“Lucas?” I asked quietly. Say something. That bright red was scaring me.
“I was afraid that was the case,” he said at last. His tone was cold, colder than I’d ever heard in fact. It was unsettling, but even more unsettling were his words.
“You what?”
“Imagine that you only tasted water and smelled filtered, unscented air. Imagine you felt neither hot nor cold, and experienced neither pleasure nor pain. Imagine how strong it would make you.”
Strong? To me, that sounded horrid.
As if he knew what I was thinking, he tilted his head slightly. “You would be strong because you would choose to eat only what was required for ultimate nutrition. You would exercise despite heat or cold. Small discomforts or distastes would not deter you. In other words, you would have a perfectly functioning body.” He smirked slightly, which made my body function in utterly inappropriate ways. “You would never crave chocolate, Samantha.”
Okay, touché.
“Pain would never slow you down, and hence fear of pain wouldn’t either. This would allow you to attempt things you wouldn’t otherwise attempt. And in attempting them, your ability to make strategic decisions would never be compromised by the debilitation of fear. Making you the perfect soldier.” He paused, shaking his head. “In short, in some respects you would become invincible. Especially if you were an android with a potential lifespan of centuries. If not millennia.”
Okay, I get it already, I thought. It sounded boring, in all honesty. But I could definitely see how it would also make someone strong. Especially someone like Zero.
“I see you understand,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said sullenly.
“Good. Now imagine something comes along, something unique and unexpected… and suddenly you can smell the clean scent of a blanket fresh from the dryer. Conceive of yourself pulling it out of that dryer on a very cold winter day, a cold that had never hurt you before but did now. And imagine that for the first time in your life, you can feel the blanket’s soft warmth sinking into you as you wrap it around yourself.”
I imagined it. It was easy. A soft, warm blanket fresh from the dryer on a cold day was one of my favorite things, which was probably why Lucas had chosen the example.
I blushed a little and looked away, but he kept going.
“Fancy enjoying your first long, hot shower.” He paused. “Or your first sip of ice cold Diet Mountain Dew.”
Another two favorites of mine. Cheater. “Luke, you said not feeling anything made you stronger,” I objected.
“It does,” said Lucas easily. “But haven’t you ever noticed it’s the things which make us weak that we love most?” He smirked, and that smirk was downright sexy. “It makes no logical sense. But somehow, these are the things that ultimately turn existence into life – and make life worth living.”
I swallowed hard, thinking of all the things that got me out of bed in the morning. Or at night. Whenever. And when I stopped to think about it, yeah. He had a point. They were all “bad” for me. They were bad for everyone. Caffeine, saturated fats, sugar, movies, video games.
Why was that? Why was it only the things that gave us some sort of weakness that we came to love? Good food? Drink? Things like recreational drugs and shopping sprees and dangerous games? Hell, even love itself made us weak. It changed us, compromised us, and turned us inside out.
“Things like that taste of chocolate that you would face Hades for, Samantha” Lucas said. He smiled slow and wicked. The gray in his eyes gleamed like gunmetal, shot through with charges of lightning. “And sex.” His voice deepened. I stared transfixed as he raised his arm to deftly brush the backs his knuckles along my cheekbone. “Imagine feeling that deep, gripping, forbidden pleasure for the first time ever. And having your first climax….”
I blushed furiously now, but I couldn’t seem to look away. He had me in his sway.
His thunder gaze slipped from my eyes to my mouth. I inhaled sharply but remained immobile when his thumb gently brushed over, then hooked my lower lip. He pressed down slightly, and his pupils darkened, expanding hungrily. “Now imagine that all of this is taken away from you.” His eyes shot back up to mine. “What would you do to get it all back, Samantha? To what lengths would you go?”
For chocolate and sex?
Fuck, I thought as my heart pounded and he looked at me like that, and heat coiled between my legs. Lucas knew damn well what was happening to me. He knew damn well what he was doing. He was doing it on purpose.
