Mated with the Cyborg (9 page)

He wondered if she noticed that while he hadn’t touched the birthmark deliberately, it had been almost impossible in the heat of passion to avoid contact. Her right shoulder pressed against his side even now, the splotch touching his skin.

“Thank you,” she said as if he’d done her some great favor.

He’d never been selfish in bed, but no woman had ever thanked him for the fucking, no matter how rip-roaring a time he’d shown her. He deserved no gratitude, and certainly not from Mariska, whose innocence he’d robbed. If he’d intended to boost her confidence, why hadn’t he settled for flirting? Why take the irrevocable step? Because out of bed, he was an asshole
.

“You don’t need to thank me.” Fuck, he was messed up.

“I didn’t think I’d get to experience that.”

He tangled his hand in the silken tresses, stifled a sigh, and offered the only thing he had. “You don’t need to worry about pregnancy,” he said. “I’m on the anti-fertility pill.” Not the truth, but close enough. His computer brain had signaled his nanocytes to halt sperm production.

“Children are a gift from the Great One.”

Or resulted from the merger of gametes from a male and a female. Potato. Potahto. For once, he managed to keep his mouth shut, and she cuddled closer.

KAI WOULD FIND out soon enough his anti-fertility drug was no match for the will of the Great One. As He deemed it, so it would be. If the Great One decided to bless her with a child, nothing could circumvent it, not even a Terran’s magic pill. His amusement had hammered home that he considered her beliefs to be superstitions, so attempting to convince him otherwise would be a fruitless endeavor.

Pregnancy didn’t always occur with the first mating, but, hopefully, there would be other occurrences. Until this moment, Mariska hadn’t considered having a child; her intent had been to experience a mating before she and Kai parted company. It had exceeded her hopes! Mating was very pleasurable for the male, but who knew a female could find satisfaction, too? Yearning and need had built to a crescendo and then she’d exploded with rapture and floated to a lassitude flooded with well-being.

All because Kai was a thoughtful lover. A considerate man. Even when he’d acted the part of an android, he’d demonstrated his caring in a myriad of little ways. She couldn’t help but like him—even when she’d assumed he was a spybot.

How fortunate to have him as her first. A Lamis-Odg male would have claimed his pleasure without any regard for hers. A woman’s enjoyment of the act had no relevance. And if she’d been with a Ka-Tȇ? Her stomach clenched.

Kai saved me from that, too
. She snuggled closer so she could inhale his scent, imprint it on her memory. His chest hairs tickled her nose. “Where did you say we were headed?” she asked.

“Darius 4.” His voice rumbled in her ear.

“That’s another planet?”

“A dwarf planet that has been terraformed and is now…a pleasure resort.”

She tilted her head to peer at him. “What is that?”

Pink tinted his cheekbones. “Uh…” He cleared his throat. “The resort is staffed by android sex workers.”

Her jaw dropped. “You mean people go there to…to…do what we just did? Why are we going there?” They had already mated. Why go to a pleasure resort? Unless, unless— “You want me to mate with the androids?” She sprang up to stare at him.

“Hell, no!”

“Do
you
intend to mate with them?” Her chest tightened at the visual image of Kai doing to another what he’d done to her. She felt almost sick. The pleasure workers were
androids
, but still. What if he liked a female bot better than he liked her?
I would rip out her synthetic hair!

“No!”

His vehemence reassured her, and she exhaled her relief.

“We need a place to hide until I figure out a solution,” he said. “Darius 4 draws all species of people, making it easy to blend in. Because everyone is different, nobody stands out. People are too focused on getting lai— I mean too focused on their own pleasure to pay attention to what anybody else is doing.”

So nobody would notice a Lamis-Odg woman. She settled back down and rested her head on his chest again.

“I reserved a private villa for us,” he said.

Villa was an unfamiliar term, but “private” seemed to imply there could be more mating. “That sounds nice.” She would employ all her powers of seduction, everything she’d learned in tutoring to ensure they mated again. She smoothed her hand over his chest, marveling at the difference in their physical structure. He was so hard, so muscled, so…. She stilled her hand over his right pec. A slight bump protruded beneath his skin. So he had one tiny imperfection. It didn’t detract from his attractiveness one iota.

