I’m practically limping for a few days after that first session with David. Things get busy at Envoy after that, and I don’t see him for a few days, but the guilt slowly sets in.

I believe him when he says he wants a family. I know what it’s like to feel that way. Although I never imagined having a child of my own, since I was told that I could never get pregnant, I still always wanted a family. I wanted a husband and children and a big house in the suburbs, the whole white picket fence thing. I know that’s probably all bullshit, but it’s something that I wanted.

Now I have my daughter, and I have to admit that despite how difficult it is to be a single mom, it still feels amazing. I love having a daughter of my own, she’s my everything. I know that no matter what, she’s my family, and I’ll always have her.

I can imagine David wanting something similar. He’s going about it in a really odd way, but I bet there’s no real good way for him to do it. He’s so rich and always in the spotlight, or at least in the spotlight of the tech community. He can’t just go to a normal surrogate, because that’ll leak almost instantly. He probably doesn’t have any close girlfriends that he could picture himself with, or at least that’s my guess. He must think of me as his only hope, and although it’s totally bizarre, I can kind of understand.

I hate that I’m lying to him. I don’t want to take the dream of a family away from him, but to be fair, it’s only six months. And he is asking me to enter into some crazy contract where he gets to fuck me whenever he wants. To be fair, I’m not exactly complaining, because it feels so fucking amazing when I’m with him, but still. It’s not like he’s getting nothing out of this.

It’s all so damn confusing. I feel guilty that I’m lying to him, but I’m only partially lying since I did actually get pregnant once despite the odds, and the whole thing is crazy anyway. I don’t know what to feel, but fortunately I get a few days without him to process a little bit.

“What are you working on?” Mel asks me at lunch on the third day after I signed the contract.

“Sven has me on this weird project,” I say, shrugging a little bit. “He has me reading user comments from customer support emails and from Facebook and I’m supposed to like… glean some ethical stance from it all.”

Mel raises her eyebrow. “Huh?”

“I know,” I say, sighing. “I don’t even understand it myself.”

“What are you finding so far?”

“People want more cup holders.”

She cackles a little bit and takes a bite of her salad. I smile, but I’m really not joking. People do want more cup holders.

Working at Envoy is great, but my division is bizarre. People keep to themselves mostly, but I’ve been getting close with Mel and Larry. Monk and Ed are also both nice, although Monk is probably the weirdest of the bunch. I don’t think “Monk” is his real name, but he insists we call him that, and he won’t answer to anything else. I think everyone’s given up trying to get his real name out of him.

“Don’t look now,” Mel whispers suddenly, eyes wide. “The big boss is coming.”

I look up and spot David walking over from the elevators, Olivia walking beside him. I feel a pang of jealousy suddenly, which is totally nuts. Olivia is gorgeous, severe but beautiful like a model. She’s brilliant, and people say she’s a big reason that Envoy’s been so successful lobbying local governments to allow autonomous cars on the road, and I believe it. Just being around her intimidates me, and she’s around David all the time.

David pauses and says something to Olivia before looking over at my group. He spots me, smiles, and says something else to her. She shakes her head and walks back toward the elevators, and he turns and heads straight for me.

“Is he coming over here?” Mel whispers sharply. “Holy crap, David’s coming over here, he’s so freaking gorgeous, how are you just—”

“Hi, David,” I say loudly as he approaches, cutting Mel off mid-freak-out. She stops talking and smiles up at him like an idiot. I’m guessing she’s as infatuated with him as I used to be, back before he got me pregnant with his miracle baby.

“Hi, Emma. Hi, Mel,” he says.

“Hi, uh, David.” Mel giggles a little bit and he smiles at her like she’s a crazy person, which, to be fair, she might be.

“I guess I’m a little too late to get you to go to lunch with me,” he says, turning back to me.

“Sorry,” I say, holding up my mostly-eaten lunch, leftovers from last night’s red beans and rice. “Already ate.”

“Shame.” His smile doesn’t falter. “Want to take a quick walk with me?”

I hesitate a second. I don’t know what the contract specifies in terms of what he can make me do at work, but he is my boss after all. I nod and stand up. “Let me put this away real fast,” I say, and hurry over to my cube. I put the glass container on my desk, snap on the lid, and hurry back to find Mel gawking awkwardly at David while David smiles back, trying to pretend like she’s not staring.

