Fantasies R Us, page 14
“I should have demanded another week,” she snapped, swiping the tear from her cheek.
“Jayne?” He rolled her onto her back and stroked her hair back behind her ear. “You’re crying.”
He reached to wipe away another escaping tear. She pushed his hand away and turned her face away from him. “It’s just the smoke in here. The damned fireplace flue must be stuck.”
He sat up against the headboard of the bed and gathered her across his lap. “The fireplace is a hologram, Jayne. It can’t be smoky in here. What’s the problem?”
I don’t want my fantasy to end. I want this to be reality and not make-believe.
I love you.
Not that she was about to make a fool of herself and admit to anyone she’d fallen in love with a cyborg.
A fantasy man that looked and felt and smelled and acted as real as any man. She pressed her nose against his smooth chest and inhaled his manly scent mixed with the spicy soap he’d used to bathe away the soot of one crispy fried dragon.
“Jayne?”
“Make love to me.”
“Whatever you want, my love—”
My love. Was there any sweeter words?
“—but I think there’s something we should talk about,” he said.
“No talk,” she countered, afraid of what she’d say if they kept talking, needing to do something that would make her forget how few hours they had left together.
She nipped his nipple.
“Ouch,” he said.
She climbed to her knees, straddled him and bit him hard on the shoulder.
“Is a little rough sex what it’ll take to chip the edge off your ire, my lady?” he asked.
“Yep,” she said and bit his neck.
“Turnabout is fair play, you know,” he said, his voice growing tight.
“I’d expect nothing less,” she said and tugged on his lower lip with her teeth.
The next instant, he had two fingers inside her. She gasped, releasing his lip. He flipped her onto her back on the bed, grabbed both her wrists in one hand and pinned them over her head.
“Now what are you going to do?”
She was totally exposed. But it wasn’t just the cool air making her nipples knot up. The dark lust in his eyes made her skin tingle and her juices flow. The way he held her to the mattress, her hands caught above her head and his long, thick fingers deep in her dripping pussy, she was trapped . What was she going to do?
She squirmed as though she was trying to escape his hold when in truth she was rubbing herself against his hand. A delicious heat spread down her thighs and up her abdomen. She swallowed back a moan of pleasure. The game required she not appear to give in too easily.
A wicked smile curled across his lips and he bent over her. When his teeth closed on one taut nipple, she bucked against the hand between her legs. Laughter vibrated through the teeth lightly pinching her engorged nipple and bathed her breast in hot breath.
He closed his lips over her nipple and sucked hard. It felt like he was sucking her insides out through her nipple. This time there was no holding back. She arched her back, threw back her head, and wailed.
His fingers moved inside her, stroking her weeping tunnel. His mouth moved to her other breast continuing his delicious torture. She twisted and bucked for release. But he wouldn’t take her over the edge.
“Please,” she whimpered.
“Please,” she growled.
“Damn you,” she howled.
His grip slipped from her wrists. She came at him swinging, but he’d backed off the bed. She cursed and lunged for him. He caught her by the legs, throwing her off balance, and hauled her to the edge of the bed.
Propped on her elbows, she glowered at him standing there between her spread legs. He drew his hips back then slammed his cock into her. She came almost instantly, her back arching violently, her head jerking back and her mouth opening around a scream.
“Clamp your legs around my waist,” he ordered in a tight voice.
Weakened but willing, she complied. He lifted her still impaled on his hard cock from the bed. Pinning her against a tapestry-covered wall, he continued hammering himself into her and made her come again.
She collapsed against him. But he held her upright, held her between himself and the wall, held her there until the spasms of her orgasm eased enough that her muscles worked again. Then he took her to the floor in front of the fireplace. Sitting face-to-face with their bodies still linked, he brought his knees up behind her and rocked her back against them.
The angle pressed him against that wonderful spot inside her, that place from which her spasms had come and come and come. He rocked her back and forth on his cock, the fabulous friction making the spasms grow once more in intensity.
He was going to fuck her to death and all she could think was how perfect a way to die.
* * * * *
She woke in a tangle of legs and arms and sheets. The scent of their lovemaking hung heavy in the air. There was a delicious soreness between her legs.
And an ominous brightness to the room.
She blinked open her eyes, realizing that daylight crept in around the tapestries shrouding the windows. A new day had dawned, her last at Fantasies R Us. She closed her eyes and bit her lip, willing herself not to think about the inevitable. She didn’t want to spend her final hours with regrets…just Michael.
Thinking of his strength, his prowess, his endurance and all he’d taught her in this short week, she knew she had to give him something back and she knew just what it had to be. She eyed his crotch and smiled.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” he said groggily.
“Look who’s talking,” she chirped, meeting his sleepy gaze.
“Is that a smile on my princess’ lips?”
“Uh-uh.”
“No more angry wench?”
She reached between his legs and closed her fingers around his raging, morning hard-on and grinned. “What do you think?”
He jerked against her palm. “I think I’ve created a monster.”
