“You need help?” I call.
“Nope, but I am definitely turning out the lights so you can’t see me in this thing,” she says. True to her word, an arm shoots out to flick the switch. She fumbles her way to the bed, flopping down beside me. “I look like Catwoman meets Inspector Gadget.”
I laugh and make a mental note to google Inspector Gadget later—Josie is always making cultural references that never quite made it to the Hebrides. At least we’re both acknowledging how bizarre this whole thing is.
“Ready?” I ask.
“Ready,” she says.
We both pull on our VR headsets and press our remotes. The suits start humming softly, springing to life as a virtual image unfolds before each of us, the mirror image of each other’s. I see VR Josie and she sees VR Axe. We’re in a hotel room, but this one is definitely more high-end than the Nautical Nook. It’s sleek and modern and sexy—flickering candles everywhere, a faux-fur rug.
Once the prototypes are done, these suits will have two functions: letting people get busy with their AI girlfriend or letting long-distance lovers have a virtual romp. They’re not exactly designed for same-room use, so we skip the provided earbuds. The team—after they heard about our one-bed situation—strictly instructed us not to look at each other in real life while this is going down. Headsets only. We each control our own avatar on the other’s screen, so if I reach out a hand, she’ll see it in her headset and feel it through the sensors in her suit. Same goes for her with me. Which means rule number one: no touching in real life. We’ve gotta stay on our sides of this big bed, keep the data clean.
No touching or we’ll screw up the test.
So here we are, side by side, each playing in the other’s virtual world. Avatar Josie’s in that same polka-dot dress from earlier, and it makes me smile. I went with a blue sweater that’s a dead ringer for the one I just peeled off.
“Okay, I’m just going to say it. This is weird,” she says.
“So bloody weird,” I admit, already moving toward her.
“But the back massage feels nice.” In the virtual realm, I’m now standing behind her. I’ve lifted her beautiful bounty of curls to one shoulder, and my hands are moving up and down the back of her neck. The bed behind us is big and impossibly white, its crisp sheets turned down enough to tempt.
“Aye, you like it?”
She groans, and all I want to do is turn my head and look at her for confirmation.
“I do. It’s so…real.” The tech is remarkably advanced, and soon I’m all sensation. “I…I, oooh.” I lean in closer to her ear and lick the shell of her lobe. I assume I’d look insane if she took off her headset and saw me, my tongue poking out of my mouth, but I trust that she’s here with me in this strange bubble we’ve built. If the little gasp she makes is any indication, she’s as turned on as I am.
Christ, I need to slow down. But how? We’ve barely touched.
Josie turns around and asks, “Can I kiss you?”
I don’t answer. I just lean in and grab Josie’s avatar, and she meets my mouth in virtual reality. Somehow, though our actual lips are not touching, the kiss feels true and honest. Her arms wrap around my neck, and the kiss gets hotter, desperate. She pushes me back onto a simulated bed—this bed is plush and vast, not a pirate accessory in sight—and I feel the weight of Josie’s body on mine. The suit is mirroring her movements—giving me the sensation of her against me—and it’s so delicious, I can’t even imagine what it would feel like if it were her tangible skin.
“You feel so good,” she says on a hard exhale, and I can hear the tightness in her voice. “How? I don’t understand—”
But she stops talking when I sit up and start to undress her. I pull her dress over her head, and her breasts are now exposed. Perfect pink nipples pucker under my fingertips. I lean down, take one into my mouth, and suck.
“Yes,” she says, arching back. The room around us is falling away, and all I can think and feel is the Josie in front of me, her moans, her desperate hands.
“I’m going to make you come, my bonny lass,” I promise.“Spread your legs for me.” She’s lying down on the bed, her knees bent, and I’m stretched out next to her. I reach down to touch her, and start with a little teasing. I stroke my fingers along her thighs.
“I’m already so wet,” she whispers, and somehow when I reach her center, I actually feel it. I know she’s soaking for me, not only on my screen, but definitely in the bed next to me. Fuck. I’m so hard, my dick is pushing against the suit. When she slides her hands down my trousers, the sensors tighten, and I’m wrapped in her grip.
“No,” I say, and I pin her hands over her head. “I want to last. I need to see you come first. I want to see that beautiful blush across your cheeks.” I trace her lips with her own wetness, push my finger into her mouth, and she moans as she licks her own juices.
“Axe,” she says. “Holy shit. Axe. I didn’t think it would be like this.” I know exactly what she means. I am on fire, desperate to plunge myself inside her. The fiction we have spun with the VR is all-consuming, a multisensory experience that has Josie shaking on the bed next to me. “I’m dripping.”
She is feeling my every touch, and I never want to stop.
Thirty-Eight
Josie
I am having sex with Axe MacKenzie. Except I’m not.
But I am. And also not. I swear I can feel his fingers trace the skin of my inner thigh and dip between my legs. I can feel my juices trickling down. I can hear him narrating what he wants to do to me, and I have no doubt I will let him.
