Pleasure 2035 Read online

  Jove didn’t say anything, but the flicker of emotion unsettling his expression proved she’d struck a nerve. He reached up and flicked her nipple with his thumb and forefinger before covering her mouth with his.

  His soft lips played hell with her fury, washing it away to expose the simmering, anguished helplessness beneath. Tears pooled and her chest tightened.

  Chilly had been, at one time, a third-year med student with a promising future, before the Great Fall. Afterward, he chose the Black way – even though the rest of his family remained on the Blue side – and managed to survive because of his medical skills and shrewd nature. He knew how to be in the right place at the right time, until he hooked up with Chico.

  When Chico’s buddy got blasted, Chilly saved him. When Chico’s other buddy got stabbed, Chilly couldn’t save him, and Chico, being the hot-headed, cruel son of a bitch he was, put a hit out on him. Only Mayflower’s intervention saved his ass, but Chilly’s lith addiction wiped all that from his memory, just another casualty of a war between ideologies.

  A tear rolled down her cheek, and thoughts of Jove’s sniveling girlfriend drifted through her foggy thoughts. Her temper flared, and she tore her mouth away from his.

  “I don’t have any money, Jove, so maybe you ought to go find your little honey pot,” she said, some latent instinctual need to avenge her injured ego claiming her lust-battled faculties.

  Jove laughed, a deep, rich sound vibrating through her and setting her blood on fire. He smoothed away the wetness on her cheek with the pad of his thumb.

  “Jealous female, are you?” he said, nipping at her ear. “I do like that.”

  Of all the insufferable, absolutely astute and correct things to say!

  “Bastard!” she spat. Not very eloquent, but she found she had trouble thinking clearly, or thinking about anything at all except him plunging into her and making her legs shake.

  She shifted, trying to break away from him, but he pinned her effectively. His eyes darkened as her nipple brushed against his lean torso. He ran his hand along side plump side of her breast, his feather-light touch wearing away her resolve.

  “Do you have any idea what I’m going to do to you?” Jove said, wrapping his arm around her waist and rubbing his thigh back and forth across her wet pussy.

  She gasped, the intense waves of pleasure ebbing and cresting as his strong thigh flexed between hers.

  “Jove…”

  “Mark. My friends and lovers call me Mark,” he corrected her, his voice low and filled with need. “I want you to scream it when you come, you understand? And I’m going to make you come hard so you will have to scream, won’t you?”

  “Yes. Oh yes…yes,” Mayflower rasped, her body on fire.

  Her orgasm loomed, and her hips begged him for it. She writhed against his leg, the coarse hairs tickling her pussy lips and taunting her bruised senses. He released her arms, using his other hand to steady her hips while she rode his leg. He watched her face the whole time, tension building in his jaw and betraying his growing desire.

  He lifted her into him and she reached her peak, her engorged, sensitive clit throbbing in ecstasy when release came. Mayflower yelled his name as she allowed the magical explosion of relief to claim her body and mind. Panting, she sagged against him, her body damp with sweat from her efforts. Her head on his shoulder, incomplete contentment rippled through her.

  She wanted more. She needed him inside her.

  Without warning, Mark groaned and spun her to face the door. His fingers slid into her wetness, stretching her tight opening to accept him. She shivered in anticipation.

  He adjusted her ass next to him and entered her. Her pussy clamped down, and he pulsed within her, stoking a fire only his seed could extinguish. His first slow thrust made her eyes roll back in her head, all thought focused on the intense pleasure building in her pussy. He sped up, moving faster and faster, going deeper and deeper with each stroke.

  Mark licked her shoulder as his thrusts increased, scraping his pointy teeth along her smooth skin as he pumped into her. He suckled her shoulder, his sharp teeth embedded in her soft flesh but not piercing it. The tingling sting only heightened her awareness of the sensations traveling though her body.

  His orgasm eclipsed hers by only a second, his semen spilling out of her as he rode out his climax. He yelled Aphrodite’s name again, but she ignored it. At least he didn’t yell Hannah’s name. She reveled in being the vessel of his need and in the feel of mating with him.

