“Have dinner with me,” he whispered in her ear as he turned them and pinned her between him and the table. Hard hands urged her back so she was sitting on it, legs spread so he could dance between them. She swallowed convulsively. Asleep, she had to be asleep. Yeah, that was it. She was asleep. Because in her reality, sexy as sin men like Johnny Ram did not ask women like her to dinner.
“Wha…?” she managed to croak, her ability to frame a coherent sentence stolen as he urged her back, bracing himself over the table and doing the air-fuck thing again. Right over her. Almost touching her. The heat of his body beat at hers despite the thin fabric of her t-shirt. She couldn’t even think of what was going on further south, her brain shorting out at the fact she had Johnny Ram between her thighs.
“Dinner. Tonight.”
He had her wrists again, pinning them over her head. Using the movement to cover what he was doing, he swept his thumb over her wrist mounted data strip. The thing bleeped as it registered his comm details.
“You. Me.”
He hauled her upright, beefy arms holding her in a close embrace that managed to keep a couple of inches between their bodies as required by law for a public performance.
“Say yes,” he ordered, pinning her with that green-gold gaze. Heat filled his eyes, the instant response licking her skin with flames of need.
“I…” she shook her head as he stepped back, staggering a little as a sense of loss filled her. Instantly she missed the feeling of his strong arms around her.
She squeaked and covered her gasp with her hand as he ripped the combats off in one quick movement. The room around them went wild, the noise almost deafening. The challenge still in his eyes he paraded in front of her, posing and posturing as the music changed to machine again.
God, he was perfection itself. The pants gone, only a small thong covered his modesty, the black fabric stretched and straining over an impressive package. Already he was hard, the thick length of his dick easily visible.
“Say yes.”
A note of warning crept into his tone as he fisted the fabric of the thong, twisting it in his grip. A sense of expectation and shock filled the room. Johnny was a stripper, yes, but he never did full nude in his act. Not this way anyway. He always waited until he was on stage and whipped the thong off at the last minute when his back was to the audience, leaving them with a view of his firm ass.
Regret filled her. Milly shook her head as reality intruded. She came here to escape the cluster-fuck that was her life. Hot fantasies about a sexy man were one thing, but having dinner with a person, someone who could actually get hurt by his association with her, was another.
“No, I’m sorry…” she said as she backed up. Looking blindly around, she searched for a way to escape the women crowded around them. She shouldn’t have come here. If Jason found out… Heart pounding in her chest for a very different reason, she pushed through the catcalling women, leaving the sexy-as-sin Johnny behind as she fled.
Chapter Two
Her steps hastened by panic and the adrenaline of being approached by Johnny Ram, a man she’d lusted over from afar for months, it didn’t take Milly long to reach her ship and then her quarters. The door slid shut behind her and she leaned against it, every cell in her body vibrating with energy.
Despite her panic and the speed she’d put distance between herself and the club, a smile spread over her lips. He’d asked her to dinner. Johnny Ram—big, sexy Johnny Ram—had asked
her
to dinner. It was impossible, unbelievable, like the wolf asking a mouse to dinner. A shiver hit her. From the hot look in his eyes though, she suspected that the mouse would end up
as
dinner…
Heat wriggled insidiously through her, adding another wave of dampness to her panties as she pushed off from the door and flicked a glance toward the bedroom portion of her open-plan quarters. Later, she promised herself. Later she’d head on down and recover her “toy” case from her locker in the hold and spend some quality time with her battery operated friends. She sighed. But not yet. The console on the desk built into the opposite wall was blinking to notify her of unread messages so she headed that way instead. Work came first.
She pulled the desk chair free from the wall, watching and waiting as it swung out in an arc and unfolded into a full sized seat pad. Even though these were the captain’s quarters, space was at a premium. Everything on board was designed to save space, to fold or slide away and make more room, even in here. Not for her the expansive and plush suites of some ship captains.
No, she got a bed built into the wall, a bubble shower enclosure and a rotating toilet which operated like a false wall in the old movies she’d watched as a kid. One moment a book shelf, press a button and hey presto, the wall turned and the ivory throne was right there. But she wouldn’t trade it for the world, or several worlds. The
Starflame
was the last thing she had to remind her of her beloved grandfather. After spending many years in high society, the daughter-in-law of a Fleet Admiral with all the rules and protocol that made her want to scream and run naked through the corridors just to alleviate the sameness of everything, the ship, running cargo, represented freedom.
Sliding into the swing-out seat, she logged onto the console and waited as the comms screen opened up. The
Starflame’s
computer core was an older model, dependable, but slow. She drummed her nails on the extenda-desk, watching the screen scroll up to the latest messages.
