The Virtual Man [The Virtual Reality 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (10 page)

As the conversation ended, Derek’s heart sank. Room 1005 was the very one he was sitting in. Tiana’s room. What was Tiana involved in that someone had hired an assassin to do away with her? Was she a felon? Who was she, really? How stupid could he be to once more fall for a woman with criminal involvements?

Nice girls don’t have contracts taken out on their lives.

What was he to do? He couldn’t judge her guilty without a lot more information. He knew what that felt like. Who was he kidding? Even if she was some kind of criminal, he couldn’t let this Scorpio person kill her. “With information comes responsibility,” he remembered his father instructing him during his teen years. Derek still missed him. By keeping what he had heard to himself and doing nothing, he would be signing her death warrant. His plan was to sneak off the ship on Arcadia 10, and disappear amongst its masses.

But he couldn’t just leave her at the mercy of a killer. Darn nuisance! Darn female!

Escaping into the population of Arcadia 10 was now out of the question. His plans would need to change. The first priority now was to protect Tiana. He would need to find out more about her background and would need to devise a plan for staying close to her after the ship landed on Magellan. He would also need a contingency plan in case he was recaptured. In true Derek form, his multitasking brain began working out all three plans as he established another communication channel to Earth. The flowers would need to wait. He would hack into her Legal-Bot and gather a few facts.

The nailpolish was barely dry when Tiana stormed out of the beauty salon. She made a pitiful sight: face flushed, towel wrapped around her wet hair, barefoot, with foam pedicure separators between her toes and her shoes in hand, cursing all men under her breath. She felt angry and betrayed. The man had seen her naked, for crying out loud. He had tasted her breasts and his finger had been buried deep inside her. What’s worse, each time she had found it a pleasant experience.

Okay, okay, powerful, all-encompassing, earth-shattering, body-melting orgasms were more than just a pleasant experience, but that is beside the point
.

“What are you looking at butthead?” she chastised a man who was apparently amused by her appearance as she walked by.

Her ire increased. Clearly he had taken advantage of her. What really pissed her off was the fact that, well, while believing him to be a virtual man, her memories of their time together were seductive, but now that she knew she had been kissed, fondled, massaged, caressed, stared at —
Okay, that’s enough Tiana
— while nude by a real man, not a computer program, she found herself wetter than she’d ever been in her life. Her depth of anger was met by an equal dose of confusion. She should be contacting the authorities and letting them deal with this Personal Attendant impersonator, but instead, she was marching to her suite and going to get some satisfaction by having it out with him.
This was personal, and so would be her revenge!
She was not about to let the ship’s authorities handle her personal business.
But why was it so personal, damn it?
He was just a low life who meant nothing to her. Right?

“Call computer in 1005,” she ordered her phone as she continued the highly undignified strut to her suite, trying to convince people who walked by that she was modeling a new fashion trend.

“How may I help you?” she heard the computer respond.

“Computer, lock all console access to my command only. Register my voice pattern as the sole access code and dematerialize any active consoles.”

“Console access changed. One console dematerialized.”

“Computer, let’s create a new program. Call it ‘Playtime with Tiana’ and base it on …”

* * * *

Derek turned quickly to the door as he heard it open. After being so abruptly shut down and locked out of the system earlier, he half expected to see a Space Marshall walk in. If it wasn’t for Tiana needing him, he would have left the room and found a different place to hide. Much to his relief it was Tiana.

“Hi, Derek sweetie, it’s so good to see you’re still here.”

Like where the hell else was he supposed to be?

Her body vibrated with anger. The frigid tone of her voice shouted to him, in no uncertain terms, that he was in deep shit. Had she found him out? Had she turned him in?

As she tossed her shoes to the side and removed the toe separators, she gave him a big grin that he accurately perceived as trouble, and sweetly continued, “You know, not having ever had a hologram of my own to play with, I’m curious as to how one would react to sex.”

Hey, things are looking up
.

“I think I would like to play a little game with my little hollow wallow buddy,” she said, giggling as she baby-talked him.

Derek didn’t know what to say, which was a good thing, for she didn’t give him a chance to respond.

