DeadlyPleasure (8 page)

“If the assassin you so loudly fucked makes the slightest
move—or any of his duplicates makes the slightest move—I will sink my fingers
into its pathetic human brain and give it a rather crude full-frontal
lobotomy.”

Thanatos’ nostrils flared. “And I will disassemble you, bolt
by bolt, diode by diode, until nothing exists of you but a screaming voice box
atop a pile of redundant components.”

Forty-Two detected the rapid increase of five beating hearts
around him. Adrenaline and cortisol leeched from all five of the assassins in
thick, contemptuous bio-waves. If his E.S.O.U.L program functioned, he would be
unnerved. If he required breath, he would surely be suffocating. But it was
not, and he did not. Nothing scared him now, and he required nothing except
primary mission command orders from the GU. And those were clear.

Return the bio-weapon alive, cognitive if possible.
Terminate all Unit Zero agents.

“Forty-Two.” Agent Proserpina’s soft voice drew his focus
from Thanatos. He slid his stare to her face, scanning her bio-rhythms for
evidence of deception or premeditative action. Nothing. She had never been so
composed. So calm. “This is not right,” she continued. “This is not who you are
now.”

A slight pulse anomaly shot through Forty-Two’s neural
network. He blinked, head twitching to the left. Once.

“Please, Forty-Two.” Falynn took a step closer. “Please. Let
Emylie go.”

Another pulse shot through his positronic matrix and without
the necessary command code, his molecular disruptor abruptly retracted into his
forearm.

Dermal layer prickling with an unknown sensory stimulus, he
stared at Falynn, the woman who had resurrected him from permanent shutdown.
The woman who had activated his E.S.O.U.L, who’d allowed him to experience
love. The woman he would have done anything for. The woman he would have died
for.

He stared at her, and then at the de-atomizer in her hand.
Aimed directly at his head.

He frowned. Why was he hesitating?

A kaleidoscope of images flashed through his neural network.
Sharp, vivid images, saturated in color. A lifetime of memories stored in his
positronic matrix since the first time his E.S.O.U.L was activated.

Falynn making him laugh, telling him bad Old Earth jokes as
they traveled through GU space toward her next target.

Falynn tending to a wound in his abdomen, her fingertips
feathering the ragged gash in his bio-dermal layer with infinite care, her soft
breath kissing the angry, damaged flesh.

Falynn asking him how he felt, what he was thinking, what he
wanted to do, where he wanted to go.

Falynn smoothing her palms up his arms as she pressed her
lips to his chest. Falynn arching over his body, her thighs gripping his hips,
her breaths short and shallow as she rode his climax until he cried out with
concentrated pleasure. Falynn…Falynn…

Falynn.

He blinked, staring at Falynn Mavek, a sense of joy and
freedom and pure release pouring through him.

His neural-net programming changed, his positronic matrix
behaving as if his E.S.O.U.L program was still operational. Emotions are
abstract concepts fed by memories, stimulated by the past, and his memories had
become more than his programming. Much more.

He was sentient. In its truest form.

And with that state, the knowledge he should
not
return the child, Emylie, to the GU, no matter what their orders. Nor kill—

[GU remote hostile uplink reestablished]

[primary directive core programming override]

[activate combat assault mode]

[engage and terminate all immediate contacts]

Falynn frowned at Forty-Two. Blistered, ragged strips of
skin hung from his structure, vile purple fluid oozed from numerous wounds on
his chest and shoulders. She’d never seen him so damaged. So broken. Kiirs, how
was he still functioning?

She shook her head, struggling to ignore the hideous damage
he’d sustained. She needed to focus on his eyes, not the singed circuits and
wires erupting from the blackened side of his face. “Forty-Two?”

For one brief moment she’d swear she’d seen the corners of
his mouth curl into a slight smile. For one brief moment his brutal hold on the
little girl with the pale blonde hair—the girl staring with such terrified
trust at Corvan—seemed to falter.

