Chapter 15
Cole
Para-synthetic, medical-grade silicone paired with a copper infusion throughout the various layers of material should mean an anti-bacterial coating for our toys, resulting in fewer infections in users.
There are two primary issues with the suffusion of copper through the silicone—first, that it’s rather difficult to do correctly and maintain the same supple, silken material our toys have become known for.
And second, the copper seems to be interfering with the nano-bots’ ability to communicate with one another.
Both issues are unacceptable. The nano-robotic technology is the primary feature that sets us apart from our competitors. I refuse to settle on one or the other—we can have both. It just comes down to me to figure out how.
I’m right in the middle of examining the chemical properties of the latest batch of material from the plant in Brazil when I hear the subtle whoosh of the elevator rising.
Sitting up straight, I lean back from my computer and look out into the lobby, my mind instantly running through the possible suspects.
No cleaning crew. Dane knows I do my best work at night, and I don’t want to be interrupted, so they come early in the mornings.
Nico would never come to the office to work on the weekend, though I have caught him sleeping in his office occasionally. If he’s up and around now, though, he will be out on the town, schmoozing with potential investors, or whatever networking stuff he does for Ember.
Dane begins his nighttime routine at six-thirty with an evening workout and is in bed promptly at eight-thirty.
I know this from our years of friendship, and also because on the few occasions I’ve tried to contact him with urgent updates about a project past that time, his phone sends me straight to voicemail.
So who would be on the executive floor on a Saturday night?
My body tenses up, and I think of the last fanatic who got up here—a woman in a bright pink tracksuit, running in and trying to take photos of Dane before security finally got to her.
We’ve increased security protocols since then, so there’s no way anyone without a keycard should be able to gain access.
Standing slowly, I walk toward the door, preparing to defend myself.
But when I reach the door to my office and look out, I don’t see someone acting like an intruder. I see someone acting as if she belongs here.
The woman is setting her things down carefully on the assistant’s desk.
She’s short and blonde, her hair pulled up into a bun at the top of her head.
She’s wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt that reads Lancaster Softball.
In her left hand is one of those massive water cups with the straw and handle, and she slowly pulls out several files, setting them on the desk before waking up her computer and turning to drape a jacket over the back of her chair.
That’s when she sees me, jumps, claps a hand to her mouth, and lets out a muffled scream through her fingers.
“Who are you?” I ask when she’s done screaming. Carefully, I look her up and down. Dane has never hired a woman to be our assistant before. “What are you doing in here? You should know that I’ve already alerted our security team.”
Breathing hard, she drops her hand from her mouth to her chest and lets out a puff of breath. “Holy crap—you nearly gave me a heart attack! And I said hi to Gerald on my way up. He knows I’m here.”
When I just give her a look, she clears her throat and says, “I’m your new assistant. Dane didn’t tell you?’
Without answering, I pull out my phone, tap over to the company email, and scroll until I find an email titled Lucy Sullivan—new assistant.
I compare the company-mandated employee photo in that email to the woman standing in front of me. Though she’s not wearing make-up now, and hasn’t straightened her hair, it’s definitely the same person.
“The question still stands,” I say, lowering my phone.
“What question?”
“What are you doing here? In the middle of the night on a weekend?”
The woman—Lucy—blinks at me, then smiles. “Well—the same thing you’re doing. I just got back from that conference with Dane in Amsterdam. And… well, I got behind on work while we were traveling. I thought I would come in to try and catch up.”
“Alright.”
Now that I know this stranger in the office isn’t going to try to attack me—or, worse, photograph me—my mind is already returning to the problem of imbuing our material with copper to improve anti-bacterial performance.
We have another lab test coming up, and I want to have solved the problem by the time the third-party evaluators review it.
I return to my office, bend my head back over the problem, and am surprised, hours later, when I emerge from the room to find the assistant still sitting at the desk, her face illuminated by the screen.
From here, I can make out the gentle shadow of her fine nose, the slight pink flush on her cheeks, the place where—I’m sure, from her bone structure and facial features—dimples will pop when she smiles. I hadn’t realized it at first glance, but she’s really quite attractive.
My natural assumption would be that a man hired her for that beauty, but Dane isn’t normally so fickle. There must be something else about her that would push him to hire outside of his normal employee profile.
You’re being really creepy, Cole.
As always, it’s Claire’s voice in my head. Also as always, she’s right—I shouldn’t be staring at the new assistant, cataloging her facial features. So, what should I be doing instead?
