Chapter 7
Ophelia roused with a surprisingly languid feeling, given how much she’d cried the night before.
Her eyes were sticky and swollen, but otherwise she felt as though she’d just had the best sleep of her life.
The TV was still on, the channel taken over by a bubbly middle-aged woman who was showing a number of cheap-looking, neon jewelry pieces available by text at extortionate prices.
She yawned, stretching her legs and enjoying the crackle and pop of her joints as her tension released.
Something skimmed over her ankle, and she yipped, trying to scramble away to no avail.
The comforter was tangled around her legs, trapping her, and the back of her hand cracked against the coffee table as she tumbled off the couch.
“Shit!” She cradled her bruised hand to her chest as her eyes watered, glaring up at the white-suited figure still seated on the couch. “What the hell?”
The android blinked down at her, expression completely unrepentant. The morning sun made his skin glow with golden light, and he looked more like a sex god than a robot.
“Why have you thrown yourself on the floor?” he asked.
“Because you grabbed my leg like you’re the monster under my bed and it scared the crap out of me?”
His impartial gaze drifted to the hand she held clutched against her chest.
“You are hurt.” He bent down and grabbed both sides of the comforter still wrapped around her, using it to haul her back onto the couch as though she weighed nothing at all. “Let me see.”
He was surprisingly gentle as he took her hand, inspecting it with a tenderness that made her heart flutter stupidly. The anti-droid groups were right; Automata was getting too close to playing God. Her brain couldn’t distinguish between machine and man. A toaster had never given her butterflies.
“It didn’t break the skin, but the vessels beneath are damaged. You will bruise. Would you like a painkiller?”
“Huh?” She’d been lost in the way his dark eyes flashed russet as the sun hit them sidelong.
“A painkiller? Do you have any here in the apartment?”
“Oh—no, it’s… it’s just a bruise. Don’t worry about it.”
“Very well.”
He released her hand, his thumb brushing over his fingers as she pulled away. Wrestling her way out of the nest of the comforter, she rose to her feet and tucked her hands against her roiling stomach.
Her eyes fell on the entryway where Logan’s shoes were still missing. “He didn’t come home.”
“No, he did not.”
For a long while, she stared at the door, adrift in an ocean of despair. She turned away, folded up the comforter, and began cleaning the apartment.
Cleaning was something she could control in a world of unrelenting chaos. The entropy might swirl unchecked in the world beyond her door, but here in the safety of her apartment, everything existed at her mercy.
The android watched in silence as she moved around the apartment, wiping down every surface with disinfectant wipes.
She poured powdered bleach in every sink until the smell was so strong that it made her eyes burn, scrubbed the spotless toilet, and wiped every speck of lime off the glass walls of the shower.
When she emerged from the bathroom, she collided with the android in the hall. He caught her as she swayed on her feet.
“What are you doing?” She twisted out of his grip, frowning up at him.
Why did he have to be so tall?
“You are cleaning surfaces that do not appear to be dirty,” he said.
“So?”
“Why?”
She scowled. “Because I want to. It makes me feel better.”
“Does it?”
Her eyes narrowed. Had he just been sarcastic? Did they program robots with sarcasm, now?
“Yes.” She brushed past him, yanking off her thick rubber gloves. After stowing them under the sink, she washed her hands briskly. As the suds ran clean, she stared at her hands, the water still running in the background.
They’re clean. You washed them.
But what if she had missed something? After all, she’d scrubbed the toilet. There were so many germs in the toilet—horrible, invisible germs.
I wore gloves. They’re clean. I know they’re clean.
What if there was a microscopic tear? What if she took it on faith that she’d gotten clean enough, and the germs were left to fester on her skin? Foreboding loomed, her vision tunneling.
She reached for the soap and started again, scrubbing more thoroughly, scratching her nails against her palms to get the suds beneath them. When she rinsed the soap away, the feeling returned.
They’re not clean.
