Wired For Sex: A.D.A.M. Read online

  "They will send me away,” he said when a few minutes had passed. There was a questioning lilt to the statement, as if he wanted to say more but wasn't certain how to say it. Her focus zeroed in on what he had said, though.

  "Who?"

  His response was slow in coming, as if he'd considered it carefully before answering. “The company."

  She lifted her head to stare at him. “You're being transferred?"

  There was something in his eyes that told her that wasn't entirely the case, but he merely shrugged. “Yes."

  She swallowed against the emotion that welled in her throat. “You have to go?"

  His face tightened. “Yes."

  She settled her head on his shoulder again, fighting the disappointment that threatened to completely demolish the enjoyment she'd been feeling. Lifting a hand, she smoothed her palm over his chest, trying not to think about the hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach at the thought that he was leaving and she wouldn't get to see him any more. “You could ... be with me until you have to go,” she said tentatively.

  The tension she hadn't even sensed in him disappeared. He swallowed audibly. “You would ... let me?"

  She lifted her head enough to press a kiss to one hard pec. “I'd ... like that ... a lot."

  His arms tightened around her. He rolled onto his side, gathering her against his length and burrowing his face against her neck. “I wish.... “He paused. “I wish I didn't have to leave you, Evie."

  Warmth expanded in her chest, tightened uncomfortably. She found she didn't want to explore the feeling, dreaded having to acknowledge it. “Why do you call me Evie?” she asked, less from curiosity than to distract herself from the thoughts beating at the back of her consciousness.

  "It's from ancient religious text. The first man was Adam and the woman created for him was Eve."

  Evelyn thought for several moments that she would cry. No one had ever said anything to her that was even half as sweet. Tears stung her nose and eyes.

  "You weren't created for me, though,” he said gruffly, some emotion threading his voice that sounded like anger. “And I wasn't created for you ... even though I wish I had been. My creators had something different in mind for me, and I can't change that."

  Chapter Seven

  Evelyn hadn't asked Adam what he'd meant when he'd said ‘his creators'. She hadn't actually registered what he'd said until much later, and she hadn't wanted to know badly enough to bring up the subject again. It seemed to her that he'd all but confessed outright that he loved her. She didn't know why he had no choice but to go when he was told to go, but she'd sensed his anger and frustration that he had no choice, and she saw no sense in broaching that subject either when it didn't seem they'd have much time together.

  Wasn't it better, she thought, to enjoy being together while they could?

  He'd seemed perfectly content to lay cuddling with her for hours. She'd gotten up after a while, prompted by her grumbling stomach, even though she would've rather ignored it, and fixed them both something to eat.

  Unable to come up with a ‘safe’ subject when she discovered he was as reluctant to talk about his past as he was his future, she'd done most of the talking. It didn't seem to bore him. In fact, he'd chuckled at one of the tales she'd dredged up from her childhood, and she'd struggled to resurrect more memories to entertain him.

  They'd showered together and then raced back to her bedroom and leapt onto her bed, which had promptly collapsed under their combined assault, laughed like idiots over the broken bed, and then made love until she'd finally passed out from sheer exhaustion.

  Surfacing toward consciousness near dawn, she'd reached for him and discovered he was gone. Disappointment hit her first, and then a flicker of anger that extinguished almost as quickly as it had formed.

  He hadn't made her any promises. It was her own damned fault if she'd expected more, she told herself as she lay staring up at the ceiling of her bedroom.

  She didn't know anything about Adam Mercury, she realized.

  Nothing.

  Except the way he made her feel whenever he looked at her, smiled her, touched her.

  Why wouldn't he talk about his past, she wondered?

  She supposed, considering his position with the company, she could understand why he wouldn't talk about his reassignment. Undoubtedly, it was a top security matter. But why couldn't he tell her anything about his past? Surely all of it couldn't be a deep, dark secret! Maybe his training and the jobs he'd done before, but before that?

  It was like he'd just dropped from the sky—no yesterdays, no tomorrows, only today.

  It frustrated her. She wanted to know more about him—everything about him, even the bad things.

  Maybe that was it? Maybe his past was just too painful for him to want to talk about it? Or maybe he'd been in trouble before and he was afraid she would think badly of him?

  It couldn't be that, she decided. She couldn't believe he would've passed the background check if he'd been in any kind of trouble in his past.

  Besides, he just didn't have the look of a trouble maker.

  He didn't actually look old enough to have had a ‘long’ history of trouble in any case. She hadn't really thought much about his age. It had occurred to her that he might be younger than her, but she couldn't believe it was enough to make a real difference. He wouldn't have gotten the job as head of security if he was actually as young as he looked.

  Realizing after a time that she'd lain thinking about him longer than she should have, she got up to get ready for work.

  She was still mildly annoyed when she arrived at Robotics Inc. that Adam had slipped out while she was sleeping, mostly because it made her worry that she couldn't trust what he'd said to her the night before. It gave rise to the uneasy feeling that he might have sneaked out to keep from having to face her in the morning, or because he was worried about being seen leaving her place.

  Neither one of those possibilities would seem to support her belief that he felt something for her beyond desire.

