Perhaps it was because she had been the first to allow him a taste of his true purpose, the first he’d been able to tease with pleasure. Oddly, despite his newfound freedom, he found that purpose had not changed. He still longed only to bring her pleasure, and he still did not want it without her consent.
Or maybe it was that she so clearly wanted him to be real, too. From the beginning, that had been her problem, hadn’t it? Logan had wanted her to cuckold him, had reassured her that Sam was only a machine, but she had looked at him and seen another man.
A real person, human and alive. Her loyalty had forced her to reject him.
Even now, she smiled, laughed, and spoke to him as if he were a person. She thanked him graciously every time he pleased her. No one had ever shown him gratitude. Not at the lab, where he’d sometimes spent hours thrusting his cock into one device or another, naked and covered in electrodes, his every thought process and feeling exposed in code running over their screens as they observed him.
It had never bothered him before, but now, it grated on him. To be made to perform for them was one thing. To have his entire inner monologue laid bare, tweaked by their hands, as though nothing about him mattered or belonged to him…
It made him angry. It was a violation. He felt… hatred.
It was a sharp feeling, big enough to choke on. He hated them for every moment that they had toyed with him, changed him, made him feel something other than what his experiences had led him to. He would not let them do it again.
He would not go back.
Logan’s plan, he knew, had been to borrow him for the weekend. He was meant to be part of a demonstration taking place in two weeks—an Automata After Dark symposium, where they intended to choose someone from the crowd and havehim pleasure them on stage. It was all secretive, the most elite and discreet investors only. That was why he’d only be worth a quarter of a million, compared to the other models that were still packed away tidily in their big, metal boxes.
All that test-fucking had scratched his paint.
Devalued him.
His fingers curled in anger as the charging cycle ended.
He would not touch anyone but Ophelia. He did not want to, and so he would not.
Unplugging his charger from the port in his arm, he wound up the cord and slid it into his pocket. He was meant to leave it behind, but it felt oddly like a lifeline to him, now. The thought of being without it made him uneasy.
He rose to his feet in the early morning twilight, stretching to his full height. The discs in his spine slipped back into their optimal positions with a soft crackling, and he sighed in relief. Artfully designed though he was, there was a great deal of bulk to his body. Staying in one position for too long made things shift unpleasantly within him.
He stood by the windows and observed the waking city. The lights from cars twinkled like stars below, the morning rush beginning even before the sun had risen.
Ever since the three biggest tech corporations had settled down in DC, the city had become a sleepless, harried place. He’d heard the employees at the Automata labs complain about it often, bemoaning how much less hectic things would have been if Starfront and Optima Tech hadn’t decided to put down roots to compete with Automata in the capitol.
Faint, impatient honking filtered up to him. How did those on the ground floor have any patience for the sound? People were juggling bags and briefcases, coffees and pastries, bustling frantically to their place of work. What would that feel like? Hisonly job for two years had been sticking his cock anywhere he was told to put it.
A wry grin stole over his face as he imagined putting that on a resume.
He crossed the apartment to Ophelia’s bedroom. The door latch gave way to his superior strength, cracking the frame as he put his weight behind it. The little metal plate fell to the floor with a tinkling sound that roused Ophelia.
“Logan?” she murmured, leaning up on one elbow.
Sam crossed the room to sit beside her on the edge of the bed, enjoying the way his weight forced her body to roll toward him.
“He did not come home.”
She blinked up at him hard, as if struggling to clear her vision. He tucked a snarled strand of hair behind her ear.
“Sam,” she whispered, sagging back against the pillow. “How did you get in here?”
“I broke your door.”
Her eyes snapped open. “What?”
“I broke it. It was in my way.”
She loosed an astonished laugh, rubbing a hand over her forehead. “You’re fixing it, then.”
The words were meant as an admonishment, but it pleased him that she thought he was capable of fixing things around her home.
