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DO YOU WANT TO BE BITTEN,
LITTLE ONE?
TIERNEY JONES
For the rest of the week, I avoid everyone. I’m not sure if it’s because they disgust me or because I disgust myself. But I cut through the lab as fast as I can, refusing to meet Three’s eyes.
He’s always there in his window doing his leering-smiling-smoldering thing, trying to lure me to him with his warm eyes and sweaty muscles.
His workouts grow increasingly intensive. One-handed pushups, burpees, squat lunges, ceiling taps that prove his muscles aren’t entirely human.
It’s not easy, but I don’t look. Too much. Which I’m partially convinced is why his exercises keep growing increasingly ostentatious.
The Sierras seem to have developed a strange acceptance for me. Most of them anyway. Prima studies me as if I might implode at any moment, and Tensy stares with outright hostility, as if she’s imagining the exact color and texture of my small intestines. But the rest of them, even Sev, acknowledge me when they see me. A few even go so far as to greet me, calling me TJ.
Every day, I go down to Octavius’ cell and show him the images. I arrive at the same time each day so he doesn’t have to worry that I’ll skip. He lives for the fifteen minutes I spend beside his cell, showing him his son, and I won’t lie, there’s something about the stoic silence that bolsters me too.
I thought I had it bad ... alone but for Swann, responsible for too much too young, tasked with this vile job in this dungeon, working for a company I hate more with each passing second, attempting to build something that would catapult humanity on a trajectory of evil unparalleled in the history of our race, toward an increasingly distant and impossible future. Yet in comparison to his misery, his loss, it could be so much worse.
He lost his wife and son, but the love is still there in his eyes.
Sometimes, he tells me about Delilah. She loved fresh strawberries and red wine.
She had freckles on her back in the shape of the Southern Cross.
Her eyes were the exact shade of a robin’s egg.
She always sneezed four times, right in a row like an old-fashioned train. Choo. Choo. Choo. Choo. And he mimics the gesture, holding his fist in front of his mouth and squinting his eyes, trailing out the oooos like a train whistle.
He touches the glass on the other side of my hand-held screen, and if I could, I’d give it to him so he could look at them all the time in privacy.
She hummed in the shower, too. Horribly, he says with a wry smile. She couldn’t carry a tune to save her life.
I file away the tidbits somewhere and in the darkest, silent moments of the night, I pretend someone somewhere knows things like this about me. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be loved that way. So deeply. So simply.
My research progresses almost on its own.
I have no choice. Baldwin, Caruthers, Bob, they would all know if I did nothing all day.
By night, I have strange dreams of Three, where he whispers words of love to me, and his taste lingers on my tongue like a promise. Dreams of Baldwin and my father. By day, I plug away, and despite my deliberate slowness, the first attempt at coding is completed. If I’ve done it right, I can upload a new program to an existing chip that will cause it to implement augmentations to extend a bio-thread into the hypothalamus.
I hope it fails.
I doubt it will.
––––––––
Today, Bob and I stand in an examination room and stare at the screen in front of us, where a rendered model plays the projected outcome of the upload.
“It’s time,” I say, self-loathing forming a monster rock-solid pit in my stomach.
His chins quiver.
I don’t acknowledge his fear. There’s no point. Showing fear in the face of a storm is as valuable as begging mercy from a monster. My face remains as unimpassioned as Baldwin or Caruthers, even as my heart turns to lead and my head screams a silent tempo of stop stop stop stop stop stop stop.
“Go ask for a volunteer.” My voice is so cold I barely even recognize it.
His eyes shift around. Back and forth. Sweat beads his brow. His lips quiver. “You know it will be Three.”
“But it will be his choice. Not ours. That’s something, isn’t it?”
His brows draw together. “Maybe we could draw straws?”
“Would you rather it were a Foxtrot?”
He grimaces. “If the subject dies, it can’t be one of the women. Baldwin would be furious.”
