Exquisite Possession: A Dark Scifi Romance (The Machinery of Desire Book 4) Read online

  Her mechling friends must be nearby. Though he and Fern hadn’t traveled far, he wasn’t sure of the radius of the effect.

  Whatever, he had her in hand. In mind.

  His cock needed more of burying itself in her, and he wondered how often people had sex, normally. Could he wear her out, or his own appendage? Twice daily was surely fine?

  A sureness arose that he would not damage either of them. This knowledge he’d possibly absorbed while a mech. Nothing was arranged well in his new brain structure. Organics were so untidy in their filing of thoughts and memories.

  “So, you’ve not been this close to the sea before. Do I make you more daring?” he asked, unclipping her shirt, folding it aside, and pulling up the black band of cloth that held her breasts.

  “I guess you do.” She set her hand to his wrist. He growled a no and she let go.

  Her smirk illuminated her eyes.

  “Raise your arms.”

  With mock reluctance, she obeyed.

  JI pulled off her shirt, unsmiling, aware of how rigid his cock had become – then drew the band of cloth up her arms to twist it about her wrists. He pinned them to the wall above by anchoring the cloth with his weight.

  That, having fastened her down, spread her out thus, it made his cock run at a higher temperature. The Shakespeare had mentioned cocks, but not binding women.

  Fuck, he liked this, binding her. He hooked the band about a piece of metal where the wall had crumbled above. When had this liking of…of ropes and wire and chains on females happened and why?

  Did desires come whole and packaged with becoming a man?

  Being elastic, the cloth bound her softly. There could be – his mouth twitched at the corner –would be, other days for more demanding binding of Fern.

  He imagined her trussed tighter with flesh bulging, with her whimpers loud.

  JI inhaled then let it out as if the world squeezed him.

  Pretty, so pretty.

  Already her eyes were glazed, and her mouth hung slightly open – she responded to his lust, and he to hers.

  Fast or slow. Slow was more scientific. He had no indelible memory architecture. A notepad would be worth bringing next time.

  For sketching and writing. Lines were only a multitude of points joined up. What would Emery have thought of him creating art, especially fucking-related art?

  Probably he’d amuse her.

  He tucked a finger into the waistband of Fern’s shorts and weighed them down with that digit as he undid the front with the other hand. They slipped a little more with each released clip. Left at ninety percent undone, the V of parted fabric made her sinfully sexy – her mound with that line of hair. JI wormed a finger into that apex and hooked it along her slit, and slid.

  His finger was sodden in an instant.

  Disgustingly wet. Of course. The word disgusting rolled through his mind, collecting bad stuff, ideas…spearing her with this or that, tying her. JI blinked them away.

  He’d been rubbing at her while those dream images rolled through. From her breathing she might come soon. Her eyelids were low, her breathing shortened, her belly jerked as sensations surged and sucked like his finger squashing into her slit.

  He pulled it away, finger shiny with her dribblings, grinning at her oh of dismay.

  That same finger looked wonderful shoved into her mouth hole.

  “Suck on it.” After a swift check of his face, she sucked.

  The threat of her teeth about his finger…the moist hotness.

  JI drew a ragged breath. “As a pet, I can do anything to you. Yes?”

  “Mmm.” Her answer was sluggish, and her tongue lapped at him.

  Greedy girl.

  “Good.” JI used that finger to paint her nipples with her own saliva, watched the tiny bumps spring upward around the central one. “I could suck you there.”

  “Yesss. Mmm.” Her breathing harshened, the rise and fall of her breasts an obvious sign of arousal.

  Then he freed his cock, let it out to be squeezed through his hand, and saw how that enthralled her.

  With a little help from his fingers, her shorts slipped further. She yelped in surprise as he stuck himself between her legs, fucking her without entering. His member slid in the slick tunnel made from pussy lips and moistened inner thighs.

  A vivid vision cranked to life and it almost, almost, spilled onto his tongue. What if I had spikes on this and shoved it in? Would you bleed?

