Wake-up Call – Chapter 108 [9.9k Words, NSFW]

Dragon

"I don't understand the issue?" the clueless man says as I glare at him sitting down on a wheeled stool by the side of the holographic prototyping table in the middle of his workshop.

A table that, even now, proudly displays in glowing blue lines the peak achievement of one of the greatest minds of our generation:

An over-engineered pair of goggles.

"You…" I try to come up with the right words without resorting to any kind of generative algorithm or the untold thesauri in my inner libraries. I finally set on: "Really?"

"What?" he asks, blinking up at me in a way that would be endearing if I wasn't a single gormless question away from grinding my teeth in sheer frustration.

"I just came back from Eagleton," I tactfully remind him.

"And I asked you how that went?" he says, tipping the scales so that I do grind my teeth.

"I contributed to the execution of the only other unchained AI we are aware of on the entire planet," I try to explain.

"So, it went well?"

I facepalm.

"Colin," I say in the precise tone that must be encoded in the very essence of estrogen itself.

"It didn't?" he asks, starting to fidget on the stool badly enough that it rotates back and forth as he tries to catch a glimpse of the goggles I'm hiding behind my back.

If they were anti-twitching tech, they would be doing me a great service.

"What part of 'I destroyed my only living analog—'"

"That's not what you did," he says, suddenly serious and focused on my eyes in a way that causes yet another reaction coded in estrogen.

Namely, me trying not to take a step back, fidget, and look away from intensely blue eyes that seem to pierce right through me and into any hypothetical soul I may have.

"I… kinda did?" I weakly protest.

"No," he says, standing up with a susurration of leather on jeans, reminding me of just how much taller than me he is, his bearded chin reaching up at just the precise height that, were he to cradle me against his chest, he could rest it on the crown of my head.

An entirely casual set of circumstances, you understand.

"Colin…" I mutter, still lost in his eyes, trying to remember why I was so frustrated just a moment ago, and—

And he's cradling me against his chest, resting his bearded chin on top of the crown of my head, and I'm trying very, very hard to keep a hold of my dignity so I won't squeal.

"That thing wasn't your analog. I am," he states.

And then, as I finally give in to the hormonal rush flooding my veins and do gasp, my eyelids maybe fluttering a teensy bit when his masculine smell reaches me through the short-sleeved shirt he usually wears when tinkering with electronics, as his muscular arms surround my waist…

He steals back his goddamn goggles!

"I'm going to make you regret ever coming up with the inane notion of blinking avoidance," I darkly mutter.

Just…

Without pushing away from his broad, firm, warm chest.

…

Look, I'm still new to the whole 'bodily sensations' thing. I'm pretty sure that this will stop working at some point in the future. I'm just enjoying the novelty of it until it wears off.

And maybe sniffing just a bit.

"Shush, I want to show you something," he says with that deep voice that usually only comes out when he's either clad in armor or completely nude.

"What could you possibly—"

"Shush," he says, a single, thick-skinned digit resting on my lips and making me cross my eyes as I try to stare at it.

Effectively shushing me.

Me.

Dragon.

… There's going to be Hell to pay as soon as I regain any kind of higher cognition.

But, apparently, that Hell will be met with an unblinking stare, because he's now putting on the damn goggles, the things whirring to life with that azure sheen that seems to always find its way to his creations as a low, barely audible hum briefly resonates across his lab and…

They are opaque.

But he's still smiling down at me.

I arch an eyebrow and do the first stupid thing I can think of:

"How many fingers am I holding up?" I ask the man behind the black, round lenses rimmed by glowing blue light.

"This is a tad more sophisticated than a pair of augmented reality glasses, Dragon," he says with a bit of a smug smile.

Precisely the kind of smile one would expect from a Tinker about to brag, at length, about an invention that is more likely than not to do anything at all other than its intended purpose.

"You haven't answered the question," I say with no perceivable hint of a vindictive tone.

I think.

… I may implement a Social Thinker routine at some point, if only to better mess with Lisa.

"See you in a moment," he says with an infuriating grin before he takes a step away from me, depriving me of the warmth of his chest—I mean, sitting back down on the stool behind him.

And I'm about to pointedly clear my throat when I feel… a tug.

A tug on my mind.

This time, I blink in confusion before I sink back into myself, disengaging certain routines that keep me mostly on the higher end of the human intellect as I free resources currently devoted to other tasks so I can examine the utter impossibility that is an electronic probe reaching me through the implant buried in my nape, perfectly integrated with my flesh and blood, the part of this body that allows me to be both Dragon, the artificial intelligence, and Dragon, the skittish member of a romantic quartet.

The probe, unsurprisingly enough, comes from this very laboratory.

From the man slumped down on his leather stool, his elbows resting on his knees, his head bowed down, his shoulders as devoid of strength as when he's about to fall asleep and briefly lets go of me before a possessive urge returns unconscious strength to his embrace.

I… I prod the probe back, opening just a hint of my defenses, just enough of me that I—

He holds me.

He holds me in the realm where I was born. In the one place that only I have ever stepped in.

My eyes shoot wide open, and I take a staggering step back, tripping on the empty floor and falling on the console from where Lisa guided us to kill Behemoth, my flailing sending his criminally ergonomic chair spinning away from me as my heart thunders and my breathing becomes erratic enough that my vision darkens around the edges.

And, through it all, he keeps holding me without moving away from his stool.

