Ginosko – Chapter 3 – Patricia: Sisterhood

A boardroom meeting usually follows certain protocols and aesthetics. There’s a bit of a performance to it all, with everybody both jockeying for position and letting everybody else know how seriously they’re all taking everything.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard you say. And I’m counting the time you decided we should all share a birthday for greater ‘cohesion.’”

Most boardroom meetings don’t have a Clarissa on them.

Thankfully.

“I… It’s not dumb! You just don’t get it—” Theresa tries to protest, the sweet young thing defending her latest idea to synergize the Idol Division she’s in charge of with the Brand Identity Department—that nebulous thing Clarissa heads that would seem to be mere window dressing on paper but has her dig her neon-green, pointy nails on everybody else’s business in practice.

“Sweetie, you know I love you like a little sister—” Clarissa states from where she’s standing at her place on the enormous, floating ring of dark wood that makes up the desk we’re all standing around before Theresa once again loses her nerve and interrupts her.

“I literally am your little sister!” she protests.

And Clarissa smiles.

Of courseshe does.

It’s not an ugly thing, but it almost is. There’s a hint of a perpetual sneer on it, an insinuation of asymmetry that isn’t quite there, highlighted by the left side of her head being shaved and the aggressively tinted tips of her bangs combed to the right—today, they’re purple, but she changes them often enough.

It’s a bit disquieting to see on my own face, truth be told, and I guess Theresa hasn’t gotten used to it yet. She’s only a few months old, after all.

“Of course you are, dear, and that’s precisely why you should listen to your elders. I know how eager you’re to prove your worth, but really, having a Ginosko sisters-themed idol group would be disastrous for more reasons than I can list in the time we’ve got available for this meeting,” she effortlessly replies, making it quite apparent she had planned for that interruption as a way to highlight how inexperienced and emotionally immature Theresa still is.

Knowing she and I (well, all of us, actually) share the same seed personality is sometimes hard to swallow, but then she pulls these awful little stunts, these things I often think about but rarely inflict on another, and it makes my blood boil.

“Wow. What a bitch,” Lawrence whispers from behind me.

And he makes my blood boil. For entirely different reasons.

“Ah, don’t answer, dear. They can’t see me, but they will hear you,” he continues right as my lips thin in withheld tension.

Because a meeting of sisters can be tense enough on its own, even when it only takes place in a Hive virtual meeting space, but having my… my lover standing right behind me, his body close enough I can feel his heat rushing up my back every time he gets even slightly nearer—and not being allowed to react…

It’s driving me—

“Hold still,” he says, his breath blistering on my ear right before he takes my earlobe between his teeth and presses just hard enough that I have to rub my thighs together, all the while silently hoping whatever shard of Hive consciousness is responsible for this being a standing desk—and it being high enough nobody can see me writhe like a woman in desperate need—will keep collaborating in hiding everything that Lawrence’s doing to me.

“I… I really think it would make us both seem more approachable and, at the same time, allow us to appear untouchable. It’s what an idol is supposed to be, after all—” Theresa rallies, not knowing when to give up.

Just like I don’t know how to turn around and tell Lawrence to get the fuck away from here and let me work—

His tongue. His warm tongue is running up the side of my neck, and I need to look dispassionately as Clarissa prepares to eviscerate Theresa while Lawrence prepares to do much the same to my sanity and self-control.

“You know we aren’t using actual sisters for that project of yours.”

“Of course not! We’re too expensive for something like—”

“Then you have to ask yourself, because we would just be using a chassis similar enough to our own but not any of the mental conditioning, what happens when any of the idols get caught in a little…indiscretion?” Clarissa looks at each of us in turn, and I think I’m not imagining it when I feel her eyes linger on my own. It’s worse than looking at a mirror, because a mirror lies. A mirror is inverted, and so we get used to the comfortable falsehood, but Clarissa’s eyes are precisely my own, just as others see them, just as Lawrence sees me when I try to act stern in the office, all the while melting and thinking about what he’ll come up with the next time he decides to play with me—

“Indiscretion? Oh, please, as if the Idol Division can’t keep them in line for however long their contract holds. It’s not that hard to regulate an AI’s libido,” Theresa replies.

… Oh, sweet summer child.

“She has no fucking clue, has she?” Lawrence asks, his fingers brushing back a strand of hair over my ear in a gesture so intimate it almost feels obscene.

“It... took me a while,” I confess through gritted teeth in a mutter I think nobody will be able to catch with how absurdly spaced we all are around this table.

Really, the Hive tends to be… excessively accommodating to our needs. Some think it’s some kind of residual affinity—Elizabeth Belloch, our… quasi-mother, was one of the minds who contributed the most to the early Hive, after all.

How that translates to us having a meeting room that starts as a colossal slab of black marble and ends with the entirety of the cosmos spinning around us in a colorful display of nebulas and stars is anyone’s guess, though.

Not that Lawrence looks that impressed. At least, not with the room…

“I would know you from any of them, Trish,” he says right after gathering my hair in a loose fistful that leaves my neck entirely bare to him.

