“Of course there isn’t.” He looked at me. “But isn’t there a need to bond with other humans?”

  “There are other ways.”

  He was still looking at me, and now he had that damn smirk again.

  “What?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “If you really believed all that bullshit you’ve been fed, you wouldn’t be here with me.”

  I tried not to squirm under his amused scrutiny. “I’m curious.”

  “Ah, yes. Human curiosity.” Another laugh, quieter this time as he focused ahead of us. “I give it twenty years before they ban that too. Dangerous, you know. Causes things like innovation.”

  I rolled my eyes. “And what kind of innovation does wireless sex cause?”

  “Does it need to cause any? It’s fun. It feels good. And contrary to what the fucking government goes to such great lengths to insist, it’s healthy.”

  “Healthy?” I snorted. “What about all the diseases that damn near wiped out San Angeles?”

  “You’re clean, aren’t you?” he asked. “And you know I am. You scan me every goddamned time.”

  “Well…yes…but—”

  “We’re not built for this, Keith. For not touching each other. If we were wired to have, well, wired sex, then why the hell does the government have to spend all this time and energy running simhouses so people get enough of a release they don’t kill each other? Why do they have to make sex a felony to keep people from having it?” He inclined his head. “What’s so wrong about it that if we have sex with each other tonight, we should be punished?”

  My teeth snapped shut. Not because his logic had won me over, but because of the implication he wasn’t just planning on introducing me to a wireless lounge and the possibility of wireless sex.

  If we have sex with each other.

  If we have sex. With each other.

  And there it was, that knowing look again. And the smirk. Couldn’t possibly skip over the smirk, could he?

  I swallowed.

  This was dangerous on so many levels. Physically. Professionally. Legally. But curiosity was a powerful thing, and I gestured for Aiden to continue. He hesitated, then did so, and I followed.

  We took the stairs down two more floors, and we were well underground now. There was noise down here. Nothing I could readily identify, just a…vibrancy to the air that hadn’t been there before.

  I paused at the bottom of the stairs. “There’ve been raids recently.”

  “Yes, but we’ve kept this place under the radar.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “We haven’t been raided yet.”

  I rocked from my heels to the balls of my feet. “And if it’s raided? Tonight?”

  “If by chance it is, then stay with me, do everything I tell you to do, and don’t ask questions.”

  “That’s encouraging.”

  “I’ve made it out of several raids and the cops never got near me. You’ll be fine.”

  So you say.

  We continued to a door with a combination lock. Aiden entered the combo, and in the next room, we encountered a couple of burly guards. Aiden exchanged subtle nods with one of them. One guard held up a scanner, and it was a scanner just like the one I used at the lab.

  I gave it a wary look. “That thing have a transmitter?”

  The doorman rolled his eyes. “Give me a break, punk. You think you’re the only one that comes in here and don’t want anybody knowing about it?”

  I looked at Aiden, and he nodded.

  I tilted my head. The guard ran the scanner over the chip behind my ear, then furrowed his brow as he watched the readout.

  “All right, you’re clean.” He gestured at Aiden. “You too.” He scanned Aiden and then waved us past.

  Aiden put his hand on the door’s push bar. The noise was louder now. Dull, low, but vibrating against the ends of the hairs standing on the back of my neck.

  The question wasn’t spoken, but it was in his eyes and the creases in his forehead.

  “I’m here.” I swallowed. “Let’s do this.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not a serious crime yet.”

  I stared at the door that separated me from one hell of a prison sentence if anyone found out. I could still turn back. No one had to know I’d ever been here at all.

  But the curiosity that had brought me this far wasn’t letting up.

  I met Aiden’s eyes.

  He nodded and pushed open the door.

  And I stepped into the wireless lounge.

  Chapter 4

  A place like this had no business existing. Not here beneath the rotting carcass of the Old City. Not this close to the New City, the sleek, sterile skyline just a handful of kilometers away.

  Every surface was painted black, and flickering strobes and constantly moving colored lights offered illumination that was both not enough and far too much.

  And now I understood why just setting foot in here was a crime.