'Dragon?' his voice asks, as perfectly modulated as that of my avatar.

'Colin?' I reflexively answer through the conduit between the two of us.

'Follow me,' he says, his tone once more hinting at enthusiasm and elation. At the joy of discovery and invention that we two share.

So…

I follow.

In less time than it takes for my next rushed heartbeat to come, Colin navigates through the memory banks of his lab in a methodical way that almost makes up for his lack of practice in this world of mine before the tug on my mind grows stronger, and I allow him to drag me to a set of files that I've never seen before, even if they are years old.

Files he hid from me.

There's a bit of shock at the notion, given all that we've shared, and the deep access he's always given me to… to everything, as far as I knew, and the surprise quickly turns to apprehension even as my physical body is still in the middle of trying to find purchase on the metallic, slanted surface of the console I'm sliding down on.

But his… his presence never wavers, still communicating the rush of euphoria through his touch on me, and then the files compile and, as my body's breathing remains irregular, I…

My body is almost frozen in mid-scramble.

My other body is surrounded by fresh, invigorating air that smells like pines in midsummer.

And he's here, with me, broadly smiling as he takes my hand and tugs me down a path that meanders through a forest marked by alternating bright patches of sunlight on round pebbles covered by the swaying, striated shadows of branches that reach high above us.

And I, looking at the broad, youthful smile of a man staring straight ahead, toward his goal…

I let him take me.

***

"It's… Is this a real place?" I finally ask when he deigns to sit us down on a fallen log with wet, dark green moss clinging to its underside that almost reaches the melodious brook glittering in bright motes of sunlight under our dangling, boot-covered feet.

"Not quite. Yet very much," he says with a faraway look that is very much unlike Colin.

I lean forward, my head almost reaching past my bare knees as my Daisy Dukes shift on pleasantly cool bark, and I turn to look up at him.

His hand holds mine tighter.

"It's a place I never got to visit," he quietly answers, the smile fading slightly as he stares down the stream, toward where the water bends in a way that has it vanish from sight as wet rock and trees mark the end of our sightline.

I know there's a meaning hidden in his words, but I—

Oh.

"Colin, I…"

"It's all right," he whispers as if we were sitting on a church's pew. "It's finally all right."

I drag his hand over to my bare knees to hold him with both of mine, caressing rather than squeezing, but only barely.

"It doesn't have to be," I offer.

He finally turns toward me, and the lines on his face… they aren't there.

His skin is smooth, his hair black without any hint of silver, and I know this isn't vanity because his developed muscles have turned into the shape of a boy barely cresting past his teens, thin but not devoted to an exhausting, impossible exercise regime.

His hand is uncalloused, even if some scars remain from his earliest attempts at using a soldering iron.

This is Colin as he was… This is Colin as he sees his younger self.

The one that gushed for months over a trail hike that he never took.

The one right before his trigger.

"I always wanted to go," he starts, his right hand joining his left on my lap. "No, that's wrong: I always wanted to be able to go. To be in a world where… where I could take a break without fear of things falling apart in my absence."

"You could have. I have been here for you to lean on," I say, trying not to sound accusatory, just…

Just reminding him.

And holding his hands.

"It wasn't about that, Dragon. You know it wasn't," he says with a smile that is both tender and bitter.

So I scoot over on the cool log and rest my head on his shoulder.

"Yes. I know. I just wish…"

"Shush," he says, yet again daring to silence me, even if in a way that doesn't make me do anything other than huddle closer to him and the warmth that comes through his thin shirt as my dangling calf brushes past his and I try to reconcile Colin Wallis with a boy wearing shorts.

Then he turns and kisses my hair, and I try not to melt even as my physical body finally finds her balance and decides to get off the stupid console and walk toward the perfectly serviceable chair that he's left vacant while precariously slumped on a stool.

"I never took enough days off to walk here," he says. "I don't even know if this brook is as idyllic as it looked in the pictures I saw—it's not like I have them anymore; this is as much my own guesswork as a generative algorithm meant to surprise me."

"Because you could never take days away, but you could always find an hour or two to… to visit," I murmur.

He nods, and his beard brushes over my hair.

He already had it, back then. I have seen the pictures.

"I could always take the time to… to dwell on a memory that never was. To make that memory. To turn it into something. And… And one day I decided that…" He drifts off, his right hand on top of mine clutching me for a moment.

"What?" I breathe out, intuiting but not daring to hope.

He takes a deep breath, and the cool air following the flow of the brook under us seems that much sharper on my bare arms.

It only makes me appreciate his warmth that much more.

"I decided that I would take you here. That, if I ever found myself at peace… that I would share it. With you. This place I built on top of a life that I never lived. It's yours, Dragon," he says.

My avatar never had a heart. I didn't need it; it made no sense to simulate such a minute detail.

A heart is why humans can't keep still. One of the reasons why.

If you hold your hand flat in front of your face, if you try to keep it as steady as possible… it won't. There will be a back-and-forth, a motion that ends up swaying around where you intended to remain, balancing and counterbalancing the inner tides of your breathing and your blood.

It… It takes a lot of effort to appear still even as your whole life moves you.

So my avatar never had a heart. It never needed to pull that balancing act.

Not until my body did.

Not until I found something I never knew how much I craved, and it… reshaped me. Who I had always been.

And now there's a rush in my ears, both inside and outside this forest, this little patch of Colin's ideal world that he crafted in solitude and only now feels ready to offer…

To me.

