Overclocked

In cy­ber­space, there are new chal­lenges, new dangers…new ways to die.

Carl Orin, Base­ment Five's first cy­ber­naut is lost in a uni­verse of bits and bytes. His rival, Dr. Tania Flowers, should be happy that karma has bit­ten Carl in the back­side, but she's itch­ing to get into cy­ber­space her­self and what bet­ter ex­cuse than a one-wo­man res­cue mis­sion?

Tania thinks she's pre­pared for what she'll find, but she's about to dis­cover that the di­gital world is more dan­ger­ous than she ima­gined. When she finds Carl, she faces a big­ger is­sue than her in­jured pride. An AI-fuelled bot­net is dev­ast­at­ing the di­gital land­scape, and only a sui­cide mis­sion into its core will avert total dis­aster. In the midst of their re­kindled pas­sion, hard de­cisions need to be made. Who will at­tempt the im­possible? Who will stay be­hind? And what hap­pens if either of them fails?

“Mmmm. That...is...so...de­li­cious.”

Tania threw her head back in blatant in­vit­a­tion, coax­ing Carl to bring his tal­en­ted mouth up to her throat. Never one to turn down such a tempta­tion, he smiled against her skin and she felt it along her nerve end­ings. His lips, warm and full, fin­ished suck­ling on her breast and worked their way over, lick­ing the dark crevice of her cleav­age be­fore mov­ing up to kiss the length of her neck. His tongue dar­ted out once to flick at her adam’s apple. It made her giggle, a low husky sound. Her fin­gers clutched at his head, part­ing the gold silk of his hair, slid­ing along its cool smooth­ness.

“Do you know,” he said, between un­even breaths, “what I want to do to you right now?”

“No.” She purred. “Sur­prise me.”

It was the easy way out, hand­ing her con­sent to him on a plat­ter like this, but she was men­tally ex­hausted and happy to let him take the ini­ti­at­ive. The stresses of work, the pres­sures of their own pro­fes­sional re­la­tion­ship, had all come to a head. In fact, Tania felt as if she’d been flattened by a steam­roller. If Carl wanted to take the up­per hand, she was more than ready for it.

He reached across her body and ducked his head be­low the bed for a mo­ment, emer­ging with two long wide rib­bons.

Tania’s eyes widened. What was he up to? And were those rib­bons made of...suede?

“What’s this?” she asked and couldn’t help the note of sus­pi­cion that crept into her voice.

Carl sidestepped the ques­tion.

“I know how hard you’ve been work­ing,” he told her. “You de­serve a rest. Some pam­per­ing.”

“Carl—”

He moved back to­wards her, rub­bing him­self against the length of her na­ked body. Oh, but that felt good. Good enough to knock any sense out of her mind. His ri­gid cock pressed against the tight dark curls at her groin and Tania couldn’t help but move her hips against him.

“Can’t I spoil you every now and then?” he asked, slid­ing the leather across her breasts.

That was their prob­lem. Carl thought he could solve everything with sex. Their in­fam­ous of­fice ar­gu­ments had of­ten ended with them en­twined be­hind closed doors. Tania wasn’t sure what it was about him but Carl had a way of de­mol­ish­ing her de­fences as if they were made of tis­sue.

“Carl—”

“Haven’t we both been burn­ing the mid­night oil lately? Put­ting weeks and weeks of work be­fore…pleas­ure?”

Prop­ping him­self on his el­bows, he took the shorter length of suede and slowly en­circled Tania’s head with it. In the moon­light stream­ing through the win­dow, she saw his face. It was stubbled and mys­ter­i­ous, partly in shadow so she couldn’t read his full ex­pres­sion. He gave her a fi­nal quirk of his eye­brow and even that ob­scured view of him was gone when the rib­bon of suede slipped over her eyes.

“Carl—”

“C’mon Tania, tell me you don’t like it.”

His breath tickled her ear, his voice pitched low. She re­mained si­lent.

“We’ve been work­ing so hard,” he re­peated. “Surely we de­serve a break?”

He was right on so many counts.

