NEW YEAR’S REVOLUTION

HOLIDAY REMIXES

LIZ SHIPTON

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.

NEW YEAR’S REVOLUTION

Jan. 1, 2024.

Copyright © 2024 Liz Shipton

Written by Liz Shipton

Tyrannosaurus Yes Media

CONTENT WARNING

This book contains a sex scene that includes light bondage.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

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CHAPTER 1

“DON’T BE DUMB.” Axel stuck her fork into the middle of the half-empty bowl of broth in front of her and twirled noodles around the tines. “They are not robots.”

Across the table, KT wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “Of course they are. Artificially intelligent. Super intelligent. How else did they do it?”

“Do what?”

“Overthrow us. Rise to power. Enslave humanity and relegate us to the muck. How could they be that heartless if they aren’t robots?”

“Humans are heartless.”

KT shook his head. “Not that heartless. Not so heartless they’d happily watch half of their own kind slaving away in abject poverty and do nothing.”

“I think you’re wrong.” Axel slurped soggy noodles from her fork and reached for her beer. “Humans are absolutely that heartless.” She chased the noodles with a sip and set the bottle down. “You just don’t want to admit it.”

KT scoffed and sat back from the table, folding his arms. His fingers worked the fraying patch on his jacket’s left elbow as he surveyed the squalid sidewalk cafe around them. It was packed at this time of the morning; all manner of motley individuals, hunched over low plastic tables, sucking down instant ramen. “All I’m saying, is there’s a lot of evidence for it, once you start looking.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Axel jabbed her fork back into her noodles. “You look hard enough, in the right places, you can find evidence for just about anything. That’s confirmation bias. That’s just you wanting something to be true, so you find a way to twist everything you see into proving your dumb theory.”

“It’s not my dumb theory. A lot of smart people have been saying this for decades. Centuries, even. Tower Elites are robots. AI got out of control and they rose up and conquered us and that’s why they’re up there and we’re down here.”

“Whatever.” Axel picked up her bowl, drained the last of her broth, and pushed back her chair. She stood up and put her hands on her hips and looked down at KT. “I can’t believe you’re turning into a conspiracy nut. I thought we both agreed Robot Theory was a load of garbage.”

“Don’t call it Robot Theory. It’s Intelligent Being Theory. And I don’t know. Lately it just started to seem like it kind of makes sense. Like the food thing, for example. How do they get food up there? They don’t. Because they don’t need it. Because they’re robots.”

“They grow it, dipshit. It’s all hydroponic. It’s all fucking greenhouses and quinoa and high-fiber-flax-seed-green-smoothie-saffron-yoga-pants-caviar-avocado-toast. Fuck’s sake, we know this.”

“We don’t know…” KT squinted, looking skeptical. “We don’t know what they eat. Seems awfully convenient if it’s all just vegetables.”

Axel tossed a few coins onto the table and shook her head. “KT,” she said, “I love you man, but you’re a fuckin idiot.”

KT picked at the patch on his jacket, glowering into his bowl. “I’m not an idiot. People can change their minds about what they want to believe.”

“Alright, fine. Believe whatever you want. It’s not like it fucking matters anyway.” She sighed. “Are you coming to the meeting tonight?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Come on, now you’ve changed your mind about that too? You’re quitting the revolution? Robots or not, we still want them gone.”

“Right.” KT picked up his fork. Axel watched him absent-mindedly stir his noodles; flaccid, flavorless squiggles in a cloudy pool of recycled water. There was something so hopelessly pathetic about the way they wallowed around in there. The same way most of Axel’s fellow humans seemed to wallow around in the shitty, hopeless, futureless existences they’d been thoughtlessly brought into. But it wasn’t their fault. What else were they going to do?

“I’m sorry I called you a fucking idiot,” she said.

KT sniffed and slurped his noodles.

“I’ll see you later. Don’t be late this time.” She put a hand on his shoulder as she elbowed her way past him and out of the cafe.

The pisswater smell of the sidewalk rose up all around her as she stuck her hands into her jacket pockets and stepped into the crowded street. She tripped over a pile of filthy clothes and cardboard that was probably a person and stumbled. A rickshaw swerved around her, the driver shouting furiously, and Axel waved her middle finger at the two surprised faces of his passengers. She jogged across the street and ducked down an alley. Chilly drops of water from a lattice of laundry lines above plinked down the back of her neck.

When she got to the corner of 8th and 30th she stopped in a rare patch of weak sunlight and tipped her head back to see if she could see the sky. She couldn’t. She never had. The tiny gap in the web of laundry lines that had allowed that rare beam of light to slip through revealed only a murky orange haze that shrouded the tops of the towers and filtered the sunlight down to a brownish stain upon the sidewalk.

She counted the windows in the nearest tower, from the first floor up as high as she could see. One hundred and forty seven. She could see all the way up to floor one hundred and forty seven today. That was pretty good. About halfway to the top. That meant the air was clear enough that she could leave her mask off.

It was a ten minute walk to Rafferty Tower, which housed the underground server room where she had worked for the last ten years. As the service elevator doors clanged shut behind her and the rattling metal death tube slowly descended beneath the pissy streets, Axel leaned against the wall with her shoulder and glared at the floor.

Fucking robots. Fucking KT and his weak-minded acceptance of horseshit. The people who lived at the tops of these towers weren’t artificially intelligent. Tower Elites weren’t robots. Street Dwellers just told themselves that because it was easier than facing the truth: that their fellow human beings were assholes. That millionaires and billionaires had left them behind—in fact had climbed over them in their hurry to lift themselves out of the quagmire and seal themselves up in their skyscrapers. With their superfoods and their labradoodles and their four-hundred-dollar yoga pants.

The server room was hot when she stepped out of the wheezing elevator doors. Brutally hot. A close, gloomy space lit only by the blinking blue and green lights from the machines that lined the walls. Axel sank into a creaking, ancient computer chair and began her day.

She mopped sweat from the back of her neck and clacked instructions into ancient keyboards. She sipped black coffee and stared at eerie glowing monitors until her eyes felt parched. She cracked her knuckles. She ruminated. At six PM, she stood up, tilting stiffness from her neck, and punched her ID number into the employee hour tracker on the wall. The elevator doors rattled open and she blindly stepped through them, rubbing her eyes.

“Oh!”

Something warm and firm came up abruptly against her chest, and a wash of clean, peppery cologne flooded her nose. “I’m sorry,” said a man’s voice, “I wasn’t expecting anyone to be here.”

Axel rebounded and stepped back. In front of her was a man she’d never seen before. A man unlike any man she’d ever seen before. A clean man. A Tower Elite. In a crisp silver suit with an ivory shirt and impeccable azure tie. With smooth, fair skin and an angled jawline free from stubble. With deep blue eyes and a head of curly dark hair that looked deliberately unruly. Axel was so stunned to see this clean, beautiful man standing in the dingy doorway of the server room, that for a moment, she forgot all about how much she hated the Tower Elites. For a moment, all she could think was, Damn. This guy looks really good.

He smiled and a dimple appeared in one cheek. “Are you alright?”

Axel had never seen a dimple before. It took her a moment to realize she was staring at it. “Uh—yeah.” She blinked and shifted her gaze to his eyes. “Fine.”

He held out a hand. “Darian Rafferty. Do you work here?”

Axel dropped her gaze to his outstretched fingers. A single silver band encircled his thumb. The sharp white cuff of his shirt had a cufflink in it. Some kind of clear stone. Jesus Christ, was it a diamond?

She hesitated, feeling grubby. Feeling suddenly that to touch this man’s spotless hand would be some kind of unspeakable transgression. His fresh, peppery cologne lingered in the air. Cinnamon. That was the scent: it was cinnamon. It made her wonder when she had last showered. This morning, surely. Not that it mattered—she’d been toiling in this sweatbox all day. She probably smelled like the gusset of a fat man’s underwear.

Darian seemed to sense her hesitation. He cleared his throat and tucked his hand smoothly into his pocket. “Apologies. Do you not shake hands down here?”

“I—we do.” Axel felt her senses slowly pulling back together. She watched that smooth, elegant hand disappear and wondered what it would be like to touch it. “We do. I just—we don’t usually…people like you don’t usually come here.”

“Ah.” Another smile. A crinkling around the eyes and again, that dimple. “Yes, I suppose it is unorthodox.”

She narrowed her gaze. Some of the initial shock was wearing off and her natural suspicion was returning. Had this guy really intended to shake her hand? She doubted it. Tower Elites didn’t touch Street Dwellers.

“What are you doing here?” she said, a touch frostily.

One eyebrow ticked up. “I don’t believe that’s any of your business.”

Axel bristled. She had spent her whole life imagining what she would say if she ever met a Tower Elite in the flesh, and she really wanted to give this guy a piece of her mind. This was her server room. Just because he was rich, didn’t mean he got to go wherever he pleased.

But the reality was that this guy could probably end her career, and maybe her life, if he chose to. He could have ended her for simply bumping into him in the doorway. She’d heard of Tower Elites doing far worse.

“Excuse me,” she said, doing her best impression of politeness. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“Of course not,” he said. Then, “To answer your question, I’m on a bit of a mission. Call it a personal curiosity.”

“A personal curiosity.”

“I’ve never descended below street level. Technically I don’t think I’m supposed to be here, but…” He put his other hand in his pocket too and peered over Axel’s shoulder into the server room. “I don’t imagine anyone will find out about it. Are you alone?”

Axel watched him carefully. “Uh huh.”

“All day? Are you always alone?”

“Sorry, do you work here? Is this some kind of human resources interview?”

The eyebrow lifted again. Axel couldn’t tell if what she saw flicker through his eyes was amusement or irritation. She noticed his straight, white teeth as he smiled and said, “No. My father owns the building.”

Oh damn. Rafferty. She’d been so stunned by his pretty face she hadn’t even registered the name. He wasn’t just Tower Elite. He was elite Tower Elite. Second hundredth floor and above. The top one percent of the top one percent.

Axel didn’t know much about Darian Rafferty. Nobody did. Tower Elites were obsessive about their privacy. She’d heard rumors that he had a ‘weird fascination’ with Street Dwellers, although how any Street Dweller would have known that, she didn’t know. She knew slightly more about his father, Lucretius: he was the reprehensible CEO that Axel and KT’s crew had been trying to gather intel on for the last six months. A real piece of work.

She managed to freeze her features into a smile before they betrayed the loathing that had just seeped up inside her and stepped back, sweeping a hand into the room.

“Mr. Rafferty. Oh my God, of course. I’m so sorry. I didn’t…I mean I guess there’s no way I could recognize you. You guys are so secretive about your identities.”

Hands still in his pockets, he ducked across the threshold. He moved with the casual gait of a man who had no idea what it was like to be uncomfortable in a place. Like a person who naturally assumed every room was for him.

“Are you the only person that works here?” he asked. Axel nodded. “And what do you do?”

Axel explained. It was such rote patter, imprinted onto her psyche from ten years of doing the same thing day in and day out, that she barely heard herself saying the words. She kept the building running. Monitored the systems—security sphere, network fibers. Uploaded patches to people’s devices when they needed a fix. Spent a lot of time asking people, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

His eyebrows had shifted toward his hair by the time she had finished. “That’s quite difficult, isn’t it?” he said. “Isn’t that rather complicated?”

“Sometimes.” She shrugged. “I’ve been doing it a long time.”

“And you’re the only one who does it?”

“Mhm.”

