Now it was time to impress him in a new way.
She didn’t speak as she slid her hands up to the exposed skin of his chest, then down to the juncture where the shirt remained fastened. For just a moment she tried slipping the button through the wet fabric, then looked up at him when the damn thing decided it wasn’t going to be cooperative.
“I promise I’ll buy you a new one,” she said simply, then yanked with all her might.
A groan escaped him when buttons flew everywhere, the skittering of them lost to the hiss of the water. He closed his eyes, his head falling back against the marbled wall in a lush surrender even as she drank him in first with her eyes, then with the helpless, needy hunger of her mouth. He couldn’t have been more stunning if he’d sprung fully formed from her deepest fantasies. His skin tone was several shades darker than her own three-days-dead paleness, and stretched tautly over a warrior’s frame that could have come from the era of gladiators. A light dusting of hair veed across his chest to arrow down his stomach, growing darker as it dipped under the waist of his pants in a trail that beckoned her to explore. And she would. But first...
With a sigh that was borne out of pure relief, she pressed her lips to where his chest shuddered with each earth-shaking beat of his heart. It was a dream come true to open her mouth against his skin and taste him, swirling her tongue to savor his clean flavor. One of his hands came up to plow through the heavy mess of her hair, pressing against the back of her head in silent encouragement to explore him to her heart’s content. His other hand pressed against the small of her back to grind her into the stiffened length of his staff, a gesture designed to both please himself and to show how her mere presence was enough to put him in such a helpless state.
It was a state she was only too happy to keep him in for the foreseeable future.
A delicious pulse between her legs began to throb even as she let her mouth wander up to the defined ridge of his collarbone. Her teeth were a gentle threat as she pushed the wet material of his shirt along with his coat off the solid expanse of his shoulders. When the sodden material caught at his elbows, he shook off the restrictive binds like he was shaking off shackles. His torso was a living sculpture, but so much more inviting as he shivered with eagerness beneath her hands, goose bumps breaking out wherever she touched despite the heat of the shower. Helpless to stop herself, Reina learned the texture of his hair-dusted skin, knowing that even if she looked the world over she would never find a man more perfectly suited to her own finicky tastes than Edison.
His hands seemed just as eager to learn everything there was to know about her. As her mouth returned to his so their tongues could joust in a sensual duel of seduction, he found the tab of Velcro at her throat and tugged it open, then worked the zipper of her suit past her waist. For only a few moments that felt like a small eternity, he left her to deal with both their shoes and socks before he was back to making single-minded love to her mouth.
Clothes were now an impediment, an unbearable discomfort as the heat they generated competed and clashed with the steam billowing around them. The cleft between her thighs was the hottest of all, and though she tried squeezing her legs together to quell the fire threatening to leap out of control, that action only made it worse. Dizzy with the hunger for his taste and anxious to learn every nook and cranny of the playground that was his body, Reina slid her mouth to where his pulse throbbed in his neck. She suckled the flavor of his skin there while she made hasty work of the belt and fastenings of his pants. She dipped her hands beneath the material to mold the contours of his firm buttocks, pushing his clothes aside as she went. All at once he was shucking the last of the barriers aside before he ripped the pink camisole she wore over her head. She wore no bra underneath, and with a hungry growl he filled his hands with the subtle swell of her naked breasts, as if he had an internal imperative to feel all of her in the next minute or die.
His devouring caresses were more delicious than any dream. Each and every nerve she possessed shivered with hyperawareness that only his touch could satisfy. Blindly she arched into his hands, seeking more pleasure while at the same time inviting bolder caresses. He obliged her with a greedy eagerness that had her pulse skyrocketing with breathless delight as he bent his head over her. His seeking mouth worshipped her body, the rough-silk caress of his tongue sliding along the valley of her breasts before it drew teasing circles around a hardened nipple. His seductive touch was both knowing and merciless, and he tormented her until he dragged a fractured whimper from her, a wordless plea that begged for more. He responded to her need, at last closing his lips over the taut peak, suckling so deeply a small spasm of raw pleasure broke like a wave in her belly to ignite the molten slickness between her legs.
What few pieces of clothing remained were a sudden, intolerable obstruction. Reina trembled with the force of her anticipation as he went to his knees to help her out of her suit and panties, and had to bite her lip to keep from crying out when he nuzzled a cheek against the dark curls at the juncture of her thighs. He didn’t straighten and take her immediately as she expected him to. Instead, he was apparently content to stay right where he was so that his hands could stroke down the flare of her hips down to her quads—now shaking with the effort to remain standing—to roam to the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs. With gentle but insistent pressure he pushed her legs apart, and she held onto the brawny expanse of his shoulders to steady herself while the beat of her heart threatened to bring her to her knees.
“Edison.” A warning. A plea. She wasn’t sure which.
He glanced up to blister her with a white-hot smile she knew she would never forget, telling her without words he understood what she meant far better than she did. “You just keep saying my name, sweetheart. You have no idea how it turns me inside out, hearing you call my name like that.” And with that, the confident slide of his fingers invaded her hidden cleft in a deliberate, erotic stroke.
