Ghost in the Machine (Corwint Central Agent Files) Read online

  Number one hundred and twenty-four, his mind continued to mark through the statistics, and she is the first to want more than a quick fuck just to see if he could. He buried his face in her hair again and took a moment to gather himself.

  She isn’t just another number.

  One hundred and twenty-three or one million and twenty-three before her. None of them mattered. He had wasted so much needless effort trying to find out what had been missing all the times before, and he knew now that he never would have found it, until he had found her. He felt her fingers intertwining with his and he smiled against her back.

  This is so much more.

  Orynn felt the feelings surrounding him change as he leaned his face against her back. He was taking a timid pause and she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps he was content with this, and she was alright with that. She would be happy to remain forever in his arms if he continued to hold her the way he held her now. She squeezed his hand and brought it up to her lips. With a smile, she kissed his hand and held it to her cheek. “We can just stay like this, if you prefer.”

  He opened his eyes and realized he had been holding her there for several minutes. His mind was still trying to process the unfamiliar feelings he was experiencing, but he knew he didn't want this to end here. Whatever these feelings were, he wanted more of them.

  He traced his hand down her cheek and across the skin of her neck. Kissing the sensitive spot above the control node once again, a smirk formed on his lips as he watched her skin shiver under his touch.

  Trailing his hands down the front of her chest, his fingers sought to get rid of the armored shirt keeping him away from touching more of her skin. She leaned back against him and he bit her shoulder playfully. The sound of her light giggle deepened his impish smirk, and with a swift movement of agility and speed, he grasped the bottom of her shirt and pulled it up over her head.

  She had no choice but to lift her arms and he pulled the shirt off and tossed it to the side. As the shirt joined her hair clip and his jacket in its orbit of their bodies, she turned and moved away from him with a raised eyebrow at the mischievous smile on his face. “Impressive.”

  “I'm just getting started.” He caught a glimpse of the tattoo that ran down her spine as she turned, and he paused to take in the sight of her body. His playful smirk deepened as he eyed the last thing standing between him and her breasts. The bra she wore looked as if it had extra moldings of support for her breasts and back. It wasn't a type of bra he had seen before, and he wasn't sure just how to approach it.

  She watched his calculating eyes and giggled again. He wasn't the first one to be stopped by the sight of her strange support bra. It helped distribute the weight of her chest around her lungs. She held up one finger, then placed that finger to a clasp at the front of her bra. With a small press inward and to the left, the clasp disengaged and the two cups of the bra loosened.

  He wrapped his hands around her waist and pulled her back down to him. Her playful giggling laughter was a new emotion from her and he wanted to hear more of it. As she moved, her bra floated open and he caught the first unobstructed view of her soft pink tipped mounds.

  He slid each strap down her arms until the bra was freely floating behind her, and she leaned back in a stretch with her breasts begging to be ravaged. Taking hold of her waist again, he pulled her down against his groin and took one of her nipples in his mouth.

  “Keilaskar.” Her eyes rolled back in pleasure as she whispered in Vesparian. She had no control over herself while under the spell of his touch. All memories of the past and fears about the future fell away.

  He had no idea what that word meant, but the accent of her Vesparian language formed so eloquently from her voice that he wanted to make her say more. He kissed his way down her stomach and unbuckled the belt of knives she was still wearing. His hands slid beneath the blood red silk of her skirt and down to the smooth flesh of her thigh. When his fingertips touched the top of her boots, he nipped her navel and was rewarded by another light syncopated note of laughter.

  Her boots were removed with practiced ease and he flung them far across the room as his eyes gazed at her bare feet. They were so small. The only other low gravity race he knew of were the Pentarix, and they had feet the size of reflector dishes. They had evolved to keep their bodies attached to the ground, while Vesparians had evolved to dance above it. He lightly trailed a finger down the top of her foot, causing her to jerk it away.

