Her hands came up to cup his face, fingers running over his cheeks.
Lorccan leaned in and kissed her palm, his eyes shining directly into hers. Though he still turned his head once in a while, he never shied from her touch.
Alainn loved him. She was almost sure she loved him. In this moment, when they were so wrapped up in each other, she felt something in her that had never existed before blooming.
Slowly, Lorccan pulled back from her.
She held her legs around him for one more moment before releasing him.
He stepped away and leaned down to pull up his pants.
Alainn waited one second more before sliding off the table. Leaning down to the floor, she grabbed her dress and lifted it up. As she slowly zipped up its side, she secured a mantle of shame around her as well.
Lorccan gave her shoulder a quick kiss before stepping back.
“You’ve got to go.”
She turned away as whatever was blooming in her wilted. She knew what time it was. Six twenty. He was going to leave her again. He’d need to shower before he talked to Shelly.
“Jade.”
“Just . . . I’m going to go to my room.”
“Jade.” His tone had changed, almost chiding now. “She’s my friend. The phone calls are important to us both. I can’t just abandon her now that I have you.”
She nodded, walking toward the stairway.
She had become the “other woman” so easily, just slipped right into the role. And just like every single day since she’d first given herself to Lorccan, Alainn knew she had to stop it. She was free-falling and, though she had a parachute, she wasn’t pulling the cord. Instead, she watched as the craggy earth rushed up to greet her. She was waiting for the splatter.
The problem was that, even though she now had a job and things to do, it didn’t make Lorccan any less her entire life. Instead, every moment of every day, she was wrapped up in him.
Even though Alainn’s mind knew that she was free falling, her heart didn’t give a shit.
His hands lightly grabbed onto her shoulders, rubbing them gently and stopping her in her tracks. “You could come meet her,” he said.
Fuck. That.
Alainn turned her head but didn’t quite look at him. “I need to go lie down and recharge my system.”
As she stepped forward, his hands dropped away. He didn’t stop her again as she left.
Alainn slowly submerged into the hot water of her tub as her monkeys hung out on the sides. Blue and Sunshine had somehow elected themselves her personal attendants, though she’d tried to convince them against it. And like every other day this week, they stood nearby, ready to hand her a robe.
Her head lay back against the tub, eyes closed. She forced her mind to formulate an escape plan that she truly didn’t want to succeed.
“I will play you the conversation Mr. Garbhan is having with Ms. Dover right now,” Rosebud 03AF said.
“Hell no!” She glared at where Rosebud’s voice had come from. Alainn liked to think that she had some self-respect left, whether or not it was true.
The sound of a woman laughing filled her room. Lorccan laughed, too, sounding genuinely happy.
Damn it.
“Not cool, Rosebud!” she yelled. “I’m not coming up until you turn that off!” Her head sank under the water. She held her breath as muffled voices reverberated through the water, a garbled mess of sounds.
It made sense. Rosebud obviously wanted to punish Alainn for inserting herself into Lorccan’s recovery and perfect love story with Shelly.
Alainn was betting that Rosebud still wanted her alive, though, so she braced herself under the water and looked up to the surface, watching light flicker overhead.
A little monkey head peered down at her, wavering in the ripples above. She opened her mouth and made a screeching sound.
A hole opened at the bottom of the tub, and the water started to drain. Alainn stomped her foot over the hole, ignoring the bite of the suction against her heel.
Just as her lungs really started to burn, the muffled sound of voices faded.
Alainn broke the surface, gasping. Air filled her lungs.
Thank all that was holy—the voices didn’t come back.
Alainn glared around the room. “If you want to punish someone, punish yourself, you stupid computer. You trapped me here. You even admitted that you threw us at each other. I’m sorry if I can’t be your perfect little chess piece!”
Rosebud didn’t respond, but she also didn’t play the voices again.
Blue was still waiting by the edge of the tub, holding up the top portion of Alainn’s robe while Sunshine held the bottom. They squirmed and seemed upset. Feeling a little guilty because she had obviously freaked them out, she climbed out of the tub and took the robe. She wrung out her wet hair as the tub started to drain. She had a bad feeling Rosebud was going to withhold baths for a while.
Running the faucet, she leaned in to take a deep sip of water.
A knock came at her door. She stood upright, shutting the water off.
She knew she should ignore it, just let him stand there, knocking all night.
Completely against her will, her feet took her forward, through the closet, and to the door. At the door she stopped and just stood there.
“Don’t open it, Rosebud,” she whispered.
Rosebud didn’t listen, of course. The door opened between them, and Lorccan stood feet from her.
A big grin lit his face the moment he saw her. He held out a hand to her, and she took it, just like that, walking out of her room and into the hallway.
Damn it. Stop being such an idiot, Alainn.
The door to her room snapped shut and locked itself for good measure.
“You’re mad at me,” he said as he stepped toward her.
“I’m mad at me. I shouldn’t let myself be the other woman in your romance, and . . .”
