The Virtual Man [The Virtual Reality 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (9 page)

“Do you like what I’m doing to you?” she heard him whisper. Tiana didn’t answer.

“If you don’t respond I’m going to have to stop,” he threatened before repeating his question, “Do you like what I’m doing to you?”

She’d be damned if she was going to give him the satisfaction of giving him an answer.

“Yes, I like what you’re doing to me,” she heard herself say, unable to fight her treasonous body. “Don’t stop.”

Her will and her mind were not working together. She was an educated, sophisticated, woman. Why was she so out of control? This minute, she would kill if she had to in order to hold on to the sensations pulsing through her lust-filled body.

A high-pitched scream escaped her throat as she felt Derek’s middle finger enter her. His index finger continued the job of tantalizing her engorged, hypersensitive clitoris without missing a beat.

Thank goodness for his big hands
.

Derek’s other hand moved from the one breast to the other. He stroked her breast upwards, each time finishing with a pinch to her aching, over-sensitized nipple. His hand’s rhythm on her breast matched that being applied to her most intimate parts.

Changing his method of attack above the water level, Derek moved his mouth from her neck to her ear, where he allowed his tongue to, gentle as a feather, lick all the way around the ridge of her ear, finally sucking the soft fleshy part into his hot, waiting mouth. In between the caresses his lips levied on her, she felt him nip her with his teeth from time to time, not hard enough to hurt her, but hard enough to sharpen her senses.

Tiana was settling into Derek’s rhythm. He was working her into a frenzy when he once more upped the ante.

“Goodness gracious!” She arched her back some more, trying to spread her legs wider as she felt Derek’s thumb gently pushing at her back door.

Tiana screamed as the myriad of feelings she was enduring became an orgasm that exploded and surged upwards from the heat between her legs, expanding to every part of her conscious being.

* * * *

The ship’s Security Officer had, after much effort, succeeded in tracing the transmissions to a specific state room. Marshall Delaney looked forward to recapturing Derek and heading back. Deep space missions no longer held any appeal or enticement for him. Not since the war.

Suspecting he would find Derek at the source of the transmissions, the Marshall, along with two Galactic Alliance Enforcement officers and the Captain, now found himself directly outside the luxury suite that he hoped held Derek. The Captain had suggested that they proceed with caution and watch the suite for a while just to make sure all was as it appeared. Impatiently, Marshall Delaney agreed that it was odd that Derek had given himself away so easily, but who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth? Besides, he hated space travel and was more than ready to go home.

Time to collect his prisoner.

“Okay, people,” he whispered to his team. “On the count of three … one … two … THREE!” The team moved in, overriding the door’s controls and opening it. The three officers, weapons in hand, rushed into the suite’s great room. What met the good Marshall’s eyes caused him great consternation. Instead of finding Derek, the room opened up to reveal a man and a woman, probably in their mid- or early-60s, stark naked running a holographic program that could have jumped right off the pages of the ancient Earth tome,
Thousand and One Nights.

“What is the meaning of this and what are you perverts staring at?” Inquired a very angry man while attempting to shield his nude wife from the strangers’ shocked eyes.

Marshall Delaney wished he had paid heed to the good Captain’s advice. Derek had set them up to keep them busy and away from his real location. What’s worse, like a fool, he had fallen into the trap. He’d be lucky if the couple didn’t sue.

Marshall Delaney could tell that the Captain was biting his lip, doing his best to keep from laughing at the predicament the Marshall had landed them in.

“Marshall Delaney, I’d like you to meet Mr. and Mrs. Leckelman. They are celebrating their forty-fifth wedding anniversary. I had the privilege of meeting them when they joined me in my private dining room for a celebration dinner a few nights ago.”

The Marshall pierced the Captain with a look that could have wiped out an entire division of Terrilians.