  Would she come screaming?

  Questions that came from nowhere. Even as he bathed in their allure.

  JI yanked at her shorts until they fell to the floor.

  “I –” Her eyes stared into his, misted over with tears or need.

  Before she could finish, he’d grabbed her ass with both hands, run them down to behind her legs. He made her bend her knees and bring them high, so he could step in and search for her entrance with the crown of his cock. The soft give, the welcoming split as her lips took him. He penetrated her slowly, feeling the give and slip and catch of her flesh as his pressed into her sopping cunt.

  The small changes on her face fascinated. Her lips, the flare of nostrils, the submission in her eyes as her lids fluttered, the sing of excitement in her when he kissed her neck as he fucked her.

  She arched from the wall, as if she was in control, as if she had any say. It had him wearing the cruel smile he’d found suited such occasions.

  With her arms trapped above it was he who could do what he liked. So he stopped and let her realize the halt was deliberate, let her build to a whining, wriggling beg.

  Then he fucked into her so her ass bumped wall, and kept going, going, ramming in. Her wetness leaked and squeezed around his cock, until her juices made every moment of his claiming as noisy as thrusting into fruit.

  Mouth on her neck, he sucked her into his mouth, smelled her, swallowing her lust, humping it back in.

  But he still…

  Couldn’t forget…

  His spiked cock idea.

  Had to wonder why he’d thought it.

  He wouldn’t, ever, would he?

  He lost that thought in the stream of his hot come, feeling her erupt into orgasm as he did. The double wham of two minds climbing into the king of all orgasms, made his knees slump, his hands slap to the wall. The pain of that palm slam woke him.

  His knees gave way and he almost fell. Her legs still gripped around his back, still intent in sucking in his cock, if she could. Her choked noises. That gaping fuckable mouth of hers.

  He squeezed shut his eyes.

  Spiked cock? Something was off. Data was coming from somewhere else.

  Chapter 11

  They’d picked their way down to the little beach through building and street. The incongruity of buildings growing from sand still struck her. The devastation this planet had suffered. Fallen civilizations. She was living in post-apocalyptic times.

  The water rolled up to their feet and washed them, cold and clean. Small baubles of blueness tumbled down there too. Some pretty organism that lived in the sea, she assumed. So long as it wasn’t a stinging jellyfish.

  Fern breathed the cleanness.

  Naked, her clothes and gun piled up on the beach above with JI’s, she stood here as if on a Caribbean holiday. The scraps of skyscrapers decorating this part of the shore would sure cut out the sunbathing potential.

  The drying seawater was making her nipples crinkle. JI was admiring them, and she couldn’t help smiling back at him.

  If not for JI, it was true, she’d be wary here. He mightn’t be invincible, but he was big, and the scavs respected him, or who he once was.

  She’d let him make her a pet. Which so far seemed to equal being his fuckable pet. Yet she didn’t mind.

  The logic was missing, as if he’d short-circuited her natural inclination to bare her teeth and snarl at everything here. Because everything here was likely a threat.

  Why?

  “Can we swim here?” he asked. “Not that I
’m sure I know how to.”

  She peered out over the low waves. Translucent water. Toppled city with nooks and crannies for whatever filled the shark niche on the food chain here. “No. I wouldn’t. No life guards here. No one to pull you out and whisk you to hospital. All we have is that healing-with-my-hands physician at the grounder camp further up the coast. Might only be ten minutes away but I wouldn’t rely on him to fix a chewed-off leg.”

  Fern grimaced.

  Relying on what seemed faith healing had helped keep her alive.

  “That on your stomach. From surgery?”

  The staple sutures shone with the sea water. She poked them with her forefinger. These never failed to amaze her. “The mechlings repaired me after I was stabbed. They saved my life. I’m not courageous enough to pull these out.”

  “Should you?” JI went to a knee and examined the old wound. “They look as if they go deep.”

  “I was told they’re fused together inside. A full circle of metal, each one is.” To get them out she’d have to cut them, then bend them enough to pull them through her flesh. “Nope. They can stay.”

