Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Sparks pulsed between the electrodes under Ronin’s skin, flooding his circuits with a near-overwhelming hum.
Had he known what touching Lara would be like, he would’ve succumbed to his desire that first night and run his fingertips over her delicate, responsive flesh.
His skin could detect pressure, temperature, texture, and moisture, but hers reacted and changed.
He could feel the little bumps on her arms when she wrapped them around his neck.
Could feel her skin warming as blood rushed to its surface.
Her nipple hardened under his caress, her smooth flesh giving way to the soft swelling of her areola.
Her lips were hungry, nibbling and sucking his.
And that suction was such a strange, thrilling sensation.
It was so intense, so concentrated, and it sent ripples across his sensors, sparking countless new possibilities in his processors.
Ronin broke the kiss and pulled away. Whether or not grief drove her desire, he would experience all of Lara, in every way he could, while he was able. He wanted to explore the many means by which he could coax reactions from her body.
Leaning back on his haunches, he answered her confused expression with a smile and cradled both her breasts, kneading them, marveling at their give within his grasp.
Lara’s lashes fluttered, but she didn’t look away as her hands fell to either side of her.
When his palms glided over her nipples, she caught her bottom lip between her teeth and moaned, moving her body sensually and making her skin rasp against his.
Witnessing her like this, getting so swept up in the throes of passion and desire, amplified Ronin’s arousal beyond any reasonable measure. The heat of his skin increased further, and the pressure within him built. Much more and he feared alerts would start triggering within his systems.
Catching the hard peaks of her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, he pinched them.
“Ronin!” Lara gasped, body jolting against his.
“Yes, Lara… Let me see your pleasure. Let me hear it.” He slowly slid his hands over her breasts, down the flat of her stomach, and around her flared hips. There he stopped them, eyebrows falling low as he examined the purple bruises on her skin.
He moved his hand to cover one of the marks, which matched its shape perfectly. “I hurt you.”
Though they’d rescinded the no touching stipulation of their agreement, he’d never intended for her to come to harm. Especially not at his hands. He’d wanted to give her pleasure, not pain.
“What?” she asked, breathless, and shifted her pelvis against him. The friction sent a ripple of sensation through Ronin that briefly jarred him from his thoughts.
“Bruises. You’re bruised, from my hands.”
Lara raised her head, glancing down with half-lidded eyes. Her kiss-swollen lips turned up in a smile. She let her head drop to the pillow, her torso shaking with barely suppressed laughter. “Totally worth it.”
He lifted his hands and stared at them. His processors whirred, but nothing came. Nothing but the evidence before him.
Lara brushed her fingers over the top of his thigh. “Don’t stop, Ronin. It doesn’t hurt. I didn’t even know they were there until you said something.” Somehow, her cheeks reddened further. “Besides, I kinda like them.”
“I…” Don’t understand.
“It’s proof you let go and felt. That you were alive, with me, in that moment.”
Alive.
Regardless of the truth, no matter the doubts he harbored about himself, she saw him as alive.
Ronin settled his palms over the bruises, rubbing gently. Lara’s lips parted, and she exhaled softly. He slid his hands down over her buttocks, then along her outer thighs, stopping at the soft undersides of her knees.
Grasping them, he guided her legs up and spread them wider, focusing his optics on her glistening sex. It was an enticing pink, with the tiny bud of her clitoris peeking out from beneath a hood of delicate flesh.
His memory called up the sensation of Lara sucking his lip, and his sensors recreated it, though it was only a muted echo that held no meaning without her touch.
Internal systems he hadn’t activated in decades fired to life. He opened his mouth and drew in air. The soft vibration of the pump in his abdomen felt strange after so long. A diagnostics check confirmed there were no leaks; the seals were still functional.
Lara tilted her head, gazing up at him. “Ronin?”
He expelled the air as he dropped his head.
“Wha—” Her voice cut off in a high-pitched gasp when his mouth came down on her sex. “Ronin!”
Her flesh was warm, wet, and fragrant, and he parted her labia with his tongue, spreading her slick, natural moisture. When his lips closed around her budded clitoris, the pump shifted on again, generating suction to raise it into his mouth.
