Love 2.0

by Lee Kilraine

  “With VR, you don’t watch your avatar—you’re actually in the virtual environment yourself. You are your avatar. VR isn’t new, but we’re working on adding ways to incorporate a user’s sense of touch to the virtual environment’s sensory factors.”

  “Touch?”

  “Yes. We’re developing biosensors that can pick up and decipher nerve and muscle movement. Our first experiments incorporated the sensors into gloves, but now we’re working with the sensors attached directly to the skin. It’s exciting stuff.”

  “Sure sounds like it.”

  “The sensors are only in the early experimental phase. Right now much of the virtual reality sexual response is still mental.”

  “Um, you mean like phone sex?”

  “More like phone sex on steroids and in three-D.”

  “That’s very . . . intriguing.” She cleared her throat. “I might have to try it out next time I go to the library. Although I guess if I don’t have a pair of virtual-reality goggles it doesn’t matter.”

  “You don’t have to go to the library. I’ve got more than a few laptops lying around. I need to set you up on one anyway to teach you all the safety measures: learning to avoid being tracked, spreading disinformation, encryption, and phone safety—we’ll cover some each day you’re here.”

  “Sounds good, but about the Blue Room . . .” Her gaze landed everywhere but on his. “Do you have a pair of VR glasses I can use too?”

  “Sure.” The idea of Mira in the Blue Room with a pair of VR glasses sent a rush of blood through his body. And to think he’d been grinning at her blush a few minutes ago. He forced his mind to stop picturing the two of them in the Blue Room. “Just so you know, the players that go in there, they’re looking for . . . a release of some kind. And the room is unmonitored. Totally private.”

  “Got it.” Avoiding his eyes, she jumped up, clearing both of their plates to the sink and giving all her attention to scrubbing them.

  Damn. Kaz had an instant urge to meet Mira in one of the private salons secreted in the corners of the Blue Room. Which was an extremely bad idea. A terrible idea. A stupendously ill-advised idea. Do not open your mouth, Kazimir. Not one word. Not one damn wor—“My gamertag is GamerGuy27, in case you want to . . . find me.”

  Mira whipped her head around to him, her eyes searching his face. “Maybe I will. I’m Damsel in Distress.”

  “I know.” It was official. He was an idiot. Why not just invite her to have sex on the kitchen counter, Kaz? Tomorrow night’s date was looking more and more necessary with each minute he spent with Mira.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kaz was on his computer and speaking with a client in Prague the next evening when Mira poked her head into his office. Holding up a finger to delay her, he wrapped up his business call and pulled off his headset. “Yes?”

  “Did you forget about your date?”

  He flipped his wrist over to check the time. Well, shit. How did it get to be that late? “Dammit. No, I just lost track of time.”

  “So much for number one of the date rules: don’t be late. You need to get going. Are you sure you don’t want me to show up and sit at the table behind you to feed you conversation starters? I’ve seen it done in movies.”

  He frowned over at her and stood, running a hand through his hair once before leaving his office with Mira trailing behind him. He grabbed his keys and wallet from the sleek metal table next to the door leading to the garage.

  “Wait! Is that what you’re wearing?”

  “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” He looked down at his neatly creased Dockers and blue plaid button-down oxford shirt. “I even took out my pocket protector.”

  “Ha! Very funny. No, it’s your shoes. A guy’s shoes can be a deal-breaker for some women.” Mira shrugged. “I mean, not me, which may be part of my problem, but for some.”

  “My Converse don’t work? Women care about a guy’s shoes? Seriously?” How did he get to be thirty and not know that? This was probably one of those cheat sheet items.

  “I think they’re adorable and you’re late.” Mira stared down at his shoes and shrugged again. “So never mind. Do you remember all the rules?”

  “No politics or religion. Listen more than talk. If her eyes glaze over, move on to a new topic. No sex on the first date.”

  “Perfect. Have fun!”