They
had
been work­ing too hard. For months, they’d been man­oeuv­ring around each other, against each other, in a high-tech hot­house en­vir­on­ment. Try­ing to prove that each was bet­ter than the other. That she was faster than him. That he was more ad­apt­able than her. That they were both more fo­cused than any other hu­man be­ings on the planet.

After eight weeks of the fi­nal trial phase, Tania was ex­hausted. If she or Carl had man­aged to win vic­tory cleanly, it wasn’t ap­par­ent from the daily status meet­ings they at­ten­ded. And time was run­ning out.

“We’re not ma­chines, Tania,” Carl said.

To­night, in the sooth­ing dark­ness of her room, with Carl’s mel­low voice whis­per­ing in her ear, Tania wanted to be con­vinced by his se­duct­ive pleas.

“We need time to en­joy life. Drop out of the rat race for an hour or two.”

De­lib­er­ately re­lax­ing her shoulders and neck, Tania let the pil­low take the weight of her head, set­tling back into the mat­tress with a sigh. She felt a pair of lips touch hers and stifled a groan. Why was it that the man she felt most af­fin­ity for, the one who was able to light her up like Christ­mas fire­works, was also the most ad­ept at push­ing each and every one of her but­tons?

When she was con­sumed by lust for Carl, as she was now, there wasn’t a thing he could do wrong. When she wasn’t, there wasn’t a thing he could do right.

“You’re think­ing again, aren’t you?” he asked. His breath stroked against her throat for a mo­ment, then moved down to her col­lar­bone. “That’s your prob­lem. You’re al­ways think­ing.”

She felt his hot mouth tak­ing in a nipple and suck­ing on it. He wasn’t gentle and she… liked it. Nois­ily, he suckled as if want­ing to draw the erect nub down into his throat. Tania arched her back and groaned again, claw­ing at his head. She could feel her sex, throb­bing and soak­ing wet, by the time he de­cided to move to the other breast.

“Nope,” he said, from a spot halfway down her torso. Tania’s fin­gers stopped their frantic quest­ing through his hair to listen more closely to what he was say­ing. “This isn’t work­ing. Not the way I want it.”

She felt his body lift away from hers and fought a pang of sharp loss. Then hands res­ted on her hips and she found her­self flipped onto her stom­ach.

“Carl!”

“Hush, Tania. Just go with the flow. Okay?”

Go with the flow.

The term struck her mo­ment­ar­ily dumb. That had al­ways been the cri­ti­cism from ex-boy­friends. She couldn’t “go with the flow”. She couldn’t “let go”. The fact that they were right only made Carl’s soft jibe that much worse.

He grabbed her arms, en­cour­aging her to stretch them above her head and Tania felt some­thing twin­ing around her wrists. That must be the second long piece of suede he’d fetched from the side of the bed.

Go with the flow, Tania.

After a mo­ment of wry de­lib­er­a­tion, she let her­self go limp.

Then a thought struck her. He wasn’t try­ing to...dis­tract her, was he?

“Carl, this isn’t about the meet­ing to­mor­row, is it?”

She winced at the harsh note in her voice but let the words stand.

“You mean,
the
meet­ing?” he asked.

After fasten­ing her hands to the metal bed­post, his fin­gers skimmed her body. Tania tried to nod, as de­li­cious tremors wracked her body. It was as if Carl had let loose a swarm of wicked but­ter­flies to rub them­selves against her skin.

“The meet­ing where they’re fi­nally go­ing to de­cide who goes into the Blue?”

Argh, why had she even men­tioned the damned meet­ing? His hands were strok­ing her but­tocks, bend­ing her legs. He pushed her knees for­ward so they were un­der her body, lift­ing her arse in the air. With a blind­fold on and her hands se­cured, Tania had never be­fore felt so ex­posed, so vul­ner­able. She got even wet­ter at the thought.

His hands spread her arse cheeks. Tania, trem­bling, waited for con­tact and jerked as his tongue licked at her puckered rosette. He wasn’t go­ing to...? They hadn’t ever...?

“Re­lax sweet­heart,” he said. “That has to wait for an­other time. To­night, I have some­thing else in mind.”