“Then maybe we just select a few. Seven? Four? Two? We could narrow it down? Decide which of them we don’t mind experimenting on, then pull a straw. Is that better?” I shrug against that internal beat in time with my heart don’t do it ... don’t do it ... don’t do it. “What’s the point?”
His shoulders slump, but he shuffles off.
And sure enough, just as we knew would happen, he comes back with Three shackled naked to a gurney, his face stretched in a wide, white smile. “Hello, little one.”
The guards check the shackles. To open, they require thumb-print access. Baldwin’s, Schwitters’, Bob’s, whichever guard’s running point that day, or mine. We are the only people who can release the cuffs.
As soon as they’re done, they leave us.
“Tierney Jones, how are you today?” Three spreads his enormous hands expansively, rolling his wrists inside the handcuffs as Bob drapes a sheet over his body. “Fine weather we’re having, no?” He looks appraisingly at the walls around us, and I wonder in passing if he’s looking for weapons or escape routes. Probably. “Low humidity. Seventy degrees. No sun, but that’s to be expected really.”
I don’t turn to face him. Just stand in front of the keypad and stare at the screen.
For this test, I’m not looking for the electrical signals, so no electrodes are needed, just a tomographic microscope to track the chips mobility.
Bob positions the box-like machine so that it covers the top of Three’s head from his brows up.
He can still see us.
And he’s still smiling. The brackets around his mouth shouldn’t be sexy, nor should the crinkles around his eyes, but they are.
This startlingly beautiful man. And he’s looking at me like he’s the west and I’m the setting sun.
I turn back to the screen and the multicolored image of his brain. I zoom in on the chip in its location along the optic track until it fills the screen. The chip should implement my code to build a trio of bio-ganglia to stretch into the hypothalamus.
“We’re going to run an upload on your nanochip.” I shove my hands into the pocket of my lab coat and focus on the sheet draped over his chest, unable to meet his eyes. I don’t want to do this. I really don’t want to do this. But if I don’t? I swallow the acid rise of bile in my throat and soldier on. If I don’t do this, they’ll turn me Outlaw and Swann will be lost to me. If I don’t do this, someone else will anyway and the end result will be the same. “It shouldn’t hurt. But please let us know if you feel anything unusual.”
“I will let you know exactly what I feel.” He fingers along the gurney’s rails.
Bob purses his lips and shuffles on his loafers.
It’s time. I don’t want it to be time.
“Are you ready?” I ask, delaying the inevitable.
“I’m always ready,” Three says in that low, gritty voice that makes my skin come alive even if he did just promise to have sex with Dolce.
I blow out a noisy breath. “Here we go.”
When I tap the enter key, the upgrade sequence links with his chip. It will take about ten seconds for the chip to receive, unpack the coding and begin implementation procedures. But after that, I’m not sure how long it will take for the process to complete.
Bob and I stare at the black shape of the nanochip on the screen.
Nothing happens. I didn’t expect it to. Not yet.
Three drums his fingers and rattles his cuffs.
Bob fidgets awkwardly. And freezes so suddenly it’s almost theatrical. “Accept emergency call,” he rattles it out fast, his eyes going unfocused the way people do when they’re listening to their chips, a voice only they can hear.
I wince for him and send a silent prayer to whatever’s out there that neither his mom or dad were hurt. Normally, our chip’s connectivity would be blocked underground, but the company has routers that bounce feeds for company employees in the case of emergency.
“I-is she okay?” He’s silent as he listens, his eyes tracing blankly along the screen in front of him. “Okay. Good. Good. Is she conscious? When can I see her?”
I touch his arm, trying to offer support.
He listens a moment longer, squeezing the back of his neck. “End call.” Pale faced, he stands there, lost and confused.
“Is everything okay?”
“My mom had an accident at work. She was found unconscious on the floor.”
“Oh no. Do they know why?”
“No. But the doctors say she’s going to be fine.”
“That’s good. Go.”
He hesitates, like he’s actually afraid to leave me alone with Three at a time like this.
