The Administration Series (9 page)

The hand in his hair tightened and he shivered. Toreth's other hand gripped his right wrist, strong fingers digging into his tendons.

"Ask for it."

"Bastard. Ah!"

Toreth twisted his arm up behind his back, sending a flare of pain through him, shockingly arousing. He'd never thought —

"
Ask
."

He wanted to keep it going longer, but he couldn't. It was too real. Too perfectly real to bear. "Yes. Please, yes."

"Please yes, what? I want to hear it."

"Fuck me."

"Again."

Barely forcing the words past the excitement threatening to choke him, Warrick gasped, "F — fuck me."

The weight shifted, pinning him more completely to the bed. Toreth untangled his fingers from his hair and slipped his hand round to cover his mouth. "Don't want you screaming," he murmured in a voice that made it clear that was exactly the opposite of what he did want. Warrick closed his eyes tightly, dizzied with desire and anticipation.

Toreth's other hand held his hip as he pushed slowly, slowly into him. "Does it hurt?"

Warrick shook his head emphatically. "Yes," he whimpered into the fingers pressed against his lips.

"Good."

He started to struggle again until Toreth took his hand away from his mouth and caught both his wrists, pinning them above his head.

It was perfect, as perfect as anything in the sim — and yet it wasn't, and the imperfections only made it better. His arms stretched out harder than he would have thought he wanted; a too-hard bite in his shoulder; the two of them moving perfectly together, then losing the rhythm for a few seconds and the sweet relief as they caught it again. All the distant details the sim would never have generated or would have smoothed away: footsteps in the corridor, vehicles passing outside.

In the sim, his mind controlled the world around him; here, even his self-control was slipping helplessly away. Too much detail, too much sensation, leaving him shuddering with the intensity. For a weird, disconnected moment, a still-lucid part of his mind began to shape the idea into a project proposal. 'Imperfections in the sensory modalities as a technique for enhancing the experience of fucking . . . being fucked . . . being
fucked
— '

Then Toreth thrust into him hard and froze, his fingers digging in painfully. Warrick gasped, half from pain, half from need.

"Don't stop!"

Toreth laughed thickly. "Very —" He cleared his throat and started again. "Very good. But I want something else."

He began to rock his hips slowly, and Warrick couldn't stop a moan escaping. "What?" he managed. "Anything. Please."

Toreth released his wrists, twining his fingers in his hair again. "Touch yourself. I want to watch you make yourself come."

Warrick didn't move, not because he didn't want to but because for a moment he simply couldn't make his shaking body obey him.

Toreth grabbed his hand, forced it down, and then briefly halted to rearrange their bodies. In the sim, they wouldn't need to, but before Warrick could begin to shape the thought, Toreth's hand closed over his, wrapping his fingers round his cock and making him gasp at his own touch. "Do it. Yes, that's right. I want to watch you." He forced Warrick's head around for another kiss. "I want to see your eyes."

Toreth's fingers interleaved with his, urging him to make his strokes tighter and faster. As he did so Toreth started to thrust into him again, deliciously hard and deep and everything was too good, too imperfectly perfect, to last any longer.

At the last moment he closed his eyes and turned his head away, screaming into the mattress as he came.

When he felt like paying attention to the world again, he found Toreth sitting cross-legged on the bed beside him. Warrick rolled over onto his back and looked up at him.

Toreth smiled. "What do you think about my inflection now?"

Warrick stared at him until his mind finally dredged up the reference. "Perfect. Absolutely fucking perfect. Emphasis on the fucking."

"Good." He got up and went off to the bathroom, whistling. Warrick watched him walk across the room, muscles sharply defined under smooth skin. First thing tomorrow, he thought, I'm finding the gym at the university and signing up. Having an office job was clearly no excuse.

Then the implications of the thought sickened him. Just like any other job. Except Toreth's job left him adept at knowing how far to push, how much pain to use and how to read the response to it. And, God, he'd loved it. Loved every minute of it, knowing who and what he was. What those hands did for a living.

It's just a fantasy, he told himself. And it was just once. Just this once. Never again. Never, never again.

Toreth stood under the hot shower and decided it had gone remarkably well. He'd count it as a draw. Warrick was still probably ahead on points, but in this kind of game the score degraded quickly, and the last round was the one that really counted. Right about now Warrick would be thinking about what he had done, and who he had done it with. How much he'd liked it.

Very enjoyable it had been, too. A little overcautious in places, but that was only to be expected with an obvious amateur. Unusually, he found he wouldn't mind doing it again. Eventually. Sometime in the future when Warrick had had plenty of time to think about wanting it. He'd wait until Warrick contacted him. Watching the water run over his hands, he wondered if Warrick would be able to get them any more time in the sim. Toreth turned his face up to the spray and pondered the potential applications.

Once back in the bedroom, he listened to the splashing water as Warrick showered, and tried to decide whether to pack up and go home or spend the night at the hotel. In the end, he decided to stay. Since he was paying for it — or at least they were his euros until accounts reimbursed them — he might as well enjoy it, even if the sheets were a bit of a mess. He could get a swim in before work and he loved hotel breakfasts.

Warrick had taken his clothes into the bathroom and emerged fully dressed, if a little tousled. Toreth thought he was going to walk straight out — which would have been fine with him — but he stopped by the door.

"Well, that was fun," Warrick said, his half-smile mask in place.

Toreth matched the smile, decided to test out his victory. "Yes. See you again?"

Warrick considered for a moment too long before he turned away without reply. The door closed behind him, and Toreth laughed.