“Bill. Bill. Rubbish. Notification of docking. Bill. No, I do not need ocular enhancement. I’d like to keep the eyes I was born with, not have them replaced with some vat-grown monstrosities, thank you very much.” She yawned as she rapidly flicked through the messages, filing or deleting them as appropriate. She reached the last and her eyes widened as she recognized the name. Why was Jason contacting her on her personal comm channel?
Her fingers shook as she tapped on the message. She’d once thought that Jason Templeton was the perfect man. Tall, blond and handsome, he’d been the epitome of charm when they’d first met. She’d told him she didn’t want to date a fleet officer, but he’d worn her down. Within three months, they were married. He’d started hitting her within six, each time full of apologies, then in the next breath blaming her, twisting his words until she didn’t know up from down or left from right. Convinced it was her fault and cowed by his threats, she’d stopped seeing her friends and avoided her family as she became a master at using body makeup to conceal her bruises.
It had taken her years to work up the courage to leave, squirreling a little of the money he allowed her away into a secret bank account. Her grandfather dying and leaving her the
Starflame
was the catalyst she needed. She’d left the same night and filed divorce papers against him.
“You little bitch!”
Jason’s face appeared on screen, twisted into a familiar mask of anger. Every part of her body tensed, ready to flee. She recognized the look in his eyes, the rage and hatred a precursor to taking his frustrations out with his fists. He’d been drinking as well, the high flush on his cheeks a warning sign she’d learnt to heed.
“You’re sleeping with that fucking judge, aren’t you?” He was in his office, the logo on the wall behind him familiar. “Got him wrapped around your little finger so he’d do what you wanted in the hearing. Dirty little slut. How’d you do him to get the ship? On his desk while the dried up old prune was still in his robes?”
She winced, trying to hide the movement even though he couldn’t see her. A habit she’d yet to break. She’d learnt never to show fear, it just made him worse. Yelling and screaming until his fists started to fly.
Taking a large swallow from the glass by his side, he leaned in as though he could see her right through the screen. “That ship is
mine,
bitch. For putting up with your pathetic moods during our marriage.”
His lips curled into a sneer.
“After all, I need some compensation for having to fuck a frigid, barren little bitch like you. If your grandfather hadn’t been who he was, you think I’d have ever bothered with you?” He laughed, the sound harsh and derisive before he turned serious and gave her a chilling look. “I want my ship, Milly, and no matter what some pansy-assed judge says, I’m going to get it.”
The connections had to be bad.
Johnny paused for a moment, squinted inside the torso panel of the android he was working on, frowned and upped the magnification in his ocular implant to check the wiring out. Yeah, he was right. The cellular connections in the upper portion were badly connected which meant that the current was only getting through to the left arm of this model sporadically, making it jerk as if it was a maniacal puppet on a string. Funny, until it had thrown carrot soup over the client. What
the client had a sexbot doing with carrot soup Johnny didn’t want to know.
“So what was with last night?” The query was light, the voice feminine and absentminded. It was also a trap. He knew it was a trap. It didn’t stop him getting sucked in.
“Last night?”
He arched an eyebrow and carried on working as his partner in crime, Cyn, plunked down on the stool next to him. She peered inside the open front of the android and grunted in approval at his neat cellular resoldering. At least he assumed the grunt was approval anyway. If he wasn’t working to her standards, Cyn had no problems with slapping him around the back of the head and doing the job herself.
They were two of a kind. Both cyborgs, they’d been created in the same lab facility, “born” within days of each other and assigned to the same team on activation. So when their world had gone to shit and the fleet had issued a termination order on all of their kind, it had been natural for them to disappear and go native together.
Templeton, no… She’s just a kid!
The memory tried to break free as Johnny’s thoughts touched on the past, but he forced it back down and concentrated on the present. Harris was dead, the rest of them were dead. There was just him and Cyn left.
“Quit the innocent act, Johnny. I know you, remember?” Her voice was amused, but with an edge he knew. She would just keep going until she got the answers she wanted. A grin twisted his lips for a second before he managed to hide it, concentrating on the work in front of him.
“No, you don’t.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Sharing some of the same DNA, they’d never gone there and never would. They were siblings, or as close to as created beings would ever get, and he cherished that relationship.
Now they were hiding in plain sight, as Cyn called it. Him as a stripper and her as the uppermost sexbot creator this side of the Kelantrian expanse. People came from far and wide for a bot from the “House of Cyn”. She had a reputation for exquisite custom creations that catered to any and all fantasies and the deactivated bots that lined the walls around them bore testament to that fact.
