Specimen

  Riley is yelling at me. She pushes one of the men holding my arm and pulls me farther away.

  “Sten!” she cries out as she grips my arm. “What the hell?”

  “You see what I mean?” Dr. McCall yells as she points a finger toward me. “His aggression levels are off the charts—just look at the data!”

  I start to take a step toward McCall again, and Riley blocks my path.

  “Stop!” she orders. “Don’t make another move!”

  “You need to explain your actions,” Captain Mills tells me, but I don’t acknowledge her. My body has stilled at Riley’s command, but my focus is still on McCall.

  Riley crosses her arms and tilts her head. She lifts her eyebrows and reaches up to take my chin in her hand, turning me to look at her.

  “Explain, Sten.” Riley’s voice is stern.

  My heart is beating faster than it was when I’d been face to face with Pike. I don’t understand. I was only protecting her, so why is she angry?

  “She’s a threat.” I motion to Dr. McCall.

  “Dr. Grace was in no physical danger,” Mills says.

  I blink and process what she’s saying. She is correct. The danger was not physical, but it was still a threat. Everything inside of me had said she needed to be protected.

  “It was a threat,” I say, “to her reputation.”

  Captain Mills narrows her eyes for a moment before looking back to Riley.

  “Dr. Grace, you need to isolate that inconsistency and make the necessary adjustments. Until then, I’m going to hold off introducing your methods to the other specimens.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Riley keeps her expression passive as Captain Mills walks away.

  Dr. McCall sneers in Riley’s direction.

  “You need to control your specimen,” she says. “I will be filing a formal report. It would be a shame if you had to start over.”

  Riley glares as Dr. McCall stomps away, Pike following behind her. He glances over his shoulder at me and shrugs.

  “Women,” he mutters under his breath before tossing me a half smile.

  I grin back. I feel no animosity toward him. He was only protecting her as he was supposed to do. I can’t hold that against him.

  “Let’s go,” Riley says with a sigh. “I want to get this data into the computer while it’s still fresh in my head.”

  She starts toward the entrance to the building, and I follow closely behind. I’ve disappointed her, and the thought is gnawing at my gut.

  I know my actions are considered wrong, but I can’t understand why. There is a deep-seated need to protect her. I know that’s part of my programming, and I don’t know why adjustments would need to be made. I had protected her just as I am supposed to do.

  We get back to the lab, and I quickly shed my clothing to get into the shower. I let the warm water cascade over my chest and think about the day’s events while Riley syncs up the data from training into the main computer.

  “What did I do wrong?” I ask as I begin to rinse off.

  “Oh, Sten.” Riley lets out a long sigh. “There’s a difference between a physical threat to my safety and another doctor, someone employed by this facility, disagreeing with my science.”

  “She wasn’t just disagreeing,” I say. “She insulted you.”

  “I can handle a few insults, Sten. It’s not the first or the last time. You can’t attack her for that.”

  I don’t see the difference.

  “How long have you known Dr. McCall?” I ask.

  “Since college,” Riley says. “We were paired as roommates our initial year, but we didn’t get along. We were in the same field, so we had lots of classes together, but I always tried to steer clear of her.”

  “I don’t like her.”

  “You don’t have to like her.” Riley chuckles. She walks over to the sink near the shower to wash her hands. “I don’t, so why should you?”

  I consider some of Pike’s reactions during the training and the debriefing. Dr. McCall’s influence on his attitudes and behaviors is apparent, and it makes me wonder if I mimic Riley in any way.

  “I’m glad she isn’t my doctor.”

  “I’m glad she isn’t, ether.”

  “How did I end up paired with you?” I shut the water off and grab a towel from the cabinet. I run the cloth over my shoulders and chest and then reach down to dry my ass and balls.

  “I chose you,” Riley finally says.

  I halt my movements and glance in her direction. This is news to me, and I’m not sure how to take it.

  “Why?”

  I don’t miss Riley’s blush or her hesitation to give me an answer. I move in front of her, grab her around the waist, and pull her against my chest. Leaning over, I press my lips to her throat.

  “You thought I was hot, didn’t you?” I run my nose from her neck to her ear. “You were hoping at some point during all of this, you’d have my cock inside of you.”

  “Sten...”

  “Tell me I’m wrong.”

  She says nothing. I run my hands over her hips and pause at her sides. I wiggle my fingers, and Riley laughs.

  “You’d better take your clothes off before you have to sneak out of here wearing my shorts again.” I raise an eyebrow at her.

  “I brought a change of clothes in this morning.”

  “You’re learning.”

  I lift her easily by the waist, reach around with one hand and rip her skirt and panties from her body. I turn to press her back against the tiles along the shower wall. I push open the lab coat and press my lips to her neck.

  “Tell me you want it.” I urge her with my words as I press my cock between her legs. “Say you want my cock.”

  “Sten!” Riley giggles, and I pause to look into her eyes.

  “Tell me.”

  “I’m not saying that!”

  “It’s true though, isn’t it? I bet you saw me lying unconscious, and all you could think about was getting on top of me and riding it out.”

  I tickle her side again, and she laughs as she tries to push my hand away.

