“I already ate.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“On the yacht.”
Oh, of course. As an android, he didn’t have her same needs. She tried to calm down thinking of their differences, but somehow, today, it only seemed like an interesting difference, and not one that should stop her from fantasizing about all sorts of wrong thoughts. Wrong thoughts about sliding her hands over him that kindled an unnatural heat in her chest. She took a second piece. “You lost your jackpot.”
“I had to restock.” He tugged a thick card out of his pocket and presented it to her. Black plastic, glassy, it glowed with the lights of the arcade.
“There’s three of those block machines downstairs. After I hit the third, the owners clamped down on me. I was feeling twitchy, but instead of kicking me out, they offered to trade my trays for a reloadable card.”
“Nice.”
He tilted his head in thought. “For a citizenry who can’t afford resurrection, people are awful trusting. That miner who argued with security never doubted he was in the right. The engineer who walked into the beach house didn’t worry that the people he found would be ruthless enough to silence him.”
“Everyone would know. Plus, if you die during state business, the government has to resurrect you.” She studied the card around her chews. “What happened earlier that made you twitchy?”
“I relived colonial history with a shop clerk.”
That didn’t sound so bad. “Your eyebrows look funny.”
“He also gave me a makeover gratis.”
She touched the glossy card. Her finances were connected automatically with her brain chip. She had never needed a physical object to represent her wealth. “Does it work outside the arcade?”
He shrugged and put it away. “We don’t need it beyond tonight.”
His confidence filled her with confidence. They had already survived this long against incredible odds. She filled her belly as he tested the water in the shower.
New, exciting thoughts shivered through her. Him, naked. Washing her, equally naked. And then, touching…
Her heart beat hard as the images played havoc with her control.
She imagined the water cascading off his hard body, slicking back his silky hair and shimmering. His hands sliding over her breasts, lathering her to a delicious arousal while a warm heat built in her stirring center. Pearling her taut nipples while his mouth tugged her earlobe and his gravelly voice murmured how he found her beautiful and amazing.
She sucked in a breath as the heat exploded.
Cressida would turn in his arms and give herself to him, sipping from his lips, wrapping herself around his hard strength as he bent her backwards and gave her exactly what she desired—
He shut off the water.
“Um, what are you doing in there?” she asked. Her voice sounded too loud for the small room.
He returned with cosmetics for changing her appearance.
Cressida studied the supplies. “I will go to the hospital, but I refuse to change my ID chip.”
He gritted his teeth. “It’s the only way.”
“And we already discussed why that is not an option.”
“Cressida, I don’t matter—”
“Since you don’t care about yourself, what happens when something goes wrong with me?” She jerked her hand in the direction of the ill employee with the weepy scar and ocular problem. “He’s a prime example.”
“Unless you have a family history, your risk is low.”
“I do have a history.”
He paused.
Her heart squeezed as if she’d heard the news yesterday. She hugged the gauzy bed covers to her chest. “My sister had her chip ID changed. Her brain swelled and she went into a coma.”
He moved to her side. Gentle. “A coma for how long?”
“I don’t know.” She squeezed the fabric. “It was considered safer for everyone if I stopped being given information, so, for all I know, she could still be…”
Cressida’s voice left her in a whisper. The younger you were, the safer the procedure usually was, because the brain was more forgiving. But Mercury’s brain hadn’t been. And because of that, her parents had stopped the illegal procedures scheduled for herself and Aris and, instead, rushed Cressida as-is to safety, leaving her comatose little sister behind.
All the times that Cressida had silently apologized, all of the prayers that she had sent across the galaxy, all the wishes that she had never been born, all the questions for why this had happened. It was her fault, it was her fault, it was her fault. It was her fault her little sister had gone into a coma and lost unknown years of her life, and her fault that she had split up their family.
He stroked her long hair. She leaned into him, closing her eyes.
Mercury had to be alive. Otherwise, her parents would have broken their silence.
Cressida swallowed the hard lump in her throat. “They decided not to change my ID chip because I run the same risk.”
“She could have reacted to the sedative,” he said quietly, “or to the placement, or to a hundred thousand factors unrelated to changing the chip ID.”
She pulled back. “So what? If I react to any one of those, I can die. And if I do, the sacrifices my family made would be for nothing.”
He studied her, his hand empty at his side, concern stamped across his features.
She had begged her parents to send her in front of the Robotics Faction. Pleaded for them to let her be killed. Reminding her of the sacrifices was the only way they had been able to force her out of her inconsolable depression. She spoke their words. “When I die, there will be no resurrection.”
His eyes narrowed. “That’s not the only reason you’re objecting.”
“It’s the one that matters.”
“What’s the one that doesn’t matter?”
She clenched her hand into a fist. “It’s stupid and irrelevant.”
“Tell me.”
Cressida felt her jaw tighten. He had seen through her again. How did he keep discovering the things that she had kept from everyone else, even her own parents?
He waited.
