Edge Of Danger

by Cherry Adair

  “Hey! Dream or no dream.No touching. ” She made a useless grab for the rapidly retreating material. It, like her gun, disappeared.

  Look Ma, no hands.

  The chair hadn’t creaked. He hadn’t moved. Either the guy was a magician, or it really was a bona fide, stress-induced, break-with-reality kind of dream. And if itwas a dream, she had no reason to be scared.

  Like hell she wasn’t scared.

  She knew her own body like…the back of her hand, she thought wryly. And this was turned on. Big time turned on. Hot to trot turned on. Ready for hard fast sex turned on. Moisture pooled between her legs and her nipples ached to be touched turned on.

  Dream or no dream, itfelt real.

  Moving made it worse, and she forced herself to lie still, hoping to God the sensation would pass so she could leap out of bed and make a run for it. She lay back against the pillows, forcing herself to breathe slowly and deeply. In. Out. In. Out.

  “How about—” Intimate pulse points started to throb maddeningly, joining all her other symptoms. “Ah…Dr. Betsy Ancker-Johnson?”

  Lying still wasn’t helping. Not at all. There wasn’t a breath of air in the room, yet her nipples peaked, hard and painfully, and goosebumps roughened her skin. Goosebumps she always got when she was sexually aroused. “Yes. Ancker-Johnson.” Her voice was thick, husky.

  She cleared her throat. “I’d love to ask her about her observations of microwave emission without the presence of an external field. Or Steven Spielberg? He’d be fascinating to talk to.”

  “I’m going to make love to you now, Eden,” he cut off her nervous ramblings.

  Thatspiked her heart rate even more, and made the nerves under her skin jump.“Jason?!” The dream suddenly made some sort of crazy sense. There were many empirical findings about dreams that didn’t fit with any problem-solving theory that she knew of. Still—

  “Ja—? Yes.Jason. ” He didn’t sound particularly pleased. “Close your eyes.”

  She closed them. It was a strain trying to peer through the darkness anyway. “That doesn’t sound very lover-like,” she told him crossly. Really, if she wasn’t ready to have sex with Jason Verdine in real time, she highly doubted she’d be ready in a dream.

  “Listen to the music, Eden.”

  “There isn’t any mus—Oh. That’s pretty.” Something with flutes that made her think of splashing water and soaring birds. Instead of relaxing, she found herself tensing, feeling a crazy—make thatinsane —urge to invite him into her bed. That, if nothing else, convinced her this was a dream.

  Captivated by the way her body was behaving, Eden tried to look at this scientifically. But, oh, God. She was on fire. Her skin felt sensitized.Fascinating. But how could this be? It took more than a suggestion of intimacy to make her hot. She was a girl who needed foreplay. Clearly her brain was her largest erogenous zone.

  She relaxed into the overwhelming sensation. The anticipation of his touch, the breathless, knife-edge of expectation had her lifting her hips.

  “I know this is just my subconscious trying to help me sort out the violence, or what to do about Jason, or…some—Oh, God what are you doing to m-me…But I don’t think it’s w-working.”

  It wasn’t working because she was suddenly consumed with the need for sex. Hard and fast andnow. Her skin burned. Hell, she felt hot all over, and it had nothing to do with the warm Arizona night. She shifted restively on the sheet, her breasts, her thighs, her belly, every throbbing, needy part of her demanding physical contact.

  Relief was in the bedside drawer. But dream or no dream, she wasn’t masturbating with some strange, disembodied invisible guy in the room watching her. No matter how much her body begged for release, or how sexy he sounded. She moistened suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue. Wanting—Needing—

  “I am not touching you.” He said it, not as though he was assuring her, but as though he refused to do so.

  “You can’t, Sparky. You’re a dream. An illusion.” The smooth bluesy music filled the room, but did nothing to slow the thud of her heart as adrenaline raced through her veins in a white-hot tide of desire.

  Eden’s body felt like a gathering storm, drawing tighter and tighter. Her knees moved apart without her conscious thought.

  He might be sitting ten feet away from her in her granny’s boudoir chair, but Eden’s nipples suddenly responded as if theywere being stroked. The sensation was nothing short of electrifying, and her stomach seemed to drop as though she were freefalling. She gritted her teeth, trying to shut off the sensations spiraling through her.

  She waved a hand over her breasts, sure that someone was physically touching her. Her hand passed through air before dropping back to clutch at the sheet beneath her hips.

  Holy cow! When I have a break with reality, I do a really, really good job.

  This is one hell of an adept apparition.

  She swore she felt the heat of his skin. But he wasn’t anywhere near her. Good Lord. The scientist in her didn’t believe in ghosts. On the other hand, she didn’t believe in telekinesis either and he’d made both gun and sheet vanish into thin air.

  “Don’t fight it,” he said, clearly exasperated. “Just feel.”