  “Hmm.” JI moved his head nearer, kissed either side of the staples, making her belly skin warm with each touch, making her pussy warm too.

  He had the Cassanova approach down pat.

  “You’re really a mech?” she said in wonder. “Used to be, I mean.”

  “Yes.” His kisses moved lower until he reached her mons, then he found her clit, her quietly engorging clit and kissed her there too.

  “Fuck, man.”

  Whimpering, she dragged him into her, with her hands at the back of his head. He was going to wear her out, she thought, as his fingers probed her slit then worked their way inside, slowly pumping as he licked and sucked.

  “Still think I’m just a mech?” he queried, tantalizing her clit with tongue. Slippery tongue tip.

  “Oh my god.” She gasped. “Don’t stop. Please? I don’t care. What you are…”

  Her stomach tightened as did her thighs. So close already. He licked then sucked at her intensely while fingerfucking her.

  The orgasm rolled in, making her jerk once into his mouth then groan and gasp through the little storm.

  JI laughed then pulled her down to his level. Kissing her with his messy mouth and all she wanted to do was collapse in his arms.

  Finally, he let her. She held onto his back, arms wrapped about him, her head down and against him as she recovered. Nose beside his chest, drawing in his salty scent. They’d have to wash again. So much gritty sand.

  How did she find this perfect lover in the middle of this wasteland of a world?

  Where had her snarl gone? She needed to figure that out. It was if she betrayed herself and that niggled at her.

  “Do you know what this monster season is? The grounder, Pilf, said it was to do with collecting waik crystals at the beach. But they have to wait for a certain time? The monster part is strange. You’re not worried about these monsters?”

  She half raised her head, shook it, then put her ear back on his chest. “I’m not entirely sure but they harvest the crystals after some sort of sea animal comes at night. Not really monsters, I’m told. When they leave there are crystals in the sand. Happens once a year. The timing isn’t exact.”

  JI stood, pulling her with him, then walked into the sea to knee depth. “They clearly do not eat people or the grounders would not be camped next to the beach. Why here? I’ve seen waik crystals and they are not rare. Uncommon, yes. But every vehicle has them, all the ever-lasting lights. The weapons. What is so special about these?”

  She dipped herself, splashing up water to wash away sand. “I don’t know, but there must be something.”

  Clinking and crunching sounds made her turn to look up the slope. Aunt M was picking her way toward them. With a mechling she’d have had more warning. Only M and JI seemed unreachable in thought, and both were or had been mechs. There must be some difference in the larger mechs. Assuming…

  “How large were you, JI?” She blushed, her mind running down the rude pathway to dick size. As if. “I mean, as a mech. You said you were a JI mech.”

  Had he already told her?

  “Very big. My full size would reach a few stories high, but I ended up in the aux mech, which isn’t a lot taller than I am now. Why?”

  She tried to imagine this.

  “Just curious.” Strange how thinking of this man as once being a mech made her horny. It would be the big bad dominance issue she had going. Her fetishes were many. Making her his pet also fed into them, even if he’d not exactly followed through on that.

  The matching of their sexual appetites was interesting. It was as if he read her mind.

  JI is a fucking asshole, she thought, as vehemently as possible, eyeing him.

  Nothing. Not a flinch of expression.

  Wrong then, presumably. She would think on this some more.

  Having dressed fully, she picked up her sandals. Putting those on could wait for a sand-less surface. One of the few things that’d carried over from going to the beach at home – not wanting to get your toes worn away by the rub of sand-encrusted sandal. Her vision blurred, and she ducked her head, sighed long and low.

  Things were looking up, surely? She had a protector, and he was sexy, and that suited her just fine, so far.

  As the results at the court on the landship had shown, bashing her way through the situations here didn’t work out well. Get annoyed at people, and they smacked you back. No matter how true your cause was. She had broken fingers and a memory of much fucked-upped-ness to verify that. The judge. Damn him to Hell. Her fingers throbbed at the memory of them bending in a vice until they snapped.

