Serafina and the Virtual Man (12 page)

“Are you really Genesis Adam? Is he really in there?” Sera reached up with her free hand and tapped his forehead.

“All that’s left of him.” Adam put one foot in front of the other, and it disappeared. He brought it back whole while Sera watched, apparently fascinated. “I can’t leave here,” he added. “And if you go beyond this point, you won’t see me anymore. I only exist in the VR program.”

“But you’re more than that,” Sera argued. “You know what happened to you after your program was made, after you died…or is this part of a game? Did you program that too?”

His lips twisted. “God, no. Even I couldn’t have come up with anything that sick.”

Sera dropped his hand and glanced at Jilly. “I can’t feel anything of Killearn in him or anywhere in here. Find out anything you can and call me or Blair. I’m going to wrestle poltergeist.”

Sera walked over the trigger point and vanished. Watching her go, Jilly tried to squash the rising panic. She had to remind herself that she wasn’t frightened of anyone.

Adam didn’t let go of her hand. Instead, he tugged her backward, away from the edge of their virtual world, and shifted around to face her, looking down into her eyes with a crease between his serious brows.

“Is that what you thought? That I’m really the spirit of Killearn, your poltergeist, playing tricks? Is that why you brought her here?”

“Yes,” Jilly said miserably. “I mean no, only sort of. And I brought her here just to
see
. She thinks she’s looking after me.”

“She is,” Adam said, twisting his fingers through hers. “I’ve seen her in action. Do you look after her too?”

“I try, but I can’t keep her away from the vampire.” Jilly drew in her breath, hated the faint shudder she heard in it. “Look, she needs everything she can get about Killearn’s death to help her disperse the poltergeist. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

“Nothing, except he was strong and vicious and wouldn’t give up.”

Jilly nodded. “Yes, that sounds like what he’s left behind. How did you get the upper hand?”

“I suppose I don’t give up either. Not when it came to our lives or his. And I’m stronger than I look.”

“You look pretty strong to me,” she said, eyeing his biceps. “Or did you program those as extra?”

His dark eyes lit with amusement. “This was me in nerd mode, right down to the old T-shirt and comfy jeans. All you see is all you get. I run when I remember, and I have a wee gym in my flat.”

“I know,” she said without thinking.

His brows lifted. “You do?”

She flushed, tried to draw her hand free of his and yet wasn’t sorry when he held firmly on to her fingers. She lifted her chin. “I went there. To find out what I could about you.”

“And what did you learn?”

“That you took nothing with you to Australia, not even your portrait of Roxy.”

He frowned. “I don’t understand the Australia thing.”

She drew in her breath. “Well, I have a theory about that. In fact, I have a few theories I need you to listen to, and you’re not going to like any of them.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Okay. Let’s go somewhere more comfortable, and you can hit me with them.”

“Adam, we haven’t got time to play games!”

“We’re already talking faster than we could in real time. Why not do it with a little luxury thrown in? Sera doesn’t need you, does she?”

She tried to laugh. “With Blair around? Are you kidding?”

“Then let’s go.” He released her hand, strode to the nearest computer, and did a lot of clicking, followed by a bit of keying and a bit more clicking. She watched him, acknowledged the ache of pity and longing in her. Along with a more down-to-earth appreciation of the neat, tantalizing shape of his denim-clad bum.

He shouldn’t be dead. He just shouldn’t be dead.

Still bent over the computer, he looked back at her across his shoulder. A smile played around his expressive lips. His eyes were warm, sending butterflies scattering from her stomach throughout her whole body. “JK? I liked kissing you. I liked it a lot.”

Chapter Twelve

Her lips parted; heat flooded her body, along with dizziness as the world swam and whirled around her, shifting, changing. And when the earth righted under her feet, he was drawing her into his arms, and they were swaying to very tinny, scratchy jazz music.

“What the…?”

“1920s Chicago,” he murmured in her ear.