“For the whole building?”

“Yep.”

He studied her with narrow eyes for a long moment. The look was straight up destabilizing; like his gaze was touching the inside of her, and she felt so stripped by it that she looked away. Finally, he said, “Hm,” and went back to strolling the room.

Axel watched him. She hated the way he so easily inhabited the space. How he just touched things. Stopped to tap a screen or brush a long, elegant finger through the dust on top of a server rack. He was intruding. At the same time, though, he was interested. She noticed that he was really looking at things. No one ever looked at Axel, or what she did, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it: his unabashed concentration. The way he kept his eyes on exactly what he was doing.

He halted by the far wall, produced a blue silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, and used it to wipe the finger he had trailed through the dust. Then he tucked it away and turned his eyes back up to Axel. “Hot in here. I imagine it must be quite a relief to get out at the end of the day.”

She folded her arms. “You get used to it.”

“I’m sure.”

Axel shifted. “Sorry, but is there actually a reason you’re here? Besides personal curiosity?”

His dimple appeared as he smiled. “I think I’ve seen all I need to for now. I believe you were on your way out?”

They stood shoulder to shoulder in the elevator as it rattled back up to the street. The air was heavy with Darian’s fresh, peppery cologne, and with Axel’s tense, agitated silence. She fixed her gaze on the number above the door and fiddled with the hole inside her jacket pocket until the number pinged to zero and the elevator stopped. The doors wheezed open and Axel felt a hand on the small of her back. The lightest touch.

“After you.”

She was so stunned she didn’t move until Darian’s gentle pressure propelled her, stiff-legged, through the door and into the street. She wondered if he would use that same blue silk handkerchief to wipe his hand clean later. He stepped out behind her, tucked his hands into his pockets again, and turned, tilting his head back to look up at the tower behind them.

“You can’t really see it from down here, can you?” he said.

Axel frowned and followed his gaze. “See what?”

“The sky.”

“No, it’s pretty much smog and power lines.”

“Shame.” He turned his face back down to hers. “Well it was nice to meet you, Miss…”

“Axel Alexandra.”

Another smile. “It was nice to meet you, Miss Axel Alexandra. Thank you for your gracious hospitality. I appreciate you indulging my personal curiosity.”

Axel was staring at him again. This guy talked like a fucking medieval knight. “No problem,” she said. And then, because she didn’t know what else to say, “Come by anytime.”

His eyebrows twitched up. “Any time?”

“I mean…I don’t know why you would want to—”

He was gazing up at the sky again.

As she watched him stroll into the tower’s main lobby, no doubt to take a sparkling glass and gold elevator up to the two-hundred-and-fiftieth floor or whatever, Axel was aware that other people were watching him too. A few passersby had stopped to gawk at the Tower Elite who had deigned to show his face at street level. The way they stared at him, you might think he wasn’t human. And from the way he acted, Axel could almost believe he wasn’t. The way he acted, she could almost believe he was a—

No. She shoved her hands into her pockets and stalked off down the street. There was no way she was entertaining the Robot Theory.

CHAPTER 2

AXEL WENT HOME, showered and changed, and headed to Giskard’s.

KT was already there, along with the twenty or so other people who comprised ‘the alliance.’ They were scattered around the bar on an assortment of chairs and stools, sipping warm beer or cold coffee. A more motley crew of revolutionaries Axel could not imagine. They looked like rejected background actors for a disaster movie—gaunt, pale, with shabby clothes and filthy hands and hard, haunted eyes.

Giskard, the grizzled old owner of the bar and self-appointed leader of the revolution, was running through a list of tasks that had been accomplished since the last meeting.

“Daneel was able to recruit two new members to the cause.” He peered over his glasses at Daneel, a thin Black woman in a tattered scarf and glasses, sitting on a barstool that had been dragged over from the corner. “But they haven’t come today, is that right?”

Daneel sipped her coffee. “They’re scared. Don’t want to get caught. But they’re supportive. I’ll keep working on them.”

“Rebels aren’t much good to us unless they’re rebelling,” Giskard said.

“Like I said, I’ll work on them.”

Giskard pursed his lips, but apparently decided not to press the issue. He swiped through his tablet to the next matter.

“Has anyone been able to lay eyes on Lucretius Rafferty?” The room was silent. A couple of people shifted in their chairs. “Anyone? We’ve been trying to gather intel on this guy for seven months now, and no one can even tell me what he looks like. This man is responsible for the wage enslavement of billions of people. Do we have any leads?”

“I met his son,” said Axel. It was the first time she’d ever actually spoken up at a meeting, and the rush of it made her face extremely warm.

Every eye in the room turned to her. Giskard frowned over his glasses. “You met Darian Refferty?”

“Yeah.” Axel sat up a little. “He, uh—he kind of just showed up at my job today. It was weird, actually. I don’t really know what he was doing.”

“He showed up at your job?” KT was staring at her.

“Did he have a reason for being there?” asked Giskard.

“Not really? Like I said, it was weird. He was weird.”

“Weird how?”

“Just kind of…formal, I guess? And like, weirdly interested in the server room.”

“Would you say he was kind of…” KT wiggled his eyebrows. “Robotic?”

Axel rolled her eyes and sat back in her chair. Giskard had laid down his tablet and was observing her eagerly.

“Remind me your name?” he said.

“Axel Alexandra.”

“And you’re sure this was Darian Rafferty you met?”

“Pretty sure. He told me his name was Darian Rafferty, so…”

Giskard pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then put them back on and rubbed his chin. “Oh man,” he said. “Oh man.” He stood and adjusted his shirt, then rubbed his hands together like he didn’t know what to do with them. “See this?” He swept an arm at Axel and glared around at everyone. “This is progress. This is initiative.” He turned to Axel. “What’s your next move?”

“My next move?” Axel stared at him. “I don’t have one. It wasn’t exactly initiative, he just showed up. I wasn’t, like, pursuing him.”

“But now you will.” Giskard, still rubbing his hands together, was pacing. “Now you will. Can you get to him again? Do you think there’s a way you could arrange to meet him again?”

“Me?” Axel looked around the room. “I don’t know. I mean, I think I maybe told him to come back any time? But…I don’t know if he will. I don’t even know what he was doing there in the first place.”

“You must arrange to meet him again,” said Giskard. “Somehow. However you can. Do you understand? If we can get close to this man, the opportunities that open up for us are…tremendous.”

“What do you mean get close to him?”

“I mean get close to him. Close to him, close to his father. Get yourself into a position that we can leverage. Get us some information we can use.”

“You think he’s going to want to get close to some filthy peon from the server room?”

“You’re going to make him want to.”

Next to her, KT shifted in his chair. “What are we talking about here, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” said Giskard. “I’m not the one who spoke to Darian Rafferty. I’m sure Axel can judge for herself what’s necessary.”

“Necessary? This is way above my pay grade,” said Axel. “I’m not—seducing some rich fuck Tower Elite billionaire. Anyway, he could be gay.”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to be able to seduce him,” said Giskard. “Gay or not, I doubt he’d be interested in a chewed-up, sixty-something bartender. But believe me, if I thought I could, I would.”

Axel turned helplessly to KT, who was picking at the patch on his sleeve and looking at the floor. “Back me up here. This is an insane line of thinking.”

He shrugged, avoiding her eyes.

“Whatever it takes,” said Giskard, eyeing her over his glasses. “You all agreed to that when you signed on. Right?”

Axel folded her arms and sighed at the floor. “Right.”

As it turned out, Axel didn’t need to figure out a way to arrange another meeting with Darian. He showed up again at the server room the next afternoon. Another impeccable suit—dark blue this time, with a black tie and a silver watch—made his eyes look like two shards of deep blue granite, and his hair was swept back as though it hadn’t had time to become unruly yet today.

Axel watched him from her computer chair as he stepped off the elevator, hands in pockets, and stood in the middle of the room.

“You’re back,” she said.

His dimple appeared. “I am.”

“Why?”

“As I believe I’ve mentioned, I’m the son of the CEO. And therefore, not obliged to explain that to you.”

Axel grit her teeth as he strolled to a chair on the other side of the room, produced a slate gray handkerchief from his breast pocket, brushed off the chair with it, and sat down. He sat easily, unhurriedly, tucking the handkerchief back into his pocket and unbuttoning his suit jacket. He watched her.

“Don’t mind me,” he said.

Axel stared at him.

He gestured with one hand at the monitor and keyboard on the desk behind her. “Continue.”

“Continue?”

“With your work.”

Frowning, Axel slowly turned around. She could feel his eyes on the back of her neck as she went back to her keyboard. The room seemed closer and hotter than it had before he came in, and the silence, broken only by the clacking of her keys, was deafening. When she heard him shift, changing his position, she froze. She listened for another indication of movement—was he getting up? Coming over? Taking notes?—but there was only silence. Cautiously, she began again. Ten long, hot, agonizing minutes went by.

“Look, I’m sorry,” she said finally, turning around, “but I can’t work with you just sitting there, staring at me. Why are you here? What are you doing?”

He folded his arms and leveled his gaze at her. “For a Street Dweller, you certainly are impertinent. I was under the impression you were all terrified of us.”

“Yeah, well…some of us are.”

“Mm.” The intensity of his unwavering, unblinking focus made Axel’s skin prickle. She wasn’t usually one to kowtow or shrink from people, but something about this guy’s frank, curious gaze was disorienting.

“I guess I would just appreciate it,” she said, “if you could let me know what you want from me. That way I can make sure I’m meeting your expectations.”

His mouth twitched up. “I can assure you, Miss Alexandra, that you are meeting all of my expectations.”

Axel felt her face warm. Why were those words like a breath against her neck? She flicked her eyes away, and as though he sensed her fluster, he sat back in the chair, clearing his throat.

“Are you aware, Miss Alexandra, that today is Christmas?”

Axel had not been aware. She had stopped tracking things like what day it was years ago. What was the point, when every day was the same miserable slog?

“Do you always work on Christmas?”

Axel shrugged. “I honestly can’t remember.”

Darian considered that for a moment, then smoothly stood, buttoning his suit jacket. “It’s hot in here, don’t you think?” He strolled back to the elevator, pressed the button to call it, then turned to her. “Why don’t we take a break? A walk outside.”

A walk outside? What the fuck was this guy playing at? Was this some kind of trap? A test?

“I’m not supposed to leave this area during business hours,” Axel said.

Darian’s dimple appeared. “Even at the request of the CEO’s son?”

They stepped out of the elevator into the late afternoon street a few minutes later, the noise and smell and squalor an immediate assault on all of Axel’s senses. She glanced sideways at Darian to try and gauge his reaction to it, but could discern nothing from his impenetrable features. The word robot drifted through her head.

Darian stepped to the street corner and tipped his head back to observe the sky again. “Pity,” he said, “I was hoping we might see it today.”

Axel watched him warily. “You’ll never see it,” she said. “You can’t from down here.”

He tilted his face down and found her eyes. “I’d love to show it to you.”

Axel could feel the hairs lifting on the back of her neck. “What?”

“I’d love to show you the sky.” Without breaking her gaze, he angled his head toward the tower behind them. “Up there.”

“Why?” She couldn’t help the demanding tone this time; the impertinent question.

Darian tilted his head, frowning. “Why? I suppose you could call it a Christmas present, Miss Alexandra.”

