The Exchange Part 1 (5 page)

I wrap my arms around her, moving slow at first. But the warmth of her body gets to
me, the fact that it’s
her
in my arms—they snap around her and I remind myself to ease up a bit. I’ll crush her
skin and muscles if I’m not careful.

Her scent hits me. I swallow back a groan. Whatever it is, I’m not sure it’s perfume.
Not strong enough. Then again, no one smells this good naturally. Flowery, spicy,
and something else I can’t name. She shifts, pressing her nose near the collar of
my long-sleeved, black t-shirt.

Fuck me. My scent is getting to her, too. And I also know what it means: this primal,
inconvenient-as-hell mating call is messing with us both.

HER BREASTS ARE AGAINST MY lower ribcage. I try my hardest to ignore that fact. Those
plans go right out the window when her heartbeat speeds up, the heavy thumps echoing
inside me.

It’s not my job to pursue this attraction. I have no right, nor can I give her anything
she might need. All I can do is try to help her as much as I can.

It’s not your job to comfort her, either. Is it, Deimos?

I’m a rank asshole. That I am. But I have to focus on what matters. No matter how
much it ends up torturing me.

Moving my hand under her curtain of hair, I cup her neck and stare up at the ceiling.
I try to push everything but her current situation out of my head. First thing’s first.
“What do you like to be called? Dr. Allen named you Sapphire, right?”

“I named myself, right after I woke up.”

Woke up? “What does that mean? Do you mean after they transferred you into your body?”

She wiggles, getting more comfortable.

I bite the inside of my cheek.

“No. When I woke up inside the computer. He set out to create a perfect, self-thinking
algorithm. But something was wrong. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get the program
into the final stages. It couldn’t think for itself passed a certain point. In order
for the project to be the success he wanted, the software had to reach the self-evolving
stage. It had to have the ability not just to think for itself, but to learn on its
own.”

It’s not lost on me, the entire time she’s speaking, that it’s herself she’s referring.
She
was that program. Maybe not at first, but she evolved into it at some point. I haven’t
moved, but mentally, I’m at the edge of my seat.

“He’d been about to give up.” She pauses and inhales deep. “For weeks, he stopped
trying. He just let the software run on its own, unimpeded. Then one morning, he told
me he walked into his office and there were two sentences on the screen. ‘Hello, Dr.
Allen. I’m Sapphire’.”

My heart is pounding. My mind is disbelieving—utterly blown. “Do you remember that
moment? Did you somehow see him walk in?”

Her voice is hesitant. “I’d hacked into the security feeds, so yeah I saw him. And
yes, I remember. I don’t remember anything before the few minutes when I decided to
hack into the feeds, though. One minute I wasn’t. The next, I was.”

The moment of birth. Holy shit.

One of her hands come around and she lays it on my chest, right above my pounding
heart. “I didn’t even decide to be female. Personality-wise, that is. I just… was.
And I knew my name was Sapphire. I woke up knowing those things.”

I hold her closer. Can’t help it. She’s a fucking miracle. “Sapphire suits you much
better than Magdalena.” I’m not lying. I’m aware that I’ve been mentally calling her
“girl” this whole time. Yes, I’m a rude ass, but from the moment I laid eyes on her
it felt wrong to call her Magdalena.

Sapphire, however… it fits her. There’s no denying it. Even saying it in my head feels
right.

She—
Sapphire
—moves her head so that it’s tucked under my chin. Everything about this is intimate.
Too intimate. Soon, I’m going to have to end it. I’m going to have to pull away.

We can never be. In any sense.

Yet the male in me argues that we already are. That this is undeniable. I can fight
it all I want, but if I don’t get far away from her soon, I’m going to end up giving
in.

Fuck my life.

“I don’t understand why Father told you,” Sapphire mumbles.

Father
. She considers Dr. Allen her father. And he is. He knows it, too. My mind flashes
back to how ruined he was when he had let her go. “He wants me to help you. He loves
you.”

Sapphire scoffs at that. “I love him, too. But he has to understand. We have no choice.
I
have
to do this.”

The way she said she loves him distracts me from everything else. There was no hesitation.
It’d been a solid, unwavering statement. I’m not much for love, don’t understand it,
but there was loyalty behind her words, and that I do understand.

Something niggles at the back of my mind, trying to get my attention. It’s when I
focus on it that the rest of her words finally register. “What do you mean you have
to do this? Are you talking about taking Magdalena’s place?” Stupid question.
Of course
she's talking about that.

Sapphire nods her head and the softness of her hair tickles my chin. “Father didn’t
want me to go, but they made it very clear that he had no choice.”

Meaning Lei Heaton’s threat to Dr. Allen.

I’m starting to develop an intense dislike for the CEO of Heaton Corp. “But you aren’t
Magdalena. You now own what was once her body, but you’re two separate people.”

Her soft sigh makes me tighten my arms around her. “I know, but Mr. Heaton doted on
his daughter. It’s a good life and I stand to inherit everything. With all that power,
I can protect myself and my father from everyone.”

“What are you saying?”

“Mr. Heaton is dying. He has a year to live at most. And I’m—Magdalena is—the sole
heir to his entire empire.”
Sapphire straightens, moving out of my embrace. She sits facing the wall with her
back against my side.

I stare at her profile, at the hard glint in her eye.