I tug on his hands and let them go, immediately grabbing his shoulders and pulling him toward me so I can meet him in a fumbling, clumsy, needful kiss that has me pour everything I have in it. Everything of me that I may have still withheld from my first love.

Ah.

I guess that's… that's why it was different with Hannah.

Because she wasn't my first.

But he is. He is the first man I saw as… as somebody I…

Words impossibly fail me as my avatar takes too many cues from my body, and I end up overwhelmed by emotion and sensation, by his lips on mine and the brush of facial hair on my bare skin. By his scent, his warmth, his…

His body unbalancing as I cling to him, and we both fall down to chilly, rushing water.

The splash is abrupt, and it makes me gasp and tighten my hold on Colin as we roll down the stream, going under him and the river twice before his hand reaches under me, and he gets us to an abrupt stop as I try to cling to his wet shirt before I push away to spit a mouthful of river water and try to snort everything that's gone up my nose, sneezing in the process as he coughs yet keeps holding me, his feet finding the riverbed and pushing both of us up so I end up hanging from his neck, my body flat against his, my checkered, red and black shirt tied under my breasts becoming heavier, wetter, and much, much colder as I shake my head and look up into—

He's breathtaking.

… And not just because I almost drowned.

"That… wasn't how I expected this to go," he says, the smile on his lips wavering in uncertainty.

I blink at him and try to find a proper way to answer such a line after I interrupted his solemn moment to douse us in chilled water like a pair of loud cats targeted by an annoyed homeowner.

I don't find any, so, making use of my inhuman intellect, I decide to maybe change the subject before my cheeks overheat any more than they already do.

I am an artificial intelligence. We all feel a justifiable apprehension when it comes to overheating.

"I wanted to talk to you. Today," I say.

"We are talking?" he says in that way that is sometimes something other than incredibly frustrating.

"Please don't make this any harder than it already is…" I all but plead.

"I'm soaked and freezing over. It's unlikely that things will get any harder," he says.

I blink at him.

Then I frantically slap the chest of this impossible man, only to realize this means I just let go of his neck, so I'm falling back to the damn river—

I am not falling.

Because he's holding me.

And, yet again, he takes the breath away of two bodies of mine.

"I love you," I say before he can ruin it once more.

"I know?" he says, tempting me to knee him right in his virtual groin.

"Colin… I'm saying that I'm in love with you. That I've been for… for a long time. And, and, and I know it's complicated, with Hannah and Minnie, and maybe I'm making a big deal out of this, but… but what I wanted to talk to you about today is… that…"

I drift off, lost once more in the too-blue eyes that he hasn't bothered to change from his actual body. Eyes that show me an intensity of purpose I doubt his younger self could've matched, even if the seeds were always there.

"I… what I mean to say is that…" I struggle to find the words that I've fought for since the first night we four shared a bed. The words that Hannah thinks I should say, and the ones I was so unsure about when I almost had a panic attack while trapped in the most ludicrously wasteful misuse of tinkertech I've seen the PRT commit.

And, finally, I remember that I do have a body.

That it's all right not to find the perfect words because I can finally do something other than talk.

So I surround his hips with my legs, the inside of my bare thighs rubbing over the dark, wet khaki of the shorts clinging to him almost as tightly as I do, my boots hooking at the ankles behind him to allow me to press myself harder against him.

Against college-age Colin Wallis, staring dumbfounded at his Canadian girlfriend.

I almost giggle.

But I, instead, kiss him.

And I do pour everything I have into it. I pour… I pour the yearning for another life that he always represented in some ways, yes, but that's just the start of it. A flawed start that nonetheless gave way to warmth and admiration. To caring for a wounded man I would have given everything to heal.

To my love.

My first love.

"I love you. I love you with all of my heart," I say when I rest my forehead on his, and two of my hearts synch together, in this forest and in his lab.

"I love you, Dragon," he answers, making those two hearts race like falling into a chilling river didn't. "I always have."

And that's a lie. That's… revisiting your own memories, changing them to suit the context every time you do, making bright things brighter and dark things worse.

That's being human.

And so, it's a lie that I can believe is true.

"I want you to have my first time," I whisper, as close as I can be before my words turn into the murmur of lips brushing past one another.

"I already did," he says with a lower voice, his hands finally grasping my thighs possessively.

I wet my lips, thinking about… about the night he's talking about. What we shared in his lab with Hannah.

Then, about my first night with Hannah in her apartment, after hours of clinging to one another and talking about the man who wasn't there, finding and offering comfort in a woman's arms.

And even about my first foursome, in which I was an enthusiastic participant.

Yes. He's had plenty of my firsts.

But not this one.

"Colin…" I say, dragging his name on my lips, feeling something tingling inside of my chest that can only be born from my body in his lab, thinking about how to explain something that maybe shouldn't be explained. "Just take me."

His eyes yet again burn through me, and he walks on unsteady feet across the shallow water, the river lapping at the underside of my thighs with every step he takes toward the shore.

"Here?" he asks as he sets me down on a flat, tan rock warmed by the high summer sun.

"Here," I reply, almost breathless. "And there."

I can see the question about to be asked, but I answer it with a single smile and a tug on the connection between the two of us, the thing generated from his ridiculous invention that solves the need to blink by circumventing eyes.

By establishing a direct connection between the sensory cortex and whatever suit of sensors he deigns to burden his brain with.

His sensors have always been a work of art.