I point at the door. “Go. Go, now.”
He leaves faster than I’d have ever imagined he could move, his big bulk vibrating.
As the door closes behind Bob, Three grins smugly.
I glare at him.
He spreads his fingers wide and shrugs his broad shoulders on the gurney. “Don’t look at me. I’m strapped down. How could I have done anything to his mom?”
I turn back to the feed. He can communicate with his fellow Sierras somehow despite their muted chips. Even the Foxtrots. They laugh on occasion at the same time, in both labs. What if he can communicate silently with the others on the outside? The thought sends a shudder through me.
And then I remember Octavius. If he can’t communicate with Octavius because of a three-story distance, then he can’t communicate with the ones out there.
It can’t be him.
I force myself to calm down, settling into the silence, trying not to notice how good he smells.
With my eyes on the screen, I can almost relax. I put on my glasses, and adjust the settings on the microscope. I check the reads. So far, the computer has detected nothing either.
The silence grows almost comfortable.
Until he opens his mouth and says, “Look at me, little one.”
“No.”
“Please.”
I do. Begrudgingly.
“You’re mad at me, Tierney Jones.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. You’re mad because I used the only power I have in this place to spend thirty minutes alone with you.”
I think about the deal he made. The thought of him with Dolce, of his hands, his lips, his tongue on her, makes me want to scream. “Why would I be mad about that?”
“I can think of several reasons.” He stares up at me with those unsettling eyes.
I cross my arms.
“We kissed, Tierney Jones.”
I make a face.
“That kiss was real. You felt it. I felt it. You know it was real.”
I stare belligerently up at the screen.
“Agreeing to breed is the only thing that would get me time with you. Ask yourself if it’s fair to be mad.”
I sigh. No. It isn’t fair. Nothing about any of this is fair.
He smiles. And wiggles his fingers at me. “Touch me?”
I roll my eyes. He’s absurd, incorrigible, unashamed. “No.”
“Come on. I do bite, but I can’t reach you like this, so it doesn’t matter.” He wiggles harder, and I sigh. Against my better judgment, I reach out my hand to touch his. Broad, callused, dry and warm against my own. His hand is so big around mine.
He squeezes it. “If I promise not to fuck Dolce, will it make you happier?”
A little. “I work here. I’m supposed to want you to ... do that with her.”
“But you don’t. I’ll promise not to do it, if you promise not to tell anyone I promised such a thing. And if you kiss me one more time.”
He’s absurd. I tug my hand away. Or try to, but he holds me firm. And I let him, angling my body so I can see the still-unmoving image of his nanochip on the screen.
He tugs me closer, his rough thumb tracing along the back of my hand, until I’m leaning against his gurney. “I read your sex books.”
“They’re Romance novels. Not ‘sex books.’ And?”
“They’re unrealistic.”
I look back at him. His face is far more interesting than the screen anyway. “I imagine that was sort of the point. But how do you mean?”
“In one, the man lives on blood and is immortal.”
“A vampire. They were popular back then.”
He cocks his head. “You like vampire stories?”
“Some of them.”
“In another, the man morphs into a beast and bites his woman. So much biting, yet his saliva heals her. She never even has a mark when it’s done. What’s the point of that?”
I remember the book he means. The man is immortal, powerful, strong, capable of anything—but his need for her brings him to his knees.
His thumb does something to the tips of my fingers. Lights them on fire, makes them tingle from the outside in. I shiver despite the temperate lab air, my toes curling inside my pumps.
He tilts his head. “Do you want to be bitten, little one?”
Why that sends a low-level surge of heat rushing south, I can’t tell you. But it does. “No.”
“I think you do.” He tosses his head on the gurney as if he’s made some sort of vital decision. His black hair spills on the sheets around him. “If you were my woman, I would bite you.” Silvery eyes, flecked with gray hone in on mine, he opens his mouth and tongues his teeth. “We have prolonged canines. It would leave a mark that would tell the whole world you belonged to me.”