  “I’m feeling plenty,” she muttered, still not sure why she was feelinganything. She shivered as the hair on her neck was brushed aside. The tightness in her stomach grew stronger as she imagined cool lips moving over the hot, damp skin of her nape. A shiver went through her, and she couldn’t help the little moan that escaped her parted lips as warm air fanned her skin.

  “Ah. You like that.” Her hair seemed to fall, sifting to tickle her neck. Eden squeezed her eyes tightly closed, knowing only pure sensation. She wanted to crawl completely into the dark, sweet fantasy that was wiping everything out of her mind but what he was doing to her. The heat and scent of the man’s skin—a man who wasn’t there—became etched on her memory.

  Not satisfied with this ethereal phantom lover, Eden craved the physical touch of his body like a drug. The pulse in her throat beat wildly as a trail of moist heat seemed to move from the base of her neck to her right breast.

  Her pulse went into overdrive as an inextricable pressure around her nipple drew it into a tight, almost painful nub. Her nipple was manipulated into an aching peak, but she had no idea how. She didn’t care. Ultrasensitive, her skin burned, and a deep pulse of expectation made her hips arch up off the mattress.

  She moaned. Instinctively she reached out her arms to hold him. There was nothing there. She dug her fingers into the sheet on either side of her hips to anchor herself again.

  “Let yourself go,” he whispered, that voice as deep and arousing as the whisper of sensation on her skin. “Just…let…yourself…go.”

  The cunning stroke of an invisible hand trailed a fiery path from her breasts across her tummy. Eden bit her lip as need ratcheted up and up unbearably. She couldn’t quite catch her breath. She wanted—she needed—

  She opened herself, yielding to the craving, desperate for sweet relief, her body as tightly coiled as a spring.

  But there was something—something on the periphery of her consciousness that kept that final release at bay.

  “Come for me, Doctor,” he said urgently.

  “No,” she told him with spurious calm, breath coming in short choppy bursts as she tried to regulate it. By crossing her legs tightly she could send herself into orbit in about three seconds if she wanted to.

  “No?” he asked, sounding annoyed. “Why the hell not?”

  “Because, even in a freaking bizarre dream like this I want more than a quickie orgasm, that’s why.” Her jaw ached from gritting her teeth to try to counteract the insistent pulse of her body readying itself to climax.

  “God, I’m arguing with an imaginary man.” Eden pushed herself up against the pillows very carefully. At this point her body had a hair trigger. “When—ifI eventually do make love with Jason, we’ll do it together. Not in my imagination. Until then I have
Richard for that.”

  She used iron control of mind over matter. Her body started to cool, very much like water having boiled in her kettle. A twinge here, a ping there.

  The chair creaked. “Who,” he asked disinterestedly, “is Richard?”

  “None of your business. Look, this is my dream. And I’m ending it. So get lost. I can have sex—good sex I might add—by myself any time I like. I don’t need some figment of my imagination manipulating me.”

  “You’re wet. On the brink—”

  “Yes. And yes. Most uncomfortable. But not fatal. Don’t you have some other dreamer to annoy?”

  She sensed rather than heard him sigh, then jumped at the unexpected brush of his hand across her eyes when he’d been safely across the room. “Close your eyes, Eden,” he said softly.

  She flinched at the brilliant flash of light beyond her closed lids.Well, shit, she thought indignantly,the son of a bitch killed me after all.

  THURSDAY9:35A .M.

  “This still feels too weird. Does it still feel too weird to you?” Marshall Davis, Eden’s assistant, demanded as the inner door opened.

  “It’s bound to feel odd without them,” Eden answered, preceding him into Verdine Industries’ computer lab in the Tempe, Arizona, head office. High, narrow windows flooded the stark room with morning sunlight.

  Marshall was a tall, almost gaunt young man, who looked, and frequently behaved, years younger than his actual age of twenty-two. Like Eden, he’d been on an accelerated learning curve. His black hair always looked as though it had been chewed off instead of cut. Choppy and uneven was made worse because Marshall tugged at his hair when he was concentrating, so it usually stood straight up in ragged steps around his face. The bane of his existence was his acne, which usually translated into a debilitating shyness around women.

  He didn’t exactly consider Eden a woman. She was his idol. His leader. His mentor.

  “Weird,” he repeated, looking around.

  “Weird” summed up the bizarre dream that had wakened her in the early hours of that morning. Sex and violence. Crazy dreams and brutal reality. Each profoundly disturbing in its own way.

  It had been just over two weeks since her mentor, Dr. Theo Kirchner, had been murdered, and the prototype of their top secret Rx793 robot stolen. There was no evidence now of either crime. The trashed computers and equipment had all been replaced with dizzying speed. The crime scene people were long gone. There was no taped outline in the small kitchen where Eden had discovered Theo’s body that night, no smudges of black fingerprint powder dusting every surface.

  She’d been told to take two weeks off. She’d reluctantly done so. After spending two days cleaning her apartment she’d been out of her mind with boredom. Bored enough that she’d hopped a flight to Sacramento and gone to see her mother.