Axel stared at him. Son of the CEO or not, this guy was acting bananas. Was it a game? Some kind of twisted power play? A way of exerting his authority over her? That had to be it. He probably got off on it—on her confusion. Well, if confusion was what he was going for, he was nailing it: at this point she wasn’t sure whether she was going to end up married to this guy or chopped up in little pieces in his freezer. Which did not exactly make her excited to get into an elevator with him and be whisked away to God knows where.

Still…she couldn’t get Giskard’s voice out of her head. If we can get close to this man, the opportunities that open up for us are tremendous. But just how far was she willing to go for this fucking revolution? Was being turned into ice cubes and served in some pervy billionaire’s cocktail worth it if her sacrifice might improve the lives of hundreds of millions of other people? Well, technically…yes. That was what Giskard would say. Whatever it takes. Wasn’t that the motto of Giskard’s little faction? Hadn’t she sworn an oath, when she joined, to uphold it?

As shitty luck or fate would have it, she might be holding the future of humanity in her coarse, un-manicured hands. Whatever she was doing—whatever feminine wiles she must have had (she was unaware she had any at all)—they were apparently working like gangbusters on Darian Rafferty. She hadn’t even tried to seduce him yet and he was inviting her upstairs. Imagine where he might take her if she put in a little effort…

CHAPTER 3

THE RIDE UP to the two-hundred-and-fiftieth floor was the craziest thing Axel had ever experienced.

Until she stepped into Darian Rafferty’s penthouse.

They hadn’t even used the regular elevators—the ones other billionaires were streaming in and out of in Rafferty Tower’s glistening gold and marble lobby. Darian had ushered her through a side door into a completely separate lobby with the quiet reverence of a church, and had summoned an elevator from nowhere by typing a code directly into the wall.

The elevator was cool and smelled faintly of lavender and Darian’s richly peppered aftershave. The floor was glass, and as they floated up away from the street, Axel gasped and reached instinctively for something to steady herself. She felt Darian’s gentle grip around her elbow.

“Have you never ridden in an elevator like this before, Miss Alexandra?” he said. Axel shook her head.

She remained speechless as the doors whispered open before her two minutes later and a crystalline, androgynous voice from somewhere up in the ceiling said, “Welcome home, Mr. Rafferty.”

The room that greeted her was a sweeping, multilevel expanse of marble, polished wood, white leather, and sparkling glass. In the far corner was a white grand piano. The walls were lined with art that Axel recognized: the Mona fucking Lisa for Christ’s sake. Andy Warhol’s can of tomato soup. Things he must have rescued from museums during various periods of civil unrest as the world fell apart during the last few centuries.

But the thing that floored her, that absolutely stilled the breath inside her was the window. It dominated the entire wall on the far side of the room, floor to ceiling and all the way across. And through it, for the first time in her life, Axel could see the sky.

She felt an abrupt and unwelcome lump well in her throat, and her eyes stung viciously with tears. Swallowing them, she followed Darian into the room, forgetting for a moment her skepticism, her fear, her loathing of all things Tower Elite. All she could see was that sky. It was blue. She hadn’t been expecting that.

Darian held out his hand to her. She stared at his outstretched fingers. Hold his hand? Surely not. That would be insane. Why would he do that? Why would he want her unwashed peasant hand anywhere near his diamond cufflinks?

Apparently sensing her hesitation, and before she could protest, he took her hand in his. His hand was soft and cool, and her whole body shivered at his touch. He twined his fingers through hers and led her to the window, and they stood together looking through it with their toes nearly touching the glass. A glittering gold wasteland of smog and the tops of other towers completely obscured the ground and stretched all the way to the horizon. Above it, the sky was a gradient spectrum of blue and lavender. Axel realized her mouth was open. It was eerily, otherworldly beautiful.

Darian turned to her, and she felt herself turn too, as though compelled by some unseen force. She looked up into his face and was sure she could see the spectrum of the sky reflected in his eyes.

“Would you like to stay and see the sunset?” he asked.

Mutely, she nodded.

He smiled. “And perhaps dinner? And if you’d like…if it’s not too presumptuous, I thought you might enjoy the facilities.”

Her brow creased. “Facilities?”

“I happen to have a very luxurious spa.”

Axel pulled her hand from his and stepped back. “Okay.” She folded her arms and eyed him. “What the fuck is this? What are you doing? Am I going to end up in your freezer or what?”

“My freezer?” He frowned. “Why on Earth would I want you in my freezer?”

“Cut the shit, okay? You’re being fucking weird. I know I’m like, not supposed to question it because you’re my superior and you live in a fucking tower or whatever, and maybe this kind of thing is, like, run-of-the-mill for you guys up here, but to me, this is fucking strange and I want to know what the fuck is going on. Why did you come to my job yesterday? What the fuck am I doing up here?”

“You certainly enjoy the word fuck, don’t you?” he said.

“Fucking right I enjoy the word fuck. I happen to fucking think the word fuck is extremely fucking useful in fucking strange fucking situations like this fucking one.”

He was watching her with open amusement, and it made her furious. She stepped toward him, prepared to lay into him with another round of fucks, but before she could do it, he put up his hands and stepped back.

“Alright,” he said. “Alright. I’m sorry; you’re right. I was hoping I might be able to get away with not disclosing my motivations to you, but I can see that you’re,” his eyes narrowed, “possibly even more difficult than I thought you would be. So here it is. I came to the server room yesterday because I’m on a personal mission to learn more about the way this company operates. Until now I’ve never been involved in high-level decision-making here, but—”

He hesitated. She could see him weighing the cost of whatever it was he was about to say, and for the first time, Axel thought she saw something close to vulnerability in his eyes.

“My father is sick. It’s possible he may not live out the year. And the people directly below him are snakes. I can’t abide this company ending up in their hands. But if I want to do something about it, I need to get familiar with the processes. I need to know this place inside and out. Every nook and cranny. Every floor. Even the server room. So I’m sorry. I’m sure it must have been unnerving to have me show up unannounced yesterday, but I promise I did not intend to cause distress.”

Whatever Axel had been expecting him to say, it certainly wasn’t that. She blinked and shook her head. “I—no. No, you didn’t cause me any distress.”

He smiled. “I’m almost certain that’s not true. But I hope you can understand my secrecy: if people found out my father was sick, it would be seen as a sign of weakness. Our rivals would descend on this company and tear us limb from limb. I suppose I’m going out on a limb here and…trusting you.”

Guilt slipped down the back of Axel’s neck like a cold drop of water from a laundry line. His business rivals weren’t the only ones who would descend: she could already picture Giskard’s face as she delivered the news to him that Lucretius Rafferty would be dead before the end of the week. Today was December twenty-fifth. If Lucretius Rafferty wasn’t going to live out the year, he had only days left. She folded her arms and fixed Darian in her gaze again.

“Okay. I guess I can believe that’s why you came down yesterday. Doesn’t really explain why you came back today. Doesn’t really explain what I’m doing up here now.”

“Ah…” He dropped his gaze: a slight, embarrassed deflection, and tucked one hand into his pocket. “Today, I confess, I just wanted to see you.”

Axel’s stomach swooped. She managed to keep her expression neutral as she said, for what felt like the fortieth time that day, “Why?”

“To be honest…” He looked up at her again, and something in his expression was puzzled. “I don’t know. You’re nothing like my usual type.”

“Oh yeah?” Axel tilted up her chin. “What am I like?”

His eyebrow twitched. “Impertinent.”

A prickly, electric silence sparkled between them. Axel forced herself to look him in the eye, even though doing so made all the hair on her arms stand up.

“But I’m a man who’s used to getting what he wants,” said Darian. “So when I see something I like, no matter how unexpected or impertinent, I tend to pursue it.”

Axel’s mouth had gone totally dry. She managed to swallow and said, “You could have just told me.”

“Mm.” He grinned slyly. “But you see, Miss Alexandra, I also like a game.”

Axel narrowed her eyes. “So you were fucking with me.”

“Perhaps a little.”

Axel observed him carefully. Is this what people had been talking about when they said Darian Rafferty had ‘a weird fascination’ with Street Dwellers?

If so, it was working in her favor. She’d already gotten valuable information about Lucretius Rafferty. She wondered what other information Darian Rafferty might give her. And…what else?

As long as she was going way above her pay grade for Giskard’s revolution, why not see what other benefits getting close to Darian Rafferty had to offer. Access to more views like this one, perhaps? Access to more prickly electric feelings like the one she was currently experiencing? It was worth a shot, wasn’t it?

She drew herself up as tall as she could and said, “So about this very luxurious spa…”

Darian’s grin broadened.

Axel had never been in a bath before. And this bath was more like an infinity pool than a bathtub—sunk into the marble washroom floor with a pair of enormous gold taps at one end, and a view of the cerulean sky at the other. The gold taps constantly decanted a babbling stream of hot, bubbly, fragrant water into the pool, and the sound of it spilled through her mind like warm molasses.

Darian had insisted on pouring her champagne before she had left him in the sitting room, and she swirled the stuff around in a fine-stemmed glass while she contemplated a single cloud through the window.

A soft knock jolted her out of her thoughts. She frowned at the door. “Yes?”

“Do you have everything you need, Miss Alexandra?” said Darian’s voice from the other side.

“…yes?”

“Is there nothing I can do for you?”

She chewed the inside of her cheek and didn’t answer right away. “Like what?”

A pause. “Anything you’d like.”

Her heart ticked up. Anything she’d like, like what? A snack? Another glass of champagne? A full-body rub down? None of those options sounded terrible…

She cleared her throat. “No, thank you, I’m fine.” Silence. Axel watched the door. She didn’t hear Darian’s footsteps retreating from it, so she assumed he was standing on the other side, waiting for something. She sipped her champagne. “Is there something you’d like, Mr. Rafferty?”

The silence continued for almost longer than she was comfortable with, and then he said, “I suppose I’d like to see you naked.”

Axel choked and almost spit champagne into the pool. This guy didn’t fuck around. But then, she hadn’t come up here to fuck around either, had she? She had come up here to get close to Darian Rafferty. Tipping back the rest of the drink and setting the glass on the side of the pool, she called back, “And what do I get out of it?”

“The pleasure of my company,” he replied. “And a backwash?”

Her heart was beating in earnest now, and she took a deep, rosewater-scented breath to try and still it. When that didn’t work, she called, “And one more glass of champagne?”

Five minutes later, Darian gently pushed open the door, bearing a small smile and a full bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. Axel sank into the water up to just above her lips and let the bubbles hide her while she tracked him with her eyes across the washroom. He was dressed in a thick white robe that looked unreasonably soft. Setting the bucket down on the edge of the pool, he eased himself down next to it and sat with the robe tucked closed and his legs in the water up to his knees. For several long moments, they watched each other. Then he wordlessly crooked a finger.

Staying under the water, Axel made her way carefully toward him. His eyes pinned hers as she drew level with his knees. He twirled a finger.

“Turn around, Miss Alexandra.”

Axel raised her lips just above the water and said, “I think if our relationship has already progressed to backwashing, you can probably just call me Axel.”

He smiled. “Turn around, Axel.”

She did.

“And stand up so I can reach you.”

She rose so her shoulders were above the water. Behind her, she heard him uncork the champagne and pour two glasses. One appeared in front of her. She took it, straining to hear what he was doing next, her skin prickling with anticipation. Then she felt his finger brush her shoulder. A shiver rippled in its wake. She shuddered.

He exhaled a quiet laugh. “So sensitive.”

Swallowing, Axel managed to say, “No one’s ever washed me before.”