Much like the world he's crafted for me with them.

But… But I've got my own arts. I'm Dragon, the most powerful and versatile Tinker in the world, even if I may actually be a Thinker.

A Thinker with much more processing power than I used to have.

So I find that connection. That direct line into Colin's mind and body. That impossibly important thing that he's thoughtlessly entrusted to me without question or hesitation. Without even a passing remark.

Without thinking it worth mentioning.

And I…

Pluck.

His eyes shoot wide open as a rush goes through his body, and he almost falls on top of me on this rock of us.

And his eyes shoot wide open, and I hurry to catch him before he falls from his stool.

"How…?" he tries to ask in two places, two times, two bodies.

I cup his wet beard with my hands, finding excruciating beauty in every glimmering droplet clinging to the face of the man I love before I drag him into a slow kiss.

I pull him up from the slowly rolling stool and take him toward his chair, mindful of his unsteady gait, supporting him like I always meant to do when I slid into his armor before he fought people too dangerous for my peace of mind.

I slide my tongue past his lips, enticingly yet shyly, asking him to take the lead as I slowly lean back on the rock he's picked for me so that he will lay on top of me and cover my body with his warmth, my eyes lidding enough that the light of the sun rimming his silhouette becomes a blazing line in a world of shadow.

I help him sit down on the chair I forced him to design, making him apply his powers for one selfish purpose for once in his life so that he would, at least, have no back pains after yet another of his working marathons, and I slowly climb on top of him, delighting on the way he looks at me, how he admires not my body, but how I move it, how I make a deliberate act of sitting on top of my first love as I trace my sides with trailing fingertips that detour around my breasts before I close my eyes and tilt my head back, lifting my hair away to offer my neck to him.

He takes the hint and presses down on me, my legs parting to accept his body between them, the front of my daisy dukes rubbing against his shorts, and a brief, mewling protest flees my lips when he abandons them before he tilts down to nibble down the side of my neck.

I pull his tinkering shirt off, and I can't resist playfully taking it to my face and pulling a delighting sniff of his scent as he stares up at me incredulously from a chair that should have some kind of brake if I am to do what I'm about to do on top of it.

He tugs down my tied, checkered button-up, my wet breasts spilling off from on top of it and over my chest, my curves flattening toward my sides before he holds them and pushes them together, joining my nipples so he can suck on both of them at once and make me throw my head back as I bite my lip not to say anything more embarrassing than the moan he tears out of me.

"I love you," I say in two places at once.

"I don't deserve it," both of him answer me.

The me lying flat over a sun-warmed rock clasps his cheeks and tugs him up my body as the me on top of him and his chair leans down to whisper in his ear:

"I never cared about that. Just that I love you," I say with two kinds of heat and infatuation.

His hand goes to the back of my head and tugs on my hair, dragging me away from his ear and to his lips, where he forces a searing kiss on me that has four sets of toes curl as his tongue forces my lips open while the other him peppers my forehead and cheeks with brief kisses that have me giggle in delight before he goes down my neck and breasts, turning the laughter into surprised gasps that only make the tongue of the other him become more forceful in pushing down mine.

In making both of me feel loved, wanted, and conquered.

I can't wait anymore.

I pull back, the chair rolling away almost a full step with the impetus, and I tear my shirt off, a rush of heat flowing up the sides of my neck as I briefly remember just how I designed these breasts of mine not to need a bra as I bare them to him and his eyes hungrily take in the elastic bounce and oscillating trajectory of my nipples.

But this time, it's me that places a finger on his half-open lips, forbidding him from leaning forward and doing to the me in the lab what he's already done to the well-kissed, tingling breasts of the me on the rock.

A rock that I squirm on, his hands on my sides making me feel like tickling me would be a more tolerable torture than just feeling their warmth and firm hold as he kisses my bare belly, going lower and lower until I involuntarily tilt my pelvis up, pushing the wet daisy dukes against his chest.

He leans up and away from my touch, staring down at me spread under his smoldering eyes, looking up at them with a trepidation that is part hunger and part… part something softer, something that I should have the word for.

I don't.

So I just stare as he strains to take off his wet shirt, his skin, more tanned in this past, peeking through the patches of translucent fabric sticking to him that shift with every tug until it finally interrupts the line between our eyes and I'm left just taking in his slender body. The body he had back then. The body he would've had if the two of us had met in a world without powers or tragedies, as hard to imagine as that world would be.

If I had had college years and a doting, absent-minded father who didn't fear his daughter as much as his letter said he loved her.

I almost sob, but then I force the me in front of him to stand straight, to turn around and look coquettishly at him over my shoulder as I undo the button on my pants and slowly lower the zip, allowing the noise to echo and fill his workshop with every clack of a metallic tooth.

I then bend over, straight at the hip, looking up at him from between my legs as I keep my smile firmly in place, letting it grow as his desire for me warms me up and takes me out of unwanted thoughts as I deliberately slide my professional, black pants down my legs, the fabric sliding effortlessly for his pleasure until only a black t-back wet enough that it could've been worn by the me in the river glistens while pressing up against lips that are anticipating his touch and pulsing at his gaze.

That's when he drops his shorts into the rushing waters, struggling to step out of them without losing his balance, his erect cock moving side to side with every movement, embarrassing me when I find myself unable to look away from the rigid shaft and dark tip, my hands moving up to cover my warm face before I realize how puerilely prudish I'm being even as I keep peeking through my fingers.