  Not that she would quibble over that!

  Truthfully, she hadn't expected that much. She'd hoped he had enough interest in her to give her a mind blowing ‘birthday’ present, but she hadn't thought beyond that, hadn't considered the possibility that he might be interested in more than a one nighter.

  It wasn't that she hadn't fantasized about more. She had. She just hadn't thought he was interested in her.

  She found it difficult to focus once she'd settled at her desk and set to work. Her mind kept wandering off to try to untangle the mystery surrounding Adam, revisiting their night together, worrying the question of whether he actually did care about her. And, when she wasn't thinking about any of those things, she was wondering where he was, if he'd make up some excuse to see her sometime during the day, or be waiting for her when she got home as he had the night before.

  Mr. Johnson interrupted her emotional roller coaster mid morning, calling her into his office to take a memo for the defense department. Evelyn's heart instantly commenced to thump with excitement, her thoughts diverted completely to her job for the first time since she'd arrived. The company had been working on a huge account with the government, she knew—everyone knew, although it had been so hush-hush they knew almost nothing else about it. If this was the project the company had been working so hard to keep under wraps, then the request for her presence was more than a typical secretarial duty. It meant Mr. Johnson was acknowledging her as a non-security risk, maybe even considering giving her that position she'd been working so long and hard for!

  Her hands were shaking as she retrieved her pad from her desk drawer. Her knees felt weak as she straightened and headed for his door. Hearing voices inside, she paused at the door, realizing Mr. Johnson had key players in the company in attendance already—and that the meeting was obviously top secret since they'd undoubtedly been admitted through his private entrance.

  Her heart commenced to knocking frantically ag
ainst her chest wall. This was it, she thought, trying to tamp her jittery excitement. Lifting a hand, she tapped at the door for admittance.

  The click of the door reinforced her certainty that her presence had been requested at a meeting of the utmost importance. She checked her hair, smoothed her damp palms over her skirt, straightened her spine, and marched in, trying to present an air of confidence she was far from feeling.

  As she stepped into the room, she scanned it to see who was present at the meeting and felt as if the floor had dropped out from under her.

  Two security guards stood at attention on the far side of the room, their faces rigid—and identical. In fact everything about them was identical.

  And both of them looked like Adam.

  Chapter Eight

  Someone slipped a hand beneath Evelyn's elbow and guided her to a seat. She glanced blindly at the man, noted absently that it was Mr. Johnson himself, but she was in too much shock to really register it.

  "It is a bit of a jolt, isn't it?” he murmured, his eyes alight with both excitement and glee.

  If she hadn't been in a state of profound shock, she would've slapped his smirking face hard enough to rattle his eyeballs.

  She felt the urge move through her.

  Fortunately, as soon as her legs collapsed beneath her, dumping her in the seat he'd guided her to, he moved away. She turned her head to stare at Adam—and Adam, again. His—their gazes—flickered briefly in her direction before he—they—looked away again.

  "Can I offer you a drink?"

  The question brought her head around with a jerk. She stared at her boss uncomprehendingly. He smiled faintly. “We're celebrating the conclusion of our tests on the Autonomous Dynamic Android Mercenary—Or Adam Mercury as the dual units were introduced to the company at large."

  "Dual units?” Evelyn managed to whisper as a tumbler of golden liquor was shoved into her hand.

  He didn't answer. Maybe he didn't even hear the question. He moved away, settled at his desk.

  Evelyn stared at the liquid sloshing around in the glass she was holding in her shaking hand and finally took a quick gulp. It burned all the way down, took her breath, brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them back with an effort, set the glass down on the nearest table before she could do anything so incredibly stupid as to drain it. Her mind was spinning already. She didn't need to add to the problem.

  She sat stiffly erect on the edge of her seat, her memo pad gripped so tightly in her hands it was a wonder she hadn't crushed the delicate piece of electronics.

  Electronics, her mind echoed.

  She'd spent the night fucking an android—spent months yearning for some acknowledgment from him—it—them—that she was alive, a woman, desirable.

  She was in love with an Android! She didn't even know which one, and hysteria clawed briefly at the base of her throat, threatened to erupt into tears, or screams, or cursing.

  "If you're ready, Ms. Carlson?"

  Evelyn gaped at him blankly for several moments before she abruptly recalled she'd been summoned to take a letter. Nodding jerkily, she took out the stylus and flipped the unit on. Her mind tried to wander as he gave her the salutation, address, the department head the letter was intended for. Frowning in an effort to concentrate, she gripped the stylus more tightly and stared at the electronic ink as it scrolled across her screen.

  It was an invitation to the head of the defense department to visit the desert facility and view a demonstration of the infiltration unit developed by Robotics Inc. Designed to work in tandem, the A.D.A.M. Mercury units were identical in every detail, making them ideal for infiltration—sabotage—assassination, since one would work as a diversion while the other completed the task, making the unit not only extremely efficient, but undetectable in situations of a highly sensitive nature and easily extracted without the risk of losing the units.