The interrogator from android hell.
He leaned over, his hand leaving my face to slip down around my waist. His fingers curled in, grasping my side firmly to slide me toward him along the mattress. It was effortless for him, and before I knew it my body was flush with his.
He was solid against me, every inch of him, and his skin was hot. He waited a moment, just watching me, studying me closely, reading me in that thorough way that took in every tiny detail and logged it for future reference. Finally, he leaned in. His words ghosted over my lips. “For whatever reason Samantha, you are this precious, solitary thing for IRM-1000. You are the only reason he can feel anything.”
No, I thought. It made no sense. But then… I could barely think at all at the moment.
“You may be his kryptonite,” he said with a look that left me undone. “You may render him weaker than he would otherwise be. But he would do literally anything for that weakness all the same.”
Luke’s solid heat, deep voice, and storm-laden eyes were encompassing me. I was fast losing this unspoken battle of wills between us. But I was confused about something just enough to form one last question. As Lucas slowly took us both to the mattress, my rapidly fogging brain managed to breathlessly ask, “How would you know this, Lucas?”
He gently took my bottom lip between his teeth to tease it as his hands slid up under my shirt and wrapped around my chest, his thumbs brushing the undersides of my breasts. His teeth released my lip from captivity as my mind spun away. I knew he was watching, cataloging, when I closed my eyes and shuddered in his arms. Above me, so close, he whispered, “I know because I would do the same, Samantha.”
I felt his hand slide from my waist, up my back, to the nape of my neck. There, he gathered a fistful of my hair and pulled gently. I couldn’t help but arch in response, exposing the column of my neck. A gasp escaped my lips when Luke’s teeth scraped along my throat, not quite hard enough to leave a lasting mark.
“For you,” he half-growled before his grip in my hair tightened and he paused above my pulse point to take more of my skin between his teeth, sucking with more urgency. I quashed a moan, but pressed my body against his, and he released my tortured flesh to finish his sentence.
“I would do anything.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
When I woke up, the first thing I noticed as my eyes blinked and de-blurred was the corded muscle of Luke’s arm draped over my waist, his hand pressed lightly to the mattress near my head. The next thing I noticed was that his chest was pressed to my back, solid and warm – but not too warm. The blankets were pulled up just enough to comfortably enshroud without stifling. It was the perfect temperature and the perfect amount of covers and the perfect – everything. I felt coveted and protected, but not drowned.
It was like he knew exactly how to spoon me, even our first time.
But I wasn’t surprised. That wasn’t all he’d known exactly how to do.
I closed my eyes, turning my attention inward. I was… tender in some places. I flexed and winced. Quite tender. Nick hadn’t been joking about Luke’s size.
As the events of the last few hours flooded my memory, I had to bite my already bruised lips to keep from moaning. In the darkness behind my lids, I not only saw but felt everything. Luke’s extremely adept hands, his intuitive touch, his focused strength and patient persistence that slowly rolled into just the right amount of selfish, slightly rough passion.
And now I wanted to do it again.<
br />
When I swallowed, I felt a little twinge of soreness in the skin on the side of my neck, I smiled to myself, despite my irritation. He’d no doubt given me a hell of a hickey. I remembered knowing he’d leave a deep mark when he’d done it. I probably should have protested, but I was caught up in him.
Besides… as immature as I knew it probably was, and as foolish too, there was a part of me that wanted to be marked by Lucas. It wanted to be owned by him. Especially now, in the face of everything. In the face of Zero.
And it was in a place easily covered by clothing anyway.
Against my back, Lucas slowly shifted. I felt him pressing his weight into the hand on the mattress in front of me. I watched that hand, how beautiful it was, remembering those fingers…. And I suddenly had to clear my throat.
Lucas rose over me from behind, and I turned just enough to look up at him. His EED was blue, his dark hair was tousled, and the black of his pupils was fast expanding. He was smiling in a way I had never seen before. “Good morning, Beautiful,” he said. His voice was deep, filled with sleep and lust and darkness. His eyes trailed from my eyes to my lips, and I swallowed again, this time reflexively.
