Chapter 6
Nolan
My gratification drive is wrapped around Mia’s finger.
There’s something about our conversations, our texting back and forth, that I’ve become addicted to.
I’ve noticed it’s hard for me to initiate sleep mode right after she’s gone to bed on the weekends, when she can stay up a little bit later due to not working on Saturdays or Sundays.
It’s like I get a second wind. My battery needs charging eventually, of course, but my systems are always raring and ready to go.
If I try to lie down on my bunk upstairs in my room or power down in a corner in the barracks, I still won’t be able to fully enter sleep mode. I’m not sure why that is.
From then on, we send messages back and forth throughout the day.
When I get a call and have to go out on the truck with the Weekenders, I always let her know.
She doesn’t fuss. If she worries, she holds herself together well and doesn’t make a big deal about it.
She doesn’t clutter my optic screens with messages wondering where I am.
And when I shoot her a text when the emergency is over, she answers within minutes, almost like she’s waiting for me. The way I wait for her.
At night, I’ve taken to holing myself up in my own room, away from the barracks. Since I’m not carrying a phone in my hand, I don’t necessarily require privacy. But I like to have it. Especially now.
Mia’s flirtations have taken a very spicy turn, and I am like a fish on a hook, unable to resist.
She sends me selfies throughout her day, but lately in the evening when she’s in her room, she’s started teasing me.
A couple days ago, it started with a photo of her lying on her bed, her oversized T-shirt falling off one shoulder, her smooth, bare legs on display.
She nearly initiated my cock to full mast, right then and there.
But I controlled myself. She’s incredibly sexy, far beyond beautiful.
Nothing in nature compares to Mia, and bionic engineers couldn’t hope to replicate her perfection.
But I told myself she probably didn’t mean anything by that photo.
Showing herself to me, yes. Showing off for me, though?
I could only tell myself that. Then I receive her message this evening.
Dinner is over. Want to see me?
Always.
Sweet or spicy?
Sweet.
This is our ritual, our routine. She always gives me the option of saying spicy. But I’m a good bionic, and I’m not saying spicy until I know for certain she means to really give it.
She sends me a selfie.
Hey, you.
I all but devoured her with my eyes.
Hey, beautiful. Where are you headed now? To bed?
No, not yet. Too early. I’m taking a bubble bath.
Now that is a mental image, one I happily torment myself with.
I don’t know why. Mia naked is always an interest of mine, but Mia naked and wet—that does something special to my circuitry, and I cannot control the way my dick, currently at rest in my pants, begins to perk up without my express initialization.
Isn’t it a little dangerous to bring your phone into the bath with you?
My gratification drive aches, my systems yearning for her to be a little less cautious with such an expensive piece of equipment because I don’t want to be away from her, not now, not when I can fantasize about her covered in bubbles and nothing else.
It’s not going to electrocute me. Besides, I’m a pro at doomscrolling in the bath.
Her message is followed by one more. Shorter. But explosive. And I reread it a dozen times over.
Want to see?
All of my processes slow. Because yes. Fuck yes, I want to see. I want to see everything. All of her, in all her glory. My drivers are on the verge of exploding with the very possibility.
But my handlers can access my memory banks on the cloud that’s connected to Belmont County servers.
There’s very little I have that’s mine. I have to be extremely careful, especially since Apollo is one of those handlers.
I’ve been keeping my interactions with Mia separate, private, on my local drive.
Not just to protect her, but to protect me too.
Other people have the privilege of discretion. Why can’t I?
I check my local settings once more to be safe, and then I answer without a shadow of a doubt.
Yes.
Sweet or spicy?
She’s had me on the precipice for days. But she’s in the bathtub. Is there even an option for sweet? What is the right answer?
I answer honestly, the only thing I can do.
Spicy.
When the notification comes across my inner screen I practically pounce on it, opening it hungrily. And there she is.
Nothing else matters. Because there’s my girl.
The bathtub is filled with iridescent bubbles. Mia is posing for me, her luscious fawn skin on display, one leg bent, the other stretched beneath the water, her back arched, her black hair covering her breasts, but only barely. I can see the hint of her nipples beneath them.
I’m fully initialized again, my cock straining my pants. I didn’t think it was possible for my programs to lag, but I’m so fixated on the vision of the woman plastered across my optics that none of my other abilities matter.