“Computer, run ‘Playtime with Tiana’.”

Derek watched as the room flickered to empty and what appeared to be a dungeon materialized in its place.

Oh, crap, the chick can program
.

To his right there was a body cage hanging from the ceiling just large enough for a human body to fit inside. Across from him, directly behind Tiana, he spotted a medieval rack complete with a leveraged tightening wheel that made it easier for someone her size to ‘stretch’ someone his size.

Double-crap, she’s a really good programmer
.

“Computer,” she ordered in a seductive voice, “replace my Personal Attendant’s clothes with a loincloth.”

Derek watched as his clothes vanished and a carefully positioned loincloth replaced them.

“Never mind, computer, replace loincloth with a g-string.”

To Derek’s chagrin the computer replaced the loincloth with a microscopic garment that must have been made from light-brown dental floss. She then approached him, placed her hands on his chest and slowly drew them to his sides, softly scratching his chest and nipples as she went along. Next he felt her attack him with her tongue, first tantalizing and tormenting one nipple, then, without pulling her tongue off his body, she dragged it across his chest to the other one and proceeded to sample its taste with gusto.

I’m okay with this
, Derek thought as the sensations she was generating upon his chest overtook him.

“You know,” she continued, “you’ve pleasured me, but I haven’t pleasured you yet. That’s just not very fair of me, now is it?”

Nope, not fair at all, nope, nope, nope.

No sooner had he gotten used to what she was doing than he felt her working her way down past his tight stomach muscles, approaching the top of his g-string.
Oh … my … goooooodnesss!
Derek’s cock stood at attention turning the front of the g-string into a pup tent, his hands lose and limp at his side.

She was going to blissfully place her sexy ruby red lips upon his … WHOA, WHAT’D SHE DO?

While Derek had been floating around in sexual la-la land, Tiana had snapped a pair of handcuffs that were hanging from the ceiling around his now useless wrists.

“Computer, retract chains.”

Slowly, a winch in the ceiling above pulled the chains tighter, shortening their length and raising Derek’s arms up into the air, dragging his helpless body up with them, leaving his feet hanging just a couple of inches off the ground.

“Now let’s dress me appropriately. Let’s see, computer, replace my clothes with the ‘Torrid Tiana’ outfit.”

Derek’s jaw dropped, and found himself unable to contain a moan of shock (or pleasure, he wasn’t sure which) as he stared at Tiana standing before him wearing a black patent-leather bra and panties with a matching black patent-leather corset, all decorated with metal studs. Around her neck she had a black patent-leather choker with a metal ring that he assumed was probably used for …

Who was he kidding, he had no clue what the metal ring was for.

Black patent-leather six-inch spike-heeled sandals highlighting her pretty little toes, newly polished red, completed the outfit.

Goodness gracious, was he developing a foot fetish now?

She continued speaking in a low, sexy mixture between a sultry groan and her good ol’ Georgia drawl.

“Very nice. I just know we are going to have so much fun tonight. Just you, and me, and a few of my toys.”

“What kind of toys do you have in mind?” he asked, trying to keep his voice under control to avoid betraying the panic he was now beginning to feel.

“Oh, just a few little things that won’t inconvenience you any since you are a computer generated character. If you were a human being, though, made of flesh that can tear and blood that can gush out of an open wound, then matters would be different. It’s a good thing holographs don’t feel pain.”

“Computer, end program!” Derek commanded in panic as he hung there, watching and realizing the computer no longer obeyed his commands.

“Silly boy, the computer only responds to human commands.”

Tiana walked over to a gothic-looking armoire he hadn’t noticed until now. She opened it, revealing an impressive collection of rods, switches and whips. After taking her time and carefully inspecting each one under Derek’s concerned gaze, she finally settled on one.

“I think we’ll go with a cat o’ nine tails,” she stated matter-of-factly.

Derek prayed she was referring to an alien kitty cat. His hopes were quickly dashed when she approached him with a mean-looking leather whip in her hand. Each one of the nine ‘whips’ split off into nine strands that he had no doubt would rip through his skin in no time. If he hadn’t been so unnerved he would have calculated out the total number of strands. At the moment, though, such a calculation held little interest for him.

