His breath hitched.
She slid her fingers into the line of his flight suit, enjoying his taut abdomen beneath the thin material. “Desire starts in the brain, Yves. Which is only one of the reasons I find you so damned irresistible.”
~*~*~*~
Zenya played with the warship reprocessor, creating elaborate meals her robot insisted she didn’t need and forced her to disassemble.
It was so boring.
She rolled over on her back and stared at the starry ceiling. The Undovans were nostalgic for a past they’d never had, so undoubtedly the night sky was a prettier exact replica of the view from their light-polluted capital. Humans constantly ached for a future they would never reach, or pined for a past they had never had. Killing them didn’t hurt anything and only removed them from their own misguided misery.
The rogue had said she had a choice.
She picked up one of the dazzle-breads and dropped a sweet, crumbly morsel in her mouth.
Her robot killed her taste sensors. If you eat excess calories, you’ll fatten up into target n82x.
Zenya spit out the mouthful.
Yves had downloaded all the messages. Her programs had reported back to her that much before he identified and destroyed them. He could be watching her carefully constructed message right now. She rolled onto her stomach and typed another inedible meal into the reprocessor. Once he watched those, her final trap would snap shut and catch him in its teeth.
~*~*~*~
Yves loved how Mercury owned her sexuality. The confidence in her beautiful flashing eyes as she rose and slid her knee along the outside of his thigh spoke to a deeper level of his consciousness. One more primal.
Her look said sex. When she looked at him, hot electricity seemed to dance over his skin. All the hairs on his body stood and tingled in anticipation.
She dug a finger into his collar and peeled back his flight suit, revealing his lean torso to her sensuous gaze. “How does it feel?”
His cataloging of sensations arrested. “How does what feel?”
“Baring yourself to me.”
“Fine.” His voice broke on the simple syllable.
Smug accomplishment flitted across her sweet face, gone like a wave to the shore.
He cleared his throat. “It feels fine.”
“I see. And how does my finger feel?” She traced the lines her eyes had been memorizing, drawing a slender index finger down the center of his chest, across his taut abdomen, to the trail of dark hair dipping below his waist. “Yves?”
“Uh…” He sucked in a deep breath as she neared his cock. Was she—?
But no. She teased him, moving away, up to his shoulders. She slid the loose suit off his torso, splaying her silken fingertips over his strangely sensitized skin. “Do you enjoy it?”
He cleared his throat. “You know I do.”
Smugness again. Followed by a sweet, delicate flush warming her body, opening her pores, and releasing her heady fragrance.
He reached out to her delicious shape.
She caught his hot hands in her cool ones. “Uh-uh. It’s not your turn.”
Fuck yeah.
He rested his tingling palms on the armrests to keep from yanking her against him and turning her delicate flush into a fever.
She explored his hardnesses and hollows, fascination quickening her soft breath and her heart rate. Yes, his body shape pleased her. She had shown interest since her first glance, back at the Cloverleaf Hub. But never had he been so grateful to his makers for their attention to those details as he was right now.
Her body shape was just as pleasing. Slender shoulders, full breasts straining against the full robe, a curvaceous waist with perfect hand-shaped divots for him to grab, wide hipbones flaring out to perfect rounded buttocks. Looking at her made his cock throb. A sensation he knew about from his reading, but which had never struck him so viscerally. She might protest that she wasn’t perfect, but from his chair, his analysis concluded that she had exactly the right curves for making him come his brains out.
She straddled his hard thighs—he rigid, almost paralyzed from the intense concentration of all his processors on her—and she lost her balance.
He steadied her with a hand under her elbow and another at that gorgeous, grippable feminine waist. Her warm, womanly flesh caressed his hands. He wanted to bring her to his mouth and eat her like one of her confections. Ah, but she was the one leading. He released her again.
“Sorry.” She brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes, her intense seduction turned to self-deprecating sarcasm. “That was graceful.”
Her sarcasm hit him like cold water. She suddenly became just another human female in his metal arms—albeit Mercury, and thus the only human female that held his interest. “I barely noticed.”
“You don’t have to lie.” She sighed. “Like anything distracts you.”
“When you’re seducing me, don’t ask me to calculate the gross regional product of the nearest hub.”
She blinked. “You think I’m seducing you?”
“You were.” He analyzed her genuine surprise. “What did you think you were doing?”
“I was trying to keep you interested.”
“You succeeded.”
Mirth returned to sparkle in her lovely eyes. “So you don’t want to calculate the gross regional product of the nearest hub? I was interested in that.”
“Sure you were.”
Her lips parted. “I’m interested in everything you do, Yves.”
He suddenly found it difficult to swallow. “That’s—”
She shrugged out of his arms, placed his palms on the armrest again, and slid her white robe off her slim shoulders. The fabric pooled at her elbows, exposing her chest and yards and yards of creamy skin. Twin dark areolas tempted his mouth. His heart rate shot for the nearest star.
He fought to control the wild beating and slowly curled his hands into fists. “—interesting.”
Pleased laughter lit her face. “So eloquent.”
He forced his attention from the playful way her breasts squeezed between her upper arms. “Stop overloading my sensors and I’ll out-talk an old Empire orator.”
