Liberation's Desire Read online

  “Mercury.” He caught her eye, forcing her to look at him. Deep blue irises threaded with solid gold. “I know.”

  Ah. He did know. Her shoulders slowly relaxed.

  He nodded his approval and released her. “Take a deep breath, bring your heart rate down, and start again.”

  She obeyed, her errors decreased, and the operation finished.

  His fingers closed to a fist. “Success.”

  “Yes!” She jumped up and hugged him.

  That was a mistake.

  His manly body enfolded her in his spellbinding arms. His deliciously masculine scent rubbed against her skin, marking her with his possession. Awareness curled in her belly. Awareness for this nonhuman robot.

  She let him go quickly, straightening her exposure suit. “Sorry. I’m so used to fail—”

  He hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her onto his knee.

  She gasped and steadied herself against his iron chest. His taut pectorals flexed, broad beneath her small hands. His shoulders rippled strength, and his thigh bulged with power.

  She tried for a laugh. “What are you doing?”

  With his newly functional hand, he brushed a long strand of hair away from her face. “I need you.”

  Her laughter evaporated. Solid awareness pounded between her legs and ached in her breasts.

  She wanted to be handled and kissed by him. By the mesmerizing blue-gold eyes that seemed to take intimate note of all of her reactions and appeared fascinated by all she did.

  “Why?” she whispered.

  “Because I’m already a part of you.” His hand cupped the back of her neck, gently positioning her head. “I can’t survive without you.” His wide thumb stroked her jaw. “I need you to keep breathing.”

  She caught her breath, then forced it through melting lips. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting closer.”

  She should have objected.

  But she didn’t. His mouth descended on hers.

  He tasted like a dream.

  A rich, warm, satisfying dream that lifted her to her tiptoes of desire and then laid her gently on a cushion of air. His lips teased hers apart, and his tongue invaded her mouth, filling her with hot wetness.

  Desire burned into her center.

  She moaned and opened herself to him completely, yielding to his delicious invitation. His arm tightened around her waist, pressing her full breasts against his hard chest. Twin points glowed into a pulsing ache.

  She explored the plains of his back, the taut strength in his shoulder blades, the sense of him, all too clearly a man.

  He took her earlobe between his teeth and tugged. Sweet desire cascaded through her.

  She kissed his face, his jaw, his ear. His moans teased her ears and his hands traced her curves, squeezing her thigh and hooking one around his waist.

  Mercury wrapped her arms around his neck and straddled him, needing the closeness, the tightness of his body pressed fully against hers.

  He gripped her hips. “Mercury.”

  Her body lit on fire; her sensitive places pulsed, scored by desire, flushed with need. She was wet and hungry and ready. For a man. For this man.

  He rocked her against his arousal.

  She shook her hair loose. She wanted to be pushed down on the bare metal floor and wrap her naked legs around him; she wanted to splay herself atop him and ride into the sunset until he cried her name. Until they both did.

  She wanted to see her image in his passion-glazed eyes.

  But…

  His brilliant blue-gold irises met hers.

  Were they really passion-glazed?

  No. They were clear.

  Actually, his hair didn’t even look mussed.

  Because he was a goddamned robot.

  She took a deep breath and pushed herself up, off his lap, and stood in front of him, straightening her clothes. “Why did you do that?”

  The quality of his attention changed. He seemed to be studying her deeply. His eyes turned more gold than blue. “Didn’t you like it?”

  Oh, goodness, she did. Her body throbbed. She crossed her arms and her legs, trying to alleviate those desires. “I asked first.”

  He frowned and looked away. “I thought you would like it.”

  That answer only raised more questions. “You kissed me because you thought I would like it?”

  He hesitated. “I… Yes.”

  “If it’s all about me, then why did you say you can’t survive without me?”

  “Your identification chip has the storage capacity I need to function.”

  She clapped her hand to her forehead. “What?”

  “Life support for a y-class android is provided by the Faction’s processors. I am able to continue breathing despite my disconnection thanks to the unique discrepancies of your identification chip.”

  “Because of my chip,” she said, hand still covering her head. “You’re able to survive because you somehow broke into my head?”

  “Your chip is broken,” he said. “I didn’t have to do anything but take what was already there.”

  She could throw something.

  For one little heartbreaking moment, she had thought he loved her. She’d thought her feelings might have touched him.

  But she was wrong. Again.

  He was staring at her mouth.

  She wiped her hand over her wet lips. “I didn’t realize robots were so into kissing.”

  “It’s a fascinating data point—”

  “Oh, shut up.” She backed away.

  “Mercury, wait!”

  “Damn you. Stay away from me! I’m not kidding.”

  “Stop, please!” He stumbled to his knees. “Seeing you like this pains me.”

  “Whose fault is that?” But she did stop. He remained on the floor, legs splayed. She wavered. “I thought you didn’t feel pain.”

  His eyes widened slightly and he looked away.

  Had she caught him in a lie? He did say he could shut off his pain receptors. But on the floor, he looked so helpless. Her anger faded to concern.

  “Get up,” she said.

  “My brain is rerouting around the bullet. I’ve temporarily lost the use of my legs.”

