“Just don’t make a sound,” he whispered against my lips, and then he kissed me again, and his hand started moving on my cock again.

  And I…

  Couldn’t resist.

  Slowly, as silently as we could, we kissed and stroked each other. I still listened for the men below us, but even as they came closer—

  “I’ll have a look around this place. They can’t have gone far.”

  —I stayed pressed against Aiden. This was stupid, and dangerous, and asking to get hauled to prison, but I was addicted to the thrill, and I couldn’t stop. I rocked my hips as much as I could without making any incriminating sounds, and he groaned so softly, no one could possibly have heard him but me.

  Footsteps crunched outside, and someone’s boots thumped on the floor beneath us. He walked past the stairwell. Then again. Each time he went by it, his footsteps crescendoing and then fading again, my heart pounded faster and my eyes watered with a mix of bone-deep fear and mind-blowing arousal. Aiden squeezed my cock harder, and I broke the kiss, burying my face against his neck before my gasp gave us away.

  “So close,” he whispered in my ear as he pumped my cock. “So fucking close.”

  I didn’t know who he meant—me, him, or the cop. Whatever. It turned me on no matter what. Knowing he was on the edge, knowing I couldn’t pull myself back from the edge, knowing someone could catch us at any moment… I didn’t think I’d ever been this aroused in my life.

  “All clear.” The voice downstairs gave me goose bumps. His heavy footsteps echoed my heart beat as he left the room below us and headed back outside.

  More voices and boots crunching on gravel. A motorcycle engine revved up, and Aiden groaned—they couldn’t possibly have heard him, but his lapse in restraint simultaneously worried me and made me that much hotter. I grabbed the back of his head and kissed him, keeping him silent, keeping myself silent, and as the motorcycles disappeared into the distance, we went crazy.

  I thrust against him, pinning him to the wall with my body, and he pushed my hand out of the way and started stroking us both at the same time. We couldn’t even kiss now. We just panted. And swore. And gasped.

  And then Aiden shuddered. The hot slickness of his semen took his strokes to a whole new level, and I came too, jerking and shivering against him.

  “Oh God…” I held onto his shoulders for dear life. “Fuck…”

  Aiden released a ragged breath, and his hand slowed. He kept an arm around me, which was the only reason I didn’t crumple to the floor.

  I licked my lips. “That was…”

  “Yeah. It was.” He kissed me lightly. “I cannot wait to get you back to a lounge and fuck you good and hard.”

  I shivered again, not sure if it was an aftershock from my orgasm or a response to his comment. Maybe both. “Where do we go now? If this one’s been raided, we can’t go back.”

  “No, we can’t. When I know where the new one is, I’ll let you know. For now, we just have to stay away from that scene.”

  “But we can still see each other, right?”

  “Of course.” He kissed my forehead. “We just can’t…”

  We both looked down at ourselves—half-naked, semen all over both of us.

  Aiden met my eyes again. “We will go to a lounge again. And we’ll go out again in the New City. We’ll just… have to lay low for a while.”

  * * * *

  “This is laying low?” I made a sweeping gesture at our surroundings.

  Two nights after the raid, our legs dangled over the edge of the mech track wall, and we sat up here in plain sight of anyone within a ten-mile radius. This high up, we were probably even in the peripheral vision of the odd camera or two.

  Aiden chuckled. “It’s not illegal to be up here.”

  “Kind of takes the fun out of it, doesn’t it?”

  We exchanged glances, and both laughed.

  Little by little, I relaxed. I rested my hands on the concrete edge. “So, why are we up here, anyway?”

  “Look at it.” He waved a hand at the landscape. “The view is spectacular.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. Anti-pollution efforts had cleared the air to some degree, and though there was still a long way to go before the sky could be called clean, it was better. The haze was transparent enough now to suggest the outline of the distant mountains, and of course the New City’s skyline glittered in the foreground.

  The wall shuddered beneath us. Aiden turned his head, and I followed, looking north right as a giant, lumbering mech appeared on the horizon.