She was wearing a long, floaty dress of light, sky-blue georgette. Adam wore a white shirt and waistcoat with his tie loosened. They seemed to be alone in an opulent room with a parquet floor and a magnificent chaise longue. Adam danced her around, and she saw there was also a large bed draped in velvet and embroidered silk. They were dancing alone in a hotel bedroom.

She said, “Please tell me Al Capone isn’t coming for us. Or
are
you Al Capone?”

“Undercover cop. You’re a dancer at the secret speakeasy club downstairs, and one of Capone’s lieutenants is paying court to you. I’m hoping you like me better.”

“But you’re lying to me.”

“On the contrary, I’ve just told you the truth.”

She swallowed. “Isn’t that cheating to join the game halfway through?”

“I wanted a quiet bit with no shooting guaranteed. So we can talk.”

“We’re dancing,” she pointed out. To a jazz recording coming out of a horn that should have had a small white dog sitting under it.

“Can you think of a better way to talk?”

Offhand, she couldn’t think of anything better at all than dancing in his arms, one of his hands burning at the small of her back, the other lightly clasping her fingers. His dark eyes were excitingly warm as they gazed down at her face.

He said, “Tell me.”

She drew in her breath with her thoughts. “Okay, I think you did die when you said you did. After the fight with Killearn in August.”

His head dipped, his cheek touched hers, warm and rough with stubble. Unfamiliar pleasure seeped through her, along with little spirals of lust she recognised but no longer feared. For she understood too that he was hiding his face from her, hiding the pain he knew she’d inflict—and that was also something she related to all too easily. Involuntarily, her fingers slid farther over his shoulder to his neck, drawing him closer.

His body felt so good against hers, hard and warm, yet quite unthreatening. On the contrary, the strength in his arms made her feel oddly safe—a rather dangerous assumption, considering.

She said, “Were you into drink and drugs, Adam?”

“I’ve read the stories, and no. I never made the statements I’m supposed to have made.” His arm tightened. “Unless I’ve forgotten. It took a while for other things to come back to me. But if I was doing all that, I’d never have made
this
.”

She sagged against him with relief. “That’s what I thought.”

His arm squeezed in instinctive response, gathering her closer, and although he was taller than her by several inches, her body seemed to fit against his like a jigsaw, every curve and plane melding. Those little spirals of lust began to lengthen and unravel into something much stronger and more all-pervasive.

Her fingers tangled in the soft hair at the back of his neck. “So I think your death was kept hidden,” she said, with a shade of desperation, “and a false trail to Australia carefully laid. I don’t think it’ll stand up to investigation, but the great thing about this was, no one saw any
need
to investigate. It was an open-and-shut case with all the right paperwork to prove it. The groundwork was already laid with your public descent into drugs and rehab.”

“Then it was no knee-jerk reaction to a mistake,” he said slowly. “It was planned for a long time before my death.”

He knew, she realised. He knew it was Dale. There was relief that she wasn’t the one to break it to him, but mostly she just hurt for him.

“I’d hoped it wasn’t,” he said with such difficulty that she pressed her cheek closer to his, as if she could absorb his pain and take it away from him. “There were other people in the house that night, besides Dale and Petra and me and the bloke I killed. I heard them. So did Dale and Petra—the noise seemed to panic them way beyond what was already going on. If I had to be shot, I wish it had been by those strangers.”

Jilly closed her eyes. “They weren’t strangers,” she got out. “They were my brothers breaking in to steal stuff. Someone put them up to it with false promises of an empty house. They’re not that bright. They ran away when they heard the gunshots. They thought it was Dale shooting at them.”

For a moment, he didn’t say anything; then he lifted his head a little to look at her. Her cheek felt cold.

“You have quite a family.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I realised he was dead,” Adam said steadily. “I stared at him, stared at my aching fingers, my brain numb. I wasn’t even relieved to be alive by then. I was just beginning to wonder what the hell I was going to do about it when this huge explosion seemed to rip my ears off. I remember falling forward, realizing I’d been shot in the back, and then the pain hit. And that was it, apart from a few hazy, fevered dreams. Until I woke up looking at you in the test lab.”

