Chapter 21 In Your Dreams, Lorian
IN YOUR DREAMS, LORIAN
Steel crashes against steel, reverberating through the empty gymnasium in the heart of the Celestial Spire.
Rafe and I are naked, our sweaty grey skin gleaming under the harsh lights as we circle each other, equally matched.
Kellen, the gymnasium manager, observes us impassively, marking each strike from the ring’s edge.
This is the only way Rafe and I can get out our aggressions with each other, and I’ve just returned to the Spire, so this match is long overdue.
Rafe adjusts his grip on the hilt of his sword, and the silver ring our mother gave us catches the light. I don’t have the strength he has to wear mine every day and be reminded she is no longer with us.
I circle my twin with my blade poised. “I noticed that you were logged into our new human liaison’s room during the Fifth Chime last night.” I say, purposely provoking him.
“Security protocols.”
“Three hours of protocols?” I push forward.
He retaliates, his blade slicing dangerously close to my throat. “Says the one following her around the Spire with illegal stealth tech.”
We fight on, our bodies marked by shallow red wounds, locked in a stalemate.
“She’s different,” I say, blocking a fierce overhead blow. “More intelligent than most of our other hires, and I’m not just talking about the other humans we’ve hired in the past.”
“And good-looking,” Rafe admits quietly, surprising me. “She’s nothing like Autumn.”
The mention of Father’s pet catches me off guard, drawing forth memories I'd rather forget. Pain snaps me back to reality as Rafe’s blade slices my arm. I grimace, conceding the point Kellen announces.
We resume circling.
“Ardon Val touched Eve today,” Rafe says, and before I can ask where, he adds, “Who knows what he would have done had her pheromones not been dampened with the Venus Lock.”
“That only proves how attractive she is.”
“We’ve had one hundred and thirty-seven hologram requests since she began working,” he says, voice dripping with disdain. “All want her likeness for private use.”
“Ah, that’s what the entertainment division wants approval for.” I saw their messages but hadn’t read them yet.
“Yes.”
“And your answer, Rafe?”
“No.”
“We want her to be angry enough to betray us to Gael,” I remind him.
Rafe’s blade flashes aggressively toward my throat. “She's not merchandise. She’s our employee.”
“You keep saying that, but then I find you’re logged into her private rooms at Fifth Chime watching her sleep.”
“I’m protecting her.”
“She’s human,” I say, slashing across his chest with force.
“Giving her preferential treatment doesn’t suit our plan.
Approve the request. Let them fantasize about her.
If she’s as clever as she appears to be, she might be so angry she’ll contact Gael herself and save us the trouble of having to wait for him. ”
“I don’t want our guests having sex with a holographic Eve. She. Is. Ours.” He slices deeply into my ribs, drawing blood. It hurts.
That was a real fucking hit.
“Point breach!” Kellen calls sharply. “Medics!”
I laugh bitterly through the discomfort, my warm blood spilling out down my legs and onto the floor around my feet. “The calculating twin,” I mock, “rejecting profit for a human woman he’s not even formally met yet.”
Our blades clash and lock, faces inches apart. “We must protect her.”
“Protection is secondary.”
We abandon pretense and are truly fighting now.
“She’ll see enough disrespect at the front desk,” he argues.
“Will she?” I counter, twisting his blade and sending it clattering away. “Denise experienced the same, and she was completely loyal to us.”
Rafe crashes hard onto the mat. “Fine, you milkless bastard, you win. But don’t make it an exact replica, and for goddesses’ sake, do not, I repeat, do not, put a collar on the hologram.”
After a second, I extend my hand, pulling him upright. “I’ll modify the entertainment request,” I concede. “Change her hair and alter her features.”
Rafe takes a deep breath as if we’ve both been relieved of the pent-up stress we’ve been carrying around since the last time we did this. “People will complain it’s not exactly her.”
“Let them.” I meet his gaze, letting him see his mirrored possessiveness in me. “Neither of us wants guests imagining they're fucking her, our human, our Eve.”
“Agreed. She’s our employee.” Rafe says, and we both know that’s the same as saying, already, we are both so enamored with her that she’s so much more than just our employee.
Back in my rooms, I settle into my meditation chamber, activating the neural interface with a thought.
Within seconds, the quantum-linked bioprocessors come to life, connecting me to the Starlight Array’s network.
My consciousness expands, flowing through digital pathways until I locate her quarters.
Eve Eden. Our human liaison. Our employee.
The first thing I do is check her vital signs. She's got a steady heartbeat, and her delta brainwaves indicate deep sleep, perfect for my next move.
The dream influencer nodes in her bed activate at my command. Technology originally designed for therapy has far more interesting applications in my skilled hands.
