by Alisha Rai
Funny how a person could go from lust to dismay in the space of a second. What was wrong with her? Of course this wasn’t real. He was her handler, for crying out loud. Her friend. He’d given her this gift as a friend, probably even kissed her as a friend, and God, she’d gone and tried to give him a virtual hand job. She nodded shortly and stepped away, hating that she actually had to blink hard to keep the tears from rising.
“Jules, are you crying?”
“Psht. No. Must be something in my eye.” God damn it, she would not cry over him, would not even admit to crying over him, not even if she had to hack a piece of wood off one of these idyllic-looking trees and shove it in her pupil to make her words the truth.
“You can’t have something in your eyes. There’s nothing here to get in your eyes.”
“Yeah? How do you know there’s nothing in my eye? You don’t know me.”
“I don’t?”
“No.” She looked away, unable to bear his focused, intense, gentle gaze. As much as she wanted to crawl under a rock somewhere and hide, her sense of justice wouldn’t allow her to leave things be. “Sorry about…touching you like that.” What a vast understatement for grabbing another person’s genitals.
“What?”
“I shoulda known better. You’re trying to be nice, and I misconstrued it.” Like she’d been misconstruing their relationship all this time in her head. Letting his voice soothe her. Bleating her life story. Going out of her way to find him fucking poetry. Jesus.
“Nice…”
“Yeah. Well, I won’t make that mistake again. Business as—”
His lips cut off her words. His kiss was as deep as before, but with a harder edge. After a second, she kissed him back, unable to keep herself from responding. The tears she’d tried to hold in check trembled out.
When he backed away, they were both breathing hard. “You.”
“What?”
His laugh ended on a sigh. “It’s you. I dream about you. Lately, you’re…you’re all I can think about, waking or asleep.”
“En serio?” He had to be messing with her. Between the kiss and her raging hormones, thinking had become a challenge. She sought to clarify. “What are we doing in these dreams?”
“Everything we did. More that we haven’t.” His laugh sounded pained. “I put my mouth, my hands, my cock all over you. Inside of you.”
She didn’t need a brain to catch up with that explicit proposal. Excitement shot through her. “Oh. That’s…cool.”
“Is it?”
“That you want me? Yes.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “Is there any doubt that I want you? I did throw myself at you.” And she’d do so again, right now.
He must have read the intent in her eyes because he took a step back, holding a hand up as if to stay her. “We can’t.”
“Why not? This is real. If we both feel—” She paused, realizing they hadn’t quite verbalized exactly what they felt.
“I wasn’t saying we weren’t real. I was saying this place isn’t real. It’s easy to confuse reality with virtual reality, and I won’t do that to you. The first time we make love, we won’t be wearing specs. If I have my way, we won’t be wearing anything.”
From lust to dismay to a heart-melting warmth. “Ah. Okay.”
He brushed his hand over her cheek, collecting the wetness. “And I do know you, love. I know you better than anyone. Maybe even you.”
Love. She didn’t like that word. If there was a gun to her head, she couldn’t have recalled a single time a person had said it and backed it up by anything. Her mother had sobbed her love as she’d lain on the floor of their rat-infested apartment in a drunken stupor. The men she’d slept with had uttered it before handing her a needle filled with heroin. The girls she’d run with had pledged sisterhood to each other, but they’d all booked it on their own as soon as the Illness started.
The word was as ephemeral as this fake reality they stood within. Still, she didn’t turn away from James as he brought her closer, letting her snuggle into his wide chest. His body heat seeped inside her bones, making her feel loved and secure in a way that didn’t exist in her life. His biceps and arms weren’t insanely muscular, but they were solid, like the rest of him. Even the bulge of his cock comforted her with the promise of desire and passion.
She really ought to pull away, she thought distantly. They both needed to sleep. He had successfully chased her nightmares away, kissed her, comforted her. He’d even given her the promise of more, at some distant point in the future.
And how’s that going to work out? What if he doesn’t even like you when you meet in person?
Door closed on that avenue of thought. Sometimes hope was more important than logistics.
He was the one who finally gave a reluctant sigh and released her. “Thank you. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.”
“Kiss me, have me give you a partial hand job, or hug me?”
“All three. Well, I’d rather a complete hand job…” There came that naughty dimple again. Be still her heart.
She was the one who needed to thank him. “Can we do this again? Tomorrow night?” Tomorrow night, when she’d be back on her coast, the distance between them another thousand miles greater. She’d need this connection.
He looked down at his feet. “I’d like that.” He pushed her hair behind her ear and leaned down to kiss her lips. “Speaking of tomorrow, you should go to bed. You have a long day of driving ahead of you.”
She nodded. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Good night.”
“Night.”
They stared at each other. “Take the specs off,” he said.
“You first,” she blurted out, unwilling to be the one who destroyed this perfect oasis.
Years fell away from his face when he smiled, making him look like a mischievous teenager. “On the count of three?” He lifted his hand to his eyes and the glasses he wore in the real world that hadn’t manifested here.
She raised her hand as well. “Fine.”
