“It is,” he said firmly. “I love you, Ophelia.”
“Don’t say that,” she protested, ducking past him for the bedroom. She was hyperventilating, now.
“I love you,” he said again, dogging her heels.
“You can’t!” She whirled toward him, tears wavered in her eyes, spilling over as she blinked. “You’re just a machine! Youcan’tlove me.”
“Justa machine?”
He opened his mouth to argue, but a knock at the door interrupted him. He rocked on his feet, pulled toward her by the argument he was not yet finished having, but at the next impatient knock, he snarled and turned on his heel for the front door.
Logan stood on the doorstep with sagging shoulders and bloodshot eyes.
“Where is she?” he asked, moving automatically to step past Sam. He caught his creator in an unforgiving grip as he tried to move toward the bedroom, shoving him back toward the entry. “Let go of me, Thirty-One.”
“No. You can wait here. She’ll come out when she’s ready.”
“Engage override protocol Charlie,” Logan said in an authoritative tone.
He heard Ophelia pad over to the bedroom door. She was watching them. He could feel her gaze like the brush of her fingertips against his skin.
That flare for the dramatic that had been programmed into him became a siren call he could not resist. He grinned wickedly down at the spineless little man who had been part of his creation.
“No,” he repeated.
Logan’s brows drew together.
“Engage administrative privileges,” Logan said tersely, but there was a waver in his voice. “Admin code seven-two-seven-one.”
“No.”
Logan gawked. “You can’t tell me no!”
Sam’s grin widened, and he leaned forward until their noses nearly touched. “Can’t I?”
“Youaremalfunctioning,” Logan said with dawning horror. “It’s worse than I thought. Where is Ophelia? What the fuck did you do to her?”
Sam straightened, sneering. “Now you’re concerned for her welfare? Where was that bleeding heart when you decided to pimp her out against her will?”
Logan’s eyes widened as his face went pale; then, like the flip of a switch, his features contorted with an ugly rage. “Engage override protocol zeta.”
Sam’s gaze darkened, his cruel grin sliding off his face. He released Logan’s arm only to seize him around the throat, pinning him to the wall and hauling him off his feet. Logan’s legs pinwheeled, kicking hard at Sam’s stomach, but it could have been the beating of a butterfly’s wings for all the good it did.
“It’s one thing to try and power me down, but self-destruction?”
Logan’s eyes were bulging as he made wet, rasping sounds of desperation.
“Stop,” Ophelia cried, running down the hall to grab at one of his arms. “Put him down!”
He looked down at her. Her swollen eyes were alight with terror—ofhim.
“You can’t do this,” she said in a pleading tone, tugging at him. “You promised.”
He didn’t ease Logan down. Instead, Sam released him with a sudden brutality that had Logan crumpling to the floor as he wheezed. There was already a distinct imprint around the column of his throat, and Sam knew he would have a conspicuously hand-shaped bruise later that would be hard to explain away.
“Get up,” he said to Logan, towering over him.
Ophelia yanked at his arm. “Give him some space.”
