An Original Sin (14 page)

He frowned. Something about this sounded unnatural. “And these men you create, they work for the women?”

She shook her head. “Oh, no. Robots do the work. My men are used only for sexual fulfillment.”

He swallowed hard. “You mean…women…”

There was laughter in her voice. “We don’t have men, remember. We need…release. My men look, move, and talk like real men. They’re programmed to respond sexually to the desires of their owner. You’d never guess they weren’t real.”

Anger seeped around the edges of his discomfort. “And when ye first saw me, ye thought I was…”

“Mm-hmm.” There was actually a purr in her voice. “I thought you were the ultimate creation.” Her tone turned thoughtful. “And in a way I was right, wasn’t I?”

He could find no words to say.

Seemingly forgetful of her fear, she turned over to face him. “So what do you think?”

Rage built in him, and he knew in some rational corner of his mind he was about to say something he’d regret. “I think it is an abomination before God.”

She sighed. “You really have to stop reacting so emotionally to everything. I provide a needed service.”

“Do ye have…” God’s teeth, he could hardly get the question out. “Do ye have a…man for yerself?”

Dimly in the dark room, he could see her bite her lip in indecision. “No. It’s sort of like if you work in a bakery and have to see and smell the baked goods all day long, you lose your desire for them. Since I make them, it’s hard for me to forget they’re not real. I can’t lose myself in the fantasy.”

“Thank God,” he murmured. “I wasna sure before, but I think ’tis past time ye experienced the real thing. Tonight.”

Without warning, he reached out and pulled her hard against him. “The dance of love between a man and woman ne’er changes, lass, and six hundred years between us means nothing tonight.”
And may I return to Scotland with no regrets.

Somehow he sensed that he wished in vain.

Uh-oh.
Now she’d done it. Flash point. Or rather,
flesh
point, because every place his body touched hers burned with a heat that convinced her she might go up in flames at any moment.
Real.
Like a greedy child, she wanted every part of him pressed to her, wanted to memorize his scent, his taste, his
realness.

Why not, just this once
? Enjoying this man’s body just once would be like trying to eat just one of those potato chips she’d bought yesterday—totally bad for her, totally addictive. Besides, there was more involved here than just sexual satisfaction. She wasn’t quite sure what it was, but if he’d only stop touching her for a moment, she’d think of it.

Why not go for it? There’s no guarantee you’ll ever get another chance to be with a real man. Do you want to die not knowing what it’s like
? Once back in her time, he wouldn’t want anything to do with the woman who’d betrayed him. Besides, he’d have millions of women to choose from. And she’d wanted this, craved it, ever since waking to find him beside her, no matter what she said to the contrary.
Just this once.

Her inner battle came to a screeching halt when she realized he’d managed to slip her gown off while she fought the good fight. “I haven’t decided yet. I’m still thinking.”

His soft chuckle was familiar, expected. “There’s nothing to think about, lass. Ye had to know this would happen when ye climbed into bed wi’ me. ’Tis the way of men and women.”

She gulped back tears. Not fear, but anticipated loss. She’d grown used to his laughter, the cadence of his speech. When he was gone forever, would she carry his memory like an unhealed wound the rest of her life? She suspected she would.

As she stared across the chasm of time at his face—the harshness, the beauty—she knew she’d made her decision long ago. “Okay, what do I do?”

His smile flashed whitely in the darkness. “Ye dinna do anything, lass. This is yer first time. Let me—”

“Absolutely not. We share responsibility for everything in my society.” Who was she trying to kid? This wasn’t about responsibility, but about having a part in what happened between them. If she took an active part, she’d still feel in control.

He actually groaned. “This isna a responsibility. I canna believe we’re discussing this.”

“I still think—”

“Dinna think. ’Tis the curse of women.”

He gave her no time to refute his claim as he lowered his lips to hers.

She’d expected his mouth to be hard, eager—if the feel of him against her hip was any indication of his readiness. But the softness of his touch took her breath away. He caressed, reassured, offered himself, and she couldn’t resist pressing her mouth against his lips, memorizing his texture, the tangy lemon taste that lingered from the lemonade he’d drunk.

His kiss reached down to light a flame that had lain dormant, unrecognized. What she’d believed to be desire had been merely flickering candlelight. This…this was the fiery explosion of a rocket blast, hurling her into an uncharted universe. When he broke contact with her lips she wanted to cry with frustration. She wanted more, damn it, more.

He feathered kisses around her lips and she parted them. He took her offering and delved deeply. She met him, touching him as he touched her. Never had she guessed a mouth could trigger the spiraling need that wrung a shattered gasp from her.

But it wasn’t enough, could never be enough. Not when this might have to last forever.