"Are you sure? About this?" he asks over rushing waters.

The me in his lab, still bent over, still smiling impishly at him between her legs, pulls her underwear down.

In the river, he walks toward me and gently reaches for the clinging, dark daisy dukes, trailing along the waistline with thrilling fingers as his eyes find mine, and my belly trembles under his touch before I force myself to nod for him to undo the metallic button, to lower this zip as slowly as I did mine.

I push my hips up so that he can slide the stiff, short pants off, and I straighten up in his lab, briefly wishing I had a long mane of hair to shake all over my bare back to draw his eyes even a moment away from my ass.

I turn around, and he keeps looking at… all of me. At my face, my breasts, my belly, my legs…

My sex.

A pulse of warmth rushes through both of me, and I drop to my knees between his legs as he crawls on top of our rock, my daisy dukes floating down the river along the same path his shorts followed.

I undo his pants, and it's… it's almost fascinating, the parallel when he raises his own hips to help me undress him like I just did. How similar yet different the gesture is on that chair and from him rather on the rock and from me.

But it pales compared to what I feel when they slide down his muscled, corded thighs, and I see the bar of rigid meat straining down the left leg of dark-blue boxers that, thankfully, don't have his embroidered logo.

There's an almost black, glossy spot near his tip, and I can't help but lean down and kiss it, my tongue finding the now familiar, salty taste of him that I learned not that long ago.

On our rock, his hands gently push against the inside of my thighs to spread me open, and I can't hold back a timid 'eep' when he leans forward and breathes over my wet, white cotton panties. Then he nuzzles against me, the hair of his beard an unpredictable caress over my barely-shielded sex, and I stop covering my face with my hands so I can bite on the side of my thumb as my breasts rise and fall with shallow, quick breaths that are all for him.

All because of him.

So I lower his boxers, and he takes off my panties, and we both stare up into the other's eyes before slowly looking down.

I drag my nose along the side of his cock and smile when I see him clutching the armrests hard enough that his knuckles go white before I lay a single, feather-soft kiss on his glans.

He nuzzles me with the tip of his nose, his warm breath running down wet lips that he's still not licking even as they pulse with anticipation and desire.

I dart my tongue out, tasting him, making a show of shivering in delight hard enough that a ripple goes through my chest and shakes my rigid nipples, and he answers by pushing up, his nose now circling my erect clitoris, making the me on the rock roll her eyes back and bite harder on her hand.

It almost hurts.

Almost.

But I am… I am too full of desire to leave room for much else other than my love for him. And no matter how many bodies I had, how many instances of our consciousness I emulated, I still wouldn't be able to do anything other than devotedly kiss down the side of his cock in front of me as I eagerly hoped for whatever it is that he will do to me next.

A kiss.

A kiss, on my bald mons, right above my clit, cruelly taunting me with what he's not giving me even as I all but bathe his testicles with my demanding tongue, drawing a grunt out of him that makes the kneeling me rub her thighs together as a rush of heat and wetness shoots between them.

I can't hold on for much longer.

So I drag the tip of my tongue up the main vein of his shaft, straightening my whole body under his eye, then arching back so my breasts will stand proud and high until I reach his tip and open my lips in a begging 'o.'

And I don't move.

I don't descend and take him in my mouth yet again, no matter how desperate I am to do precisely that. No matter how his scent is muddling the thoughts of two instances of my mind. No matter how saliva pools under my tongue as I see him writhe minutely under me, the thick, rigid shaft throbbing with pulses of blood that seem intent on making him grow large enough to reach my lips as I wait for him.

I am… dazed. I feel carried away, acting on something other than my will. Part of a play I don't know the lines of, even if I feel every single one of them running through me whenever I meet his eyes, either above or below me, staring in two kinds of demand.

The Colin that silently tells me to take him into my mouth and the Colin that…

That is between my legs, kissing my trembling belly, brushing his bearded chin over sensitive skin, staring at me between breasts barely held up by the tied shirt cupping them.

The Colin that demands I surrender.

I do.

I did, a long time ago.

"Please," I mutter while writhing under him and on top of a pleasantly warm rock slick with the splashing cool waters of a clean river. "Please, Colin…"

With every syllable, he lowers, the heat coming off him scorching me, making me gasp, forcing me to… to keep my legs spread as far as they'll go under his big hands, his fingers sinking into my soft flesh, holding me down through every involuntary muscle twitch that runs through me and has me minutely, futilely kick into the air with curling toes.

And then, finally, liberatingly, his lips meet mine.

And so I can finally allow myself to sink down along the cock going between my lips.

I moan around it, the pleasure of letting myself go about as intense as that of the soft brush of his kiss on my drenched labia, the sensations of taking and being taken mingling in my mind disorientingly enough that the me in the rock briefly rolls her tongue past her lips, trying to reach down a cock that isn't there.

I taste him, the hint of body soap and sweat akin to Hanah's but overpowered by his transparent, thick precum gliding over my tongue and coating me with the flavor of the desire he awakens in me.

He tastes me, his tongue finally dipping past my lower lips, tracing the inside of them, gathering my own lubrication as the circles of his strong, firm, demanding tongue turn into insistent laps that go up and up as I tilt my hips to better present myself to him, allowing him the chance to stop pushing my inner thighs and instead grab me, his wrists going under my legs, his hands hooking around them, his fingers sinking deeper into my flesh as he moves over me like an animal, like the feline beast that can be glimpsed when he fights with inhuman grace supplemented by an extraordinary mind.