  I had never in my life seen so much skin. Not just skin, but people touching and moving in ways that would short-circuit a sim. The air was alive with pheromones, and all along the walls and on the crowded floor and even in shadowy booths, bodies writhed and undulated in time with hypnotic music blasting from a dozen or so speakers.

  Suits were zipped, unzipped, completely on, completely off, and there wasn’t a glove in sight. Bare hands ran over suited and naked skin alike. Bright, colorful lights rippled across sweaty flesh, sleek suits, and flushed faces, and obscured the striping on suits that differentiated one job from the next. There was no telling who was a cop, a mech escort, a doctor—just faces and bodies. Mouths moved with mouths, hips moved with hips. Men and women, men and men, women and women, more than a few I couldn’t identify one way or the other, but there were distinctly more men than women. They were in pairs, trios, clusters.

  A woman up against a wall had her leg over a kneeling man’s shoulder, her fingers gripping his hair, and he’d buried his face between her legs. Her other hand was in the disheveled hair of another woman, and that woman’s mouth busily explored every inch of the first woman’s breast. The one against the wall writhed and shook, her lips apart and her eyes closed, and she might have even been crying out, but over the music, I couldn’t hear a thing.

  A black-haired man, the top half of his suit peeled off and hanging from his waist, passionately kissed someone else, someone still fully suited—though the black-haired man’s hand disappeared inside the open zipper—with collar-length blond hair.

  And after watching and experiencing countless sims, I was almost certain I recognized the rhythmic, fluid way one guy’s hips moved behind the naked, delirious man he had bent over a large speaker.

  One pair was so enthralled with each other—maybe they were drunk?—that they staggered and stumbled across the room. They paused long enough to exchange a few words with a fully suited and dangerous-looking man, who waved them past. Then they hurried through a door and disappeared into a shadowy hallway.

  Aiden put a hand on the small of my back, and though I could only feel its weight, I swore his body heat came through the insulated layers to warm the base of my spine.

  He leaned in and spoke to me, but his breath rushed past my neck, and his voice created a soft vibration that made me shiver, and words were lost on me.

  I turned toward him. “What?”

  “Just take it in.” He might have been shouting, but all I heard was a whisper. “Let yourself adjust to everything.”

  Adjust. To all of this. That wasn’t happening anytime soon.

  Aiden removed his gloves and tucked them into his belt. Then he took my hand in his and locked eyes with me as he slowly peeled off the ever-present covering. He didn’t relinquish my gaze, and I held my breath, certain with every motion that the warmth of his hand near mine was going to become skin-on-skin contact. Without a single touch, he peeled off my glove, and then he did the same with my other hand. My skin felt cool even in this warm air. Exposed. I took my gloves from him and tucked them into my belt like he’d done with his own.

  He held out one bare hand. Light danced across his palm, creating and erasing deep shadows in the grooves and contours.

  Slowly, cautiously, I reached for it. In the fraction of an inch remaining between our hands, the warmth radiating from his palm met mine, and I hesitated. I met his eyes. Looked at my hand hovering above his. Looked at his eyes again.

  I lowered my hand, and as soon as our palms met, all the breath escaped my lungs. I closed my eyes as I closed my fingers, and the soft, warm contact sent electricity crackling up the length of my forearm.

  “Come with me,” he said. When I opened my eyes, he nodded toward what appeared to be a dance floor off to one side. Most people on it were dancing, though some were moving together in a decidedly different and more primal rhythm.

  I swallowed hard but let Aiden guide me.

  We stopped against a wall, and I was thankful he didn’t try to convince me to dance. Not yet at least. Maybe another night, but—

  Another night? Ooh, no. This was a one-time thing to satisfy some curiosity. I was not taking the risk of coming here again. Taste it once, chalk it up as experience, and move the fuck on.

  Aiden put his arm around my waist, and his fingers curled against my side, drawing me closer to him. His breath warmed my ear as he said, “What do you think?”

  My mouth was dry. I shook my head. “I don’t even know. This is so…”

  “Just take it in.”

  Take it in. Right.

