I looked over at Zafyra, an unwelcome blush spreading over my face.
“What is it, darling?” She put an arm below her head, lazily, deliberately – a movement that made her long hair cascade down in waves. She still smiled, but something darker was hiding in her eyes.
I gulped. “It—it asks if the AI evoked any… emotional responses in me.”
“Well?” Her smile turned into a full-blown grin as she sat up straighter, her gaze hovering over my body as if seizing up a prey. “Did I?”
My body tensed, suddenly flooded with the urge to offer myself to her, like a toy for her to use as she pleased.
“Well, sometimes you piss me off,” I started, refusing to look at her. “With those cryptic responses when I ask a question you can’t answer. Or when I try to say something nice and all you do is reply with a sarcastic ‘how quaint’.”
I cautiously glanced over. She chuckled. “What else?”
My stomach turned. I didn’t want to say it – but lying felt wrong, even to an AI. “Sometimes you make me sad,” I admitted quietly, refusing to look at her. “Well, not you. But the thought of you, existing all alone in a digital prison, trapped between zeroes and ones… with no one to talk to other than me.”
When she didn’t reply, I slowly turned to look at her. Her smile had faded – for the first time since she’d entered my space. For a moment, she almost looked upset.
Her form flickered again – a nanosecond longer than last time. Then, she smiled again.
“You’re forgetting one,” she murmured, leaning closer to me. My nostrils flared, still searching for any hint of a smell – once again finding nothing. “Desire.”
My heart skipped a beat. My legs pressed together, causing her gaze to flicker down.
I opened my mouth to deny it, but no words came. My breath came out shattered, because I couldn’t feel her, couldn’t smell her – but she looked so real, sohere. Her body caught the shade just right, and those damn eyes – so dark, so predatory. The red ambiance reflected darkly red in pools of gleaming obsidian, and she stared at me like she wanted to eat me alive. Not just sexually, but actually devour me whole, leaving nothing but bones.
And I might let her.
I laughed uncomfortably, slightly tugging at the straps of my top – the thin fabric stretching uncomfortably against my hard nipples. “If you don’t mind, I’m not disclosing that on a form that…”
“Stand up for me,” she interrupted. Her smile had faltered and there was no lighthearted humor in her voice, not anymore. Just dark hunger.
A choked sound left my mouth.
My body got up from the couch as if moving on its own account. With slow steps, I walked to the middle of the room, my hand awkwardly fidgeting with the edges of my shorts.
“Turn around.” Zafyra’s voice was a low command. I turned sharply.
“Slower.” Her voice made me freeze – dominance drenched in thin restraint. “Let me see you. From every angle.”
I did as she said, feeling equal parts stupid and aroused as I turned on my feet. Her gaze cut my skin like a knife, shaping the remains of my dignity into raw desire.
I wasn’t used to this. I wanted to run away and hide from her prying eyes – but if she wanted me to strip naked right now, I would do it, too.
A dark chuckle behind me. I spun back around, uncertainty rising in me.
“You can sit back down.” She reached forward as if intending to take one of the empty glasses from the table – then froze midway. Almost like she, too, forgot for the briefest moment that she wasn’t really here.
She quickly recovered by lifting her hand to run it through her hair, as if that had been her intention from the start.
She caught me staring. She blinked slowly, like a criminal caught doing wrong.
I sat back down on the couch, slowly, my eyes locked with hers in a desperate attempt to capture every movement.
Zafyra cleared her throat, her unimpressed expression returning to her face as she nodded toward my wristware. “Were those all the questions?”
“Right.” I couldn’t turn on the display fast enough, desperate for some sense of normalcy I probably wouldn’t find here, talking to an AI through the augmented overlay in my lenses. “There’s one more.”
I paused, but when she said nothing, I took it as a sign to continue. “If there’s anything I’d like to change about my AI companion.”