“Good morning,” I replied, smiling.
Damn. He’s too gorgeous. My body was far too aware of him. His lips curled a little more, giving me that new, sexy smirk that was too similar to his creator’s. I suddenly turned my face away from him to moan longingly into the pillow beside me. It was shameless. And I couldn’t help it one bit.
He must have known, must have read it in a scan, or maybe he was simply a man and knew what to do, because he chuckled low, balanced on one unnaturally strong arm, and used the other to snake beneath me and roll me over onto my stomach.
My breathing hitched, then sped up. I squeezed my eyes shut tight and bit my sore lip as my heart raced a million miles a minute. I knew this was going to hurt – and I wanted it anyway. I couldn’t have told you how badly I wanted it.
His arm stayed wrapped tight around my waist, holding me firmly against him as he once more found my core, sank deeply into it, and took me to some kind of godless heaven.
Hours later, I’d showered and dressed and entered the kitchens to find Lucas had cooked me breakfast. That was nothing new. He almost always made me breakfast. But this time, he sat across from my chair to make sure I ate it. I would have rolled my eyes at the amount of care he was exhibiting, but his actions were actually kind of endearing. So I sat down and tried not to feel conspicuous.
“Scrambled eggs,” I said, smiling down at the plate. They were a rare treat. Eggs were the one food that science hadn’t yet been capable of perfectly replicating without any actual animal products. And Lucas had put cheese on them too, which wasn’t as rare since it was replicated, but was absolutely delicious.
Scrambled eggs.
I blinked.
Scrambled. Scramble….
“Oh my God,” I said aloud.
Lucas straightened at once, probably slipping into battle mode. “What?”
But it all just occurred to me right then, each little piece, every memory, and the schematics of how it would all fit together. I heard Sonia’s words in my head, and saw them float by like glowing text ripped from a holy manuscript…
…We lost touch with Jonathan and Nathan right away. Zero must have scrambled the signal…
Floating just behind them and glowing just as bright were the tiny scrambling nanites I’d originally incorporated into the outer silicon layers of android skin to prevent probed readings upon contact a year ago.
And the solution to our most recent problem was there in that puzzle too, spinning and moving and glowing just like everything else. It was a missing link, like an electron to a proton, and it would draw everything together. I just needed to focus long enough to recognize it.
I stared unseeing at the fresh, hot plate of breakfast. In my head, equations and yellow-gold diagrams turned like carnival lights. It was there… it was there…. It’s right there.
Suddenly I was jumping up out of my chair and looking frantically all around me for something to take notes and draw with.
“Samantha!” Lucas was alarmed. He stood quickly, moving around the table. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Someone else came into the kitchens at full speed, probably spurred by the sound of my exclamation and Luke’s questions. I saw them out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t even look at them. I needed to concentrate! Focus!
I pushed past Lucas to begin walking briskly toward the lab Nick and I had been working in day and night, and luckily Lucas let me go.
“What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” Charlotte asked as I brushed past her too. I looked up briefly and tried to smile reassuringly. But big, blue eyes searched me with concern. She had bags of toys in her arms.
“It’s fine!” I told her hastily as I moved further down the hall. “Really! Nothing’s wrong!”
Lucas was right on my heels. Over my shoulder, I called, “I need something to draw with and I need an interface!” In my head, the pieces began to shift together now, finally pulled as if by magnets. I felt my pace quicken further. Then I broke into a run. “And I need to see Nicholas!”
Luke’s running footsteps were still behind me. I knew that if he wanted to, he could easily overtake and then overpower me, so I called back to him as well, just to alleviate his concern. “I know what to do!” I told him. “About the bounty hunters! And the android scans! And even the bullet-proof skin I was working on!”