Her body bucked with the first intimate touch, the pleasure like an electric jolt to the system. Her jagged gasp echoed in the confines of the shower and seemed to spur him on to wring more sounds of sensual torment from her. Pleasure poured like liquid fire from his touch to the very core of her, as if he wasn’t just touching her body but her very soul, and she never wanted it to end. She spread her legs wider while her hips began to rock in a rhythm that matched his stroking hand, a frantic, needy response that showed him without words just how easily he could inflame her.
His touch was both violent and gentle, relentlessly pursuing that secret nub to which her entire being seemed to be affixed. The slick inner flesh there swelled and throbbed with an ever-growing need for release, while incoherent pleas for mercy and demands for more gushed from her along with his name. Always his name. In that moment—maybe from the second he’d come strutting into her life—Edison was the center of her universe. Undiluted pleasure pushed its way into every corner of her awareness until she could easily believe she had come into this existence solely for this stimulation overload. He pushed at her still, massaging her with sweet relentlessness until she swung from one spasm of piercing delight to the next, her whole body struggling to get through the excruciating delight before it killed her. And just when she half-believed she really could die of it, he replaced his hand with his mouth, his large hands tilting her pelvis up and opening her innermost flesh to receive the hot bathing of his tongue.
The shattering inside her was so agonizing in its raw beauty she could do nothing else but cry out, her head snapping back as she gave herself to the sweetest pleasure she had ever known. It was so intense, her abandonment of awareness so complete she didn’t know he had risen to his full height, picked her up and spun her around to press her up against the wall until she felt its hard surface bite into her shoulder blades. Then he was inside her with a thrust so powerful it tore a jagged gasp from her even as it brought him up to meet her all the way to his hilt. His hardened
manhood was as big as the rest of him, and it took her a moment to adjust to the overwhelming sensation of the void within her suddenly being filled. He didn’t give her that moment, instead surging into her again and again until the wild frenzy that hadn’t yet left her broke her apart again, and this time her cries of undulating satiation were joined by his.
Chapter Seven
“Did you really transfer from Lincoln Park to my precinct because of me?”
The wind had stopped its agonized screaming sometime after midnight. Beyond the insulated HD privacy windows that ranged across one wall of Edison’s spartanly furnished bedroom, snow now fell in gentle swirls to ensure that it was a white Christmas Eve. The worst of the storm was over, and in its place was a quiet, perfect peace.
Or, Reina considered, maybe she was just projecting onto the world how she felt. Not that she believed there was such a thing as perfect. Nor was she a big, sappy idiot when it came to matters of the heart; flowers and weeping violins weren’t her thing. But she did believe the most vulnerable piece of one’s soul—that thing poets referred to as the heart—could be given to another.
Or in her case, hopelessly lost.
She hadn’t been kidding when she’d told Edison he had gotten under her skin right from the beginning. Her almost-painful awareness of him from the moment he’d swaggered into her life had been so distracting he might as well have perched on the edge of her desk in nothing more than his birthday suit. Now that this awareness had overtaken her to fill every corner of her mind, she at last recognized it for the panty-melting attraction that it was. But because he’d announced himself as her rival, she hadn’t allowed herself to recognize it. Nor had she acknowledged that his constant attention was a reflection of a mutual hunger. If she had, that would have been the end of it—game over for both of them. She would have been lost long before this.
She was lost now. No, she corrected, irritated that even now she was shying away from the truth. She wasn’t lost. Her heart was.
She’d gone and fallen in love with her rival.
The question now was whether or not falling for the police commissioner’s golden boy was the biggest mistake of her life.
With Edison’s chest pressed to her back, she felt him stir. “Oh. You heard that, huh?”
“Actually, I thought I’d dreamed it. Thanks for verifying that I didn’t.”
“You sneaky bitch, you.”
“That’s me.” Nestled on her side, she stroked her fingertips along the arm draped over her waist. “I never was clear why you left your department in Lincoln Park to take up residence in mine. I always had the suspicion you had me in your crosshairs.”
“I suppose that’s one way of putting it.” He nuzzled his face into her neck, and she shivered when his lips lingered over the delicate point where spine met neck. “I’ve always been ambitious, and I don’t apologize for it. I want to be the best at what I do, and to do that I need to see if I measure up to the best around. That’s you.”
Her eyes drifted closed to better savor the invisible fire dancing along her nerves wherever his lips touched. “There have been times when I’ve wanted you anywhere but in my precinct. When you were the first one to sign up for the bod-mods, I fantasized about beating the crap out of you for wanting to become one of the department’s first walking toasters.”
“Watch it, lady.” His arm tightened around her, but she could sense the care in the gesture. With his heavier-than-human body, she was touched at how much thought and consideration he put into handling her. “Those are fighting words.”
“Are they still fighting words if I say you were perfect the way you were?”
He lifted his head off the pillow they shared to frown at her. “Are you saying I’m less than perfect now?”
“Idiot.” With his mouth so close, there was no way she could resist having a taste. No matter how many times she touched him, kissed him, brought his body into hers, she would never be able to get enough of him. “You haven’t lost a step, and you know it. But I’ll admit that’s what I was afraid of when you disappeared for a month after being modified. I was so worried that when you finally returned from your recovery, you wouldn’t be...you.”