  She gritted her teeth and knelt to help him. “I’m seriously going to hurt you.”

  “No.” He eased into the seat. “You can’t. You wouldn’t hurt someone else, even to save your own life.”

  “Maybe for you I’ll make an exception.”

  He smiled. “That I’d like to see.”

  She battered down her own matching smile. They were arguing. “I’ll help you however I can. Don’t try to kiss me.”

  “But that’s where I need your help,” he said. “I am driven to touch you. I can’t stop myself.”

  The feather-light stroke on her sensitive neck promised sincerity. She shivered. “And?”

  “It’s a corruption caused by the rogue. I need to kiss and touch you until I have identified the origin of the malicious code.”

  Malicious code. His desire to touch her was malicious code.

  “And you need me because why?” She honestly didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “Your kisses are pure data. Once I gather enough data, I can destroy the source.”

  Pain pierced her right through the heart. Data. She was data to him. “Let me think about it. No.”

  “Just until I can trace the source.” He leaned back, exposing the hardness that, minutes ago, she had only wanted to rub herself hot and sweaty against. “Otherwise, your presence makes it difficult to focus. Pressures need to be released.”

  Spoken like every cold, heartless, self-absorbed man. “Pressures, huh? In your pants region I’m guessing?”

  “I need you,” he insisted. “To gather data. Not just to release pressure.”

  “Aha.” She rose. “Your hands are working now, right?”

  He flexed his palm. “Yes. Why?”

  “Then wrap them around the tense part”—sh
e dropped her gaze to the long, hard, attractive part that she would love to stroke for him, if only it weren’t so dangerous—“and gather your own damned data.”

  He blinked.

  She stomped into the darkness, seeking somewhere, anywhere, far from overbearing robots and their oh-so-cool logic.

  ~*~*~*~

  Alas, it took so long for a ship to break free of ordinary space and reach the intergalactic speed necessary for entering a Tube.

  Zenya analyzed the engines of the TM-Righteous Justice. Around her, cleaning droids whirred, their small vacuums sucking up brain matter and scrubbers demineralizing blood. Given the state of the command deck, and how many people had packed in here to make their last stand, the droids would be working for some time.

  All space-going vessels were made so that a single person could fly them, from a planet-sized dreadnaught to the tiniest single pod. She now used the simplified controls and aimed for the accelerators that would bring her up to intergalactic speeds. A team of engineers might have been able to help her squeeze a little more juice out of the fuel.

  Too bad she’d had to kill them all.

  While traveling, she sent communications to the Robotics Faction buoys stationed along the accelerators. She shot her own encoded report, keyed so that the buoy would forward it to the Central Mainframe via their own private faster-than-light instantaneous communication. She would download their response when she passed by the next buoy.

  Meanwhile, this buoy sent back local news, public notices, and private messages. Nothing about the tragedy or the missing warship from her delivery to the government a day or so ago; the government was doing a great job of suppressing information.

  Ah, but there was a message here from the Robotics Faction, hidden and encoded in what appeared to be a sales advertisement. She downloaded the existing message and started decoding.

  It was much easier to communicate now that she no longer had to break out of her chains in secret and sneak around the rebel base, pretending to be a helpless victim.

  Hmm, the message was only a call code. She dialed the private number. Perhaps her assignment had an update.

  She was settling in when her call was answered. A surprised woman blinked from a blank view screen. “Hello, Zenya.”

  Ah. The rogue.

  “Hello.” Zenya lounged on the luxurious captain’s bench. “The Faction will be interested to know that their unbreakable code is so easily shattered.”

  “They already know.”

  “I’m startled and pleased to meet you. Miss…?”

  “Call me the rogue agent.” The woman smiled. Her gray screen perfectly blocked out all background. “That’s what you’re doing already.”

  Zenya studied the woman. She could be in a glorified rocket, in an unstoppable warship like Zenya’s, or she could be in a crowded shopping mall holo booth. Zenya’s robot strove to identify her situation while her human also tried to draw the woman out.

  “Nice ship,” Zenya offered.

  The woman smiled, revealing nothing. “Yours seems perfectly functional, but a little large for one person.”

  “You prefer smaller ships?”

  “I’m flexible so long as I don’t have to kill the previous occupants.”

  “Wrong place, wrong time.”

  “Is that how your robot handler justifies the kills? Or how you do?”

  Her question rolled off Zenya. Long ago, so long that she could hardly remember, she had held different opinions about killing. But those were opinions only, not experiences based on fact. Now Zenya found that killing was the most expedient way to accomplish her goals. All her goals. Corpses were easier to interrogate than most people believed.

  “As much as I enjoy social calls”—Zenya waved her hand over the luxurious captain’s reprocessor and made herself a steaming cup of cinnamon cocoa dusted with gold leaves—“I assume you had a reason.”

  “Yes.” The rogue sobered. “You have a choice.”

  Hmm, a hint of blue in the gray background? Perhaps a reflection...

  “A choice?” Zenya’s human repeated, and sipped the cocoa. Smooth, chocolatey, and perfectly spiced.

