Chapter 22
Ophelia didn’t remember the journey home.
She wasn’t even sure how she’d walked home, given how violently her legs had trembled after Sam wrung a second orgasm from her.
He kept his hand at the small of her back all the way to her apartment door.
When she stepped aside and stood there in shock, he knelt and unzipped her boots.
She was little more than an obedient doll as he stripped off her shoes and coat and urged her toward the bathroom.
He left her standing on the tile as he ducked his head into the shower, turning it on and adjusting the temperature.
She stared at herself in the mirror, unable to recognize the woman who stared back.
This stranger in the mirror had found out her fiancé was cheating on her and retaliated by hooking up with a sex bot in a dirty alleyway in the middle of the night.
She looked down at her hands, scratched and dirty from clutching at the brick wall for purchase as he’d brought her to heights of pleasure she had never known existed.
She was going to be another statistic for the People First movement.
Here we have Ophelia Sinclair, addicted to her pleasure unit after one quickie. She spurns all human men, crippling our birth rate, all so she can ride this robot into the sunset!
A laugh bubbled out of her, and she clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle it as Sam glanced back at her.
He arched a dark brow, looking at her hand pointedly.
What?
He straightened, holding her gaze as he dragged his shirt up over his head.
Oh.
Her knees felt wobbly again as she watched all those muscles flex.
He grinned knowingly at her as he undid the fly on his pants, dragging them down his long legs with performative slowness.
When he stood up, he was completely naked, all drastic planes of golden muscles dusted with dark hair and freckles she desperately wanted to explore.
“Come here,” he murmured, stepping closer to her.
She gazed up at him, amazed and afraid of the enormity of what she was feeling for this man who wasn’t even really a man.
An android—a defective one, probably, if his complete disregard for the moral core of his AI was any indication.
Eventually, he was going to get caught out, and they would wipe his memory and start over with his code.
As he dragged her dress up over her head, she realized she would merrily bash anyone who tried upside the head with something terribly, lethally heavy.
He dipped down to kiss her briefly, and she followed him up onto her toes to make it last just a little longer, rewarded by an approving smile.
When he knelt to untangle her from her torn stockings and twisted-up panties, she braced her hands against his shoulders.
He pressed another kiss over her bare hip, and her breath hitched in anticipation, but he only tossed the clothes aside and rose.
With her hand in his, he led her into the shower.
She’d thought at the start that it was a pretense to keep seducing her, but all he did was wash her ever so tenderly.
There was something soft in his eyes, something she would have said wasn’t possible only a day ago.
But if Sam was somehow breaking every other protocol of being artificially intelligent, then maybe…
Ophelia closed her eyes, losing herself in the sensation of him dragging a soapy washcloth over her shoulder.
She wouldn’t read into it. That was too much to hope for, and even if she did…
what the hell would it mean for them? And what did it say about her that she’d been over her relationship for all of a couple of hours and she was already thinking about moving on?
She looked down at Sam, who was balancing her foot on one knee as he gently washed her sole. Her toes curled as the touch tickled her, and he grinned before repeating the same feather-light brush of the cloth, forcing her to squirm for relief. Their eyes met, and her heart skipped a beat.
Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she’d been over her relationship for a lot longer than she’d ever been willing to admit. He stood and took her hands, tenderly washing the shallow scrapes free of dirt and debris.
“You were brave tonight,” he murmured, meeting her gaze.
“I was?”
“Very.”
She bit her bottom lip, watching his thumbs trace over the veins in her wrists.
“What are you feeling?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Lost, maybe.”
Losing her nerve, her eyes danced away from his. His hands left hers, smoothing up her arms to wind around her shoulders. He pressed her close beneath the warm spray, resting his chin on her head.
“You did well.” One of his thumbs swept a soothing pattern over the nape of her neck. “Do you have regrets?”
Was she projecting the vulnerability in his question?
“I… I don’t. Not about us.”