  “Stop that!” She curled her legs under her with a laugh as he tried to grab the other foot.

  As she moved to get further away, he latched onto the fabrics of her skirt and tugged at them. In one fluid motion, her body floated forward while her silken red skirt, and the black one beneath it, slid effortlessly down her legs and off her feet.

  Realizing she was now completely undressed aside from her underwear, she placed her hands on her hips and eyed him up and down. “Now this is hardly fair.”

  “I think it’s perfect.” He licked his lips as his eyes fell to her last defense. A pair of underwear that were simple in their appearance, but hugged tightly against her skin. He raised an eyebrow at their bright blue color. “Blue? Really...”

  She blushed and turned her eyes to the side as her hand raised to her mouth to hide her embarrassed smile. She felt so young again with the way he teased her, and it all felt so comfortingly familiar. Part of her told her how childish she was being, but the louder part was telling her to enjoy every moment. Her eyes darted back to him for a quick glance of his blue hair, his blue eyes and the subtle blue tint to his skin. The redness of her face deepened and she looked away again.

  He laughed at her odd embarrassment. She was acting so playfully with him, and it was such a drastic change from the Orynn he had witnessed just moments ago in the hangar. This was a side of her he imagined the world rarely saw, and it was a side of her he was thoroughly enjoying.

  “What is it?”

  She kept her hand to her mouth to cover her growing embarrassment. “Blue is my favorite color.”

  He grinned at this new bit of information. Really? He reached out and grabbed her ankle, pulling her back to him with a smile. “Lucky me.”

  He gently took her wrist in his hand and pulled her hand away from her smile. “You shouldn't hide that.” Not entirely sure where his reaction came from, he kissed the tip of her nose. He had never been in this situation before, and he thought he should be unsure of what to do or say. Instead, he felt relaxed and his interactions with her felt more normal than anything he had pre-programmed from past experiences.

  When his hands moved to the waistline of her underwear, she pushed away and wagged a finger at him. He had a confused look on his face as she pushed herself from the floor with a light step and made a wide arc around his body. When she darted behind him and pressed her breasts against his back, he shuddered. Her hands circled across his chest as her lips suckled on his earlobe. Unsure if that would be affective on him, she was happy to hear his sharp intake of breath. Tracing her tongue over his ear gave her the satisfaction of hearing him moan.

  He felt his knees weaken as her tongue traveled over his ear. He didn’t even know those sensors were there. No other woman had ever bothered to try and pleasure him like this. So overtaken by the feedback in his sensory network, he didn’t notice as she stopped her suckling of his ear to slide her hand down to his waist and unbutton his pants. When her fingers dove beyond his waist, his network erupted and verged on overload. He stuttered and took a step back.

  “Now who isn’t being fair?”

  She grinned against his back as her fingers continued to trail lightly along his erection. He shuddered with a another moan under her toying and her grin widened. Now that he was staggering defenselessly from her touch, she moved her hand up to grip the bottom of his shirt. With a mischievous giggle, she yanked it up and dragged it with her as she pushed herself away from him.

  When she spun back around to look at him, his shirt grasped poss
essively by her fingers, her eyes widened at the sight of his bare arms and chest. It was like nothing she had ever seen. The skin of his arms and torso were more translucent than his hands and face, and there were strange designs running along it. As her eyes focused more deeply, what at first appeared to be intricate geometric tattoos became more like the pathway patterns of a circuit board. The silver lines ran under his skin, ending and starting again at hundreds of circular junction points.

  He turned his eyes away from her shocked expression as her eyes surveyed his visible network. In ninety-four percent of his previous sexual encounters, this was the moment they asked him to turn off the lights. The other six percent had been too drunk to care. With the lines of his network exposed, there was no question that he was nothing more than a machine.

  Without looking at her, he held his hand out. His voice grated with annoyed frustration. “Can I have my shirt back?”

  Orynn frowned at his sudden change in mood as her grip on the fabric tightened. “I have done something wrong?”

