by Nya Rayne
Phia stared at her, as if she hadn’t a clue what she was talking about, before her attention strayed and she glanced around the room. Something was missing. She glanced between the two white pillars separating her viewing room from her kitchen and the door leading to the outside hallway.
Nothing.
Phia sat up straighter, her mind alert. She threw her legs off the couch and started to stand but stopped.
He was standing near the windows, his back to her, his hands resting comfortably in the small of his back as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
“Donté,” she whispered, not realizing she had spoken out loud.
He turned to look at her then, his head tilting to the right as if to say, Do you have need of me?
“Do you want some water?” Dr. Lobush asked, interrupting the amateur staring contest.
Phia tore her eyes away from Donté. “Yes, please.” A second later, the doctor was gone and Phia found herself staring at the floor. She’d actually fainted! How could she have done something so…so…silly?
The appearance of sandaled feet and then white-draped knees in her line of sight startled her, and she sat back. Her eyes traveled swiftly up the same body that had caused her to faint in the first place. Donté gazed at her, as if examining an animal he’d never seen before. Her breathing quickened. He leaned forward, his breath misting over her face and neck, and she could feel the room beginning to turn again. She leaned back away from him, her hands coming up to push against his hard chest.
She could feel his heart beating, thrumming soothingly against her hand. Her fingers knotted in his toga of their own accord as her arms began to tremble and the room began to spin faster and faster around her. She pulled him closer, but her only reward was the sound of her heart beating in her ears as the floor rose and fell beneath her feet.
“Are you going to faint again?” His voice was low and husky. Strong hands came up to her shoulders, and she was shifting, being positioned back on the couch. She closed her eyes and willed herself to calm down before she totally humiliated herself again.
A hand on her forehead drew her from her reverie, and Phia opened her eyes to a ruefully smiling Dr. Lobush. “Drink this,” she ordered. She held the glass to Phia’s lips and allowed her to take a few small sips. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right? I could bring him back another time.”
Phia pushed up. “No, no, it’s fine. I haven’t been sleeping much with all the excitement.”
Dr. Lobush shot her a telling look. “If you’re sure.”
“I am.” Phia scooted back, leaned against the arm of the sofa, and added, “I’m sorry about all of this. I must admit, though, it’s rather disconcerting.” She glanced up at Donté. “He must think I’m some kind of moron.”
“If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be human.”
She groaned and brought her knees up to her chest. Wrapping her arms around them, she said in exasperation, “Let’s try this again. How are you, Dr. Lobush?”
“Very well, thank you for asking.”
Phia glanced at Donté again. “Uhm, well, is there anything I should know? Anything special I should do for or to him?”
“You mean like whether you should walk him, feed him, and pet him when he’s good?”
“I’m sorry,” Phia said quickly, realizing her mistake. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
Dr. Lobush’s eyes shifted from Phia to Donté and came to rest on the darkening sky beyond the window. “It’s fine, but there is a reason why I wanted to bring him to you myself instead of having you pick him up.”
“I’m listening.”
“As I have already told you, he is special. Let’s say, one of a kind. Because of this, I must ask you not to tell everyone about him.”
“Excuse me? Why?” Phia sat forward, her brows drawn together. “The people I know with personomales don’t have to hide them. As a matter of fact, they do the exact opposite. Why would you ask me to hide mine?”
“Phia, the people you know with personomales don’t have a human altered personomale. They either have the FAP or the PAP model.” She looked over at Donté as she continued, “Think one of a kind, okay? And remember what he can give you, other personomale owners could never dream of receiving.”
“What he could give me?” Phia turned Donté, her eyes narrowed. After a moment her eyes widened in shock before she dropped her gaze to her hands, and tried to hide her chagrin. “Oh.”
“I also believe until he is acclimated to you and his new surroundings, it would be prudent to keep him close.”
“Keep him close?”
“Yes. Don’t introduce him to the entire world. Maybe a few friends and family members, but don’t let them know he’s a HAP if you can help it.”
Phia tried to think of whom she’d already told about him. She could only remember telling her best friend, Ice, but she wouldn’t try anything with him. She’d told a couple of the girls at the foundation where she volunteered, and she’d told her mother, but she hadn’t gone into any detail with any of them about what he was. She glanced back up at the doctor.
“I already told my best friend about him. Other than her, no one knows what he is.”
“Good, let’s try to keep it that way. At least for a while.”
So, they were rare. So what? She turned, dropping her feet to the floor. “Is there something you aren’t telling me?”
“Do you remember what you said to me about love not being easy?”
“Sure I do, but what does it have to do with keeping him a secret?”
With a sigh, Dr. Lobush said, “Everything.”
They talked for a while longer. Phia got no closer to figuring out what the woman was hiding, but knew she definitely wasn’t telling her everything. In the end, she saw Dr. Lobush to the door with a promise to call her should anything unusual occur.
As the door slid closed behind the doctor, Phia sighed and turned back to face her newly acquired human altered personomale, whom she could not tell a soul about and had to let everyone believe was merely the prototype of a PAP yet to be released to the general public. What was she supposed to do with him now? Was she supposed to talk to him?