  Kaz drove his sports car instead of his pickup truck. Mira thought Cheryl would appreciate it more. Of course he was a few minutes late arriving at her house, but she wasn’t quite ready anyway. He waited in Cheryl’s living room, sitting on the pink silk-covered couch next to her miniature Chihuahua, Ralph. Ralph stared at him with a death-ray look. If dogs had hit-lists, Kaz figured he was on Ralph’s.

  Thankfully, Cheryl finally entered on a light cloud of floral perfume. It was pleasant without being overpowering, which he appreciated. Not quite as fresh as the fresh clover scent he got when he was close to Mira but nice.

  “Does your dog blink?”

  “I should have warned you. Men make him nervous and he freezes up.”

  “How long does it last?” He felt bad for the little guy.

  “About an hour or until he falls over. He’s fine. I’m sure he’ll grow to like you.”

  They arrived at Yadkin’s Depot, a local bar for the young, single crowd, to find it packed. Looked like trivia night was very popular. They found a team of Cheryl’s friends to join up with.

  Over the next hour Kaz, Cheryl, and her friends proceeded to decimate the other teams with their pooled knowledge. It was fun and Cheryl couldn’t be any nicer, yet as the night wore on it became apparent the two of them had widely dissimilar interests.

  Normally, it would take a few dates to figure that out, but the game of trivia brought it all out in the open. And it shouldn’t have been a big deal. He’d had previous girlfriends whose interests didn’t come close to intersecting with his on a Venn diagram, so why was it bothering him now? Because now you’ve met a woman who has strong opinions on mathematicians.

  He leaned toward Cheryl. “You don’t happen to have a favorite mathematician, do you?”

  She laughed. Giggled, actually. “No, I can’t say that I do. I’ve got a favorite magician, a favorite musician, and a favorite dietician—but a mathematician? No.”

  All things he was interested in too, so he refocused on Cheryl and her friends as they continued their take-no-prisoners approach to the game.

  “Oh, oh, I know that one!” Cheryl grabbed on to his biceps with one hand while she waved her hand in the air to capture the MC’s attention with the other. “Kim and Khloe!”

  Jill, who Cheryl introduced as her BFF, shouted out her first woo of the night. The first of many.

  Cheryl and her friends were excited, giddy even, to find their team winning. Between Cheryl’s knowledge of pop culture and all things Kardashian, her friend John’s rote memorization of sports stats, Jill’s vast and intimate insight into boy bands and reality TV shows, and his own grasp of science, technology, and Latin, there were few questions their team didn’t answer.

  But with each question and answer, the chasm between Cheryl and himself broke open like a fault line during a 6.0 magnitude earthquake. Throw in her constant giggle and Kaz knew this wouldn’t work. And honestly, it wouldn’t be fair to Cheryl to even try when he couldn’t push thoughts of Mira out of his head.

  When the two hours allotted by Mira’s first date rules were up, Kaz released a sigh of relief. Rules were rules, so after they said good-bye to Cheryl’s friends he drove her back to her place. At her house he walked her up to her front porch to say good night.

  “Kaz, I had such a fun time tonight. How about I pick our next date?” She smiled happily up at him and walked her pink-painted fingernails coyly up the buttons of his shirt.

  He took a casual step back, clearing his throat. “Cheryl, I don’t think it’s going to work.”

  “It’s not?”

  “You know that conversation we
had about memory and RAM in your computer? There will be a lot more conversations like that.”

  “Oh.” She blinked and tilted her head. “Well, I guess I don’t mind. I like smart men.”

  “You looked pretty bored. Also, I should tell you I have it on authority I’m not a good kisser.”

  “You’re not? I’d be happy to kiss you to give you my opinion.”

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t put you through that.”

  Cheryl’s shoulders slumped and she pursed her lips.

  “Plus, you probably didn’t notice, but these are my favorite shoes.”

  Her gaze dropped to his shoes and her eyes went wide before she glanced back up at him. “You know, I think you have a point. I mean, I like you just fine, Kaz, but we don’t really have much in common, do we?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Total bummer, but I had fun anyway.”

  “Me too. Good night, Cheryl.” He reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze before heading down her front walk.

