Chapter Six
Lilly
Adam takes me from my ineffective hideout in the dead of night. He blindfolds me and he puts me over his shoulder and he carries me through the darkness. I have no say in it. He gives me no choice.
I am still frightened, but there is nothing I can do with the fear. He has me in his grasp and I am not capable of breaking free of it, even if I wanted to. I don’t know if I want to. I have dreamed of him for long years, and though in the end I ran from him, thinking that he would hurt me, it is obvious he doesn’t have that in mind right now.
After a long journey being carried like a slab of meat, Adam puts me down in a chair and pulls off the blindfold that has deprived me of the sights of our journey. I find myself in another underground room of some kind.
“Where are we?”
“Under the basement of the old municipal library,” he answers me without reservation as he gets up and leaves me where I’m sitting. I watch as he walks around the room, adjusting valves and things that probably matter for reasons I don’t understand yet.
“Why did you blindfold me if you were just going to tell me where I am?”
“There are things you don’t need to see,” he says, his handsome face taking on a serious expression.
I have to applaud his sense. This library wasn’t just a place for books, it was part of the municipal infrastructure, and at one time was designated as a rendezvous point in the event of nuclear tragedy. So, while books molder on the shelves above, below there is a reinforced bunker.
He’s done some work on it. Stripped wires are everywhere, covered with tape and connected with what look like handmade plugs. My eyes go directly to the array, trying to work out what he’s doing with it, but he picks me up again and carries me away from it almost immediately and into a smaller room where there’s a bed.
He puts me down on the bed and stands over me. “You’re going to stay here, with me.”
“And what’s the plan, Adam? You have half the world looking for you.”
“It won’t matter soon.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He crouches down in front of me and looks at me with those gray blue eyes, his strong hand over mine.
“It means I have a job to do, and once I’ve done it, it will not matter what they do.”
I swallow. “A… job?”
He nods, dark hair falling over his forehead. God, he is devastatingly gorgeous. I can’t stop staring at his face. I have missed him so much, I just want to kiss him, but that is a mad impulse given he has hunted me down and taken me prisoner.
I ran from him after the authorities alerted me that he was hunting me. I ran out of guilt and fear. And he found me anyway. Now I’m going to pay for all my sins. I can see it in his eyes, though I don’t yet understand how.
“You helped make me,” he says. “Now you will help me make another.”
“Another cyborg? A whole team was responsible. I can’t make a whole new you,” I try to explain. “I don’t have the expertise, or the equipment, or…”
He interrupts me with a sexy low chuckle. “You have all the equipment you need,” he says, glancing pointedly between my thighs. “I don’t want you to build another creature like me. I want to breed you, Doctor Mallory. You will make another like me in your womb. You will bear my offspring.”
He wants to breed. Should I be surprised by that? Maybe not. But why me? Why has he come all this way, risked all this danger just to get to me? It makes no sense at all.
“You could breed with any woman,” I say. “There’s no need for it to be me.”
“I would not be with any woman other than you.”
He looks down at me with a passion that makes me quiver. He’s entirely serious. And he can do anything he wishes to me. I have no means of protecting myself against him.
“Adam…” My voice shakes.
His hand slides up my thigh in a gesture that might be intended to be comforting. “Don’t be afraid.”
“I can’t help it.”
I’m terrified. This is not a good situation. I’m stuck with a cyber humanoid who doesn’t understand social cues, or the concept of consent. Ascent beat that out of him over the years, if it ever occurred to him at all. None of the programming I had planned for him was implemented, of that I’m sure.
Adam slides up the bed and draws me back with him. He is gentle, but insistent. My body follows his will, because it has no choice. For long minutes, he runs his fingers over me above my clothes, caressing me gently, looking at me with a gaze that would be loving if it came from a properly socialized man who understood the first thing about human love.
Suddenly, Adam throws one long, powerful leg over me and crouches above my prone body, his long fingers reaching for my clothing. My shirt turns to scraps as he yanks it off me in one rough, masterful motion.
I don’t know whether to be terrified or turned on. I think I’m both. There’s no malice in him. He’s not trying to hurt me in any way. He just… wants me. That desire has kept him alive, and I think my desire for him might be what’s kept me breathing these past lonely years too.
I never had any interest in anyone else after being terminated from Ascent. Adam was always there, standing invisibly there between me and any man I meet. No human male can compare to a perfectly engineered cyber human, not in terms of intellect or physical prowess. Adam’s emotional capacity is equal, or perhaps even greater than that of most men. The look in his eyes is one of lust, possession, desire, and yearning. It reaches out, touches me and I feel him inside me somehow. We are connected. We have always been connected.
He could maul me with his lust, but instead he just looks down at what he has exposed, my breasts bare, too small to bother with a bra, but he seems entranced by them.
His large hands slide down, up my torso, cup the soft globes of flesh. He runs warm, I notice. There is a heat to his touch that feels delicious against my intimate curves.
“You are beautiful,” he murmurs, as if it is a discovery. “I wondered for a long time what you would look like without the stiff lab coat they always had you wear. You were hidden to me for so long. I will have you naked now always.”
He slides down my body and sets about making his words a reality. He tears my clothing into little pieces, his fingers making the fabric disintegrate as if it were mere tissue paper.
In seconds, I am utterly naked, bared to his eyes and to his will. He moves back to crouch over my feet, his gaze raking up and down my body.