“One, two…”
“Three,” she whispered into the empty, makeshift bedroom she stood in. The moon lit the room, but the darkness was a sharp contrast from the sunshine of the virtual land she’d left.
The sunshine she wanted to return to. She glanced down at the glasses in her hand. So innocuous, so small, yet limitless in their potential to take her away from this place, from this life. It would be so simple to slip them on her face and go back to…
“Jules?”
His voice intruded on the tantalizing fantasy, and she sighed. He hadn’t been kidding. It was tempting to say fuck it all and run away from reality. She walked back to her makeshift pallet, slipping the specs back into their pouch.
“Thank you for letting me see you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.” He paused, and his next words came in a rush. “I can still taste you.”
“Me too. I mean, I can…you know.” She shouldn’t be able to, but the lines between fantasy and reality had been massively blurred.
He cleared his throat. “I’ll let you go.”
“I’ll call you when I get to Cali tomorrow.”
“Or if you need me.”
“Sounds good.”
“Night, Jules.”
“Night.”
There was a pause, as if he wanted to say something more, but nothing emerged. In the next moment, she knew he was gone.
She sat down on her pallet, her arms loosely linked over her knees as she stared out the small dormer window. That first month she’d scavenged on her own, she’d looked forward to the full moon. A full moon meant light. The Shadows hated light. One night of reprieve from her constant worry and terror was tantalizing. But no. Moonlight didn’t seem to affect the Shadows one li’l bit.
She sighed and lay down on her pallet. The emotional rollercoaster of the past couple of days made her weary enough to crave sleep but pumped enough to need some sort of release first. A figh
t, sex…though the latter would be far more welcome.
Especially with your tall drink of handsome. Yup. She was screwed. She turned onto her side and punched the pillow she’d made of her rolled-up jacket. Closed her eyes. Counted sheep.
She sighed as she watched the moonlight move over the ground. It was going to be a long night.
Chapter Four
James spent twenty minutes staring at the wall.
Not that it was a particularly great wall. The mud color was actually pretty hideous. Unfortunately, his austere cell didn’t give him much to stare at. His granddad sporadically offered to cheer up the place, but it seemed unnecessary given how little time he spent in here.
He turned away from the wall and lay down on his bed. The room was tiny and the bed matched, but luckily it was long enough to accommodate his frame. He rested the handheld console that monitored Jules on his chest. He wished he could lay Jules on his chest.
The moments he’d spent with her in that Eden had been perfect. To see her face and her body as if they were normal people just looking at each other…he’d never forget that. She was stunning, her body showcased in that floral dotted dress from the store window she’d passed months ago.
James bit his lip, because otherwise he was too damn tempted to sit here the whole night licking it. He couldn’t honestly taste her. After all, virtual reality wasn’t real, despite how good Jules had tasted and smelled and looked and, God…felt. She’d felt really, really good.
James shuddered. Her small, capable hand wrapped around his cock would be an experience he would take to his grave. His swollen erection still hadn’t subsided. He was strangely averse to touching himself to rid himself of the condition, not after her hand had been on him so recently.
It shouldn’t have felt any different from when he took care of business, and yet the excitement and eroticism had been ramped up immeasurably. Perhaps it was the fact that she’d been so very willing. She wanted him. As much as he wanted her. A smile curved his lips. He liked that. He liked it a lot.
Will she want you this much if she ever meets you?
The thought got rid of his smile in a hurry. He closed his eyes, the better not to see all the flaws she would see if they actually were to meet in person.
He should have been honest with her. The guilt of his deception weighed down on him, mingled with the exhilaration of being with her in some small way.
He had entertained the fantasy of them meeting in person and falling in love, neither of them disappointing the other. Yet now, Jules would know at first glance she was simply so much more than he was.
She was brave. He was not. She was fearless. He was a mass of fears. She defended their race with a knife. He was pretty good with a gun, but he’d only honed his skill on the shooting range. Her face and body had no flaws.
And his…
After looking into her eyes and seeing happiness and caring and lust, he didn’t know if he could bear it if, in real life, those things were absent.
Cross that bridge when you get to it.
God knew when or if it would even happen. They hadn’t exactly spoken of it. Maybe before that distant time in the future he could make himself more worthy of her. And admit the small lie of omission he’d implicitly told in that VR exercise.
With a sigh, he launched himself off the bed. It was the middle of the night, but there was no use lollygagging around when he had no intention or hope of sleep. He could get some work done. Maybe, he mused as he slipped his feet into a pair of shoes and collected his specs, he could jot down some notes for the programmers on ironing some of the kinks out of the program they’d used.
Raven was never fully asleep, as there was always more to do than there were hours in the day. James nodded to the few people who were up and about as he made his way from his room to his office.
The door unlocked with a press of his finger on the lock, and he shut it, hoping no one would come bother him. The lights flickered on, the dim lighting suiting his tired eyes perfectly. He sank into his swivel chair and docked his handheld monitor. The big computer instantly took over, whirring to life, as it defaulted to accept her data.
He pulled up the spec program, hoping it would help him fight the urge to click into Jules with audio so he could listen to her breathe as she slept, and holy God, could he get any creepier?
