The Virtual Man [The Virtual Reality 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (11 page)

“I would never do that. A gentleman never hurts a lady.”

“Well, true, but you’re not a gentleman, you’re a convict that was, if I understood things correctly, on his way to jail on Lunar 5. Did you not like the other boys? Is that why you escaped?” she continued in a pouty tone.

Derek finally began to understand. She’d been playing him.

“Okay, I think I get it. You’re trying to teach me a lesson, aren’t you? How did you find out I was human? What gave me away?”

“The wall-sized ‘wanted man’ portraits that Galactic Law Enforcement is broadcasting across the galaxy were a good first hint.”

“Now will you let me down? Please?”

“Only if you promise to tell me how you got yourself into this mess. I’ve observed you for close to a week and I don’t believe you are the thief you have been convicted of being. A liar, a voyeur and a pervert, maybe, but not a thief.”

“I promise. Just please let me down, my arms hurt.”

Tiana giggled, looking quite pleased with herself. She was no longer mad at Derek and, surprisingly, neither felt any danger from him nor seemed to give any credence to his conviction.

“Computer, end program,” she ordered. Instantly, the cuffs around his wrists, along with the rest of the dungeon, dematerialized and were replaced with the room’s regular furniture. A very naked Derek Hart dropped the full two inches to the floor, landing on his muscular legs.

Tiana dropped back onto the couch and made herself comfortable. “For the record, Derek, I still think you whine too much.”

Tiana felt a blush claim her face as she stared at Derek’s exposed and rather large …
red alert, red alert, dangerous thoughts in attack formation!
“Okay, Mr. Hart, you appear to be real enough, but you don’t seem to be wearing any ‘real clothes’. Would you mind putting something on?” She managed to get the words out, instantly cursing herself for suggesting he cover himself.

“I can’t,” he responded without making any attempt at covering himself, quite comfortable in his current state of undress and arousal.

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“When you ended the program, you also ended my clothes.”

“Well, put on whatever it was you were wearing when you snuck in here.”

“This is what I was wearing when I snuck in here.”

“Computer, dress this man in jeans and a black T-shirt … err … make that a black muscle shirt.”

The computer complied immediately by materializing the requested items of clothing on Derek’s body. The full impact of her actions sunk in. She had dressed him in a muscle shirt so she could continue to admire his body.
What was she thinking!!!

“Okay, I’ve fulfilled my end of the deal,” she said. “I’ve let you down and out of the goodness of my heart I’ve even clothed you. Now it’s your turn. How in the world did you get into this mess? The news feed said you were some kind of scientist.”

Derek was starting to relax, but she could still see a little distrust in his eyes.
Good. That’ll teach him
. She chuckled to herself.

“I was, or rather, I am. Six months ago I was the top expert in holography in the galaxy. I was a red-hot commodity, at least, until I met a certain lady, and I use the term ‘lady’ rather loosely, by the name of Melinda Harris. I met Melinda at a symposium at which I presented a paper on creating high-definition holographic objects with limited computing resources, my specialty, and the single piece of the puzzle that made holographic chambers affordable and therefore available to the masses. She was everything a man could hope for, or so I though at the time, and I fell hard for her.”

Tiana squirmed in her seat at the thought of Derek with another woman. The thought of him getting physical with any female bothered her, but the thought of him caring for, or worse, loving another woman really pissed her off. Now that she knew Derek to be part of her reality, she found herself wantonly attracted to him, perhaps even emotionally attached to him.

This is crazy, the man is an escaped convict
.

Derek continued his story.

“I kept records of my work at home and often worked remotely from the house. To my delight, Melinda. being not just my lover but a colleague, was extremely interested in my work. I’d bounce ideas off of her. She would help me refine holographic objects. It was the perfect relationship.”

The word ‘lover’ in the context of the conversation made Tiana sick.
Bitch!!!!

“Twice I caught her logged in under my user ID, looking over my latest refinements. I didn’t think much of it, as she was helping me with the work, but since it was a security breach and violated company policy, I asked her not to do it again and changed my password. Both times she apologized, and promised it would be the last time.”