I study them. “They’re not that long.”
He grins. “Kiss me, and they’ll grow.”
“No.”
He draws in a long breath and I get the impression from the way his eyes go slightly unfocused that he’s scenting me. “If you were mine, I would bite you while I was deep inside you, and you would come, screaming with the pleasure and the pain. You would come so hard your legs would shake and your eyes would roll back, and you’d carry a piece of me inside you always.”
I yank my hand from his.
“Would you like that?”
I tell myself he’s trying to manipulate me, I tell myself not to believe it, but it’s hard not to believe the open, unguarded look on his face.
To stop him from talking more, I say, “I saw Octavius.”
The smile leaves his face. His whole body goes still. Above the sheet, the muscles of his chest, neck and shoulders tighten. Three is a man I’ve seen in a variety of states. Angry. Joking. Gentle. Aroused. Now, it’s like he’s shut it all off and become something else. He is pure focus. “How is he?”
“He said his hope had been renewed.”
His gaze roves back and forth between my eyes. “Is that all?”
“Yes.”
“Say it again word for word, exactly like he did.”
“Okay. He said, ‘tell him my hope has been renewed.’”
“Why did he use those words specifically? ‘Has been renewed’ implies that something changed. What changed? What did you do to him?”
I glance up at the screen. I look away from Three, not sure I want to see the effect my words will have on him. “I showed him pictures of his son. And a video of him playing the piano.”
“Dane?” He closes his eyes. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did you see?”
“He’s by a lake. He’s clean. He’s smiling in some of the photos. Well dressed. He looks like the kids at the boarding schools I went to. He’s talented with the piano.”
His eyes open. “You think he’s at a boarding school?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He tries to sit up but is held back by the bindings on his wrists. He curses. “These fucking cuffs. Sit me up.”
“No.”
He breathes hard through flared nostrils, his body going still but his muscles stay tightly clenched. “Thank you. For what you did for my brother.”
“I didn’t do it for you.”
“It doesn’t matter who you did it for or why. It was kind. And if I didn’t already think you were perfect, I would know it now.”
“I’m not perfect.”
“To me, you are.”
“You say ridiculous things as if they are clear facts.”
“It’s true. It would be truer if you would kiss me.” He sinks his top teeth into his bottom lip, a little smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.
“I’m not falling for that again. And this time, you can’t force me to do anything.”
He raises a brow, and so fast I’m too stunned to react, animal fast, the way a cobra strikes, his leg on the far side of the gurney flashes outward, snags me right behind the shoulders with his ankle in a show of impressive strength and agility, and, bending his knee inward, drags me so my face is within an inch of his, his calf across my back pulling me in close. “I could.”
I stare back, breathing hard, acutely aware of the hard weight of his leg behind me. Even strapped to a gurney, he is far from helpless. Even when they appear innocuous and cowed, these soldiers are anything but helpless. “But you won’t.”
His breath fans out over my face. “No. But I wish you would.” His gaze drifts down to my lips. “You could climb on top of me, lift your skirt up over those garters.” His eyes flare. “Yes, Tierney Jones, I saw your garters. A strange choice for a little thing like you. You could let me inside your body so easily. Just imagine how good it would feel. Hot and hard, inside all your tight wet heat. Thrusting. Rocking.”
My stomach boomerangs. My core clenches. It’s so easy to imagine the thick hard weight of him pressing into me, stretching me, filling me. I can practically feel it.
“As charming as that invitation is ...” I press my hands into his chest, his lower leg leaves my back, and I rise cautiously, acutely aware that he could knock me over at any time. “No.”
“Is there anything you want to know about us?”
A million things.
“Kiss me again one time, Tierney Jones. And I’ll answer any question you have in the world. Honestly.”
A thousand ideas go through my mind. I could ask about his childhood, or my father.
Instead, I realize, there’s only one thing that truly matters. “Are you trying to manipulate me into helping you in some way?”