  The hurt tone of her question drew his eyes back to her. She was still hovering a few feet away, holding tightly onto his shirt. The hurt in her voice was reflected by the confused sadness in her eyes. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He was just processing a reaction based on all his previous experiences. “No, I just thought... now that you’ve seen...”

  She suddenly understood. Somehow, perhaps with another woman, he had been shamed for being a Mecha. Her expression softened as she looked over his bare skin again. The patterns were mechanical, yes, but they were also strikingly beautiful. They conformed over every muscle, from his thin well defined arms to his broad shoulders. The lines that traveled over his hard chest, down his abs and disappeared beneath the open zipper of his pants sent a warm trail of desire between her legs.

  Her heartbeat sped as she considered where those lines ended. First, she needed to clear his misunderstanding. She let go of his shirt and held her hand out to him with a smile.

  He cast aside his previous experiences under the inviting nature of her smile and took her hand. He followed her as she led him closer to the wall where the moon-glow lamps were brightest. The light shimmered across her silvery white hair and made her skin glow. As she stood under the lamp and drew him close to her, his confusion grew.

  “Ethan, look at me.” She held her arms out to her side to give them the most light. When his confused expression deepened, she pointed a finger to the inside of her wrist and ran it in a line across her skin down to her elbow.

  “Look at me.”

  He tilted his head and focused his eyes where she had pointed on her wrist. He adjusted the gamma settings on his visual inputs and slowly the pattern on her skin emerged. They were the very faint etchings of scars that had been made long ago. As his eyes moved from wrist, to elbow, to shoulder, the recognized pattern emerged.

  Lines and circles.

  Her neuro-stimulator implants. His mouth opened in stunned silence. Now that he knew what to look for, his eyes roamed her entire body and found her to be covered in the familiar pattern.

  She smiled as the look of recognition came to his face, running her fingers through his hair as his eyes roamed over her body. “Mecha... Organic... We are all machines, Ethan, but we are all alive.”

  His gaze lifted to her face. With the new gamma setting of his eyes, her free-flowing tresses had an ethereal quality and her eyes sparkled with amber, green and silver. The acceptance of him in her eyes destroyed any remaining doubts. He started to pull her down to him, but stopped. He didn’t want to pull her down towards the ground when she belonged far above it.

  He used his heels to slide his boots off as he disengaged his internal gravitational stabilizers. One hand slid up her back to press her body against him, while the other hand steadied his movements against the wall next to her head. His lips brushed against hers. “I want you so damn much.”

  The power of his kiss pressed her head against the wall and brought forth a throaty moan. Her arousal flared as his mouth overtook hers and threatened to take the breath from her. She wanted him just as much, and the last fading warning from her mind died unfinished as her heart beat strongly against her chest with the force of her need for him. The Wraith hissed as its claws slipped and the churning fire of her spirit reached up to drag it under. Rules be damned; she wanted to exist with him, even if it was for only one night.

  He let her catch her breath by suckling her bottom lip, and he felt her nipples hardened again against his chest. He didn’t need the empathic connection between them to tell him how much she wanted this, too. He could feel her body reacting to his every kiss and touch, and it spurred him to go further.

  Pushing their bodies away from the wall, he turned them in midair so that she was beneath him. His warm kisses left hot tingles across her skin as he made his way down her lithe frame. Gripping the waist of her underwear, he slid them slowly off her legs, kissing every inch of her on the way down. On his way back up, he kissed the inner part of her thighs and stared into her half closed eyes.

  Every part of him wanted to be close to her. His skin begged for her warmth and his lips craved the sweetness of her skin. All thoughts of her trying to control him for some hidden agenda fell to background noise as the emotions she was feeding him through the connection consumed his mind. He had been under her control the moment their eyes had met in that hangar, and he knew he was powerless to stop her.

