“Let me clean up a little and we can go anywhere you want.”
“Anywhere?” I asked with a sly grin.
“Anywhere within driving distance.”
“So Hawaii’s out?”
“Can’t drive there, so yea it’s out.”
“Awwww. Can’t we take the hovercar? It’ll drive on water.” I gave him my best-practiced pout.
He tossed a grease rag in my face. I let out a yelp and forced my shields up. They barely stopped the rag from hitting me. Tanaka walked off laughing. My powers had left me completely for a while at Christmas when Doc somehow stole them from me. I was still fighting to get them back. Tanaka knew about it, he was there to see it happen. Is he testing me? I started to ask when what I saw zapped my mouth dry.
Tanaka pulled his dirty shirt off and over his head, the muscles flexing under his tattooed skin with every move.
Hard to believe that all that is mechanical. It all looks so real, so manly, so . . . sexy. Uh! I meant, you know. . . . He looks okay. For a dude.
Parts of me throbbed in response to the vision of him pouring water out of a jug over his head. The feminine body took over, ignoring the warning signals from my heterosexual male brain that I wasn’t supposed to enjoy looking at him like that. He stood there in glistening water kissed perfection without a shirt.
Does he know what he’s doing to me? For that matter, why is it affecting me like this? I’m not into guys, right? But he isn’t really a guy, he’s a machine. That makes it okay . . . doesn’t it?
I spun around and bent over a little, pretending to be interested in something. Bent like that it was easy to reach up under my skirt for a little rub without being noticed, unless you were standing right in front of me. I had practiced the move at home with mirrors. I stayed like that quietly rubbing away watching Tanaka out of the corner of my eye. My own private little fantasy.
He shook off the water from his hair as he reached down. Both hands gripped his tight jeans as he started to pull the buttons apart. Once he had them half undone, my heart skipped a beat. If he was wearing underwear at all, it was very small. A knot that had formed low in my stomach dropped straight to my crotch forcing me to let out a gasp. The noise drew his attention. He glanced at me and smiled. Worse of all he stopped undoing buttons.
Damn him! How dare he interfere with my fantasy! This was the first time I was turned on looking at a guy, couldn’t he be nice and do what I wanted him to?
He pulled on a cleaner looking shirt. I swear he even groped himself a little as he tucked it in. He was flirting with me, and it was working. The satin-like material of my armored spider-silk panties became slick as it got wetter. Tiny shivers of pleasure caused me to close my eyes for a second.
What the hell is wrong with me? Why is he affecting me like this all the sudden?
“Having fun?”
I screamed and bolted upright. Tanaka had snuck up on me when I had my eyes closed.
“Relax. Come on, let’s go.”
He grabbed my right hand and pulled it to him. That was the hand that had been up my skirt a second ago. He held it gently and forced my fingers to flatten out from the fist I had been holding. He was gentle yet firm in his movements. Then he bent over and placed the lightest brush of a kiss on the tip of my middle finger. With a grin he dropped my hand and went for his car. As soon as he was turned with his back to me I brought my hand up to my nose.
OH!!! MY!!! GOD!!!
The smell of my arousal was very evident on my fingers even at a short distance, and he had kissed that finger. No doubt he’d caught me. Embarrassment flooded my cheeks.
Can’t I just go one day without embarrassing myself?
* * *
Tanaka told me all about the traditional Japanese New Year’s he had spent with his family. The dressing up and going to the temple sounded like fun. I wonder what I would look like in a full kimono? We’d stopped at a burger joint and picked up some food on the way to his apartment. I had wanted a decent sit-down lunch. He wanted a shower and clean clothes. He was driving so he won.
Next time, I drive.
His apartment was a ground floor double. It was disturbing how clean the living room and kitchen were. They were even decorated like something out of a catalog. The place felt like a show-house. A demonstration home decorated to look fancy, but without a lived in feel or smell. The refrigerator was like the rest of the kitchen, organized, neat and tidy. I had to look. Even the lid to the ketchup was sparkling clean.