Her resistance leaked out. The control that she so carefully kept crumbled beneath his gentle request. She let go. “I…wanted to reunite my family.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Yes, but…” She laughed dryly and rubbed her forehead. “I wanted to put everything back exactly the way it was before it went wrong. And I can’t do that if I’m no longer a Sarit Antiata.”
“Changing your ID chip doesn’t change who you are.”
“I know!” she snapped, losing her control abruptly all over again. “I told you it’s stupid, all right? Mercury probably already has a new name. Maybe Aris too. There’s no way to go back in time, and yet…and yet…” She covered her face. “It’s the only way I could make up for what I did to them.”
He shifted quietly. The comforting warmth of his hand stroked her hair once more. “You can’t go back in time.”
“I know.” Her voice sounded stuffy in her ears.
“Is there some other way you can make it up to them?”
“They probably both hate me now anyway.”
He was silent for a long moment. “Would you hate one of them if they were the reason you had to be separated?”
“No!” She dropped her hands. “Of course not. I’d take on the entire New Empire to keep them safe.”
“Are they so different from you that they wouldn’t feel the same way?”
His words made her heart stop.
She considered them from outside her body. All of this time, she had only thought about what she had done to Mercury and Aris. She wouldn’t blame them at all if they hated her. She hated herself. Hated that she had made the mistake that crossed the Robotics Faction, and hated that she was so helpless that she couldn’t fix it and make everything right.
But Xan was right. Her siblings were stronger than she’d thought. T
heir love was stronger. Even separated by all of this time and distance, there was still hope. Someday, they would be together again. She just had to fight.
She looked up at him. This android who had saved her, one little piece at a time, and given her back the hope she had lost. She took his hand, threading his fingers through hers. “Thank you.”
The corner of his mouth quirked. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You did plenty.” She held out her hand for the cosmetics. “I’ll take these for now, but we will find another way.”
He said nothing as he handed her the supplies.
She swallowed a slow-acting melanin pill and a second pill that directed some of it to the stroma of her irises, to increase the Rayleigh scattering shifting her eyes from blue to green.
He held up a tub of Bruisease. “This has to be kept away from water. It’s going to hurt, but how about changing the rest in the shower first?”
She swallowed the sudden dryness. “You’ll need to help me.”
His eyes remained steady as a rock. “Anything.”
She rested her feet on the ground and put slow pressure on her heels. Pain shrieked up her legs. She sucked in a breath through her teeth.
With an arm around her bare shoulder blades, he helped her to stand, supporting her into the tiny room. The stream eased down her sore back like a warm caress.
She rested her hands on the tile while he rinsed her body and scrubbed the depilatory cream into her scalp. Her hair dissolved like a color; she watched it disappear down the drain, careful not to get any splashes on her brows or lashes. Gentle hands stroked her head, tracing the soft lines of her bare skull. Slower than her fantasies and more real, his kindness filled her with sweet tears. She arched like a cat against his sensual touch.
Then he made her into a new person.
Under his ministrations, hair regrowth formula adhered to her scalp. He rinsed the layers away, revealing the first bit of fuzz. She touched it tentatively. Red. In a few hours, it would grow as long as her fingers, and in a day, it would reach her shoulders. She swallowed a calcium packet and an E supplement. Without those minerals, her new hair would turn brittle and break away, fragile as strands of spun glass.
His eyes traced the fuzz, an odd expression on his face.
“You’re sad,” she guessed.
He flashed to her in surprise. She had been correct. “I like you as you are.”
Tenderness flowed into her heart. She liked him the way he was right now too. “It’ll come back in a few days.”
His thumb stroked her cheek. Absent, as if he didn’t notice. “Real hair takes so much longer to grow.”
“Then you’ll just have to wait with me until it’s all back.”
His eyes skipped up to her scalp again. He pressed her briefly to his chest, making a wet print on his flight suit, and shut off the water, allowing radiation to dry her naturally and fully. Her chemise and panties puffed out, made fluffy by the warmth. He scooped his arm under hers and helped her back to the bed. His skin felt cool, as it had many times in the past.
She looked at the other tubes. “What about you?”
“It’ll wait.”
“I can—”
“I want you mended first.” He lifted her up onto the gauzy sheets again, sat beside her with one knee tilted to her and the other foot on the ground, and unscrewed the lid of the Bruisease. The cream smelled medicinal, antiseptic, vaguely of peppermint balm. He scooped up the contents with bare fingers and brushed them, ever so gently, over her ankles.
The cream seeped in like a relaxing heat, catching her muscles mid-throb and filling them with a pounding warmth, like slipping into a silken chocolate bath, coating her in luxury and cream. He slid his slippery fingers around the underside of her bruised heel and crunched toes. He gently flexed the joints as he coated them with relief. Delicious sensation radiated up her legs toward a sudden awakening between them. She moaned.
He pressed higher, up her shins to the knee, up her thighs. The pounding grew to a throbbing ache. She licked her lips. Her body undulated with his movements, inviting him closer. His hands massaged up the line of her undergarments, across her trembling belly, to her bruised collar.