Then, I close my eyes and enter her dreamscape.
She's recreated the Grand Lobby, but in her dream, it’s distorted.
The ceilings are stretched impossibly high, and shadows pool deeper and darker than any reality.
She stands at reception wearing her Celestial Spire uniform, but it keeps changing, shrinking and exposing more skin with each anxious breath.
She dreams about guests walking past her desk with predatory eyes focused entirely on her.
Her humiliation is delicious.
I step into the dream fully, not as myself, but as an invisible presence. I amplify her anxiety, sharpening the guests' features into the most alien and most intimidating species she encountered today.
Ardon Val approaches. In her dream, he reaches across the counter and grabs her arm. “You'd make a lovely pet,” dream-Val says. “Let's see how you look in a pet’s collar.”
Her fear spikes, but there's something else beneath it. Something she's trying to suppress.
I search her physical reactions. Ah, I see; these are almost completely masked by the Venus Lock. But I found her secret: she’s scared, but aroused at the same time.
Humans are such contradictory creatures.
In the dream, Val drags her from behind the desk. Other guests gather, watching as he tears at her uniform, all the while saying, “Pets don’t wear clothing.”
She struggles and cries out, but no one helps, and she feels ashamed when she's naked and collared in the lobby.
I slide my presence into dream Val’s form, erasing him.
Then, kneeling before her, I circle her sensitive nipple with my tongue.
Her breath stutters, and her body arches with longing, despite her shame.
Her dream taste is everything I imagined—salt and fear, but underneath it, the first trace of sweetness.
Her nipples harden under my mouth, swollen peaks meant to command men like me, and I worship them with slow, possessive sucks until her whimper turns into a helpless moan.
“You are not theirs,” I whisper against her breast. “Never theirs.”
Her hands clutch my hair, desperate and afraid of what she is allowing. I suck harder, biting down gently on her nipples, until she moans again.
“And you’re not his to take,” I whisper into the dreamscape, remembering she still sees me as Val. “I’m not him.”
I nudge her mind, so the dream shifts. Val disappears, and the lobby transforms into something else entirely. A garden. Familiar to her somehow, although she's never been here before.
Paradise.
The word surfaces from her subconscious, carrying with it layers of human religious conditioning. Eve in the Garden. How perfectly appropriate.
She stands naked among flowering trees, unashamed in her innocence, just as her namesake once did, and it makes me ache to corrupt her.
My cock throbs with the need to plunge deep into that untouched cunt, to tear away every remnant of her mortal shame and baptize her in the only truth that matters…pleasure.
I manifest myself slowly. Not as my true form, that would shatter the symbolism, but as a shadowy serpentine creature that I glean from her mind. “What do you desire, little Eve?”
At the sound of my voice, she covers her breasts and vulva with her hands. Decades of religious conditioning are activating neural pathways, filling her with guilt for her nakedness and for the pleasure she felt moments before.
This is too easy.
“The religious ones who raised you taught you that desire is a sin,” I observe, letting my presence brush against her skin. “That pleasure leads to damnation.”
“Yes,” she whispers, tears forming in her dream-eyes. “You shouldn't be here. This is wrong.”
“But this is just a dream. You’re in the Celestial Spire where pleasure is pleasure.” I manifest more fully now, but in a serpentine form. “How ironic that your corruption should happen in galactic paradise itself.”
She trembles, and her emotions are all over the place, caught between fear and fascination.
“I can give you knowledge,” I promise, the words echoing through her memories of this place. “Everything your nuns denied you. Every pleasure they called a sin.”
“I shouldn't,” she breathes, but her body betrays her; her arousal is building despite her protests.
“Shouldn't want?” I laugh softly. “Shouldn't touch? Shouldn't hunger?” I slither around her, and my serpentine tongue licks at her neck and she trembles.
I can’t help myself now.
I produce a jeweled collar on my serpentine tongue. “Put it on,” I whisper in her ear, sending more shivers down her body. “Choose knowledge, pleasure, and me. Become mine.”
With a shaky hand, she reaches for the collar.
“Yes,” I say, my tongue against her neck. “Put it on, Eve.”
She shudders in the dream, already chasing the orgasmic release she thinks she can steal. Then she wakes, fingertips grazing the Venus Lock’s polished edge.
I smile; how quickly she forgets what Dr. Veil told her. Nothing short of a Sovereigns’ permission will grant her an orgasm with the Venus Lock on, and I’m not going to give that away so easily. She must earn her orgasms from us.
I withdraw from her mind. Then, I thumb the comms panel, picturing her as I send a message to Rafe:
It’s time to meet our new receptionist. Schedule the formal introduction before the High Table tomorrow. I’ll shift the corridors to green in the afternoon.