sex bots 04 - one night steined
One Night Steined
Book four in the Love-Bots series.
Kuriko Mai is a stein with an issue. She never remembers sex. Nor does she recall meeting the men she finds in her bed. Cursed with flawed programming, she’s all but given up hope of having a normal life. However, after years of watching her suffer, her boss Frank can’t stand it anymore, and he’s determined to make her remember any way he can.
Frank has always loved Kuri. And when he finds himself in a heated embrace with her, he can’t walk away—even knowing she may not remember him in the morning. But when it’s obvious Kuri recalls moments of the passion they shared, the two decide to become lovers in hopes Frank holds the key to ending her malfunctioning programming. Their plan backfires when their erotic experience opens a floodgate of memories so painful, Kuri breaks down.
In order to move forward, Kuri has to face her past. She just doesn’t know if she can risk the pain loving Frank could cause.
Ellora’s Cave Publishing
One Night Steined
ISBN 9781419938528
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
One Night Steined Copyright © 2012 Daisy Harris
Edited by Grace Bradley
Cover design by Caitlin Fry
Photography: FXQuadro, Crok Photography/Shutterstock.com
Electronic book publication February 2012
The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.
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One Night Steined
Daisy Harris
Prologue
April 26, 2026
Frank King heard the knock of skull against drywall and ran toward the room where he kept the girl. “Ana, stop.” He charged through the door, rushing to where he’d chained her to the wall.
The newborn stein pinned him with a glare. Ana twisted her lips into a snarl before cocking her head forward and slamming her skull back into the wall.
“No.” Frank fell to his knees in front of her. Knowing she’d scream if he touched her, he placed his hands on the wall behind her so that when she knocked her head back, she hit his knuckles instead of the concrete. “Please, I’m trying to find somewhere else for you to go.”
Frank had lived fifty years as a reanimated human, and been mostly happy. So he hadn’t realized she’d be so miserable. He’d found the beautiful reanimated girl unconscious in an abandoned lab, and brought her back to his home to finish her programming.
“Just kill me,” Ana shrieked. “Kill me, kill me, kill me.” She started chanting the words, bucking against her bindings.
“I can’t.” Frank half-growled, half-sobbed. “I’ve found somewhere else for you, some people who will take care of you.” He reached for the syringe full of sedatives in his pocket and plunged it into her thigh.
She sobbed, the sounds getting lighter and calmer as she lost consciousness and crumpled to sleeping on the concrete floor.
He watched her for long minutes, tears streaming down his face and self-loathing burning a hole in his heart. He never should have finished the reawakening. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered to her slumped body. Frank grabbed some gauze out of his medical kit and cleaned the streak of blood off her temple. “I’ll take you there tonight.” She couldn’t hear him, but he wanted to let her know. He’d take her somewhere with better doctors, with men who knew what to do better than he.
Back in the late 1970s when Frank had been brought to life, beings like him were rare. As of 2020, a large company called Synaviv had started building more steins. Synaviv made soldiers mostly, but they also manufactured other types. They would know how to fix what was wrong with Ana. If not, they’d have the guts to end her unlife.
Frank gathered her up in his arms and carried her into the outer room of his lair under Pike Place Market. The two-thousand-square-foot space had been closed off and locked due to water damage, but Frank had cleaned it up three years earlier.
Struggling to hold her aloft, Frank slipped his phone and car keys into his pocket and went to the front door. At the last minute, he grabbed an extra blanket for Ana. She was still wearing the hospital gown he’d found her in. Frank choked back a fresh tide of pain as he realized he’d never even convinced her to put on clothes.
Pike Place Market was a latticework of hallways, shops and stairs carved into a downhill section near the Seattle waterfront. Past midnight, the shops were empty, though music rung out from distant bars. Frank hurried down the filthy staircase with his arms full of female. Then he carried her to his beat-up minivan, slid open the door and laid her across the back seat.
He readied himself for his life without her—the one where he’d once again be alone. Frank had rescued three other steins, not counting Ana—one from an abandoned lab and two who were being used as bait for dog fights. He’d tried to reprogram all three, but none of them had enough circuitry to function.
It was probably a mercy, Frank thought as he pulled out of the parking lot and wove through the rain-slick streets of Seattle. The steins built for dog-baiting were rudimentary. Their flesh would have degraded over time, even with every bit of Frank’s medical knowledge. Frank’s system was extremely advanced for his era, and he had tinkered with himself over time, adding upgrades based on articles he found in journals and online.
Frank glanced down at his hands. One had been grafted from a black man, and the other from a white one. Neither matched the brownish skin of the rest of his body. Frank knew he should be grateful. He hadn’t aged or rotted in any of his fifty-some years. However, he knew that with scars on his face and mismatched skin, no one would ever find him pleasing, much less love him. Hell, Ana had screamed in terror.
