Overclocked

by K S Augustin

  In cy­ber­space, there are new chal­lenges, new dangers…new ways to die.

  Carl Orin, Base­ment Five's first cy­ber­naut is lost in a uni­verse of bits and bytes. His rival, Dr. Tania Flowers, should be happy that karma has bit­ten Carl in the back­side, but she's itch­ing to get into cy­ber­space her­self and what bet­ter ex­cuse than a one-wo­man res­cue mis­sion?

  Tania thinks she's pre­pared for what she'll find, but she's about to dis­cover that the di­gital world is more dan­ger­ous than she ima­gined. When she finds Carl, she faces a big­ger is­sue than her in­jured pride. An AI-fuelled bot­net is dev­ast­at­ing the di­gital land­scape, and only a sui­cide mis­sion into its core will avert total dis­aster. In the midst of their re­kindled pas­sion, hard de­cisions need to be made. Who will at­tempt the im­possible? Who will stay be­hind? And what hap­pens if either of them fails?

  Chapter One

  “Mmmm. That...is...so...de­li­cious.”

  Tania threw her head back in blatant in­vit­a­tion, coax­ing Carl to bring his tal­en­ted mouth up to her throat. Never one to turn down such a tempta­tion, he smiled against her skin and she felt it along her nerve end­ings. His lips, warm and full, fin­ished suck­ling on her breast and worked their way over, lick­ing the dark crevice of her cleav­age be­fore mov­ing up to kiss the length of her neck. His tongue dar­ted out once to flick at her adam’s apple. It made her giggle, a low husky sound. Her fin­gers clutched at his head, part­ing the gold silk of his hair, slid­ing along its cool smooth­ness.

  “Do you know,” he said, between un­even breaths, “what I want to do to you right now?”

  “No.” She purred. “Sur­prise me.”

  It was the easy way out, hand­ing her con­sent to him on a plat­ter like this, but she was men­tally ex­hausted and happy to let him take the ini­ti­at­ive. The stresses of work, the pres­sures of their own pro­fes­sional re­la­tion­ship, had all come to a head. In fact, Tania felt as if she’d been flattened by a steam­roller. If Carl wanted to take the up­per hand, she was more than ready for it.

  He reached across her body and ducked his head be­low the bed for a mo­ment, emer­ging with two long wide rib­bons.

  Tania’s eyes widened. What was he up to? And were those rib­bons made of...suede?

  “What’s this?” she asked and couldn’t help the note of sus­pi­cion that crept into her voice.

  Carl sidestepped the ques­tion.

  “I know how hard you’ve been work­ing,” he told her. “You de­serve a rest. Some pam­per­ing.”

  “Carl—”

  He moved back to­wards her, rub­bing him­self against the length of her na­ked body. Oh, but that felt good. Good enough to knock any sense out of her mind. His ri­gid cock pressed against the tight dark curls at her groin and Tania couldn’t help but move her hips against him.

  “Can’t I spoil you every now and then?” he asked, slid­ing the leather across her breasts.

  That was their prob­lem. Carl thought he could solve everything with sex. Their in­fam­ous of­fice ar­gu­ments had of­ten ended with them en­twined be­hind closed doors. Tania wasn’t sure what it was about him but Carl had a way of de­mol­ish­ing her de­fences as if they were made of tis­sue.

  “Carl—”

  “Haven’t we both been burn­ing the mid­night oil lately? Put­ting weeks and weeks of work be­fore…pleas­ure?”

  Prop­ping him­self on his el­bows, he took the shorter length of suede and slowly en­circled Tania’s head with it. In the moon­light stream­ing through the win­dow, she saw his face. It was stubbled and mys­ter­i­ous, partly in shadow so she couldn’t read his full ex­pres­sion. He gave her a fi­nal quirk of his eye­brow and even that ob­scured view of him was gone when the rib­bon of suede slipped over her eyes.

  “Carl—”

  “C’mon Tania, tell me you don’t like it.”

  His breath tickled her ear, his voice pitched low. She re­mained si­lent.

  “We’ve been work­ing so hard,” he re­peated. “Surely we de­serve a break?”

  He was right on so many counts.

  They had been work­ing too hard. For months, they’d been man­oeuv­ring around each other, against each other, in a high-tech hot­house en­vir­on­ment. Try­ing to prove that each was bet­ter than the other. That she was faster than him. That he was more ad­apt­able than her. That they were both more fo­cused than any other hu­man be­ings on the planet.