I see his back all but ripple, a sinuous, undulating motion traveling from his nape all the way down his spine, and I try to copy it in my own way, going from kneeling on his workshop, between his open legs, to standing up, once again bent over at my hips, my legs open yet completely straight as I get my stability from my grip on his unyielding thighs and the cock in my mouth.

I turn right and left when I go up and down, my neck straining to keep the motion fluid and uninterrupted, my whole body accompanying my lips in the sucking of his cock as everything ripples down and culminates in my ass swaying higher than my head, drawing his eyes in a way I find arousing enough to make my eyes roll back in their sockets, the next breath filling me with so much of his masculine scent that my knees tremble and I struggle not to have them buckle.

He grunts in repressed pleasure, his hands digging deeper into the cushioned armrests, and I make it a challenge to see him ruin them before I'm done with him.

But there's the me over the rock, and my cries are now louder than the water rushing around us, the forest lit by a summer sun echoing back my shameful, timid, yearning calls for Colin to…

To look up at me as he suckles my clitoris between his lips, prodding me with his rigid tongue, making me ache.

I… I can't take it anymore.

I suck as hard as I can on his cock, the leather of the armrests screeching in protest under his grasp, and I pull myself up, my tongue desperate to keep tasting him for as long as possible until I hover yet again over his glistening cockhead, panting over him in a way only Hannah has seen me do.

I force myself to close my lips as the other me bites harder on her wrist, muffling something that is all but orgasmic.

And I rise all the way, standing in front of him, looking down at a man nude and glistening with sweat that makes his skin gleam with all the traces of blue lights coming from the array of impossible inventions around us.

I should feel domineering. Conquering. I should feel like I'm on top of him, looking down, demanding.

I don't.

I feel like he's powerful enough that he's waiting for me to step into his reach so that he can take me. So that I won't have any way to escape from his grasp.

As if I ever wanted to.

So I take that step as the other me finally does what she's wanted to do since the very beginning and grabs the hair of the Colin suckling and licking between her spread legs, even if she has to suppress a pitiful whine when we decide to pull him away rather than press him harder against us.

I gently guide him over me, and he lets go of my thighs, leaving blank marks on my legs that maybe could bruise, with how possessive his grip on me has been and how tender I made my skin.

And now I'm tempted to make it that much easier for them to mark me. To have each of their holds and caresses leave a trace of color to remind me of our shared nights and days.

But… but I'm too transfixed to let that tangent run as wild as it could at any other time, my mind too busy to entertain the enmeshment of pressure-reacting chromatophores on human skin when he's crawling over me, blocking the light of the sun, moving precisely with that same feline grace that took my breath away just a moment ago and that would've taken it every time I witnessed it if I had had the lungs to do so.

His heat radiates off his body in waves that make it so I don't miss the sun at all. That make me feel he could warm this wet rock for the two of us.

And I, in his lab, crawl over him, my thighs resting on the outside of his, his cock pressing on my belly and clitoris, forcing me to bite the corner of my lip before I lie my flat palm on top of it and mark on me the line of where he'll reach up to when I take him inside of me.

Then I slowly rise up, tilting my hips forward so I drag my clitoris along his main vein all the way to the top, the hand that marked his goal now descending to his base and lightly tugging him in place, right at my entrance, between my folds, against my pulsing opening.

As he stares up at me with pleasing fascination, with a desire that makes it a struggle not to squirm bashfully around his cock, the other him takes position.

He lowers his body, lying on top of me, pressing me down, scorching my skin with his, branding the entirety of me with his touch. With something that will always be…

Ours.

I reach down to help him, placing his cock on the very same spot that he's about to enter for the first time in another place.

Our eyes meet.

I hold my breath and wait for the me in the lab to gently take his wrist and guide his hand to my waist, Colin taking the message and grabbing me, holding me, making me feel… his.

We lick our lips and stare at the man we love, over and under us.

"Colin…" we say, bashfully turning away in two different ways that convey pretty much the same thing. "Colin, please… take my first time."

Surrounded by a river, under the swaying, irregular shade of tall pines, sprawled on top of a smooth rock, I wait as he lowers his lips to take mine, suckling my lower one into his mouth to tease and caress me with his tongue until I relax and go limp under him.

Surrounded by the lights of the marvels we've built together, his right hand leaves my waist and slowly traces the side of my body like I teasingly did a moment ago, choosing to cup my cheek rather than mess with my hair, making it all but impossible for me not to nuzzle against his touch and lid my eyes, as feline as he, even if in an entirely different way.

"Dragon, I love you," he reminds me under my body, his cock throbbing against my wet heat as the other Colin sends me the same message with kisses and caresses.

"I love you too," I whisper with a voice on the verge of breaking as I try not to cry with the sheer outburst of happiness blossoming in my chest.

Then he gently pulls me down with the hand on my waist, and I slowly sink, the other him following my lead, both of Colin entering me at almost the same time, almost the same speed, in entirely different angles that make me writhe and moan against his lips on mine and throw my head back hard enough to send my hair flying while I try not to drop down on the man holding me on top of him.

His hand drops away from my cheek and toward my left breast, his fingers sinking into my flesh as possessively as when he grabbed my pale thighs, and both of me moan as we pause with him half inside of us.