  Her second orgasm took her higher than the first, rocking her to her core. She floated back to Earth, and Mark slid with her to the cold cement floor, their bodies intertwined. He wrapped her in his arms, his large frame covering hers, and his proximity lulled her into a satisfied slumber.

  Until she dreamed of the synthbots.

  Chapter Six

  Mayflower woke with a start. She lay flat on the gurney, naked but covered with the sheet. Her pulse raced and cold sweat covered her body. She’d dreamed about them. Again.

  Mark had disappeared, and she thought she’d possibly dreamed their whole encounter, this whole weird day, but the sticky evidence on her thighs indicated otherwise.

  She missed him. She missed how he made her feel like nothing in the world could hurt them – er, her.

  Oh God.

  Getting up off the gurney helped offset her unsettled equilibrium. Harsh and cruel she understood, the feelings she’d developed for a total stranger she did not. Cold fear snaked through her. What if he’d recognized her and called Chico? What if somehow this was all a set-up for Chico to find her? What if Mark really wasn’t a Blue Honey, but a Blue assassin?

  She wrapped herself in the sheet and walked so fast she almost ran, trying not to panic. Mayflower rushed to the room where Chilly set up Dime’s space, the space she’d begged him to create just in case Chico got tired of her or something else went terribly wrong.

  And something else had gone terribly wrong.

  She found the door opened a crack and tiptoed to it, terrified of what she might find on the other side. She needn’t have worried.

  Clad in his silky pajama bottoms, Mark sat beside Dime, watching the young man work his computer. Hannah sat on the other side, gawking with avid interest at Dime’s laptop screen. Mark’s arm lay casually around the young man’s shoulders.

  Mayflower sucked in a deep, stuttering breath, surprised. Dime didn’t let anyone near him except her.

  But even with Mark so close, Dime continued to work like always, with his back against the wall, his left leg bent at an angle flat on the floor and his right knee bent to his chest.

  His laptop tipped precariously on his left leg, his left hand tapping the key while his right hand ran the length of his thigh, maneuvering the mouse this way and that along his jeans. His eyes widened, then shut for a few seconds. They snapped open and he blinked repeatedly before staring at the screen and laughing wildly. The cycle repeated itself again.

  Mayflower had endured the same scene, her heart breaking a little more with each passing day, since she’d found Dime, a handsome youth only a year or two younger than her, by her estimation.

  Black of hair, blue of eye, fair of skin. That’s how she described the heroes in all the stories she told him at first. She’d thought if she worked with him, read to him, played games with him, she could undo some of the neural damage caused by the leakage in his brain.

  Two years later, she realized nothing could undo anything. Nothing could bring back her son. Nothing could unmarry her husband from her sister. Nothing could make Chico disappear. Nothing could fix Dime.

  Her path to destruction set the moment she woke up in the alley so long ago—abandoned for dead by all who knew her—she’d reconciled her fate, but something inside her refused to give up on searching for a place for Dime. She hadn’t been able to protect her son, even as he grew in her womb, when the synthbots attacked her. She still didn’t know why they picked her, and she didn’t care anymore. Wha
t was done was done.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Hannah whispered to Mark.

  “Maaaaaaaaaafloooooooooooer,” Dime screamed in one of his random outbursts. Mayflower jumped.

  Her motion caused the door to creak, and Mark looked up, capturing her in his incredible gaze. Something in her tummy fluttered, winding its way lower until her thighs clenched. Dime laughed in his maniacal, bizarre, endearing way and her maternal protectiveness kicked in.

  She steadied her nerves and strolled into the room. Hannah shrunk next to Dime at the sight of her, and he laughed with his mouth fully open.

  “Pretty girl scared, Maaaafloooer,” he crooned and laid his head back. He fell asleep instantly, as usual. Hannah blushed.

  Mayflower arranged her sheet around her and sat at Dime’s feet, fighting the urge to throw herself over him and protect him from the intruders. It’d been them for just so long…

  “This is Dime. His mother was a lithac junkie and used him as a transporter to get money to support her habit.” Mayflower’s voice faltered.