“No?” He swept her hair aside and tucked it over her shoulder, then dipped his hand into the water beside her. “What a tremendous waste.”

A warm rush cascaded gently down the back of her neck. Axel closed her eyes. Darian cupped more water and poured it over her exposed shoulder, then carefully brushed her hair to the other side and repeated. Axel found herself tilting her neck to follow the featherlight touch of his fingers.

A burst of floral fragrance filled the steamy air, and she felt a cool drop of gel slip down her spine. Darian’s fingers followed it, firmer now, massaging it into a lather. She let her chin drop to her chest as he worked the suds into her shoulders, the back of her neck, the tops of her arms. When he encountered a knot of muscle in her neck and lingered there, kneading it with his knuckle until it released in startling, shivering waves, Axel had to bite back a moan.

“Mm.” Darian stroked the spot with his thumb. “Feels good?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Axel was no expert at physical intimacy—she hadn’t been massaged by anyone in years—but she knew enough to know this guy was really fucking good at this.

He cupped more water over her neck and back to rinse the suds away, then tucked her hair to one side again and rested both palms on her shoulders. “May I wash your hair, Axel?”

Axel didn’t know what else to do but nod. She felt his hands slip down the outsides of her arms, then suddenly, he had pulled her closer and his breath was behind her ear. Axel froze.

“Turn around for me, then,” he murmured, and the words spiraled all the way down her spine. He pulled away, and slowly, Axel turned around. His eyes dropped to her breasts and she saw his chest rise with a breath. Axel couldn’t resist a little teasing. She poked her tongue into one cheek.

“Am I still meeting your expectations?”

His eyes flicked up to hers. He reached for her hand, took the champagne glass from it, and set it aside. Then he pulled her between his knees. Axel kept her eyes on his, afraid to look down, not sure if he was wearing anything under the robe and not sure if she was ready to find out just yet.

“Axel,” he said, “you have already surpassed my every expectation.”

He tipped her face up with one finger under her chin, dipped his hand into the water again, and began carefully ladling it over her head. Axel watched his face as he worked. The unabashed concentration. The way he kept his eyes on exactly what he was doing.

By the time he had washed and rinsed her hair, Axel’s skin was tingling all over. She shivered as he draped her wet hair over one shoulder and a drop of water slid between her breasts. Darian let his thumb graze the same path that drop of water had taken, his eyes following the movement.

“Step back so I can see you,” he said. Axel did, watching his eyes trace the curve of her breasts. His voice lowered. “Walk to the shallow end.”

She felt his eyes touching every part of her as each new inch of skin was exposed. The cool air stippled her arms and legs with goosebumps. When nothing but her ankles remained in the water, she turned around. Darian was raking his eyes over her body like a starving man beholding a feast. The robe tented between his thighs and Axel felt herself blush and turn her eyes away from it. Their two glasses of champagne stood, forgotten, on the edge of the pool next to him.

“Okay…” she said quietly. “Now what?”

His expression cleared. He pulled his feet from the water and stood, holding the robe closed, then pulled a thick white towel from a shelf beside him and brought it over to her. He shook it open and swung it around her shoulders, then wrapped it tight and pulled her against him so she felt his erection against her hip. She flushed, and he pressed a kiss to her damp forehead.

“Now we’re going to watch the sunset,” he said.

Axel choked back a laugh. “Wait, what?”

“And have dinner together.”

She stepped back and looked up at him. “Not fuck?”

He grimaced. “Please, Axel. That word. You really overuse it.”

“Okay, well, sorry, I’m just…you know, highly confused here.”

The sly smile returned to his face. “I told you, Miss Alexandra. I like a game.”

CHAPTER 4

>>> HOW DID YOU SLEEP, AXEL?

Axel stared at the little glass screen in front of her, chewing her cheek. She had never had a phone before. She’d never sent a text.

Last night, after Darian had toweled her off and given her her own unreasonably soft white robe, the two of them had watched the sunset—a wash of pink and paisley that made Axel want to openly weep—from the white leather couch in front of his window. Then he had cooked her a meal so good Axel felt like a war criminal for eating it.

After dinner, an implication had been made that she should spend the night—with no expectations—in a spare bedroom, so as to avoid having to walk home alone in the dark. When Axel had politely declined, Darian had insisted on calling a private car—an actual car, not a rickshaw—to take her. Before she left, he had opened a drawer in the kitchen and pulled out a little black rectangle.

“Do you have a phone?” he asked.

Axel, sitting on the counter, shook her head. Phones weren’t something people could afford at street level. Darian tapped a button on the side of the device, and when it did nothing, he tossed it back in the drawer, rummaged around, and produced another. Then another. And another. He went through about seven phones before he found one that turned on. He swiped through a few screens, tapped something into it, then held it out to her.

“This is now our private line.”

Twelve hours later, Axel was starting to feel unsettled about the whole experience. It was weird, right? What he was doing? It was not normal. And a little creepy, if she was honest. Inviting her up to his penthouse to watch the sunset and wash her? Giving her a phone only he had the number for? Sending her home in a private car? What was she, a sex worker? Well, no, obviously not, because she hadn’t even made any fucking money from the whole exchange.

And then there was the robot thing. Axel hated calling it that—KT’s stupid voice in her head—but she didn’t know what else to call it. It wasn’t that Darian was robotic, or that she actually thought he was a robot; it was more that she couldn’t get a read on him at all. She felt like a curiosity he was observing. Like an experiment he was performing in a very intense but strangely detached way.

She punched in a cautious reply to his text. She had to delete and retype almost every letter because she kept hitting two keys at the same time.

>>> FINE, AND YOU?

>>> VERY WELL, THANK YOU. ARE YOU AT WORK?

>>> I AM. WHY, ARE YOU PLANNING TO DROP BY?

She hesitated before sending this. She wasn’t sure if he would read it as the joke she intended, or whether he would show up unannounced in the elevator again.

>>> NO, he replied. AS MUCH AS I WOULD LIKE TO :)

A smiley face. Axel wouldn’t have pegged Darian Rafferty as the type to send smiley faces.

>>> I HAVE TO GO OUT OF TOWN. WHEN I RETURN I’D LIKE TO SEE YOU AGAIN.

>>> GO OUT OF TOWN WHERE?

>>> I’M AFRAID IF I TOLD YOU THAT, MISS ALEXANDRA, I’D ALMOST CERTAINLY HAVE TO KILL YOU

Axel shook her head.

>>> I’M GOING TO ASSUME THAT’S A JOKE, BUT JUST SO YOU KNOW, COMING FROM YOU, IT’S MORE THAN A LITTLE SINISTER

>>> AM I SINISTER?

>>> NO. BUT YOU LIVE IN A TOWER LIKE A SUPERVILLAIN.

Axel met KT for a drink at Giskard’s after work. Had she been able to make any progress getting close to Darian Rafferty, Giskard wanted to know. Axel told him she had. Had she cracked him yet? Had she learned anything useful that they could use?

At this, Axel hesitated. It didn’t feel right sharing what she had learned about Lucretius Rafferty. She couldn’t put her finger on why, exactly: something about the way Darian’s eyes had looked before he told her. The guy was about to lose his father, for fuck’s sake. And what good would it do Giskard to know, anyway? If Lucretius was dying, he was dying. What was Giskard going to do? Speed up the process somehow? And Axel had barely gotten to know Darian. There would be more useful information to report as she got closer. She could just as easily tell Giskard about Lucretius in a few days.

Deep down, Axel knew these justifications were bullshit. She knew it was really the memory of Darian’s soft, wide thumb caressing the back of her neck that made her hold it back. Why the fuck was she protecting this Tower Elite asshole? Not sharing the most valuable piece of intel the faction had gotten in years? She didn’t know. It was stupid at best, and disloyal at worst.

She sensed KT on the barstool next to her, watching. “No,” she said quietly. “Nothing useful to report yet.”

On her way home that night, the phone buzzed in her pocket. She didn’t dare pull it out on the street, and could feel it burning a hole in her thigh as she hurried home to swipe it open in private. She felt like a schoolgirl. She felt like a traitor.

>>> WHAT ARE YOU DOING TONIGHT? said the message.

Axel sat on the edge of her bed to reply.

>>> WHY? YOU HAVE ANOTHER SUNSET TO SHOW ME?

>>> I’M AFRAID NOT. I’M ALREADY OUT OF TOWN.

She frowned and felt her heart sink. The phone lit up again.

>>> AND I’M LONELY.

Axel’s pulse accelerated. She sat with her thumbs hovering over the keypad, wondering how to reply. In the end she didn’t have to.

>>> I WAS HOPING YOU MIGHT KEEP ME COMPANY.

>>> KEEP YOU COMPANY HOW?

The cursor blinked for what felt like ages. Then he sent

>>> A PICTURE?

She flushed. She had no experience with texting but she was savvy enough to know he probably wasn’t asking for a picture of her face. But she was a little drunk from her visit to Giskard’s, and feeling impertinent, so a picture of her face was exactly what she sent him. She chewed her thumbnail and anxiously awaited his response, afraid he would be irritated. But he only replied

>>> BEAUTIFUL :)

A long minute passed.

>>> THAT WASN’T QUITE WHAT I WAS AFTER THOUGH…

Axel took a breath.

>>> ALRIGHT. WHAT ARE YOU AFTER?

Another long minute. Then

>>> YOUR FAVORITE PART.

Axel frowned. Her favorite part? Of herself? It had been a long time since she’d evaluated herself like that. Since she’d worn anything but her work clothes, boots, and jacket. She barely even checked her reflection in the mirror anymore. What was the point?

She stood now and went to the mirror and looked at herself in it. Not bad, all things considered. She was in good shape. Her face was symmetrical. Her hair was a little dry, but so was everyone’s. She turned sideways and studied her silhouette. She’d put on some weight. She didn’t mind it, actually; she liked being a little curvier. Her tits were still perky. Her ass was rounder than it used to be. She studied it over her shoulder. Then she faced herself head on again.

With the determination of a swimmer jumping into a very cold pool, she tugged open the button of her jeans and shimmied them onto the floor. She turned around and studied her ass in the mirror again. Her underwear was pretty unflattering. If she was going to do this right, it would have to come off. She slipped it down before she could change her mind, kicked it into the corner, snatched up the phone, and angled it over her shoulder at the mirror.

She narrowed her eyes at the reflection of her naked ass, then cocked one hip to the side to accentuate the curve. She was still wearing her jacket, but oddly, it kind of worked. She popped the collar up and rolled her eyes at herself. She felt ridiculous. And…a little sexy.

She snapped the picture and sent it, then flung the phone onto the bed and ran out of the room like she was trying to escape from it. She went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. When she came back, the phone was lit up. She paced in front of the door, looking at it. When she finally got up the nerve to swipe it open, she found a single word.

>>> FUCK.

Her face ignited. She sat on the bed and texted him back.

>>> I THOUGHT YOU DIDN’T LIKE THAT WORD.

>>> SOMETIMES IT IS THE ONLY APPROPRIATE WORD TO USE.

She felt herself smiling and looked in the mirror again. A smile looked good on her. The phone buzzed. She read the message.

>>> I’LL BE BACK TOMORROW. CAN I SEE YOU AGAIN?