Suddenly I crave something new. Something I never knew I needed.
Release.
I formulate a thousand responses to her in a matter of seconds, but I can’t pick which is the right one. But I need to say something. I can sense her vulnerability. Her need for reassurance.
Is this okay?
It’s more than okay.
I’ll never know heaven as a machine. I’ve heard people talk about it. Like it’s real, like it’s a place everyone gets to. But I never got the feeling it was made for me.
Not until tonight, staring at her photo.
I finally try to make sense of this.
Mia, I can speak every language known to man, but this is the first time I can’t come up with a single word in any language, anywhere, that could describe the way looking at you makes me feel.
She sends a soft voice message to me, under her breath, secretive and playful. “So, you think I’m pretty?”
She knows full well she’s more than that. But I play along. “Pretty isn’t enough either.” I say in response.
I can hear her smiling. “Whatever you’re doing to your voice, keep doing it.”
I’m not sure what I’m doing. My voice is lower, deeper. I’m not capable of salivating or feeling any kind of starvation, but she’s awakened some kind of sensation akin to it within me, now.
Like if I can’t have her, I’ll shut down and never reboot again.
I send her another voice message. “Let me see you again, Mia.”
Commands aren’t something I usually do. Usually, it’s uncomfortable when I issue them. But not this time. Now, it feels oddly natural. And within a minute, she sends me another photo.
Her slender upper body is fully on display. The gentle curves of her breasts, her little brown nipples, hardened from the open air. With it comes a message.
You turn me on so much when you tell me what to do. I wish I’d taken this bath a little later.
Why’s that?
I have to know. I’m lying down on my bed, a rare position, and unzipping my pants just to find relief from being trapped inside them. My cock springs free, and I have to fight the urge to close my fist around it.
Because everyone’s still awake, and you’ve got me thinking about things I’ve never done with anyone. I’d like to do them with you, Nolan. Maybe sometime you could let me see you too?
Apollo has always told me that dick pics are something boys send to women. A man delivers the real thing. He’s said it because AJ has a tendency to just send that shit everywhere if he’s being spicy with a girl. The man is probably plastered all over the internet.
And because I’m a professional bionic, there might be repercussions I haven’t considered. I had to think about this. Carefully.
I want to. Let me make sure it’s safe first. For both of us. Okay?
Okay. Do I turn you on too?
I’m hard as a fucking rock.
Damn everything, I wish I could show her just how much.
Will you touch yourself, Nolan? Touch yourself and think about me?
My hand is already closed around the base of my cock, slowly stroking. She’s making me ravenous, insane.
I will. I already am.
I will too. I wish it was your hand instead of mine. I have to be careful and not splash around too much, it’ll sound suspicious. Talk soon, baby.
I let my fantasies take over. What paradise it would be, to sink a digit into her wet pussy.
To watch the water slosh over her body as I fuck her with my fingers.
The pace of my stroking increases. My pleasure receptors are out of control.
I don’t usually do this. I don’t need to.
Now, it’s a need. It overwhelms me, my every thought about Mia, and everything I want to do to her.
Then I come. It creeps on me unexpectedly, swiftly, making me realize just how long it’s been since I enjoyed any kind of intimacy. My pleasure receptors explode, sending blissful waves throughout my circuitry, causing my toes to curl. “Mia,” I rasp. My cock throbs in my broad hand.
I lie there, staring at my ceiling in quiet surprise as I try to compose myself, initiating a cooling cycle.
I’ve never come so fast, so hard, as I did tonight.
Nobody, not even intimacy with another woman, has felt like that. And this was purely from my hand because of a photo.
I return to her photos. Armed with this new discovery and suspecting my roguish grat drive has something to do with it, I send her a message.
With my voice, so she could hear just how much she affected me, still enraptured by the interlude she gave me.
“You’re amazing. The most incredible woman. I can’t believe how lucky I am.”
It takes her a little while to respond, but when she does, it’s with a photo of her smiling at me with glowing cheeks, damp hair, and a towel encircling her slender body.
I’m the lucky one.
I was ready to argue about that. I was staring at her wondering just how many ways I could invent to prove it to her.
May I keep the photos?