There was everything from an imperial slave-girl to a dominatrix clad in red and black leather, right through to the latest stars of the holo-screen. All achingly lifelike, it was as though someone had simply pressed pause on life and transported them here. They were as near to the real thing as it was possible to buy or purchase time with, Cyn’s talent shining through in each and every one of them.
“Oh, get over yourself!” She grinned back and punched his shoulder. He rolled easily with the blow, the tap light despite the fact that she could have punched a hole in sheet metal if she’d wanted to. “You may have gotten all these other women convinced you’re sex on legs, but I’ve seen you in states no woman
ever
wants to see a man. And you snore. Although I’m willing to admit your spinal implants are a work of genius.”
He snorted. “That’s only because you fitted them.”
“Too right. Now tell me about the woman last night. Before I decide to lock those spinals and make you watch a marathon of
Love Colony,”
she threatened.
A shudder streaked through his large body, shaking his shoulders. He hated that damn space soap opera. She would, he knew she would.
“Bitch.”
“Don’tcha just know it.” She smiled sweetly, twirling a diagnostic wand between her slender fingers. “Now spill.”
Johnny sighed, he wasn’t going to get out of it. He carried on working, large fingers deft despite the delicateness of his task. Although the stripping brought more than enough money to support them both, he spent most of his time in the back room here at the shop doing routine maintenance on the bots to free Cyn up for creation and development of new models.
The Krasis gladiator line had gone really well last year, still were selling well. They just needed a few more of those and they could sink all the credits they needed into a colony start up and disappear off into the wilds of space where no one cared how much metal they had inside their skins.
“Not much to tell,” he finally admitted. “She’s been coming into the bar for a couple of months. Never dressed up, no makeup. Always cargo pants and a t-shirt. Figure on her like…”
He whistled and traced an hour-glass shape in the air with his hands.
“Hot. I asked her to dinner. She ran out.”
Grumbling in frustration, he went back to soldering. The patch job was almost done and they could put this one back into service. “That was new. Never had a woman walk out on me before. Was almost like she was scared.”
He slid a sideways glance to find Cyn watching him with a peculiar look.
“What? I’m not
that
bad a dancer, you know. People actually pay to watch me.”
“Yeah, and some people will pay to watch Sartorian slug-worms duel to the death, so don’t get above yourself, lover-boy.”
She grabbed a diagnostic pad from the bench when he put his tools down to check the android they were working on. She pursed her lips as the thing booted up and displayed a readout on the androids base systems. Routine stuff she didn’t need to think so hard on so he wasn’t surprised when she spoke again.
“It was the Aries 7000 act wasn’t it? You sure you didn’t scare her with the ‘big, bad, killer cyborg’ thing?”
Above them the android snapped its eyes open, staring blankly at the wall ahead. It was the Deloriat dancing girl model. All slender lines and tits like globes on a stick, it did nothing for him. He liked soft curves and give in his women. A little padding on the bones so he didn’t have to worry about hurting them if he was a little rough or breathed on them wrong. His mystery woman from last night was his idea of perfection.
Johnny shook his head as he waited for her verdict on the work. “No, couldn’t have been. She was
really
getting into that. Her heart rate went through the roof and pupil dilation? I lost sight of the color of her eyes at one point.”
He might have lost sight of them, but it made no difference. He knew what color they were. A rich, warm brown, they reminded him of roast
wayalla
nuts from Feneris Three or the deep, dark color of
kruss
, the outer systems answer to expensive terran chocolate, in his opinion better than the original. He’d never been into food during sex, but the urge to cover her in the stuff just so he could lick it off hit him and he shuddered, cock hard and aching in his pants in a heartbeat.
“I need to find her.”
The door chime jingled from the front room of the shop, alerting them to the fact a customer had walked in. Cyn shoved the pad into his hands.
“She’s hot to trot. Close and seal while I go and deal with whoever that is.” She rubbed her hands together. “Hopefully a nice fat sale so I can go buy those components I’ve been drooling over at Big Vinnie’s.”
Johnny shook his head as she disappeared through the door into the main shop. Typical Cyn. No interest in the usual female type things like flowers and chocolates. The one time he’d bought her jewelry, she’d been delighted…then broke it apart and used the stones in a jeweled bearing. He’d been pissed, but the sight of her sitting in her pj’s, ruined bracelet scattered around her as she showed him the bearing excitedly had melted his heart. It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t like most women, she just hadn’t been built that way.
It seemed his mystery woman from last night wasn’t like most women either. He’d offered it to her on a plate, an offer that would have had most women at his beck and call or pinned against the wall in his dressing room as he took them hard and fast to slake the lust that surged through his body at the mere thought of her.