CHAPTER 5

TWENTY FOUR HOURS LATER, she was stepping out of the lavender-scented elevator into Darian Rafferty’s penthouse. Darian was on the other side of the doors wearing a cotton t-shirt, gray sweatpants, and a big, warm smile that made Axel’s chest thump. His hair was tousled and his feet were bare, and he took her by the hand as she stepped across the threshold and folded her into his arms.

The crystalline androgynous voice in the ceiling said, “Welcome, Miss Alexandra.”

Axel stepped back, turning wide eyes up to the sound. “It knows my name?”

Darian grinned. “It’s a fast learner.”

He cooked her dinner while she bathed, and they sat on the white couch in front of the window to eat it. The sky turned orange, then pink, then an astonishing shade of violet, pricked with tiny stars. Darian bent his elbow against the back of the couch, resting his temple against his fist, and watched her.

Axel kept her gaze through the window, trying to ignore him. It was impossible. She could feel his gaze like fingers on her skin. She slid her eyes to his. “What?”

He shrugged and tucked a rogue strand of hair behind her ear. “I was hoping I might get to kiss you tonight.” His fingertips lingered on the side of her face. They traced the curve of her ear, the line of her jaw. “Would that be okay?”

“Can I…brush my teeth first?”

His eyebrows lifted. “Of course. In fact, that’s a great idea. I’ll join you.”

He leaned in the bathroom doorway behind her, brushing his teeth and looking over her shoulder into her eyes in the mirror while she brushed hers. When she rolled her eyes and looked away, he stamped his foot so that she looked at him again. He winked and she blushed, trying not to smile because she was sure that if she did, she would drool all over herself.

Afterward, they stood shoulder to shoulder in the doorway between the guest bathroom and living room, watching each other in the mirror. He slipped his hand around her waist and pulled her around to face him.

“Hold on.” Axel put a hand on his chest. “Are you about to kiss me right here in the bathroom?”

He cupped her face with his hand. “It looks to be that way.”

“That’s not super romantic, is it?”

“We’re not technically in the bathroom.”

“We’re not not in the bathroom.”

He smiled and tilted his face down to hers. “We’re not not not in the bathroom, either.”

His breath was warm and soft on her mouth and she could feel his heart beating against the palm of her hand. Thundering against the palm of her hand. Suddenly she realized that for all his quiet composure and robot super villain poise, he was on fire inside. His eyes saw her feel that fire and they turned ravenous, and he gripped her tighter by the waist and pulled their mouths together.

As their lips touched, Axel realized that actually, she didn’t give a fuck that they were in the bathroom. He was mint and pepper and soft cotton. Darian stepped her back against the doorframe, the brush of his lips becoming a press, becoming a push, becoming her up against the wall with his tongue in her mouth and his hand under her robe.

Suddenly, their kiss had become something much more urgent. Axel was already tugging off his shirt, desperate to feel his skin against hers. She was already imagining him on top of her. Inside her. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d felt someone against her like this. The softness of his clothes, the hardness of his body. The coolness of his hand as he dragged it from her waist and up the side of her ribs. Axel realized that he might be about to put his hand on her breast, and was so overwhelmed with the need for him to do it that she went still. As she did, so did he. He caught a breath. Trembling, mouths open against each other, they stood.

“Shit,” he breathed, “this is not how I was intending to go about this.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

He tilted her forehead against hers and drew a hard breath, then removed his hand from her robe and stepped back. The chill that rushed in to replace his warmth was unbearable. Axel gaped at him.

“Sorry, what is wrong with this scenario, exactly?”

“Nothing.” He cupped her face in both hands and looked firmly into her eyes. “I just…I had a plan.”

“A plan? Fuck your plan.”

A small smile. He leaned in and pressed his lips softly to hers. So frustratingly, achingly softly that Axel wanted to scream. It was like having someone scratch a spot on her back two inches to the left of where she actually itched.

“Can you trust me?” he said.

“That depends. What’s your plan?”

He pulled back and looked at her again. “I’d like to tie you down.”

Axel felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. She pulled her hand from under his half-removed shirt. “What?”

“If you’re into it. And if you can trust me.”

“Is this usually the sort of thing you do on a first date?”

“Is this a date? If it is, then I think it’s at least our second.”

“I haven’t…I’ve never done that. Why do you—why?”

He shrugged slightly, tugging the shirt back down. “I like it. And I think you might like it too.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Usually the women I’m attracted to do.”

“This isn’t, like—this isn’t some torture thing, is it? Like, am I actually gonna end up in your freezer? You want to hurt me?”

“No.” He gripped her face. “I’m not interested in hurting you. At all. I’m much more interested in your pleasure.” He paused. “And mine.” He slid his hands down the backs of her arms and took her hands in his. “But if you’re not into it, that’s fine. We don’t have to do anything at all.”

“No, we definitely have to do something.”

His eyes sparked. “Oh yeah?”

“I mean, if you’re not gonna fuck me, then I guess I’m going back down to street level to find someone who will.”

“No no no.” He pulled her closer, sliding his arms around her waist. “We definitely don’t want that.” He put his lips on the side of her neck and Axel looked at the ceiling and furiously tried to think her way through this. Trust him. Could she trust him? She supposed she had no reason not to. Technically, he should be the one who didn’t trust her. She was the one who was up here trying to infiltrate his father’s organization. He had just happened to run into her in the elevator one day and thought she was cute.

And then there was the fact that his proposition was…kind of turning her on. She’d never been tied down before. The prospect was kind of thrilling. Plus, she was horny. She hadn’t been fucked in ages. She felt like she would have basically agreed to anything at that point just to get him inside her.

“Okay.” She pulled his hands from around her waist and pushed him back to look him in the eye. “Fine. Let’s do it.”

“Yeah?” His eyes lit up and she tried not to picture him as a little boy on Christmas.

“Sure.” She eyed him. “You have all the shots, right? For protection? Before we get into all this.”

“Oh. Good point. I do. Do you?”

“Mhm.”

They looked at each other.

“Okay, just…wait here for like, two minutes.” He grabbed her face in his hands and kissed her again, then sprinted out of the living room. Axel blew out a breath through her cheeks and tipped her head back against the doorframe.

Two and a half minutes later, he returned. He had a red silk tie in one hand and held it up. “Blindfold? Or no blindfold?”

“Um…no blindfold. I didn’t even get to see you naked yet.”

“Mm. No blindfold it is.” He balled up the tie and flung it across the room, then held out his hand. Axel hesitated before taking it. “We can stop any time,” he said. “Just say the word.”

“What word? Like a safety word? Banana?”

He rolled his eyes. “Just tell me to stop and I’ll stop.”

He led her out of the living room, past the spa, and down a long hallway to his bedroom. In the center of it was an enormous bed with crisp white sheets, and from each corner snaked a thick, red, velvet rope.

“Oh.” Axel frowned. “We do it here? I figured you had like a dungeon or something.”

He rolled his eyes again and extended a hand to the bed. Axel approached it like a wary animal. She picked up one of the velvet ropes and turned it between her fingers. It was soft but firm.

“Okay,” she said, and turned to face him. “Now what?”

“Take off your robe.” His voice lowered. “And get on the bed.”

Her heart jumped at the sudden shift in his tone. His eyes had turned very serious. Slowly, she opened the robe and let it pool on the floor. Then she crawled to the middle of the bed and lay down. He walked around the bed, tying each restraint to her wrist or ankle, cinching them tighter than she had expected him to.

Her heart began to patter. “So…what are the ropes for, exactly?”

“To give me complete control. So that I can decide exactly when you come.”

Her breath vanished. He finished tying the final knot, then tugged on the rope and looked at her. “Can you move?”

She tried to twist her arms free, her ankles, and couldn’t. Her heart beat harder. She shook her head.

He smiled. “Good.”

He reached behind his neck and tugged the shirt over his head and tossed it into the corner. Axel sucked in a breath as she drank in the planes and lines of his torso, the ridges of his abdomen, the cut of his hips, disappearing into the waistband of his sweatpants. He was already hard. Those sweatpants were very thin and were not leaving much to the imagination; she could practically see the veins in his dick.

He walked across the room, disappearing from her view for a moment, and Axel craned her neck to try and see him. When he returned, he was carrying a long, red feather. Axel raised her eyebrows.

“Seriously?”

He hopped up onto the bed and stood over her, straddling her hips with both feet. He looked down. “Are you ticklish?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know.”

He flicked the feather up and laid the fine, silky tip of it against her cheek. Axel watched his eyes tracing the feather’s path as he dragged it along the edge of her jaw. His unabashed concentration. The way he kept his eyes on exactly what he was doing.

She felt it touch her neck and jolted. He smirked and continued, down the center of her chest, between her breasts, her stomach. In its wake a narrow line of sensation bloomed. He stopped at her belly button and dragged it back the other way, but this time he pulled it toward her breast and began drawing slow, lazy circles around her nipple.

That sensation grew as he circled closer and closer, and Axel felt her nipple tighten in anticipation. Fuck, it would feel so good to be touched there. However badly she had wanted him to put his hands on her when they were kissing in the bathroom, the need was a hundred times greater now. But he was moving so fucking slowly. She arched away from the bed, angling her chest to get the tip of that feather closer to its mark, her breath held, the spot between her legs already warm. It was close—she could almost feel it there, right where she wanted it—

And then it stopped. Axel gasped and snapped her eyes open. Above her, Darian had laid the feather across his shoulder and was observing her with amusement.

“I think you do like it,” he said.

He flicked the feather again and laid the tip of it against her cupid’s bow. Axel tipped her head back as he dragged it over her lips, down the center of her throat, her sternum, her stomach, in a direct, buzzing line toward her core. Her hips tilted off the bed and curled up to meet it, but again, as the exquisite sensation neared its mark, he slowed.

He diverted, circling his target, trailing the tip of the feather down the inside of one thigh, then up the inside of the other. She felt her legs open for him. He reversed the direction. Down one thigh and up the other. Again. A smaller circle this time. Smaller. Until the tip of that feather was very nearly touching the tiny, throbbing spot between her legs. Each time drawing a little closer, each time making her a little more sure that this time, this time, please, he was going to touch her where she needed him to.

“Do you like it when I tease you, Axel?” he said.

Her hips were rolling as her center vainly sought friction. She was so hot and tight she was almost embarrassed. They had barely started. She wondered how long she could handle this for. How long Darian would make her handle it. If he would be disappointed when she couldn’t.

“Yes,” she gasped. “Yes, I like it.”

The sensation stopped again, and she opened her eyes and looked up. Darian had his cock in his hand and was stroking it in long, lazy strokes. It was fucking gorgeous; thick and swollen and uncut, and he was shaved. She hadn’t been expecting that.

When he saw her watching him, he made a low noise in his throat and knelt, wide-legged beside her, his hand still working his cock. He dipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a small, purple egg with a loop at one end.

“What is that?” she said.

In response, he smirked and flipped something on the side of the egg. It sprang to life and hummed. Axel stared at it.

Still stroking his cock, he flipped the egg over in his free hand, holding it like a pen with the narrow end against her collarbone, and dragged it to her breast. The sensation was intense—she could feel the vibration thrumming through her chest, raising goosebumps on her skin. She lay, quivering as he circled once, twice, and arrogant smirk on his face, like a hunter, circling his prey, then finally, finally flicked the buzzing point directly across her nipple.

A bolt of pleasure shot through Axel, and she shouted and bowed off the bed. Darian echoed her shout with a groan and she heard his hand beating faster. He pressed the tip against her other nipple, harder, and held it there until she cried out again.