Be nice to her. Ask if she wants a coffee.
“Would you like a coffee?”
“Oh, Christ!” she jumps again, bringing her hand to her chest, which only draws my eyes to her breasts, hugged by the worn t-shirt. It’s slightly too small for her, like it could have belonged to her a long time ago. “Sorry—you move so quietly.”
“I’m going to get a coffee,” I say, trying to ignore the irritation of having to take time away from my project. It niggles at the back of my mind like a parasitic worm trying to gain access to my brain stem. “Would you like one?”
What I mean is that I can fetch her one when I get my own from the lobby, but to my surprise, she nods and pushes back from her desk, taking a moment to stretch with her arms held above her head before she grabs her massive cup and starts walking in my direction.
“Yes,” she says, her hair just brushing my arm as she passes. “I’d love one—I can fill my water, too.”
My body instantly rejects this—the last thing I want is to have to socialize with this stranger.
A stranger who, no doubt, won’t last more than a few months in this position.
Dane has been trying for nearly a decade now to find us an assistant who can manage three executives at a time, and who lives up to his impossible Rourke standards.
His hires have included Stanford graduates, eager young entrepreneurs, all looking like carbon copies of Dane, just twenty years younger.
None of them have been… this.
As we ride the elevator together, then exit and start walking toward the coffee machine, I wait for her to ask me how I like the weather, how my night is, or if I enjoyed my travel to Brazil.
Any number of the small, irrelevant questions that normally trip me up.
What is there to like or not like about the weather? It just is.
Yet again, she surprises me when she turns and asks, in a bright, curious tone, “What are you working on?”
I turn to look at her, and the action tugs me away from the project once more. I’m finding it hard to ignore her, to stay in my own head like I normally would around another person. Around anyone except Nico and Dane, that is, and even sometimes with them.
“…I’m working on the stabilization of the chemical properties of our coating materials, enough to suffuse them—or in-lay them, I suppose—with enough copper to boost the anti-bacterial properties.”
“Oh, like, to make it self-cleaning? Like, antibacterial?”
I squint over at her, adjusting my expectations. Maybe it’s sexist to assume she wouldn’t have any idea what I was talking about. Or, maybe not—I assume most people don’t have any idea what I’m talking about most of the time.
“That’s right,” I say as we push through a set of double doors together.
“The problem lies mostly in the copper’s interference with the nano-bots within the toys.
Particularly in the line that emulates oral stimulation, as it requires a much more precise algorithm than the others—the tongue is one of the most complex muscles in the human body.
Not to mention the control of heat and pressure.
In the oral line, the nano-bots number in the thousands, and even a slight deviation in their calibration from the interference could result in an interruption in pleasure.
Our customers invest a lot of money in our products; they expect them to deliver the perfect release, every time. ”
The more I talk, the faster my words come out. When I try to talk to Nico about my work, he pretends to fall asleep. Talking to Dane is slightly better, but he often finds himself frustrated too easily when he can’t find an answer right away.
Telling Lucy, however, feels different.
Especially when I turn to look at her, awaiting her response, only to see that her cheeks have darkened, red and patchy now. Her throat bobs, and she delicately bites her lip before releasing it.
Oh—she’s turned on.
I’ve studied enough human behavior around arousal to recognize its signs.
And the sight of this woman, clearly experiencing something from me talking about my work?
It arouses me.
We fetch our coffees, Lucy fills her water, and we head back to the elevator. I’ve never been particularly gifted at reading the room, but even I sense the strange weight between us, that moment like it created matter from nothing.
Which is, of course, impossible.
Lucy surprises me once more when she pauses in blowing on her coffee, turning to me as we wait for the elevator up. “What if you didn’t use copper?”
My brow wrinkles instantly, “What do you mean?”
“If the goal is to make the product self-cleaning,” she muses, tipping her head to the side, “but the copper is going to interfere with the robots, then why not look for a different way? Like, maybe each toy could come with a case—sleek and pretty, like everything else. And it could use—oh, I don’t know—like UV light or something?
To clean it? I’m not like a chemist or anything, but I had a friend who had a self-cleaning water bottle do that. It was really cool.”
When I say nothing, Lucy Sullivan turns to look at me, and I can’t stop myself from staring openly at her.
“What?” she laughs, shrugging and blowing at her coffee again. “Was that totally stupid? Sorry.”
“No,” I manage, mind already turning the thought of a cleaning case over and over. “Not stupid at all.”