She hugged him, pressing her cheek to his once more. “Where were Dale and Petra while you were fighting with Killearn? What did they do?”

“I don’t really know. They shouted a lot. I remember Petra squealing, and Dale yelling at her to get out of the way. I caught glimpses of them sometimes, sort of circling around us, looking terrified. I kept wondering why Dale didn’t help me, why he didn’t realise this was life or death for me. But he’d never been a fighter, not in the physical sense. I put it down to that.”

He drew in a shuddering breath. His arms tightened again. “I’ve no idea where they were when I was shot. Not in my line of vision. They weren’t even on my mind anymore. I was thinking about the man I’d killed.”

“Stop,” she said. “Stop thinking about it now. I’ve got it. It’s all right. It
will
be all right. Sera’ll set you free.”

He stilled, and stupidly, it was only now that he’d stopped dancing that she registered they’d been doing a kind of informal waltz all the way through the traumatic conversation.

Slowly, he detached his cheek from hers once more. “You mean she’ll send me away. That’s not free. If I was free, I’d be here with you. And I’d be alive.”

Her heart beat and beat, every stroke both pain and warm, soothing joy, because she was up there in his thoughts and desires. “Freedom isn’t the same as wishing,” she whispered. “Sera can explain it better than me. You mustn’t cling to the world.”

His lips quirked. “The world clung to me first. But I have to say death with you, JK, is a surprising pleasure, even with all the other crap.” The veiled pain in his eyes seemed to have dissolved into a warm, growing heat that caught at her breath. “Fuck, you’re beautiful. Why did I not know you before?”

“We never moved in the same circles.” It wasn’t a bad effort, although the mockery was spoiled by the strange quivering of her voice, which she couldn’t seem to control.

“Didn’t we? We’re both computer nerds; we both play games.” He seemed to be inhaling her, his nose and mouth hovering over her lips, and cheek, her ear, her hair. “We even lived in the same city for the last eight years. God, you smell good.”

“I don’t know why. I don’t wear perfume.”
Did I just say that?

“Maybe it’s shower gel or shampoo, or maybe it’s just your soft, warm skin…”

His words amazed and enchanted her. No one had ever spoken to her like this, certainly not in such a deep, quiet, sweetly arousing voice. More than that, his lips finally brushed the skin of her cheek, soft, butterfly-light, and skimmed down slowly to the corner of her mouth. She gasped, aching for his kiss, reaching for it, and he gave it, his mouth closing fully on hers, sinking, parting her lips for the entry of his tongue, and she was lost.

It was like the first kiss, only more so. There was no panic about this one, no desperation because of the approach of enemy soldiers or the discovery of an only-too-real body. There was just him, and his exciting, exploring mouth, and his strong arms holding her close into his hard, wonderful body. He made no effort to hide his erection. In fact, he pressed it against her so that she could feel the whole length of it, even moved his hips in a deliberate if lazy caress, and her own body reacted without permission, arching into him, redoubling the thrill of the whole embrace.

His palm cupped her cheek, he deepened the kiss, enticing her tongue into his mouth, stroking and caressing it with his. His teeth grazed her lips. And she responded to everything from blind instinct, seeking ever greater closeness, ever greater pleasure as the heat of blatant desire coursed through her, urgent, demanding.

He drew back at last, but only far enough to stare into her eyes, his own hot now and strangely, excitingly clouded. “I want you,” he whispered. “I want you very much.” And then his mouth was back on hers in another long, devastating kiss, and his hand slid down her nape, her shoulder to her naked arm, then inward to her waist and upward. When his palm closed over her breast, a low, pleased moan escaped her lips, and his kiss hardened.

She liked that too, tangling her fingers in the hair at his nape, trying to press him even closer as he bent her back with the force of his kiss.

“Why do I still need to breathe?” he wondered unsteadily against her lips. “I’m a dead man in a computer program.”

“You don’t feel dead,” she whispered. “You feel so alive, so— Oh God.” She reattached her mouth to his, and he didn’t seem to mind. His hand on her breast moved, caressing the aching peak of her nipple. She stroked down his back, over the ridges of his spine and ribs, loving the hard muscle she found on her way to his hips.