  When she felt his tongue flick across the hard node of her arousal between her legs, her mind exploded in a dazing fire of hot light and burning ache. Her back arched and her fingers grasped his hair as his mouth surrounded her. Her breaths became short and labored, and she whimpered at his teasing.

  The sound of her needy whimper only made him want to devour and pleasure her more. His hand slid between her parted thighs as he kissed is way back up her stomach. Her stomach fluttered against his lips and her whole body gave a tremor at the touch of his fingers.

  “Sinae.” Her head fell back and the Vesparian words flowed freely past her lips. Please make me yours. “Sinae vel Ethan.”

  The sound of her pleading cry for him sent a shudder down his spine and drove his growing need for her to its limits. He removed his fingers from her warmth, leaving her whole body quivering. His lips kissed the space between her breasts, and he circled her nipple with the wetness on his fingertips before suckling it from her skin.

  Her hands drew his face up to hers, and as he moved up her body, she used her feet to slide his pants down his legs. He buried his face into her neck with a hungry growl as his hand moved to the small of her back and her legs curled around his waist. He pushed the tip of his cock against her, barely penetrating her warmth, and held it there.

  The feeling of him so close made the force of her desire for him almost too much to bear. The raw strength of it took the breath from her lungs and frightened her with the power it held over her.

  It is not too late to stop this madness!

  Her mind knew it was wasting its breath as her hands moved up his arms. The loud vibration pulsing through their connection was all she could hear. It was madness, but she could not stop it. His warmth and his gentle touch was all that she wanted. She needed it to surround her and fill the empty void inside of her spirit.

  I do want this.

  Her heart stopped as the energy flowing between them passed through it, and she knew that it was so much deeper than want. It was a heavy gravity pulling against the very core of her being, and with one last hissing scream in unheeded bitter protest from the Wraith, she let the connection rip apart the bindings she had spent so much effort creating. Her heart beat stronger than it ever had before with its new freedom, and it showed her the truth she had known all along.

  I have fallen in love with him.

  He kissed her cheek then rose up so he could look into her eyes. In them, he saw a deep longing and a reflection of his own desire. With a unified sigh of appeasement from both their bodies,
he guided her downwards as he moved forward into her. She let out a soft gasp as he filled the empty void, and her insides trembled in revelation at the feeling of being whole. He kissed her open lips as he withdrew from her slowly, then entered her again with more force.

  A deep need within him surged, but he wanted to savor every second of what was happening. Nuzzling into her hair and breathing deeply of her scent, he growled and withdrew. He wanted to feel each separate sensation and hear every individual beat of her heart. Sitting up, he held her against his chest and brought her into his lap.

  For a long moment, he held her there, floating in the middle of her room. Leaning his head back to look at her face, he had never felt this close to another, and no woman had ever looked at him the way that she was. The mercury of her eyes was searching him, as if she wanted to ask him an important question or tell him a deep secret but was hesitant to speak. It lasted only a brief second, and as it passed, her fingers moved into his hair as she took his mouth with hers. As she lowered her hips down onto him, the look in her eyes was forgotten and he broke away from the kiss to let out a loud, carnal groan.

  His hands clasped onto her thighs and dug into her flesh as she rocked against him. There was nothing mechanical or rehearsed about his movements this time. He was letting the connection between them lead the way, and he followed the rhythm of her body. As their movement fell in synch, the connection pulse grew in intensity. Each time he moved within her, the pulse shot out along his synapses and sparked. The sounds of her soft whimpering cries filled his ears as she buried her face into his shoulder.

  With each thrust, the feelings within her compounded and the attachment of her heart to him grew. She lost herself in the gentle strength of his arms and the heat from his body. With a shuddering gasp, the connection exploded with a torrent of emotion as she gave in to her heart and released the final chain binding her soul. She cried out with the power and beauty of it. Her fingertips clung to his shoulders to steady herself as her senses were blinded by the sensations rippling through her spirit.