His head fell forward, and he fixed her with a stare. “Do I need to write it in big letters across your wall?” He shook his head, pulling at her hand and bringing her closer to him. “You’re not the other woman, Jade.” His arm went into her robe and around her waist.
Alainn stepped right into his embrace, letting her robe fall off her shoulder. She could think whatever she wanted, but obviously she had no self-respect left.
“Am I only not the other woman because I’m not real to you?” she asked in an accusatory tone, her anger rising up. It was her one last effort at putting up a defense against him. It wasn’t much of a defense, though, as she was standing with her robe open, naked before him, while he stood fully dressed in a suit.
“You’re the only thing that’s real to me.” He leaned in, his hands moving over her warm, naked backside as the material of his suit brushed over her front.
Her gaze met his, pleading, as his hands grabbed her ass and hoisted her up onto him. He carried her down the hall to the entertainment room, then set her carefully on the couch. His hands undid the tie and opened her robe fully as he knelt down on the floor between her legs.
She looked down at him as he looked up the length of her body. Her breathing was already unsteady. His gaze roved down the length of her. His arms wrapped under her ass as his head came down between her thighs.
And just like that, the whole world fell away and, again, she was blooming for him.
A long time later, Alainn looked down and whispered, “You’re still dressed.”
“Let’s go remedy that,” he said. Lorccan left her robe behind and lifted Alainn, naked, into his arms. He carried her up all the flights of stairs to his room. Her room was closer, but Lorccan refused to enter it now that the peace lily was there.
After setting her on the bed, he made quick work of taking his suit off and joining her. He lay with his front to her back, a position she realized Lorccan liked to keep her in.
He kissed her neck. “I love all your tastes,” he whispered as his hand slid down her stomach to rest just between her thi
ghs. “How does your body do that?”
“Um . . .” It was very hard to think of a decent answer with his hand cupping her there. “My body was printed—it’s the exact same as a normal body, just with certain hardware to make it function.” She gasped the last word as his finger slipped forward and rubbed up and down. “It doesn’t bother you?” she breathed.
“No,” he whispered.
As if to prove it, his erection pressed against her backside. It seemed that both of them were making up for a lifetime of going without.
Because she’d never tried it before and was very curious, she turned over toward him and gave him a small grin before ducking under the covers. He stiffened as she crawled down his body, but the moment she took him into her mouth, that changed.
She fell asleep halfway on top of him—and woke to screaming. It had been the same almost every night.
Alainn woke under him or beside him, and he would be holding the scarred side of his face and screaming.
“Lorccan!” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulled his body onto hers. “Lorccan, wake up!”
Usually he did, but that night he bellowed a long, horrid cry directly above her face. His neck arched up as his head tilted to the ceiling.
“Lorccan!” Tears coursed down her face. “Wake up!”
He wouldn’t, not tonight. He just kept howling out cries as she clutched him in her arms.
“Please, wake up! It’s Jade! You’re safe!”
But he wasn’t safe. He was trapped in some deep, all-consuming nightmare, and she wasn’t there. She was here, clutching his body and far away from his mind. Eventually his cries turned into whimpers, and he relaxed onto her. His face nestled into her chest as she combed fingers through his hair.
Eventually, sleep found her, too.
The next thing she knew, lips slowly moved up her back, kissing her awake. Peering behind her, she yawned as she found Lorccan over her. He grinned down like he had not spent most of the night screaming. He grinned like the nightmares didn’t exist.
“Hi,” she said, reaching for him.
“Will you marry me, Jade?” he asked, his gaze intent on her.
“Ha. No,” she said with a laugh as she reached out to him. “Come here.”
He moved into her arms, lying down beside her. She swung a leg over his hip and snuggled into him.
His hand grabbed that leg and pulled her tighter to him. “That is the strangest rejection I think any man has ever had to his marriage proposal.”
Alainn wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “You’re really proposing to me?”
“Of course. I’m serious. Do you think I would joke about that?”
“But . . .” She leaned back to look at him. “How would that work?”
“A priest would ask for our consent and then say that we’re man and wife,” he said like he thought she might actually not know. His hand came up to cup her cheek. “He wouldn’t know what you are, and there’s no law against it. I’ve arranged for all the paperwork, so it’d be almost entirely legal.”
“You’d have a priest come in here?” she asked with eyebrows raised.
“I’m sure one would be willing to do it over video conference.”
She nodded.
“Is that a yes?” he asked as his forehead pressed into hers.
His voice sounded so full of hope, and she hated to crush that.
But she shook her head. “No—Lorccan, I’ve only been here for a couple months. You don’t know that this is what you want forever. I’m just your first.”
“Jade, I told you. You’re pulsing through my veins; you’re in the marrow of my bones. Three months or three years doesn’t matter now. My heart beats to love you.” His hand came around the back of her neck. “I didn’t know you could cry.”
Crap.
She was crying.
Alainn nodded and said, “Me neither; what a surprise.”
He kissed her tears, one after the other. “So is that a yes, then?”