“Not in this moment. No.” He doesn’t even blink. “In this moment, all I want is to taste your tongue.”
“Why do you say the things you say to me? You don’t do that with anyone else.”
“Why not you?”
“Most people are predominantly interested in me because of who my parents were. They just want to know what happened to make the illustrious Dr. Martin Burke Jones lose his mind and rebel.”
His nostrils flare. “Yes. Fuck your father. I just want you,” he grumbles. “He is to blame for all of this.” His voice isn’t loud, but it may as well be. I flinch. Whatever my dad was to me, he played god when he made these Sierra soldiers. That makes him responsible. At least in some ways. “I loathed your father and everything he represented.”
“I imagine I would too, if I were you.”
He shrugs that off. “I hate your father. I hate him so much I wish him back if only so I can kill him afresh. And yet I want you so badly, I wake in the night, humping the floor of my cell like an animal.”
A rush of wet heat fires between my thighs.
“I want to hate-fuck you for who he was, but I want to do it gently for the look I see in your eyes every time you try not to look at me.” He isn’t done. He keeps going in that deep, rich, drugging voice of his. “I picture a hundred ways I could work your body, only to have the guards turn the spotlights on me and threaten to strap me down. I hate them all.” The muscles of his abdomen tighten. His feet shift restlessly on the gurney. “I desire you despite all of it. Despite who your father was. Despite who you work for. Despite what you are trying to do here. To me. To my brothers. My sisters. Despite all that you represent. My desire for you overrides the hate I feel for the very name you bear and the purpose for which you live. I want you anyway. That’s desire.”
Desire. I feel it now. Desire so potent, so shining, so thick in my blood, it sends my knees shaking and I have to lock them, lean against his gurney. I can almost feel the wet drag of his tongue over my heated skin.
“Kiss me again.”
Because the hell of this constant state of arousal is clouding my judgment, I don’t hesitate or pretend. I stroke my hand along his cheek, pushing the hair past his temple, skimming my thumb over the hard rise of his cheekbone, and lower my lips to his.
I’m not at his mercy this time, in his lap and confused. This time, I am in control, the pressure and speed are up to me. I keep it light, barely touching his skin, coast my lips over his.
He does smell good, and his skin is soft. The look in his eyes speaks to a desire so strong, so poignant it is impossible for me to be unaffected. It’s like my whole body explodes with a want and a need so hard that all I see is him.
And if that’s what I feel, this must be acute torture to him. I can’t change the fact that he’s a prisoner or that he’s been drugged into a state of permanent arousal and denied self-relief. I can’t stop this evil company. I can’t change that he was created in a lab or that he’s Outlaw. I can’t stop any of this. Maybe he’s a liar, maybe he’s a manipulator and a user, but it doesn’t matter.
That’s on him.
What I do, that’s on me.
And I can do one thing to help him, and I want to. For me. So that I can remember it later in the dark of night. But only if I dare.
I glance around the room. There is no camera. The other rooms have the red circular eyes of the ubiquitous cameras that always watch us. But the offices and examination rooms seem to be private. Nothing came of it last time we kissed either.
Just the two of us.
I draw up every last ounce of my courage, and touch my palm to his chest, right between the thick swells of his pectoral muscles. The hair there tickles my palm, and I wiggle my fingers back and forth.
My eyes closed, I lean in, touch my lips to his, and he opens for me, his tongue sliding against mine. He groans, low and deep, calling to everything inside me, and I get even wetter. For him, I gush. I can feel it, slippery between my thighs, because now I know what’s coming, exactly what I want to do to him.
My hand slides up his thickly-veined forearm, along the swell of his biceps, over his thick shoulders and hard chest, down the bulges of his stomach, over his hip bones and hard muscles, until I find new veins. His muscles lurch under my touch.
He hisses sharply, as I grip his rock-hard girth. “Fuuuuuck.”
I drag the sheet in my wake, drawing it down his body, baring his skin for my view.