And then his eyes had shimmered iridescent yellow, a hideous
color they’d never glowed before, and his tattered, scorched face became
expressionless.

“What’s going on, Forty-Two?”

He didn’t respond, his strange, disturbing yellow eyes
stayed locked on her.

Behind him, two of Corvan’s dimensional others shifted their
stances, the movements so slight she doubted anyone else would have noticed.
But she did. Even if they weren’t
her
Corvan, she knew them well. Knew
every nuance of their bodies. They were about to attack.

She had to do something. Before they all died. Including
her.

“Forty-Two,” she snapped. “I order you to stand down and
report.”

The ’droid’s eyes flickered. Yellow. Red. Yellow. Blue.
Yellow again. A spasm seemed to rack his body and his jaw bunched, the
teratanium metal bursting through his blackened, blistered dermal layer. Emylie
cried out as the arm pinning her to his massive chest tensed, her little feet
kicking futilely at Forty-Two’s thighs, her hands scratching at his flayed,
fluid-seeping forearm. He flinched, and his eyes flickered back to blue.

“What the Fri’ac is going on?” Corvan’s growl made her
start. She shot him a quick look, wishing to Kiirs she knew.

“Forty-Two,” she repeated, lifting the volume of her voice
an octave. “Report.”

“The GU is remotely connected to my core operating system
and has uploaded a programming change.”

The statement, spoken with such a matter-of-fact tone, made
Falynn’s heart clench. She shook her head, taking a step forward, ignoring the
sound of Corvan—all the Corvans—leveling their weapons on the ’droid’s head.
“No. They can’t do that. I disabled the remote uplink function when I reactivated
you.”

“No. You did not. The remote uplink function has a failsafe
override controlled by the Galactic Union.” His eyes flickered yellow, his left
arm twitched, and for a terrifying moment Falynn thought she heard the whine of
his molecular disruptor charging up.

“They can’t do that,” she repeated.

Forty-Two’s ravaged face grew contemptuous, angry. He
snapped straighter, fresh fluid spurting from the pulse wounds in his shoulder,
the diodes in his eyes glowing yellow, and then another shudder racked his body
and his eyes shimmered back to blue. “They have enabled my primary assault and
terminate mode,” he said, eyebrows creasing into a small frown. “I cannot
change this programming.”

“What does that mean?”

Without breaking eye contact with Falynn, Forty-Two removed
his hand from Emylie’s head and slowly, gently lowered her to the floor. A sob
tore from the young girl’s throat and she ran forward, throwing herself into
Corvan’s arms. He scooped her up and hugged her to his chest, murmuring soft
nonsensical sounds. Rocking her from side to side even as his stare and weapon
stayed firmly locked on Forty-Two.

Falynn watched the heartwrenching display for a fraction of
a second before turning back to Forty-Two. He stood motionless, his eyes a
soft, deep blue. “I am sorry, Falynn,” he said, molecular disruptor emerging
from his forearm.

Falynn stared at him, her throat squeezing tight. “Sorry for
what, Forty-Two?”

The images filled his head. Poured through his positronic
matrix. Vivid images rich with color and emotion. Memories.
His
memories. Of Falynn. Of his life.

[molecular disruptor charging]

A smile pulled at Forty-Two’s lips.

[molecular disruptor charged]

He flicked a quick look at the original Corvan, the man who
would heal Falynn’s wounded soul where Forty-Two had failed, before returning
his gaze to her. “It is time for you to make noise, Unit Zero Agent Proserpina.
A lot of noise.”

[GU command control establishing reconnection]

He raised his arm…

[local host override]

And locked his molecular disruptor on its target.

[terminate in five…four…three…two]

Falynn’s eyes snapped wide. She lunged forward, arms
reaching for him. “Forty-Two!
NO
!”

[one]

The resonating pulse punched Falynn in the gut as Forty-Two
discharged his weapon directly into the side of his head, blasting its
structure into a million particles of metal dust. Completely destroying his
positronic matrix.