He groaned into her mouth and lifted his head. His breathing was ragged, his voice unsteady. “Would you allow a dead man to make love to you?”

Jilly, who’d had such difficulty encountering a live one she could even tolerate, just said, “Please, please…” in a mindless sort of way she suspected she’d despise in the morning. Right now, it didn’t matter, since she was pulling him with her toward the large, ornate bed.

He muttered something beneath his breath, and suddenly he lifted her off her feet and strode across the room with her. Now here was the Rhett Butler that Dave Jenner had so signally failed to emulate the other night—masterful, urgent, strong. And yet he laid her on the bed with gentleness and straightened to drop the braces from his shoulders and tear off his tie and shirt.

She reached for him, and he came into her arms as if it was the most natural place in the world to be. He lay over her, his body deliciously heavy on her hips, her pubic bone. His still-covered erection pushed between her parted thighs. His skin felt warm and smooth under her hands as she ran them over his shoulders and arms and back. He was beautiful, she realised; a naked man
could
be astoundingly beautiful, and suddenly she wanted to see all of him.

She wriggled under him, which had the additional advantage of pleasing her body, so avid now for new and greater thrills, pushing at him until his face changed and he yanked himself off her as if afraid he’d been hurting her. Suddenly terrified he’d go too far away, she seized his naked shoulder, pushing him onto his back on the pillows so she could stroke his lean, broad chest.

Breathing deeply, he let her, watching with obvious pleasure. She smiled and kissed his chest just above the nipple, then the nipple itself, letting her lips linger there to enjoy the novel sensation.

Muttering something that was at least half groan, he reached up to the unseen fastenings of her dress and tugged once. It slipped down her shoulders to her elbows, revealing some weird corsetry that he began to unfasten at her back, hook by hook. His gaze never left hers, and suddenly it was unspeakably exciting to feel his fingers working at her back, knowing that any moment, she’d be naked. Greatly daring, she traced one finger down the central line of his chest to the waistband of his trousers. She unfastened the buttons there and kept going, revealing the fine line of hair that ran from his belly button into his shorts.

She paused. The full length of his erection lay thick and hard over his flat stomach. She laid her hand over it, and he exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath for ages. She liked the feel of it, hot, ridged, enticing; she yearned to see it.

But she hesitated, suddenly unsure. A thread of panic brushed through her, threatening her with memory. But he seemed to read her mind and obligingly shoved his trousers and underwear down over his hips.

Her breath caught. He took her hand, and, under her widening eyes, he kissed her fingers and palm and then placed them over his naked cock. She swallowed. The skin felt so soft over all that steely hardness, so amazingly hot under her hand. She closed her fingers around the shaft, and he smiled at her.

“Oh yes,” he approved softly, and then, swiftly, he sat up and rolled her under him, and there was no dress, no corset between them. A quick scuffle of his feet, and the last of his own troublesome clothes vanished too. His hand closed over one breast, softly, tenderly caressing. Slowly, oh so arousingly, he lowered his gaze from her eyes to her uncovered breast.

“Fuck,” he said huskily. “I knew you’d be beautiful all over. But your breast is like…” As if he ran out of words, he lowered his head and took her nipple reverently between his lips. The pleasure was exquisite, especially when his lips moved in the sweetest caress she’d ever imagined, gently rolling and tugging.

She closed her eyes, never wanting it to stop. And it seemed he was in no hurry, for he kissed her nipple for a long, long time while his hand kneaded the other, doubling her pleasure. His leg, long and muscled, stretched over both of hers, and he moved it caressingly until he shifted position and lay instead between her thighs.

She gasped, her eyes flying open, because although he’d lain there before, they’d both been dressed, and it was very different now. Warm, naked flesh lay against hers. His cock slid between her thighs, and she felt herself contract in need and longing. She was so wet down there, so anxious it almost frightened her. Almost. Always, it seemed, he kept her tension just on the right side of fear.