He’s breathing hard now and fast, his chest rising and falling, his abdomen flexing. He rears up on the gurney, trying to keep his lips to mine, but I pull out of reach.
His hands fist in the cuffs, the tendons of his throat cording.
The sheet falls away, and there it is. His whole body naked for my view, but far from defenseless. The illusion that I am in control is a strange one. He could easily use his legs to capture me again, his teeth to kill me.
There is trust here. It goes both ways.
He leans up into me, as far as the restraints will allow, but my mouth is still too far for him to reach.
I smile, trying to be reassuring, and squeeze his cock in my fist. It’s even harder than the rest of him.
When I touch the slick bead of moisture at the top of the crown of his cock with my thumb, he groans.
He is so thick my fingers don’t meet, the skin, so silky and smooth on something so hard it’s like holding a bar of warm silk-wrapped white-hot metal.
It’s not enough.
He bucks against me. I want to taste him again so I touch my lips to his, feather soft, and whisper, “Yes?”
His eyes drift open. “Yes, what?”
“What I’m doing. Is this okay?”
He lets out a breathy laugh, his brows drawn as tight as if he were in pain. “Yes. Fuck, yes.”
I lower my hand, all the way down to cup the heavy sack below, letting my hair drag down his chest, enjoying the way his muscles quiver, until I reach the very thing I’ve been dreaming about for weeks. I lick the tip slowly, dragging my tongue along that bead of moisture, tasting his salt. He groans and I moan back in primitive, savage communication.
I take him deep, looking up into his pale eyes. He’s staring down at me intently, tensed, his lower lip pushed forward, jaw slack, brows together, pupils dilated. Male arousal in portrait form.
I’ve done this before, and always found it to be a chore. But this time, it’s so different. It’s like his pleasure becomes mine. Seeing his response to my actions drives me, spurns me on, pushes me to take him deeper. I want as much of him as I can take. I want everything. I want it all.
He thrusts his hips up when I do, driving his cock even farther down my throat. He makes these sexy, throaty grunts, and I try to answer back for him. Drool wets my hands, and his shaft. The grunts get deeper, faster, and I increase my pace, matching my tempo to his thrusts, he shoves back suddenly with a long, protracted hiss, and the hot splash of his seed rushes down the back of my throat.
His hips rock into me erratically, his head lolling on the gurney, the veins of his lower abdomen pulse.
I have to struggle not to make a mess, and I can’t leave any evidence that we did this behind. No proof of my illicit actions—a scientist fellating her test-subject violates so many laws. I’d be turned Outlaw instantly.
He collapses on the gurney, struggling for air, hands restless in the cuffs, and I keep on sucking, stroking the length of him until the spasms stop.
We’re quiet for a long time.
“Tierney Jones,” he says.
I rise, dabbing at the corner of my lips, take a long sip from my water bottle and drape the sheet over him. “Yeah.”
“Kiss me again.” There’s a new sadness in his voice. It calls to me.
I touch my lips to his, and this kiss is both soft and gentle. Maybe it’s his way of saying thank you.
At first, when he hisses, I think it’s because he’s so into the kiss, so into me. It takes a second for me to realize that the hiss goes on a beat too long.
I open my eyes to find him, face contorted. “Three?”
I touch his cheeks. His face twisted in agony. That hiss is one of debilitating pain.
“Shit.” I glance at the feed. The programming worked. The chip has extended ganglion into his hypothalamus.
His fingers tighten around mine so hard I’m surprised my bones don’t break. I yelp, and he releases me, his hand instantly tightening back into a fist. His head and shoulders rise on the gurney, veins showing on his face, his eyes squeezing shut.
This shouldn’t hurt him. But it clearly does.
I stare at the screen, unsure what to do. It’s too late to stop it. And I couldn’t anyway.
I thought I was inventing a way to make them amenable, and maybe I did, because I just invented a way to make them suffer. And in addition to mind control, the company just got its hands on a button to trigger instant debilitating pain.