  “But if you ever want a kissing coach, feel free to call me.” Her giggle followed him all the way to his car.

  What do you know? Mira was right about the shoes.

  * * *

  Mira was sitting in Kaz’s kitchen, her mouth full of cake, when he returned home from his date.

  “Hey.” He nodded and moved past her to wash his hands at the kitchen sink.

  She tried to read his face to see how it had gone, but his face gave away nothing. Bad date? Great date? She honestly couldn’t tell. Although he did grab one of his home brews. She hadn’t noticed he was a big drinker since she’d been staying at his house. Did that mean anything? Grabbing the glass of milk in front of her, she washed down her bite of cake and waited.

  He palmed off the top of his beer and took a drink before grabbing his laptop off the kitchen desk and settling down at the island. It took less than two seconds for him to be absorbed in his computer.

  “So?”

  “So what?” He took another drink of his beer and then his fingers flew across his keyboard with lightning-fast speed.

  “The date. How was the date?” Of course she was dying to find out. Besides, she couldn’t coach him if she didn’t know the results.

  “Fine.” His focus remained on his laptop, but he gave her a long side-eye before refocusing on his screen.

  “That’s it? Fine?” For a minute she thought he wasn’t going to respond again. “Just tell me one thing about the date.”

  He finally paused and lifted his hands away from his laptop. “Turns out you were right about the shoes.”

  What? What woman in her right mind would look at the package that was Kaz Cates and give a flying leap about what shoes he had on? The man was gorgeous, polite, and wicked smart. He had this reserved manner, but under it, under the calm coolness, was this vibrating energy that felt dangerous. Like a leashed tiger.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” The flush of relief that surged through her body contradicted her words. Which was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Time to move right along to the next date for him. “Are you sure it was the shoes, though? Maybe it was the good-night kiss? Did you kiss her?”

  Apparently, he didn’t kiss and tell. Which she had to respect, but how was she going to keep coaching him if she wasn’t able to help him evaluate where things went wrong? Plus, she couldn’t stop wondering if he’d kissed Cheryl.

  He shut his laptop and turned to her. “You already checked out my kiss. You said I passed. So why would you think it was the kiss that blew it?”

  “Because you’re smart, good-looking—downright sexy even—nice, a bit mysterious as women wonder what you’re thinking when you sit there quietly observing. You’re pretty much the total package, so maybe I was wrong about the kiss.”

  “Maybe?” He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her.

  She pushed some cake crumbs around on her plate with her fork before looking back up at him, her eyes focused on his lips. “Kisses can be so subjective. And maybe you weren’t on your game.”

  His gaze narrowed on her and she shifted on her stool and avoided his eyes, looking around the kitchen at everything but Kaz.

  “It wasn’t my kiss.”

  “You’re probably right. Of course it wasn’t.” She stared down at the cake crumbs on her plate and spun her empty milk glass in her hands. Mira didn’t think it was the kiss either; the kiss had made her weak at the knees. But he hadn’t said whether he’d kissed Cheryl yet, and for some reason Mira kept poking, trying to find out. Why the heck did it matter to her? “No, I’m sure your kiss was fine.”

  “Let’s review my technique, shall we?” He stood up from his stool and stepped next to Mira, reaching out his hand and lifting her to stand in front of him. “First, I stand close, very close, so you can feel the heat from my body.”

  His heat scorched her, but she tried to play it cool and nodded, like they were going over the steps of how to fill out tax forms.

  “I’m not rushing because I want to take in the scent of your perfume and the sweetness of your skin. I take my time. I want to make sure you want me to kiss you. I want to make sure you need my lips on yours. That you’ll need the touch of my fingertips along your skin, and I’ll skim the pads of my fingers to brush the inside of your wrist. Your collarbone. I’ll stroke your neck with my thumb to feel the flutter of your pulse. I don’t want to make another move until I know I’ve set your heart racing.”

  Oh good Lord, she wanted all of that and more. But all he was giving her was his heat. And using his dark, gravelly voice to describe with such exquisite detail that her body was reacting without a touch.

