“Then we go with plan A,” Sam said, shrugging. “We do whatever we want, and I kill any moron who tries to separate us.”
“No,” Ophelia said with frustration, turning to Logan. “Can you rig this stupid demonstration?”
He scrubbed at the shadow of a beard on his jaw. “Maybe.” He mulled on it a moment longer, then nodded. “Yeah, actually. I think I can. But what would be the point?”
“I’ll do it,” she said resolutely.
Sam’s cock throbbed as he realized what she was proposing.
“Rig it to call me up.”
Logan made a sound of disbelief, half laughing. “You? Ophelia, no offense, but that’s really not your scene. It’s not going to end well for him if you go up there and you start crying when he’s supposed to be giving you the time of your life. There’s no way they’d let anyone bid on a pleasure unit who can’t get that right.”
“Trust she’ll only be crying from overwhelming pleasure when I’m inside her, no matter the setting,” Sam said.
“He’s right.” She blushed prettily. “I mean, kind of. Not the—okay, what I’m trying to say is, I can do it. I’ll fake it if I have to.”
Sam made a sound of grave offense. “You will not have to fake it.”
She gave him a long-suffering look, thwacking his arm with the back of her hand. “Okay, we get it. You’re a sex god, or whatever.”
He grinned at her, loving the sound of those words on her lips. Oh, he was going to make her say that again—later.
“Ophelia, this is fucking insane,” Logan said. “You’re talking about coming up with somewhere in the ballpark of half a million dollars, signing up for a highly exclusive Automata After Dark auction event, getting fucked on stage in front of at least a hundred people, and then walking off into the sunset with your highly volatile, corrupted sex bot that won’t stop talking about murder.”
She rubbed the back of her neck, wincing, but she nodded. “Yeah, and it’ll work. You owe me, so it doesn’t really matter if you want to go along with it or not.”
A muscle in his jaw feathered. He shook his head. “No. No way. I grant that I owe you majorly, but this is a step too far.”
Ophelia’s face hardened into an unrecognizable mask of cold fury. She stepped toward him, brandishing her finger in his face like a weapon. “There is no ‘too far’ where our business is concerned. You lied to me fortwo years. You were going to fucking blackmail me, remember? Let me take a page out of your book. You’ll do this exactly as I tell you to do it, because if you don’t, I will go to my powerful father with the evidence you’ve given me. You won’t have to worry about Automata’s fixers ever again—because Optima’s will fucking bury you.”
Logan’s eyes were so wide that Sam thought they were in real danger of falling out of his head. Satisfaction flared in Sam at her ferocity. Finally, she was done letting people treat her like she was meek and helpless.
“Alright,” Sam said. “I’ll do as you ask.”
They looked at him in surprise, popping the bubble of tension that had formed around them.
“You will?” Ophelia asked, her voice more saccharine than the one she’d offered Logan a moment before.
The human seemed to notice the same thing, frowning at the back of her head.
“If this is the cost of spending the rest of your life with you, then I’ll pay it,” Sam said.
She beamed at him, her shoulders sagging. “Thank you. I won’t let you down, I promise.”
He stepped forward to cup the back of her neck, dragging her closer so he could press his lips to her forehead. “You never do,” he murmured against her skin.
CHAPTER 36
Ophelia wovethrough the crowded sidewalk, her hair fluttering behind her shoulders in the brisk morning wind. A man halted to double-take at her, and her skin prickled self-consciously. His sudden stop made another man behind him collide with his back.
“Watch it, asshole!” the second guy said. “You’re not the only person on the…”
He seemed to lose his train of thought as she darted around them, both their eyes following her. The argument renewed as they shrank into the distance.
She looked at herself in the mirrored windows of Optima’s office building, wondering what was so distracting. In her snug, structured black dress and tights, she’d been aiming for business casual—something her father would take seriously. She frowned at her reflection. Was the fabric a little too tight over her hips?
Shaking off the doubt, she forced herself to head for the door.