The glass walls were beginning to darken, their night tint replacing the polarized day glass. Dusk was approaching.
She stepped closer, her eyes trained on Donté. He moved fluidly away from the spot where he’d taken up residence throughout most of the afternoon and glided toward her, as if he had heard her subconsciously call to him. She stopped, but he continued in her direction. She swallowed and tried to avert her gaze, but couldn’t. He stopped an arm’s length away from her, his eyes never leaving her own. She swallowed and blinked, glancing at the darkening sky behind him. “Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?” she forced out.
He seemed to think about that, which was good in her opinion, before he answered, “Do you want something to eat?”
Phia scratched her head and frowned up at him. “No. Do you want something to drink?”
He stepped closer to her. “No. Do you want something to drink?” He covered the last bit of space between them and stopped.
What was his deal? She’d heard from some of her friends that personomales got stuck in loops from time to time, but he was supposed to be human, right? Well, if that was so, why the heck was he tossing her questions back at her? In the few seconds it had taken to decipher her little conundrum, he’d crossed the last bit of space between them and was standing so close, she could feel heat oozing from his body like tendrils of electricity. She could hear him breathing and feel the air he exhaled dance across her face. She looked up at him, her eyes trained on his beautiful, ghostly blues.
“Do you want to watch a cast?”
His head dipped down to hers, tilted to the left and then the right, before coming to rest against hers. “If you want to, but what exactly is a cast?” He sniffed her lightly around her mouth, along her cheek, at the base of her ear, and then dipped lower, inhaling w
hatever scent was wafting from her neck.
“A show with actresses pretending to be people they’re not.” Her heart began to race again, thumping violently in her ears. She could feel sweat beginning to bead up between her breasts and her knees, those weak and pathetic knees, which were beginning to buckle once again. She reached for him, her hands gripping the front of his toga as she tilted slowly forward. The room was topsy-turvy again, spinning uncontrollably as she felt powerful arms encircle her and, seconds later, pull her off her feet.
“Are you going to faint again?” he asked, and had she not known for a fact she was losing her mind, she would have sworn by the tone of his voice that he found something comical about her current predicament.
Her head lolled backward, only to tilt forward again and come to rest on his muscled chest. “Would it make you happy?” She was simply trying to remain upright.
He was quiet for a long moment as he sat down on the couch with her still wrapped in his arms. He shifted her, cuddling her like a baby, her head snuggled in the crook of his neck. “No.”
What was happening? Why was he holding her like this? Did he see her as weak? Did they program him to do this? Did other owners of personomales feel such a strong pull toward their new companions? Would she ever be able to tolerate his closeness without fainting?
The hands of darkness called to her from the recesses of her mind, and she snuggled closer into the warmth her new companion offered her. She knew she needed to find answers to the questions racing around her head, but she couldn’t hold on any longer. His chest, his arms, the rhythmic sound of his breathing were like a haunting lullaby, forcing her to surrender. She felt him shift ever so subtly and seconds later felt the tip of his nose against her cheek.
“Why…” she started, her voice low with fatigue, “why do you keep sniffing me?”
“You smell like rain and flowers, and it reminds me of something, but I don’t know what that something is,” he said, his voice velvet-soft.
“Do you like it?”
“On you, I do, I think.”
Phia had no response. So she allowed the darkness to devour more of her consciousness, until it took her from this world and delivered her into a world filled with wistful dreams. His velvet-soft voice pierced the darkness. “What do I call you?”
She hadn’t the strength to answer verbally, but through the fog of sleepiness she was shouting her name.
Chapter Five
The minute consciousness started to return, Phia felt as if an orchestra of monkeys were inside her head, pounding on every obnoxiously loud instrument known to womankind. She couldn’t remember feeling this bad since she and Ice had celebrated their college graduation with three bottles of red wine.
Phia groaned, her eyes clenched, her temples throbbing. “Make it stop,” she begged as she rolled from her back to her right side and covered her eyes. She tried to remember if she had drunk anything the night before. Unfortunately, the harder she thought, the louder the monkey ensemble banged on their timpani drums and blew on their trombones.
The events of the night before began to replay in her head. No, she hadn’t drunk a thing, but she had acquired something, or was it someone? She rolled to her back and immediately regretted it, because the lead monkey began to play a solo on his cymbals.
Phia groaned in agony and gripped the sides of her head. “Holy mother of…Gah!”
The mattress to her right shifted, and she stopped breathing altogether.
“Are you in pain?” the voice from the night before asked. Her eyes snapped open. For a full three seconds she stared back into eyes filled with concern and confusion. Then she took a deep breath and screamed and screamed and screamed.
Donté pushed away from her in haste while covering his own ears as she pushed up with one hand and pulled the covers up to cover herself. A second later, the pain returned. It was at the front of her head this time. The lead monkey and his band of tormentors were performing an encore.