  “Oh, lovely.” Aiden scowled. “These things shake the whole goddamned universe.”

  I tightened my grip on the edge of the wall. “Is it safe up here?”

  “Yeah.” He sat back from the edge and gestured for me to do the same, and we both held on to the metal safety railing. “Just hold on. It gets a bit wild.”

  A bit? Yeah, right. The whole thing rumbled and rattled. Not enough to knock us off, but it was unsettling to say the least.

  The massive mech belched out thick clouds of black smoke as it rolled slowly down the strip of groaning asphalt. Two escorts rode beside it on motorcycles, and one turned toward us. He touched his helmet’s black visor in a mock salute, and Aiden returned it.

  We watched the mech continue past.

  When it was gone, Aiden turned his gaze back toward the New City. “Things have changed so fast. In our lifetime alone, we’ve seen so many changes, and I…” He shook his head. “I guess sometimes I just need to come up here and know that even with things like that”—he gestured at the cloud the mech had left behind—“something is still the same.”

  “Except all of this is changing too.” I nodded toward the Old City. “Wasn’t it six months ago, there were twice as many buildings right over there?”

  “Yeah, but the mountains, the ocean, the sun.” He gestured at each in turn. “Some things don’t change.”

  “I guess they don’t, do they? I shifted. “How often do you come up here?”

  “Like I said, all the time.” He looked out at the water. “Any given night, if I’m not at the wireless lounge, I’m here.” He chuckled softly. “Surprisingly, I haven’t been up here very often lately.”

  He met my eyes, and I shivered. Then we both looked out at the water again. After a while, I broke the silence.

  “This is all there is for you?” I watched him staring at the ocean. “Just sex dens and sitting up on top of the wall?”

  Aiden turned toward me, a strange smile on his lips. “Beyond food and shelter, what more does a man really need?”

  I didn’t have an answer for that.

  Facing the water again, he said, “I’ve never brought anyone up here before.”

  “Never?”

  “No. This is where I come to be alone.”

  “So why did you bring me this time?”

  Gaze still fixed on something in the distance, Aiden drew the tip of his tongue along the inside of his lip. “Because the last few times I’ve been here”—he turned his head, meeting my eyes in the warm light—“all I could think of was you.”

  I gulped. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” He paused. “You asked a while back if there’d been others before you.”

  I nodded.

  “There have been, but there’s… there’s never been another you.” He took a deep breath. “I mean, I’ve been close to one or two. But not like this.”

  “I’ve never had anything that remotely compares to this.” I chewed my lip. “I didn’t even know this existed.”

  We locked eyes, and he smiled. So did I.

  High up here, where anyone could see us if they cared to look, it was tempting to not only touch his face, but to draw him in for a soft, chaste kiss. A lifetime of indoctrination didn’t stop this moment from feeling like the perfect opportunity to lean over and press my lips to his. It also didn’t stop me from realizing how wrong it was that we couldn’t.

  We both shifted our gazes out to the water. Neither of us spoke as the sun sank into the champagne-tinted sky, and slowly, darkness wrapped itself around us and filled the void between us. Aiden’s hand slid over the back of mine. Our gloves were on, but the weight of his touch was there. We exchanged glances, but anything I could say just then felt as forbidden as the kiss we couldn’t share.

  So we didn’t speak. We didn’t move.

  We just sat up there, on top of the world with Aiden’s hand over mine, and watched the two cities fall asleep.

  Chapter 15

  Abruptly, Aiden vanished.

  One night, we were having deliciously illegal sex in the wireless lounge. The next… he was gone.

  Messages went unanswered. He didn’t come to his sim session on Thursday. When the next appointment rolled around, he still hadn’t come in. The one after that, same thing.

  A million scenarios played out in my mind. Had something happened to him? He did work in one of the construction zones, after all. Accidents happened. They happened frequently.

  Or had he been caught on the way back from the lounge? We’d left separately the last time. Maybe he’d been arrested? Gotten hurt?