“I then started seeing reports on the nightly news of houses being burglarized. In each and every case, the house’s security systems were bypassed as if it had been an inside job. All these homes belonged to wealthy people and had one other thing in common. They all had the household model holographic chamber I had designed. Eventually the Galactic Bureau of Investigation put two and two together and started checking out the chambers’ logs. Melinda was using my research, my company’s flagship product, to case the houses, track the owners’ movements, then rob them blind.

Tiana could see Derek’s pain etched on his handsome face. His expression showed the feelings of betrayal he had thus far kept from her as he continued his story.

“When the GBI tracked it all, wrongly, to me, Melinda disappeared. She just vanished as if she had never existed. It was the perfect frame and I was the perfect chump. My company went bankrupt and I went to jail. What hurt the most was that my stupidity had cost my family its name and its honor. For the first time in my life I was actually glad that my father was dead. It spared him the pain of seeing me, his only son, going to prison and seeing the family name tarnished to a humiliating state that it will never be able to recover from.”

Visibly upset, Derek took a deep breath. “When you saw me at the courthouse I had just been sentenced to twenty years, and the Marshall you saw me with was escorting me to the Lunar 5 penal colony.”

“When you fell in front of me that day,” Tiana asked, feeling both embarrassed and wary, “why did you mock me?”

Derek looked stunned. “You thought I was mocking you? Tiana, I’ll own up to worship, adoration, immature behavior and heavy drooling, perhaps, but not to mocking. Why do you think I tripped and fell on my face? When I first laid eyes on you I melted into putty. My legs became noodles. I became irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was the vision of you, the beautiful and adorable creature that God had laid in my path at my darkest hour. Tiana Weiss, it was you who gave me the strength to escape and not give up on my life.”

“So you followed me to the ship in the hope of meeting me?”
Ohhhh, how sweet, my own little stalker
. “But how did you track me down?”

“You know, you really should be more careful who you stick your luggage ID labels on,” he answered with a triumphant grin. “Besides, you hurt my upper lip. Want to kiss it and make it better?”

Hmmnn, I should have stuck the label on his crotch. That’s it. No more talking. Time to make out!

As if he could read her mind, Derek swept down on Tiana. She felt his urgency and his need from his kiss. Or maybe it was her own deep desire she was projecting onto him. Either way, if she didn’t kiss him, taste him, and savor him right now she was simply going to implode.

As they merged into the kiss, Tiana felt like Derek had set off a wave of passion that burned its way down to her heart and then, like the ripples of an ion pulse in the midst of space, exploded, spreading warmth and contentment throughout not just her physical body, but also to her very soul. How could one kiss do so much to her? How could one kiss move her to the point of such desperation for a second one? She felt Derek’s arms pull her to him. She knew she should resist, but instead, her arms reached up and encircled the tall man’s neck, pulling him down to her with the same urgency with which he was claiming her. She allowed her fingers the pleasure of running through his soft and curly hair, caressing the nape of his neck.

Tiana felt Derek’s kiss slow down. The passion of having to immediately have her appeared to be changing to one of enjoying and delighting in her. He expertly explored her mouth, paying his respects to every minute detail. His velvety tongue glided across hers, flicking back and forth, tasting her until she could almost feel her body melt into a pool of hot lava; lava which he and he alone had ever heated to this level. Not to be outdone, her tongue responded by sliding underneath his and savoring him. She reached out and gently nipped the tip of his tongue.

Where had that come from? I am a civilized woman. I don’t bite.

Derek’s moan of pleasure mixed with surprise at her challenge, corrected that perception. She was a woman in heat for her man.

Yes, I do bite and I probably also scratch and claw
.

As Tiana felt Derek pull away from the kiss she almost flew into a panic, as if she couldn’t survive a single moment without it. She quickly calmed down as she felt him nipping at her neck. One moment, he was gently nuzzling her and the next he was nipping at her.

