Overclocked (9 page)

Tania didn’t say any­thing and, for a mo­ment, Carl wondered if she’d taken in the words he’d spoken. When she fi­nally answered, her voice was warm and filled with an emo­tion he had never heard be­fore.

“I was afraid you’d win be­cause you have so much more prac­tical ex­per­i­ence than I do,” she fi­nally told him. “I had the the­ory, but you’d been out there, ac­tu­ally set­ting up and ex­ecut­ing scen­arios, harden­ing sys­tems, stop­ping at­tacks. Don might’ve liked me but I al­ways thought you were the
board’s
fa­vour­ite.”

Carl snorted and dragged Tania close. Her thigh was warm against his for a mo­ment be­fore she shif­ted and straddled him. Carl didn’t know whether the feel of a hot-blooded wo­man within his arms was real or based on noth­ing more than re­col­lec­tion of real-time sen­sa­tions. At that mo­ment, he de­cided he didn’t give a damn.

“Stu­pid, isn’t it?” he said. “Here we both were, scared that the other per­son was go­ing to be the first in cy­ber­space when, in the end, it really didn’t mat­ter. We both ended up in the Blue within hours of each other, real-time.”

“Work­ing against each other all these months,” she ad­ded, “when we could have been work­ing to­gether.”

“All that time lost.”

With a slight tug, he pulled her face down to his and kissed her.

“God, I missed you,” he whispered against her lips.

“Show me.”

Carl didn’t need a second word of en­cour­age­ment. Slid­ing down the chair, he half-lif­ted her above him, run­ning his fin­gers through her wavy hair while he plundered her lips. She res­ted her el­bows against the top of the chair but stayed close to him and he felt the heat from her breasts warm his skin.

“How will this ap­pear on the sensors?” she asked when she fi­nally drew back to take a much needed breath.

“You mean to our two bod­ies laid out with all that equip­ment at­tached?”

She sucked at his bot­tom lip, drag­ging it into her mouth. “Hmmm…mmmm.”

He felt the scrape of her teeth against his tender flesh and gently pulled away so he could an­swer.

“The way I fig­ure it, we’re both clocked up. Our minds are mov­ing hun­dreds of times faster than nor­mal. I doubt our phys­ical bod­ies can catch up.”

“So what are you say­ing? That, as far as our phys­ical bod­ies are con­cerned, this is go­ing to be the equi­val­ent of wham-bam, thank-you-ma’am?”

He grinned. “All at the speed of light, darlin’.”

She laughed and the spasms vi­brated against his palms. The tremors felt good, felt real.

“You’re in­suf­fer­able,” she said.

“And you,” he kissed her, “are ir­res­ist­ible.”

She melted against him, her body pressed against his, and Carl closed his eyes, sup­press­ing a groan. It had been so long. Fif­teen long years without hear­ing Tania’s voice or touch­ing her warm skin. Fif­teen years of think­ing and re-think­ing all the stu­pid mis­takes he’d ever made in his life, start­ing with his smug and ar­rog­ant at­ti­tude in high school and end­ing with how he’d treated his co­hort dur­ing the Base­ment Five tri­als.

It was fi­nally time to make good, he told him­self. Start giv­ing in­stead of tak­ing all the time. It was the least he could do.

He reached for the front zip­per on her one-piece suit, pulling the fastener down to re­veal a de­li­cious ex­panse of latté skin, shad­owed to chocol­ate by the curve of her breasts. The nipples stood out, erect and proud, like pebbles of dark co­coa. Cradling her breasts, Carl bur­ied his face between them, breath­ing deep. The scent that hit his nos­trils went straight to his cock, harden­ing it in an in­stant. He moved his mouth, plumped a breast in his hand and suckled on the aroused nub.

Tania moaned above him and pushed her body at him. Need­ing no en­cour­age­ment, Carl sucked deep. He pulled on her nipple as if it was a tof­fee, strok­ing the sens­it­ive skin with his tongue and rev­el­ling in the shud­ders he felt ripple through her body. He had fan­tas­ised about this for years, but couldn’t be­lieve the in­tox­ic­at­ing real­ity of it. Fi­nally, the feel of an­other hu­man, writh­ing hot and will­ing, in his hands. No, not just an­other hu­man be­ing. A mere hu­man wouldn’t have aroused such sexual ex­cite­ment within him. It had to be Tania, in all of her fiercely in­tel­li­gent and sear­ingly pas­sion­ate glory.