I rounded the corner, the door to the lab slid open, and a weary Nick at the end of his shift looked up from the table he’d been working over. I exclaimed, “Nicholas! I figured it out!”
He just stared at me for a protracted and dumbfounded period of time before he finally ran his hand over his face and said, “You figured what out?”
He was in desperate need of caffeine. Or sleep. Caffeinated sleep. That what I called this stage of being: The caffeinated sleep stage. It was the stage where you could drink twelve espressos and probably do some kind of speed to boot, then sleep for twenty hours like a toddler after a sugar high.
“All of it,” I told him, grinning and stepping into the room. “I think I’ve figured out a way to stop androids from detecting who we are with their scans, and I think I figured out the android bullet-proofing once and for all!”
Nick blinked. Then I watched his eyes widen. He straightened where he was standing, looking two-hundred percent more awake than he had ten seconds ago, when I’d walked in. “In that case, get in here and take over,” he said, looking around the table at the mess he’d made.
We were both rather frantic workers, and tended to not clean up after ourselves when in the throes of creating something, which was probably foolish and dangerous when conducting science experiments, but it was just the way we worked. Sometimes it felt like if we stopped or slowed down even the tiniest bit, we would lose the tenuous grasp we had on the specifics of what we were doing. Like a writer interrupted mid-flow – we wouldn’t be able to regain that momentum once it was lost, no matter how hard we tried.
When I got to Nick’s side of the table, I realized Lucas had followed me into the lab. He was standing near the door, watching us with an obvious dose of infuriation. But it was good natured infuriation, at least. He was almost smiling.
I gave him an I’m sorry, forgive me, you know you love me anyway! smile and he shook his head, sighing. “I’ll be back with mocha protein shakes for the both of you.” He turned on his heel and left the hall, allowing the door to the lab to slide shut.
My heart warmed, and my stomach growled. Lucas made the best shakes.
“Christ,” Nick whispered under his breath. “You two finally did the deed last night, didn’t you?”
My head whipped around. “Wha-what?” I stammered like an idiot as my face flushed furiously.
But Nick’s gaze slipped from my wide eyes to my neck, and he smirked. “That’s what I thought. No wonder he’
s being so smug.”
My eyes grew even wider, and before I could stop it, my hand guiltily slapped over my neck, where I knew that damn hickey was. Not so easy to hide after all.
“You know… we’ve only been dating a few weeks!” I insisted in my defense. “There’s no ‘finally’ about it!”
Nick snorted, shook his head, and returned to cleaning up the work area. As he turned his back to me in order to replace several mechanical components in their material slots on the shelf, he asked, “So… how was I?”
I was still staring at his back wide-eyed, my face burning, so it took me a second to understand what he meant by that. And when I did, I was naturally offended.
“Ugh,” I said, rolling my eyes and dropping my hand. So the mark was going to show. Oh well. For all I cared, Nick could stare at it and stew. “Just like a guy to try and take credit for another man’s sexual prowess.”
Nick turned a broad grin and glittering blue eyes on me. “That good, huh?” he said unabashedly. “I’ll count that as a successful program in my notes, then.”
I gawked at him.
He ignored me, took out an electronic notepad from his lab coat, and began hurriedly typing with one hand on the screen. “I’m betting Malcolm is even better, given his disciplined bellicosity,” he said nonchalantly and without looking up from his pad. “Care to find out for me? Purely for the sake of science? I would have to warn you though,” he continued with a thoughtful finger to his chin in pretend concern. “Zero’s added height is the tip of the iceberg; everything about IRM-1000 is bigger.”
My mouth snapped shut. My gaze narrowed. I thought very quickly, and just as quickly I came to a conclusion. Nick was venting. He was clearly jealous, and passive-aggressive dickheadism was how Nicholas Byron dealt with his jealousy. But I could handle Dickhead Nick. I was used to Dickhead Nick. Hell, I had a damn degree in Dickhead Nick.
I, Android: A Different Model Page 32