She hugged him but taking care to ensure the sacred spiral didn’t touch his skin, even though there had been contact during mating. Could she have misunderstood what she’d been taught? For anyone other than herself to touch it meant certain death for that person. Yet Kai remained unscathed.

Perhaps the commandment applied to the Great One’s Chosen Few and not Terrans. Or possibly one had to touch it in an intentional way to be stricken.

Or perhaps it is not true
.
Perhaps it is just a birthmark
.

Blasphemy! Hurriedly she said a silent prayer for forgiveness that she dared to question. Proof came from faith itself. And if she were enough of a heretic to demand
evidence
, well, it was heralded in consensus. One person could be fooled, but everyone? Impossible.

“Welcome to Darius 4,” the male and female androids said in unison. A modicum of clothing revealed they both were well-endowed for their respective genders. The male wore a loincloth, the female a breast-hugging, thigh-skimming toga.

“I am Karina.”

“And I am Miktos.”

“It will be our pleasure to escort you to your cabana. Please follow us,” Their singsong voices harmonized.

With a light touch to her waist, Kai guided a wide-eyed Mariska along a path meandering through a terraformed park where couples and small groups freely expressed their passion in open-air gazebos, beneath the canopies of trees and on not-so-secluded patios.

“This is one of our most popular settings.” Karina swept a graceful hand to encompass the gardens where people and androids fucked like bunnies. “We also have specialized, deluxe venues.” She gestured to mirrored domes in the distance.

“Waterfall and woodland sexscapes are frequently utilized as well,” Miktos chimed in.

“Are they all nature settings?” Mariska asked.

“No. We also have sets for restaurants, libraries, infirmaries, and nightclubs.”

“Infirmaries? You mean like a medical facility? I don’t understand,” she said.

“Roleplaying,” Kai explained.

“Exactly.” Karina nodded. “Our patrons refer to it as ‘the naughty nurse game’ or ‘playing doctor.’ Of course, we do have a real infirmary in the event an injury occurs.”

“Darius 4 pleasure android programming does not allow us to inflict injury on any patron, but often guests arrive with their own partners or join up with others, and, on occasion, their game play becomes overexuberant,” Miktos added.

“Like the Ka-Tȇ?” Mariska said.

“The Ka-Tȇ are banned,” Miktos and Karina spoke together. “Darius 4 fosters free and open sexual expression—but not at the cost to our guests’ lives.”

It would be bad for business if paying guests were ripped apart and killed. He was glad the androids had mentioned it to give more reinforcement to what he’d told and shown Mariska.

“We will enter through here,” the androids said and gestured to a large dome reflecting the garden scene back at them. He wondered if the two droids were networked since they spoke in sync so often. Except for their singsong voices, they appeared quite lifelike. In a crowd composed of Terrans and Darius 4 androids, one would be hard pressed to identify the bots from sight alone. They didn’t even have the industrial-grade polymer smell. Instead, they exuded a pleasant musk—a masculine, woodsy one for Miktos, and a citrusy, floral one for Karina.

Miktos opened the door. Mariska gasped, and Kai had to admit he was impressed. It was as if they’d stepped into a tropical island paradise. Powder-soft sand stretched out to a turquoise ocean connected to an azure sky by a thin horizon. White surf crashed gently on the beach and filled the air with a smoothing susurration accented by the cry of sea birds. Five thatched huts perched on stilts over the water.

Part real, part illusion. His computer brain analyzed the data his cybersenses compiled. The expansive sky was a domed ceiling, arching 100.23 meters at its zenith. The water was real enough, composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen per molecule, with a 3.5 percent salinity, primarily sodium and chloride ion solutes. Except its ebb and flow wasn’t created by gravitational lunar attraction, but a tide machine that emitted a low-frequency hum most people couldn’t hear.

The crabs scuttling over the ground minerals composing the sandy beach? Tiny bots. Same for the birds soaring overhead.

Mariska dropped to her knees and sifted the sand through her fingers. “I have not seen sand since I was child on my home planet. And I have never seen water like that.”

“It’s called an ocean. Darius 4 did a good job of replicating it,” he said. “This scene would not be out of place on Terra.”