He moved from one breast to the other, mak­ing sure he lav­ished the same care on both. She pulled back and he thought she was just in­tent on re­pos­i­tion­ing her­self again, but she moved farther and farther out of his grasp un­til she rose from the chair.

Carl was gripped by sud­den panic.

Had he done some­thing wrong?

With an ar­res­ted breath, he watched her, wait­ing for her to move, to say some­thing. To give him a clue. He couldn’t read the ex­pres­sion on her face. He didn’t think he read any dis­taste there but there was a watch­ful­ness to her eyes that he couldn’t in­ter­pret. Was she go­ing to walk out on him? Try to find her own way back to Base­ment Five?

When she reached for the zip­per on her suit, he al­most cursed. Once again, he had blundered, think­ing he knew what she wanted when it was clear he didn’t know a damn thing at all. Fif­teen years of think­ing about her and he still man­aged to fuck things up.

His eyes widened when she grabbed the pull and dragged it…
down
. She wasn’t wear­ing a bra and—oh God—by the looks of things, she wasn’t wear­ing any un­der­wear either. (Was this his visu­al­isa­tion or hers? Did it mat­ter?) The ma­ter­ial of her suit stretched as the zip­per pulled against it then split open over a trim torso and a de­light­ful, slightly roun­ded belly. Lower, and it fin­ished kiss­ing her ab­do­men. Lower….

Carl’s breath caught in his throat.

The jour­ney ended just be­low the edge of a lus­cious tri­angle. Tania’s skin had slowly been dark­en­ing as his gaze fol­lowed the down­ward path and now it stopped at a tangle of black, frizzy curls.

He felt the weight of Tania’s gaze watch­ing him…watch­ing her. Roam­ing all over his body the way his own gaze was roam­ing over hers. Rest­ing on the junc­ture of his thighs where his own arousal showed clearly through the slick ma­ter­ial of his suit.

She slipped her arms out of her suit’s sleeves and let the ma­ter­ial dangle on her body, its weight slowly drag­ging at her hips. Her body was curved, her breasts high and proud, an erotic land­scape in chocol­ate that Carl yearned to ex­plore.

When Tania stepped out of the suit com­pletely, Carl thought he would come just on the im­age of her com­pletely na­ked in front of him. With far less grace, he re­moved his own suit and grim­aced a little at the folds of old-look­ing skin that greeted him. Be­fore he could think about it any fur­ther, she was on top of him, strad­dling him with her legs. The scent of her arousal hit his nos­trils like the finest aph­ro­dis­iac at the same mo­ment that he res­ted his hands on her hips.

“I am so wet,” she whispered, lean­ing down to breathe the words into his ear. “I can’t help my­self. Every time I think of you, I just…want to fuck you.”

With his right hand, he reached up and pulled her head to his mouth, push­ing his tongue between her lips. The arousal he had felt be­fore was noth­ing com­pared to what Tania’s words were do­ing to him now. Strain­ing, he wanted to bury him­self deep in­side her and pis­ton into her with des­per­ate en­ergy. As if aware of his thoughts, she lowered her­self so her sex brushed the tip of his dick. Her de­li­ciously wet and musky sex. With a thrust, he tried to drive him­self up­wards but her hips danced out of range. Even as he rav­aged her mouth he felt her smile against his lips.

The minx.

When she tried the man­oeuvre for the second time, his left hand was ready. He pushed her hips down against her move­ment away and sud­denly, glor­i­ously, he was en­fol­ded by her slick wet heat.

Carl threw his head back and rev­elled in the feel­ing. He couldn’t think. He doubted he could even breathe. His en­tire body, his en­tire es­sence, was con­cen­trated on the one spear of flesh now em­bed­ded in the hot sex of his wo­man.

His wo­man.

It felt so good, soun­ded so good, even if it was only in the re­cesses of his mind.

And then Tania began to move. She un­du­lated against Carl’s erect cock, mas­sa­ging it and squeez­ing its head. At the same time, she pushed her­self up, then back down again.

“Don’t,” he gasped. “Too good.”

His eyes were closed so he didn’t know what she was plan­ning un­til some­thing hard and sharp flicked across his nipple. He shuddered at the feel of her fin­ger­nail against him and the zap of elec­tri­city that streaked straight to his groin.

“No.” He said some­thing he’d never said be­fore while hav­ing sex with a wo­man. “Please.”