When he withdrew, she barely had time to murmur a protest before he trailed a searing path of kisses down the side of her neck.

She’d made so many men and believed them lifelike, able to fulfill a woman’s deepest need. She’d been wrong.
This
was real—moist heat spreading through her like the fire lakes of Tanar, her breaths coming in harsh gasps as though sucked from her by Roshun’s swirling wind demons. But she couldn’t let go until…until…

She rolled on top of him.

He stopped kissing her, and she sensed his puzzlement. “ ’Tis not a position I’d choose to give ye the greatest pleasure for yer first time, lass.” His voice, harsh with need, belied his calm words.

Now she was puzzled. “You’ve…touched me. It’s time to mate, isn’t it? And I have to be on top for that.”

“Why?” His tone had gone beyond puzzlement to incredulousness.

“When I send out the instruction manual with my men I suggest this as the optimum position for—” Why was she babbling when hunger shrieked and beat at the walls of her heart?

“Damn it to hell.” His muttered expletive didn’t sound promising. “Dinna compare me to one of yer fake men. Ye canna sit on top of me like…like the queen of the mountain and tell me how and when to pleasure ye.”

He rolled her over, and she found herself looking up into his fierce glare. “ ’Tis not time until I say ’tis time.”

“Why not?” She’d studied behavioral disks on the sexual relationships between men and women, and they all stated that mating could take place when the woman was ready. “I’m ready.”

“Ye havena the experience to know if ye’re ready. I’ve made love to scores…to a few women, and I know. Ye’re not ready.” His savage assertion made her burrow deeper into the bed.

“You seem kind of arbitrary to me,” she murmured from her cocoon beneath him. She reached for some scathing remark about his need to control their mating, but when he touched one nipple with his tongue, she almost shot from the bed.

“Number four,” she managed to gasp.

“Can ye not save yer voice for womanly cries of satisfaction?” The sandpaper edge of his voice spoke of barely leashed hunger.

Satisfaction
? What a pale, washed-out word for the exploding star-shades of red his touch—

He drew the nipple into the warmth of his mouth and suckled.

“Number five!” Her voice was a cry of despair torn from the knowledge that her life’s work had been a failure.

“God’s teeth, will ye stop blathering, woman.” His words came in biting gasps.

She wanted to explain, but right now she couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate on anything except what he was doing to her.

As he softly kissed a line of blistering heat down her stomach, she silently counted—six, seven.
Useless.
Everything she’d ever done was useless.

She lifted her hips in an instinctual offering. History disks said—She couldn’t remember, didn’t want to remember.

“Ye’re a beautiful woman, Fortune.”

The soft touch of breath from his whisper told her he’d moved lower. She felt like a loose-jointed doll as he gently parted her legs and touched her with his mouth.

“Twenty!” she screamed, arching from the bed—pleading, sobbing, aching for…

“Stop counting.” His grunted order was one part leashed tiger and two parts angry male.

“I…I can’t.” My God, were those tears sliding down her face? “That’s number twenty in my manual.” What was she saying? Why was she saying it? “You skipped steps eight through nineteen. But it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter at all.”

His muttered curse was crudely primitive and particularly fitting for the situation. But for all his obvious aggravation, his fingers skimming the inside of her thighs were whisper light.

She shivered, and he moved his head up to lay it on her stomach. Why had he stopped when every inch of her flesh vibrated with need, when her body clenched with unbearable anticipation? “Please…” She couldn’t voice what she wanted, because she wanted too much.
Now.

His soft chuckle sent a puff of warm breath across her skin, and she drew in her stomach on a startled gasp. She’d never thought her body could be so sensitized to his touch that even his breath could…

“Ye shouldna rush, lass. ’Tis the enjoyment of the journey that makes the end so glorious.”

Hmmph.
Fancy words, but his voice sounded strained, strung tight with the same need that made her long to beg. “My men don’t wait. When the woman is ready—and I’m ready—they do it.” Her voice quavered, further proof she’d lost control, a control that had been the cornerstone of her existence until Leith.

“Do it? ’Tis a cold way of describing the wondrous feeling when a man and woman join.”

His fingers drifted over her stomach and softly circled her breasts, leaving a trail of molten heat in their wake. A totally irrevelant tear slid down her cheek, but she couldn’t summon the courage to reach up and wipe it away for fear her movement might stop the wonderful things he was doing.

“Ye think ye’re ready, but ye’re not, lass. That is the difference between yer fakes and a real man. Ye’ve made them to fit yer own imagination, but I can take ye beyond what ye’ve ever imagined.”

And he did.

An eternity beyond number twenty, she clung to his sweat-slicked body, every inch of her own skin an extension of his, her universe centered on the almost-pain ecstasy of his finger rubbing her swollen nub, then slipping into her, the in-out thrust that made her moan her inability to stand any more.

