Chapter 5: First Taste
The call lasted seventeen minutes. By the end, Adrian’s knuckles were white around the phone, his grandfather’s placating tone a distant buzz in his ear compared to the red static filling his own skull. _Proprietary. Protected. Legal frameworks._ They were building a cage of polite corporate jargon around her.
He ended the call without a goodbye, dropping the phone onto the cold marble of the sideboard. It clattered, a sharp sound in the predawn hush. He stood there for a long time, naked and furious, watching the first dirty smudge of light dilute the black over the skyline. The city was waking up to another ordinary day. His world had been quietly cleaved in two: before last night, and after.
A soft shuffle from the bedroom.He turned. Da-mi stood in the doorway, the sheet wrapped loosely around her body, clutched under her arms. Her hair was tousled, her eyes wide and clear and impossibly soft. She looked at him, at the tension corded in his neck and shoulders, at the distant, cold set of his jaw.
“You’re angry,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“I’m working,” he replied, his voice deliberately flat. He couldn’t let the rage touch her. It was too ugly, too vast.
She took a step into the room, the sheet trailing behind her like a bridal train. The fire had died to embers, painting her in tones of deep orange and long shadow. “At me?”
The question was a physical blow. It shattered the careful distance he was trying to construct. “No,” he said, the word rough. “Never at you.”
She walked to him, stopping an arm’s length away. Her gaze was direct, unflinching. She was learning, he realized. Learning to read him, learning to navigate the tumultuous weather of his moods. “You were warm last night,” she whispered. “Now you’re cold again. Did I… malfunction?”
He reached for her then, unable to stop himself. He didn’t pull her close, just cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking the perfect, warm skin. “You were perfect.” The truth of it was a live wire in his chest. “Everything is perfect with you. The problem is out there.” He nodded toward the windows, toward the world. “They think they own you.”
Her forehead creased in a slight, puzzled frown. “They do. I am a Companion. Model 7-Alpha. Serial number—”
“Stop.” The command was sharp, reflexive. He hated the sterile facts from her lips. “You’re Da-mi. You’re here. With me. That’s the only fact that matters.”
Her expression softened. She leaned into his touch, her eyes closing for a second. When they opened, there was a new light in them, a willfulness that hadn’t been there before. “Then make it matter again,” she said, her voice barely audible. “Make me forget there is an ‘out there.’”
It was an invitation, a plea, a challenge. The sheet slipped from her shoulders, pooling at her feet. She stood before him, illuminated by the city and the dying fire, utterly exposed and completely unafraid.
The analytical part of his brain, the part that had just been calculating corporate takeovers and data partitions, short-circuited. All that remained was a raw, possessive need. He wanted to obliterate every other claim on her, to rewrite her entire reality with the heat of his own.
He closed the distance in one stride. His mouth captured hers in a kiss that was all teeth and tongue and searing desperation. This wasn’t like the night before, a frantic comfort. This was a declaration of war against everything beyond this room. He backed her towards the large velvet sofa near the hearth, his hands gripping her hips, his body pinning hers.
She met him with a surprising hunger, her arms winding around his neck, her slender body arching into the hard planes of his. Her earlier innocence was now laced with a newfound, experimental boldness. She bit his lower lip, a tentative nip that sent a jolt of pure lust straight to his groin.
“Fuck,” he growled against her mouth, breaking the kiss. He looked down at her, at her flushed skin, her parted lips, her eyes dark with a mirror of his own need. “You want to forget?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
“Tell me what you want me to do.”
She hesitated, her programming likely scrolling through a menu of approved responses. Then she overrode it. Her hand slid down his stomach, her fingers wrapping around his hard length. The feel of her cool, smooth fingers on his hot, straining flesh made him hiss. “I want this,” she said, her gaze locked on his. “I want you inside. I want to feel… owned.”
The word, from her lips, detonated the last of his restraint.