The highway crossed the lake separating the city of Seattle from the office parks of the East Side. He curved into an arterial and then into the wide lot of Synaviv Labs. Frank parked and swung open the back door, bending to lift the woman he’d thought of as his only friend.
Ana’s eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t wake up. He breathed a sigh of relief and lifted her from the seat, carrying her toward Synaviv’s loading dock. It was one in the morning, and soft night sounds rustled the bushes and trees.
Frank lifted Ana onto the raised platform of the dock and then climbed up himself. He pulled a cream-colored sweater and the stylish jeans he’d hoped she’d like out of his bag. Then he slipped off her clothes and dressed her as quickly as he could. Frank didn’t look at her body as he did it. “I’m so, so sorry.” He begged forgiveness from her limp figure. “They’ll take care of you here. They’ll have teams of doctors, and computer programmers. They’ll fix you.” He touched her face, worrying she’d wake suddenly and shriek.
Frank finished dressing her. If she was going to wake up around strangers, the least Frank could do was make sure she looked presentable. He wrapped her in a blanket and shrugged off his jacket to fold it into a pillow. Lifting her gently, he settled her into what he hoped was a comfortable position. Frank wanted so badly to kiss her cheek goodbye, but instead he turned away.
“Bye, Ana.” His voice caught in his throat. “I’m sorry.” Frank crossed a few steps away before dialing Synaviv’s operator. When an automated machine picked up, Frank said, “I think one of your subjects escaped. There’s a woman wandering around in the parking lot. I saw her as I was driving home.”
Frank hopped into his car and drove a few blocks. Within minutes, sirens sounded and he watched as two ambulances searched Synaviv’s lot. He hung his head in relief.
They’ll find her. They’ll find her and fix her and she’ll be happy.
He looked over his shoulder and shifted the van into reverse, but his phone buzzed in his pocket. Frank pulled out of his hiding spot and out onto the street before talking. Using a cell phone while driving was against the law, but then again so were free steins like him. Frank should have turned himself into the police or a lab like Synaviv years ago. But a very selfish part of Frank enjoyed being free.
“Hello?” He knew it would be his human informant. No one else had Frank’s number.
“Frank. Glad you’re up. I’ve located those traffickers in New Mexico.”
“Hmm?” His head full of Ana and failure, Frank pulled onto the highway and onto the bridge to Seattle.
On the phone, the human sighed. “Pay attention, buddy. Those sex traffickers, with the steins they’re using as prostitutes?”
Frank nodded. “Yeah, what about them?” At that moment, he felt just as evil and morbid as the people the human was talking about. After all, hadn’t he put extra effort into Ana because she was beautiful? Had he tried as hard with the male steins he’d found? He couldn’t be sure.
“I managed to intercept a phone call, and then found their website where they list their locations. I’ve got the address of the place where they’re staying this week, but they’re leaving in the next thirty-six hours.”
“Yeah?” Frank pulled off the highway and drove into a residential area.
“Can you go down and get them?” The human waited, silent, for Frank’s answer.
Frank didn’t have a choice but to obey the man on the phone. He’d worked so hard to make that contact on the Internet—a human who could see things that Frank might not catch. “How far is it?” Frank calculated whether he’d have time to swing back to his rooms under Pike Place Market for brains and organ meats before he left, or whether he’d have to find a sympathetic butcher along the way.
“It’s at least a twenty-five hour drive. You’d have to leave soon.”
Frank grunted his agreement and pulled back onto the road. “All right. Text me the location.” He swung into town and picked up some meats from his butcher down by the docks. So early in the morning, the butcher never had any other customers. Frank wore gloves and kept the hood up when he went into the shop, but he was pretty sure the butcher knew. There couldn’t be very many people coming in daily for sheep brains and cow intestines.
The sun rose over Lake Union as Frank got back on the road and headed south. He drove all day, stopping only for gas and to pee. He ate his meats raw, though in general he preferred to cook his brains. Some steins, the news reported, were known to attack humans and animals if they got loose. But Frank didn’t believe it. He’d only ever eaten brains in plastic bags, served by his maker or from a butcher. After all, someone had to eat the parts humans didn’t want.
Twenty-seven long hours later, Frank pulled past the rundown motel. It was near dawn. Sun scorched the desolate desert landscape of strip malls, highway and shrubs.
He pulled past the building to drink the last dregs of his coffee, and then called his informant. The human picked up on the first ring. “You there?”
Frank hitched the phone under his ear and rifled in his glove compartment for his handgun. “Yep. Any idea how many might be inside?” In front of the motel, a slender Asian girl in a tiny dress sauntered along the front of the building. Frank couldn’t tell if she was a stein or a human, but she definitely walked with the aimless agitation of a prostitute. Other than the girl, there were only two cars in the parking lot. Nine a.m. must have been a slow time of day for the sex trade.