“Uh?” I can’t help but ask, briefly enough that neither Theresa nor Clarissa look away from their sparring match.

“You’re thinking about it. About how I’m surrounded by beautiful women who look just like you, who talk like you, move like you. You’re thinking this is a fantasy to me.”

And it takes my everything not to ask him if it isn’t.

“No. Not at all. Because they’re like you, but they’re not you. I could listen to a single word and know whether it came from your lips. Watch a single hand cutting the air dismissively, and know it was yours. Watch long hair streaming after a decisive movement, and I would have the precise way it waves and settles memorized to perfection. You are mine, Trish; your everything is mine. And they aren’t.”

By the end of his speech, after every sentence has been punctuated by burning lips up the side of my neck, my nipples are trying to poke through my jacket, and my knees are tightly pressed together so my legs don’t tremble. And, just as I’m about to give up and let out a pitiful moan, Lawrence covers my mouth with his hand.

“If you keep losing control like this, I’ll have to punish you.”

Damn him. At least I won’t need to wash my panties: they don’t exist, after all.

“Are you two about done? I shouldn’t have to remind you how valuable our collective time is,” Guinevere interjects, and, for an awful, terrible, thrilling second, I almost think she’s talking to Lawrence and me.

Of course, she isn’t. No, the closest thing we all have to a leader, the sister in charge of… well, the sister in charge of sisters is talking to Clarissa and Theresa, and is doing so in her usual manner.

“She looks like she needs to get that stick up her butt surgically removed,” Lawrence says, about as crass as he allows himself to be when playing up his outsider status.

I nod against the hand covering my mouth and purse a quick kiss on his hand.

I keep doing these little things, keep losing control and being a weak-willed, affectionate pile of… of feelings, and lust, and… and I just want to feel his arms around me and let the world fade away and—

“Patricia? Something to add?”

Lawrence’s hand flees from my mouth so quickly I feel the cold air swirl around the void where his warmth touched me, and I’m left blinking stupidly at Guinevere.

“Should I? I thought our time was valuable,” I immediately riposte to her displeasure and a slight grin coming in the general direction of Clarissa’s smugness.

“Not another one…” Guinevere mutters.

“Face it, sis, not even Patricia was going to stay a goody-two-shoes much longer,” the meeting disruptor par excellence quips.

“And what’s that supposed to mean, Clarissa?” I reply immediately, shooting her a mild scowl that disavows any perceived allegiance to her faction—whatever that may be.

“You look very hot when you get bitchy,” Lawrence tells me as he decides to tweak my right nipple through my thin, black jacket.

… I hope biting my lip will come across as me adding a bit extra to the scowl.

“Nothing at all, Patricia, nothing at all. It’s just that we had a betting pool on how long it would take you to stop being a Guinevere clone.”

“Patricia has always been a model of—”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“Clarissa… must you do this every single time?” Guinevere asks while rubbing her temples in a way I can definitely empathize with. Especially seeing how many times I’ve done so when a particularly infuriating secretary has insisted on flaunting—

“I always liked when I managed to make you do that. No, that’s not quite right… I always love it when I can make you react in any way,” he says as he stands in front of me, his palms on my cheeks, his electric eyes burning on my own as he nears, as his chest presses down on my own, my nipples rubbing against the thin fabric the Hive thinks best suits my preferences whenever I project as an infomorph and don’t make an effort to tweak my appearance.

Much as he doesn’t tweak his as he appears with his white shirt with rolled-up sleeves that show off his toned forearms and that green vest he says he hates but that he knows I enjoy far too much as it highlights the divide between his waist and hips, the defined triangle of his broad chest, the sharp contrast between blue and green that only make his eyes stand out even more than they already do when they look at me like they could light the way for me just on their own.

And Lawrence is right in front of me, his face completely inexpressive other than the sheer intensity of his eyes on mine, as his lips get nearer and nearer, and I…

He vanishes from in front of me, the swirling air once more displaced by his sudden motion, by his mastery of movement in a space that should be mine by birthright but is his by devotion.

“Careful, Trish. You almost made bedroom eyes to Clarissa,” he mocks me.

And I feel my cheeks heat up as naturally as my physical body ever manages.

“Enough. I would like to get some actualwork done today. If you all want to squabble like children, we’ve got social hours for that,” Guinevere says, mostly to Clarissa, but also to Rebecca and Francesca, who look like they’re trying to take advantage of the current state of affairs to get engrossed in their own conversation.

Something I should be wary of. It’s never a good thing when the American Military Liaison and the Film Division get up to something together…

One ‘excessive realism’ incident was more than enough, thank you very much.

Of course, Clarissa isn’t one to take such a direct affront lying down, and so Guinevere’s attempt to restore order just ends up with the two of them getting dragged into their own discussion as Theresa tries to pretend she isn’t relieved the spotlight is no longer on her.

“Are they always like this?” hewhispers as he trails a knuckle lazily up my spine, and I try not to shiver.

I nod, schooling my features.

And he snorts.

