41. REGENERATE #2
“Tell me you’re not reporting to the Trairch Dominion about Ariella because you don’t want me getting into trouble.”
She jerks in my hold.
There it is. The delay. The conflict in her artificial brain.
“Am I the only one feeling this?” I push, tightening my grip, forcing her gaze back to mine. “Or is this just… programming to you?”
Her breathing starts to fracture—uneven, shallow, wrong.
Brows pull together, lips parting as another sound escapes her, this one stripped of anything resembling pleasure.
“Alistair, st—”
“That I’m the only one who lo—”
Her body seizes.
It’s not subtle this time. It’s violent.
She arches her back in an awkward angle, limbs locking for a split second before the erratic convulsions begin—her entire system spasms as the overload exceeds the equilibrium threshold.
I don’t hesitate to grab her face. My fingers dig into either side of her head, and then I twist hard with a grunt.
The body goes limp instantly.
I shove her off me without ceremony, letting her collapse onto the couch. For a second, there’s nothing but the involuntary twitching in her limbs.
A pale, creamy fluid seeps from her nose shortly, then her ears. It’s slow at first before it thickens, trailing down her skin in sickening lines while her body continues to jerk sporadically.
Crash confirmed.
“The one who loathes you,” I finish quietly, the words settling into the silence like an afterthought.
My erection aches, turning into an angry shade of purple for not finishing off.
Ignoring the throbbing pain, I push myself to my feet, rolling my shoulders once, and step over to the discarded pile of clothes on the floor.
The bloodied leather are still slightly damp, still heavy in my hands. Without looking at her again, I toss them over her body.
“I know you’re watching, little kitty. You can come out now,” I call out for Ariella even though I’m entirely naked.
There’s a sudden tranquility for a minute echoing my voice back to me.
Then the main door creaks open.
Ariella steps inside cautious like a timid, scared kitten—one who willingly walks into the danger just for the thrill of it.
Her eyes flick briefly towards throbbing erection before she forces it toward the twitching, ruined body beneath the blood-soaked leather lying on the couch.
“Is she… is she dead now?”
“Yes.”
She steps closer despite herself. “How are you so sure?”
“Because I designed her.”
Her gaze snaps back to me, an unsettling doubt flickering beneath the surface. “Are you a Synthète too, Alistair?”
For a fraction of a second, I actually pause because of what the question implies.
“No.”
Suspicion creeps in her demeanor where curiosity used to live. “How would I believe you? After everything I just witnessed?”
“If I were one, I wouldn’t need to break one to prove a point.”
Her lips part. But her eyes flick to Delilah, then back to me.
“You made her malfunction,” she points as an observation.
“Yes.”
“Why not just kill her before? If you could simply do this all along?”
A faint smile touches my lips hearing the right question.
“You don’t destroy an asset until you’ve extracted everything it can give you. And you…” I murmur, “you were the perfect trigger.”
“Did I always trigger you to kiss her?” she asks, her fingers fidgeting against the leather of her gloves—pulling, tugging, rubbing, needing something to ground herself.
“Always,” I answer, without hesitation.
No point softening it. Not when she’s already seen and known too much.
It started the night I first felt her presence in my bedroom, not the day when I felt her presence for the very first in the bushes of the Oxford University over a year ago.
That faint shift in the air while I stood under the shower, water running down my skin, steam fogging the glass. Most people would’ve dismissed it, saying it’s just a trick of their mind. I didn’t.
“I always knew it was you… a girl with a very poor sense of self-preservation.”
Her fingers still.
“But you kept coming back,” I add. “Same distance. Same restraint. Watching me like you thought you were invisible,” a small pause. “I wanted to see how long you’d last without reacting. How much you’d take in silence until curiosity compelled you to act on impulse.”
Her throat works, swallowing a lump.
“So I gave you something to look at. To trigger you in return because you were triggering me. And every time I fucked her afterwards…”
I let the sentence hang for a beat, just long enough to let her fill in the rest before I do. “You were intruding on my mind.”
Those hazel eyes grow wider as they slowly blink once, then stare right into mine.
“So yes. You didn’t just trigger it. You were the reason I started it,” my gaze locks onto hers with quiet certainty.
Ariella blinks and looks down. Something shifts in her demeanor—shyness.
“But you never kissed me,” she murmurs.
That catches me off guard more than it should.
“You always kissed a Synthète,” she continues hesitantly. “And I’m human.”
Her toes are curling inside those platform boots. I can tell by the way she’s shifting weight from one foot to another.
For a heartbeat, she doesn’t look like the girl who’d stab someone without blinking.
She looks dangerously soft.
Suddenly, Ariella looks more like an innocent girl confessing to her crush.
“Would kissing you prove that I’m human?” the edge in my voice dulls just enough to pass as curiosity.
Her head snaps up instantly, eyes lighting—bright, eager, unguarded. She nods too enthusiastically.
An amused chuckle slips out of me. There’s something almost disarming about her naivety.
My hand moves before she can think too much about it—one hand takes off my glasses, throwing them aside, the other wraps around her throat to pull her into me.
Then I kiss her. Hard.
She stumbles from the force of it, a soft gasp escaping her lips—but she doesn’t resist. If anything, she melts into me instantly, like she’s been waiting for this exact moment to happen in real life.
The room smells wrong—metal, blood, something synthetic burning beneath it. But I keep kissing her in the room that still has the corroding Synthète.
Those small hands clutch at my bare shoulders while my mouth moves against hers, slow at first, then deeper. My tongue presses past her lips, and she lets me in.
Ariella leans into me, rising onto her toes without realizing it. Her hands wrap around the back of my neck to pull me down to her height.
My grip tightens slightly at her throat to feel the way her pulse jumps rapidly beneath my fingers. It’s addictive.
She moans in my mouth, clutching on my body as the kiss deepens, turns messier, more breathy, more desperate.
My tongue drags slightly against hers before I pull back just enough to let her breathe.
“You wanted me to prove,” I murmur against her lips, grabbing her throat a little harder to cut off the airflow.
She parts her lips, gasping to draw oxygen into her lungs while my thumb presses firmly against the pulse point on her throat.
“Careful what you decide to believe, little kitty,” and I capture her lips with mine to devour once more.