She paused and he star­ted to smile with re­lief un­til he real­ised that that hand was now mov­ing down his body. It skimmed his torso, bent and circled his cock with a couple of fin­gers then re­treated. But not too far. Carl felt a fa­mil­iar slow vi­bra­tion against his pu­bic hair and real­ised that Tania was mas­turb­at­ing her­self. A part of him pro­tested, want­ing to do that job him­self, but he couldn’t work past the bonds of para­lys­ing pleas­ure that held his body in thrall.

Her gasps of pleas­ure filled the air, in con­cert with the spasms that gripped then re­leased his stiff cock. When she moved, rid­ing him in a frantic jumble of con­trac­tions, moans and de­li­cious fric­tion, he strained to hold on to his con­trol. It broke when the waves of her or­gasm con­sumed her. Tania’s moans turned to screams and the left hand at his shoulder spasmed and dug into his flesh. The ad­di­tional sen­sa­tions were too much. With a sense of re­lief, Carl pumped into her, his hips lift­ing off the chair, and he lost him­self in the best or­gasm he had ever ex­per­i­enced in his life.

“Do you have a bed­room in this place,” a voice mur­mured in his ear, “or have you been an in­som­niac for the past fif­teen years?”

Carl roused him­self from the pleas­ant stupor he’d been mired in.

“No,” he said and wondered why his voice soun­ded so hoarse.

He cleared his throat and tried again. “Seems the brain needs down-time, body or no body, so yeah, there’s a bed­room.” He paused. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”

Neither of them moved.

Fi­nally, with a sigh, Tania fi­nally lif­ted her­self away from his body. Carl looked down at him­self and his slum­ber­ing cock with a feel­ing of sat­is­fac­tion. Right now, he just wanted to col­lapse where he sat but knew that wasn’t the gen­tle­manly thing to do.

Stand­ing up on a pair of dis­tinctly wobbly legs, he half-zipped his suit back up and held out his hand. Tania hes­it­ated for a mo­ment, then bent to pick up her own suit with one hand, put­ting the other in his.

“The bed­room’s through here,” he said, in­dic­at­ing a door at the far end of the room with a jerk of his head.

They headed to­wards it slowly, paus­ing only to open the door be­fore walk­ing across the floor to col­lapse again onto a large bed.

“How will we know when to wake up?” Tania asked, her voice husky and drowsy.

Carl thought it was the most won­der­ful sound in the world. A sleepy Tania. He knew he would re­mem­ber it for the rest of his life.

“I’ve got it down to a fine art by now.” He slid next to her. “Don’t worry, I’ll wake you up.” His voice was ser­i­ous. “I prom­ise.”

“Mmmmm.”

She snuggled her head into his shoulder.

Carl’s last thought be­fore he, too, was over­taken with slum­ber was to won­der whether his skin was look­ing a bit younger than when he had glanced at it earlier on in the day. He thought it did but, then again, he might have just been ima­gin­ing things.

Tania stared at Carl across the length of his work­ing room. “You can’t be ser­i­ous.”

She noted the bur­geon­ing ten­sion in Carl’s shoulders and the lines etched deeper in his face, but didn’t care.

“It’s the only way, Tania,” he ar­gued. Be­hind him, mon­it­ors dis­played the latest stat­ist­ics on the Rhine-Temple bot­net. Traffic, sites at­tacked and in­vaded, po­ten­tial vic­tims. It was like watch­ing a slow-mo­tion mas­sacre, but Tania had other things on her mind.

“The only way to what? Turn your­self into a mar­tyr?” She shook her head. “I can’t be­lieve you’re think­ing of go­ing up against that thing by your­self. You could get your­self killed.”

Her eyes nar­rowed as a sud­den thought struck her. “Don’t tell me what we just had was your idea of self-pity sex?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Carl threw his hands up in des­pair. “You’re wound up pretty tight, aren’t you?” He strode over to where she stood. “Can’t you un­der­stand that I’ve fi­nally come to my senses? Whether real or vir­tual, fif­teen years is a long time to think things over, Tania.”

He reached out to touch the smooth skin of her cheek, his voice soften­ing. “You get to re­live your mis­takes, over and over again. To real­ise what an as­shole you’ve been down through the years. You start yearn­ing for a chance to re­deem your­self, to fi­nally prove that there really is a good per­son, deep down in­side.”

Tania felt a sting­ing wet­ness in her eyes and blinked quickly. She swal­lowed, hop­ing her voice was steady and in con­trol. “In that case, it makes even less sense. You’ve fi­nally achieved some de­gree of – what? – Buddha-like en­light­en­ment and now you’re will­ing to throw it all away on a jumped-up com­puter virus?”