by Selina Rosen
Conner laughed, and said too late, “Watch it, kid, that stuff will bite you on the ass.”
Elantra nodded and took another drink, more carefully this time. It was funny, the more of it she drank the better it tasted, and two beers later she was talking easier than she had in her whole life. “...I want to go to college, you know. Not online, a real university, where I could interact with real people, work on real patients, learn from real doctors, but my father won’t let me. I bet you could count on your fingers the number of times I’ve been out of the building, and any time I have been, I’ve had to take half a dozen security people with me and go to a destination of my father’s choosing. Unless of course I snuck out, and then I was always so afraid of getting caught or something really bad happening like... well, what happened, that I didn’t really have a good time. The only people I ever see are my father’s business associates and his staff, and they all act as if they aren’t allowed to talk to me. I have experienced more in the last couple of days than I have experienced in my whole life till now. Computerized school, virtual swimming, virtual dancing, a virtual life. Maybe you guys are right. Maybe it is too much.”
“So, you ever have sex?” Conner McVee asked plainly.
“Of course I have,” Elantra laughed then came clean. “Well, only with the computer....”
“Virtual sex?” Conner laughed. “What about the real thing?”
“Are you kidding? Nasty!” She made a face. “Besides, Daddy would flip. He’s got a husband picked for me. Buddy something. He works real close with my dad. He’s all right I guess. Someday we’ll get married, they’ll hand us a screen and put us in a room together, and that will be it...”
“Gee! You sound excited,” Conner said sarcastically.
Elantra shrugged. “It’s expected of me. I’ll get married. The marriage will make a corporate merger between two strong companies. We’ll have the obligatory sex, then they’ll put our genetic material together and make a couple of kids. He’ll help my father with his business, and I’ll be free to practice medicine.”
“Your dear father is marrying you off to the son of one of his crime lord cronies, and you don’t see anything wrong with that whole picture? I got a better idea, what about you look around till you find someone you actually like. You date them. If you have any chemistry with them, you screw them. If you fall in love, then you get married and have kids,” Conner said.
Elantra laughed. “You guys have some really weird ideas.”
Conner laughed and shook her head in disbelief. “Even when you’re married you’re going to have sex through a screen, and we have weird ideas.”
“Unlike you who exchange body fluids with just anyone, I don’t care to do that. It sounds messy, and...”
“God in a car! You people are fucked!” Conner stood up shaking her head. “You’re going to marry someone you don’t really even know, because Daddy wants you to, but you’re going to fuck through a screen to make damn sure that you don’t enjoy it... For God’s sake! You’re not even straight.” Conner laughed.
“Am, too,” Elantra insisted.
“Tell it to someone else, Lanny. I have a sensitivity implant in my brain, remember? If no one else in the world knows, I do. Do you want to...” Conner looked at the empty bottles on the table, counted six that were hers, and realized she was letting the alcohol talk – so she fell silent.
“Do I want to what!” Elantra demanded standing up with an effort and weaving ever so slightly.
“Nothing,” Conner said.
“Do I want to what!” Elantra screamed again.
“Do you want to spend your whole life wondering what it would be like to love someone and to have them love you? To feel another body against yours, to feel the warmth and the passion.” She got up and walked over to Elantra. Without warning Conner took Elantra in her arms. Elantra started to look away, and then their eyes met. “Do you want to spend your whole life never knowing what it would have been like if we had kissed, on impulse, without any screen? Without anyone giving us permission. Just two people in the moment, letting passion seize them, right here, right now.”
“No,” Elantra breathed. She threw her arms around Conner’s neck and pulled her head down. Their lips met. It was warm. It was wonderful. Conner pulled back.
“Open your mouth,” she breathed. Elantra’s lips parted, and Conner’s tongue moved to probe the willing void of Elantra’s young hungry mouth.
Elantra’s whole body felt like it was on fire. She didn’t really know how it happened, but the next thing she knew she was lying on Conner McVee’s bed, and Conner was all but ripping her clothes off. Wherever Conner touched her skin it felt hot. Conner took her own shirt off. She lay on top of Elantra so that their bare skin met, and then Conner’s lips were soft and warm against her throat. Elantra felt her whole body jerk and then a sensation she had never even come close to feeling. The computer hadn’t prepared her for this. Virtual sex wasn’t even close to the real thing. This was going to be something explosively different, and she wasn’t ready for it.
Terror suddenly gripped every fiber of her being. She couldn’t be doing this, not with Conner McVee, and not without a screen. She wrestled herself out from under Conner and out of Conner’s grasp. She stood up, pulling her shirt around her. “Don’t touch me,” she said, close to tears.
Conner flopped back on the bed with instant frustration. “God in a car! Why not? Because you’re enjoying it too much? Come on, baby, it’s all good. You want me; I want you. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to spoil you in an irreversible way. I’m going to make love to you. I’m going to take you someplace that you’ve never been before.”
Elantra looked at Conner McVee and realized that she had never wanted anything more. Her body was still warm where Conner had touched her and ached for more.