  The visit had been better than expected. Of course, Eden thought wryly, her mother was interested in the murder, something that wasn’t about her daughter’s work. They loved each other, but they were so dissimilar that it was hard to sit down and have a real conversation, although they always tried.

  Eden was pathetically grateful to be back at work.

  The lab was once again pristine. No wonder her subconscious was freaking out. How could she pretend that things were normal when they were anything but?

  Theo wasn’t just “gone”; her eighty-six-year-old mentor had been murdered in cold blood. He should have died in his own bed. Peacefully. Instead, he’d been shot and filled with terror, his last words to her:“Destroy everything. Trust no one. Promise me.”

  Though Jason Verdine had provided round-the-clock bodyguards to ensure her and Marshall’s safety, Eden was nervous as hell. She had wiped all the data from the computers, as Theo had instructed. But 80 percent of their work was in her head.

  If anyone ever discoveredthat…

  She’d worked for Verdine Industries for more than a decade. This, the Elite Team lab, was the nucleus of VI’s long-term projects in core areas of artificial intelligence. Supposedly headed by Dr. Kirchner, but really overseen by Eden.

  The R&D department next door consisted of a hundred and fifty-some people, and their support staff. The rest of the employees in the building were admin, sales, and manufacturing. Verdine Industries was a multibillion-dollar corporation. They manufactured everything from home robots that cleaned and vacuumed floors, to innovative items for NASA, to high-tech robotic toys.

  The Elite Team had consisted of the three of them. Herself, Theo, and Marshall. Now there were two.

  The authorities suspected one of Verdine Industries’ rivals of the theft, but so far had no proof. The police had to be right on target; the killer, the thief, must be a competitor.

  But no one knew how they’d been able to bypass the security systems in order to get into the lab. No one, not even the United States government, could penetrate the complicated, sophisticated access system at the lab. Particularly this smaller lab.

  Yet, somehow, someone had.

  Theo’s death and the theft were an active case. Every now and then another alphabet soup government official would show up with more of the same questions. Eden and Marshall had no answers. She wished they did.

  She glanced around the brightly lit lab. She’d designed it herself and every aspect of the room usually brought a thrill of pride. This was normally the time of day she enjoyed most. When the day was just beginning and ripe with possibilities. When hours stretched before her, each one conceivably holding the key to something she hadn’t known the hour before.

  But Jason had been told to halt any further development of a replacement for Rex, pending the outcome of the investigation.

  Eden felt lost. Dr. Kirchner’s murder, and the theft of a decade’s worth of work, had changed her fundamentally, and nothing would ever be the same again. Thelab would never be the same. She’d never again feel the peace and joy walking in here as she had done every morning for the past ten years.

  There had been breakthroughs made in this lab that no one but the three of them had known. Not even Jason himself knew the extent of their advances. And even Theo and Marshall didn’t know how much further Eden had gone on her own.

  The ramifications of such advanced robotic technology falling into the wrong hands were terrifying. She’d known pushing the AI envelope that far was dangerous. Known it, but kept on going past the point of no return. Because her damn curiosity had compelled her to keep striving for the holy grail of AI.

  The Rx793 robot they called “Rex” now had the capability of reasoning abstractly. Which allowed him to reason analogically and hierarchically. Rex was capable of interacting without benefit of communication.

  Marshall, a mechanical engineer, had designed the automated parts of Rex with 3-D geometry, and had spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours “playing” with the robot, teaching it human behaviors.

  Even he had no idea just how far she’d taken their creation, Eden thought, pressing a hand to her stomach. Forget about butterflies. She had pterodactyls swarming and dive-bombing inside her.

  And now someone else had Rex.

  All that someone needed to do was ask Rex the right questions. Oh, God—She felt sick to her stomach. No scientific advancement was worth a human’s life. She knew with every fiber of her being that Theo had died trying to protect the robot’s technology from falling into the wrong hands. He’d tried to warn her that the world wasn’t ready for such advancements. But she hadn’t listened.

  Her eyes stung. She’d already cried buckets. She didn’t have a drop left. “Theo practically shoved me out that damn door that night. If I’d stayed another half hour—”

  “You’dbe dead too.” Marshall reached out and gave her a hesitant, awkward hug. Bless his heart, he smelled strongly of Clearasil and Brut cologne. In all the years they’d worked together, he’d never touched her. Embarrassed, he let her go immediately and shot her a self-conscious smile as he stepped back, his face pink.

  “I don’t wan
t you to be dead, Eden. Losing Dr. Kirchner was bad enough. Ireally don’t want you to be dead.”

  “That makes two of us.” She was thankful for Arizona’s open carry law that allowed her the LadySmith .357 Magnum, five-shot revolver she now had in her purse. The gun had been under her pillow when she’d woken this morning. She’d been wearing her ladybug pajamas as well. Which proved, no matter how realistic it might have been, her dream had been just that. A dream.

  Perhaps her body was trying to let her know subconsciously that it was time to find a lover. Jason?

  He was charming, and nice looking, and wealthy, and—

  Not him,she thought, puzzled by her own reticence.