  Maybe he had just decided to move on and didn’t want anything to do with me. Or he didn’t like the idea of indulging in each other when I was supposed to be settling down with my government-approved wife like a responsible citizen. None of those options thrilled me, but given all the worst cases floating around in my head…

  I discreetly checked the reports of recent wireless lounge raids, scanning the arrest lists for his name. Under the guise of updating his chart, I looked in his file, and there was nothing to indicate he’d been detained, hospitalized, or killed.

  It was possible to disappear into thin air in San Angeles, but most people who did eventually turned up full of knife wounds in a slum’s back alley or floating facedown in a canal. If he was all right, but he’d decided to go completely underground, the odds of me seeing him again were slim to none.

  But I had work to do, and couldn’t risk raising suspicions, so I headed out to the waiting area to bring in my next patient.

  My chest tightened when I saw Rodney looking back at me, and I realized it was the first time I’d seen him here since the raid. Thank God he’d either made it out, or he hadn’t been there that night.

  I gestured for him to follow me, and he kept his head down the whole way back to the sim room.

  When I closed the door, he quietly said, “That was a close call that last—”

  “Shut up,” I said under my breath. “It was, but we can’t talk about that kind of thing.”

  He shifted his weight. “What do we do now?”

  “Rodney. Look at me.”

  He met my gaze, eyes wide. Bloodshot too, as if he hadn’t slept since the raid.

  “Listen,” I said. “What you do now is don’t go anywhere near one of those places again, all right? It’s dangerous.”

  “But you—”

  “I was stupid just like you were,” I hissed. “I can get you suppressors if you need them. I’m using the hell out of them myself right now.”

  Rodney studied me. “They don’t help me.”

  “Then what else can you do?”

  “I’ve asked my doc for more sessions, but…” He shook his head. “Man, I need it. I need the real—”

  “You need to think about your family.”

  “But you—”

  “Rodney. For God’s sake. It was a mistake, and it’s not something we should be discussing here. Just stay away from them, all right?”

  “All… all right.” He avoided my eyes and cleared his throat. Gesturing at the sim chamber, he murmured, “Should we, uh, get started?”

  * * * *

  After Rodney left, I was rattled. Drumming my fingers on the front desk, I stared at the door he’d just gone through, half-expecting every cop in San Angeles to come crashing in and arrest me. Of course they wouldn’t—Rodney hadn’t said anything outwardly incriminating.

  And although he was an idiot for even thinking about discussing wireless lounges in a simhouse, at least he’d avoided getting caught in the raid. Good thing he was fast on his feet, or he probably would’ve—

  “Hey, Keith.”

  Graeme’s voice jarred me out of my thoughts, and I turned around. “Hmm?”

  He eyed me over the computer screen. “You cutting down on your sims?”

  “Come again?”

  He tapped the top of the screen. “You’re showing four weeks since your last sim. You usually run them like clockwork.”

  “Really? It’s been that long?” I cleared my throat and shrugged.

  “Yep, it has. Is there something wrong? You’re skipping sims, and I gotta be honest, man. You haven’t been yourself lately.” His eyebrow arched. “You haven’t, um…”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Good.” Then he grinned. “Is it that girl you were meeting? The one you were hooked up with?”

  “No, no. Guess I’ve just been tired lately.”

  “You’ve gotta keep up on your sims.” He shot me a pointed look. “Even if the government doesn’t come down on you, that stress will get to you after a while. Trust me.”

  I held his gaze for a moment. Had he gone back to the lounges? Was he as hooked as I was? “I’ve just been distracted, I guess. Tired. You know how it goes.”

  “Mm-hmm. Well, you don’t have another patient for a while, and Sim Room 3 is open for a couple of hours.” He nodded down the hall. “If you want to grab a session, I’ll update your file.”

  “Uh, sure. Yeah. Thanks.”

  “No problem.” He winked. “Have fun.”

  “Right. Yeah.”

  Could this feel any weirder? God, I hoped not.