Phia bit down on her lower lip and dropped her head for a second, and Donté was back at her side, his hands on her shoulders, pushing her back down. She looked up at him, her brows furrowed as she took in his shirtless chest, his matted hair, and his weary eyes. She then turned her attention to her own lack of clothing. Last night she’d been wearing a ringed hula dress over black Lycra tights, but now she was wearing nothing but her brassiere and panties. He undressed me? Stupid question, very stupid question, Phia. She pushed at his hands and tried to sit up, but his uncompromising tone stopped her.
“Lie still. You are obviously in some kind of pain.”
She stared at him, unable to come up with a solitary thing to say.
“What hurts?” His voice was softer this time and filled with concern.
Phia licked her lips, her voice a croak as she said, “My…my head. I’ll just take some medi-pills, please.”
“That won’t be necessary.” His gaze traveled the length of her body before he moved, scooting closer to her side. “Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to help you with your headache, and I can’t do it with you staring at me.”
“You don’t have to, honestly. You don’t.” She tried to look away from him, but her eyes dipped instead and landed on the large scar covering his chest, as if it were some sort of badge of honor. She swallowed and started to ask him about it, but his hands were suddenly in her face, at her eyelids, forcing them closed.
“Keep them like that,” he said.
A little voice in her head told her to open her eyes, to watch him closely, but she argued against that advice. This was Donté. She’d picked him, prayed for him, and brought him into her home, and obviously, her bed. She had to trust him. She had to give him a reason to trust her. This was a step in the right direction.
Cool air swept over her body, and Phia shivered. She started to open her eyes, but he spoke melodically, his voice like thick buttercream. “Remain still. Keep your eyes closed, and focus on something you find relaxing.”
For the first two seconds she tried to obey his request, but the very instant she felt his soft, thick fingers brush over the side of her left cheek, run the length of her neck, and drift slowly over her collarbone, thoughts of anything besides him evaporated. His fingers trailed down the valley between her breasts, walked up each of her mounds, and danced around her now-erect nipples.
Her breathing quickened, and her heart pounded in her chest as his fingers, then his large hands, sensuously massaged one of her breasts, then the other, and slid down her side, squeezing gently and releasing as they moved farther down her body in a methodic, calming, circular pattern.
The tips of his fingers caressed her sensitive skin, eliciting an unwanted moan from her. She squirmed under his touch, not totally sure if she wanted to be closer to it or whether she wanted to get away from it. As his hands slipped over her stomach, he moved in closer to her, his knees pressed against her side. Phia found herself desperately wanting to look at him, to see his face, to ask him how this was supposed to get rid of her headache.
Before she could pull the correct words together to ask him, his fingers slipped down the outside of her thighs, trailed slowly up her inner thighs, and caused every coherent thought she might have been entertaining to slide out of her grasp. Her eyes started to open, but she clenched them closed, refusing to ruin this moment with him.
He palmed the inside of her thighs, close to an area no man had ever touched, and moved her legs, opening them wider with one hand while his other hand, which had moved back up her body, massaged her lower abdomen.
This was crazy, she realized with the swiftness of a frightened hare. Yes, she’d purchased him and had ached to be caressed and touched like this by a real, living and breathing man, but she didn’t know a thing about him, who he was, or what he wanted out of life. How could she lie here, allowing him to touch her in places where only a chosen few had ever ventured? I’m going to stop it! Right now! Right this i
nstant, she decided, but her body remained still with the exception of the trembling that traveled from her core outward, and her eyes remained closed to the man and the room around them.
The hand at her abdomen moved lower, the fingers of his hands slipping beneath the band of her satin panties. If there was ever a time to stop what he was about to do, now was the perfect time. Still, she didn’t move. His hand slipped deeper into her garment, palming her heat. She shivered against him, her legs coming up so they were bent at the knees. Her thigh muscles tensed around his hand as a moan slipped past her parched lips.
He shushed her, brought a hand up, and brushed it across her cheek. “Relax.”
His fingers moved with expert precision, massaging the hairless lips of her sex to and fro, around and around. He ran his knuckles up the outside corners of the joints connecting her legs to her groin. She gyrated against his touch, her head thrashing back and forth. As his thumb rubbed at the rise of her vulva, her hips, of their own accord, rose up against his touch, her thighs relaxing, her legs falling open.
She gripped the sheets as his finger slipped between her now moist and throbbing lips, brushing past the opening. “Donté?”
“Shssh,” he ordered, and as he parted her lower lips, his fingers moving gently but swiftly, she lost her grip on the world. His thumb moved over her clitoris repeatedly, brushing over the tip, applying enough pressure to elicit a soft moan from her as her hips undulated toward his touch.
Suddenly, all she knew was this unnatural feeling swimming through her, growing by insurmountable bounds, making sparks of electricity bring parts of her body alive she wasn’t even aware she owned. He was relentless in his ministrations, and damn near intent on driving her insane. Colors swam before her closed eyelids, beautiful shades, some she’d never seen before. The slick stickiness of her sex grew and expanded, draining from her like warm, rich syrup over hot crepes, and still his fingers danced over her, never entering her, but coming so close she could feel him pushing against her walls, plunging deeper and deeper.