“No, no I can’t.” She held her hands to her head and ran out of the room. She had expected Conner to follow her, but she didn’t. She sat down on the couch, bent over and tried to catch her breath. She was mildly intoxicated, she’d been intoxicated before, she knew what that felt like. Conner had told her there was a small amount of alcohol in the beverage.
That’s it. I’m drunk. That’s all.
Problem was her thinking didn’t seem to be affected.
Her whole body trembled. She turned around and saw Conner still lying on the bed with no shirt. She stood up shakily and walked over to the door. She looked at Conner, who looked unblinkingly back. “Conner, what’s wrong with me?” she asked in a pleading tone. She expected some flippant answer, so was surprised to hear Conner speak to her in a calm, even reassuring tone.
“Nothing’s wrong with you. You’re just afraid; I would be, too, in your position. You’re a long way from home tasting the world for the first time in your life. You didn’t plan on me, and you sure didn’t plan on this.” She stood up then and walked over to Elantra. She looked down at her and lifted Elantra’s chin with her finger so that Elantra had to look at her. “If it’s any consolation, I didn’t plan on you, or this, either, and I’m also a little afraid.” She kissed Elantra’s lips gently then moved away and smiled at her. “That’s part of the fun, the not knowing. You can’t program people, Elantra, you don’t know what I’m going to do, and I don’t know what you’re going to do. But I’ve done this before, and I know how good it can be.” She bent down and kissed Elantra’s throat. “I’m going back to bed, where are you going?”
Conner hadn’t slept that well in a long time. She looked at the woman she held in her arms. She was beautiful, she was warm, and she was real. Conner didn’t know how or why, but she had feelings for Elantra. Feelings that made no sense. No sense at all considering who the girl was. It was confusing, but it felt good to be alive again. There had been women since Peggy. Women who had satisfied her body, but none that had satisfied her soul, no one had breached the hole that Peggy’s loss had left in her heart... till now. Elantra stirred and pulled herself closer to Conner
. Conner held her tightly, afraid that in the light of day Elantra would have different feelings about their coupling.
Her fears were not unwarranted.
Elantra pulled herself closer to the warmth that shared the bed with her and snuggled between two breasts. She woke immediately with the realization of where she was, what she had done, and who she had done it with. She shoved quickly away from Conner and jumped out of bed, pulling the sheet around herself and completely uncovering Conner.
“Hey!” Conner protested.
“Conner McVee!” Elantra screamed, backing away from the bed. “You got me drunk and took advantage of me.”
Conner laughed. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me! You drank two eight ounce six point beers for God’s sake,” Conner said sitting up on her elbows. “Save it for someone else, baby, no one gets that good without experience unless they’ve spent a whole hell of a lot of time thinking about it. I’ll even bet I could tell you what your favorite virtual program was.”
“I... I don’t even like you,” Elantra stammered out, “and I’m not gay, so what other reason can there be?” Elantra looked around for her clothes. Not finding them, she grabbed Conner’s shirt off the floor, put it on under the sheet and then threw the latter at Conner’s naked form. “This will never happen again.” She pulled the shirt tightly around her body and headed for the door. “I only hope I can wash all the germs off of me before I am infected.”
“Damn! You look hot in my shirt. Your beautiful legs, and what I can see of your gorgeous ass,” Conner sighed. “It’s really a shame.” She clicked her tongue. “Yeah, I had me some real plans for that body this morning.”
Elantra turned in the door and glared down at Conner, noting that she hadn’t even attempted to cover her naked body. “You are an egotistical... bitch!” Elantra spat at the irritating smirk on the woman’s face.
“Look me in my infrared scan and tell me it wasn’t good.”
Elantra started to scream something back and wound up staring silently down at her own feet instead.
“You are an incredible beauty, Elantra, and an incredible lover. It would be a shame to let all that go to waste on some man who could never satisfy you. Someone who could never feel for you what I am feeling. Never want you the way I want you right now.”
Elantra crawled back into bed with Conner, and wrapped herself around her. “My father would kill me,” she said in a whisper.
Conner laughed. “No. Your father would try to kill me and even that wouldn’t keep me away.” She picked Elantra’s chin up with her fingers and kissed her gently on the lips. “You made me remember something I had forgotten. Sometimes you have to take risks. Some things are worth taking risks for.”
Chapter 8
Conner McVee told her to stay in the car, so she did. She didn’t want to, but Conner insisted in that “I am the law” tone, so Elantra sat and waited not so patiently for Conner’s return.
Elantra wasn’t such a ‘building brat,’ that she couldn’t figure out what was going on. A crew of workers was building some sort of building; framing Conner had called it. They were working with primitive tools, and all the workers wore the same sort of belt that Conner wore. She caught a glimpse of Conner through the “frame” and smiled. She was probably going to get some horrible disease from having unprotected sex, but for some reason she wasn’t really worried about that. In fact, all she seemed to be able to think about these days was Conner McVee. She found herself more times than not smiling for no particular reason, and everything that Conner said was suddenly just hysterically funny, or brilliant.
Even now as she watched the builders, the sight of Conner made her heart quicken, and she had to fight the urge to go to her to touch her. She could still feel Conner’s touch, smell her, taste her. Sitting in the car thinking about how they had made love that morning she came in her pants. It wasn’t a particularly comfortable feeling.