She began to slide down his body and he levered himself up onto his elbows.
“What are doing?”
“Pleasuring you,” she said, her gaze fixed on his face as she touched her tongue to the tip of his cock.
He groaned. “This fantasy is about your pleasure, not mine. Besides,” he croaked out as her tongue traced the hard ridge of his cock head, “I’ve had plenty of pleasure fu—”
She slipped her lips over him and the word caught in his throat.
“Jayne,” he ground out, reaching for her. “You don’t have to do this.”
She lifted her mouth just far enough from his cock to be able to speak. “But I want to.”
He seemed to study her a moment, his cock throbbing in her fist. Then he nodded and she took him once more into her mouth, her tongue swirling around his rod, tasting their lovemaking of the night before on him.
She watched him as she rubbed the head of his cock against the ridges in the roof of her mouth, as she scraped her teeth lightly up the length of him, as she laved his shaft with her tongue and squeezed his balls in her hand. She watched his chest rise and fall with his breaths and his color deepen as his arousal mounted. She watched him watching her slide her mouth up and down him.
She watched him draw one long breath through parted lips as she relaxed her throat and took him deep, watched his eyes roll back, his muscles clench across his stomach and his body shudder with utter pleasure as his release shot down her throat.
“You are amazing,” he panted out as she settled beside him and propped her head on an up-crooked arm so she could continue watching him. “Where did you learn to do all that?”
“I read a lot.”
* * * * *
She woke from her nap alone in their bed. With a start, she sat up. Was it over? Had she slept away the last twenty-four hours of her fantasy?
She scrambled from the bed and pulled the tapestry away from the window. The sun was high in the sky, well past midday. She still had hours to go until noon tomorrow. She let out a relieved breath. But in the next breath she tensed. If her fantasy wasn’t over, then where was Michael?
The entry panel on the far side of the room slid open and he strode into the room wearing shimmering cobalt blue pajama bottoms. His gaze slid down her naked form. He smiled and joined her at the window.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said, gathering her in his arms.
She threaded her arms around his neck, the silk pajama bottoms like liquid fire against her skin, his bare chest to her naked breasts pure heaven. She gazed up at him. “And what would that surprise be?”
“First.” He held up the tops to the pajamas for her.
She raised an eyebrow at him. “You want me dressed?”
“Just for now.”
He helped her into the oversized top, the cool, slick fabric making her nipples knot up. He smiled down at the tight buds, flicked them with his thumbs and kissed her long and deep.
When he let her up for air, she murmured, “If that’s the surprise, I’m all for more.”
“That’s not the surprise,” he said, drawing her to the bed.
“Mmmmm. Any surprise that has to do with a bed has got to be good.”
“I hope you’ll think it is.”
“You hope?” She eyed him curiously as he lifted her onto the bed. But he would not meet her gaze. “Michael? You’re making me worry that this might not be a good surprise.”
He vaulted onto the bed beside her, propped himself up on one elbow, stroked the inside of her thigh just above her knee and grinned up at her. “I think it’s good.”
“Your lips say yes, but your eyes reflect doubt,” she said.
His hand stilled against her leg and he sobered. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
“Then trust that what I have done is for your good.”
She sobered. “What did you do, Michael?”
“Enter,” he called and a panel slid open, admitting a man dressed in gold silk pajama bottoms, balancing a bowl of strawberries in one hand and gripping a bottle of champagne and three champagne flutes in the other. Will Scarlet smiled at her as he stopped at the side of the bed.
“I am at your service, my lady.”
She looked a Michael. “What is this?”
“Before you leave Fantasies R Us, I want you to know that you can be satisfied by a man other than me.”
She felt as though the bed dropped out from under her. “No.”
“I’m concerned you’ll go back to the real world believing no man but me can satisfy you.”
She gaped at him. “What would you know about the world outside Fantasies R Us?”
He didn’t answer. He just looked at her through shuttered eyes, shuttered as though there was something in them he didn’t want her to see. She didn’t expect a cyborg to have that kind of depth.
Then again, she hadn’t expected a cyborg to be more than a sexual being—a fantasy fuck. She hadn’t expected him to be so aware, so caring. She hadn’t expected to fall in love with one.
She drew a deep, steadying breath. “I just want to spend the few hours I have left of my fantasy with you.”
“But—”
She placed a finger across his lips. “Please, Michael. This is what I want.”
He drew her hand aside and looked her deep in the eye, deeper than she expected any cyborg capable of doing. But he nodded.
“You may leave us, Will,” she said.
“As you desire, my lady,” he said, setting the fruit bowl on the bed beside her hip and handing Michael the champagne bottle and two of the flutes.
Then, with a wink, he was gone.
Michael reached across her and plucked two of biggest, reddest strawberries she’d ever seen from the bowl and dropped them into the bottoms of the crystal flutes. Next, he popped the cork from the champagne and poured it over the glistening fruit.