She pouted, her lips dark as her pearled nipples. “You don’t really want me to stop. Do you?”
He traced every micro-expression—hunger, calculation, fascination. His cock throbbed against his flight suit. Everything was told on her face. Ideas, schemes, desires. Ones he had put there and ones that belonged only to her. And right now, he could barely stop himself from ripping off her robe and his suit and changing those expressions to ecstasy.
He shook his head.
Her playful pout smoothed. She reached to the tray and popped something small into her mouth.
He controlled himself. This was research. “What was that?”
“Rainbow candy. Heard of it?”
Every human child begged for the multi-flavor delight. Usually confectioners combined flavors such as strawberry and orange, lemon and grape. “Fruit has never held my interest.”
“This rainbow is my own invention.” She licked her lips. “It’s a little more X-rated.”
Ah. “The flavors are all aphrodisiacs?”
“A good guess deserves a good reward.” She licked her lips. Her breath, scented with spice, made his hard cock twitch. “Want a taste?”
His heart rate shot for the stars again. “Um…”
Her lashes lowered. She bent over him. Her breasts brushed his chest. “Yes?”
The softness burned like fire. He held his breath. She was so, so beautiful.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She touched his lips.
He lost himself in her.
Flavors crossed his tongue. Cinnamon and cardamom, lavender, cream, ginger, honey, nutmeg. Swift as her alternating identities, each more deliciously sinful than the last. They burned into his body, enflaming him. Their tongues tangled. He chased the one flavor he wanted more than any other. He chased it until she moa
ned into his mouth and melted into him like fine chocolate. Until he found it and claimed it. Until he drowned in it.
She pulled back and rested her forehead against his. Breaths heaved in her chest, and that delicious scent of hers drenched them both. Her feminine heat.
She wiped her bruised mouth. “You like the rainbow candy?”
“Yeah,” he said roughly.
She blinked, centering herself, then reached back to the tray for the final item: a foam that could take on any flavor, spread on hot skin as thin as perfume, and be lapped up with the wet heat of a tongue. “Which flavor was your favorite?”
“You.”
Her hand paused. As she comprehended his words, her heart beat louder beneath her delicate ribcage, echoing up into his head. She flushed. The heat and flavors intensified.
He gave up on controlling his own heart rate and gripped her soft waist. “My favorite flavor is you.”
Her teasing faltered. Beneath her confident, sexy smile, he glimpsed an even sweeter Mercury. Credulous and vulnerable, and yet somehow still complete. The woman she should have become if she hadn’t lost a year of her life changing into someone else.
She twined her fingers in his damp hair. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Your turn.”
Fucking hell.
All he wanted to do was crush her to him while he consumed her. First, he would nibble on her succulent mouth, then her luscious body, then her pendulous breasts and pearlescent nipples, then the sweet, wet, dark core. And then he would drive deep into her and lose himself in all that she was.
Imagining it was pure torture. He gripped her thighs. “Mercury.”
Anticipation thrilled through her expression, and he swelled further with the knowledge he had put it there. He nuzzled her. “Thank you.”
She smiled softly. “For making you do what I want?”
“I want this.”
The words tasted strange on his tongue. He didn’t want anything, but no more accurate words described the need she evoked in him.
Somehow, she read the conflict in his cold eyes. She stroked his hard cheekbone, gentle and understanding. “Don’t think so hard. Okay? Just feel.”
And before he could explain the impossibility, she drew his hesitant hand to her hot breast.
Her breast filled his hand, warm and soft. He squeezed.
She moaned.
He explored her other breast. Her pearled nipple fit in his mouth. He sucked on her warm skin, tasting her.
Her heart rate jumped and her skin heated beneath his tongue. Reacting to him. The knowledge made his cock swell. He tugged her against his hardness, pressing her soft cleft, so she would know.
And she did. She closed her eyes and arched toward him with a low moan.
He lifted his mouth to hers and caught her breath, her moan, her spicy desires.
She writhed against him. Delicious syrup radiated from her hot sex, dampening her robe and his flight suit.
He tugged her robe apart, baring her lovely dark triangle.
She looked… He couldn’t define her body, couldn’t find the words to conscribe it in his brain, couldn’t analyze it into abstraction. She looked like woman and like sex and like home.
She placed a hand on her nakedness. Her lips curved into a devilish smile. “No fair.”
And then she wiggled back and ripped open his flight suit down to the thighs.
His cock sprang free and pulsed, hard and rhythmic, beneath her naked appreciation. She touched her fingers to her mouth and encircled him, sliding the warm wetness down his hard length. Pleasure exploded beneath her caress. Fuck. His jaw flexed as his lungs sucked in, forcing his breath between clenched teeth.
She slid up to the mushroom tip, her gaze on his face, at the uncontrolled expressions flooding him. Her pupils dilated. “I think you like it.”
She was so present. He had to be here, with her, now.
Breathe .
He cupped her womanhood, the flesh hot and slippery beneath his fingers.
She opened to him. “Yves.”
