was losing her mind. She had allowed herself to be seduced by a program that opted to respect her instead of pleasuring her. Maybe he, it, wasn’t programmed for sex. But be it a he or an it, Derek sure had aroused her senses to full attention.
Damn good program!
Without saying a word, Tiana got off the bed, dressed and left her suite. She didn’t have to explain herself to a computer program or waste politeness on it.
* * * *
Derek stayed in the bed, wondering how much longer he could keep up the deception before she figured out he was not the product of a programmer’s imagination, but a stowaway
, technically, a criminal stowaway, and alerted the ship’s authorities. To his astonishment, his biggest fear wasn’t getting caught and spending the next twenty years in prison. It was getting caught and spending the next twenty years apart from Tiana. Putting the thought away, he closed the Victorian Bedroom program, hoping he would get another opportunity to use it with her.
He couldn’t help himself. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything else.
Tiana Weiss. A beautiful name to go with a beautiful woman, he thought. He was trying to think down his erection, but it would not budge.
Knowing where the sadness he had read in her eyes had come from only made him want her more. What kind of a combination moron and monster could willfully hurt such a divine creature? The side of him that was every bit the alpha male, protector of the fairer sex, rose to the surface. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this way, if ever. Melinda had never needed his protection. By the same token, snakes in the grass are not known to need anyone’s protection.
* * * *
As she stepped out of her suite, Tiana activated her phone, conveniently housed in a pair of lenses implanted in her corneas. The set came with a matching communications chip implanted under the skin near her left ear, which, using her bone structure, served to both capture and transmit sound between her and the caller. Contact phones, as they were commonly referred to, were the latest thing on the market and had been a present from her now-ex-husband.
“Call Rita” she ordered. Two rings later, Rita answered, her image displaying in Tiana’s contacts.
“Well hey there, stranger,” Rita said. “I’m assuming you’re on board?”
“Made the flight by the skin of my teeth, but I did make it. What are you up to? Where’s your suite?”
“Top level, Suite 1052. Come on over.”
“I’m just down the hall from you in 1005. I’ll see you in a minute. End call.”
* * * *
As Tiana terminated the communication, Rita looked down at the head of her Personal Attendant, which had been quietly engaging in some rather ‘personal attendance’ to her before and during the conversation.
“Well, darlin’, I’m afraid we’ll have to finish this later,” Rita drawled in her very southern way. “Tiana is a little conservative and I just don’t want to make her little mind explode right now. Run along and synthesize us some chocolate truffles.”
* * * *
It would be so good to see Rita, thought Tiana as she knocked on Suite 1052’s door. The last couple of weeks, both she and Rita had been so busy packing and preparing for their tour of duty in the Omicron quadrant that they had not had much of a chance to see each other.
“Computer, open door,” Tiana heard Rita order, followed by the swish of the door sliding open.
As she stepped inside, Tiana glanced around. The suite was identical to hers. Rita, wearing just panties and a T-shirt that read ‘Eat G.R.I.T.S.,’ got up from the couch and greeted Tiana with a hug. On the back, the shirt explained what G.R.I.T.S. stood for: Girls Raised in the South.
“Darlin’, it’s so good to see ya. I’ve been so worried about you having to face that slimy hound dog of a husband of yours in court yesterday. Wait, that’s an insult to hound dogs, isn’t it? Tell me, how did it go? Are you doin’ okay?”
“Everything went well, stressed, but well. Tom didn’t even bother showing up, can you believe it? The court allowed me to finalize my side of the divorce and they’ll deal with him later. As of yesterday afternoon, however, I am a free woman.”
“Yeah, but how do you feel?”
Dang it! Rita could always see into her soul.
“I feel like hell. I should be happy to be rid of him, but instead, I’m just plain heartbroken. The feeling of failure and inadequacy color my days and hours.”
Rita embraced her.
“Darlin’, it’s going to be okay,” she said, her tone communicating the motherly love she felt for her younger friend. “You’ll see, pretty soon you’ll be dating some alien with five penises and Tom will shrivel up and be ancient history.”
Tiana laughed, “Rita, you have this unique ability, no matter what the circumstances, to make me laugh. On a more serious note, though, I’m done with dating! I’m done with men! I’m certainly done with marriage! I plan on avoiding the Y-chromosomally-challenged sector of the species like the plague from now on!”
“Chocolate truffles, ladies?” Rita’s holographic personal attendant interrupted presenting them with a tray of the mouth watering treats.