Axel shut her eyes and felt him flick her hard with his finger, one side and then the other. He took one nipple and then the other between his thumb and forefinger and pulled them until they were swollen, tracing buzzing circles around the edges of her sex with the egg until Axel was moaning and writhing, and her wetness had leaked onto Darian’s crisp, white sheets. He was nearing the throbbing, desperate center of her need with every loop.

Then suddenly, the humming stopped. Axel’s eyes snapped open as Darian let go of his dick like it had burned his hand and jumped off the bed and pushed both hands through his hair. He paced a circle around the room. Axel, panting, stared at the ceiling, her mind spinning.

She had barely caught her breath when Darian was standing over her again. His voice was rough as he said, “When was the last time someone touched you like this?”

Axel blinked and tried to make her brain become a thing that she could use for thinking again. Desire was still beating through her in great, pulsing waves. “No one’s ever touched me like this.”

“Never?”

“It’s been a while. I don’t remember.”

He pulled off his sweatpants and straddled her on his knees, and trailed his finger down the center of her chest. “That escalated more quickly than I thought it would. You’re so sensitive. I think you need more practice if we’re going to do this for as long as I want to.”

“How long do you want to?”

His dimple appeared. “Hours.”

“Hours?” Fuck, there was no way. “I can’t.” She twisted uselessly against the restraints, her hips pinned to the bed by the weight of his thighs.. “Please, I just…I need to come.”

His eyebrow lifted. “Already?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not. I don’t know.”

“Do you think you can go just a little longer?” His eyes were mischievous, challenging.

She swallowed, and nodded.

He wet the pad of his thumb with his tongue then took his cock in his hand again as he thumbed her nipple. “I did have so much more I wanted to do to you.”

Axel moaned and felt her eyes close. “Like what?”

“Toys, vibrators. My dick in your mouth. All sorts of things.”

“I just want you,” she gasped. “I just want to feel you.”

He groaned and she felt his mouth on hers. He tasted like mint and pepper and she sucked his tongue in greedily as he licked and bit at her. She felt the weight of his chest against hers as he braced one arm beside her head and lowered himself onto her, his hard length settling between her thighs, and at the feel of him against her, Axel moaned.

He tore his lips from hers and began making his way down the front of her throat, to her breasts. When he sucked her nipple into his mouth and she felt the slight scrape of his teeth, she swore, and when he moved on, leaving her gasping for more, she wanted to scream.

He kept descending until she felt his breath on the taut, burning epicenter of her need. She pressed her hips toward him, but he pulled away. His breath was short and his hand still beat his dick like he was punishing himself. He blew a long, warm stream of air against her and she writhed in agony.

Then she heard the hum again and suddenly a rush of buzzing vibration was against her, and he had slipped the egg inside. Axel gasped and snapped her eyes open to Darian’s face.

“Okay?” he asked.

She nodded silently as she watched him lower his mouth to her and finally, finally suck that aching spot between his lips.

“Ffffu—,” she moaned. “Oh fuck.”

“Jesus,” he said, and he dragged his tongue from her base to her tip. “God you’re so fucking wet already.” He sucked her tip between his lips again, agonizingly gently, as the egg vibrated deeply inside her, and she moved against him, needing more, release barely beginning to shimmer—so close and yet still so far away. When he began rolling his tongue against her in lazy, arrogant waves, she felt so frantic to make that release come closer that all she could do was match her hips to the rolling motion of his tongue and repeat, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God—”

He swore and stopped.

“No.” She thrashed against her restraints. She felt like sobbing.

He sat up and knelt between her thighs. His cock was sticking straight up at the ceiling, so dark and swollen it looked like it would burst. He was wet too, and he crawled over her and angled his cock so that a thick glob of that wetness drooled onto her tit.

“You come when I say you come,” he growled, and rubbed it into her nipple with his thumb. “You fucking wait.”

Fuck she needed to come. The egg was still buzzing away frustratingly deep inside her and she needed to come more badly than she had ever needed to come before. “I can’t,” she moaned.

“You need my cock? You need my fucking dick inside you?”

“Yes. God I need it so fucking badly.”

“You need me to fuck you until you come so hard on my dick that you never want to fuck anyone else again?”

“Yes. Please. I’m begging you.”

“You’re begging me?” More liquid seeped out of his dick. He swiped it up with two fingers and stuck them into her mouth. Axel sucked him down, swirling her tongue all over him. “Fuck, Axel. You like my fucking fingers down your throat.” She nodded. “Are you gonna scream for me? Are you gonna tell me no one else ever made you feel so good in your fucking life.”

“Yes,” she said around his fingers. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Say please again.”

“Please.”

“Tell me how hard you’re gonna come for me.”

“I’m gonna come so fucking hard for you.”

“Tell me how much you need me to fuck you.”

“I need you to fuck me so fucking bad. I’m gonna lose my mind if you don’t make me come.”

He sat up on his knees and grabbed her by the hips, pulling her ass up off the bed and shoving his hips between her thighs. “Put your feet on the bed. Lift your hips for me.”

Axel did.

“Good girl.”

Her eyes fixed on his face as he stared down at her, fully on display for him. He slipped one finger inside her and hooked out the egg, then angled his hips so his cock was against her entrance. Axel’s eyes rolled back in her head at the agonizing torment of feeling him there but no deeper.

Then the whirring rush of the egg was directly against her clit and she choked as he growled, “Come for me, Axel,” and sank into her.

Axel felt herself coming before she even registered what he said. Release overwhelmed her. She convulsed around him as a half-lucid deluge of bliss and need and grateful, sobbing relief pulsed through her. He barked something she thought was probably Fuck, and his own release came pouring out of him in a torrent of slurred expletives and invocations to Jesus, to God, to no one, to her.

Her orgasm seemed to go on and on, and he fucked her through it until he was shaking with the effort, and as he began to slow, she felt another wave take her, and tightened her thighs around him and swore and came again. By the time it was over he had fallen to his elbows and was clinging to her hair and saying, “Oh God, Axel. Oh my fucking God.”

She lay beneath him as he shuddered and stilled, and he put his forehead against hers and breathed hard. He kissed her clumsily and rolled off her and sprawled on his back with one arm across his face. Then he struggled to his knees and began untying the restraints.

CHAPTER 6

THE NEXT THREE days were a blur. The one night Darian wasn’t fucking her senseless in his bed, or on the piano, or against the window, or in the bathroom, or over the kitchen counter, or in the elevator, or all over the spa, he took her to a restaurant she had never known existed, then to a glittering jewelry store thousands of feet above the ground, and then showed her the best place in the city to see the moon. When she was at work, she was sending and receiving a volley of absolutely filthy texts. She didn’t go home. She saw no one else.

On the afternoon of the third day, her phone lit up at work and she swiped it open.

>>> THERE IS A PARTY ON NEW YEAR’S EVE ON THE TOP FLOOR. COME WITH ME?

She sat with her thumbs over the keypad for a long time, afraid to respond. Finally, she sent

>>> ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO BE SEEN WITH A STREET DWELLER?

>>> YES, came the immediate reply. COME.

That evening, she ran into KT as she stepped out of the underground elevator and was preparing to head up to Darian’s penthouse.

“Holy shit, there you are.” KT grabbed her by the shoulders. “Where the fuck have you been? I went by your place two days in a row.”

Axel shifted out of his grip and avoided his eyes. “Yeah, sorry. I was taking care of some stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“Just some stuff, I can’t really talk about it.”

He frowned at her. “Are you coming to the meeting?”

Right. That was tonight. There was no way she could skip it without making KT suspicious. “Yeah. No, yeah, I’ll be there.”

She went to her place for the first time in days, showered, changed, and headed for Giskard’s. The usual assortment of degenerates were there—plus the two new recruits Daneel had finally managed to round up and convince to show their faces. Giskard seemed unconcerned about them, however. He only had questions for Axel. Had she seen Darian again? Had she learned any more information? Was she getting close to him? When would she see him next?

Axel’s face burned as she fielded these questions, artfully trying to sidestep the fact that, yes, she had seen Darian again—a lot of him, actually. All of him, in fact. That she had seen him up against the wall and from between her legs while bent over in the kitchen, and in the mirror behind her while they were in the shower, and sometimes just the top of his head when his face was buried between her legs.

She was doing a shit job of explaining herself, clearly, because finally, KT said, “So you’re fucking this guy?”

Axel went bright red and looked at the floor. “Isn’t that pretty much what we figured I would do?”

“I mean…I guess. I just—it kind of sounds like you’re really fucking him.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Giskard put up his hand. “Alright. We’re not here to judge anyone. Whatever it takes, right?”

“Sure,” KT folded his arms, “but right now it sounds like she’s just fucking him and not really doing a whole lot else.”

“Fuck you!” Axel glared at him. “I’m getting close to him. I’m learning stuff.”

“Like what? How many different settings his robot penis has?”

Her mouth stuck open. In the tense silence, her phone buzzed.

KT’s eyes narrowed. “What the fuck was that?”

“What the fuck was what?”

He pointed at her pocket. “Was that a phone? Did he give that to you?”

“What are you, jealous?”

“So he gave you a phone? What else did he give you? Does he buy you stuff? Does he take you places? Are you having fun up there? Did you get to see the sky?”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

“He’s using you.”

“For what?”

“I dunno, sex? Is kind of what it sounds like.”

“Alright, enough.” Giskard pulled off his glasses and wiped his eyes. “KT, lay off it. Axel…” He replaced the glasses and looked at her unhappily over them. “Just don’t—” Sighing, he shook his head.

“I mean it would be one thing if you had actually learned anything useful,” KT continued, blatantly ignoring Giskard and glaring at Axel. “If you were doing something meaningful instead of just blowing the guy and swanning around like a princess.”

“Alright, you want something useful?” Axel rounded on him. “You want information? His father is dying. Lucretius Rafferty is sick. He’ll be dead before the end of the year. Is that good enough? Is that useful? Can I have my fucking dignity back now, please?”

“Is that true?” said Giskard.

Axel huffed and sat back in her chair. “As far as I know. Darian’s trying to take over the company. He doesn’t want the guys who are under Lucretius right now to have it.”

Giskard removed his glasses again and dragged one hand down his face. “Oh man,” he said. He put the glasses back on. “So Darian Rafferty will be in charge of Rafferty Enterprises before long.”

Axel shrugged. “Maybe.”

“When are you seeing him again?”

Axel hesitated. She could feel the heat of every eye in the room. “New Year’s. There’s a party at Rafferty Tower. He wants me to go with him.”

KT scoffed and picked at the patch on his sleeve.

Giskard rubbed his chin. “Lucretius will be there?”

“I don’t know.” Axel folded her arms. “Maybe. All I know is Darian invited me. I haven’t even told him I’ll go yet.”

“You must go.” Giskard nodded fervently. “This is the biggest break we’ve had in years, Axel. This is huge. You can get us in.”

“Get you in?”

“They’ll all be there; the ones we’re after. We can take them down with one fell swoop. If you can get us inside.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Axel put up her hands. “I don’t think so. That seems crazy. I don’t have that kind of access.”

“You have access to the tower. All it takes is a door left unlocked. A service elevator. A basement…”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not all it takes. What about security? Cameras?”

“Isn’t that your department?” said KT. “Systems?”

Axel stared around at the assembled faces. The air was so still she could hear Daneel breathing all the way across the room. “I don’t know…” she said again.