“We have on file that you requested our most private setting. Does this meet with your approval?” Miktos asked.

“Who is staying in the other units?” Kai eyed the five huts.

“No one yet. Later in the week we have a Malodonian and a Xenian scheduled. You have been placed at the far side,” Karina answered. “We opened this venue last week. We thought it would be popular among Terrans since it approximates one of the biomes on your planet. ”

“I’m not—” Mariska started to speak.

“This will be perfect,” Kai said while shaking his head.

“We will leave you, then.” Karina and Miktos bowed. “To enter your unit, palm the scanner. You may order meals to be delivered or you may come to one of the four dining facilities.”

After the androids departed, Mariska said, “They think I’m Terran! Why did you stop me from correcting them?”

“It’s safer if they don’t know you’re Lamis-Odg.” In booking the resort stay, he had checked the Terran box for both of them.

“You said anyone could blend in here.”

“It’s another level of protection.” Like the blaster he had tucked into his waistband under his shirt. Darius 4 didn’t allow weapons on the premises, so he’d been forced to leave his blasters and Tasers on the Panthera, except for the easily-concealed small one. “As you saw when we passed through the garden, people are too busy with their own pursuits to pay attention to others, but if anyone does notice us, two Terrans will arouse fewer questions than a Terran and a Lamis-Odg woman. I doubt many Lamis-Odg have visited Darius 4.” Terrorizing the galaxy left them scant time for recreation.

“But I don’t look Terran!” She crinkled her forehead. “Do I?”

No one would guess she was anything
but
Terran; however, he wasn’t sure how she would react. “You can pass if people don’t look closely.” He sidestepped and gestured to the hut. “Let’s check out our accommodations.”

Mariska hung back and eyed the sand longingly. “Would it be appropriate if I took my shoes off?”

He grinned. “I would say it’s
de rigueur
.” She looked at him with a blank expression, so he slipped off his boots.

A gleeful smile lit her face as she tore off her shoes and dug her feet into the sand. “It feels different from the dunes I knew, more powdery, but it’s nice.”

“Do you miss your planet?”

She wiggled her toes and nodded. “Sometimes. I was young when we left, but I remember the dunes, walking with my
nahnah,
the woman who took care of me. She was not allowed to accompany us when we traveled to my father’s space station, and I didn’t realize until later how much she had protected me. It seems like a long time ago.”

He wished he could promise the future would be brighter than her past, but many uncertainties still existed.

He stretched out his hand, and she stared at it before clasping it. “This gesture. This is something Terrans do?”

“Lamis-Odg don’t hold hands?” he guessed.

“No. Is there a purpose to it?”

“To show affection.” He tightened his fingers, and she squeezed back. “I…like you, Mariska.” Dammit, but he did. Too much.

“I like you, too, Kai.”

They smiled stupidly at each other, but it was a pleasant kind of awkwardness. Then he tugged on her hand, and they kicked through the mineral powder to their hut. Though constructed of synthetic materials, the faux wooden walls and thatched roof appeared authentic, as if the structure had been transported through a worm hole from nineteenth century Polynesia—or at least a twenty-first century holiday resort. However, the palm scanner outside the hut was pure twenty-fifth century.

He flattened his hand against the screen, the scanner beeped, and the door swung open. Belatedly, he wondered if his scan left a traceable imprint, but, hell, he’d already registered. All anyone had to do was ask guest services to discover he’d checked in. If anyone was going to leave a sign, better him than Mariska. Obido didn’t know his real identity.

“Whenever we need to scan in or out, let me do it,” he told her.

As they entered the room, a robotic green lizard clinging to the wall scurried out of sight. Darius 4 thought of everything. He eyed the netting around the large bed and hoped the resort developer had stopped short of creating mosquito bots.

A fan swished overhead even though the resort controlled temperature and humidity of the entire biodome for optimal comfort. Through the large windows, the ocean gave the illusion of stretching out to a far horizon—in reality, one kilometer. He marveled at the creativity—and cost—of creating such an authentic appearing playground. This setting was more than a cyberoperative could afford. Fortunately, he’d been able to hack into an off-planet account and transfer funds to pay for this jaunt. The planetary raider wouldn’t miss the credits.