I unpacked the burgers on the small breakfast table under the window while he made vodka fruit smoothies.
Vodka with cheeseburgers and fries? Oookay?
“What do you think of the place?” he asked as if to break the awkward silence we were falling into.
“Oh sorry, it’s a neat apartment. Very . . . clean. No wonder you hated my old bachelor pad so much.”
“It’s not really as clean as I usually have it.”
“What?! Oh please, Martha Stewart would kill to have a place like this. What do you mean it’s not clean?”
He gestured to the closed bedroom doors with glasses of smoothies in his hands. “Go ahead, take a look.”
I went to the first door and hesitated a second before gently tossing the door open. The bed was neatly made except for a pristine folded down corner where he had gotten out earlier. There was also a neatly folded shirt on the foot of the bed.
“Heaven forbid! The bed isn’t fully made!” I gasped mockingly.
“Funny. Take a look at the other room.”
Fine, let’s see just what all kinds of skeletons are hidden in his closets.
I crossed over and all but kicked it open. Only to have my jaw hit the floor. It was a disaster zone that made most landfills look like a pristine city park. It reminded me of my old apartment on a bad day, just with computer equipment and books instead of empty pizza boxes and beer cans. There was a single narrow pathway to the large computer station on the far side of the room. You would have had to shuffle your feet to get through while being careful not to bump anything for fear of an avalanche.
“Now THAT is more like it. Why is this room a hurricane zone while the rest of the place looks like it should be in a catalog?”
“I like things neat and orderly. I used to be obsessive compulsive.”
“Used to?”
“Alright, so I still am a little. Sue me. Here, drink.”
I took the concoction with great hesitation. Vodka had gotten me embarrassingly drunk at New Years, I had promised myself never to drink it again.
Oh hell, why not? Tanaka wouldn’t take advantage of me, would he?
It was mixed berries and bananas. I couldn’t even taste the vodka.
“You put vodka in this right?”
“Yes. Did I use too much?” he asked with genuine concern on his face.
“I can’t taste it at all. It’s good.”
“I’m glad you like it. Now let’s eat, then I will change and we can go check on Emmy.”
“Tell me something. Well, if you don’t mind talking about it. I mean. . . . You’re mostly” – I paused for the right word – “synthetic now, so why do you have to eat?”
He let out a chuckle. “You answered your own question. Mostly synthetic isn’t all. My brain is still human. It still requires the same things it did before. Blood, air, water, and even food. I don’t need to eat anywhere near what I used to, and I can even go for weeks between meals. But I spent almost twenty years eating meals like clockwork. It’s a hard habit to break.”
We sat down at the table and started to eat.
“Really. I had no idea. So you’ve been synthetic for what? . . . About six years now?”
“Seva–” he stopped trying to talk with his mouth full and swallowed his fry. “Sorry. Seven. It’s been seven years of oil changes and tune-ups for me as of yesterday.”
“Oh. Uh. Congratulations?” I asked unsure if he thought the anniversary was a good thing or not.
“Yes. Thanks. I would’ve died without the synthetics. It took me the first couple years to accept that I wasn’t fully human anymore, but I got over it.”
I can relate to that. The not feeling human anymore part anyway.
He watched me take a bite of burger then turned impatient. “Well? Aren’t you going to ask?”
“Ask what?” I spit crumbs at him talking through my burger without thinking of my table manners.
“Ask about what happened that made me this way.”
“Oh. I just figured it was your business. And if you wanted me to know, you’d share.”
I’d expected some discussion from him on how a woman would be concerned with the details, but he never gave me one. Which was good. I so was not up to that after the day I’d been having.
“I was a Navy Seal. A black OPS mission near Australia. Three of us went in for a two mile swim to the target. We ended up in the middle of a feeding frenzy of sharks. A whale had died drawing the bastards in. Dagger never stood a chance as the Great White attacked him from below. The shark hit him so fast that they both went airborne high enough that the entire shark cleared the water. I’ll never forget watching that monster shoot up out of the water only two feet away. It seemed to take hours for the bodies to both clear the water and fall back into the dark depths.”
