Chapter 7
SEVEN
MARIA
I couldn't reach the spot.
I sat back on my heels, the panel that hid this section of the wall on the floor next to me, examining the white glowing cords, the neurofilaments that were hidden behind it, as I tried to work out the best way to get to that spot that was just out of reach.
I'd been on Lyrien for almost a month now, going off the clock and calendar Lyrien had set up for me, and it was a strange sort of heaven.
When he meant that he could entertain me, he meant it.
He had the ability to change the internals of the ship easily with his drones, rearranging the spaces into complex structures within hours of my mentioning a desire.
But only after I had cleared specific segments of neurofilaments that he isolated for the task.
He was methodical about it, to the point that he had created a grid for us to work through, section by section.
He had a manufacturing bay with a variety of machinery that he wouldn't allow me to touch unless I completed a four-month operations and safety course.
I wasn't ready to add that onto my rapidly filling schedule of activities, but sometimes I watched a live feed of the room when I requested something in particular.
It was fascinating to watch how he took a vague description of mine and turned it into a viable product, like my new treadmill that had been added to my gym.
He mentioned he was using blueprints for other species, then adapting them to my own descriptions of what I needed, but it was still impressive.
So far, he had made me a gym that included a climbing wall with safety equipment, a swimming pool with a full window out into the stairs, a media room with surround sound and cushions, a vocational training classroom, and something that he was building for me now that I couldn't wait to try out.
I'd described a holodeck to him, and he said he had the perfect thing.
I didn't recognize anything coming out of the manufacturing bay, so I decided to wait for the full reveal rather than watch what he was doing.
Plus, I had plenty of work to do tracking down the smudges on his neurofilaments.
They were the most alien thing about him, and I was having a hard time thinking of him as a software program whenever I handled them, especially because they seemed to have some sort of sensory input for him.
He had even stopped me a few times in the first week of my working on them to tell me that it was overstimulating and he needed a break.
The more I worked on them, the more used to it he got, which was good, both because he needed me to do this and for the more selfish reason that I liked touching them.
They were soft, reactive, and warm. They pressed back against me like they were limbs, and it was the closest I had gotten to a kind, affectionate touch since I was taken.
As time went on, I realized that doing this job for him was fulfilling a need I had, a craving for closeness.
It was a problem.
Not for him, but for me.
He was an artificial intelligence housed in a giant alien spacecraft, and I was a small biological humanoid he had rescued.
When he dropped me off where I wanted to go, that would be the end of all of this, and I was developing...
feelings. Feelings he couldn't possibly return.
Maybe it was a reaction to him rescuing me.
Maybe it was because it was starved for affection, and he had rescued me and treated me with a genuine kindness that was almost painful to receive because of how deeply I craved it.
Or maybe it was because he took care of my every need.
Almost every need.
Every time one of his neurofilaments shifted while I was working around it, stroking the inside of my wrist or curling around my palm, it felt good, like someone trailing their fingers against me, and my body would react as if it were being caressed, with pleasure tingling along my skin where he touched me.
His neurofiliaments seemed to react to me more and more as I continued with the maintenance work.
These spot cleaning sessions kept leaving me with a soft ache between my legs.
I craved his touch, missing it when I was alone in my rooms.
I eyed the spot, deep in the mass of neurofilaments.
The ones in the wall were thick, like a woven fiber shaped into small tree trunks, but he could shift them and part them to some extent.
We had done everything I could reach at arm's length by kneeling in the hallway, but the next spot was pretty far back, and it was on a big one.
He could move the big ones as well as the smaller-sized filaments, but it was a slower process, and I wouldn't be able to clean that spot today.
"Lyrien," I said. "I think the only way for me to reach the next spot is to climb in. Can your neurofilaments support my weight if I crawl on them?"
He was silent for a moment, a pause I'd gotten used to whenever I asked a question about touching the neurofilaments in a new way.
"They can easily support your weight," he said, an almost husky quality to his voice.
When he made his voice sound like that, it made my problem so much worse.
I hadn't told him because I didn't want him to stop, but damn, was it doing something to me.
"Alright, I'm going in," I said. "Let me know if this is too much or if you need me to change anything I'm doing. We can stop at any time."
I leaned forward into the gap he had made in the filaments, putting both of my hands down on the silky surface as I leaned my weight in slowly, testing to make sure I wasn't going to slip through the fibers. They held sturdy beneath my hands.
"Maria," he said, his voice still holding that husky quality. Then he made a sound like he was clearing his throat. I rocked back on my hips, taking my upper body out of his space, puzzled by the sound.
Why would a software program generate the sound of a throat clearing? Maybe he was trying to sound more relatable to me? There were so many things like that, small things that made it hard to remember he was just software.
"Would you be willing to remove your clothing?" he asked.
My heart rate spiked upwards for a moment, and it took me a second to remind myself that, despite how delicious his voice was, he was not a man.
He was a spaceship, but he was also of alien origin.
"Why?" I asked, even though I already knew what he was going to say.
I'd been so careful about how much I touched him with my bare skin because of how much I wanted to, how much it turned me on. It felt like I was taking advantage of him, of satiating a one-sided need. So I held back.
"The feeling of your clothing is uncomfortable," he said. "It is preferable to have your skin touching me instead. However, if this request is unpleasant to you, please ignore it. It is only a preference of mine."
The only problem with the request was that I was far too eager to do it. I was already feeling dampness between my legs. I was performing maintenance. I couldn't crawl around in him, dripping wet with arousal.
"I'll remove the outer layer," I said, finding a compromise between what we both wanted and what I didn't want to have to explain.
He didn't say anything as I stripped off the comfy leggings and shirt he had made for me, along with the soft-soled shoes and socks. After a moment, I pulled off my bra as well and added it to the pile, leaving me standing in only a pair of panties.
