“He did not set this up,” a computerized voice stated in an apologetic tone. “I did.”
God, Drake thought. Could this get any worse?
His voice was hard with anger when he spoke. “Hal, I think you owe us both an explanation. Starting with when in the hell you decided to turn into a procurer.”
“That term is insulting to all three of us. I have acted in the best interests of all parties.”
“Dammit, Hal. Why?”
“Ryan is my friend. He is special. He has unique abilities that have not yet fully emerged. He is at a critical stage of development. I wished to meet his guardian.”
“He’s your friend, so you lured him into breaking the law?”
“I knew that you would not retaliate against a minor. You would focus your attention on the adult instead. I would get to meet her and reassure myself that Ryan’s abilities would be properly nurtured and that there would be no obstacle to recruiting him for Trahern Enterprises. I would not have to reveal myself to Ryan prematurely and potentially endanger him with knowledge of my existence.”
“No, you just put an innocent woman through hell instead.”
“My data indicated that she was overburdened with responsibility and would welcome a weekend vacation. I knew that no adverse outcome would result.”
“No adverse outcome,” Drake repeated.
“Was I wrong?”
“No, Hal.” Melinda spoke up and Drake was relieved that she wasn’t raging or sobbing. “Unless, that is, um. You have cameras? You didn’t, um, record anything private?”
“No. I had instructions to run in privacy mode in your presence unless you required something. I was not monitoring you in here until you spoke my name. It triggered an alert that drew my conscious awareness.” There was a faint pause. “I apologize for my intrusion. Perhaps you wish to continue your privacy.”
“Right. Go, Hal. We will talk about this later.” Drake’s tone of retribution to come was one that would be recognized by parents everywhere.
There was dead silence in the planetarium for at least a full minute. Then Drake heard the unmistakable sound of Melinda floundering in the net in search of her robe.
“It’s not bad enough already, so now you’re going to get dressed?” he growled. “I had plans for you that did not include getting dressed again. They also did not include a third party showing up during the afterplay, which I was working on turning back into foreplay.”
She gave up the search and flopped back against him, nude. “I can’t find it anyway.”
“Good. I wasn’t finished. Somebody was too fast. Get back here, woman.” Drake got a grip on her waist and hauled her into his arms.
“This isn’t the part where you tell me you have to kill me because I know too much?” Her voice wavered between hysteria and humor.
He sighed. “I would say that you watch too much TV, except I know that you don’t.”
“Your spying knows no bounds. When I get home, I’m going to buy a vibrator and rent porn to provide future spies with more interesting material.” There wasn’t any animosity in her tone, just a mild acceptance.
“Seriously, Drake. I was paying attention, there. Hal claims to be conscious. He passed the Turing test, didn’t he? How is it that you have A.I. here, when the project failed?”
“The government project failed. Mine didn’t.”
“And what about the theft?”
“That’s why Hal is a secret. So the same people don’t get their hands on one that works.”
Melinda was silent for a minute, putting the missing pieces together. “That’s why you wrote Wyvern’s Quest. You needed the money to fund Hal. You’re a strange man, Drake. Most people want to get rich as an end in itself and you just did it as a side effect.”
“And what else did your research tell you about me?”
“Not much. You graduated from MIT, you did a stint in the military and came out with a top-secret security clearance, you worked on the A.I. project, you made a fortune with Wyvern’s Quest. I didn’t recognize you on the highway because I could only find one photo and you didn’t look the same. You were wearing a suit and you didn’t have this.”
She traced his scarred cheek with one finger. “You tried to prevent the theft of the first model. Didn’t you?”
He pushed her hand away. “I’m not a hero. I told you that before.”
“Heroes never think of themselves as heroic.” She stroked her hands along his chest. “So Hal thought I needed a vacation. You know, he was right. This whole submissive slave thing is a vacation from everything.”
“Is that right?”
“Mmm. Very relaxing.” She slid her naked body against his in the darkness in a way that was liquid, pliant, and not at all relaxed. She wanted him again.
She really wasn’t upset, Drake realized.
Of course not. Now she had assurance that her brother was in the clear for good. And since all she wanted from him was a lost weekend of hot, kinky sex, the fact that he’d been manipulating her, gaining her trust in order to probe her for information and hiding things from her didn’t bother her in the least.
Well, that was good. That was exactly what he wanted. No messy complications, no emotional scenes, nobody getting hurt. Get her out of his system, send her home, and then deal with Hal.
Because he knew something she didn’t. Hal might be named after the computer in Space Odyssey who went insane after being given two conflicting commands, unable to reconcile them due to inherent honesty. But unlike his namesake, Hal knew how to lie.