Conner seemed to be looking for someone, or something. Elantra wished she would come back to the car and that they would go home and make love again. She didn’t understand what could be so important that they had to leave the house. What could be more important than being alone together?
Conner crawled up the ladder. She walked across the roof and sat down beside a big, burly-looking man with a full beard. She took the shingles he handed her and a fist full of nails from the sack he set between them, and using her hand-held hammer she started to help him shingle the house. They worked for several minutes, and then the man set his hammer down, and Conner set hers down so that the handles of their hammers made an X. No one knew how or why, but this had become a tradition, so they did it and didn’t worry too much about the logic behind it.
“So, Hammer, I was wondering when I was going to get to see you. What can I do for you?” he asked.
“Great Contractor... I’ve got a problem,” she said.
“So I see,” he said with a laugh waving at the girl in Hammer’s car. The girl gave him a confused look then waved back, and he turned to smile at Conner. “She’s very pretty.”
“Yes she is, and very young. I need to know something that only you can tell me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true, but ask anyway.”
“If you love someone, truly love them and they die, can you love someone else?”
The Contractor laughed and adjusted the blue hard hat that showed him to be a member of the clergy. “If you are asking the question, you already know the answer... Hammer, the heart can love as much as the brain will let it.”
“But, if I truly loved Peggy... How can I love...” She pointed at Elantra in the car and snarled almost hatefully. “How can I love that girl? She is nothing like Peggy, nothing at all. She’s weak where Peggy was strong, and strong where Peggy was weak...”
“And you are a different person now than you were when you loved Peggy. Peggy’s death has made you a different person. You needed Peggy then, and maybe you need... What’s her name?”
“Elantra.”
“Maybe Elantra is what you need now. Just because you love this woman now doesn’t mean that you loved Peggy any less then. Peggy wouldn’t have wanted you to go through life unloved or unloving...”
“It’s not that simple, Contractor.” Conner took in a deep breath. “Elantra is... Well, she’s Tarent Powers’ only child.”
By the look on The Contractor’s face, he realized the implications, so Conner continued without waiting for his reply. She told him everything that had happened. “...and I kidnapped her from Mishy because I thought I could play Tarent’s game better than Mishy could. I think maybe part of me just wanted to stop Mishy from doing something that would make him the same as Tarent, and part of me just wanted to have something, anything, that I could use to get Tarent to stick his head out of his glass and steel tower so that I could get a clean shot. I don’t really know what I was thinking. None of it seems to make any sense to me now. I told Tarent I was going to kill her unless he killed himself or turned himself in. I told myself I would, too, but even Tarent knew I was bluffing. Mishy isn’t too pleased with me. I get the feeling that he’s probably looking for me just as hard as Tarent is now.” She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “I’ve got a damn tracer implant built into the components of my left arm. It’s got a fifty-mile radius, and I’m well out of that, for now. But it’s only a matter of time before they start traveling with the base, if they’re not already. Eventually they’ll find me, either Mishy or Tarent. Mishy will be hell bent on killing Elantra, and Tarent will be hell bent on killing me and dragging her back into a life that she doesn’t deserve. There is too much life in her for her to be trapped in a building.”
“We can protect you here, Hammer. You’re one of us, we have a code...”
“I appreciate it, but I wouldn’t bring this trouble down on anyone else’s head. Not for the sake of saving my own ass, or even Elantra’s. I need Doc Pherson. I need the tracer removed before they have a chance to find me, but as I
’m sure you know, he’s up at the lake.”
“I’ll see what I can do about getting him back here.”
“Thanks.”
“She’s not a Constructionist is she?”
“No.”
“A mixed coupling...”
“With all due respect, Contractor, right now I’m not even sure I can keep us both alive long enough to enjoy a serious commitment. If I do, it’s only a matter of time till Elantra finds out what I’ve done...”
“You mean... she doesn’t know that you kidnapped her?”
Hammer shook her head sadly. “I told her some cock and bull story about how her father hired me to keep her out of town till Mishy cools off. When she finds out... I don’t think she’s going to take it well.”
“Maybe you should just tell her and get it over with. Explain to her how you feel...”
Conner laughed and patted him on the back. “You don’t know Elantra. Nothing I can say... Why can’t anything be simple?”
It was the Contractor’s turn to laugh. “If it was simple, it wouldn’t be life, and it most assuredly wouldn’t be love. Will Elantra convert?”
“You’re awfully worried about that, seeing as we probably have no future together,” Conner laughed.
The Contractor looked from the woman in the car to Conner, and seemed to concentrate for a moment. He looked into Conner’s eye and held her gaze. “I see a future for you together. I see it in the way she is watching you and in the way you can only go a few moments without looking at her. Feelings like these don’t go away, and they can outlive almost anything. So is there a chance that she will convert?”
Conner smiled stupidly. “She likes sex too much not to.”
The Contractor smiled then. He picked up Conner’s hammer and handed it to her. Then he picked his up. “In that case, go with my blessing, Hammer McVee, and a blessing on your lover as well. Bring her to see me when things cool down and we’ll start the conversion process.”