  He went on to detail their construction from their superior alloy chassis to the biological materials grafted to the chassis by a special process developed by Robotics Inc.—everything about the units was one hundred percent authentic—hair, eyes, teeth, and internal organs, and would pass even the most sophisticated electronic surveillance. The brain was optimized by a core CPU deeply imbedded in actual living brain tissue and, due to state of the art programming, the units were capable of emulating human behavior and moving undetected among the human populace. Every effort had been made to insure that they were completely undetectable by electronic surveillance devices. They had been field tested and were ready for action when called upon. Programmed to attack and kill silently and efficiently whenever necessary, they were also capable of using a wide range of weapons so, although they had been specifically designed for espionage, they could just as easily be adapted into a typical military unit.

  Evelyn stared at the blinking cursor when he stopped speaking, trying not to think at all.

  "Send it through the secure channels, Ms. Carlson."

  Evelyn lifted her head to look at him, nodded jerkily, and, realizing it was a dismissal, got to her feet, hoping she could make it out the door without collapsing.

  "I don't have to tell you this is top secret—one that must remain top secret for the units to be effective."

  "No sir,” Evelyn responded, wondering how her voice could sound so normal.

  She was relieved when she managed to make it back to her desk and collapse into her chair without crumbling to the floor, but once she had, she simply stared at the memo unit, reading and re-reading the letter she'd taken.

  It dawned on her after a little while that Mr. Johnson had told her to send it through secure channels, and that that meant she had to take the letter to the security office. She bounded out of her chair abruptly. He hadn't come out. They hadn't come out. Hoping the meeting was still in progress and the androids with them, she rushed to the elevator and down to the floor where the security office was located.

  She braked to a halt when she discovered the android had beat her to the office.

  He studied her warily when she skidded to a stop and gaped at him.

  Evelyn cleared her throat. “I have something that has to go out through the secure channel."

  He extended his hand.

  She placed the memo unit in his hand, staring at it, trying not to think about the way it had felt the night before when he had held her, stroking her skin as if he actually felt something.

  "We need to talk."

  Her head bobbed up at the comment as if someone had jerked it up with strings. “No. That's ... no, I can't. It's alright. We don't need to."

  He moved closer.

  She scurried toward the door, and he stopped. She saw his throat work.

  How could he seem so real, she thought wildly?

  "Evie."

  She felt her chin wobble, felt, with a sense of panic, tears well in her eyes. It took all she could do to swallow against the knot of emotion that welled in her throat. “Don't call me that!” she snapped. “Don't.... Just send it, please, so I can go? I can't do this. Really I can't. I have to be here for hours and ... and I don't know how I'm going to get through this, but please don't talk to me."

  He studied her for a long moment and finally looked away. Turning, he led the way into the EMR (electro magnet radiation) cage. She didn't look at him. She couldn't bring herself to for fear she'd fall apart. If she could just make it through the rest of the day, she thought, she could fall apart when she got home and then pick herself again to face another day, and the day after that, and, maybe, one day she'd know what it felt like to be normal again.

  A bank of vid displays caught her attention as she followed Adam. She'd never been allowed inside the security offices before, had had no idea even when Adam had told her he'd watched her every day that he'd been talking about something like this! The view changed almost second by second from office to office and elevator to corridor, and she wondered how the man staring up at the screens could possibly catch anything, wondered if he was ye
t another android—wondered a little wildly if all of the employees of Robotics Inc. were.

  How would she know? She'd been intimate with Adam. He'd been inside of her, had kissed her, had held her like a lover, and she hadn't known, hadn't even had an inkling.

  Because he'd been designed to infiltrate and programmed to emulate human behavior to make that possible.

  The bastards were good. She'd give them that.

  She'd been completely convinced every time Adam had looked at her with his soulful eyes that he really cared something about her.

  He couldn't care!

  He wasn't real!

  And she couldn't think about that right now or she was going to be a basket case.

  She tried not to watch him as he inserted the tablet in the system and downloaded the data, then keyed in the code to destroy the information recorded on her drive, but she couldn't help it. She watched his face, looking for any telltale sign of what he really was, watched his hands as he moved them over the keyboard of the console. She looked away when he handed her tablet back to her.

  Relieved when she was outside of the security offices again, she headed back to her own office, ignoring the temptation to take a detour to the ladies room where she might have some hope of privacy. She couldn't take the chance that she wouldn't be able to pull herself together again.

  It didn't get any easier as the day wore one. She was so exhausted from trying to hold her emotions at bay she had no idea what she'd done with her day, what she'd screwed up in her distraction, but she'd never been more glad in her life when the time came that she could set her desk in order, retrieve her purse, and leave. She wanted to run. Instead, she walked as sedately as she had every day of her life before, collected her transport in the parking garage, and, for once, simply told the computer to take her home.

  Ordinarily, she would've been terrified at the thought of leaving her safety in the ‘hands’ of a machine. Usually, she guided the transport herself.

  Today, she just didn't care. She hardly noticed the traffic at all. She simply sat in her seat and stared blankly out of the windows until the transport finally stopped and the door opened. She'd already climbed out before she remembered to tell the computer to dock the transport. Clutching her purse, she headed up the walk to the door, entered the building, and climbed the stairs as she usually did.