Again, she soaped her hands. This time, she wondered if her wrists were clean, as well. When she rinsed, she realized the gloves only came up to the middle of her forearm. She dipped her entire arm into the sink, scrubbing with the harsh dish soap, which she was sure would clean her.
Her breath came too fast, her eyes stinging with unshed tears.
Damn it, I’m clean. I’m clean!
But the feeling, that looming portent of doom, wouldn’t abate. She couldn’t stop until it stopped, until it was sated.
When she reached for the soap again, a big hand caught her drenched wrist.
“They are clean,” the android said, shutting off the tap with his free hand. “Your skin will crack if you keep going.”
“How do you know?” she asked in a small voice.
“You washed them. They are clean.”
She shook her head, tugging at her wrist, trying to break free. “You don’t know. You can’t.”
“What do you think will happen if they are not clean?”
Her eyes darted. “I don’t… I don’t know. I’ll get sick. Something bad. Just something bad, okay?”
He studied her with his dark, steady gaze, saying nothing. Grabbing a swath of paper towels from the holder above the sink, he patted her dry meticulously. Her body shook with unsatisfied nervous energy. When he released her to throw away the sodden paper, her body swayed toward the sink again.
“Ophelia.”
She shuddered. Her name in that deep, dark voice…
Begrudgingly, she turned back to him. He was standing in front of her fridge, head ducked down as he perused her sparsely populated shelves.
“You are low on groceries,” he noted, emerging as he shut the brushed chrome door.
“I… I usually go shopping on the weekends.”
He nodded sagely. “Then we should go now. The weather is optimal for walking, but it will rain this afternoon.”
Her eyes bugged out of her head. “We? Who is we?”
“You and I.” He frowned at her as though she was being difficult to decipher.
“No, we cannot go anywhere.” She wagged a finger in his face, then pointed at the glowing blue designation at the breast of his uniform. “You literally say ‘pleasure unit’ in big, neon letters. I can’t take you to the grocery store!”
“Why not?”
“Because people will think I go grocery shopping with my sex doll.”
His expression grew considering. “That is accurate.”
She huffed, digging the heels of her palms into her eyes. “You’re driving me insane.”
A silence.
“You are not insane.”
Her arms went slack, and she looked at him between the gaps in her fingers. “You’re saying that after seeing the thing with the sink?”
“Yes.” He gently gripped her wrists, drawing her hands away from her face. “You are sane, Ophelia.”
He stepped into her, still holding her wrists, backing her against the counter in the narrow galley kitchen.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was embarrassingly uneven.
“Your home is clean,” he said, glancing around the apartment. “You do not appear to be concerned about attending a work shift. You do not wish to procure groceries. It seems you have free time.”
She stared blankly at him, horror dawning as his voice turned silky and he pressed his hips against hers.
“You’re tense, Ophelia.”
God, the way he kept saying her name…
One of his hands skimmed up her arm to cradle her neck from behind, massaging the knotted muscles there with strong fingers. She choked back a moan, mortified.
“I can help you with that,” he said, sultrier than should have been possible for a machine.
She should pull away. Tell him to stop. He couldn’t touch her without her consent. All she had to do was—
His other hand released her wrist, and his fingertips dipped into the waistband of her pajamas.
Her breath caught as he idly ran his hand back and forth, not delving any deeper, teasing the very hem of her panties.
He brushed over a sensitive spot just inside her hip bone, and she mewled, hips twitching, inadvertently grinding against him.
She felt him growing hard at the friction, his substantial length stiffening against her. His fingers dipped a little deeper, sifting through her pubic hair, and she forgot how to breathe. Her core clenched hard, desperate for him to slip one of those fingers where she ached the most.
Just as the tip of his middle finger was about to dip between her labia, she grabbed his wrist hard.
“Groceries,” she gasped, dragging his hand out of her pants. “We should—we should go now. The rain.”
The robot stared down at her with a hungry gaze she knew had to be some kind of artifice. Machines didn’t get horny.
Then, suddenly, he grinned. It transformed his face, the sexual energy dissipating as his cheeks dimpled. “Very well.”