Shielding his eyes, the Marshall spoke to his two officers. “Head back and meet me in the Captain’s office.” Turning to the now covered but extremely irate couple, he withdrew his identification. “My apologies sir, ma’am, please pardon the interruption. I am Space Marshall Troy Delaney. I am tracking an escaped felon and, in the process, investigating some illicit communication signals that were traced back to your stateroom. This is obviously a horrible and awkward time for me to be asking, but have either of you made unauthorized transmissions since the start of the trip?”

“Marshall, as the Captain just said, my wife and I are celebrating our forty-fifth wedding anniversary we have not communicated with anyone anywhere, nor do we have any plans to do so. Getting away from people is why we are on this trip.”

“I pray both of you will accept my humblest of apologies for my thoughtless intrusion. Rest assured it will not happen again,” the Marshall promised in the most humble tone he could come up with.

He turned and, with the Captain following closely behind him, left the stateroom. His thoughts melded with his anger as he faced the fact that Derek had made a fool of him once when he escaped at the spaceport and had just finished making a fool of him once more.
Derek Hart, I will find you even if it means searching every square inch of space dust in the universe
. This was no longer just a job for him. It was personal.

Ahh, this is the life.
Tiana leaned back in the comfortable lounge chair in the ship’s beauty salon as a team of nanobots applied a final coat of red polish, her signature color, to the nails on her perfectly pampered fingers and toes.

I really need to do this more often!

Between the soothing skin treatment of Llegorian mud and the hair follicle stimulation, she had not only added four inches to her already long and beautiful head of hair, but now her skin looked and felt ten years younger. Perhaps she ought to heed Rita’s advice and start flirting with younger men.

She allowed her mind to wander, but this time she wasn’t thinking about her bad experiences or about Tom. She found herself, strangely enough, not even thinking about younger men. Images of her holographic Personal Attendant took over her mind. It, no, not it, he was so kind and gentle. Since the strange experience when he had brought her to orgasm for the first time through a simple massage —
okay, okay, and by driving her boobs to the point of insanity —
he had somehow known she wasn’t emotionally ready to go any further physically and had limited his advances to just pleasuring her. He was always there to serve her breakfast when she woke up, and he was always there to tuck her in at night, no matter how late she arrived from her outings with Rita. Not only that, he had the face of an angel and the body of Adonis, and for the remainder of the flight she owned him!

The remainder of the flight … Her mind slowly drifted back to reality. She would lose him/it at the end of the flight. Its memory banks would be erased after the trip and her face, her name and their times together would be forgotten as if they had never happened. Derek was a program, not a man, yet her heart sped up when he was near and her mind kept finding its way back to thoughts of him when he wasn’t.

Get a grip, Tiana; you’re losing touch with reality!

She was going to miss this … program … when she reached the Magellan Outpost. The ship was currently in orbit above their first port of call, the ice planet of Tetras 3. They would spend the day loading and unloading passengers, refueling and preparing for the next leg of the trip. Rita had wanted her to catch a shuttle down to the planet and go skiing with her, a once in a lifetime opportunity, yet all she felt like doing was staying in her suite and spending time with … a hologram? Damn it, she was withdrawing further from reality to spend time with a man who didn’t really exist, in a computer-generated fantasy.

News from Earth was playing on a viewing monitor directly to her left. Deep in thought, she was not paying attention to it until a familiar face on the screen caught her eye. It was the man who had accosted her at the courthouse.

“… Managed to escape while at the spaceport waiting to be transported to the Lunar 5 penal colony. Mr. Hart, formerly a research scientist and part owner of Holographic Dreams Inc., a manufacturer of holographic chambers for both the personal and commercial markets, is not considered dangerous, but was the subject of a much-publicized trial that left many questions as to who his accomplices had been, unanswered.”

A second photo of the escaped felon, without the beard and with neatly groomed shorter hair, flashed on the monitor, causing Tiana’s stress to surge back up to pre-beauty salon levels as the announcer continued, “Anyone seeing this man is asked to please contact Galactic Alliance Law Enforcement immediately.”