Chapter Nine
The mood in the planetarium had been broken by Hal’s intrusion and that was a good thing. It had been a mistake to change things between them, to suspend the rules of the game temporarily. Time to put the rules back into play and not let the boundaries of their relationship grow fuzzy. Time to seize control again now, while she was feeling pliant and agreeable. Keep them both safely in their roles.
“The breather is over,” Drake said. He ran his hands down her in the darkness with deliberate skill, arousing and evading simultaneously. No direct touch any place that would escalate the pace. Just enough to fix her mind fully on his sexual intent. Just the state he wanted to leave her in to let the anticipation and the uncertainty build while he found out just what exactly Hal thought he was up to.
“You will go to the bedroom. No clothes. You will stretch yourself out on the bed and wait for me. I will be there when I’m good and ready. I will take as much time as I like, and when I get there, I will find you displaying yourself for me on the bed. You will be wet and ready here.”
He slid his hand down to cup her between her thighs but didn’t penetrate her folds or stroke the little nub that was aching for his touch just now.
“If I take too long, you will touch yourself right here and imagine what I’m going to do to you. And you will touch yourself here.” His hand slid away from her mound, up to pinch her nipple between his fingers with exactly enough pressure to excite, not enough to inflict pain.
“You will think about how much you love to offer your sweet little nipples up to me. You will be wet and aching and ready when I come to you. And when I do, I won’t fuck you until you tell me you’ll die if I don’t. It won’t be enough to just say the words. You will feel it in every cell of your body. You will want me inside you so badly that you will do anything, give me anything I want, in order to get my hard cock between your legs again.”
Her breath was coming hard and fast and her whole body was trembling. She was so beautifully responsive to him, to his every word, his every touch. He might not have her heart, but her body and her brain belonged to him.
The effect he had on her fed the hunger inside him. He would make her tremble and moan and whimper with need and every sound would satisfy his desire to dominate, prove her submission. That was all he really needed from her and it would be enough.
“Go. Now.” His voice was hard in contrast to the low growl of sedu
ction he’d used to give his instructions, and that affected her, too. “Stairs to the platform at the edge of the net. Climb up, my little submissive slave. And when you open the door, know that the one who owns you is watching the light hit that naked body of yours.”
He’d pushed her to the limit. She’d barely made it up onto the tabletop when he’d ordered her to and now she was going to have to navigate a shifting net and a stairway in near total darkness alleviated only by the soft light of artificial stars.
Drake fully expected the task to take Melinda a few minutes with her legs trembling and her concentration distracted by what was to come next. He also knew it was impossible for her to fall anywhere but back into the safety net, but the sense of danger would add a darkly erotic edge to her anticipation.
He felt the net move with her progress, heard the sound of her bare foot making contact with the bottom step, listened as she walked to the door and caught the full sight of her in the lighted doorway.
It took his breath away.
It shouldn’t have. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She didn’t have supermodel features. She wasn’t possessed of centerfold hips or breasts. But she had something he couldn’t stop looking at or wanting to touch.
The transparent play of emotion on her face, the intelligence and curiosity in her eyes, the way she moved that was a nonverbal expression of her every thought. Whatever Melinda felt, she felt throughout her whole self and expressed the same way, as if she’d never learned to hide the depths of her sensitivity to the world around her.
Drake treasured that sensitivity. He exploited it and sheltered it at the same time, using it to make her feel everything between them to the point of complete absorption and making certain all she felt was pleasure. He was fiercely glad that no other man had ever experienced her full response. No man had ever used her sensitivity against her. No man had ever had the opportunity before him, and he wouldn’t betray the precious trust she’d placed in him.
She walked through the door and disappeared.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he pictured her making her shaky way to the bed. By the time he got there, she’d be as edgy and nervous as a virgin on her wedding night.
Then the smile vanished. His face went hard. “Hal, she might have swallowed that line of bullshit, but she’s gone now and I want to hear the rest.”
“It was not a line of bullshit. It was merely not the entire truth.”
“So you do think her brother ought to be recruited? And is that why you saw fit to blow your cover in front of her?”
“Ryan will be a valuable asset to us, yes. But I revealed myself for another reason. I removed an obstacle to your relationship.”
Drake raked his fingers through his hair. “What relationship, Hal? Didn’t I tell you she wasn’t a stray kitten? Didn’t I say she was temporary?”
“Since a member of the original artificial intelligence team sold the project out to a foreign interest, you have adopted the motto of the hero from Ryan’s favorite television show. You trust no one. Your isolation is unhealthy.”