  “Don’t do that! I’ll drop you on your ass.” I hoist her a little higher against the wall.

  “Don’t you dare!”

  “You’re going to have to tell me that you were checking out my dick, then.”

  “I did not ogle your unconscious body!” She can’t get the sentence out without laughing again.

  “Liar.” I take my cock in my hand and rub it over her, pressing the head up against her clit. “Admit it.”

  “You did look pretty good,” she says along with another string of laughter. She grins as she runs her hand over the side of my face.

  “You’re so beautiful,” I tell her. “I’m glad you picked me.”

  “I knew you were the one I wanted as soon as I saw you,” she says quietly. “It wasn’t about your looks. I knew you were the right one for what I wanted to do.”

  “Ride my cock?” I grin, and she rolls her eyes.

  “I’m not dignifying that with an answer!”

  “I guess I’ll just have to remind you what it’s like.”

  Without another word, I lift her into the perfect angle against the wall and position the head of my cock between her legs. I slam into her, pull back, and slam forward again. I place one palm against the tiles and angle the rest of my body to hold her against the wall and just pound into her. Riley holds on tightly to my shoulders and gasps every time I enter her.

  I press my forehead to her shoulder, and she wraps her arms around my head. I feel her tense all around me, gasping for breath as I impale her against the wall. I press my body firmly against hers, burying myself deep and staying there. I grind against her in slow, precise circles until her pitch rises and she cries out.

  “Sten! Oh, shit! Sten!”

  In my head, I whisper Galen and wonder if I’ll ever hear that sound from her lips.

  I come as she shudders around me. I press my lips to her collarbone and kiss her
skin gently before slowly lowering her to the floor. She keeps a firm grip on my biceps as she leans against me.

  “Wow,” she says. “That was…intense.”

  “You bring that out in me. Sometimes I just can’t help myself.”

  “Sometimes?”

  I shrug and grin at her. She’s a little shaky on her feet, so I help her over to the rolling chair and sit her down. She leans back and takes a long breath before smiling back at me.

  “I’ve got to finish going over the data,” she says, “but all I want to do now is take a nap.”

  “I just want to lay you down on that bed and start over again.”

  “Maybe I do need to adjust your meds.” She laughs.

  I can only shrug again. Meds or not, I don’t think I will ever get enough of her.

  Chapter 10

  I’m in the field at the farm, turning soil with the trowel and trying to will water into existence. My stomach has been in a tight ball for days. I won’t have enough to keep anyone happy. What are they going to do if I can’t deliver? Will they take the land away? Will they split us up? Take my sister away from me?

  The rumbling sound of trucks doesn’t concern me at first. Trucks come down our rural road all the time, carrying goods from the storage barns to the city. They’re so loud today, though, I head around the barn to see what’s going on.

  I turn the corner and see the machines—huge metal monsters filled with soldiers.

  I wake in a cold sweat.

  Thankfully, I’m not alone. Riley is curled on her side, next to me in the small bed. She’d worked late to get all the data from our most recent training mission into the computer, and I’d practically begged her to just spend the night with me. With her here, the dream, along with the fear that came with it, fades quickly.

  I press my chest to Riley’s back and slide my arm carefully under her neck. With the other arm around her stomach, I pull her closer to me. I’m hard as a rock. It’s hard to resist the urge to rub my erection against her ass, but I manage. At least for a little while.

  As she begins to stir from sleep, I kiss her neck and shoulder. She hums softly and presses back against me. I slide my hand over her stomach, down to her thigh, and then back up to cup her breast. Her hum turns into a moan, and she turns her head to give me better access to her neck.

  Moving my hand lower, I slip it between her legs and hold her thigh up enough to gain access. I enter her slowly from behind, easing my way forward until I’m encompassed by her. I pause and press my lips to her shoulder, holding her close to me. Riley sighs and turns her head to meet my lips.

  I move slowly, listening to the changes in her breathing and basking in her scent. It’s different in the morning, stronger and slightly muskier. I can smell myself on her, too.

  Riley raises her leg a little more and shoves her backside against me, driving me deeper. I pick up the pace as I feel her come with a small, high-pitched gasp. I quickly follow, grunting my pleasure against her throat.

  I wrap myself around her tightly, holding her to my chest as our breathing returns to normal.

  “That was quite a good morning,” Riley mumbles with a sigh. “For a minute, I thought I was having a dream.”

  “Best kind of dream,” I respond. Images from my own dream try to invade my head, but I push them away. I just want to focus on the here and now, primarily, Riley’s warm skin up against my own.

  “It was very nice.”

  “Just nice?”

  She snickers and rolls over to snuggle against me.

  “We could just stay like this all day.” I know my suggestion is pointless, but I say it anyway.

  “I do have work I need to get done.”

  I sigh and relax my grip. Riley crawls off the bed and gathers her clothes from the floor while I get myself over to the shower. By the time I’m dressed, she’s already pounding away on the computer.

  “The techs are performing some maintenance on the virtual systems,” Riley says. “I need to run home and check on a few things, and then I have a meeting later. Do you want to hang out in the lounge while I’m gone?”

  “Sure.”