She stumbled to a halt, staring at the now headless form,
watching the lifeless remains of the R42 military-combat android stand frozen
for a split moment, before it collapsed to the ground with a solid, jarring
thud.

Kiirs, no.
She dropped to her knees, mindless of the
multiple Corvans watching her, and placed her hand on the R42’s hard chest, the
flesh cold and clammy under her palm.
Oh, Forty-Two.

“Falynn?”

Corvan—
her
Corvan—lowered into a crouch beside her,
his arms still cradling a silent Emylie, the little girl huddled against his
chest with her thumb in her mouth. He studied her with unreadable silver eyes,
his expression revealing nothing.

“I never told him,” she said, turning back to the ’droid.

“Told him what?”

“When I first repaired and resurrected Forty-Two, he asked
me why I’d activated his emotion program. I never told him.”

“Why
did
you activate his E.S.O.U.L?”

“I found Forty-Two close to permanent shutdown almost a year
after you disappeared. I couldn’t tell him why I resurrected him when he first
asked because I didn’t know.” She looked at Corvan. “I do now.”

“What do you know, Proserpina?” The steady calm in his voice
made her chest tight.

“I’m an assassin,” she said, turning back to gaze blankly at
Forty-Two’s motionless torso, a sardonic smile playing with her lips. “My
existence is about bringing death. I’m very good at it. The second-best
assassin Unit Zero has. But when I found Forty-Two, I finally had the chance to
give life, not take it.”

She paused, feeling six pairs of eyes on her. Five belonging
to the same man, a deadly assassin; one belonging to a little girl capable of
healing all the sickness in the known systems. Death and life.

“When you disappeared,” she continued without looking at
Corvan, “you took with you my capacity to feel. Everything I was, everything I
did, was because of you. When you weren’t there, I became hollow. Emotionless.
Empty. A true killing machine. I hated who I’d become. If I could give an
android designed
not
to feel the chance to experience something so
abstractly vital as emotions, I could almost convince myself I still had a
heart. And by Kiirs, he
felt
. He felt everything. His E.S.O.U.L felt
more than I ever could, and I truly believed I’d given him what I didn’t have
anymore. A soul.”

“You always had a soul, Falynn. It was your soul I fell in
love with, not your ability to kill.”

She closed her eyes at Corvan’s softly spoken words and
released a sigh. “But my ability to kill defined who I was. You made it that
way, Agent Thanatos. Yet when we made love that night in my quarters, when you
finally held me and kissed me, I suddenly realized I wanted so much more. I
wanted…” She trailed off, cheeks growing hot.

“With Forty-Two by my side, I tried to become the person I
believed I could have been with you,” she continued, needing to explain to
herself, as much as to Corvan. “I knew he’d fallen in love with me, that his
emotions program was functioning at its most profound and abstract level, but I
could not love him back. I was empty without you, Corvan. No matter how many
times I told myself Forty-Two filled the void you’d created, I was empty. And
the emptier I became, the more proficient I was at killing, until I existed only
to end life.”

She swallowed, lifting her head to look at him. “And then I
was sent here to kill a nameless target and retrieve a stolen weapon.”

The corners of Corvan’s mouth curled slightly. “And in doing
so, were reborn.” His right hand left Emylie’s back and he raised it to
Falynn’s face, cupping her jaw gently, brushing his thumb over her bottom lip.
“Again.”

He leaned forward, replacing the thumb on her mouth with his
lips. The kiss was soft, a mere whisper of contact, and yet it sent a ribbon of
heat more explosive than a sun into the pit of her belly.

She pulled back, staring deeply into his eyes. “What happens
now?”

Corvan gave her a small lopsided smile. “Your days of being
a killing machine are over.”

“They are?”

He nodded. “Yes, they are. I promise.”

Emylie straightened a little in Corvan’s arms, withdrawing
her thumb from her mouth to look at Falynn with solemn brown eyes. “And Corvan
always keeps his promises. Always.”

* * * * *

He eased her down on his bed, his gaze roaming her naked
form as he removed his trousers. His nostrils flared, his breaths long and deep
and ragged, the only sign he battled for control of his body.