  After eight weeks of the fi­nal trial phase, Tania was ex­hausted. If she or Carl had man­aged to win vic­tory cleanly, it wasn’t ap­par­ent from the daily status meet­ings they at­ten­ded. And time was run­ning out.

  “We’re not ma­chines, Tania,” Carl said.

  To­night, in the sooth­ing dark­ness of her room, with Carl’s mel­low voice whis­per­ing in her ear, Tania wanted to be con­vinced by his se­duct­ive pleas.

  “We need time to en­joy life. Drop out of the rat race for an hour or two.”

  De­lib­er­ately re­lax­ing her shoulders and neck, Tania let the pil­low take the weight of her head, set­tling back into the mat­tress with a sigh. She felt a pair of lips touch hers and stifled a groan. Why was it that the man she felt most af­fin­ity for, the one who was able to light her up like Christ­mas fire­works, was also the most ad­ept at push­ing each and every one of her but­tons?

  When she was con­sumed by lust for Carl, as she was now, there wasn’t a thing he could do wrong. When she wasn’t, there wasn’t a thing he could do right.

  “You’re think­ing again, aren’t you?” he asked. His breath stroked against her throat for a mo­ment, then moved down to her col­lar­bone. “That’s your prob­lem. You’re al­ways think­ing.”

  She felt his hot mouth tak­ing in a nipple and suck­ing on it. He wasn’t gentle and she… liked it. Nois­ily, he suckled as if want­ing to draw the erect nub down into his throat. Tania arched her back and groaned again, claw­ing at his head. She could feel her sex, throb­bing and soak­ing wet, by the time he de­cided to move to the other breast.

  “Nope,” he said, from a spot halfway down her torso. Tania’s fin­gers stopped their frantic quest­ing through his hair to listen more closely to what he was say­ing. “This isn’t work­ing. Not the way I want it.”

  She felt his body lift away from hers and fought a pang of sharp loss. Then hands res­ted on her hips and she found her­self flipped onto her stom­ach.

  “Carl!”

  “Hush, Tania. Just go with the flow. Okay?”

  Go with the flow.

  The term struck her mo­ment­ar­ily dumb. That had al­ways been the cri­ti­cism from ex-boy­friends. She couldn’t “go with the flow”. She couldn’t “let go”. The fact that they were right only made Carl’s soft jibe that much worse.

  He grabbed her arms, en­cour­aging her to stretch them above her head and Tania felt some­thing twin­ing around her wrists. That must be the second long piece of suede he’d fetched from the side of the bed.

  Go with the flow, Tania.

  After a mo­ment of wry de­lib­er­a­tion, she let her­self go limp.

  Then a thought struck her. He wasn’t try­ing to...dis­tract her, was he?

  “Carl, this isn’t about the meet­ing to­mor­row, is it?”

  She winced at the harsh note in her voice but let the words stand.

  “You mean, the meet­ing?” he asked.

  After fasten­ing her hands to the metal bed­post, his fin­gers skimmed her body. Tania tried to nod, as de­li­cious tremors wracked her body. It was as if Carl had let loose a swarm of wicked but­ter­flies to rub them­selves against her skin.

  “The meet­ing where they’re fi­nally go­ing to de­ci
de who goes into the Blue?”

  Argh, why had she even men­tioned the damned meet­ing? His hands were strok­ing her but­tocks, bend­ing her legs. He pushed her knees for­ward so they were un­der her body, lift­ing her arse in the air. With a blind­fold on and her hands se­cured, Tania had never be­fore felt so ex­posed, so vul­ner­able. She got even wet­ter at the thought.

  His hands spread her arse cheeks. Tania, trem­bling, waited for con­tact and jerked as his tongue licked at her puckered rosette. He wasn’t go­ing to...? They hadn’t ever...?

  “Re­lax sweet­heart,” he said. “That has to wait for an­other time. To­night, I have some­thing else in mind.”

  His hands roamed her skin again and Tania for­got about her ques­tion and her mis­giv­ings at be­ing tied up. She for­got about everything ex­cept the sen­sa­tions rip­pling through her at Carl’s touch.

  The man was a maes­tro, wringing sobs of need and groans of frus­tra­tion from her. His fin­gers and tongue played her body like a finely-tuned in­stru­ment, light­en­ing pres­sure to a tingle be­fore press­ing them with fo­cused in­sist­ence. Fi­nally, he moved be­hind her, us­ing his rock-hard cock to sep­ar­ate her outer lips and rub against her clit­oris, the con­dom-sheathed skin send­ing vi­bra­tions of need through her sex. Couldn’t he feel how wet she was? How much she wanted—needed!—him in­side her?