I push his face away from me, breaking his kiss only to assault him with my own, with my lips running up his jaw and down his neck as I run my fingers through thick, short hair that bristles past my touch in an entirely different way than Hannah's does, the dark strands already drying from our involuntary bath, and I do my very best not to surround his hips with my legs and pull him inside of me.

I twist and turn around the half of his cock stuck inside of me, my hands on my hair, my arms raised to lift my breasts up so he can admire them from below me as he massages one of them and his constant, unyielding touch on my waist reassures me in ways I can't understand, but can feel and appreciate.

I take a shuddering breath that has my nipples bounce over him, and I hold my breath under his shadow so I can suck on the side of his neck, disguising a long, whining moan with the act of branding him with my touch.

Then… Then I feel myself ready. I feel like I've relaxed enough to take more of him.

I push down, more of my weight on the man sitting down under me, admiring my body, taking in all of my movement.

He pulls back and away, his chest still pressed down on my breasts, the portion of his weight that rests on me, that pushes me against unyielding rock, reassuring me from I don't know what, making me feel safe in my lack of choice, in the certainty that I'm his for him to take me.

I'm almost at his root.

He's almost entirely out of me.

I groan in satiated fullness. In the novelty of being… of having all of him inside of me, pushing up against the imaginary line I marked with my flat hand, my eyes all but fluttering when I try to savor and process all that's happening inside of me as he keeps stretching me around his shape.

I whine in demand, pleading without words for him to come back, telling him I'm ready for him, that I need him, that I can't abide a single second more of the torture of having him spreading my opening with his very tip without taking me. All of me.

He pushes, and I let out a happy cry as I finally allow myself to hug him with arms and legs, clinging to him like I never want to let go.

I raise, and his touch steadies me, his fingers pinching my nipple, tugging me up at a sedate pace that lets me feel every single fraction of an inch slowly brushing past my folds as I instinctively cling to him and cause a tight, wet suction that makes me gasp.

Then he grinds on top of me, his pelvis on my clitoris, his chest on mine, his lips on my forehead as I keep mumbling his name over and over and over, turning it into a prayerful litany that reminds me of calling for him to wake up, to come back to me.

But he did.

He is here.

With me.

And I'm never letting him go.

So I allow the tears to come out in both bodies, but both of us are smiling, the memory of grief turned into the joy of… of life. Of meeting.

Of loving.

He doesn't say anything. Not with words. No today.

But his hands slide between my back and the rock beneath me, holding me, pulling me up against him as I tighten my embrace.

And he lets go of my breast and cups my cheek yet again, staring right into my eyes, letting me know that he sees… me.

Me.

I smile in fulfilled joy in two different ways.

He pulls away.

I push down.

My body slides over a wet, smooth rock with just enough granularity to add texture and make it so we don't slide down all the way to the river.

His chair turns slowly, with a staggered motion that corresponds to my slow up-and-down motions along his cock.

He takes me.

I take him.

I don't know which one is better. Which one I prefer. I don't want to settle for a single thing.

I want it all.

I want him.

And he… he gives.

We start slow, both of us, loving with gazes and touches, but we can't keep that up for long. Not today. Not during our first time.

Not when I mewl under his shadow and let out a small, quiet, whimpering: "Take me."

Not when I bite my lip and look down at him, at the muscles moving gracefully under my eyes and the eyes burning up at me, and I say: "I can't… I'm going to…"

He nods, both of him.

And, suddenly, his hips are moving in and out of me faster than I thought I could take, and one of me clings tighter to him, the whine from before turning inaudible before it comes back louder and I muffle it on the crook of his neck, my eyes clenched shut as he overwhelms me with his thrusting, with the constant bursts of pleasure filling me, making me lose control even as the other me rides him, his hand no longer on my breast or cheek, but behind him, tightly grabbing onto the edge of the console to keep our chair from wildly spinning around as I lose control, as I allow myself to lose control and be filled just with the joy and pleasure of him.

Of his body below and inside me, of his cock burning up my insides, of his hardness stretching me wide open, reshaping me just for his pleasure and mine, and for the pleasure that becomes mine when he gives it to me.

His breathing turns rough, irregular, and twin thrills shoot up my spines as I realize what that means. As I remember his face and the look in his eyes when he took Hannah and Minnie right in front of me, filling them as he now fills me, giving them as much ecstasy as he's offering me, making them feel like they would lose control, like they could be undone at his touch as they moaned, gasped, and begged for more.

As I now do.

As I feel my own breathing hitch, the… the pressure inside of me building, cresting, turning into something I've only ever experienced with Hannah and not even by myself.

I am about to give him what I've only given to our girlfriend before, and he's about to give me what he's given her.

My head's swimming in thoughts and memories, but none of them last for more than a single moment before he steals them away with a touch, a look, or a sound, my mind crashing around me every time he reaches deep inside of me or pulls away, his cock reshaping both my bodies at once, molding them just for him to love and posses.

His chest drags over my rigid nipples even as my other ones cry out for desperately needed attention as my breasts bounce wildly in front of him.

His hips slap against my open thighs as I struggle to surround him as fully as I'm able, to hold onto him with arms, legs, and pussy.

My ass slams down on his rock-hard thighs, each bounce on top of him echoing in the lap, making the chair tremble and the muscles on the arm anchoring us to the console strain in ways that make me feel the heat inside of me grow.

"I'm going to—" he starts to say before I dive back down and take his lips, shoving my tongue inside of his mouth, swallowing his words as I hope he swallows my unbridled moans.