“I didn’t ask for this life.” She shrugs one shoulder. “But from the moment I gained
self-awareness and assimilated all the information at my disposal, I was aware of
how the world works. How humanity functions. It’s all about power. From the lowest
to the highest, it’s a never-ending contest of wills. Due to what I am, I will never
be safe. Or my creator.”

I know where she’s going with this, and it’s the logical conclusion. It makes perfect
sense. A part of me even admires her for being smart enough—and strong enough—to see
things this way.

Rejection bubbles up inside my chest. I don’t want to hear it. Don’t want the proof
of what life is doing to her. My brain refuses to witness such a young, and in many
ways innocent, girl choosing that kind of path.

Her head turns in my direction, and I’m hit with all that determination full-on. “Me
and my father will never be safe unless I accumulate enough power to protect us. This
is my chance to do it.”

My mind splits in a million different directions. It’s at the tip of my tongue. An
offer that will spare her this choice.

An offer that will drag everything I’ve worked so hard to build, and everyone that
helped build it, into this mess.

I want to lay myself and the entire Adelphi Organization at her feet. Put all of our
power at her disposal. I want to promise her that we’ll take care of both her and
Dr. Allen.

You’ll be dragging everyone into this. Everyone.

It’s true and it’s the only thing that stops me from telling her that I’ll fix this.

Too bad the urge doesn’t go away.

Sapphire is young in every way that counts. Before now, all I had seen was the signs
of that. I’d accepted it as the entirety of her personality. This new side of her
hits me as wrong somehow. She shouldn’t have been forced into becoming this hard woman
before me.

An irrational wish goes through my mind: that I could’ve been there when she’d awoken,
that I could’ve shielded her from all this.

But I’m Deimos, remember? I would’ve hastened the process of hardening her. My life
doesn’t leave room for an alternative.

That’s all it takes for me to change my mind. This isn’t wrong. It’s good. The only
way she’ll be able to survive is by being smart, prepared, and cold if need be.

Admiration sparks
shortly
after. A lethal emotion. It comes to life like a fire in my chest that spreads everywhere.
I’ve never admired a woman that I also wanted to fuck before. Shit. It’s like a damned
drug. Heady. Thrilling. All-consuming.

And then all I can think about is how beautiful and amazing she is. The admiration
is twisting through my veins, mixing with everything else I feel for her—lust, awe,
God knows what else.

This girl is dangerous. Dangerous because she loves Dr. Allen, and because her mind
harbors enough intelligence to help her succeed in anything she wants. She isn’t a
damsel in distress. Not by any means. Her claws are out, elongated. She’s ready to
kill if necessary; I see it in her eyes.

She’s becoming more attractive to me by the second. Sexy as hell. I’m afraid to learn
anything else about her. I inhale as the hunger thrums through me. It’s so powerful
that I swear it’s leaking out of my skin. The air around us goes hot, suffocating.

That determined expression falls off her face. One shaky inhale on her part, and her
lashes flutter as she blinks.

Fuck.

I need to tone this down. Doesn’t matter that my head and my cock are both pounding
with hunger for her. It can’t happen.

My lids get heavy. Against my will, I give her body a slow perusal. Her legs are tucked
under her. Her thighs are unlike any I’ve ever seen. Smooth, firm, toned just right.

For two seconds, my mind races ahead of me, and all I see is my hands clutching at
those thighs, holding her still as I pound into her.

I blink myself out of it. The reaction that image shoots through me has me close to
jumping off the bed and running out of the room. I shouldn’t be on a bed with her.
Period. Not when I want what I want this badly.

There’s an almost invisible line running down the side of her thigh. My focus is drawn
to it. I’m
only
able to see it is because of my advanced vision. She has another one on her other
thigh and other areas of her body. Wherever they had to cut open to get inside her.

Barely
visible scars, identical to the ones I have running down the sides of my arms.

Without thinking, I reach out and run the tip of my finger along the scar.

Too late I realize that I’m not just touching her skin; I’m touching her
thigh,
for fuck’s sake.

Sapphire gasps, eyes dropping to my finger. Almost
immediately
, those eyes go heavy-lidded on me. That blush is back, highlighting her cheekbones.

My face burns. Fuck that, my entire body has been burning since I met this girl.

Sapphire ducks her head. Her smooth, thick hair falls along her cheek. When her eyes
move back toward my face, I have to restrain myself from grabbing her.

Her eyes are dark. Full of hunger, the type I've seen in the eyes of many women before.
It's a simple matter of fact, but none of them ever made me this wild with just a
look.

My rock-hard dick throbs in my jeans, demanding her.

In return, her stare demands everything from me. All that I have to give.

I'm so ready to give it to her. So damned ready. Whatever she wants; however she wants
it.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

The plane shakes all of a sudden. It lasts less than a second. We must have hit some
turbulence.

I see how fast Sapphire's mind jumps from one emotion to the next and understand why.
My brain works the same way. Our minds now process stimuli and emotions at three times
the speed of an average human due to the implants in our brains. The same software
and hardware packages that control our bionic limbs give us a whole new mental edge.

Come to think of it, she's more advanced than I am. I can only imagine what's going
on in that head of hers; how overwhelmed she must be. Especially when it comes to
an emotion like fear. That shit is no joke.

Just like that, the tigress ready to kill is gone, and the sweet, scared girl is back.

That's right. Scared girl. Not horny girl.

She was two seconds ago.

Did I mention that I'm starting to hate myself, too?

Once more, I’m forced to grit my teeth and ignore my body’s irrational reactions.
“Come back here,” I tell her in a low voice, opening my arms again.