His hands reached up and cupped her head as he allowed his lips to wander aimlessly over her face and neck. He licked and kissed his way up, finally resting upon her eyebrow. He kissed and tended to that eyebrow as if it were the most sexual part of her very being.

Who would have ever thought eyebrows to be an erogenous zone?

Not to be distracted into complacency, he moved on. When she felt him nuzzling and kissing his way across the top of her ear, she thought the sensation would kill her. He hadn’t even made a move to steal second base yet and she was tottering between passing out and ravaging him. Her panties were soaked with her desire for him. Her heart was clambering to know him. She was edging down a slippery slope. She was starting to turn her heart over to him. This simply could not be happening. It was just lust from being on the rebound, she reminded herself. She had no intention of belonging to anyone ever, but it didn’t change the reality that she was immersed in. Derek’s kisses were claiming her.
It’s just lust
. They were branding her with a searing heat that was bonding their hearts together.
It’s just lust
. She struggled to stop the searing connection. She must not get emotionally involved with this, or any other man, yet she was becoming his, irreparably his. What if he was another Tom? She couldn’t take having her heart betrayed once more.

Too fast. Too fast.

Gathering what little strength and logic she had left, Tiana managed to utter the words that neither she nor Derek wanted to hear, “Derek, I … we shouldn’t …”

“Yes, I know. Trust me.”

Hell, I do trust you. It’s me I don’t trust!

She silently admitted that she wanted him. She wanted him more than she had ever wanted any other man, including Tom.

Tom. Tom who? Control, control, control, potential heart-wreck ahead!

Every alarm she had protecting the secured perimeter around her heart was going off. Loudly! Unfortunately, her heart wasn’t listening. Her defenses were crumbling and she was beginning to raise the white-hot flag of surrender. To make matters worse, she was surrendering to a man she barely knew who was wanted across the galaxy for crimes he supposedly had not committed. Or so he said.

“My angel of mercy, I would never do anything to rush you or dishonor you in any way.”

* * * *

Derek desired this woman more than his very breath, but he meant what he said. That fact scared him to death. What was he going to do? He had made up his mind to never trust or feel for a woman for as long as he lived, but not allowing his heart to feel what it felt for her right now would be worse than death itself.

He thought he had loved Melinda. If that had been love, then what was this all-consuming emotion he felt for Tiana that wrenched his heart right out of his chest and laid it at her feet?
Her pretty little bare feet with delicious little toes polished red, mind you!

These new feelings that this strangely exotic woman brought out in him were a hundred times more potent than anything he had ever felt before and permeated his mind, body and very soul. Derek didn’t know exactly when it happened, but it him like a ton of bricks. This, not whatever it was he had felt for Melinda and others before her, was real love.

I, Derek Hart, am falling in love with Tiana Weiss and there isn’t a thing I can do about it.

The one thing he could do, however, was protect her. He would not allow anyone to harm her, regardless of his own fate.

Derek pulled away, gentling and soothing her passion with tender strokes down her back.

“Tiana, there’s something you need to hear.”

As Derek finished playing a copy of the transmission he had intercepted earlier, Tiana sat in quiet shock.

“I don’t understand. I have no personal enemies. My ex-husband may not like me very much, but I’m out of his life now. There’s no real need for him to want me dead. Besides, he’s the one who cheated on me, not the other way around. I’m the one who should want
him
dead.”

“What about your job? Would anyone there benefit from seeing you dead?”

“I suppose someone would need to take my place if I was dead, but I’m high enough in management that my replacement would probably be recruited away from another firm. We don’t have any potential Partners waiting in the wings at this time.”

“There’s got to be a reason for someone wanting to kill you.”

“Yes, I know, but it’s not terribly obvious,” she said, frustration seething inside her.

“People do odd things for incomprehensible reasons. In my case, I’m still trying to figure out why Melinda would have gone to all the trouble of establishing and maintaining a relationship with me and then deciphering my code, just to steal a few household items. Seems like a lot of effort for a comparatively small payoff. There are much more profitable things she could have done with access to my code. For one thing, she could have stolen it and sold it to the competition. She would have made a lot more money.”