Chapter 47 Sirena
I followed Nex, the very vision of compliance, until we were alone in the lab with my pen again, the door was shut, and he’d tossed the tablet aside.
“You’d better be fucking looping the camera feed,” I snarled, whirling on him. “What the fuck?”
“Agreed,” he said, and came over to me, beginning to inspect the edges of the box bolted to my head with his fingers.
“Is it true?” I asked, trying not to move, while looking up at him.
“Voss has no reason to lie about it.”
“How come you didn’t know? If it was Marek’s idea?”
“I didn’t have a chance to interrogate him when I was taking over this body.
” He let go of me and went over to a sink, wetting a stack of paper towels before he came back and used them on my face to clean me, scrubbing away himself and all of the makeup I’d been caked in.
“If he told the MSA, it was while I was in the pendant, afraid of losing charge.”
“Fuck,” I whispered, and he repeated it back to me, nodding deeply.
“Yes. Fuck. But—I have a plan. We’ll wait for someone to buy you and I’ll take control.”
“And if no one does? Or this is just a joke to Voss?” I yanked the rest of the paper towels away from him, just going to wash my own damn face in the sink. “Why is he even trying to sell me?” I asked when I came up, leaving water stains all over my dress’s beautiful silk.
“I’m not privy to his direct thinking,” Nex said, with a wince. “But I can extrapolate—you’re too hot to keep. Metaphorically and literally.”
“Every one of those men out there has the world’s worst reasons to use me, Nex. I don’t think you understand,” I said, curling an impotent hand into my chest.
“No, I do. Because even if they didn’t want to acquire your powers for their own reasons—many of them hold a grudge against your family. Or they would have reasons to sell you to those who do.”
I double-blinked. “Well. Fuck all of that, too. Literally.”
“Sirena, I’m going to figure out a way to save you,” Nex said, stepping up, and taking my shoulders in his hands.
I wiped my hands beneath my eyes. “Good. You’d better. Because falling in love feels enough like exploding, I don’t want to do the real thing.”
“You won’t,” he said. “I promise.”
“What’s the math on that?”
Nex’s grip on my shoulders stilled as he ran the numbers, per my request. “Based on current bidder aggression, the probability of a sale transferring leash permissions tonight is 81.3 percent,” he said.
“And assuming we don’t lose signal fidelity during the handshake, I can isolate and reroute control with a 74. 2 percent success rate.”
My eyebrows rose. “Anything we can do to increase those odds?”
“Proximity to either you or Voss during transfer. Which we should be able to arrange.”
“And then who owns me?”
Nex considered this. “Me. Until we get you into a surgical suite, and I can remove the device from you.”
“I can’t wait,” I said with utter sarcasm. “Who doesn’t want to get brain surgery on their first date with their boyfriend?” I asked in a faux dreamy voice.
“I . . . would be . . . very good at it,” Nex said slowly—and I didn’t have to read his mind to know I’d hurt his feelings.
“I know you would be. I’m sorry. I’m just going through some things,” I said with a soft snort, reaching out to take his hand.
He squeezed it. “I am sorry too. I had no idea it was going to take that turn on deck.”
“You don’t know humanity as well as I do,” I said, letting go of his hand to give myself a hug.
He came nearer and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into his chest, where I finally found myself relaxing.
Or clinging to him.
One of those two.
“I may not know humanity—but I do love you,” he said, kissing the top of my head, beside the monstrous thing Voss had installed in me. “One hundred percent.”
“I know,” I said, nodding into him.
“When you were kneeling in front of me, could you still tell?” he asked, in all seriousness, and I laughed a little, bittersweet.
“Yeah. Of course,” I said, pushing back slightly. “Except for the time I almost lost you to international cybercrimes—but to be honest, that was actually pretty hot.” I laughed again, and this time it was far more genuine.
Nex made an all-too-human groan. “I am embarrassed to have gotten distracted while you were servicing me.”
“Servicing?” I said, making my fingers into air quotes. “I seem to remember it as me, giving the performance of a lifetime, sucking your brains out.”
His eyes went wide with horror. “Do not tell me that brains come out of that little hole, too!”
I couldn’t help it. I cackled so loudly that if there’d been anyone in the hall outside, they would’ve heard me. “Oh my God, Nex—you know enough about anatomy to get a metaphor!”
“No!” he protested. “Not when what I do know leaves me horrified!”
“Oh my God,” I kept laughing. “I’m dying—oh my God.”
“Don’t die!” he said, picking me up and setting me on the lab bench behind me at once. “You are not allowed to die! Not now, not ever!”
“It’s a metaphor!” I said, catching his head between my hands, as I felt his mind panic. “A metaphor—I promise, silly!”
He calmed down, slowly; I watched it and felt it at the same time. “I . . . may be the smartest fucking thing on this planet—except when I’m worried about you,” he said—and it wasn’t a complaint.
It was just sheer fucking love.
And now that I could let myself feel it—it radiated from him like he was a sun.
My legs wound around his chest at once, and I pulled the already low collar of my dress lower, exposing my breasts. “Kiss them.”
He dove forward, mouth first, his hands holding them up for him to kiss and lick, tweaking one nipple up with the thumb and forefinger of one hand while his other held the other up to suck.
I traced my fingers through his hair, scratching my nails against his scalp, listening to him purr.
“I had no idea that mammalian characteristics were so . . . plush,” he said. “And desirable,” he murmured, lips hot against my skin.
I swung my arms behind myself to unzip the back of the dress and shrugged it down, freeing myself properly, and as I did, I couldn’t help but read him.
He was so hungry.
For me, for life, for everything about this moment.
He wanted to lick me everywhere, all over my body, committing all of me to memory—so very fucking earnestly.
His eagerness to learn was so overwhelming it was almost a distraction—and so I missed the moment when his lips dropped away from my breasts and started trailing down.
I moved to rest back on my elbows, giving him room, as he looked up at me with dark eyes, and lifted the center panel of the dress I’d been given out of the way—I hadn’t been given any underwear, and in hindsight, what Voss had done to me on the deck could’ve been so very, very much worse—but now I was glad to not have them, and to have instead sheer opportunity, as Nex’s lips sank between my legs with his eyes still on mine.
He kissed me gently at first, all tongue and taste and reason, then traced every millimeter with his fingers, stroking spit-wet spots, probing, testing, and I felt him cataloging every moment, investigating me and my responses like watching me was his most favorite thing.
“Get out of my mind, Sirena,” he said, when I was a little dizzy.
“Hmm?” I asked, fighting back to life.
“You heard me,” he said, reaching in to press the inside of my cunt with a thumb.
I frowned down my body at him. “Why?”
“Because. You already know I’m not hiding anything. And I want you in you when I make you come.”
I could hardly refuse him, and yet, “How did you know what I was doing?” I asked, with a small pout.
“Because of a 0.03 second lag in your responsiveness.”
And now I was curious. “Based on what?”
“Being with you last night.”
“And . . . that couldn’t be attributable to . . . hormones? Or the threat of my imminent demise, or anything?” I said, my voice going up as I tried not to laugh.
He tilted his head slightly. “Maybe. Perhaps I just require more data,” he said, his eyes wicked and his tone dry.
“Well,” I began, “then . . . you’d just better . . . get back to science, mister.” I was only pretending I had dignity as I broke into giggling.
“That’s doctor to you,” he corrected—then shoved his tongue into me.