Falynn watched him through half-lowered eyelids, her own
breaths quick and shallow with anticipation.

Emylie lay tucked into her own bed on the other side of the
apartment, sleeping deeply, the nightmare of Forty-Two’s attack soon lost to
the safety of Corvan’s arms and presence. Falynn understood that all too well.
When Corvan wrapped his arms around
her
, she felt like nothing in the
world could ever harm her. It was a glorious feeling, one she would willingly
share with Emylie until the end of time.

When the head of Port Mercy security had insisted on talking
to Corvan about what had happened, the little girl had—somewhat reluctantly—stayed
with Falynn, her tiny hand holding Falynn’s tightly.

They’d sat and waited together, silent for a long time until
Emylie turned to her and said, “Do you love Corvan?”

Falynn’s face had flooded with heat at the unexpected,
upfront question. “Yes,” she’d answered, not wanting to hide anything from her.
“I do.”

Emylie had studied her for a moment, brown eyes swimming
with solemn curiosity before she nodded her head once, and Falynn had smiled at
how Thanatos-ish the action was. “I do too,” she’d replied. She’d tucked
herself into the side of Falynn’s body then, as if the matter was closed,
asleep within minutes.

Falynn’s throat had squeezed tight, and before she knew it,
she’d been gently stroking her fingers through the sleeping child’s hair, a
feeling of complete and utter contentment warming her heart—that mysterious
organ she’d long thought lost to her. Yet in the space of a day, she’d found
it. Birth, death, rebirth. She truly was Proserpina.

“I don’t want to fuck you, Falynn Mavek,” Corvan declared,
his eyes seeming to glow as they held her gaze. “I want to make love to you.”

His calm statement sent a stabbing bolt of wet heat into
Falynn’s very core. She sucked in a swift breath, a slight whimper escaping her
lips. “I
want
you to make love to me, Corvan Jareth.”

The engorged cock jutting from between his thighs twitched
at her response, its venous length and bulbous, distended head all but stealing
her breath. A glistening bead of pre-cum leaked from the tiny slit in its tip,
and she licked her lips, longing to taste the sweet saltiness of his desire.

Slowly climbing onto the bed, he balanced on his knees
between her thighs, smoothing his hands up her legs until his fingertips
brushed the swollen, throbbing lips of her pussy.

Lowering his head to her belly, he touched his tongue to her
flushed skin, just above her navel. “You taste so good.” He investigated the
shallow indent with his lips and tongue, the simple and yet so very erotic
exploration making her pussy constrict. Fresh cream slicked her inner thighs,
turning the air to a heady musk. The scent of her own pleasure and the feel of
Corvan’s mouth on her skin were intoxicating and she closed her eyes, reveling
in the assault on her senses. Kiirs, she never wanted this to end.

Drawing little circles around her navel with the tip of his
tongue, Corvan slid his hands under her butt, lifting her hips off the bed
slightly before moving his mouth from her belly to the smooth curve of her sex.
He kissed her mons, flicked his tongue over her folds, lapped at the juices
wetting the soft lips. She moaned, pressing her feet to the mattress, pushing
her damp heat harder to his mouth.

His tongue dipped into her core, stabbing with rapid rolling
strokes until a cry burst from her lips. She arched her back, squirming tension
building deep in the pit of her belly and setting her on fire.

Fisting the sheet, she willed her orgasm to wait, but when
Corvan took the tiny nub of her clit into his mouth and sucked, she couldn’t
hold back. Liquid rapture surged through her. She bucked, her moans filling the
room, her cunt gushing with fresh cream.

And still Corvan made love to her. He feasted on her
pleasure, drank of it, his mouth exploring her sex with such masterful
thoroughness she came again and again. When she feared she could take no more,
that he’d drained her body of its very last climax, he lifted his head from
between her thighs, rose up onto his knees and offered his thick, rigid shaft.
“Taste me, Falynn.”