“Okay, ready?” I ask him.

“Let’s go.” He nods back toward the elevators, and I follow him as we walk.

We go a few feet in silence before he looks at me. “Is that Mel girl… normal?” he asks.

I grin at him. “Normal how?”

“I mean, she was just smiling at me like an idiot. Is she high?”

“No, she’s just weird.”

He laughs a little bit. “Okay. I guess I shouldn’t expect anything else from Sven’s division.”

“Why is his division so strange?” I ask him. “I mean, it doesn’t seem to make sense. Everyone’s working on some random project Sven keeps talking about, but as far as I can tell, we’re all doing random bits and pieces that don’t fit together.”

He looks a little surprised, but he’s smiling. “You noticed that?”

“I’ve been talking to people, and Sven has me doing this weird task.” I shrug a little bit. We come around a corner, but instead of going to the elevators, he walks down a short side hallway that I’ve never been down before.

“Don’t worry about Sven,” David says to me. “I promise, whatever he has you guys doing will all add up in the end.” He stops outside of an unmarked door, takes out his keycard, and holds it over the locking panel. The door clicks and he turns the knob, looking back at me. “Or maybe it won’t. Doesn’t matter either way.”

I want to argue with him but my words are lost as he steps into the room. I follow him and look around, my eyes wide open as I stare at racks and racks of silently whirring computers.

David walks a few feet into the server room and I follow him. “Is this it?” I ask in a whisper.

“Is this what?” he answers, stopping a few feet into the room, head cocked.

“The Brain.”

He frowns a little bit and then laughs. “Oh shit, I forgot people called it that. No, this isn’t the Envoy central system, this is just a local server farm for you guys.”

I nod, a little disappointed. The Brain is the central nervous system of every single Envoy car. They’re all linked through this system and each Envoy talks with every other Envoy, constantly optimizing ride paths and sharing useful collision avoidance data. The Envoy cars are actually individual cells in a huge brain, or at least that’s how I think about it. Because they’re all linked, they can constantly improve each other. An Envoy car has never crashed into another Envoy, and never will. They’re practically the same thing.

“What are we doing here?” I ask him. The room’s actually pretty warm, which is common for a server room. He steps closer to me and I back up a step, running into the wall. He smirks and I know what he’s thinking. My pulse quickens as I think about the last time he fucked me, bent over his dark, panties around my knees. He was rough and gentle and incredible, all at once. I’m still throbbing from him.

“Are you busy tonight?” he asks as he gets even closer.

“Busy? Tonight?” My brain’s having trouble keeping up with him so close. His body’s practically against mine. His hands stray to my hips and his lips find my neck, gently caressing me. I toss my hair back a little bit unconsciously.

“Tonight,” he says simply.

“No, I’m not busy, but I have Julie.”

“Maudette will watch Julie. You’re contractually obligated to go out with me.”

“Out?” I ask, a little lost. “I thought we’d just…” I trail off.

He smirks at me. “You thought we’d just fuck in your kitchen, shake hands, and part ways?”

I blush a deep scarlet. “Basically.”

“We can do that, if you want,” he muses. “Might be fun.”

“No,” I say quickly. “We can go out.”

“Okay then. I’m enacting the contract tonight. Be ready by seven.”

“I will,” I say softly. “Are you sure Maudette doesn’t mind?”

“No, especially considering how much I’m paying her.” He steps away from me and gives me a look. “See you at eight.”

He walks away, leaving me there to catch my breath. I’m dripping wet and trying to control myself as the door to the server farm swings shut.

I take a few minutes before I finally follow him out. Fortunately, the door only locks from one side, so I can easily leave. I head back to my division and I find Mel hanging around my desk.

Her eyes light up as I sit down in my chair. “Well?” she asks.

I shake my head. “Just asking me about how I’m settling in,” I lie.

“Oh,” she says. “That’s odd. He never did that for me.”

I shrug a little bit. “We met once at a conference. I guess we’re… friendly.” I don’t know how else to explain it.

She gives me a look and then sighs, smiling. “Lucky girl.”

I want to explain more but I know that’d just look worse. “It’s no big deal,” I say.

“Put in a good word for me then, okay?” she says. “I can be very discreet.”

I almost choke as she giggles and walks away.