…patient and uncompromising. She came alive in his arms.
“Ah,” he said, feeling the rise of heat in her. He lifted her off of her feet and she knew she was glowing as he held her against his chest. He moved her across the room, through the lambent light programmed to synthesize the canopy effect of a rainforest. She watched the shadows move across his face, and reached up to trace a finger along his jawline, as he lay her down upon his operating table. She started to feel the cold steel at her back, her soft, naked form spread against the unyielding surface. It was here that he had performed his most devastating and incredible coup. Three years prior, he had found her, genetically defective and close to expiration in the vault of the city hospital, and he had brought her here and repaired her. Here, where he made flowers sing to listen to their secrets and blossoming trees grew from roots of tangled wires and iv drips, he had ventured past the bounds of normative ethics and risked a procedure which had saved her sentience, and left her in a questionable state of being. Yet she had woken. She had walked out of here, and back into the world, equipped with a new set of enviable attributes.
And here she was pulling him down to her, feeling his mouth fit over hers, sweet lips seeking her own as he planted a knee firmly between her thighs, urging her legs apart. “Fuck me,” she thought. And it passed. She felt her incredible heat warming the table beneath them, felt her breath become shallow as he kissed her thoroughly, his tongue working her lips apart again and again. Her spine was a current of energy. He tasted like honey and she wanted it, wanted more. The thought passed as she bucked against him. She held his face in her hands, bit at his lips. “Fuck me,” she thought, “Oh fuck.” She moaned and arched against the table, grinding against his thigh, darkening the light linen pants with her come.
“Fiore,” he repeated, gasping as he grabbed her hips, her ass, and repositioned her toward him. With one hand he shoved the pants aside, and took out his cock, erect and gorgeous. She felt greedy. It was hers. He held her down though, muttering those same words, “Flower, my flower, fucking hot pussy flower, I need it, oh…” as he slapped it against her thighs, teasing her. She came twice more hearing him, pinned and writhing against him. Her breasts were circles of fire against his chest and they were slick with sweat. He kept mumbling in her ear, his breath hot against her neck, while his cock strained against the crease of her thigh, the lips of her pussy. It would have gone on and on, until she drew back and slapped him clean across the face, looking up at him with wide, moist eyes.
“Please,” she said. “Let me,” she offered, opening her mouth. “Please,” she thought, “Let me. Let me take you.” The thoughts were rolling on one another now, feeding her desire and she was the waves of lust, her cunt throbbing. As she lay back and he fed her his cock, one hand massaging the back of her head, opening her throat, they were afloat in a sunset sky darkening to a purple field of stars. She sucked until she gagged on him, until the drool was pouring in streams out the corners of her mouth and tears were in her eyes.
“I need you,” he staggered, his breath coming ragged. She felt herself raised off the table and turned over, her cheek pressed against the metal slick with all of her juices. She felt her arms spread to the sides as he took her by the wrists, and pinned them down. She convulsed again, opening her mouth, licking her lips and the table, tasting nectar. “Fuck,” she thought. And even that passed.
“Have me,” she said. “Let me be your toy,” she thought, opening her legs, spreading her dripping pussy for him. “May I be what you need,” she thought again, moaning as he entered her, his hips slamming against her ass, the edges of the table bruising her thighs. What table. Her palms spread beyond themselves and she was the table, she was the floor, she was the tangling vines, and the electric cacophony of her environment. She swore she could hear the the colors blurring before her eyes. He was in her now, thrusting into her, his hands at the back of her neck. She took all of him, clutching him with muscles deep inside of her, feeling all of him, the flow of his blood, the beat of his heart. The beating of his heart. It was loud in her ears, and she felt her body shift to accommodate him, changing as though she could dissolve and reform around him, her heart synching with his, becoming an extension of him. Not self. No self. Small and vast, vibrating until every cell of her hummed with him. As he came, spending himself into her accepting body, her heart stopped.
She had died a thousand times since her miraculous repair. Each time was a voyage into emptiness. It was a journey of falling. She was a flickering light projected through a card deck of realms into the unspeakable void until she found some concept of ground, some motivation to push off, like when she was a child leaping from the dock into the lake by her grandfather’s cottage. She would hold her breath and jump, letting herself go, sinking deeper and deeper to some unknown depth, surrounded by darkness and what she imagined were the flashing scales of beings, fish and mermaids and monsters and incredible mysteries of hope and despair, until just as she was sure she was lost, her feet touched the murky bottom and she pushed off with all of her might, looking up and watching the light come closer and closer, until her head broke the surface of the water, an explosion of breath and light and life.
When she came back this time, her surroundings clicked in phases, as the doors of her senses slowly opened. He had wrapped her in a soft cotton sheet, and moved her to a couch under an arch of playful roses. She was in a different room, an alcove to the side of the main entrance with a dryer and more comfortable climate. The roses were her favorite. They were a project of his, and they behaved like tiny puppies on their vine leash, sniffing and pouncing. She thought he would have abandoned them long ago, had she not taken such a liking to them. Her eyes were still closed, but she smiled to feel the soft petals tickling her cheeks. She felt the lip of a cup pressed under her mouth and she drank deeply the warm herbal tea. She always came back with an incredible thirst, though perhaps it was in part due to the amount of fluid she had spent in their lovemaking. Lovemaking. She also came back with a feeling of profound tenderness. Thirsty and tender, and broken hearted. These were all things one could get used to. She opened her eyes and he was sitting there on a low chair next to the couch.
“Thank you,” she said, bowing her head to him, a tear sliding down her cheek.
“No, thank you,” he said, reaching a finger out to catch it, and bringing it to his lips, tasting. He gazed at her face, awe painted across his features. Awe and love. It was an awful love they shared.
“You are incredible Kvietka,” he sighed.
“Thanks to you,” she remarked, taking his hand in hers and feeling more herself with each passing moment.
“Perhaps,” he said. He was dressed, changed into a different outfit, one suitable for evening. She wondered how long she had been… out. It varied. They sat in silence for a few moments looking at one another. He cleared his throat suddenly, standing.
“I need to go,” he said, “I hung your dress up. It’s by your payment near the door. Nice shoes, by the way.”
She smiled.
“Please know,” she ventured, “you don’t have to pay me Adam. We’ve been over it. What I am, I owe to you. In your debt, forever—“ She stopped. They didn’t know how long she had actually. How many of these little deaths her system could take. If one of these times she wouldn’t come back. Or if she would, always. There just weren’t any precedents for her situation.
“No. I do,” he said precise and formal. “It can’t be otherwise Jojo. I can’t have you my beautiful, unique flower. We could never exist, so I must maintain you, like the rest of your…clients. I—I have to go. Take your time. You know the way out.”
Her heart broke as she understood that they would never have anything beyond this. And the thought passed.
“Be well,” she said, sitting up.
He crossed the room away from her. “Oh, Kvietka,” he said holding up a small package and placing it on the table by the door, “Happy Birthday.” And he was gone.
She left the building the same way she had come in, nodding invisibly to the evening concierge, and moving across the lobby gracefully over her high heels. Around her throat was a small sterling locket, shaped like a flower. Tied with a length of black ribbon, the locket contained a miniature clock and ticked away the moments against the pulse in her throat. She stepped onto the street and paused, the cars rushing past her. She felt the twinge of attachment that sometimes came after such an evening. She felt greedy. The thought passed. She had others waiting that needed her.