He knew he couldn’t violate her dignity that way. Too much had been taken from her by force. He’d let her keep her privacy for as long as he was able. He winced as he thought of the hardships she’d experienced in her young life. She was lucky she had strong will and mind, to be able to overcome a life of poverty and drug abuse.
Overcome it to be badass and capable, while retaining that core layer of vulnerable sweetness.
He tapped his pen against the counter. Jiggled his leg. Should he call her? No. No. She was sleeping, and he’d bothered her enough. He would wait for her to call him. He was sure she was doing fine without him.
Chapter Five
Jules would cut a bitch to sleep in, just once.
Sadly, there were no lazy mornings in her future. Dawn would break in a half hour or so, and she needed to get on the road now if she wanted to make it home before night fell there. Not many Shadows roamed this close to daybreak. Their animal instincts drove them to shelter.
Jules shook her head and focused on her job at hand, which consisted of rappelling down the back of the house from the small dormer attic window. She cursed as the overgrown bush pricked her. Shoulda tried for the front door.
Nah, better to work a little harder and get out safely. After all, Shadows weren’t her only concern. There could be humans lurking around. She’d run across more than her share of crazies, some of whom were more than harmless looters. It was a delicate balance to save the survivors while hiding from the bad guys.
Her hand remained on her blade, while her eyes stayed sharp as she made her way to her van parked a couple of houses down the street. It was another vehicle amongst many, but if anyone looked closely, they would realize it wasn’t covered in dust, but mud and bugs and travel grime. Her bag got tossed in the rear. The necessities—blade, gun, basic first aid—were strapped into the belt around her waist.
She slid inside and cranked the engine, thankful once again for its silent operation. She traveled back through the still-dark residential neighborhood. This was a classic college town, with the university at the center and the residential and commercial neighborhoods radiating outward from it.
As she passed the university, she glanced guiltily at the stolen book sitting at the foot of the passenger seat. Sorry, librarians. One of her vague memories of her childhood included a crusty nine-hundred-year-old librarian who had struck terror into the hearts of children and faculty, so she was traumatized. But even the most hardened librarian would prefer a thief stealing a book to it moldering away in that building, right? Right.
She turned her attention back to the road just in time to let out a very uncool squeal and slam her brakes on.
Her bumper stopped barely an inch from the figure standing in front of her van. What the—?
For a moment she wondered if it was a Shadow, but once the shock wore off, in the light of her high beams, she could see that the coltish teenager was human, with light brown hair and matching amber eyes. A very dirty, malnourished, shell-shocked human. Her clothes, what appeared to be a tattered hospital scrub uniform, hung on her lanky frame.
Jules breathed in deep, calming the heartbeat that had taken a fast jump. She could handle this.
Jules opened the door of her van and got out easily, fearing any sudden movements would spook the girl. “Hey,” she said softly.
The teen stood frozen in the road, still in a trance from…well, who knew from what.
“My name’s Jules. I’m here to help. I work for an organization called Compou—”
“They’re coming,” she whispered. Only the girl’s eyes moved. Her pupils were dilated, her body shaking.
&nbs
p; Drugs. Or something. If she was high, it was entirely likely she was running from some hallucinated nightmare.
Still, Jules’s hand dropped to her blade. “Shadows?”
“They’re coming.”
A shiver trickled down her spine. “Okay. Why don’t we get in my car, and we can outrun them, then?”
“Run.” Tears filled those dazed eyes. “We have to run. He told me to run.” With that, she spun and started sprinting away. For a weak, skinny-looking girl, she sure could move fast. Jules cursed.
It was tempting to let her go. But the girl was young, and Jules knew she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she let a scared, high teenager kill herself by wandering into a Shadow den, or worse. She shut her door and started the chase.
Jules was in good shape, so a run didn’t wind her, but her legs were short and stubby compared to the gazelle in front of her. “Hey,” she called out, no longer so quiet, as they raced across the open quad of the university. “Come back here! I can help you.”
But the girl was, sadly, beyond reason. Jules was about ready to flying tackle her to the ground when the teen suddenly came to a halt, breathing hard. Jules stopped behind her, stumbling at the loss of forward momentum. The girl didn’t speak, didn’t turn to face her. Her body shook like a leaf.
“Listen, girl, I know you’re scared, but whatever you’re terrified of…” Jules followed her gaze and swore viciously. Three figures had crept out from behind a decrepit McD’s sign to their right and across the deserted street. She was too far away to see their faces, but no doubt they were focused straight on the two of them. The dinner gong had rung.
Jules glanced around frantically for some cover for the girl. “Get over behind that tree. If anything happens to me, run for the car, got it?”
The teen didn’t respond. Jules grabbed her arm and shook her, and finally the taller female blinked and looked at her. “Behind. The. Tree. Now.”
The girl blinked, and some of the fog seemed to clear from her gaze. “Tree?”
“Yes. Now. And stay.”
Jules pulled her blade and focused on the attackers after making sure the kid was scrambling away. Jules prayed the girl would be alert enough to understand she should hide.