There was a beat of silence. “You were worried? About me?”
“A little.” Her voice was uncharacteristically small as she uncorked a truth that had been buried so far down it was hard to admit, even now. “I kept remembering all the times we’d crossed swords with each other—everything from you eating my pistachios to arguing with you over how to handle the nutty professor, to the time when we were racing each other to see who could get the Cicero Slasher first. All these memories of you—of us—they were all I could think about when you were gone. I just didn’t want that special spark that made you you lost forever. So...I worried.”
“Yeah?” There was something in his touch as he sifted his fingers through her hair, something so unbearably tender it tightened her throat in a kind of sweet anguish. “So, what do you think of the finished product, Vedette? Do I pass muster?”
“Careful, pal. That sounds suspiciously like fishing for compliments.”
“I’m serious, Reina.” He levered himself up on an elbow and she could feel his gaze brush over her face like a caress. “I want to hear you say you’re okay with the way I am now.”
“I’m better than okay with it.” Rolling onto her other side and wanting to banish the shadows darkening his eyes, she hitched a leg over his hip. “And thanks to you, I don’t feel nearly as hostile about the bod-mods as I used to.”
He looked as surprised as if she’d said she wanted to go skydiving without a parachute. “Does this mean you’re thinking about getting bod-mods?”
She shook her head. “Not only do I have that bad experience in my childhood where I felt like I had become more machine than human, I don’t think they’d be right for me. I’m comfortable with how my brain operates, and I recognize my thought processes just wouldn’t be compatible with neurolinks. I take too many sideways leaps of logic that, strangely enough, often bear fruit in the end.”
“Like chasing down a total stranger in a white-out blizzard?”
“Exactly.” She loved how the brush of her breasts touched the wall of his chest with every breath she took. “My dad always taught me to rely on good old-fashioned brain power, and that’s what I do. If I were to try and force my outside-the-box way of thinking into an algorithmic structure, my work would suffer. Not to mention I’d probably go nuts having a constant stream of meaningless chatter zipping through my wetware. I’m too solitary.”
“I’m good with that.” As if he had all the time in the world, he brought her hand to the lengthening thrust of his hardness while cruising his lips over her face. Her heart skipped a beat, and she reveled in how he closed his eyes in obvious bliss as she stroked him from base to tip. “Feel free to be as solitary as you want, as long as you’re solitary with me—your partner.”
That made the enthusiastic slide of her hand pause. “I thought this case was a special one-off deal, and that our partnership was only temporary.”
“Nope. I need a partner, and since I’m now a level five I get to choose who that is.”
She couldn’t seem to wrap her mind around it. “Our captain isn’t going to like that.”
“Actually, other than a token protest, he didn’t say much and neither did anyone else. I think it’s finally dawning on everybody that the world isn’t ending just because you’ve decided bod-mods aren’t for you.”
“And you’re sure you’re okay with having a partner who’s purely organic?”
“Well, my only other option would be Manu Obie, but since I can’t quite stomach the idea of dealing with the chronic halitosis on a daily basis, you’re it. Say hello to your permanent partner, Detective Vedette.”
“I don’t know if this i
s going to be a win for you.” A laugh escaped her, but she couldn’t help it. It wasn’t much, but the fact that Edison wanted her as his permanent partner—and the possibility of spending almost every waking hour with him—left her oddly breathless. “At the moment your partner is fresh out of ideas when it comes to figuring out what the next step is.”
“I think I might have a few.” Hitching an arm under her knee, Edison opened her legs wider and slid the tip of his manhood into her threshold. “There’s no way that kid can exist. So why don’t we take the screencap of our impossible bionic jumper’s actions to someone who knows more about this stuff than we do?”
“Like who?”
“The guy who turned me into a walking toaster might be able to give us some idea of what we’re dealing with.”
“Okay. I think...” Her breath caught as he rolled on top of her and slid his now-throbbing staff into her in one smooth thrust, unleashing a lush bloom of pleasure that drenched her brain. “Um. Never mind. I’ll think later.”
* * *
The renaissance of artificial intelligence, or AI, had a birthplace, and it was in the heart of Chicago. CCR, or the Chicago College of Robotics had been the ivory-tower home for the likes of Delbert Conrad, father of android technology, as well as the Nobel-prize winning team that had created the biofusion nanites that powered the country’s military fighting force, members of law enforcement and anyone willing to take a risk on the thriving black market for bootlegged bod-mods. As Edison walked through the massive white and chrome lobby of CCR’s avant-garde main building, he recalled all too well the palm-sweating anxiety of when he’d first come through the automated doors to check in for the surgery that had changed both his body and his life. The uncertainty of whether or not he was making the right decision had eaten an acidic hole through his gut and there had been countless moments when he’d thought of just walking out without a backward glance. Now he knew it had been the right decision for him, just as he knew there was no way Reina would be a good recipient for any type of bod-mod. Bod-mods were for regular people who needed to be extraordinary. But Reina had been born extraordinary. There was no point in gilding the rose.
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