Despite his steady movements, his breath hitched, and his interest pressed a thick rod against her thigh. But no matter how she opened herself to him, no matter how she invited him to take more, he doggedly kept his touch professional. Clinical. Even when she opened her eyes and met his, his gaze on her was a laser fully focused, so intense that she heated even more, flushed with his gentle, thorough attention. But he made no demands. He stopped at the edges of her chemise, exactly where she had stopped him before, and pushed forth the tub of cream so that she could finish slathering it on the bruises that had yet to be treated.
She slid down the chemise.
He blinked and took in the view, consuming her bare breasts and stomach, and lower, her mound.
She pushed the tub back to him. “It’s okay. I don’t mind if you…touch me.”
He took a long breath as he reached for the tub, scooped up cream, and gently slid his fingers along her most sensitive regions. Her breasts, full beneath his touch, her nipples, pearling beneath his powerful fingers, the roundness of her belly, the pinkness of her lower places. He leaned over her, his chest against hers and his rugged chin next to her jaw. Heat flared through her. She held her breath.
He rolled her toward him, balancing her belly against his knee, and rubbed the cream into her aching back and spine.
She released her breath in delicious moans. Her relief moved through her in exquisite waves of release, turning the burning pain into warm throbbing that fed into the fire burning deep in her body. He cupped her buttocks in his hot palms and increased the sensation. She moaned again.
He paused. “Cressida.”
His voice sounded pained.
She slid up on her elbow, catching his heated gaze. His whole body felt taut, his calves folded beneath his knees, his back straight as a rod, his jaw locked. She caressed the bulge of his quadriceps. “What is it?”
“I want…” He frowned, a punctuation mark without a sentence. “Androids don’t have wants.”
She tilted her face up to his. “But?”
He moved closer then stopped, his lips a fraction from hers. His breath was shaky; his hardness pulsed against her as though testing his control. “I want to pleasure you.”
Shocking need flashed through her. He looked at her with such naked desire. She surged up and pressed her lips to his.
His mouth moved beneath hers, surprise giving way to hunger. Her hands slid around the back of his head, threading his hair. He nibbled her sensitive lips and, when she opened to him, plunged in his tongue. Liquid heat blazed in her. She moaned.
He kissed her breathless, filling her with sweet need, turning the throbbing ache into twisting desire. His rippling back knotted, hard and perfect, beneath her hungry fingers. Fitted against her soft curves, his powerful arms and legs held him steady over her body. He stroked her cheek, focused on her as if she were the only star in an infinite black sky, and his whole being reached for her light.
She separated the front of his suit. As she had seen so briefly before being crushed against them in the decontam room, his pectorals were wide and smooth, the nipples small and dark. She traced the musculature down his belly, over the taut abdomen, to the divot of his waist. The obliques over his hips bulged against the line of his profile. She parted the seam lower, over the bulge, to reveal first the fleshy tip, his engorged shaft, and finally the smaller cluster of his testicles. His eyes remained on her, unchanged with his nakedness.
She met his hot gaze. “Do you like this?”
His jaw clenched. Fighting himself. “Androids don’t have likes, either.”
She teased the line of his belly button to the ridge of his desire. “But?”
“But I’m a machine. I have biological components, and this”—he indicated his lower hardness—“thi
s physical reaction to my mental state makes no sense.”
“Aw.” She drew delicate fingers along the silken skin. He sucked in a breath through his teeth, and his masculinity pulsed beneath her. “I know the feeling.”
“I can’t…I can’t understand this.”
She started to let go and straighten. He was right. A human and an android together defied logic. And, honestly, just because she felt fragile and he made her feel strong was no reason to—
“Cressida.” His hand curved around hers and strengthened her grip on his pulsing hot shaft. “I want to keep you safe. The farther away I go, the faster I have to get back. When I think about someone causing you pain, an illogical urge drives me to destroy unrelated objects. And when I’ve made you happy, I need to increase that happiness. I want to pull it down from the heavens and present it to you. This”—he indicated his still diamond-hard erection—“is a manifestation of that want.”
She licked her dry lips. “Androids don’t have wants.”
“You make me want you.”
She slowly rolled upright. His words fell upon her like stars, glowing softly on her healing skin. “Tell me this isn’t a program.”
“Never.” His truth blazed. “I only feel this drive, this all-consuming obsession, with you.”
She encircled the head. Like the rest of his body, it was cooler than she expected, and yet there was warmth deeper, like the sheen glistening on his forehead. A hint of the uncontrolled. The length her fist clasped firmly was hard as rebar, the skin soft as her own but the internal strength enough to lift him off the ground.
His breath hitched.
He, the android who outran space lasers and jumped out of falling shuttles without raising his heart rate by one single beat, couldn’t keep his breath even in front of her.
He wanted to pleasure her.
She tugged him forward. “Xan. Make me forget.”
His eyes searched hers, seeking to confirm what she asked, exactly.
Sliding under his flight suit and nestling herself under his elbows, her bare leg hooked around his as she pulled him down on top of her. She released his mouth long enough to nuzzle his ear. “Make me feel.”
Liberation's Kiss: A Science Fiction Romance (Robotics Faction Book 1) Page 15