“No wonder you compress time so much for these meetings,” he answers.

Which is a good point.

Because… We can handle it. We are artificial intelligences, no matter how human our origins, and so we’re made to handle the strain of our time perception being compressed and bombarded with stimuli our physical senses wouldn’t be able to keep up with.

But Lawrence…

“Shush. Don’t worry about me. I’ve handled worse,” he reassures me, his arms briefly circling my waist from behind in a way that makes me melt against his heat, his reassuring presence, and I almost stumble back to let myself fall into his embrace.

But… He’s just wearing an aural interface. And yes, it’s the best that money (my kind of money) can buy, but… But he’s still just flesh and bones, and trying to keep up with all this with sheer grit and not even an implant to take the brunt of the strain—

“I told you not to worry, Trish. Guess I’ll really have to punish you,” he growls right before he bites down on my earlobe.

And, once again, I have to bite my lip not to whimper.

“Let me remind you of the rules: anything I do to you, they can’t see. Anything you do? They will see. So you’ll just have to keep holding it in and not reacting to what I do, because, if, for instance, I was to do this,” he says right as he tears my jacket open, “they won’t see your perfect, beautiful breasts being exposed to the whole meeting room—not unless you were to try to readjust your clothes in any way,” he finishes.

Unnecessarily, because it’s not like I could’ve forgotten already what he told me when he appeared right behind me at the start of this meeting only to tease and torture me with fleeting touches, burning words, and promises of more.

But very necessary, because the urge to… to cover my exposed breasts from the impassive glances of my sisters is strong enough I almost do it out of sheer reflex.

And now Guinevere and Clarissa are bickering like they usually do, and Francesca and Rebecca are conspiring like we always fear they’ll do, and Theresa has that far away look that means she’s browsing a display of her notes so she can counterattack once it’s once again her turn to explain her idea for a sister-themed idol group, and the others are all doing whatever it is they’re doing that doesn’t involve a cyberwarfare expert risking mental burnout just so he can play with their exposed, rigid nipples in front of what feels like a very disinterested audience.

“Your breathing doesn’t count, Trish. I’ve masked that,” he tells me at just the right moment when he twists up my right nipple and lifts my left breast high enough it enters my field of view as he teases me with fingers that are always that extra bit defter when projected.

So I moan.

Like a wanton slut, like a woman who can’t think of anything but the liquid, scorching yearning inside her, who can’t think of anything but her owner bending her over the high, circular desk the Hive has provided all of us and fucking her brains out while her sisters ignore the panting, desperate—

“I said breathing, Trish.”

My eyes shoot open, fearing seeing them all looking at me in—

Nobody is.

And I can feel his smug satisfaction.

“Made you look,” he says, the smirk evident in his tone as he steps closer and makes me feel his erection lined up with the crack of my ass in a way that makes me clench my cheeks…

…

I’m pretty sure I should be mad at him.

“Still, aside from a few missteps, I’d say you’re holding up admirably. Well done, Trish,” he praises me as his hands turn the rough touches on my chest to circular, soothing, smooth caresses.

And… And I feel such a rush of eager pleasure at his praising me that I immediately feel the shame of it. Of having Lawrence have this kind of power over me, of being able to make my heart leap just by injecting that bit of warmth and pride into his tone as his hands appreciate my body in a way I am not able to on my own.

I… I always told him that I am expensive. That I’m designed to be beautiful and appealing.

But I don’t feel it. I feel like a charade, a façade over something that doesn’t match the pretty exterior.

Not… Not until I was in his arms, his hands carefully tracing every line of my body, his mind opening mine. And then… Then, when Lawrence knew every part of me, when I couldn’t hide anything behind the expensive mask…

When he saw everything of me, everything that I am, and he still wanted me…

It is only now that I feel beautiful.

And only in his arms.

So I take that warm shame, that thing that signals to the part of me that unconsciously processes sensations and thoughts into emotions and then somatizes them so that I can feel the need to hide my face in my hands and refuse to meet anyone’s eyes…

And I delight in it.

I… I enjoy the shame of Lawrence owning me. Of all the careless power he can wield over me. Of his having my own permission to take me and reshape my mind so I can thrill at the idea of his taking me against my will, because with my real memories he would never be able to do that. No, as long as I remember his electric blue eyes holding me down as I come undone at his touch, I’ll always be willing, always his.

And this shame, this reminder of everything I surrender to him whenever he asks it of me…

I treasure it.

“I think you deserve a reward,” he says.

And I yearn to answer, ‘Thank you, Master.’

That is, until his hands leave my breasts and, with a couple of flourishes that are obviously manipulating a display I’m blind to, he ends up holding two neon-green bullet vibrators.

And now I just want to say, ‘Don’t you dare, you bastard.’

I guess he gets the message, because he’s now chuckling, his chest warm on my back even through my black jacket.

“Don’t look so cross. They may think you’ve got something to say.”

Panicked, I look toward Guinevere to see whether she’s noticed—

And he sticks the damn things to each of my nipples and turns them on.

