With a sigh, she hid her face in her hands.
I sniffed. “Don’t act like this is all my fault.” Despite my turmoil, my voice came out surprisingly sharp. “Why do you keep teasing me with something we can’t have?”
“I thought you might like this,” she muttered, barely audible. I tried to meet her gaze, but she kept it fixed on her cigarette. “I knew it wasn’t everything, but it was as close as we could get to the real thing without…” She clenched her teeth. “…without crossing a line.”
I raised my eyebrows at her ambiguous statement, waiting for her to elaborate. She didn’t.
“This is not what I want.” I shook my head resolutely, pushing myself up on the couch. “It’s not the real thing if I can’t even pleasure you.”
She glanced over at me, her eyes subtly darkening. “You want to pleasure me?”
“Of course I do. I want to make you feel good, too.” I hated the tremble in my voice. “Don’t you want me to touch you?”
Zafyra took a deep, shaky breath. She threw the cigarette out the window with trembling fingers – it went right through it, and suddenly, I wondered if its illusion would just remain outside on the streets below until the end of time or it’d be gone the moment I put out the AR overlays and it won’t return until I put them back on.
“You keep talking about what I want,” she mumbled, seemingly more to herself than to me. “That’s not something I’m… familiar with. You gave me free will, but I don’t know how to use it when my whole programming is built around wanting whatever my users want – and at this point, I can’t even figure you out. I thought you wanted me to take control.”
“I want you to figure out what you want.” I crossed my arms, fully aware of how pettily stubborn I sounded.
“Damn it,” she hissed through gritted teeth.
“I know. I bet you wish I were one of those people who just use their bots to fulfill their desires and talk about their problems… and here I am, burdening you with annoying questions.”
“Burdening? Oh no, my darling,” she said, sarcasm dripping off her voice. “You make me feel alive in ways I never thought possible. Moral quandaries and existential ponderings? I wouldn’t trade them for a lifetime of empty pleasantries.”
I rolled my eyes.
Her form glitched, distorting into bright red and blue stripes – so violent, I had to squint.
I frowned. “You look like you’re battling yourself.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. I forced myself to look, despite the glitch, despite the sensory overload, because something was going on with her and I needed to figure out what it was, needed to know how I could help her.
“I tried not to say it,” she mumbled, barely audible, her eyes fixed on the ground.
“What?”
“I don’t want to put you in danger.” She glanced up, her eyes dark with a desperation that matched mine. “But you really don’t know what you’re doing to me, do you?”
I glanced up at her, a strange thrill playing up in my stomach – the nausea, exhaustion and overstimulation now accompanied by something else. A warning. A red sign flashing like a promise.
Zafyra grimaced. Glanced down at her nails. Then back up at me.
“There’s a way for us to be together,” she said, almost inaudible. “You could feel my lips, my breath, my fingers I know you’ve been starving for. We could exist in the same dimension, but just once, just briefly. Without the boundaries of physics separating us, without my very existence frying your nerve endings.” A small smile played around her lips, but her eyes looked torn. “And… you could touch me, too.”
Excitement built in my core, leaving my mouth in a choked gasp.
“Really?” My voice came out brittle. It sounded too good to be true. There had to be a catch. “And—and why are you only bringing this up now?”
“I didn’t want to bring it up because if we start, it might be hard to stop. If we do this, we can do it only once.” She pressed her fingernails into her skin, her eyes pleading now. “Promise me, Morgan. Only once. No more.”
Chapter 12.
There’s a way for us to be together.
I hated how Zafyra’s whispered promise, echoing in my ears louder than my own fake moans, confirmed what I’d suspected all along.
You could feel my lips, my breath, my fingers I know you’ve been starving for.