For one moment, she thought maybe she could say yes. Living as a robot wasn’t as hard as Alainn originally thought it would be.
The day after they’d started sleeping together, birth control had been waiting in the bathroom. Her guess was that Rosebud 03AF didn’t want her plans for Lorccan to end up with Shelly ruined by a very big surprise ending. “Guess what, Lorccan? I’m having your illegitimate robot-human baby! Ta-da!”
But it wouldn’t work. Eventually, she would expose herself. Every day, she felt just that little bit closer to crashing into the rocks. She couldn’t let Lorccan marry her while she was still deceiving him.
“Just—” She shook her head. “Not yet, okay?”
He smiled. “Then I’ll just keep asking you until you say yes.”
“Okay.” She laid her head against his chest. “Keep asking me.”
26
January 23, 2027
Colby Murphy’s pen scratched across the page as his finger held the place where the Butterfly Nebula should be. Two points of pain were forming on the backs of his ears—something that happened every time he worked for a prolonged period. That, along with the strain in his neck and back, was going to force him to cut his time in the workshop short today.
He made the final marks, rubbed his eyes with his hands, and stood up from the chair.
“Did you find it?” Rose 76GF asked him. She’d watched him for at least the last five minutes; he’d felt her inhuman eyes on him. Rosette 82GF also stared at him, though she was always just staring off at something, so he thought it might not be him that she was actually interested in.
He raised the paper. “Yes. I should probably get these papers to the university.” He rolled back his shoulders, feeling a strong ache in his shoulder blades.
“Why don’t you call it in?” Rose asked, gaze still fixed on him.
He yawned and shrugged at the same time. “I need to get out of the house.” Standing, his attention skipped between the robots that looked so like his sister—but somehow didn’t.
“That’s good. I really should be focusing on breaking into Rosebud 03AF’s system instead of astronomy.”
Colby gathered up the papers on the table, shuffling them across the tabletop. “How’s that going?”
“It’s harder than I expected. She’s created several layers of protection. I’ve been able to break through many of them; I believe I am almost through.”
“Are you sure I can’t help? I might be able to—”
“This is far too sophisticated for you or your hacker friends.”
“I understand.” Colby focused on making a neat pile in front of him. “When you are through her system, how do you plan to get Alainn out?”
“I have a plan. Even though you are more intelligent than the majority of the human population, I don’t think I can explain it in a way you would understand. I should never have helped Alainn do what she did, and my only hope is to remedy my mistake.”
“You’ve told my father your plan, though?” Colby asked as he pushed his glasses up his nose and tucked his papers into his briefcase.
“Of course,” she said. A moment later, both of the Roses smiled, in sync with each other.
Colby nodded. “I guess that’s good enough for me. If Dad asks where I am, tell him I drove his car down to the university.” He waved.
“Where else do you go?” Rose asked, gaze still on Colby.
He made his movements slow, nonchalant as he turned back. “Sorry?”
“The university is forty-six miles away; your odometer always reads that you drive fifty-five to sixty miles each way.”
Colby shrugged. “Coffee, usually. Sometimes I go for food. It’s nice to finally have a car for transportation.”
Rose nodded, her gaze still piercing his. “Perhaps one day you’ll take me to the university.”
Colby nodded. “Taking either of you would be an honor.”
It would be the type of honor that could get him promptly kicked o
ut of the program for academic dishonesty.
Without waiting a second more, he walked out of the house and down to his father’s car. The little blue car had been parked a few blocks down since the last time he used it.
Colby kept his back straight and body stiff as he started the ignition and drove down the hill. In his mind, he recited: left-most drawer, three from the top, centimeter open, computer screen on the left had a website open titled “Common Household Toxins.”
Rosette 82GF had closed the website within thirty seconds of him entering. The shredder had been full of blue paper from an unknown source.
As soon as Colby was three miles away, he pulled off his route. Reaching under the seat, he maneuvered out his latest notebook. His fat fingers had a difficult time turning the pages, but eventually, he made his way through to the first clean page. Quickly, he spilled all the observations he’d been repeating in his head for the last two hours onto paper. At the end, he continued with behavioral observations.
Rose again indicated that it was Alainn’s idea to take her place in Mr. Garbhan’s household. She still refuses to give details of her plan to extract Alainn. Her daily behaviors and routines continue to be regular. Father continues to spend very little time in the workshop and the majority of his time in his bedroom.
After finishing, Colby again stored the book under his seat and drove back into traffic. He’d need to find a better route—perhaps one that took fewer miles and more time.
Mr. Garbhan’s tower was by far one of the most imposing buildings downtown—a thick, black high-rise cutting into the sky.
Colby headed down the access road, then turned to park before the wide screen outside the garage.
Before he had even rolled down his window, Rosebud 03AF greeted him, “Hello, Mr. Murphy. How are you doing today?”
“I’m good. Any chance you’ll let me talk to Mr. Garbhan or my sister?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Murphy. I can’t do that.”
Colby sighed and rubbed his nose. “Okay, show me that she’s okay and I’ll go.”
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