  I really didn’t feel like doing a sim session. I hadn’t been in the mood for one because I’d been worrying about—and jonesing for—Aiden.

  But I had to. Graeme had already taken notice, and it wouldn’t take much for the others to catch on. Then there would be questions. Possibly a review of my file, which meant even more questions, and then the entire government would be watching me like a hawk for signs that I’d been engaging in illegal activity.

  So, if only to keep suspicions at bay, I didn’t argue with Graeme, and went down the hall for my impromptu session.

  I went through all the automatic motions of hooking up the electrodes and machinery. Then I lay back, pulled the lid closed, and put on the virtual reality goggles.

  The sim started.

  The physical stimulation was weak at best. The sim partner, the one I’d carefully honed to look like Aiden, was mechanical and fake.

  I closed my eyes behind the visor and let my memories fill in where the computerized fantasy couldn’t. I saw Aiden in naked ecstasy while the other man fucked him. Tasted the hot desperation with which he’d kissed me. Heard him moaning over the music, felt hot semen on my skin.

  We were in the back, hidden from everyone else by thin curtains and nothing else. His breath on my neck. His cock inside me. That electrifying moment when his cock slid over that sensitive place.

  And then we were in that empty building, pumping each other’s cocks and breathing together in silence, with lights flashing and voices outside, a stroke away from the edge and a moan away from jail.

  And one of those nights when I’d fucked him, when we’d both been right there, so close, so ready for release but enjoying it too much to let go, and then his whole body tensed, and he clenched around me. There was no stopping now, no holding back, and as he shuddered and shook beneath me, I threw my head back and lost control. I came inside him, taking a few jerky, uneven thrusts as if my body thought I could get just a little deeper.

  Inside the sim chamber, I gasped. My toes curled and my back arched and I came, but as my climax peaked and fell, and I sank back to the chamber, an empty feeling set up shop behind my ribs. Disappointment dulled the edges of the tingling aftershocks. The orgasm had felt good, but it just wasn’t the same. I couldn’t come in a sim nearly as hard as I could in Aiden. Or with him in me.

  I lifted the chamber’s lid and sat up slowly. My head was light, but the world didn’t shift and list all that much. I put my suit back on and sank into one of the chairs while the machine cleaned itself.

  The sim had gotten me off, as it was supposed to, but didn’t leave me feeling remotely satisfied. The emptiness of being without Aiden actually hurt now.

  There was no reciprocation in a sim. Though I could reach out and “touch” my sim partner, and I could fuck him or stroke his cock, he was just a machine. A few billion pixels and some coding. He didn’t get anything out of it. There were no hitches in his breath. No tremors, moans, sighs. No mutual vulnerability to all manner of danger.

  And afterward, it was all wrong. The lack of someone else beside me. Being alone in this small but somehow cavernous and cold room. There was no one to touch, no body heat to exchange while I slowly floated back down to earth.

  There was no denying the truth: I needed to go back to the wireless lounge. But where was it? And even if I found it, what if Aiden wasn’t there? I wasn’t sure if I could get close to someone like I’d done with him. And was it worth the risk to go into the Old City in search of the lounge, when he might not be there?

  I looked up at the clock on the wall. My allotted time for my sim session was almost up. I had more patients coming in. More sims to run.

  Sighing, I pushed myself up, made sure my hair and my suit were straight, and left the room to get back to work.

  I could barely concentrate on putting people through their sims. Just putting an electrode on someone’s skin turned my stomach. What if I felt their skin through my suit? Some heat, some pressure, something? And what if I reacted? What if someone knew?

  Fuck, I was a wreck. Every sim session, I fell apart a little more. Every day at the simhouse, especially the longer I didn’t hear from Aiden, drove me a little further out of my mind.

  Where are you?

  Chapter 16

  With less than twenty-four hours to go before another sim that Aiden probably wouldn’t show up for, I found myself waiting in a café and wanting to be anywhere but here. I couldn’t back out, though. After weeks of excuses, I was meeting Julianne again.