It surprised her to hear herself say the words, but they were true. She had a litany of regrets when it came to the two years she’d wasted on Logan, but what they’d done in the alley… she couldn’t bring herself to regret that.
He pressed her closer with a satisfied sound.
She looped her arms around his waist, fascinated by his flexing muscles and the warmth of his skin. He felt so human that if she hadn’t seen him open up his arm with her own eyes, she would be convinced he was a man masquerading as a machine.
“What happens now?” she asked so softly that she was sure the rush of water would carry the whispers away, but Sam heard her.
“Whatever you want, Ophelia.”
She drew back to look up at him. He was gazing down at her with a dark look that straddled love and obsession—both things that a robot shouldn’t be able to feel.
And for her? For scared, strait-laced, timid Ophelia?
No one had ever given her a look like that, as though the whole world hinged on her good graces.
“I’m scared.”
His hands cupped her face, thumbs stroking over her cheeks. “You have nothing to fear in this world as long as I am in it.”
“How can you say that?” She pressed her hands over his. “You’re a machine, Sam. An expensive one. Automata is going to come to take you back sooner or later.”
“No one is taking me away from you,” he said with vicious intensity. “I won’t allow it.”
“There’s… something wrong with you, isn’t there? The things you say, the things I’ve seen you do…”
He studied her hard for a moment, his expression inscrutable. Her heart rate picked up, and she fought the urge to squirm under his harsh survey. Had she gone too far? What would a robot with a malfunctioning moral core do to protect itself?
“Would you turn me in if I were defective, Ophelia? Would it offend your delicate sensibilities to know that my existence is illegal?”
She bit her bottom lip. A few days ago, she would have said yes. Now…
“No,” she whispered.
His lips curled into a slow, satisfied smile.
“Good girl,” he murmured, a moment before his lips slanted over her own.
When his kisses trailed down her neck, she pushed him away. He made a disapproving sound, frowning at her as he tried to move back in, but she pushed him again, pressing his back against the tile wall of the shower.
“Ophelia,” he said in a warning tone. “I want to touch you.”
“My turn,” she murmured against the column of his throat.
His skin was so perfectly smooth, unblemished by the rasp of stubble she expected.
Her tongue flicked out, tasting the water that pooled in the hollow of his throat.
Sam slid his hand to the nape of her neck—holding her possessively, but not trying to guide her.
He didn’t urge her down the way Logan would have, spoiling the fun of her exploration.
No, he stood perfectly still for her, watching in open wonderment as she touched and tasted every inch of him she could reach.
He wasn’t blinking or breathing, just staring down at her with an intensity that no human man could ever possess.
When she lowered herself to her knees on the slick tile, he finally sucked in a sharp breath.
His cock bobbed in front of her face, begging for attention.
She skimmed her hands up his thighs, enjoying the way they jumped and tensed beneath her touch, even knowing it was all some response that had been programmed in a lab.
He hissed when she finally wrapped her hand around him, tensing under her touch. She watched him from beneath her lashes as her hand pumped him. As thick as he was, her fingers didn’t touch.
She added the other hand, working him slowly, learning him. His hand at her nape tightened, but he still didn’t drag her mouth to him. His free hand sank into his hair, pulling at the roots as a muscle jumped in his jaw.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her hands still moving over him.
He blew out a stiff breath, and his tongue flicked out to wet his lips.
“It did not feel like this before,” he said through gritted teeth, twitching his hips toward her.
“Before?”
“In the lab,” he grated, muscles rippling as she paid special attention to his head. “They would make me perform for them with a partner. Testing me. It never felt like this. This is…” He shook his head, brows drawing together. “I cannot describe it.”
The jealousy that speared through her at the thought of him having sex with someone else was ridiculously irrational. He was a pleasure unit; his entire purpose was to fuck other people.
He grinned down at her as though he knew exactly what she was thinking.
“She wasn’t human,” he said, his thumb brushing the sensitive skin behind her ear. “You’re my first, Ophelia. You’ll be my last.”
Her heart fluttered wildly.