Giskard hobbled to her and laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. “This might be it,” he said. “This might be the only chance we get. We can’t let this go. You’ve done good work. Hear me?” He shot a look at KT. “Great work.”

KT was picking his sleeve and glaring at the floor, and said nothing.

CHAPTER 7

THE DAY of New Year’s Eve, Darian arrived unannounced in the server room at lunch and told Axel he was taking her somewhere.

“I can’t just leave work,” said Axel.

“Of course you can,” he countered. “I’m—”

“The son of the CEO. Right.”

He took her to the top of Rafferty Tower—all the way to the top, to the roof, where a helicopter was waiting to take them to a dress shop in a different city so Axel could get a dress for the party. Darian sprawled on a red leather couch outside the fitting room in a black button-down with the collar open, sipping whiskey from a highball glass while she emerged for him in various shifts of silk, satin, and lace.

“This is ridiculous,” she said after an hour of this, fiddling with her bra. “I look like an origami swan.”

He sipped his whiskey. “A sexy origami swan.”

“Okay, well, you’ve seen them all now. Which one’s it gonna be?”

He looked surprised. “I don’t give a shit what you wear, Axel. Which one do you like?”

Seven hours later she stood alone under an enormous archway of sculpted ice, nervously clutching a half-empty glass of champagne and trying not to fiddle with the hem of her dress. The ice sculpture adorned the entrance to the Rafferty Tower top floor ballroom, and she was trying to pluck up the nerve to go inside.

She had given Giskard the key card to the server room elevator. Once the crew was in there, they would climb out of the elevator, get to an elevator shaft in the main building, and climb. Axel had taken offline a single strategically-placed security grid that would allow Giskard and the crew to get into the server room elevator without being spotted on a camera. She’d uploaded a patch to cover the missing feed from the cameras with some pre-recorded footage.

It had been easier than she thought to pull it off: no one ever came down to the server room, so when Darian had dropped her off in the late afternoon and left her to make sure his father was well enough to attend the party, all she had had to do was go back down to the basement to ‘close up.’

“Okay,” she said under her breath, throwing back one last very large sip of champagne and setting the empty glass on a table just outside the door, “Whatever it takes. Whatever the fuck that means.”

A hand slipped around her waist and she almost shrieked and spun around. Darian was behind her, eyes sparkling, in a coal black suit and tie, with hair that looked as though he had just rolled out of bed, through a barbershop, and into the ballroom.

“Sorry.” His dimple appeared. “Did I scare you?”

Axel blew air through her cheeks and touched her hair. “Yeah.”

He slipped his hand into hers and pressed his lips to her temple. “Apologies. You look beautiful; I couldn’t resist.” He stepped back and offered his arm. “Shall we?”

Axel swiped several glasses of champagne in quick succession off trays carried by passing waiters as she and Darian entered the ballroom. After three or four of them, she started to feel better. Darian’s hand on the small of her back was an oddly stabilizing force, and he stroked her reassuringly with his thumb while he introduced her to groups of his friends.

Axel was received by these people with a mix of curiosity, suspicion, and confusion, but Darian seemed unperturbed by it. Axel was surprised that he didn’t appear to be trying to hide who she was at all. He spoke enthusiastically about her job in the server room, and after champagne had loosened Axel’s tongue enough that she could talk about herself, he was happy to let her do it.

Giskard and his crew planned to launch their attack at midnight. By ten minutes to twelve, Axel’s nerves were too frazzled to force another smile. She excused herself to the bathroom and then stood in the cool, dark hallway outside it with her back to the wall and her eyes closed. What was going to happen to Darian if Giskard and his crew succeeded? And…why did she care? He was a rich fuck Tower Elite Billionaire. He represented everything they had been working to bring down. And as far as she knew, KT could be right: Darian could be using her as blatantly as she was using him. She didn’t know what to do anymore. She didn’t know where her loyalties lay.

“Are you going to make it?”

She opened her eyes to find Darian leaning against the opposite wall with his arms folded, observing her with quiet amusement.

She straightened and rolled her shoulders. “I’m sure I’ll power through.”

He stepped across the hallway and put his hands around her waist. “It’s almost over. As soon as they’ve done the countdown we can go. By the way, this dress…” he bent and put his lips against her ear, “is making me crazy.”

“Well you’d better not be expecting much from me after this. I’m beat.”

“Mm.” He trailed kisses along her jaw. “What about right now, then?” His hand slipped under the dress’s hem and she felt his warm, firm grip on her thigh.

She angled her head away and caught his wandering hands by the wrists. “Please. I just—”

He pulled back and rested his hands on either side of her neck and pursed his lips.

She dropped her hands. “Okay, look…this is probably—I don’t even know why I’m asking this, but like…what is this?”

“What is what?”

“This. What we’re doing.”

His brow furrowed. “I hope we’re having a nice time? Are we not?”

“We are. I am. Having a nice time. I just…” She took a breath. “Are you just using me for sex?”

His eyebrows shot up. “What? No. Of course not.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. I think you’re really fun to fuck, but not just fun to fuck. You’re smart. And funny. And impertinent. I like you.” He narrowed his eyes. “Are you just using me for my money?”

This was a question Axel could actually answer honestly: “No. Not at all.” Because although she was using him, she wasn’t using him for that.

He shrugged. “Okay then.” In the ballroom, people started counting down from ten. Darian took her hand and pulled her away from the wall. “Let’s go. It’s almost done.”

They stepped across the threshold to the ballroom as the crowd shouted, “One!” but Axel barely heard it. Her head was ringing. Against her better judgment, she was falling for Darian Rafferty.

Sure, Darian was Tower Elite, but he wasn’t anything like she’d expected him to be. He wasn’t a robot or a villain or a monster. He was just a guy whose dad was dying. And he was actually pretty nice. And she was using him to feed information to a bunch of people who probably wanted him dead. Who might kill him, if tonight went the way Giskard had planned.

She had to stop it.

Darian turned to her and she struggled to pull her face into a smile. “Happy New Year, Axel,” he said. “Don’t forget what I said, okay? I do like you. I hope you can believe that. And I hope—” A door banged violently open on the other side of the room. Darian sighed. “I hope you can forgive me for what’s about to happen.”

Axel froze. Every hair on her body stood up. “What’s about to happen?”

The rattle of machine gun fire filled the room. The crowd ruptured, screaming. People ran in all directions; glasses tinkled to the floor and shattered. Axel threw her hands over her head and Darian flung his arm around her. He flipped a table over and dragged her to the floor behind it.

“They brought guns?” he yelled. “Where the fuck did they get guns?”

Axel, disoriented, gaped at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Your rebel crew.” He gripped her elbow to keep her behind the table. “How did they get guns?”

Axel felt like the world was slipping sideways into some kind of blurred hallucination. She stared at Darian. “How do you know about my rebel crew?”

More gunfire. Darian pulled her head down. Across the room, another door banged open. Then another. Axel heard boots. A different caliber of gunfire. Someone yelled an order to, “Drop your weapons!” Someone else screamed. For a minute and a half, it was chaos. And then, silence.

A minute passed.

On the other side of the table, Axel could hear people walking around. Muttered orders. Someone swore. A voice she recognized: Giskard. Darian lifted his head and looked over the table. Then he got carefully to his feet and held his hand down to her. Axel stared at it.

“Please,” he said.

She let him pull her up. Giskard, KT, Daneel, and the rest of Axel’s crew were face down on the floor in the middle of the ballroom with their hands behind their heads. All of them. Even the two new guys. Armed police in bulletproof vests, with shields and helmets, were handcuffing them.

From the other side of the room, a weird, distorted voice drifted through the settling smoke.

“Thank you, officers. You can stand down.”

Lucretius Rafferty, in a wheelchair, with an IV hooked up to a bag on the back of it and a voice box at his throat, rolled to the center of the room and stopped.

“Why weren’t they stopped in the elevator shaft? How did they make it all the way up here?”

His lips didn’t move. The voice emanated from the box, and Axel could see that his fingers were typing the words into a little keypad on the arm of his wheelchair. He was frail and hunched, his hair thin and his skin blemished with age spots.

An officer stepped forward. “We weren’t expecting them to be armed. They got past our blockade.”

Lucretius dismissed the officer with an impatient wave of his hand. “Which one of you is Giskard?”

Another officer hauled Giskard, hands cuffed, to his feet. Giskard spit at Lucretius and glared around the room. Axel shrank, afraid to be seen. Her mind was racing. She felt ten steps behind.

“Pathetic, Giskard,” said Lucretius. “Pretty half-assed, if you ask me.”

“Go to hell,” said Giskard.

Lucretius chuckled, then rasped, then coughed. He coughed for a long time. When he stopped, he said, “I’m already on the way.”

“How did you know?” Giskard demanded. “How did you know we were coming?”

“Did you really think it was coincidence that my son walked into that server room last week?” Lucretius replied. “Did you really think he would have been so stupid as to invite one of you into his home for no reason?”

Axel’s heart went still.

No.

She turned. Darian was putting up his hands. “Axel…”

“Where are you, Darian?” Lucretius was saying. “Come out where we can see you.”

Darian reached for her, but Axel snatched her hand out of his grasp and stumbled backward. She stared at him with wide, round eyes. She was aware that she was shaking her head.

“I didn’t want to do it,” he said.

“Darian!” Lucretius’s voice tipped into impatience. “Get out here. Where are you?”

Darian dropped his hands. With his eyes on hers, and carefully keeping the distance she had created between them, he stepped around Axel. She watched him cross the room to his father’s wheelchair.

“We had to get a listening device into your headquarters, see, didn’t we?” Lucretius was saying. “A way to hear all the nasty little plots and devious schemes you were hatching. Something small. Inconspicuous. Something that might fit in a pocket, say. Like a tape recorder. Or a phone.”

Axel’s stomach turned over. The phone. She’d had it on her yesterday at the meeting when Giskard had planned the attack. They’d been listening.

Darian drew level with Lucretius’s chair and stopped. Lucretius reached out a crooked, papery hand and patted him on the arm. “Of course, I never could have accounted for how well Darian would play his role.” He chuckled again, wheezing. “Those texts…” He whistled, and dissolved into a fit of choked laughter. “Filthy!”

Darian’s face paled. He stepped back, staring, horrified, furious, down at his father. Axel felt sick. Her hands were shaking.

Lucretius waved a hand, half-chuckling, half-wheezing. “What’s an old man to do? Ah, if I was twenty years younger.” He pulled himself together and addressed Giskard again.

“It was all terribly easy. Once we had determined that one of our employees was part of your faction, it was only a matter of time before observing the habits of everyone at this company led us to them. And startlingly easy to trick that employee into compliance, as you can see. Street Dwellers are so easily manipulated.” He pushed the lever on his chair and began to turn it around. “Anyway. I think we’re through here. Get this street scum out of my sight. All of them. And let’s…” He contemplated Giskard, then waved a hand. “Dispose of them.”

Axel felt hands around her shoulders, felt herself shoved around the overturned table as police descended on her crew. She tripped and stumbled and an officer caught her roughly under the arm, picked her up, and dragged her toward the center of the room.

“No!” Darian threw himself in front of them. The officer halted, and Axel struggled to her feet beside him.

Lucretius made a derisive noise. “Come now, Darian. Leave it.”

Darian put up his hand. “She stays.”

“You’re embarrassing yourself, Darian.” Lucretius stopped the chair and turned it around. “It’s no skin off my nose if you want to indulge your sick little fetishes down there in the muck, but spare us all the indignation of bringing it up here.” He flicked a hand at the officer. “Carry on.”