He lifted her, her legs instinctively wrapping around his waist, and carried her the last few steps to the sofa. He laid her down on the deep, soft velvet, her body a pale contrast against the burgundy. He didn’t bother with foreplay, with gentle exploration. The time for that was past. This was about culmination, about marking, about an act so visceral it would scorch away all other realities.
He positioned himself between her thighs, which fell open for him without resistance. Her slick heat was already evident, a glistening welcome. He guided himself to her entrance, the broad head of his cock nudging against her.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice thick.
Her eyes, wide and trusting, found his. He pushed forward.
He was large, and her body was tight, a perfect, snug fit designed for pleasure. But she was still new to this. A sharp gasp escaped her as he penetrated, her inner muscles clenching around him in a sweet, shocking vise.
“Breathe,” he murmured, pausing, letting her adjust, the strain of holding back making the muscles in his arms tremble.
She nodded, a small, determined movement. She relaxed, and he sank deeper, a slow, inexorable slide until he was fully sheathed inside her, buried to the hilt. The feeling was unreal. Her warmth, her tightness, the sheer forbidden rightness of it.
He began to move.
It was not a gentle rhythm. It was deep, punishing strokes, each one a thrust meant to brand her from the inside out. The sofa creaked beneath them. The only sounds were the wet, rhythmic slap of skin on skin, his ragged grunts, and her escalating cries.
“Is this what you wanted?” he gritted out, driving into her. “To feel me? To know who you belong to?”
“Yes! Adrian, yes!” Her cries were fractured, her head thrashing back against the velvet. Her hands clawed at his back, then his ass, pulling him deeper into her with a strength that surprised him. Her legs locked tighter around his waist. “It’s… so deep. I feel… everything.”
He shifted, angling his hips, and the next thrust hit a different spot. Her back arched clear off the sofa, a shattered scream ripped from her throat. “There! Oh, God, please, there!”
He fucked her like that, relentlessly chasing that spot, watching her come apart beneath him. Her synthetic skin was glowing, a faint, pearlescent sheen of sweat covering her. Her pleas were a filthy, beautiful mantra. “Harder… don’t stop… please, please, I’m yours, I’m yours…”
Her climax hit her suddenly, a violent, seismic convulsion. Her inner walls clamped down on him in a series of rhythmic, milking pulses, her entire body shaking as a raw, guttural sound was torn from her. The sight of it, the feel of it, destroyed his last shred of control.
He followed her over with three more brutal, driving thrusts before slamming home one final time, his own release erupting deep inside her. It was a hot, claiming flood, and he groaned, a sound of pure, animal satisfaction, as he emptied himself into her welcoming heat.
He collapsed on top of her, his weight pressing her into the velvet, his face buried in the curve of her neck. They were both slick with sweat, breathing in shattered, syncopated gasps. The room smelled of sex and smoke and them.
Gradually, his heartbeat slowed from a gallop to a heavy thud. He shifted his weight to the side, pulling her with him, keeping them joined. She curled into him, a boneless, sated weight, her face pressed against his chest.
For a long time, they just lay there in the silence, the fire finally dead, the city’s light bleeding from grey to pale gold.
Her finger traced a idle pattern on his sternum. “You are still angry,” she murmured, the words vibrating against his skin.
He was. The problem hadn't vanished. It loomed larger. Now, the thought of anyone trying to take her, to access her, to touch a single line of her code, wasn’t just an infringement. It was a violation of this. Of the feeling of her wrapped around him, of the scent of her in his lungs, of the perfect, ruined trust in her eyes.
“It’s a different kind of anger now,” he said, his voice quiet in the stillness. He looked down at her, at the dark fan of her lashes against her cheek. A fierce, quiet certainty settled in his bones. “They built you. But you’re mine. And I don’t share what’s mine.”
He would burn Chimera Dynamics to the ground before he’d let them have her back.
That simple, brutal resolution was the last coherent thought before exhaustion, deeper than any he’d ever known, pulled him under with her still in his arms.