  The vice…

  Fern shuddered and swept that away. Begone foul thing. Maybe she should draw a pentagram to get herself a demon who could consume the judge, piece by piece?

  Aunt M still waited at the edge of eroded pathway and sand.

  “He’s your friend, JI?” Fern squinted, a bit shocked by how Aunt M seemed eternally ready to fall apart. Could her mechlings repair him? They had many skills.

  “Yes.” He clipped his pants at the waist, grabbed his weapon from where it was propped, and hers too. “I met him when I joined a mekker man called Ryke for a time. He went on to take his followers to an old city not too far from here. Ryke has been blessed by Aerthe and she likes him.”

  “Wow.” Even she knew of the craziness of this, although there had been rumors the grounders had told her. She’d thought them only tales.

  “Yes. Wow. He is blessing more mekkers. I cannot but wonder at the consequences of unleashing them on the land.”

  “No one here likes anyone else, much. It will cause an imbalance.” Maybe start wars. Bigger wars.

  “Very wise of you to deduce that.” He nodded then offered her gun to Fern. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” The thing had shed all sand as if it were magnetized to reject it. Not a surprise to her. With waik crystals a part of them, she’d been informed to treat her gun as if it were alive.

  Since it shot like crap unless the mechlings sighted the targets for her, she assumed her gun hated her. The design had stayed as plain gray. The grounders had tsked at that.

  “I have a question for you also.”

  “Okay. Though your Aunt M is looking impatient.”

  He was shifting from foot to foot, limbs lifting and seemed to have an annoyed stance.

  “Yes. I see this. He can wait. I think he only wants to harangue me over going to find the judge. So. Tell me.” He paused, seemed to need to sort his words. “Have you ever had a strange sexual need to be fucked by a spiked cock?”

  What the?

  Fern actually leaned back as she took that question in.

  Her fantasies had come perilously close to that. Would it hurt to confess? Maybe. If he did it.

  Fuck, her mind was spiraling into the possibilities, though it would be…difficult to arrange. Surely?


  “Ummm.” She screwed up her forehead and the wave of her embarrassment led to a blush. “A little?”

  “Oh?” His eyebrows threatened to take off. “And bleeding from it? As you come, screaming in orgasm?

  What the fuck?

  “I mean, a pierced cock more? I think? As in one with hard implants. Some men did that. I don’t actually want to hurt to the point of bleeding.” Just some pain would be nice. She resisted squeezing her thighs together.

  “For the sensation? Or something else?”

  How did he find this question? But then she supposed it wasn’t totally uncommon for men to want to embellish their cocks.

  “Both?” She shrugged. “The looks. The sensation it might give.”

  The fucking sadism in a man shoving that in. Oh my.

  Not going to say that. Not, not. Or that she’d grown wet imagining.

  JI knew enough.

  “Okay.” As if it was finished as a topic, he strode toward the waiting mech.

  She resisted the urge to catch up and tug on his shirt, to say, “When? Please?”

  Fuck no.

  “I have explored, in the interests of helping your new friends, JI,” Aunt M announced as they reached him. “I found a reservoir of clean water on the roof of a small building. It can be accessed if the stairs are cleared. There are also many small animals they can hunt for food. I presume they already know this, miss?”

  Fern agreed.

  “Therefore we can leave.”

  JI cocked his head to the side. “Why would I? I am happy.”

  “Because…” A few of his limbs twisted in the air and his voice became a whine. “It is important, JI. I have seen what this judge can do, has ordered. He tried to kill Ryke. To have Gio captured and taken to him. He seeks to revive a JI mech!”

  “I know. It’s not my concern.”

  That woman. She knew of her but would not wish the judge’s attention on anyone, let alone a woman.

  “JI,” she began.

  “Yes?” He swung to her. “You are afraid of the judge. I won’t be taking you there.”

  “That’s your reason?” Aunt M seemed indignant. His eye lights glowed a deeper red.