  “You already have autonomy. You, of all the android classes, don’t have to do the assignments you’re given.”

  Of all the android classes . The rogue not only had access to the Faction inner network, she also had been listening to their chatter for some time. Androids were androids, to outsiders.

  “Aw.” Zenya reprocessed the mostly-filled cup and hunted the menus for something she hadn’t tried before. In six hundred years, it was a challenge to taste something new. “How else would I stave off the boredom?”

  “I think you’re already bored. Bored to death.” The woman leaned forward, putting her face so close to the recorder it revealed the grease in her pores. “Rushing from assignment to assignment will never give you the freedom you crave. Their assignments will never end, no matter how furiously you complete them, and so long as you allow the Faction to rule you, you will continue to die inside. Only when you start making your own choices will you truly begin to live.”

  As the rogue spoke, a sharp spike of fury lodged in Zenya’s hard, metal chest.

  Now, that was an unfamiliar sensation. Anger. True seething, burning anger, was something she hadn’t experienced in several centuries. Her robot immediately dampened it, and the spike wisped away like fog.

  “That’s very interesting,” Zenya said.

  “Don’t let your robot kill off the woman who still yearns to break away inside.”

  Zenya laughed. The empty sound rattled her cocoa cup, sending ripples across the chocolate.

  This rogue presumed to know her. Presumed to know anything about her.

  In fact, the human inside had already died and been resurrected hundreds of times. That’s why she was only a persona now, and the original memory that had given her a personality was long destroyed. Every assignment, she tested the limits of suicide, but her indestructible body prevented even that final choice. Centuries ago, this impassioned speech could have reached her. Now, it only sounded like rain on a taut canvas.

  But because the rogue had evoked the sensation of anger, suggesting that there was still something willful deep inside Zenya, she would do the woman a favor and kill her in the most creative way possible. When Zenya found this rogue, she would rip a hole in the woman’s belly and drop in the bits she cut off so the rogue digested her own self, piece by piece.

  Zenya flexed her fingers. “You assume my robot and I are ever in conflict. On the contrary. We are nothing but peace and harmony.”

  The rogue sighed. “This is why I prefer face-to-face meetings.”

  “Give me your location and I’ll be right there.”

  “You and every available agent-friend.”

  “Oh, I’m not big on friends.” Zenya smiled with all her teeth. “We only need you and me.”

  The rogue smiled. “How terrifying.”

  “Aw. I’ll make it interesting.”

  The warship’s accelerators burned to their match point. Zenya approached the communications cutoff to drop into the super-accelerated Tube connection to Cloverleaf Hub.

  Cloverleaf Hub, the rogue’s last known location and the current location of Yves and Mercury.

  “Any last requests?” Zenya stretched. “I expected something like warning me off of hurting your precious Mercury. Or have you fallen for Yves?”

  The rogue leaned back. “Because we’re remote, I’ll give you a hint. If you really want to catch up to me, you can’t focus on the past. Focus on the future. Your future, Zenya.”

  The connection severed.

  Her robot proposed several theories. Most likely the rogue was hinting to go to the next name on the list.

  Which meant she would be least prepared to be intercepted before she could leave.

  The Robotics Faction had spent far too long chasing after the rogue. Zenya would find Mercury and Yves first, squeeze them like
damp rags, and lure the rogue into the open.

  She transmitted her orders for Hope Station to prepare a special welcome for Plastics Frigate 8-6-8.

  Then, the warship accelerated well beyond light-speed and dropped into the first Tube. Sending Zenya on her way, skip-hopping across the short galaxy, to the Cloverleaf.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I think”—Yves patted the fluffy sofa bed, using expression 108i-tender solicitude—“that you should come over here and discuss our relationship.”

  “I think”—Mercury arranged a scavenged dinette table— “that this is starting to look like a real home.”

  Yves had watched her spend the last few hours dragging over furniture to create a boudoir-style living room, complete with voluptuous red faux-synth shuttle carpet and polished gold-finished benches. His recovery bed, Mercury had created out of comfy red fabrics and body-molding foam.

  “Check out this window.” She draped a feathered throw over the giant piece of hull glass. “If you turn it curve-side out, it blocks the light.”

  It did look comfortable and homey, and just the sort of place to wrap his arms around Mercury and bury his face in her neck until she sighed and gave in to him. “We are going to leave so soon that this work is somewhat pointless.”

  “Oh, it’s working perfect for me.”

  Certainly it gave her responses a little snap. Like armoring herself from manipulation, she decorated the living room to take back her control. And he couldn’t deny her industriousness was endearing. Nesting, creating a home for them, a love nest…the more he thought of sharing her home, the more he began to want those sweet pink lips on his again. Want? No, this had elevated to a craving. “Come over here.”

  “See?” She rotated the flare-resistant satellite wreckage on the squeaking floaters she had scavenged. They barely held the incalculably heavy glass aloft.

  “Mercury…”

  “And look what else I found.” She hung a tiny square mirror next to a fragment of flower-decorated glass, multiplying them. “Now it’s like a garden.”

  “You’re stalling.”

  “I’m creating a nice place for you to think.”