Next morning, Sara was once more already at her screen when he arrived.

Toreth stopped on the way into his office and sat on the edge of her desk. "In bright and early, I see."

She nodded, absolutely serious. "It's because I love my job so much."

"Incidentally, aren't the annual performance appraisals the week after next?"

Sara grinned. "I'd completely forgotten. I'll get the forms ready for you."

They both knew she had nothing to worry about. Although she had a somewhat idiosyncratic approach to timekeeping, she was a damn good admin and his main problem was fighting off attempts by other paras to poach her.

Sara looked him up and down. "Good day off?"

"Not bad."

"Do anything fun?" she enquired, in a tone which effortlessly translated the question into 'anyone fun'?

He grinned. "Weird and wonderful. I'll tell you all about it later. Have I got any messages?"

"Just one important one. Tillotson wants to see you as soon as you're in. He didn't say what about but he didn't sound happy that you'd taken the time off without him seeing a holiday request."

Toreth made a rude noise and opened his office door wide enough to throw his jacket onto his desk.

"Get me a coffee, will you, Sara? With luck, I won't be too long."

He hoped the summons wasn't just over his taking holiday without approval; unfortunately, his immediate superior was exactly the kind of bureaucratic obsessive who
would
kick up a fuss over something so petty.

When he arrived, Tillotson's door was wide open, and he could see the ginger-haired head of section watching the reception area. When he saw Toreth, he beckoned him in at once.

Toreth waited to see how the opening of the meeting would go. When Tillotson decided to elicit confessions of illegitimate time off or expense account fiddling, he tended to go in for heavy-handed hints and verbal traps. A direct question meant his mind was on a different track.

"You were supposed to be at a seminar the day before yesterday," Tillotson asked, after waving him irritably to take a seat. "Did you go?"

A promising start. "Yes. Computer sim technology. Psychoprogramming are very keen on it, so I thought I'd take a look, see what the fuss is about."

"Who was the speaker?"

"A Doctor Keir Warrick."

Tillotson nodded. "Did you understand the seminar?"

"Some of it," he admitted cautiously. "It was very interesting." That clearly pleased Tillotson, so he added, "I got myself a guided tour of the lab yesterday."

"Good. Excellent, in fact. You've got a new case."

Toreth relaxed. Tillotson obviously hadn't found out anything about the last couple of days. "I have prisoners — "

"Your team interrogators can deal with them. There was a death last night at this Doctor Warrick's corporation. Here."

He held out a hand screen, and Toreth took it, as the seconds in which he should have declared a personal involvement came and went. He wanted to hear about the case and anyway, as far as he was concerned, two fucks — one of which wasn't even real — didn't constitute an involvement.

Skimming the file, he went straight to the important part: the victim's political status. The girl had been a graduate student working in the AERC laboratories. No valuable discoveries to her credit, no history of involvement with dissidents, nothing at all to merit I&I attention. Last of all, he looked at the name and biographical details. Kelly Jarvis, which rang no bells. No important family connections, either.

"Why are we interested?" Toreth asked.

"Because of the other file on there." Toreth skipped to the next document, checking the name first this time. He whistled softly. Jon Teffera, co-owner of LiveCorp and its many subsidiaries. No need to look in the file for the reasons I&I were interested in him. A senior corporate, known for the number and variety of his Administration friends, was definitely more I&I's province than a lowly graduate student.

Toreth recalled that Teffera's death had been reported in the news, with a bland, natural-causes explanation he'd wondered about at the time. What was the connection to SimTech? A glance at the file provided the answer, but also a puzzle. "Found dead in his sim couch? I didn't think they were for sale yet."

"They aren't, except to corporate sponsors of the project and their close, influential friends." Tillotson checked on his screen. "The full list of who owns them should be in the file somewhere. I'd like you to make sure it's accurate, though."

"Of course, good idea," Toreth said, even though that had been the first thing he'd thought of. Something else occurred to him, and he double-checked the date on the Teffera file. "Why has it taken so long to get to us?"

Tillotson's sharp nose twitched, a sign of irritation. "The Justice Department has been sitting on it. They called Teffera's death corporate sabotage, and then changed their minds to natural causes. This morning, some European Legislature admin was at the . . . what is it?"

"Artificial Environments Research Centre?"

"Yes. He arrived for an early morning meeting just after the student's body was found. He knew about Teffera and he started pulling strings before Justice turned up."

"Name of this good citizen?"

"Keilholtz. He's a personal assistant to one of the Legislators — it's all in the file."

Tillotson's way of saying 'get out there and get on with it'.

"I have authority?"

"Yes. Justice are still on the scene. Kick them out, and be as rude as you like. Or maybe leave that until we have all their files. Take as many people as you think you need. I've sent out a priority for this to the whole department; if anyone doesn't cooperate with you, let me know. I want it dealt with and closed
quickly
."

Toreth left, grinning. A juicy case and a priority order on the resources to solve it. Chevril would be sick when he found out.

Back in his office, he drank cooling coffee and gave Sara an outline of the case, running through lists of things to do and people to get hold of. Then, leaving the arrangements in her capable hands, Toreth left to stake out territory.

In the car on the way over to the AERC Toreth considered the best approach to the problem of wresting his investigation from Justice. The student's death was the less important part of the case, except for any potential connection to Teffera, a question on which Toreth was keeping an open mind for now. However, it was the fresher crime scene — Teffera had been dead for a fortnight, and they would have to wade through the Justice investigation files before starting new enquiries.