Chapter 14: Complaining
The sterile air in Laloz’s living room tasted of metal and isolation. Glitch stared at the half-assembled sex robot strapped to its frame, its smooth plastic limbs catching the cold morning light. She felt like a ghost in the machine of his life, a temporary program running alongside his main obsession. Her ass was still tender, a dull ache that punctuated every shift of her weight on the chrome stool.
Laloz was at his workstation, tinkering with a synthetic tendon. He hadn’t looked at her since she’d arrived, since he’d silently let her in and gestured to the stool. The whiskey glass from last night was gone. The floor was spotless. It was as if their confrontation against the window had been a dream.
“You’re quiet,” she finally said. Her voice echoed in the vast space.
“Thinking,” he replied, not turning around.
“About her?” Glitch nodded toward the robot.
“About you.”
That got her attention. She watched the tension in his shoulders, the careful, precise movements of his hands. This was his language—fixing, assembling, solving. Not talking. Never talking.
“The other day,” she began, choosing her words like stepping on ice. “What you did. When I was trying to talk. You just… shut me down. With your mouth.”
He put the tool down. It clattered against the steel table. He turned, leaning back against the edge, wiping his hands on a cloth. His eyes were dark hollows. “You were leaving.”
“I was talking. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “It always ends the same. People talk, then they leave.” He looked past her, at the empty cityscape. “My ex-wife talked for a year. Paragraphs. Essays. Then she left.”
Glitch felt a pang she didn’t want to feel. Pity. It was a dangerous currency here. She stood up, the stool scraping. She walked over to him, stopping just out of arm’s reach. “I’m not your ex-wife, Lalo. I’m the person you’re fucking raw against a window because you’re too scared to hear me say this isn’t healthy.”
He flinched. Good. She needed to see a crack.
“You think I don’t know?” His voice was low, raw. “You think I don’t lie awake after you’re gone and feel like I’ve swallowed a battery? That it’s all just acid and charge inside me? I know what this is.”
“Then why?” she pressed.
“Because when I’m with you,” he said, finally looking at her, his gaze fierce and lost, “I’m not lonely. It’s simple. It’s a circuit. A connects to B. Pleasure. Connection. Silence. It works.”
“Until it burns out.”
“Then let it burn.”
He closed the distance between them. This time, there was no violent grab, no forced submission. He cupped her face, his thumb stroking her cheekbone. The tenderness was more disarming than any shove against glass. “Don’t go,” he whispered, and it was the most vulnerable thing he’d ever said to her.
He bent and kissed her, a slow, deep exploration that tasted of coffee and desperation. His hands slid down her neck, over her shoulders, tracing the lines of her body through her thin shirt. When he pulled back, his breath was warm on her lips.
“I love being with you,” he murmured, the words foreign on his tongue. “It’s not just the sex. It’s… you. The way you laugh at your own jokes. The way you smell after you’ve been here an hour. Like my place and you all mixed together. It’s you, Glitch. It’s just you.”
The confession hung in the ozone-scented air. It was the thing she’d ostensibly wanted to hear, the reason behind all her complaints—a request for something real. Now that it was here, it felt like a trap. Beautiful and suffocating.
She didn’t pull away. She leaned into his hand. “Lalo…”
“Shhh,” he said, but it was soft now, a request, not a command. He kissed her again, then sank to his knees, just like before. But his motions were different. Reverent. He nuzzled the front of her loose cotton shorts, breathing her in. His fingers hooked into the waistband and slowly pulled them down, along with her underwear, letting them puddle at her feet.
He looked up at her, his eyes asking permission. She gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
He didn’t dive in. He leaned forward and pressed a soft, closed-mouth kiss to the head of her cock, which was already stirring to life. He kissed his way down the shaft, gentle, languid kisses that made her thighs tremble. He took her balls in one hand, cradling them, his thumb brushing over the skin as his mouth worked its way lower, to the tight furl of her ass. He kissed there too, a warm, damp press that made her gasp.
Then his tongue came out. A slow, flat, lapping stroke from her perineum all the way up to the base of her spine. He did it again. And again. A meticulous, worshipful cleaning. An apology written in wet strokes.
“Oh, god,” she breathed, her hands finding his hair. It wasn’t the frantic, silencing assault from before. This was a deliberate, devastating seduction.
He brought his mouth back to her cock. He didn’t take it all. He licked around the head, tracing the ridge, sucking just the tip into the heat of his mouth, his tongue flicking against the slit. His hand wrapped around the base, stroking in a slow, counter rhythm. Up. Down. A twist of his wrist on the upstroke.
He looked up at her, her dick in his mouth, his eyes wide and honest. “I love this,” he mumbled around her flesh, the vibration traveling straight to her core. “I love how you get so hard for me. I love the taste of you. I love that you let me do this.”
Every word was a shock to her system, a direct current to her nerves. Her concerns, her husband, the pathetic robot watching them with sightless eyes—it all blurred into static. There was only this man on his knees, offering devotion with his throat, and the terrifying, exquisite pressure building in her groin.
His pace increased. The suction grew harder, more urgent. His free hand reached between her legs, two fingers pressing insistently against her entrance. She was loose and wet from his mouth earlier, and they slid in easily, crooking upward, finding that spot inside that made her vision spark.
“Fuck, yes, right there, don’t stop,” she chanted, her hips beginning to stutter, pushing her cock deeper into his mouth, fucking his face in shallow, ragged thrusts.
He took her, gagging slightly but never retreating, his fingers pumping inside her in time with his bobbing head. The sounds were obscene—wet, sloppy, desperate. It was raw, but it was raw with a new, terrifying dimension. This wasn’t just a physical takeover. It was an emotional one. He was claiming her not with dominance, but with a need so profound it felt like love.
The orgasm tore through her, violent and unbidden. She cried out, a sound that shattered the room’s sterile silence, as her release pulsed down his throat. He swallowed every drop, his fingers working her through the convulsions until she was whimpering, oversensitive, her hands pushing weakly at his head.
He released her with a final, soft kiss to her spent flesh. He stayed on his knees, wrapping his arms around her thighs, pressing his cheek to her stomach. He was shaking.
She looked down at the top of his head, her own breath coming in shudders. The robot gazed blankly from its frame. She had gotten what she wanted. He had said the words. He had made it about more than sex.
And now, standing in the cool, humming silence of his perfect, lonely house, with the taste of her own pleasure on his breath, she had never been more afraid.