  Tania bit at the pil­low be­neath her face and pulled her­self on her el­bows. She used her ex­tra lever­age to push against him.

  “Carl!” She was beg­ging. Ask­ing. Or­der­ing.

  “I’m there, sweet­heart.”

  Then he was in­side her and she al­most screamed with de­light, clench­ing against his length with coax­ing spasms. With each thrust, her breasts hit the sheets, the cot­ton rub­bing against her sens­it­ised nipples. He moved even closer and she felt the heat of his body arch­ing over her back. He played with her nipples, pulling at them and pinch­ing them between thumb and fore­finger.

  “You like that, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes,” she sobbed, her eyes closed be­hind the blind­fold.

  “But you’d like to come even more, wouldn’t you?”

  Was he in­sane? Of course she wanted to come! In fact, she could already feel the grand­mother of or­gasms build­ing in her belly.

  “Oh God. Yes!”

  If she soun­ded frantic, she didn’t care.

  When one hand left her breast to rub down her ab­do­men, she jerked in­vol­un­tar­ily. All she could think about was Carl reach­ing down...touch­ing her...rub­bing against her wet­ness....

  His fin­gers touched her frizzy curls and she al­most bucked off the bed. She was so aroused, she was sure she was drip­ping onto the sheets, the musk of her arousal filling the bed­room.

  Carl nudged her knees fur­ther apart with his own, and star­ted up a steady rhythm, a fin­ger emer­ging out of nowhere to flick against her erect clit­oris be­fore re­treat­ing again. With each touch of him against her wet groin, elec­tri­city sparked through Tania’s body, made stronger by the fact that she couldn’t see what was hap­pen­ing. She was so ready to come. Her body craved it, her muscles tight­en­ing even as she spilt more juice from her cunt.

  Twice, she neared cli­max. Twice, un­be­liev­ably, Carl froze. His fin­gers, his cock, his en­tire body stilled. But, even though she couldn’t see, she could tell he was on the verge of com­ing too. She could feel his body thrum­ming, the vi­bra­tions trav­el­ling from him to her across the most in­tim­ate of em­braces. She felt his clench­ing and the quick gasp that her­al­ded a suc­cess­ful head­ing off of his re­lease. It was in­cred­ible how shut­ting off one sense seemed to heighten the oth­ers. Des­pite the fact she was bound and blind­folded, the sen­sa­tion of Carl tee­ter­ing on the edge gave Tania a sense of power she’d never felt be­fore.

  She was temp­ted to wriggle against that de­li­cious cock and make him lose his much vaunted con­trol. Make him grab her by her hips and thrust into her so they could rut away like des­per­ate an­im­als. She wanted to pun­ish him by break­ing his con­trol as much as he was pun­ish­ing her by re­tain­ing it but, just for to­night, de­cided to be­have her­self. To re­lax and cede domin­ion to an­other.

  To go with the flow.

  Then Carl twitched against her again, all fin­gers and cock and her not be­ing able to see a thing. She lost it, scream­ing out her or­gasm to the room, buck­ing against his groin and driv­ing him to his own cli­max. The shud­ders rocked her body for many minutes, wave after wave keep­ing her in a pure zone of pleas­ure. It was the most glor­i­ous feel­ing in the world, phys­ical in­tim­acy coupled with a bliss­ful rav­ish­ment.

  The shud­ders fi­nally abated and she began rid­ing the wave of post-co­ital bliss, fi­nally aware of the sweat bead­ing on her skin and dampen­ing her hair. She didn’t care. Carl gently pulled out of her. When he left the bed, Tania felt the mat­tress lift slightly but she didn’t stir. With her muscles turned to mush, she didn’t think she was cap­able of a single move­ment. When he re­turned, he had some­thing warm and damp in his hand. It was prob­ably a face towel he had taken from the rack in her bath­room. With slow strokes, he wiped her clean, the rough cot­ton tick­ling her still swollen clit­oris.

  “If you keep do­ing that,” she slurred, “I’ll be ready for more ac­tion within minutes.”

  He chuckled. “I don’t think so, darling. I think all we need right now is a long, deep sleep.”

  “Mmmmmm.” In all hon­esty, she didn’t have the en­ergy to ar­gue.