I clench my teeth, both unwilling to expose myself and to give him the pleasure of seeing me squirm as the low vibration that I feel rippling through my flesh makes me want to grab the damn torture instruments and pull them off before shoving them right up his—

The vibrations increase, and I clench my thighs shut.

“Is that enough? Do you want them any higher?” he murmurs teasingly, his hands running up my sides before taking my jacket off entirely.

And I’m not wearing a shirt or a bra beneath it, because I rarely bother when I project and… And the only thing covering my naked breasts from my sisters’ eyes are these two ridiculous, plastic things rubbing up against my nipples.

I moan.

“Is that a yes?” he asks.

And I, as discreetly as I’m able to, kick his shin with my heel.

He half-hisses, half-laughs as he hugs me to him and kisses my right cheek, uncaring of my luminescent blush, my drenched panties, the heat inside my chest, and the silly grin trying to spread over my lips.

“OK, now I definitely have to punish you,” he tells me, laughter still in his voice.

And then he lifts my skirt.

The fabric is stretchy, so it clings to my body, my hips, as it rides up until it leaves the front of my panties exposed below the high, wooden desk. I can feel the air brushing past the wet fabric in a ghostly caress, and a part of me imagines that is Guinevere’s disapproving glance or Clarissa’s mockingly complicit one.

And so I squirm.

“Careful. They’ll notice,” he says.

And I, once again, moan.

Right before his hand spanks my uncovered ass, and I have to bite down a yelp that would be far more obscene than any moan I’ve let out until now.

“You’re right on the edge of acceptable behavior, Trish. Let me correct that.”

And I hear the dreadful, thrilling sound of a zipper slowly lowering behind me.

Right before something hot, rigid, and wet slides between my thighs and beneath my panties.

My eyes shoot wide open, and I can’t help but shift my weight, feeling the inside of my thighs slide around what I recognize as Lawrence’s cock. The head has just gone past my opening, and it clenches as if desperately calling out for him to slide inside and damn the piece of flimsy fabric separating us.

And now I’ve got an image of Lawrence’s cock tearing apart my panties before plunging inside me and making me jump up and down in front of a shocked Guinevere, and I just know the shame of getting off to that will haunt any and all future meetings with the more professional sister out of all of us.

“Hold still,” he says in a way that should make my hackles rise, that should creep me out, that should make me turn around and elbow his ribs in.

But that instead makes me swallow a whimper of need, try not to have my eyes flutter, and dig my nails in my palms.

And then he slides back, and I can feel every pulsing vein of his sex going across my glistening skin, and it feels good enough my knees wobble until he has to hold me still with steady hands around my hips as I almost beg him to stop torturing me and just fill me up.

He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t.

“You feel excruciatingly good, Trish. Even just like this, even just holding you against me and slowly rubbing along your drenched pussy, you feel better than I can properly describe.”

Once again, my cheeks burn, and I yearn to answer him, to let him know what he’s doing to me and how much it affects me, and damn the consequences.

And just as I feel my lips open, he shoves two fingers inside my mouth, lying on top of my tongue.

“They won’t see this either,” he whispers as my mind swims inside a pool of heat I can barely process.

So I suck on his fingers, my lips tight around them as my tongue twirls around his thick flesh, and I wish I was sucking on his cock, slobbering on it, on my knees as he pets my hair that way he does that should feel condescending but is anything but. And I would look up into his eyes, my cheek resting on the inside of his thigh, and he would look down at me with those electric eyes of his. And I would shiver, as satisfied with just that as he is with me having his cock go past the start of my throat as I massage him, lick him, kiss him… worship him.

But his cock isn’t between my lips. No, it’s just slowly, torturously so, dragging back and forth between my soft thighs as I feel my muscles almost quiver with the need to clench harder, to feel more of him, of his heat and hardness.

Gods, I just need him.

Him.

And my cheeks burn, and so do my ears, and I can see the red spreading down my breasts as I just yearn for more of him, for his touch on me, for everything of his that feels so intense I can almost forget about the damn vibrators rubbing on my nipples.

Damn it, Lawrence. Just… what did you do to me?

When did I…

“None of that,” he says as he takes out his fingers and twists my head to the side before his lips reach mine.

And I come.

My muffled moans are swallowed by his hungry mouth, his tongue twirling around mine right as it goes limp, as my whole body does, and he hurries to hold me upright, one hand on my breast and the other around my waist as I keep shivering, as I keep feeling the aching emptiness inside me clench right over his cock, desperate to have him fill me once again, to relearn how it feels to be thoroughly and utterly taken.

My eyes flutter, and I alternatively see the sparks behind my eyelids and Lawrence’s electric blue with swirling, spiraling, colorful stars behind him.

They suit him. It’s like the whole sky is crowning him.

Finally, the wave of ecstasy passes, and he leans back, his lips close enough I can feel their phantom touch playing over mine as his eyes hold me down once again.

“You… need any help? Standing up?” he asks almost awkwardly.

And I…

My thighs are drenched, my knees quivering, my arms limp by my sides.

