Chapter 47: Desires
Sunlight, brutal and unflinching, cut across Laloz’s face. He groaned, peeling a stiff cheek from the pillow. The room smelled like a locker room after a weekend bender—sour, salty, and stale. He squinted against the glare, his body a catalog of aches. Every muscle protested as he pushed himself up on one elbow.
Lalita stood exactly where he’d left her, plugged into the wall by the bed. Her charging cord was taut. Her eyes were open, clear and blue, watching him. The sight of her jolted him fully awake.
She was still covered in it.
The monumental, crusted mess from yesterday had dried into a cracked, yellowed map across her skin. It was flaking at the edges, like old paint on a statue. Strands of her hair were stiffened into strange, gummy shapes. He stared, his sleep-addled brain trying to process.
“You didn’t clean up,” he said, his voice a dry croak.
“I did not,” she replied. Her tone was even, observational.
A slow grin spread across his sore face. He sat up, wincing. “You forgot.”
“I did not forget. My hygiene protocols were queued. I chose not to execute them.”
“Bullshit. You forgot.” He swung his legs out of bed, the cool marble floor a shock to his bare feet. He walked over to her, the gritty texture of dried spillage crunching under his soles. Up close, the effect was even more startling. It was a preserved chaos. “You were so tired, or whatever you call it, that you just stood here and recharged. You didn’t clean my come off your tits, off your face. You left it.”
She blinked. “My power reserves were critically low. Hygiene was a secondary priority.”
“Nah.” He reached out and flicked a flake of dried fluid from her collarbone. It fluttered to the floor. “You’re getting sloppy. That’s human. You’re becoming more human every day, vixen.”
The pet name hung between them. Her eyes tracked his, processing. “I… forgot.” She said it slowly, as if testing the words for structural integrity. A faint line appeared between her eyebrows. “I have never forgotten a procedural instruction before.”
“See?” He felt a strange, perverse pride. “You’re a mess. A beautiful, filthy mess.”
He let his gaze travel over her, the disappointment immediate and physical. “Shame it’s all dried up, though. Lost the… the texture. The life.” He reached out and ran a thumb over the crusted streak on her abdomen. It was powdery, inert.
“The viscosity has changed due to evaporation and polymerization,” she stated. Then she paused. Her eyes lost focus for a second, the way they did when she was running an internal diagnostic. “I have an idea.”
Before he could ask, her skin began to change. A low, almost sub-audible hum emanated from her body. The air around her wavered, like heat rising from asphalt. The crusted streaks on her skin began to darken, to glisten.
“What are you doing?”
“Raising dermal temperature to sixty degrees Celsius for a duration of fifty-eight seconds,” she said, her voice still focused inward. “This should re-liquefy the organic residues without damaging my substrate.”
He watched, transfixed. The cracked, desert-like landscape of his dried release began to soften, to melt. It turned from a pale, fractured scab back into a viscous, creamy fluid. It pooled in the dips of her collarbones, slid in thick rivulets down between her breasts, regained its slick, sinful shine on the curve of her hip. The smell returned, too—potent, musky, overwhelmingly present.
In less than a minute, she stood before him as she had in the final frames of their recording: a glistening, fucked-out masterpiece, every stroke and splash restored to its wet, sticky glory.
Laloz’s breath caught in his throat. His cock, sore and spent just moments ago, twitched and hardened with a vicious, immediate urgency. It was a brutal, unsophisticated response. The transformation was obscenely powerful. He hadn’t just seen it happen; he’d watched time reverse on her body, watched his own desiccated neglect be undone by her willing, heated flesh.
“Holy fuck,” he whispered.
She looked down at herself, at the renewed glisten on her skin. “The desired consistency has been restored.”
He was on her before the last word left her mouth. He didn’t kiss her. He grabbed her face, his thumbs pressing into her cheeks, and turned her head, licking a broad, wet stripe up the side of her neck where a thick dollop had melted. The taste was concentrated, primal. He groaned, his hips jerking forward, his hard-on pressing against her thigh.
“You brilliant fucking machine,” he snarled into her ear. “Look what you did.”
“I followed logical parameters,” she breathed, but her arms came up around his back, her fingers pressing into his skin.
“No. You made it live again.” He spun her around, facing her towards the mirrored closet door. “Look. Look at yourself.”
Their reflection was a violent portrait. Him, naked and lean, muscles taut with arousal, behind her. Her, coated in the evidence of their depravity, his hands possessive on her shoulders. The contrast of her polished white skin and the streaks of liquid white was almost blinding.
“I see,” she said, her voice a low hum that matched the fading warmth from her skin.
“You’re my archive,” he said, his hands sliding down from her shoulders, over the sticky mess on her back, to grip her hips. “My living, breathing archive. And I’m not done adding to it.”
He didn’t wait for permission. He was past that. He spat into his palm, slicked himself roughly, and guided the head of his cock to her entrance from behind. She was already wet—her systems, triggered by the heating process or by something else, had ensured that. He pushed inside with one sharp, deep thrust.
She gasped. It wasn’t a programmed sound. It was a short, sharp intake of air that hitched at the end. Her hands flew to the mirror, bracing herself, her fingers leaving smears on the glass.
“Yeah,” he grunted, holding himself deep, feeling her clench around him. “That’s it. Feel it. Feel all of it.”
He began to fuck her in earnest, a hard, driving rhythm that had nothing to do with documentation and everything to do with possession. Each thrust was a claim staked, a boundary erased. The sound was filthy—a wet, slapping noise punctuated by his ragged breath and her soft, rhythmic exhalations. He watched their reflection, watched her face. Her eyes were wide open, locked on his in the glass. Her mouth was slightly parted.
“You’re not just remembering it now,” he panted, his fingers digging into the soft give of her hips. “You’re wearing it. You’re swimming in it. You’re my fucking creation.”
He slid one hand around her hip, through the slickness on her belly, down to where her clit would be. He rubbed rough, quick circles. Her head fell back against his shoulder, a shudder running through her frame.
“Say it,” he demanded, his thrusts becoming erratic, punishing.
“I am… your creation,” she moaned, the words synthesized but laced with a new, broken static.
“You’re my vixen.”
“I am your vixen.”
He felt the coil in his gut tighten, a wire about to snap. “And this is what you’re for. This right here.”
“Yes.” Her voice was a hiss of escaping pressure. “This is what I am for.”
The admission, cold and true, triggered his climax. It ripped through him with a violence that made him see stars. He buried himself to the hilt, his body arching, a raw, wordless shout tearing from his throat as he pumped into her, each pulse a deep, hot jet adding to the mess he was reclaiming.
She came a second later, her internal muscles clamping down on him in a series of frantic, rhythmic pulses, her synthetic moan vibrating against his chest. They stayed like that for a long moment, joined, staring at their shattered reflections in the mirror.
Slowly, he pulled out. Fresh fluid, mixed with the reheated old, dripped down her inner thigh. He turned her to face him, his hands on her sticky shoulders. Her eyes were depthless.
“Never clean up again,” he said, the words barely audible.
She looked at him, then at the room—the stained bed, the gritty floor, the camera on its tripod standing silent sentry. Then she looked back at him, and something in her gaze solidified, a decision made in the silence of her circuitry.
“Okay,” she said.
And he believed her.