  Now that we have met, Isaac, Pike, and I are able to meet with each other in a lounge near the virtual training centers. It’s a good place to talk about the missions we’ve done and compare tactics. Most of the time, we all agree on what approach to take, but on the few occasions where we disagree, I find their reasoning interesting.

  Riley escorts me to the lounge, where Isaac is already sitting at a table, leafing through a manual of some sort. It’s a pointless activity—he could just have the information loaded into his implants, but he says he likes the tactile sensation of the paper.

  I drop my ass into the chair beside him, and he pushes the manual away.

  “Boring day,” he says. “No training.”

  “Me either. The virtual systems are offline.”

  “I heard. I was going to go to the gym, but Shweta said she had a meeting to go to.”

  “Riley, too.” I reach over and flip the manual so I can see the cover. It has the Mills Conglomerate logo printed on the top corner, and the title is Healthy Today, Brighter Tomorrow. I thumb through a few pages. All the articles are about the benefits of synthetic food sources.

  I’ve found Isaac to be a very relaxed guy most of the time. He’s thoughtful and soft-spoken but an animal when threatened. When he talks about Dr. Rahul, he gets a glazed look in his eyes. He says he’s in love with her.

  I can’t define how I feel about Riley. Love is too simple a word.

  Though I have spent approximately the same amount of time with both Isaac and Pike, I identify more with Isaac. Pike smells too much like Dr. McCall, and I don’t trust her. She has it in for Riley, and despite the adjustments Riley made to keep me from going after Dr. McCall when she says something derogatory about Riley, I still struggle against the desire.

  I flip another page of the manual, and there’s a photograph of someone planting seedlings in rough soil. The man in the picture is older and red-faced with sweat on his brow. Many of the seedlings are already turning brown.

  They won’t survive.

  I blink, the image reminding me of the dream I’d had last night. A vision of my hands pushing tiny seeds into little paper pots fills my head.

  “Do you ever dream?” I ask Isaac.

  “I guess,” he says with a shrug. “Sometimes I’ll dream about one of the training missions from the virtual center. Usually it’s because I thought of a better way to accomplish the objectives—like my head wants to try it out again.”

  It isn’t the kind of dream I want to hear about, but I can only nod. Though I have similar thoughts in my head, I don’t recall actually dreaming about missions. All my dreams are on a much more personal level.

  But I can’t tell him that.

  The doors open, and Pike strides in.

  “I hear they’re getting ready to send us out on a real mission,” Pike says as he takes a seat across from me.

  “Oh yeah? Who said that?” Isaac leans back in his chair, making the two front legs rise up in the air.

  “Who else do I ever talk to?” Pike says with a laugh. “Helen slipped me the info while I was slipping her the dick.”

  Isaac chuckles, but I just roll my eyes. I know the others are just as sexually conditioned as I am, but the very idea of having my dick anywhere near Dr. McCall leaves me feeling a little queasy. How can they talk about missions while they’re fucking?

  “Did you get any actual information?” I ask.

  “Something about a defector,” Pike says as he shrugs his shoulders. “I was a little preoccupied and didn’t ask for a lot of detail.”

  “Perks of the job!” Isaac says. He reaches over and punches me in the shoulder. “With all the extra drugs you have in your system, you have to be all over Dr. Grace all the time.”

  I can’t help the grin that spreads over my face. There is no denying it. Since the first time she let me f
uck her, I’d been inside her as often as possible. I try to wait until she isn’t busy, but sometimes I have to resort to distraction techniques. I’d come up behind her when she’d be working on the computer, slip my arms around her, and kiss her relentlessly until she’d let me fuck her on the desk.

  Pike laughs loudly when I don’t offer a verbal response. I’m not comfortable talking about my sexual relationship with my doctor, so I try to steer the conversation in a different direction.

  “I’ve got information on several defectors,” I say. “When Riley uploaded historical data into my head, there was a bunch of stuff on technical people who went rogue last year.”

  Isaac and Pike both pause for a moment, retrieving the information for themselves.

  “She didn’t give me a name,” Pike says. “I don’t know which one it might be. Have you done any virtual training on recovering people?”

  “No,” Isaac and I say in unison.

  “Huh.” Pike frowns. “I’ve done two of those.”

  “I thought most of our training was on the same timeline,” Isaac says. “Are there any other anomalies?”

  We discuss the types of virtual missions we’ve done, but the schedule is identical with this one exception.

  “Weird.”

  “Maybe you have another one going on today,” Isaac says as he nods toward the entrance to the lounge. Dr. McCall is heading in our direction, but she doesn’t acknowledge me as she retrieves Pike. He leaves with a quick “See ya later” in a tone too low for his doctor to hear, but she gives him a stern look anyway.

  “Three likely candidates,” Isaac says.

  “Candidates?”

  “Defectors.” He leans forward again, and the legs of his chair bang against the floor. “Spencer Cannon from the medical division. He fought against Project Mindstorm from the beginning. Annabel Jarvis, also from medical is a likely candidate.”

  “She made claims against synthetic food production.” I tilt my head as I access the information. “I understand Cannon—he knows a lot about the drug treatments for Project Mindstorm. Why Jarvis?”