He stroked her as she stroked him, their eyes locked, their bodies hot and primed for a dance ancient as the stars. Her cheeks flushed as her scent ripened. He wanted to memorize the feeling—no, he wanted to bathe in it, roll in it. He wanted to drive himself deep inside her. He wanted to give up analyzing and give in to sensation.
She suddenly gripped him. “I want to put you in my mouth.”
His heart thumped louder than their gasps. His cock pulsed in her slick hand. “What do you— Why?”
“Because I want to give you pleasure.”
The image of her mouth wrapped around his cock nearly caused him to release right there.
But that was dangerous.
Losing himself in passion—in her—meant letting go of his last controls. It meant forgetting logic and throwing out any pretense of analysis. Analysis, his fundamental trait.
Only analysis made him valuable as a y-class android.
“I’m supposed,” he said, “to pleasure you.”
“Pleasing you pleases me too. Not just taking, there has to be giving too.”
He shook his head.
“Dammit.” She gripped him harder. “Why won’t you let me give this pleasure to you?”
He spoke the words on the top of his mind. Unprocessed, unfiltered. Raw. “All I know and all I want to know is you.”
She smiled. That soft, credulous smile. “I love you too.”
The whole world hung suspended. She loved him. She loved him. Mercury Sarit Antiata Chen Laredo loved y-class android Yves|Santiago.
And that might be worth losing himself—
“It’s okay if you don’t.” A fragile shell crusted over her sensual honesty. “I don’t mind.”
No. He couldn’t lose himself.
With Mercury like this, hesitant and unsure, he remembered exactly how much he needed to analyze data to ensure her safety.
He researched her pleasure, not his.
Anything else—like giving and taking, like love—was illogical.
Yves shoved Mercury into the chair, knelt between her legs, and pressed a finger into her hungry, wet center. She moaned and arched into him. “You, Yves—oh, yes—”
He thrust in a second finger, matching the pace of her gasps and her desperate, uncontrolled writhing. Her rising temperature. The flush of her body beneath his mastery.
And then, when he knew she should have peaked, she gripped on to her pleasure as she clawed for his bare shoulders. Her eyes flashed, blue as an electric storm and just as unyielding.
“Come,” he ordered her. “Experience the pleasure you deserve.”
“Not without you.” She gripped on to her own release, her thighs trembling as she struggled to hook around his, her hands fumbling for his iron cock, her words forced between pleasure-soaked gasps. “You…have to feel good…too.”
Fucking hell.
His logic processors fired up to the thousands as he obeyed her will and buried his cock deep into her.
She gasped and cried out, squeezing him as she gave in to her orgasm.
He wanted—he didn’t want anything—he wanted to squeeze her whole body until she was nothing but this scent—he had no desires—until she glowed with his arousal. He needed to thrust into her—he didn’t need anything—until she gasped and cried out his name—
She cried out a second time, and a third. The orgasms ricocheted through her body, wringing her like a wet cloth, until her arms dropped and she gasped for air.
Her pleasure resolved. He could make her come three times or three hundred. He elected the lesser number this time and allowed her to relax into the warm glow of lassitude.
Now he should be able to move on. The question of Mercury’s pleasure had been answered.
But his new knowledge didn’t satisfy his craving.
Something was missing.
Pleasing you pleases me too. If he could really have confidence they were true… Dangerous words. She
was too unselfish, too giving, too generous. Accepting her unselfish generosity would lead to his final madness.
Mercury touched his cheek. “You’re thinking awfully hard.”
“I’m contemplating our plan to escape the zero,” he lied.
“Now?” She laughed softly. “I’m sorry for pushing you.”
It stung like a reprimand. Because he had a choice to lose himself in feeling with her, and had turned away from it. A strange heat burned in his chest and throat. Shame.
She rose and shrugged on her robe. “I hope you got something useful for your research anyway.”
“No, that’s not…” He reformulated. “It’s… Mercury, I can’t.” Every sentence led him to her hurt her or worse. He shook his head, fumbling for the right truth. “Too much—”
“It’s okay.” She smiled, soft and warm, and squeezed his arm. “I had a good time.”
A good time.
The evil words echoed in his chest. She’d had a good time. The lie poisoned her trembling lips, scraped lines into her forced smile.
She, who deserved so much more than a good time—
A noise near the doorway thrust him to his feet, sheltering Mercury with his body.
The x-class stood in the doorway. He gazed right through Yves’ nakedness and jerked his chin at the startled woman behind him. “Hey. Is she decent?”
Yves resealed his flight suit. “What’s the emergency?”
A half grin quirked the corner of his mouth. “Sorry, did I interrupt something?”
“No.” Mercury fastened her robe. Her eyes refused to meet Yves’ as she tidied the aphrodisiacs tray into the reprocessor. “Yves finished.”
The scarred brow rose. “I hope he wasn’t the only one.”
A strange sensation filled Yves’ head. Tingling, like small bees chewing a honeycomb out of his brain. Words blew out his mouth uncensored. “What the fuck do you want?”
The x-class blinked.
Behind him, Mercury stilled.
Shit . He reined in the control. “You’re early.”
The x-class spoke carefully. “Cressida wondered what happened to the cakes. I had to hot-foot it down here before she came looking.”
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