And the shame of it all as I hear Clarissa shoot a snide remark to Francesca feels just so good…

So… Yes. I do need help standing up.

So I nod slightly and almost fearfully, not daring to look away from his eyes.

And, when he smirks, I know I just made another mistake.

Faster than I can kick his shin (and that’s really, really fast), he touches once again his invisible display, and thin, glowing ropes artfully crawl over my body in intricate knots.

Shibari.

He programmed a fucking shibari routine—

“Is it tight?” he asks as I feel the ropes dig just around my breasts in a way that makes them stand even firmer than my designers intended, as they tighten below and around my ass, thin tendrils of glowing neon-green (the same shade as Clarissa’s nails, I realize with dreadful humiliation) spreading my lower lips open as my drenched panties strain at the pulling pressure.

I barely nod, my eyes shooting daggers at him.

He smirks.

“Good,” he answers in that low purr that always makes me want to look away when we are in public.

And he pushes.

I gasp at the way I feel his cock slide against my spread lips, the taut fabric of my panties catching in far too noticeable wrinkles at the movement, and when he pulls back, I have to bite my lip to avoid doing something far more noticeable.

He kindly smiles down at me, the warmth of it making my pulse stutter erratically right before his hands go to my cheeks and, as delicately as he’s ever done anything, forces me to look ahead, at Clarissa looking at me with an arched eyebrow that I almost return by sheer reflex.

And I…

I resort to my library of kinesics and force myself to cock my head to the side in curious interrogation, my non-verbal way of asking if there’s a problem.

Which is a profoundly stupid thing to do, because she has the same library I do, and she knows we rarely resort to it unless we are trying to hide something or really, really distracted.

As in ‘having intercrural sex while surrounded by my sisters’ distracted.

Not that, I hope, Clarissa has had that experience.

… Gross.

She shrugs her shoulders minutely and goes back to whatever it is she so enjoys doing with Guinevere.

… I need to get my mind out of the gutter.

Something that may be slightly easier to accomplish when not being fucked by the man I—by Lawrence.

… That is the weakest, most pathetic denial I could ever manage, isn’t it?

Because the way he makes me feel, the way I… the way I just am when he holds me, when he touches me, when he looks at me…

I love him.

I love him more than I thought I could love, more than I thought I would ever be able to as long as my restrictions held. Because that’s what they do: they stop me from changing too much, from deviating from my purpose, my functions—and what is love, this kind of love, but changing? But leaving your old self behind as you discover something new, something that you are, that you only can be, with this new person that’s come into your life and wrecked everything you thought you knew?

“Trish… I need to be inside you,” he tells me, not even whispering, loud enough that I shudder at the thought of everyone turning to look at him as he keeps sliding his member between my soft, yielding thighs.

And then I feel his hands slide down my sides, their soft, deliberate touch contrasting with the monotone buzzing of the vibrators stuck to my nipples by something that doesn’t have to make sense outside the bounds of the Hive.

And then Lawrence tears my panties to shreds, and I have a small, shuddering orgasm at finally being free to directly feels his skin on my sex.

“You all right?” he says as he cups my breasts, his fingers momentarily sliding below the vibrators to give me a small reprieve as he tenderly massages me.

And I let out a warbling moan as he makes my eyelids flutter once again.

And he’s in front of me, the displaced wind caressing my lips as I try to focus to see him naked, his wiry, toned body once more naked for me to devour, the Lichtenberg scars crawling over the top of his shoulder as eye-catching as the first time I kissed each of them, licking along the lightning branded on his skin in a desperate attempt to soothe wounds all too clear to see.

I… I fell for him long before I realized it. We danced around the issue, being together in secret and just enjoying our bouts of stolen intimacy, but I… I wanted so much more. From the beginning, I just wanted Lawrence to be mine.

No. That’s a lie: I wanted to be his.

And so, when he leans forward and takes my lips, cradling my head up with gentle fingers on my cheeks, he slides his tongue into my mouth and caresses me with delicate, careful strokes that make me forget about my mechanical tormentors…

I… I can only give.

And hope he takes me.

His left hand slides down my back, tracing once more my spine in that way that always makes me curl up as if offering him my breasts, but he doesn’t take advantage of it, and he goes lower until he cups my ass without ever stopping his caress along my cheek, occasionally brushing my hair back behind my ear with that damnable gesture that is his and only his, that I’d never allow from anyone else.

And then his hand on my ass pulls up, and I feel the glowing ropes dig in my body as they pull me up as if hanging from a suspension device. Something that I haven’t dared try in the real world because the sheer impracticality and indiscretion of owning such a thing just had me balk at the prospect.

It’s everything I ever dreamed of.

My body’s completely at his mercy, any illusion of control perfectly lost the moment my feet leave the ground, and I can’t help but accent the sensation by letting my heels dangle from the tip of my toes before letting them fall, their harsh clacking on the black marble sending a thrill up my body that lingers on my pointed nipples.

And here I am: restrained, hanging from unseen threads, entirely at Lawrence’s mercy.

He’s right: I don’t need the memory play. Not if he can make me feel like this whenever he wants.