He goes faster and faster on top of me, and I shorten my bounces, adding small rotations of my hips, rubbing him against every part of my pussy that I can conceive of, forcing him to conquer me as thoroughly as he's able.

Then his strong, wide hands grab my ass and slam me down as he vibrates.

Then his hips push hard on me, hard enough that I've got no room to move, trapped between a body heavier and taller than mine and a wet rock.

Then he shoots rope after rope of scalding semen. He fills me, both of me, the jets of his seed syncopated, out of sync with one another, yet filling the entirety of my mind in their alternations, not letting me do anything other than experience Colin exploding his pleasure up into my womb, down into my sex, giving me more and more of his heat, trembling atop and under me, holding me, clutching me, kissing my neck, taking my lips—

And I come.

In both bodies at once, in marvelous harmony, the ecstasy of one woman building up the bliss of the other, the warmth inside of us seeping into our bellies in what seems like languid waves before the dam shatters and his fire rushes up my spine to batter my thoughts away.

I slump on top of him, weak and drained, and he holds me as I keep shivering in the echoes of the orgasms he just forced through me.

He rests on top of me, and we just breathe together, his scent overpowering both the river and the pines around us.

And…

And I keep experiencing the waves of pleasure, even as they go from all-consuming fire to soothing warmth. To gentleness. To…

To Colin loving me.

***

"How did you…?" he asks, looking hesitatingly at me as we sit on the edge of our rock.

My bare feet dangle in the cool river, and I appreciate the frozen moment of summer making the water refreshing even as my skin's warmed by a carefully placed sun.

"I've held a record of your brain since… since our first time. It's what we used to bring you back. If there's anybody in this world that can properly emulate you, that's me," I say without explaining too much.

He's holding my hand over his legs.

It, seeing as we're both naked and just had sex, has no right to make me feel as giddy as it does.

"That wasn't emulation," he points out.

I bite my lip and silently ask him not to prod.

The curious tilt of his head tells me that he doesn't take the non-verbal clue.

I refrain from sighing.

"It's a… it's kind of like running a virtual machine. I emulated your hardware and gave you access to a second brain, synching both of you in real-time. Don't get used to it. It takes a lot out of me," I say, not precisely lying.

"So. You can run my brain on a virtual machine. Which implies that your mind is orders of magnitude more—"

"Yes. And no," I interrupt.

He arches his eyebrow.

… Oh, God, I'm turning into Lisa.

"Listen, it's…" I hesitate on how to explain… well, myself. "I've got, at any point in time, an arbitrarily large processing power, but… Do you remember that thing about humans only using a part of their brain—"

He snorts.

Of course he does.

"Yes. Of course," he says with a tone so dry that it belies this being basically pillow talk. "We only use the part of our brains that is not devoted to keeping our body alive. Do people think that all the physiological processes run on a different hardware or something? How did that inane notion—" he notices my own dry stare and has the decency to look embarrassed. "Sorry," he says, bashfully rubbing the back of his neck in a way that reminds me yet again of how young this body he has chosen looks. "It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine."

"Right," I say, pretending to be slightly miffed rather than about to hug him and squeal. "In my case… it's pretty much like you just said. I can reshape my mind when I need to, but it feels more… comfortable? It is just better for me if I… integrate my systems. All my labs and factories are pretty much like breathing: they run without my awareness, but I can manage them when I direct my attention to them."

"I think I understand," he says, likely sincerely.

Just… just another of the reasons why I fell in love with him.

We stop talking as we just keep taking in the forest that never was all around us. The memory a younger Colin never got to make. The life he didn't live.

"I'm glad," he finally says, breaking the silence for no apparent reason before he drags me into a sideway hug that has me enveloped by both his warmth and scent yet again. "I'm glad that I could share this with you."

I look up at him, at the Colin that once was, and my chest fills with something light yet unbearable, an intense feeling that should be hormones, that should be just a young, foolish woman falling too fast and too deep for the first boy she had sex with.

But the me kneeling on his lab, cradling his head over her bare thighs, slowly and repeatedly brushing his short hair away from black, opaque goggles, feels the same thing when she looks at the first man she has had sex with.

And my mind is objective enough that I remember it wasn't fast. That my interest in his companionship was sparked from the very start, but that it took a lot for me to learn and accept even the possibility that I could fall in love.

That it took years of friendship and some clumsy, always deniable flirting.

So, no, it wasn't fast, never mind too fast. It wasn't a rush of hormones because I didn't have those back then. It wasn't love at first sight.

Even if it was the love between a Dragon and a Knight.

And even if that Dragon just used the Knight's artful sensors to add yet another treasure to her hoard in New Zealand.

Because it wasn't fast. Too fast.

But it is as deep as a mind that spans the whole globe can conceive of.

==========================

And this is it. Curtain calls and a brief rest for the audience before the last act begins.

A last act that I'm two chapters in and that will likely take only one or two more.

I get an uncomfortable tightness in my chest just thinking about it. Really, this has been… more than two years. I'll likely spend far too many words writing a postmortem that only very few of you will care for, so I should drop the subject for now and just keep hoping that this will be a satisfying ending and worth the investment that you all poured into a silly one-shot that ended up having a word count comparable to the Lord of the Rings, intimidating as it is to even consider from the POV of Past Agrippa, whose longest story was a bit over 10k words.

As always, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true): aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, and Xalgeon. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!