His eyes glazed over in memory so he never saw the shiver run down my spine. I had shark attack memories of my own from when we went to rescue everyone from Jacob on Christmas Eve. His sounded worse. After a few moments of silence, he blinked himself back to reality.
“Anyway. We were over a mile away from the nearest shelter, in shark filled waters, only a few yards from a communal feeding frenzy, with fresh blood in the water.” He stopped talking as if that was the end of the story.
“And?” I finally questioned him when he didn’t say anything else for over a minute.
“I got attacked,” he shrugged like it was nothing.
I groaned and accusingly pointed a greasy fry at him. “Tanaka. You suck as a storyteller.”
“Well I haven’t had centuries to practice like Arkon,” he teased.
* * *
We ate and he told stories about his trip to Japan in his own anticlimactic way. The food was overcooked, greasy, and not very good. The drinks however were excellent. I downed two glasses and asked him for a refill. I didn’t even have a buzz.
Did he lie about the vodka?
“You probably shouldn’t drink anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Vodka always hits you slow. You’ve had about four shots worth already. Any minute now it will hit your system. You’ll be drunk off your feet. Seven shots and you pass out.”
“Did you bring me here to get me drunk and take advantage of me? Dirty boy!” I mocked him.
“You have been around Vicki waayyy too long,” he teased as he brought me another glass.
I knew I really shouldn’t drink that much, but it really tasted good. At the New Year’s party I got very drunk on vodka. Let’s just say I became extremely friendly when drunk. Friendly, and a nudist. Most everyone in my building got a good look at my toned body without restrictions. Then I had apparently tried to con Charles into having sex with me in the elevator, but I never remembered any of that. When he sat down, Tanaka sat next to me instead of across from me.
I wonder why?
“Did Vixen know you were a cyborg?”
“Yea. She knew once we first met. It kind of intrigued her I think.”
“So you were a cyborg when the two of you were dating?”
“Yes.”
Suddenly I felt all floaty and happy. The vodka finally hit. I became obviously tipsy.
Sober to drunk in sixty seconds, or shumething like that. Hehe!
“Do I ever have hangovers? I mean when even I got drunk at New Years I never a hangover felt.”
He smiled. “No. Besides, you have the painkillers and hydro. Take them later and you will be fine.”
“The painkillers aren’t working Emmy for anymoresh.” My speech was getting worse as I the vodka I’d drank fully took effect.
“I know. We’ll find a way to help her.”
He placed his hand on top of mine on the table, smiling at me in a way that should have made me nervous. His fingers were tracing the curves of my hand in little circles that felt so right and wrong all at the same time. It was like the nerves in my hand were directly hooked up to other parts of my body. My nipples went hard almost instantly, and that longing returned low inside me.
“So how you did . . . with her? It, you know?”
“Huh? Oh, you mean how did we have sex? Like any other couple I suppose. We never did anything too kinky.”
“I mean p-p-physically. So, you have the equipment in the right places all then?”
“Sure I do. I am a fully functional male. The only real difference is that I cannot have children. My balls are for decoration only.”
“Only decoration? You can’t feel nothin’?”
“Oh I can feel. In fact my nerve sensors are more advanced than regular human nerves are. I can feel things no human can.”
“So, how it work does?”
“Just like anyone else. I get erect when I am aroused. Of course one of the benefits of being a cyborg is that I can control it a bit more.”
The puzzled look on my face made him laugh. He leaned in placing his hand on my knee under the table. He gently squeezed and caressed my knee and lower thigh. The thigh sheath and my skirt kept him from going any higher. He let his fingers play under the thigh sheath a little. It felt like he was touching other things.
“How you do control it?”
“I feel pleasure like anyone else. When I have had enough pleasure, I orgasm. But, as a cyborg I can force myself to hold off my orgasm for a while. That way I can remain erect for as long as needed for my partner’s pleasure regardless of my own release. I can also make myself go between erect and flaccid at will, without stimulation.”