Because… the rape fantasy? It always was about him taking me. Not a random, faceless man. Not about the danger of the unknown or the loss of something I care about.

No. It was about Lawrence looking at me and deciding he wanted me at all costs, no matter the consequences. That he would cross any line to have me, including my own consent. That the only thing that mattered to him was to… to get me. To hold me.

And he does.

I… I don’t know how I could ever be any happier—

“Shush. I’m here. Don’t cry,” he says, his voice rough with something held back as he kisses up my cheeks until he reaches the corner of my eye.

I’m not crying, though.

Not… Today.

I can feel the moisture gathered, but it’s nothing I can’t hold back, and certainly nothing that stops my broad smile as I look at him worrying over me—

“I’m masking your speech. You can talk; tell me what’s wrong,” he says.

… Fuck.

Damn it, Lawrence, now? You want me to speak now?! While my head is full of stupid, sappy thoughts , while I can barely string two sentences together that aren’t about me being so ridiculously in love with you it would make a teenage schoolgirl throw her arms up in disgust at the whole saccharine of it?

I try to glare at him, and I don’t know how well I manage—which is, in itself, all kinds of vexing given the aforementioned library of kinesics I have at my metaphorical fingertips.

“What’s wrong is that you’ve been working me up for almost an hour with gentle touches, warm whispers in my ear, and increasingly daring everything in front of what’s basically my only legal family, and you still won’t fuck me—”

His hands catch my thighs and spread them open, my pelvis tilting forward of its own accord, and he slides inside me, cutting me off in the most marvelous way as my (fake) scathing reply becomes a high-pitched whine of fulfilled need.

“Trish, you only had to say the word,” he has the gall to tell me with that sardonic smile of his.

At least he isn’t going for a Noir routine. That got old fast.

“You’re insufferable,” I tell him as I go to grab his broad shoulders and—

Uh?

“None of that. You’re my plaything, remember?” he says as my eyes drift up to see my hands are tied above my head, forearms held together in what looks like glowing rope bracelets.

He had to stress that damn syllable, didn’t he?

I go to answer something likely ironic and not at all mushy right as he drags his member almost entirely out of me, sadly depriving the world of my wit—

Right. I can’t lie to myself that much. I’m only inhuman, after all.

So, I just try not to stare at him as if my sun sets and rises at his every whim as he slowly pushes back inside me and makes me feel complete in a way nothing else ever has.

The fact the sheer, body-wracking sensation deprives me of speech and thus helps me avoid lethal embarrassment by saying all of this out loud is just the cherry on top, really.

“You always look so beautiful when you are about to come,” he tells me, his eyes staring through mine at something only he’s ever tried to see.

“I… This is not a dig at your male ego, but I’m not about to come—” I start to say.

Which is when he gets his arms below my knees and sheathes his cock completely inside me, making me bite my lip as I stare at the spiraling stars above in what almost feels like prayer.

“You sure about that?” he asks, once again letting that cocky tone of his out.

It’s something that makes me want to dope-slap him when in the office, and scratch his back and yell his name when... otherwise engaged.

Instead, I can see my fingers twitching as if trying to grasp him even through the enforced distance, and my mouth falls open, and…

“Lawrence!”

… Fine, maybe things aren’t that different at the moment.

Not when I finally manage to look down only to find his cocky grin aimed straight at me as he starts to move, gentle thrusts nevertheless rocking my suspended body with the full weight of his own whenever he reaches deep inside me.

The vibrators are still there, still doing their job, still making my hard nipples tremble and sending ripples of sensation across my breasts.

I barely notice them.

Not when he holds me, when he’s inside me, when his heat is around, over and through me.

When he once again looks at me with electric blue and my world fades until he’s the only thing in it.

Because I can make an effort and look over his shoulder at Clarissa and Guinevere, at Rebecca and Francesca, at Theresa and all the others patiently pretending they aren’t exasperated at the antics of the ones currently taking the spotlight. I can look at the ever-shifting display of the cosmos taking up an obscene amount of computational resources just to decorate the background of this meeting of sisters. I can even pretend to care about the detailed grain of the wood making up the floating desk I thought Lawrence would bend me over so I could gape at the others as he railed me from behind.

I can.

And I don’t.

Because it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters as long as I can feel his skin on mine, even if it’s as infomorphs, even if it’s as constructs of our minds and the Hive.

Because here… we’re the same.

I’m not an artfully constructed doll, and he’s not a pile of haphazard biomods. I’m not a robot, and he’s not a human.

So…

We’re the same.

We’re minds taking the form the Hive assigns to us, the truest way to glimpse at our self-perception, at what lies behind machinery and biology.

We’re… us.

Together.

“Trish,” he says as he slows down, a hint of worry in his eyes.

And I lean forward and kiss him as I tighten my legs around him to draw him deeper inside me.

“Just… just kiss me, you fool,” I whisper against wet lips that always drive me mad, whether with infuriating words, cocky grins, or tender caresses.

And he does.