Through the remainder of the afternoon, they drank and ate and fucked. No. Not fucked. They made love. Sweet, tender love.
And when they were sated, he held her as they watched the sun set from the tower window. It was a glorious show of purples and pinks. A perfect sunset to mark the perfect last night of a perfect love affair. But then the blackness of night chased every last hint of color from the landscape.
“’Tis better to have loved and lost,” she murmured, “Than to have never loved at all.”
“What’s that?” Michael asked, letting the tapestry fall over the window.
“It’s the last lines from Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam A.H.H.’.” She peered over her shoulder at him. “It’s a poem. You know what poetry is, don’t you?”
“I know what it is,” he said, brushing his lips against her ear. “Is that poem a favorite of yours?”
“It used to be.”
“But not anymore?”
How was she supposed to answer that question? I now understand what the words truly mean…now that they apply to me.
But to admit such a thing would be to confess she loved a…cyborg. And that she could not do.
On a heavy sigh, she said, “The words are sappy and trite.”
She turned in his arms, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, aware that everything they did between now and noon tomorrow would be sentimental and clichéd. How else could the perfect affair end?
Chapter Twelve
Jayne strode into the literary section of the library, the location of the request flashing on the digital readout clipped to the waist of her skirt.
She had returned to the real world three months ago with her contact lenses inserted, wearing her hair a little looser and moving like the sensual woman she’d learned resided inside her. The men had noticed. The first month, she’d politely rebuffed their approaches, explaining that she needed a little time to get over a love affair. It was the truth.
Purposely, she passed the floor-to-ceiling rows of classic fiction without rechecking the flashing request. She didn’t need to. She knew the volume she sought, knew it well.
The second month, she’d begun socializing. A library function where she chatted easily with the new director, a handsome single man. A night out at a social club where she was the envy of all her cousins because every man in the place jockeyed to dance with her. An occasional cup of coffee with co-workers, male included, at the coffee shop around the corner from the library.
She came to the end of the literary stacks where shelves climbed from floor to ceiling. She peered up at the collections of the great poets. Amazing how many there have been since the beginning of recorded time. It remained one of the few areas of the written word that were still being recorded in hard format. There was just something romantic about a volume of paper and ink poems that those digitally recorded lacked. Perhaps it was the romantic in the human species that clung to the luxury of paper. And she was most definitely a romantic.
Eyes shining, she rolled the wall-mounted ladder to the precise section containing the book she sought. She used to visit this poet’s works often for her personal pleasure.
As she climbed, she wondered who was requesting this specific volume of Lord Byron Tennyson’s. Could it be a man? Might his interest in Tennyson’s later poetry be enough on which they might build a friendship…or more?
Or would he, if it even was a he who requested the book, turn out no better a prospect than the two men she’d dated this past month? Neither had measured up to Michael’s standards well enough to even tempt her into bed. No man could.
Or perhaps she simply hadn’t yet been ready to mar the memories of perfect sex with Michael by having sex with a mere mortal man. But it didn’t sadden her. There was much more she wanted to explore sexually. When the right man came along, she would. She was certain of that.
With each step she took up the ladder, her slim skirt pulled across her backside and its side-slit opening shifted against her thigh. It reminded her of Michael’s caresses. She hoped the right man would come along soon. She was itchy for the feel of a pair of strong, hard, skilled hands on her, to know release again as only a man could give it. Maybe he’d even turn out to be the man requesting the volume containing Tennyson’s most epic poem.
Her fingers closed on the familiar book, its hard edges worn and its spine broken from decades of handling. She slid it reverently from its row, its musty scent like an aphrodisiac to her nose, its brittle pages an invitation to her fingers. Who was the person who’d requested this volume, a person with privileges few had these days? With nearly every book available in electronic format, only those with special privileges were allowed access to physical books. Were she not employed by the library, she would never have been allowed to touch this book.
Hooking an arm around a ladder rung, she fingered open the volume. Its well-used pages flipped of their own accord to the page containing the line she’d used these past three months to soothe her aching heart. She ran her fingertips lightly along the words, loss squeezing at her heart. She would never know Michael’s touch again. That fact had become an irreversible reality when she’d tried to book another fantasy with Fantasies R Us.
A week without the charge for her fantasy showing up in the debit column of her financial readout and she’d messaged Fantasies R Us. Their reply was an amazing notation that they’d refunded her full payment due to the grievous mistakes made in the administration of her fantasy.
She’d immediately tried to book another fantasy. But the cyborg she requested, she was informed, was no longer in service.
Michael. No longer in service.
And any man she welcomed into her life would pale next to her experiences with him. How could he not? Michael was a cyborg programmed to be the perfect lover. No man could live up to his standards. No man.
“’Tis better to have loved and lost,” she read aloud, “than never to have loved at all.”
“I disagree,” rose a familiar masculine voice from the foot of the ladder, a voice that slid into the slit of her skirt and up her exposed thigh, making her tingle as only one voice ever had. But it couldn’t be him?