She felt the quiver in his body, his hands, as he parted her legs, then settled between her thighs. His raw power, his heat, his scent of sex and hot male, overwhelmed the last of her control, and she shook with need. If he didn’t take her now, she’d splinter into a million star-fire sparks.

But even through her haze of desire, she knew that when he lifted his hips and slowly entered her, it was with a care for her newness.

She didn’t close her eyes as he slid into her. Wincing at the momentary pain, she watched his expression, memorizing it for lonely winter nights in a pale, meaningless future. Wrapping her memories around his fullness deep within her, she cried out as he withdrew only to plunge deeply again and again, each strong thrust sparking a bluelit flame that burned higher, hotter. She had no voice left as the sensation built, quivered, then exploded in a comet-streak of white light and heat. On some other plane, she was aware of Leith’s cry joining hers.

And afterward she lay still beside him, listening to his harsh breathing, and cried. Silent tears slid down her cheeks—because she might never experience this wonder again, because she’d been foolish enough to think she could capture this solar flash within her poor imitations of men.

“Do ye have a number for the last?” His tone held no anger, only faint curiosity.

“No.” Was that wimpy voice hers? “I never realized it could be so…so…”

“Aye. ’Twas the same for me.” He gently kissed her damp forehead. “But I canna believe ye counted the steps. Ye must tell me what comes between seven and twenty. No real man would last so long.” He playfully squeezed her. “I dinna think I would want to be a man in yer world.”

“Without that last step, the others don’t matter, and none of my men could come close to…to…”

“A machine canna touch yer heart, Fortune.”

Her life’s work, a failure. How could she tell women her men were lifelike when they didn’t even come close?

It would be best if this never happened again, because she somehow knew the explosion of joy would come only with Leith, and Leith was forever out of reach. If he returned with her, he’d belong to the world, as he should. Besides, he’d hate her for dragging him there. And if he returned to his time…Either way, this could never happen again. She sensed that each time it did, her agony at Leith’s loss would increase.

Wrapped in his embrace, she felt his breathing ease. He snuggled closer and touched the tip of her ear with his tongue. “ ’Twas wondrous.” His low murmur sent shivers of longing to nerve endings that should be suffering overload by now.

“Yes.” There was nothing more to say. The thought of
returning to her sterile workroom to create more fakes—fakes that seemed tawdry and inadequate measured against Leith—depressed her. Would she go through the rest of her life knowing her greatest joy had happened three hundred years in the past—never to be experienced again, never to be forgotten?

“It didna matter that ye were not on top?”

She heard the laughter in his voice and for once didn’t react angrily. “Oh, but I was.” She reached out and traced the line of his strong jaw. Her hand shook. “Not only was I on top, but I floated free, beyond the stars, beyond eternity.”

“Aye.” His soft chuckle reached all the way to her toes. “Ye’re like no other, lass. Ye remind me of a loch near my home. ’Tis small and verra blue. A foolish man would think it shallow and cold. As a lad, I fell into it one bitter winter day. ’Twas amazing. The water was warm. A man could close his eyes and sink into its heat.” Leith kissed the sensitive skin beneath her ear, and she shivered.

“But when I tried to stand, I couldna touch bottom. I still dinna know how deep the loch is, but some things are best left to imagine.” His lips touched the base of her throat where her pulse pounded a mad rhythm. “The loch’s mystery still draws me.”

She believed him, and felt a warm spurt of happiness, knowing how many women he’d probably sampled, how many he had to compare her with. Women who’d felt his touch the same way she’d felt it, touched him in ways she hadn’t.

She hadn’t touched him. “I’m sorry, Leith. I didn’t do anything to give you pleasure. My men are programmed to do everything, and I forgot. I lay there like a big lump of emotional dough.” The thought of running her hands over the hard planes of his body brought an excited shiver. She would remember that when she went back to work.
Maybe if she made her models more interactive, she’d increase her clients’ enjoyment. Then again, maybe not. Running her hands over a lifeless fake couldn’t begin to compare with sliding her fingers across the body of a vibrant, living man. A real man. This man.

“Dinna fash yerself, lass.”

His laughter vibrated in her heart, and she stored the memory to pull out later, years later.

“Ye didna need to touch me. Yer response pleasured me.” He pulled her closer against him, and she fought the rising tide of hysterical tears.

No!
She couldn’t take it. Instinctively, she knew each time they became one, the memories would double in intensity, torturing her, reminding her of a future she could never have.

She also knew she wouldn’t be able to resist if he wanted her again, and from the feel of his body, that would be very soon.
No.
She couldn’t resist him, so she had to make sure he stopped wanting her.