When she sat forward and swallowed him as deeply as she could without choking, his eyes rolled back in his head. She hummed around him, and he shuddered, that hand at her nape tensing as though he was struggling not to choke her with it.
She pulled off of him with a wet pop, sucking at the head, and his hips chased her. His spit-slicked cock slid along her cheek.
“Use me,” she said impulsively.
His eyes widened. “Ophelia…”
“Use me,” she demanded again.
She had no idea what possessed her, but she desperately wanted him to unleash all that tightly controlled aggression flickering in his dark eyes. She wanted him raw and uninhibited—as she’d never been with anyone, ever.
“Tap me twice if I’m hurting you,” he said urgently, his nostrils flaring. “Tell me you won’t hesitate to stop me.”
“I’ll stop you.” She panted in anticipation.
“You are so fucking good,” he said reverently, finally using his grip to guide her. His free hand held his cock still as the other led her mouth to it. “Such a good girl.”
Her lips parted, and he dragged her down his length experimentally, watching her like a hawk as he found the limit of how much she could take before she began to gag.
He backed off, letting her bob over him for a few strokes before forcing her to take more again.
This time, he let her choke for a moment, biting his bottom lip as she struggled for him.
When her eyes began to water, he dragged her off his cock, allowing her to gasp for breath.
His thumb swept over her bottom lip, wiping away the strand of spit that stretched between her mouth and his cock. “You want to please me?”
“Yes,” she gasped, blinking the tears from her eyes.
“He didn’t deserve you,” Sam said with viciousness, feeding himself back between her lips. “He could never.”
She took him deep again, earning a sound of approval as her tongue swirled along the underside of his shaft in restless patterns while she sucked.
“No human man deserves you,” he continued, the glint in his eye turning fanatical. “I will not let them have you. You belong with me.”
Her pussy throbbed at the insane, possessive things he was saying, and her mind wasn’t clear enough to conjure a reason to argue.
Tears dripped from her eyes as he forced her to gag on him again.
Her jaw was beginning to ache in earnest, but she didn’t want to tap out; she was enjoying the deranged praise he was lavishing on her too much.
She wanted to hear more about how good she was.
That had been such a rarity in her life.
He urged her to pick up her pace, letting her take him more shallowly, and she used her hands to make up the difference in his length. It only occurred to her when he was tensing beneath her that she had no idea if a robot could come—but then he did.
The sound he made as he came was pure animal, even though he was a machine. She was helpless to do anything but swallow as his cum spurted into her mouth.
She hadn’t often allowed Logan to finish in her mouth; it felt too unclean.
The handful of times she’d allowed him to guilt her into it, she’d lain awake for hours feeling queasy and anxious as he dozed off in his post-coital glow.
So much of sex had been a source of anxiety for her, even as much as she craved it.
The smells, the textures, the tastes… It had been something to endure rather than enjoy.
It was different with Sam. Her mind didn’t play through a reel of every unpleasant thing she’d ever learned in a biology lab. He was no mere biological being, after all.
His cum tasted the way his lips had—citrus and sweetness, like icing spread over her tongue.
That usual queasy feeling didn’t creep up on her as she swallowed, so she closed her eyes and lost herself in the experience, sucking him clean as he twitched.
She laved him with her tongue until he wrapped her hair around his fist and tugged her off.
He gazed down at her with an expression she could not define as anything other than loving. Could he feel that? There was a glitch in his code that permitted him to do so many things that no robot should be able to.
Was it such a leap to believe he might be capable of love, as well?
“You’re perfect, Ophelia.” He dragged his wet thumb over her swollen lips. “You’re a credit to humanity.”
She slumped forward, pressing her cheek against his thigh and letting him take her weight. Her eyes were too heavy to keep open, and her body felt leaden.
Sam shut off the shower and scooped her off the ground like she weighed nothing.
He set her on the sink and swaddled her in a towel, allowing her to sag against him as he blotted the ends of her hair dry.
His gentle ministrations and the citrus scent of him were the last things she was aware of before exhaustion carried her away.