  Trying to put into words something so horrible was difficult, and no one ever asked before now. No one had cared. “He had information—corporate secrets mostly—stored in his head in neural form, but she let her suppliers overload him and it leaked into the surrounding brain tissue.”

  Mayflower felt Mark’s stare burning into her naked back and tried not to flinch. Only by never showing her fear had she survived this long.

  “Can I touch him?” Hannah’s huddled form spoke, her voice quiet but hopeful.

  Mayflower sat there, unsure. No one had every asked to touch Dime before. All of this was too new. Strong arms encircled her from behind, holding her, and she let go of her apprehension.

  She nodded.

  Mark lifted her to her feet, and snuggled her to his naked torso. His erection poked her, but he seemed in no hurry to bed her again. Instead, he did something much worse. He held her close and rocked with her as they watched Hannah stroke Dime’s long black hair, her eyes wide in wonder.

  Mayflower’s tears spilled.

  She’d hoped for this. She longed for Dime to connect to the outside world, even with all of its horrors, but letting it happen created a surge of emotion she wasn’t quite ready for.

  Mark swept her into his arms, tucking her into his massive chest. He maneuvered her through the door, shutting it with his foot before carrying her back to the makeshift medical room.

  He sat down on the gurney, holding her while she cried. Her sniffles turned into sobs that turned into wailing, but Mark didn’t move. He just held her, his lips pressed against her forehead in silent compassion.

  She wanted to hate him. She really did. But when his lips covered hers, so soft and gentle, hate wasn’t the emotion causing the flutters in her stomach. She didn’t like it at all.

  Mayflower struggled to get away. She’d let Mark in too much already and was getting dangerously close to letting him in more. Too much more. She didn’t need anybody, certainly not a gigolo.

  “Hannah will be good for him, Mayflower,” Mark said, his tone reassuring. Mayflower turned her face away, swiping at the wetness on her cheeks.

  “You’re awfully quick to give up your girlfriend,” she said, trying to sound as condescending as possible.

  Mark placed a fingertip under her chin and turned her face to his.

  “Hannah’s father does corporate relations for a large company. He sold her to some buyers to keep them from taking funding for a new erectile dysfunction drug from his bosses.”

  “Like Lot offering his daughters to the mob? How biblical,” Mayflower popped off. Mark squeezed her, his expression hard. She winced.

  “Hey, you’re hurting me!”

  “Hannah is twenty-three and has never been exposed to anything but Blue society,” Mark continued, his eyes narrowed and dark. “She has no concept of the Black culture or their technology. She doesn’t really understand what’s happening to her. My agency sent her to partner with me for the Dostens. I sent her into my bedroom and told her to go into the music closet. I don’t fuck naïve children.”

  Realization dawned. Mark intended to use the pleasure synth that was supposed to be in the box instead of Hannah. He’d risked his life to save a young girl he didn’t really know and she’d nearly ruined it. Mayflower lowered her gaze. She’d been such a bitch.

  “I-I’m sorry,” she choked out, shame burning her cheeks and tears forming again.

  Mark didn’t speak. He stood, letting her feet slide to the floor. Turning her toward the gurney, he bent her over the thin mattress and ripped the sheet away from her body, leaving her exposed and vulnerable to his whims. She quivered and her breathing quickened. His silky pants pooled to the floor around his feet, and he kicked them aside.

  “Bad girls need discipline, don’t they, Mayflower?” Mark said, his voice low with a dangerous edge.

  “What? You’re going to spank me?” Mayflower laughed, half incredulous. “I don’t think so.”

  She cried out when his hand connected with the cheek of her ass, the sting from his smack burning her skin. She tried to wiggle away, but he wound his fingers in her hair and held her against the gurney.

  He thumped her ass again, this time harder. Heat seared her flesh and spread outward, inflaming her pussy. A burst of her woman’s cream spilled down her thighs, and she moaned in frustration. When he smacked her again, she uttered some very unpleasant words and tried to swing at him.