“Ah!” Lara cried out, bucking her hips against his face. “What— Oh fuck!
Lashing her clit with his tongue, he wrapped his arms around her thighs to keep her from squirming away.
Her heels pressed into his shoulders, and as he continued sucking and licking her clit, her hands flew to his head. She writhed in his hold, raking his scalp with her nails. His audio receptors picked up the rapid thump of her heart through her thighs, punctuated by her panting breaths.
Every motion, every sound, was a declaration of life.
He reveled in it, reveled in her.
“Ronin, Ronin…” Legs trembling, Lara frantically rocked her pelvis against his mouth. “It’s…it’s too much, but… Oh God, it feels so good. Please don’t stop. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t… Ah!”
With a hitched, broken sound, she threw her head back as her body tensed.
Liquid heat flowed from her, squirting his chin and dripping onto the bedding.
Then she released a series of cries as she curled her fingers and tugged his hair, creating prickling pain that crackled across his scalp and faded over a fraction of a second.
Disabling his air pump, he released the suction on her clitoris and didn’t resist the temptation to circle the thrumming bud with his tongue once more.
It coaxed another sultry moan from Lara.
Her body quivered, and Ronin gazed at her sex, fascinated by the sight.
The red curls of her pubic hair were wet with her arousal, her labia were plump, and the muscles of her inner thighs were trembling.
Finally, Lara sagged onto the bed, her hands falling away from his hair.
Ronin wiped his chin on the blanket and lifted his head to look at her. She stared back at him with sparkling eyes, her chest heaving, hair disheveled, and skin flushed.
She raised her arms and beckoned him closer.
Ronin released her thighs and drew himself up, crawling over her. His abdomen brushed over her slick folds. She shivered as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Bracing himself on his elbows, he settled a small portion of his weight atop her, pressing his chest against her soft breasts.
“I…didn’t know you could do that,” she said, grazing his jaw with her lips. She rolled her pelvis forward to rub along his shaft.
Tendrils of pleasure flickered across his sensors. “Been no reason to, until now.”
She smiled as she smoothed her hands around his shoulders, across his chest, and down his belly, blazing an electric path over his skin.
His processors simulated a dozen possible sensations to determine what her hand would feel like on his penis.
When she finally closed her fingers around it and guided the tip into her welcoming body, everything stopped.
Thought processes halted, analyses were suspended, calculations ceased.
There was only pure sensory input, untainted by interpretation.
Only the pleasure of her touch as their bodies united.
Moist heat enveloped him, and her inner muscles contracted as she took him deeper. Her hands roamed around his hips, over his buttocks, following the contours of his back to settle on the backs of his shoulders.
He pumped his hips slowly, measuredly. Sparks crackled at the base of his spine and arced through his body.
Lara stared up at him, and he stared back, noting every tiny change in her—the drooping of her eyelids each time he slid in, juxtaposed by the parting of her lips, the tightening of her grip, the press of her nails against his skin, which somehow enhanced his pleasure.
“Ronin,” she whispered.
She dug her heels into the backs of his thighs and met his rhythmic thrusts, taking him deeper and harder each time. Electric jolts buzzed through his systems.
Lara brushed her lips across his jaw, chin, and mouth as her breathing grew more ragged, broken by her soft moans. “I love the feel of your cock inside me.”
And he could not describe the feel of her around his cock, could not describe the signals buzzing along his sensors and through his processors in response to what they were sharing.
Ronin didn’t act on logic or calculations; mutual pleasure was his only motivation, the only factor he considered.
Balancing his weight on one arm, he wrapped the other around her waist, lifted her bottom off the bed, and quickened his pace.
The change in angle brought new sensations.
The feel of her altered, the points of friction shifted, and her cries became frantic.
She dragged her nails down his back and clung to him.
The urgency of her movements fled as her body went taut. She screamed, quivering in his arms, and her sex rippled and constricted around his phallus, blasting it with liquid heat.
