12. Tisha

The river had gotten her, dragging her beneath the surface over and over until she suffocated. Only this time she couldn’t wake up. There were no terrifying black hands to save her and drag her to the surface. There was only fire in her lungs as she drank the oil-slick water again and again.

Until the last time. She was drowning again, losing her last bubbles of air to the freezing waters as she flailed uselessly under the surface. Then something wrapped around her chest. It constricted her ribs and pinned her arms to her sides. Immobilized, there was nothing more for her to do other than accept her fate as she sank to the bottom. No struggle would beat the machinations of the river, and maybe the only way to win was to just stop fighting.

That constricted feeling persisted as awareness gradually returned to her body, freezing waters giving way to stiff fabric and hard planes.

She was in bed, still night, huge arms squeezing her back tight against cool armor, absorbing her panic. Her hips were pressed into the crook of his, her legs trapped underneath his own. Every inch of her back side was tucked firmly against the planes and angles of his hull, but even though his surface was cool her skin was on fire at every point of contact.

He must’ve sensed her wake, because his death grip loosened around her. He made to move away, but froze when Tisha grabbed the hard forearm splayed across her chest, holding it tight to her breastbone.

They lay in silence as the last shreds of the nightmare faded and Tisha tried to parse the reaction she was having to his machine. After a few minutes, she steeled her nerves and flipped onto her side to face him.

“You were afraid,” he whispered when she looked at him, sounding almost apologetic.

What was he feeling in that moment? Did he sense this thing hanging in the air between them, or was he completely oblivious to how her body was reacting to his? Tisha reached up slowly, working up the courage to trail her fingers along the side of his visor, down the line of what would be his jaw were he a human man.

“Do you feel anything? This?” Tisha cupped his rigid neck, then slid her palm down to the smooth, curved expanse of his chest. She rested her hand there, where a heart would be.

“I’m afraid I may feel too much.” There was something raw in his voice, broken in its uncertainty.

A robot must not be used to being uncertain.

If she’d thought through the next thing she did before she did it, she would’ve stopped herself from the sheer stupidity of it. But logic didn’t enter into the equation as she brought his hand to her lips, knowing full well he was guiding it there because she couldn’t lift that thing all on her own, and kissed his cool carbon knuckles. She glanced up at him before pulling back, gauging his reaction by the pulsing of his eyes.

“Tisha, I…”

She trailed her mouth up his hand—shifting up the bulging curve of his forearm, to the bicep and across to his chest. She lifted her face to his facelessness.

With a grunt that was almost human, the robot enforcer in her bed slid a palm to the small of her back and pulled her closer, destroying the inches between them until she was pressed wholly against his unyielding mechanical bulk. All of her but her mouth, which parted in a sharp gasp. That distance was destroyed too when Ansel tilted his chin down, bending his head until his visor was pressed to her forehead, skin to glass.

When his hand slid up her back, her body arched into the touch. No prints or texture clung to her skin as he moved. There was only the smooth glide of unyielding fingers splayed across her flesh, traversing up until he cupped the back of her neck.

He had no lips to taste or breath to draw on, but she needed to feel him. When she kissed the solid void of his mask, the buzz of a current that passed between them shot straight to her core.

Ansel brought his other hand to her side and pressed until she was on her back with him atop her. He put just the right amount of weight on her to make her feel securely cocooned beneath him, his elbows propped into the mattress on either side of her head.

Her eyes widened when she felt a growing hardness at her inner thigh, her belly clenching. “Do you…”

“Yes.” The words vibrated from his chest to hers so hard it may as well have been a purr. “I have a dick.”

Tisha sputtered a laugh, heat already creeping to her cheeks at the confirmation that he’d heard her and Kena talking about him after all. But the dying glow of his eyes brought her back.

“I cannot parse what is happening,” he said seriously, a hand cupping her cheek as he pressed his forehead to hers once more.

“Me neither,” she whispered. “But it’s okay.”

“My agency may be gone tomorrow. They try.”

God, please let them fail.

“I understand.” She smothered the pang of fear at the prospect. “But not tonight?”

He trailed a cool fingertip along her lip, tracing the curve of her mouth down to the line of her throat. “Not tonight.”