The picture was the same image as her holographic suite’s Personal Attendant. The computer program she had been attracted to since she set foot on this ship. Her fantasy was turning out to be more real than she had anticipated.

Damn him!
Not only had this poor excuse for a human being made fun of her at the courthouse, he had escaped, followed her all the way into her suite and made himself at home pretending to be part of the room itself. No wonder Rita’s Personal Attendant was different from hers. Hers wasn’t made of lying, deceiving and conniving flesh and blood. She had gotten her wish, her virtual man had come to life. Her very own Pinocchio, lies and all. But what did he want with her? Why her? Tiana was angry, yet she also felt a thrill and sense of lightness at the fact that Derek was a real man.
And what a man!
But if he was a real man, why hadn’t he had sex with her? Men just weren’t THAT unselfish. Maybe he didn’t find her sexually attractive. After all, she was the one who had an orgasm that first night, not him.

Tiana needed answers, and she was going to get them from Derek, the man.

Back at Tiana’s suite, Derek was keeping himself busy, console on his lap, searching the databanks from flower shops near Tiana’s home back on Earth in an effort to try and figure out if she had a favorite flower.

Real macho, Derek. You’re pussy-whipped by a woman who doesn’t even know you exist. Literally.

Even though he had been cooped up in Tiana’s suite pretending to be a fixture, waiting on her hand and foot, the time had just flown by. If time does indeed fly when you are having fun, then he must have been having a blast. And why wouldn’t he be enjoying himself? Tiana was incredible. She was beautiful, smart, relaxed and totally transparent in her interactions with him. With Tiana, what he saw is what he got. Even though she thought he was a virtual reality character she was always kind to him. It was the little things she did, such as waiting for him to sit down with her before beginning to eat a meal. She was never derogatory in her interactions with him even though, to her, he was no more than a computer program. Everything from the way she giggled to the way she looked at him first thing in the morning when he performed his ‘wake-up call’ duties for her hinted of deeper feelings than those between a user and a computer program.

At the next port of call, Arcadia 10, he would need to make good on his escape. Even if he was caught, the Galactic Alliance had no jurisdiction there, for Arcadia 10 remained independent and had no extradition treaties with other worlds. In essence, it was a haven for those who dabbled in questionable activities. With his intelligence and skillset he ought to be able to make a good living and a fresh start there.

He would miss this adorable vision of beauty and femininity. He couldn’t get involved with her even if he wanted to, which, after his last experience with an affair of the heart, he certainly didn’t. Not with any woman. In the meantime, though, she sure felt right, but he would have to continue to hold his lust back. He would not break her heart any more than he would allow her to break his, but the niggling fear of losing her versus recapture surfaced to shake his resolve.

Damn, network traffic between here and Earth sure is slow today
, he thought.

Derek kept losing his signal regardless of any adjustments he made. It was almost as if someone else was trying to hide a signal within the ship’s com link into the galactic-net. One hidden signal didn’t degrade the speed of the network much, but two, by their very stealth nature, would certainly cause this type of delay.

The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Derek’s fingers moved like lighting across the console’s keyboard entering a decoding routine to work in conjunction with the encryption routine he had written years earlier for his company’s holographic chambers. He would use both routines in tandem to reverse-engineer and decipher the other transmission competing with his for resources, assuming there was one. If someone was getting in the way of his synthesizing flowers for Tiana, he was going to find out who it was and put them out of commission.

“Computer, execute program and play results.”

As the computer followed his instructions, Derek heard a mechanically scrambled voice transmit over the room’s sound system. Best as he could tell, at least one of the parties in the conversation was on the starship.

“… arrived from the planet. It’s butt-cold down there. Do you have her room number?”

“Yes, she is in room 1005, one of the luxury suites,” a second mechanically scrambled voice responded/ “Remember, it must look like an accident. I cannot risk the law pointing a finger at me.”

“Do not insult me by telling me how to do my job, human. I’ve been doing it since before you were born. Scorpio, out.”