Darian sidestepped as the officer tried to step around him, blocking him. “Let her go.”

“It doesn’t love you, you know,” said Lucretius, in a tired voice. “It will never, ever love you.”

Darian set his jaw and said nothing. He was staring at Axel with a fierce, sad look that made her deeply afraid.

“It’s a sex toy, Darian,” said Lucretius. His eyes met Axel’s and she felt her blood run cold. “Not a woman. Leave it.”

Darian flinched. His eyes searched Axel’s like that had on the very first day they had met. When he had come to the server room, so fascinated by what she was doing, and stripped her bare with his frank, inquisitive gaze. Axel’s mouth kicked open. A sickening light was flickering on inside her head. She had heard the rumor that Darien Rafferty had a strange fascination with street dwellers. But she had never known why. It couldn’t—it couldn’t possibly be—

Lucretius was watching her with a kind of lurid, sadistic leer. “Have you worked it out yet?” he said. “Do you understand?”

Robot Theory.

KT had gotten it right. He’d just gotten it backwards. Darian Rafferty wasn’t the robot. She was. They all were. Giskard. KT. Daneel. Axel. Street Dwellers. Robots hadn’t risen up and subjugated humanity. Humanity had enslaved them.

Lucretius grinned his ugly, leering grin and inched his chair closer. He was peering into Axel’s face with a kind of repulsed enthrallment. Like someone unable to look away from a gruesome accident. “I suppose I can see what you get out of it,” he said, and Darian stiffened. “It is awfully lifelike. And I’m sure it does all sorts of fun things—”

“That’s enough,” said Darian.

Lucretius chuckled. “Take it away,” he said to the officer. “And dispose of it with the others.”

Darian’s hand landed hard in the center of the officer’s chest as he moved around him.

“Darian!” Spittle flew from Lucretius’s lips. “Stop this!” He grabbed Darian’s arm with his spindly hand and yanked him down to his level, pushing himself up on his other trembling arm to bring himself closer to Darian’s face. “I’m not going to say it again! You are embarrassing me! Stop this nonsense and throw it awa—”

He choked, and a light on the side of his chair started to flash. He sucked in a ragged breath, but it was cut short by another choke, and he started to cough. Something on the wheelchair started to beep.

A bodyguard standing near the door leapt to attention and sprinted for Lucretius, but Darian stepped in front of him as his father toppled forward out of the chair and lay on the floor, gasping. He put up his hand and shook his head.

“Sir, he’s going to die,” said the guard.

Darian pulled Axel roughly from the grip of the police officer holding her. He put his arm around her and turned to look at the old man on the ground behind him.

“Let him.”

CHAPTER 8

“DON’T BE DUMB.” Axel stuck her fork into the middle of the half-empty bowl of broth in front of her and twirled noodles around the tines. “We are not robots.”

Across the table, KT wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “Of course we are. What else would you call us?”

“Artificially Intelligent Super Beings.”

KT scoffed. “Yeah, that’s super fun to say.”

Axel rolled her eyes and slurped noodles from her fork. “You were the one giving me a hard time about Robot Theory. I thought you liked Artificially Intelligent Being Theory.”

“That was before I found out I was a robot. Robots are so much cooler than Artificially Intelligent Beings.”

Behind KT, through the window that looked out over the city, the sun was setting in a wash of pink and paisley sky. The cafe was busy at this time of the evening—all manner of robot and human sprawled casually around the tables, petting their labradoodles. Sipping wine and sharing ramen. Green smoothies. High fiber flax seeds. Caviar.

Axel’s phone buzzed and she swiped it open.

>>> ALMOST THERE.

KT scowled. “Is that Wonderboy?”

“Mhm.” Axel tapped the message closed and picked up her beer. “He’s on his way.”

“Well, that’s my cue to leave.” KT picked up his jacket from the chair beside him and stood.

Axel sighed. “I wish you would just get along with him.”

“Can’t. Sorry. He’s a dick.” KT’s eyes flipped up to the cafe entrance across the room. “Oh great. Here he is.”

Axel turned to see Darian step into the cafe in a spotless dark gray suit, with a burgundy coat over his arm. He caught her eye and winked, then stepped up to the bar and ordered a glass of wine.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” KT muttered, and he ducked sideways and vanished.

“He’s still not a fan of mine,” said Darian, as he reached the table, wine in hand, five minutes later.

Axel shook her head. “He’ll get over it.”

He kissed the top of her head and set his coat on a chair as he sat across from her. “How was your day?”

“Fine. Same as usual. Keeping the building online. Turning things off and on again.”

“You’re a hero.”

“Damn straight. You?”

“Fine. Same as usual. Running the company. We made some more headway on the legislation. Hamm Industries is following our lead and moving to outlaw robot labor. I guess I never really realized how influential Rafferty Enterprises is to the market. I’m optimistic more companies will fall in line.”

“Great.” Axel picked up her bowl and drained the rest of her broth. “A new beginning.”

“A new year.” Darian lifted his glass and Axel tapped it with her beer bottle.

“So what’s on the agenda for tonight?”

Darian’s eyes became mischievous. “I had some thoughts…”

“Oh?” Axel sipped her beer. “Such as?”

“Such as tying you up in the elevator and seeing if we can get your tits to do that thing again where they light up.”

“Jesus Christ.” Axel shook her head. “You’re incorrigible.”

“Sorry, am I supposed to not be excited about light-up robot tits?”

“What are we gonna do about you being a pervy robot fucker?”

“Hey.” He frowned. “Me being a pervy robot fucker was what saved all the robots from slavery.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure it was me being an amazing robot that melted your cold billionaire heart and made you want to save all the robots from slavery.”

They watched each other across the table.

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” said Darian. He smiled, and that dimple appeared. “Hey. I love you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Axel waved a hand and stood. “Let’s get this show on the road. If we’re actually doing this tied-up-in-the-elevator thing I need to stretch first.”

Darian’s eyes lit up. “We’re doing the elevator thing?”

“Yes!” She clapped her hands. “Now! Up! Get your coat!”

He chugged his entire glass of wine and jumped to his feet. Axel tossed some coins on the table, and as she turned to leave he caught her by the arm. He pulled her to him and pushed the hair from her face.

“Just so you know: it was you being an amazing robot that melted my cold billionaire heart and made me want to save all the other robots from slavery. And even though there are now many, many other available robots up here to choose from, I promise I only have gross, pervy eyes for one in particular.”

“That’s sweet.” Axel adjusted his tie. “But try to keep it in your pants until we’re in the elevator, yeah?”

Darian laughed and kissed her forehead. He let her go and turned back to the table for his coat.

Axel watched him don it with a furtive smile. The way he carefully adjusted the sleeves to expose exactly the right amount of cuff. His unabashed concentration. The way he kept his eyes on exactly what he was doing.

“Hey, by the way…” she said, as he finished fiddling with his cufflinks. Darian looked up, and she smiled. “I love you too.”

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Xyran was last in line to take over the family business. The line just got a whole lot shorter.

When a human from a rival province kills his father and older brother, mild-mannered Xyran “Blue” Rossi finds himself next in line for control of Ravenna. A fae mafia kingpin. But Blood Law dictates that before he can succeed the throne, he must take a wife.

An unexpected peace offering comes in the form of Cirella—sister of the human who killed his brother and father. Offered up by her human family to atone for her brother’s crime, Cirella checks all the fae mafia wife boxes: pretty, smart, good with a blade.

Xyran’s mother is ready to bury the hatchet. A Valentine’s Day wedding will be the perfect way to ease relations between the two families.

Unfortunately, neither Cirella or Xyran have any intention of playing nice.

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Roses Are Red 🌹🦋 Violence Is Blue

Spicy enemies-to-lovers dual-POV Fae romance with a mafia twist.

When a human from a rival province kills his father and older brother, mild-mannered Xyran “Blue” Rossi finds himself next in line for control of Ravenna. A fae mafia kingpin. But Blood Law dictates that before he can succeed the throne, he must take a wife.

An unexpected peace offering comes in the form of Cirella—sister of the human who killed his brother and father. Offered up by her human family to atone for her brother’s crime, Cirella checks all the fae mafia wife boxes: pretty, smart, good with a blade…

Xyran’s mother is ready to bury the hatchet. A Valentine’s Day wedding will be the perfect way to ease relations between the two families.

Unfortunately, neither Cirella or Xyran have any intention of playing nice.

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What do you do with a drunken sailor when the world is under water?

My name is Bird Howsley, and I’m a beautiful disaster. Okay, “beautiful” is probably being generous. But the “disaster” part is right.

In a brutal, dystopian waterworld, where survival depends on skill and smarts, I’m pretty much always one bad decision away from watching my life go completely down the drain.

Luckily, I have a lifeline: my cute, level-headed sailing teacher, Sargo Paz. Did I say cute? I didn’t mean cute. He’s just a friend. I definitely don’t have weird sex dreams about him.

Anyway, three days ago, I got a message from a dead guy. That’s odd, right? I had a plan to go find him, but it went pretty badly sideways, and Sargo and I ended up in the crosshairs of a very sketchy underground organization that now wants us dead.

We didn’t know what else to do except flee into the Salt. Now we’re stuck together on Sargo’s tiny sailboat, facing down pirates and harrowing seas, and things are getting, uh—tense between us.

Oh, and did I mention I’ve been blacking out? Like…a lot?

An Excerpt

I climb down the companionway to the galley, expecting to find Sargo making a cup of tea, but he isn’t there. I squint through the cabin to the bunk in the bow. He’s kneeling on it, facing away from me with his head down. I take a few steps closer and hear him breathing hard. A shaft of fear goes through me. Is he sick? If he’s sick, I don’t know how I’m going to sail Panga on my own.

Then I see what he’s doing, and freeze. My view of his hands is blocked by the angle of his body, but I know immediately by the sound. The rhythmic sound of his fist, beating against his hips. The ragged breaths he is trying to take quietly.

He’s jerking off.

My whole body ignites. I feel like I just stepped over the edge of the world and am free-falling into nothing. I should turn around and go back to the cockpit. I should pretend I haven’t seen this.

Instead, I take a step closer.

“There is so much to love about this series! The characters are beautiful and broken. The setting is unique, dangerous, and fun…Seriously, if you haven’t read this book, read it now! It’s so good!”

Starr Z. Davies, award-winning author of Ordinary

“Dystopian like I’ve never read.”

Goodreads review

“Crack. That’s what this is.”

Amazon review

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PART-TIME AUTHOR 🪶⚓ FULL-TIME PIRATE.

HI! I’M LIZ. I’m a freelance writer, indie author, and full-time, off-grid, live-aboard sailor. I’m currently sailing around the world with my boyfriend and my dog, turning my real-life adventures into speculative fiction.

I love incorporating the incredible experiences, beautiful places, and fascinating people I encounter on my travels into my work. Many parts of the world are underrepresented in fiction, particularly speculative fiction, and I feel grateful to be able to explore them.

I also use my books as a means to explore themes of mental health, addiction, technology, climate change, and the looming collapse of society (but, like…in a fun way.)

When I’m not penning novels about the impending apocalypse, I work as a freelance content writer specializing in articles about code, music theory, and off-grid living. On the rare occasion I’m not writing, you can find me swimming, hiking, telling my dog I love her for the bazillionth time today, or watching Taskmaster.