  “Ouch!” she screamed. “You’re hurting me, you fucker!”

  “Am I?” he responded, his large hand coming down hard a third time and eliciting another round of expletives, along with the most amazing burst of need she’d ever felt. “Or are you? How long are you going to keep torturing yourself for things you can’t control?”

  Stunned, Mayflower froze. Tears trickled down her cheeks, carrying with them all the pain and guilt from the past. Her ass throbbed, and her pussy ached. Powerful need tussled with anger and frustration at herself and the situation she’d let herself get into. How had she gone from being a Blue mother-to-be to a Black…whatever she’d become?

  Mark released her, catching her as she fell forward, steadying her. He entered her without any warning, his hard cock stretching her tight opening, his crisp pubic hair pricking her scorched ass. He slid in easily and settled into a steady rhythm.

  He played with her tits, squeezing them, making her ache for his mouth and the way he teased her nipple with his teeth. He rubbed his fingertip across the space where her other nipple should be, acknowledging her difference from other women but not shying away from her. His touch along the smooth area sent tiny shocks through her breast, and she threw her head back.

  Their grunts and moans echoed off the cold walls of the warehouse, creating an eerie soundtrack reverberating in the hollow halls. It reached its crescendo as they neared completion. Mark reached around her waist to stroke her bud, nipping at her shoulder as he thrust into her, his pointed teeth pricking her with a sting. The powerful combination proved too much and she shattered into a million pieces, her orgasm more intense than before.

  Mark erupted inside her, his come gushing down her thighs, and a second round of pleasure wound its way through her exhausted limbs. He panted in her ear.

  “Damnation,” he gasped as her pussy muscles tightened around him, drawing him in deeper and deeper. She had no control. Her body responded only to him, to his desires. She laughed, truly carefree for the first time since she could remember.

  She was completely and utterly free.

  * * * *

  He was trapped. Mark’s cock plopped out of Mayflower as they held each other, recovering. His orgasm blinded him, and when her cunt clamped down on his cock, the intensity rocked him to his center. He’d not felt anything so perfect since before he married Niobe.

  Niobe—despicable, traitorous, a conniving whore. The opposite of Mayflower. Niobe, his own wife, hadn’t responded to him with the same passion a
s Mayflower, and she certainly wasn’t the type to tolerate imperfection in others. Had he realized sooner how vicious she was, his son might have lived.

  The vision of Mayflower struggling with her emotions when she’d found him and Hannah with Dime made his heart pound. He’d sensed her maternal instincts from across the room, though she’d tried to hide them.

  And now he was trapped by the lie he’d lived for so many years, by who he really was. Even now his wound healed faster than it should have, marking him. He had to leave or put them all in danger. If being an ex-vampire didn’t cause enough problems, his undercover work did.

  Mark had no choice. Duty called, but he didn’t want to go. Just like two thousand years ago when he didn’t want to leave his young son to fight the Persians.

  He chose to protect the Spartan state over his own child, leaving him with the boy’s cruel mother. If he’d only known. Mark never saw his toddler again.

  The slight tremble of Mayflower’s legs brought Mark back to the present. She supported most of his weight, and the fatigue showed. As gently as he could, he straightened and embraced her, hugging her to his chest. He fought for words, but none came.

  He kissed the soft skin where he bit down during their fucking, hoping like hell a volcano would erupt or a river would overrun its banks and drown them all, just so he wouldn’t have to make the decision to leave again.

  “Hey,” Mayflower said, her voice floating back to him over her shoulder.

  It held a certain wispy quality, and protectiveness surged through him, ending at his stiffening cock. “Why do you bite when you, you know…”

  “When I come?”

  Mayflower’s skin warmed, and her breasts swelled against his arm. Mark smiled.

  “Old habits die hard, I guess,” he answered nonchalantly, letting her feel his erection.

  Mayflower tilted her head, and Mark imagined the quizzical expression on her face. As with any other quality, it probably suited her lovely features better than any woman he’d ever met. And he’d met a lot of women.