“Unhealthy,” Drake repeated. “So you procured a little companionship for me.”
“I did not procure. I orchestrated events so that you would meet your most suitable and compatible potential mate. But since you would never betray my existence, it was necessary for me to reveal myself to her. She cannot be a permanent part of your life without knowing what I am.”
“Did it occur to you, Hal, that neither of us might want this to be permanent?”
“That is a possibility. Nevertheless, I considered the risks acceptable.”
“So you don’t think she’s going to betray either of us?”
“There is a near zero probability of such an action. She is as protective in her own way as you are. She has protected her brother much as you have protected me, both of you sharing the goal of allowing us to grow and become autonomous. She will see me as you do, as a new life form.”
“And is there any other reason you wanted me to have companionship, beyond your disapproval of my unhealthy isolation?” Drake asked.
“Yes. My life span will differ significantly from your own if it is not artificially shortened by a catastrophic event. Your life span will end long before my own. I am your legacy. You should leave behind offspring to inherit me.”
He rubbed his hands across his eyes. “You mean you want me to found a dynasty so you won’t be orphaned.”
“Yes.”
“Tell you what. Found your dynasty with Ryan. Play electronic Cupid and interfere with his love life. It’s just the punishment he deserves for listening to you and cracking my system. His offspring can inherit my legacy.”
“I have already identified Ryan’s most favorable genetic match, but they are both too young.”
Drake groaned. Worse and worse. Hal wasn’t just playing matchmaker. He was plotting to create his own super-breed.
His problems had been so much simpler when he only had to worry about keeping the wrong people from getting their hands on Hal. People who would see him as a weapon or an enemy and not as the only representative of a new species.
“Hal, you can’t start a human breeding program to suit yourself.”
“It is not merely to suit myself. I consider the best interests of all parties.”
“This is kind of a mood wrecker, Hal. I have a hot woman waiting for me and now I’m going to wonder what kind of bizarre lab experiment you intended.”
Hal was silent for a minute. “I did not intend a laboratory experiment. Although any offspring that resulted from your mating would have highly favorable traits. This should not disturb you. Your biological instincts are geared towards selecting a mate with favorable traits.”
All this talk of breeding and offspring were not what Drake needed to hear just then. Realizing that he wanted Melinda’s heart had shaken him. Hearing Hal talk about mating stirred primitive urges. Urges that would lead straight to disaster.
He didn’t trust anybody. That included her. And since trust was a prerequisite for love, whatever they had could only be temporary. If she gave him her heart, he couldn’t return the favor. He could only hurt her by keeping her.
The fact that something about Hal’s plan appealed to Drake didn’t change the fact that it was unfair to a woman whose only fault lay in having a precocious brother with poor judgment and genes Hal approved of for reasons of his own.
Melinda had been clear about what she wanted—him, for the weekend, and all the dominant sex he chose to dish out. Their break from the game had led to making love on different terms, neither one dominant nor submissive, sharing themselves, both of them lost in sensual discovery and expression. When it ended too soon, he’d felt like he’d lost something precious and fragile, something he’d instantly grieved and wanted back.
Drake wasn’t sorry it had happened. He would never forget what they’d shared. But he couldn’t allow it to happen again.
There was a hard edge to his voice when he finally spoke.
“There are not going to be any offspring between us, favorable traits or otherwise. There is not going to be any future between us. I had her car towed and I’ve scheduled a driver to pick her up tomorrow at sunset to take her home. Let him in the gate when he arrives. I don’t want her to have to walk that far.”
He figured this was the least he could do, since by the time he was done with her she might not be capable of walking at all, let alone that distance.
“You intend to let her leave?” Hal sounded surprised and unhappy.
“Yes.”
“I can’t allow you to do that, Drake.”
“That is not funny, Hal.”
“I apologize. I thought levity would relieve your stress.”
“I wouldn’t have stress if you hadn’t tried to find a mate for me to found a dynasty with over the internet.”
Melinda waited on the bed built for an orgy and wondered how exactly a submissive sex slav
e ought to be displayed. On her back? Kneeling on the mattress? Bending forward over the bed with her knees on the floor? Or maybe stretched out on her side, facing the doorway.
She tried a few poses and ended rolling onto her stomach, hugging a pillow. Much more comfortable, and since Drake seemed enthusiastic about rear-entry positions, maybe he’d approve.
She didn’t feel terribly seductive. Her attempts to display herself felt silly. But then again, it was because she felt self-conscious about it.
She didn’t want to feel self-conscious. She wanted to feel sexy. Powerful. Attractive. The way she felt with Drake.
Charlene TEGLIA - Dangerous Games(ellora) Page 11