As she snagged a truffle off the tray, Tiana wondered why Rita’s suite still used the old-style holographic Personal Attendant. She hadn’t given it much thought, but such upgrades were typically systemwide across all the holographic suites. Strange, though for some inexplicable reason, she was glad at the thought that perhaps she was the only passenger with ‘Derek Erecticus’ in her suite.
Great, now she was feeling possessiveness and jealousy over the stupid program. Ah, damn good program.
“Tiana, I don’t know about this business of giving up men, though. There’s at least one man that I just know you are going to want to have a repeat performance from,” Rita teased with a wicked grin.
Tiana stared back at her with caution in her eyes. Rita was a bit wilder than she was, and there was no telling where the conversation was headed.
“And just who exactly is this paragon, Ms. Andrews? After that last debacle, you better not be thinking about fixing me up.” Tiana clearly remembered Rita’s attempts to take her mind off her troubles by fixing her up with a couple of her guy friends. All she had wanted to do at the time was hide from her mean, disappointing life and meeting new people did not meet this criteria. Besides, she was not planning on ever trusting another man with herself. Relationships of the heart only brought pain and new opportunities to be abused. It was a testament to the fairer sex’s incredibly stupid tendency to forgive and forget that any woman was still married.
“Though I still maintain that you should allow me to find you a good man, or at least an above-average one, no, that is not what I am doing, at least not this time. The one man I know you’ll let back into your body is none other than the smooth, hard and wet Jack Daniels.”
Having said so, she whipped out a bottle of the old Earth liquor she had brewed in her lab.
“This is one man that you don’t have to handle on your own. What do you say we share him later on tonight? Ya feelin’ kinky?”
“How much of that stuff did you bring?”
“Honey, I brought enough of this to last us the next two years if it has to. It gets lonely out here in space and a girl’s gotta have her a man to keep her warm at night.”
Tiana chuckled. “Rita, you’re developing a sexual attraction for an ancient Earth drink.”
“No, no, no,” she said with a sigh, putting on a sexy red dress that clung to her curves like a glove. “I just happen to think that every so often, it’s nice to kill a few excess brain cells and forget how sorry reality can actually be.”
A deep, heartfelt sadness shone through the blonde’s cool blue eyes. This was a side of Rita Tiana had never seen before. For the first time since knowing Rita, Tiana wondered why the other woman had never married, even though Rita was ten years her senior.
The two women headed out of Rita’s suite and soon found themselves walking down the ship’s Promenade Deck. On their left they had the best the luxury starship could offer in the way of restaurants, shops and nightclubs. To their right, however, was the stark opposite. On that side, the clear glass wall gave them a breathtaking view of space and the natural beauty that the Milky Way held in store for those who simply took the time to look.
As they leisurely strolled down the Promenade’s walkway past a gaming arcade, Tiana noticed Marcus Long, along with his kids, waiting in line with several other fighter pilot wannabes of various ages to use one of the holographic chambers that appeared to be running the popular Terrilian Assault
Battle Simulation game.
Seeing her, Marcus waved. As Tiana waved back, Rita noticed the interplay.
“You know, darlin’, he’s available.”
“You never give up, do you? He’s got two kids, what makes you think he’s not married?” Why couldn’t Rita leave her to her quiet, asexual existence, last night notwithstanding?
“He’s a widower.”
“Not that I’m looking, but if I were, I think he’s younger than me and besides, I’m his boss.”
“Don’t be such a prude. He’s not that much younger than you, he’s 28.”
“How do you know so much about this guy? What do you do, introduce yourself to men by saying, ‘Hi, my name is Rita, please state your name, age and marital status’.”
Winking, Rita replied, “No, of course not silly, that would be rude. When I meet a man I first explain to him that I have this friend who’s bound and determined to grow her hymen back like an Ambrosian lizard and that if she doesn’t get laid soon she is going to become a recluse and go live in a cave in the middle of an asteroid belt. Then I ask what his name, age and marital status is.”
Tiana blushed as she noticed that passersby were overhearing their conversation and beginning to stare.
“Girl, would you keep your voice down? People are staring.”
“What did I say?” Rita retorted with a chuckle and an innocence that Tiana knew did not exist within her eccentric friend.
“Actually, Rita, Marcus is another prime example for not getting involved in a relationship. He probably loved his wife very much and she died on him, leaving him brokenhearted to fend for himself and their two kids. That’s one man that I’ll bet would love to be able to go back in time and do things differently.”
The Virtual Man [The Virtual Reality 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 5