  “Isn’t it time you un­tied me?” she asked after a few long minutes.

  “I will. In a bit,” he replied, rub­bing her back with his hand. She sighed as he caressed her with long, slow strokes. It was sen­sual as well as com­fort­ing and Tania could only man­age a half-hearted wriggle of her bum to in­dic­ate her ap­pre­ci­ation of his ges­ture. She turned her head to one side and closed her eyes.

  When she was al­most asleep, he slipped into bed next to her and held her close.

  “Carl?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “You should really,” she yawned, “un­tie me.”

  “I know. I will.” He paused for two heart­beats and there was a smile in his voice when he con­tin­ued. “Don’t you trust me?”

  What a stu­pid ques­tion to ask. Of course she didn’t. They were rivals weren’t they, des­pite their in­cred­ible sexual chem­istry?

  “No.” The one word was little more than a mumble. Her head felt so heavy. She bur­rowed her cheek deeper into the soft soft pil­low. Just a little rest then she’d de­mand Carl re­lease her. Right now, though, she was feel­ing so limp and con­tent.

  So re­laxed.

  A hand stroked her hair and low words soothed her already drowsy brain.

  Just a little nap, she thought. A teeny, tiny...yawn...nap....

  Tania woke to a strange sen­sa­tion in her up­per arms. She blinked. It was still pitch black, in­dic­at­ing—

  No, it was the blind­fold! Damn, but she still had it on. Her hands, which were tied to the bed frame, were thank­fully loose. With a thumb, she eased the blind­fold up from her eyes and flipped it off her head, then stared around her bed­room in open-gaped sur­prise. Bright sun­light streamed in rib­bons through the half-closed blinds, form­ing a rippled pat­tern on the car­pet.

  Sun­light? Blind­ing, un­for­giv­ing sun­light?

  But, but her alarm was usu­ally set to a darker and more prom­ising six-thirty in the morn­ing! In dread, her skin sud­denly cold, Tania threw a fear­ful glance at the clock on her bed­side table.

  10:30, it blinked.

  “Shit!”

  She couldn’t be late. Not today. Any damn day but not today!

  Like light­ning, she shuffled to the end of the bed, picked up her clock and checked the set­tings. The alarm had been turned off. With pan­icked hands, she reached for her mo­
bile. Off as well. And she knew who did it. Motive. Op­por­tun­ity. Arse­headed­ness.

  Carl fuck­ing Orin.

  “The rat bas­tard.” She stalked to the shower. “The low-down, con­niv­ing rat bas­tard.”

  The all-im­port­ant meet­ing that had been on her mind for days, that had been con­sum­ing every avail­able neuron for months, was sched­uled for this morn­ing. Hell, it should have taken place two hours ago.

  The thought of what she was missed, what she had already missed, sent Tania into over­drive. She had the shortest shower on re­cord. She changed into the first set of present­able clothes she could find, un­suc­cess­fully smooth­ing two deep wrinkles down the front of her jacket with the flat of her hand and swear­ing as she did so. Fi­nally, sigh­ing with ex­as­per­a­tion, she tugged a brush through her way­ward hair. Her black locks re­fused to co­oper­ate. Tania gave up, throw­ing the brush into the corner of her bed­room. She picked up her bag, dumped her phone in it and ran out of her apart­ment, head­ing for the car-park. An un­end­ing string of muttered curses fol­lowed her along her route.

  The low-slung res­id­en­tial com­plex Tania cur­rently called home had been built, and was main­tained in its en­tirety, by Rim­shot In­dus­tries, her cur­rent em­ployer. A lot of sci­ent­ists, aca­dem­ics and high-tech con­sult­ants vis­ited Rim­shot’s main cam­pus and it was a lot more con­veni­ent, not to men­tion a sav­ing of time and awk­ward ques­tions, to have them bil­leted at the com­pany’s pur­pose-built ac­com­mod­a­tion quar­ters.

  The com­plex it­self was airy and beau­ti­fully land­scaped with its own gym, swim­ming pool and sev­eral en­ter­tain­ment and so­cial rooms. If it wasn’t for the as­so­ci­ated work, Tania would have thought she was be­ing paid to stay at a high-class re­sort. But this morn­ing, she saw none of the tiling, warm tim­ber sur­rounds or sway­ing bam­boo land­scape screens as she bolted for her car.

  At least the arse­hole hadn’t thought to take her keys away, al­though she wondered if that was that due more to for­get­ful­ness on his part.