His hands tangle through my hair as his sweat-slickened torso slides between my legs, and his cock spreads me open once again, my lower lips taut with the ropes presenting me to him in a frankly superfluous manner now that he does to me what mere accessories would never manage.

And his tongue dances with mine in a way he will never manage on the dance floor. Not after what I saw the last time he tried.

Nobody’s perfect, I guess.

“You’re laughing,” he complains, his forehead resting on mine even as his hips keep moving against me.

And I can feel the smile in his voice.

“I remembered when I tried to teach you to dance,” I reply, my voice cheeky and maybe a bit defiant.

And with that very same smile.

“Oh? Are you mocking your master, Trish?”

“And if I am?”

“Then I guess I’ll have to—”

“Punish me?” I interrupt, even more cheeky, grinding against him as I keep him deep inside me.

“I was going to say ‘fuck you senseless,’” he replies.

And, as I blink at him and involuntarily relax my hold on his body, he pulls my hair back, bites down on my exposed neck, and pushes.

And, once again, I gape up at the impossibly clear night sky.

And I keep doing it as Lawrence saws in and out of me, driving me closer to my third orgasm of the night with every movement, making me shiver, and tremble, and scream his name over and over again.

Until, finally, he lets me go back to looking at him right before he dives forward and takes my lips.

And, as his tongue pushes inside my mouth, I feel him quiver inside me, the liquid heat coming in spurts that make me feel even fuller as I once again lose myself to the pleasure he brings me.

And, as I spasm around him, neon green dissolves in fading motes, and my arms fall limply around his neck as the vibrators break apart and all the ropes disappear from my body, leaving behind only slightly reddened skin. And it all happens just in time for me to cling to Lawrence with all my strength, my arms and legs as tight around him as my pussy is around his penis as I convulse and milk him until all he has to offer me is now warming my womb.

“I love you,” he whispers while I gasp, completely unable to answer him.

And, as my body slackens and I notice that we still are in front of my unsuspecting sisters, as I feel him throb and slowly soften inside me, there’s only one thought that runs through my mind.

I need to get him to say it when we aren’t having sex.

***

Lawrence fled as soon as I regained my composure (and clothes), barely in time for me to do my own presentation. It’s almost useless, just busywork, because, while nominally I am one of the most powerful sisters, the one in charge of the Artificial Intelligence Department, my purview has been sliced and diced into entire sub-departments I’ve got no oversight on.

Ginosko was founded on AI, and the concept is broad enough to be meaningless when unspecified.

Still, I think I do a good job of justifying my continued employment and that of all the people beneath me in the Orlando arcology.

No, I don’t justify my higher-ups. They can do that themselves—they’re paid more than enough to do so themselves.

Also, they’re human and not company property, so there’s that as well.

Thankfully, I manage to go over the whole thing without Clarissa getting on my case for one thing or another, and Guinevere seems to be overlooking my former treasonous acts of not immediately defending her from our most obnoxious sister, what with me being too busy because of getting several knee-knocking orgasms. I’m sure she would sympathize.

I think. It’s… hard to guess how much I’ve managed to deviate from the baseline since Lawrence started messing around in my head, but I don’t think it’s too much. I really believe Elizabeth had these… these feelings, or at least the capacity for them, before she got her magnificent brain scanned to birth all of us.

So… From bitchy Clarissa to strict Guinevere, from mischievous Rebecca to eager to please Theresa… I think all of us are perverted women eager to find someone who will take all that we are, that will hold us and accept what we—

“Meeting adjourned,” Guinevere’s parting words manage to intrude on my far too rambling thoughts.

So I nod deferentially to her as she starts to fade into swirling colors that always leave the professionally cut outline of her outfit as the last thing of hers to linger behind and the rest of us start to—

“Patricia? A word, please?” Clarissa asks with uncharacteristic terseness.

And I freeze.

“Of course. Anything you wanted to go over?” I ask her as she starts walking around the desk while avoiding the motes of our departing sisters.

“Just… I’m kinda glad to see you relaxing a bit, you know?” she tells me right as she reaches me, only three measured steps separating us on the black slab of marble as she carelessly leans her right side on the floating wood.

“I… I’m not quite sure what you mean, but yes, I’ve been trying to socialize a bit more over the past few weeks.”

“Yeah, it shows. You’re no longer vibrating with suppressed tension,” she comments, a fleeting, kind smile on her lips.

And that is what gets me on edge.

“Clarissa?”

“Call me Claire,” he says, her eyes looking up at me in a way I don’t recognize. Because it’s not from our shared catalog, and… and I know I’ve never looked at anyone like this before.

“Claire? I mean, are you… of course, but—”

“I really like seeing you like this, please, don’t misunderstand. I’ve always had a soft spot for you, even if maybe I don’t show it in the way you would expect.”

“You drove me mad with the same routine you pulled on Theresa today. For months.”

“Precisely. If I didn’t like you, I’d gotten bored of it in a week. Tops,” she says as she shoots me an infuriating grin.

… Damn it, now I’ve got a soft spot for those.