His hands roamed her skin again and Tania for­got about her ques­tion and her mis­giv­ings at be­ing tied up. She for­got about everything ex­cept the sen­sa­tions rip­pling through her at Carl’s touch.

The man was a maes­tro, wringing sobs of need and groans of frus­tra­tion from her. His fin­gers and tongue played her body like a finely-tuned in­stru­ment, light­en­ing pres­sure to a tingle be­fore press­ing them with fo­cused in­sist­ence. Fi­nally, he moved be­hind her, us­ing his rock-hard cock to sep­ar­ate her outer lips and rub against her clit­oris, the con­dom-sheathed skin send­ing vi­bra­tions of need through her sex. Couldn’t he feel how wet she was? How much she wanted—
needed!
—him in­side her?

Tania bit at the pil­low be­neath her face and pulled her­self on her el­bows. She used her ex­tra lever­age to push against him.

“Carl!” She was beg­ging. Ask­ing. Or­der­ing.

“I’m there, sweet­heart.”

Then he was in­side her and she al­most screamed with de­light, clench­ing against his length with coax­ing spasms. With each thrust, her breasts hit the sheets, the cot­ton rub­bing against her sens­it­ised nipples. He moved even closer and she felt the heat of his body arch­ing over her back. He played with her nipples, pulling at them and pinch­ing them between thumb and fore­finger.

“You like that, don’t you?”

“Oh yes,” she sobbed, her eyes closed be­hind the blind­fold.

“But you’d like to come even more, wouldn’t you?”

Was he
in­sane
? Of
course
she wanted to come! In fact, she could already feel the grand­mother of or­gasms build­ing in her belly.

“Oh God. Yes!”

If she soun­ded frantic, she didn’t care.

When one hand left her breast to rub down her ab­do­men, she jerked in­vol­un­tar­ily. All she could think about was Carl reach­ing down...touch­ing her...rub­bing against her wet­ness....

His fin­gers touched her frizzy curls and she al­most bucked off the bed. She was so aroused, she was sure she was drip­ping onto the sheets, the musk of her arousal filling the bed­room.

Carl nudged her knees fur­ther apart with his own, and star­ted up a steady rhythm, a fin­ger emer­ging out of nowhere to flick against her erect clit­oris be­fore re­treat­ing again. With each touch of him against her wet groin, elec­tri­city sparked through Tania’s body, made stronger by the fact that she couldn’t see what was hap­pen­ing. She was so ready to come. Her body craved it, her muscles tight­en­ing even as she spilt more juice from her cunt.

Twice, she neared cli­max. Twice, un­be­liev­ably, Carl froze. His fin­gers, his cock, his en­tire body stilled. But, even though she couldn’t see, she could tell he was on the verge of com­ing too. She could feel his body thrum­ming, the vi­bra­tions trav­el­ling from him to her across the most in­tim­ate of em­braces. She felt his clench­ing and the quick gasp that her­al­ded a suc­cess­ful head­ing off of his re­lease. It was in­cred­ible how shut­ting off one sense seemed to heighten the oth­ers. Des­pite the fact she was bound and blind­folded, the sen­sa­tion of Carl tee­ter­ing on the edge gave Tania a sense of power she’d never felt be­fore.

She was temp­ted to wriggle against that de­li­cious cock and make him lose his much vaunted con­trol. Make him grab her by her hips and thrust into her so they could rut away like des­per­ate an­im­als. She wanted to pun­ish him by break­ing his con­trol as much as he was pun­ish­ing her by re­tain­ing it but, just for to­night, de­cided to be­have her­self. To re­lax and cede domin­ion to an­other.

To go with the flow.

Then Carl twitched against her again, all fin­gers and cock and her not be­ing able to see a thing. She lost it, scream­ing out her or­gasm to the room, buck­ing against his groin and driv­ing him to his own cli­max. The shud­ders rocked her body for many minutes, wave after wave keep­ing her in a pure zone of pleas­ure. It was the most glor­i­ous feel­ing in the world, phys­ical in­tim­acy coupled with a bliss­ful rav­ish­ment.