“Really? So it’s just like a regular . . . uh . . . member, but with benefits control?”
“Yes. Just like any other really.”
“How big? I mean, I’m curious, from a infellectual standpoint strictly.”
Am I trying to convince him, or me?
“I never really measured it. Would you like to see it? Strictly from an intellectual standpoint of course,” he teased just a little.
I was buzzing good now. He had to have known it. It was that euphoric place you strive for when you drink. That point where you have to drink a little to keep it going, but too much and you risk being sick or passing out. I took another sip of the berry smoothie. Maybe I just needed the extra confidence.
“Alright. Let’th thee it.”
He smiled a little with a hint of a blush. His fingers lingered on me as long as they could until he was standing. His washboard abs were prevalent even through his loose shirt. He slid his hands up his thighs and held them over his crotch suggestively.
“Cut the act. This is strictly intellectual, remember? Not sexual.”
His smile widened. Without a word he reached down and pulled on his fly. The buttons opened one by one in rapid succession. With each one a deeper throbbing came from within me. If this kept going I was going to leave a wet spot on the chair. I took another sip to hide my anticipation. I was right, no underwear. With the fly open he reached in and pulled himself out. He stood there sticking straight out already semi-hard. He was enjoying this as much as I was, maybe more.
“I thought you would be flaccid.”
He closed his eyes a second. He deflated like a balloon with a leak. I twisted my head to get a better look. Look this way, look that way. It was like studying a specimen in biology class, and I was just like the horny school-girl ready to jump the hot teacher. I lifted my hand just a little towards it, not sure if I wanted to touch or not. Suddenly it grew. And grew. And grew. It happened so fast that there was actually a SLAP when it hit his stomach.
>
“Don’t do that! At least warn me next time. Are all cyborgs un–uh, un . . . you know? And that big?”
“Only if they want to be. You can touch it if you want. To determine how realistic it is for purely academic reasons of course.”
I thought about that a second. As tempting as it was, I still had a little hang-up about him being a guy. I couldn’t help it.
“That’s okay. I’ve seen it. You can put it away now.”
I took a big swig downing half of the smoothie at once.
How do I get myself in these situations?
He never put himself away. Instead he just sat back down and tossed his shirt over himself before leaning forward and putting his hand on mine again. I was suddenly aware it wasn’t as hard to make good sentences again.
The vodka isn’t wearing off already, is it? I’m still buzzed, but now am in better control. Were my shields burning out the alcohol like they used to? Or did seeing Tanaka’s glory sober me up a bit? I didn’t use my psionic-shower, so my shields had nothing to do with it. It must be him.
I reluctantly decided to change the subject.
“Why did we all start referring to the old Kieran as Vixen all the sudden after Christmas? I never could figure that out.”
“It was Emmy’s decision basically. It was easier for her to accept the fact that you were her sister and that Vixen was another person entirely. She has had a lot of emotional problems lately with being betrayed like she was and all. We wanted to make things better for her. So the old Kieran disappeared, and Vixen became her own person. It’s funny because that was kind of what Vixen was after anyway.”
“What was she like, you know, in bed?”
So much for changing the subject.
“Firecracker, screamer, multi-orgasmic, squirter if the conditions were right. You would be more comfortable without all the guns on. You’re safe here. Relax.”
I had been fidgeting, but it wasn’t entirely because of the guns and straight blades digging into my back. I wasn’t fully comfortable sitting next to Tanaka, especially since I knew he was still ready, only covered by his shirttail. His hands came up and eased the shoulder rig off my shoulders. He draped it over the back of the chair. It really didn’t do that much. The guns were attached to my belt, and I wasn’t letting him take that off. Not by my choice without a fight anyway. So I still sat there with the guns still digging into my back a little.
Immortal Death (Kieran Grey Psionic Hunter Book 3) Page 3