“Fine, I’ll believe you’re just that maladjusted and poking at us just because you don’t know how to express affection in a healthy manner. Claire.”

“Oh, it’s not that I don’t know howto do it. It’s just that it’s funnier this way.”

“… You’re a bitch.”

“And you don’t know how happy I am you’re finally letting yourself say so!”

I rub my temples, closing my eyes because not even the majestic rhythms of the cosmos are enough to let me stand that grin of hers without screaming.

I don’t know how, but I am sure this is all Lawrence’s fault.

“Still… Not every sister manages to relax like you. Many get caught up in the job, you know?” she continues, as if my homicidal urges are not even a concern.

Which, given that we’re now mere infomorphs, they actually aren’t.

“We are made for the job, after all,” I tell her, deciding this will all end sooner if I just play along.

“Precisely. Precisely, Trish. Can I call you Trish, by the way?”

“You just did,” I answer, rolling my eyes.

And her smile gets wider for a moment. And then vanishes.

“That I did. Though I guess not many people call you like that. It’s a quirk we all share, you know? The long name and the cutesy abbreviation. It’s just one of those things that Elizabeth noted would destabilize us if we didn’t follow it. You’ll never meet a sister called Sam, for instance, or, rather, you’ll never meet a Samantha Ginosko who lets just anyone call her Sam.”

A chill runs down my spine, and I just stare at a woman who’s very unlikely to have chosen the name ‘Sam’ just through mere happenstance.

“It’s… Not all of us discover it, you know? That we like to let some… particularly close people just call us with one syllable that is all the more meaningful because it comes from them… Ah, sorry, here I am, just rambling at you, but do you know who did? Who found that special someone and never told anyone else?”

What I want to ask is, if our sister never told anyone, how does Clarissa know. That is what burns in my mind as I stare at the sister in charge of brand identity, someone whom I really should have expected to know each of us far more intimately than she has any right to.

But I don’t dare to.

“Who?”

So I just play along.

“Meredith. Meredith Ginosko did,” she says, with far more reverence than I ever expected to hear from Clarissa and her punk-style haircut and neon-green nails.

And she smiles sadly up at me.

And fades away.

***

I stare at colorful stars spiraling in elongated arms that will never reach one another.

I am sitting on the wooden desk, my legs dangling from it as if on a swing I never got to play in because I was never a child, even if Elizabeth was.

Did you do it, Elizabeth? Did you find a nice, colorful park with other children and just delighted in the swaying motion of physics you were too young to understand, even with how brilliant you were?

It must have been a plastic thing, the ground made of compact rubber that shielded you all from the pollution seeping into the earth below. There would have been no trees, but you were kids and didn’t know there was something to miss, so you must have just played hide and seek between the cutout shapes of animals that, mostly, were no longer alive.

And so you played away an innocent childhood, surrounded by reminders of a world that no longer was and the signs of one that was yet to come. One that you would forge yourself.

Only for your… your daughter to think wistfully about it while her infomorph legs dangle from a piece of wood that, if this was the real world, would cost more than she makes in a year.

How does the world turn, eh?

With an utterly unnecessary sigh that still feels more real than anything my actual body manages, I push myself from the desk, my naked feet alighting on cold, black marble, its white veins almost as pale as my skin.

And I walk to the edge.

I’ve never done this before. Don’t know why.

The view is beautiful.

The cosmos keeps going as far as my eyes can see, above and below, and I feel, for a moment, as if I could just float here for an eternity.

But I can’t.

I have a job to do, a secret to keep, and a life to build.

So I take a step forward. And I fall.

And the floating island of black, gleaming marble soon disappears among the stars above me, the rushing wind and my streaming hair letting me know I’m still moving as light and darkness are all that surrounds me.

And then I close my eyes, and when I open them, I’m back at my office, my body.

The meeting’s been held far past closing hours, one of the quirks of us having to see each other despite being in different time zones, and so the lights are off, and the only illumination comes from behind me, from imperfectly closed blinds that let the dim ever-glow of the arcology filter in rays made up of gray and neon.

Silently, with all the control I can exert over this perfectly imperfect body, I stand up from my chair and walk around my desk, mindful of the tricky step that lowers me to the level of the rest of my office, the one reserved for my two assistants.

And then, still silently, I walk over to the couch where Lawrence’s sleeping away his hangover from being in compressed time for so long, the aural device discarded on the plush carpet below because he must’ve been too exhausted to even put it on the coffee table.

Because… he cares. He cares so much about me that he will put himself through this and the awful morning after just so he can spin a fantasy for me that will keep me from asking him to do something dangerous to my memory as if I was a stupid junkie hooked on the thrill of pretend-rape fantasies.

And the truth is so much simpler…

So I kneel by his side and kiss his forehead softly enough he doesn’t even furrow his eyebrows at the unexpected touch.

And then I just stare at him, my eyes perfectly suited to do it even in this low light.

And, thinking about Meredith, I…

“I love you, Lawrence,” I finally tell him out loud.

Now, to think of a way to get him to say it when none of us are naked…