  “I’ll let my hands caress the delicate bones of your face. So beautiful. I’ll want to plunder your luscious lips—but I won’t. I’ll hold back and move in slowly . . . drag out the moment because I won’t want it to end. I’ll want it to last forever.”

  Mira bit her lip to stop herself from moaning.

  “I’ll be close. So close our breaths will mingle. I’ll breathe you in. Deep. Then, when I can’t hold off any more, I’ll taste you. I’ll sip the sweetness from your lips. You’ll go to my head and I’ll want more of you. I’ll take it.”

  Her nipples went tight and her breath whooshed out of her lungs.

  “I’ll take your mouth with mine. Hard. I’ll plunder. Deep into your sweetness. My lips on yours, firm and hard, and we’ll catch fire—but just before we go up in flames—I’ll slow it down. I’ll bite that plump lower lip of yours and then pull back. So we can both drag in a breath. So I can start all over again.”

  Mira plopped down on her stool as her knees gave out. Every part of her body on edge from his kiss play-by-play, some parts downright on fire. “Oh yeah. That’s all ringing a bell now. So we’ll go with different shoes for the next date, then.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  After escaping the kitchen before she went up flames, Mira paced her bedroom and tried to talk herself out of entering Zero Point and heading straight for the Blue Room. Sadly, she couldn’t think of a single reason why she shouldn’t at least go look. She certainly wouldn’t be able to sleep because thanks to Kaz she was hot, bothered, and turned on.

  She was blaming Kaz’s slow, sexy description of his kissing technique for her predicament. It had been all the verbal and mental foreplay she needed to set her body on fire. Like the thirty-minute firework show on the Fourth of July, only he’d stopped before the explosive finale. Kaz’s sexy voice kept replaying through her head and had every cell in her body strung tight like a rubber band just before it snapped. Something had to give.

  He’d left her hanging all right. Both her insides and her brain were wound up and needing a release. Every nerve in her body pulsed, jagged and exposed. Wanton and wild. Ready to take a risk. But virtual sex? Wow, that would be a giant leap for her.

  What would it hurt? If she didn’t like what she found in the Blue Room, she could leave. She hadn’t had the nerve the night
Kaz had lent her the laptop and VR goggles, but tonight the buzzing feeling of sexual need and desperation had all her nerves jangling like live electric wires.

  But was she desperate enough for virtual sex? Virtual foreplay? The one thing that held her back was that even though virtual sex wasn’t sex, she still couldn’t imagine having it with just anyone. Like a virtual stranger. Or even most of the virtual friends she’d made in the game during the last six months.

  There was one person, though . . . yep, the very man who’d gotten her in this hot and bothered state. Kaz Cates, aka GamerGuy27.

  If she ran into Gamer Guy, she’d give it a try. Maybe. Assuming Gamer Guy wanted to. He totally did. Why else would he have told you his gamertag? Assuming she’d have the nerve to ask him. Think of the research and the people you could be helping. It would be like a good deed, right? Oh, boy, you’re really reaching, Mirabel. Reaching and desperate. You have nothing to lose. If Gamer Guy didn’t show, she was off the hook—yet not.

  Her gaze landed on the borrowed equipment. Along with the laptop and everything she’d need to enter the virtual environment was a set of adhesive sensors and directions for how and where to place them on her body. Oh boy. This was crazy, right?

  No, it was cutting-edge science. She’d go into the Blue Room and look around, maybe even try a few of the activities Kaz had mentioned. She didn’t even need to go into the private room. But if she did wander in . . . and Gamer Guy showed up while she was in there . . . she would go for it. Or not.

  Decision made, she read the instructions and carefully adhered the sensors before donning the VR headset and logging into the game. The goggles were heavy and took some adjusting to. There was a steep learning curve, discovering how to move her head to navigate through the virtual world. Kaz had given her data gloves with built-in sensors. She could reach out and touch things. Pick items up. In theory, she could physically interact with other players, which, duh, was the point of entering the Blue Room tonight. To interact with others. To interact with Kaz.