“Lara…” Ronin groaned. His processors thrummed, internal systems crackling as Lara pushed his sensors into overload. He pressed on, eliciting another cry of pleasure from her, and then his optical input flashed white.
The world fell away. Every minute movement from her inner muscles played across his cock with the force of a windstorm. He was aware of her pulse, rapid but steady, everywhere their bodies touched, and felt her warm breath on his skin.
She writhed beneath him, arching her back. Ronin’s body locked.
Slowly, the tension in her fingers eased. As Ronin’s optics came back online, he lowered her fully onto the bed.
Panting, Lara draped a forearm over her eyes, and a broad smile stretched across her face. Her flushed skin glistened with perspiration.
He held himself over her, not yet withdrawing.
After crossing into the White, her warmth and softness were comforting, serving as both a tether to reality and a reminder of their shared pleasure.
There was no tension evident in her, no fear.
No disgust for having coupled with a bot again.
For a few moments, at the very least, he’d made her happy.
Something about that was…fulfilling.
Ronin’s brow furrowed. Why should his contentment be derived from her enjoyment?
He was a dustwalker, a wanderer, a robot who would walk the wasteland until he broke down or was deactivated.
And yet after so many years of searching, it was only here, with this woman, that he felt closest to discovering his purpose.
His thoughts were interrupted by a long, low gurgling. Lara peeked at him from beneath her arm.
“What was that?” he asked.
“My stomach.”
He leaned back and moved his hands to her abdomen, checking for more bruises, feeling for signs of damage. She squirmed, body shaking. He stilled his hands.
Am I causing her more pain?
“What are you doing?” She took hold of his wrists and drew them away. Her smile hadn’t faltered.
He met her gaze. “I hurt you.”
A laugh bubbled from her. “No, you didn’t.”
They both looked at her stomach when the sound repeated.
“How could I not have?” he asked.
“That means I’m hungry, Ronin.”
Tentatively, he pressed his palm to her abdomen. She didn’t stop him.
He could feel the rumbling inside. Whatever data his fractured memory contained regarding human anatomy, it apparently didn’t cover their bodily functions with much depth. “You eat, and this stops?”
“Yep.”
“So…there’s no pain?”
She glanced away. “Well…”
He withdrew his hand immediately. “Lara…”
She chuckled. “Pain in all the right places.”
“I do not—” He snapped his mouth shut as he recalled Lara pressing her nails into his skin, pulling his hair, and digging her heels into his thighs. Each had been a small source of pain that heightened the experience.
“I think I understand. Somewhat.” His optics dropped to where their bodies were still connected.
Where that delicate pink flesh was wrapped around him, where he was buried inside her.
It was a sight he liked immensely. He lowered a hand to her hip, settling his fingers over the bruises.
“Pain isn’t always bad…because pain is part of being alive. ”
“Yeah, as long as it’s not too much.” Her smile wavered, and something flashed in her eyes for an instant.
Before he could guess its nature, she recovered.
“I’m fine, Ronin. Just starving. Not, like, for real, but…
” Catching her lower lip between her teeth, Lara slowly pulled away, forcing his phallus—his cock—to withdraw from her sex.
It slipped out, still erect, covered in her arousal.
She sat up, her gaze lingering on it. Ronin didn’t miss the infinitesimal darkening of her blue eyes, and the glint of desire they held.
She cleared her throat and scooted to the edge of the bed. “Uh, lemme get something to eat, and you can show me the scrap you found while you were gone.”
“All right.” Already craving her heat, he watched Lara slip out of bed, noting how her figure had subtly filled out since she’d started living with him.
He knew she wasn’t fine, not under the surface, and how could she have been?
Not all pain was physical. It had only been nine and a half hours since he told her about Tabitha.
She plucked a shirt off the floor and tugged it on, glancing over her shoulder to cast him another smile. Reaching up to tuck loose hair behind her ear, she walked into the hallway.
Ronin climbed out of bed, pulled on his pants, and picked up his coat. As he walked, he dipped a hand into the inside coat pocket, withdrawing the ring.
Perhaps it would be an uplifting surprise for her on the heels of so devastating a loss.