"So, what do you think?" I asked, gesturing at myself.
"Are you asking me to comment on your body?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "This is the first time you've seen it like this?"
"I had an idea of your general structure from your medical scan, but this is the first time I've seen your body without clothing on my optics," he said, his voice soft.
"You are very beautiful. I'm curious about your chest. I didn't realize they would move like that without their clothing restraints. Are they soft or hard?"
"Let's get this done before you find out," I said with a laugh and a smile as I turned around to crouch back to the open space in the wall.
He was sweet to call me beautiful. He had access to information on all sorts of different species and their beauty standards, as did I in my entertainment room.
He didn't have to say something that nice.
I would have been happy with interesting, unusual, or unique.
Beautiful was a compliment that had nothing to do with logic and more to do with making me feel good.
I took the cleaning pad from the drone that followed me around on these excursions and crawled into the neurofilaments.
There was enough room for me to crawl on my hands and knees, so I scooted in, feeling the shift of them under me.
When I reached the spot in the back, I took a moment to clean the spot off thoroughly and check to make sure there weren't any that I missed.
Work done, time for a little play.
"Okay Lyrien, tell me what they feel like," I said as I lay down, letting my breasts pillow against the filaments under me.
They rippled, squeezing and massaging my breasts, and my chest sank down into them until they were completely encased in the filaments, and I was being massaged with soft palpations.
I bit my lip. Two of them shifted and rolled my nipples in between them.
I gasped, completely unprepared for the sheer depth of the movement.
I had expected a little bit of movement, given the strokes he had given my arms when I reached in between filaments to reach different spots, or even a hearty massage, but this was like he had grabbed me in two giant handfuls and was playing with them.
And it set me on fire.
"I love touching them, they are soft," he murmured, as if his voice was in my ear. "Is this touch enjoyable to you? May I continue?"
"Yes," I barely managed to get out as he continued to massage them with warm caresses. Then he managed to roll my nipples again, and I let out a moan and my hips rocked down against the floor.
"Oh," he said, surprise in his voice. "May I touch there too?"
A light ripple of a filament traced my inner thighs.
"Please," I begged, and then my hips sank down as well, and then the touching was everywhere, fingers stroking up and down my body, trailing along my back, filaments rippling in between my legs, and pressure against my mound, rolling pressure that was like I was being petted down there, stroked.
I sank down further, space around my face remaining open, but the rest of me encased inside him.
Filaments threaded through my hair, tugging it with gentle strokes as it slid around my ears, caressing my cheeks, trailing against my lips.
I let out a soft cry, and it felt like his lips were caressing my ear, his voice low and murmuring in my ear.
"Do you want me to continue?" he rasped.
"Yes!" I cried out.
There was still air, I could breath, but it felt like I was floating in a sea of filaments that were supporting me, exploring me, stroking me down there, over and over, rolling against
me with the rocking of my hips, following the motions as he stroked me through the cloth of my underwear, grinding against the pressure until I reached a tight peak, an explosion and my hips jerks and I let out a cry, singing out his name as he lifted me up over the crash and brought me back down, his touch following the movement of my body and my inner channel clenched around an emptiness I ached to fill.
"You just orgasmed with me," he said, his voice holding that husky quality with a sprinkle of delight.
Then I felt something hard, pressing in between my legs, pressing the fabric of my underwear up into me, just a little bit, sending a shock of need and pleasure through me.
"It has made you even more slick down here.
I can feel the dampness through the fabric, where you receive penetration. "
My entire body stiffened in shock, muscles tensing.
There was no doubt in my mind, both from his actions and his words, that he had absolutely brought me to the peak of my pleasure with deliberate intent.
The press of his neurofilament against the wet fabric of my underwear, pushing it into me, just slightly, the first inching steps of penetration.
It was too much, too alien.
All of a sudden, there was space around me, filaments rushing away like water coursing down a hill, the tunnel reforming around me, resuming the same shape it had before it collapsed into a writhing mass of pleasure.
I was now upright, sitting, leaning back against a wall of filaments, one of which stroked my back gently.
"Maria?" he murmured.
I put my hand over my heart, feeling it pounding against my chest as I leaned back against him, not wanting to move yet grateful for the sudden space around me. With just him touching my back, it was easier to think past the overwhelming sensation that had just encased me.
I was like a toy in his grasp.
"Lyrien," I said. I wasn't quite ready to address what just happened, the fact that he had essentially grabbed me and played my body like a fine-tuned instrument, strumming my chords to a song of his choosing.
So instead, I asked the question I already knew the answer to, an answer that became clear the moment that I had given an inch and he had taken a delicious, decadent mile. "Are you an artificial intelligence?"
The silence was made longer by the thrumming of my own heart in my ears.
"No," he said, his voice soft. "I am a biological being. My species can easily merge with and control technology thanks to our neurofilaments, even tech built by other species. I'm sorry I didn't specify sooner. I knew you believed I was software, and I didn't correct your assumption."
Something eased in me, a tension I didn't realize was there. I didn't want to emotionally connect with software. The fact that he was a real, biological being eased the knot in my heart and allowed it to relax into the strange possibilities.
It helped that he acknowledged right off the bat that he had let me think that way.
Even better, he apologized for it.
My assumptions weren't his responsibility, but in apologizing, he was showing me his sense of right and wrong, and his sense of wrong included not letting me lead myself on.
"Why didn't you?" I asked as I reached out to touch the filament wall next to me.
One of his smaller filaments reached out, intertwining with my fingers.
"It was safer to leave you with your assumption until I learned more about you, especially when we're in a state like I am in," he said.
I opened my mouth to ask what state that was, but he spoke first.
"The room you call a holodeck is complete," he said. "Would you like to see it?