“Ah, Tiana, I don’t think this is a good idea. Don’t forget, the upgrade gave me the ability to feel emotions and pain.”

“Darlin’, I would never hurt you. Computer, turn off my Personal Attendant’s ability to feel pain. There, now you won’t feel a thing, and I’ll be able to whip you even longer, relying on the fact that I won’t be hurting you. Do scream and pretend like it hurts, though.”

“Hello, it doesn’t work that way. I wasn’t designed to be able to turn off my senses, you know.”

“Oh, don’t be such a big baby. You’re not real. Pain is not a reality to you.”

Tiana lifted the whip and swung it with all her might hitting the wall beside him, just inches from his manhood. Derek heard the whoosh of the whip, felt the breeze that it created sweep across his chest and down past his favorite organ, followed by the loud crack as it hit the wall.

“Oh, dang it, I missed,” she teased. “I was hoping on landing all 81 little strands on the tip of your holographic cock. Guess I’ll have to try again.”

She released his cock from the pouch of the g-string. Wickedly, she stroked her long red nails down its length and back up. Teasing the very tip of his manhood, she bent down and wrapped the thin strands of the whip around its base, beginning to pull the leather tight. Tiana placed her hungry mouth on his cock and began to tongue the tip. She sucked him as she pulled the cat-o-nine tail strands tighter.

His rod twitched and pulsed with desire. It tremored with the need for release. He was getting closer. Tiana attacked his engorged member with a lust she had never felt before, for anyone or anything. Derek appeared confused between the need to breathe and the need to moan as both actions merged into a single sound that gave him away. He was readying to come. Tiana continued stoking his fire, feeling his cock twitch each time she pulled closer to the tip, until she sensed he was standing at the very edge of desire and about to jump off. Releasing him from her mouth, under his protesting and disaproving gaze, she brought a second whip into play and hit the wall with it.

“NO! Have you lost your mind? You must be a pretty sick puppy to get off on inflicting pain upon another sentient being.”

He still wasn’t admitting he was human. Oh, well, she would just up the ante.

“Stop being such a sissy! Hmm. Maybe I’ll try something a little different.”

Turning back to the armoire, Tiana thoughtfully perused the selection of whips and, after placing both whips back where she had originally gotten them from, selected a long bull whip.

“Darlin’, you’re just gonna love this one. It is made of one-hundred-percent Peruvian llama leather. It won’t sting as much as the cat o’ nine tails would have, but it is easier to aim and it will rip up a bigger and deeper piece of your,” she giggled, “anatomy.”

In utter shock, Derek watched her approach carrying what appeared to be an eight-foot bull whip.

She’s too small to wield that big whip
, he thought, moments before she swung the whip around the top of her head then flicked it straight ahead of her, where it made a loud cracking sound.

So much for that theory
.

Derek’s cock still ached from the sight of her, not to mention his need for release, but his blood hadn’t pumped this fast ever!

Tiana stopped for a moment, looked at Derek with her most intense, studious and academic look, before saying, “Did you know that when properly used, the tip of a bull whip travels so fast it causes a sonic boom? That’s what the crack you just heard is, you know.”

“I’ll bet you’re a lot of fun during a game of Trivial Pursuit. Why don’t we play that?” Derek joked in the hopes that she would give up the current game.

“You whine way too much. I haven’t even touched you yet,” she said as she lifted the whip back in the air.

“Stop! Okay, okay, I know what you’re after. I admit it, I am not a hologram and I am a human being just like you. Please, put the whip down.”

“What! You? Not a hologram? Surely you jest!” she teased in her finest southern belle drawl. Tiana appeared to truly be enjoying herself.

“No, I’m serious. I’m the man who stumbled next to you at the courthouse back on Earth. Do you remember me? Please let me down and I’ll prove it to you.”

“Well, if you’re a real person, not a computer program, and I let you down, won’t you be mad at me? Now I really can’t let you go. Why, you might try and whip me back.”