  I leaned against the wall and Aiden and looked out at the crowd. Everyone—suited, half-naked, fully stripped—moved together, bodies pressing, rubbing, sliding, rocking. Hands were everywhere, like they all had minds of their own. Some stroked hair, some pulled it. Some drew down zippers, some gripped collars. Some caressed, some clawed. No two people did the same thing, and their expressions varied from quietly entranced to contorting with pleasure that must have bordered on pain.

  I shifted, trying to get comfortable as my cock hardened beneath my suit. This should have been appalling and disgusting me, making me want to run for the door. It ignited something, that was for sure, but disgust wasn’t on the list.

  My muscles were wound tight with a strange tension. No, not quite tension. An itch. Like they wanted to move. I could neither feel nor hear my own heartbeat now, but the thumping bass took its place, and my body wanted to sync itself to that rhythm.

  Beside me, Aiden nodded subtly in time with the music. His foot tapped, and the rest of his body moved almost—but not quite—imperceptibly along with the beat. The same beat that everyone else danced to.

  He glanced at me, grinning when he caught me staring. “You ever danced before?”

  “I have, but not like this.” Dancing to music was one thing. Everyone did that. But dancing while touching someone else? Touching someone else like that? Fuck.

  “Want to?”

  I moistened my lips. Oh, hell. I was already here. Why not? I nodded instead of shouting over the music again, and Aiden flashed one of those grins that always made my knees shake. He slipped his hand into mine again, bare skin on bare skin, and led me out into the mass of people.

  The crowd parted for him and closed behind me, like an organic thing swallowing us up and making us part of its ever-expanding form.

  He stopped somewhere near the middle and put his hands on my waist. Then he turned me around and pulled me against him. We gave in to the thumping beat, and our bodies moved. Mine responded to his, or maybe to the music, or maybe to both, but whatever the case, moved of its own volition, relieving that tense, wound-up itch to be anything but still.

  Aiden’s hands ran up and down my torso, along my sides and over my abs. My muscles contracted beneath the dull, suit-filtered contact. His erection pressed against my ass. Alarm crackled through my veins, reminding me I shouldn’t be doing this, but I ignored it and leaned against him, seeking the heat of his body even through the insulated layers we wore.

  He leaned down and said something in my ear, but I didn’t hear it. All I was aware of was his breath cooling the perspiration on my skin, and the soft brush of his lips across the edge of my ear. I put a hand over his on my hip. Then the other. His still moved, but now mine followed, his flesh heating my palms the way I only wished it would heat the skin beneath my suit.

  Licking my lips, I looked around. We could get away with that here, with peeling off layers and touching without barriers. Half the people here did just that, and if I was this turned on already, I could only imagine how aroused they were. How aroused I—we—could be.

  Not far from us, another couple caught my eye. They were chest to back like us, but…different. So, so different. The man in front was completely stripped, not a shred of anything covering his skin. His cock was soft, but his eyes were closed and lips parted with unmistakable ecstasy.

  The one in back looked right at me over his partner’s shoulder. Their bodies moved, not in time with the music but in time with each other, their rhythm slow but sharp, originating in their hips and reverberating through their bodies as thrusts punctuated slower, smoother motions.

  And I realized Aiden and I had fallen into the exact rhythm. Our hips, our bodies, even our breathing mirrored the two of them.

  No. No, that wasn’t right. We hadn’t fallen into their rhythm. I had, and Aiden had followed suit. Oh God. They weren’t just dancing, and neither were we, and our bodies moved in a fully clothed pantomime of theirs.

  The one in back shuddered. His rhythm fell apart, and damn if mine—ours—didn’t do the same. His eyes lost focus. Closed. Closed tighter. He pressed his lips against his partner’s neck, and when he exhaled, the hairs on my own neck stood on end.

  Aiden’s lips grazed my neck, followed by his warm breath, and I shivered in his arms. Then I turned around and looked up at him. My God, he looked like he often did when he got out of a sim chamber. Flushed. Blissed out. Smiling like he didn’t give a fuck about anything except the here and now. I reached up to touch his face, and he turned his head and kissed my palm, the softness of his lips making my heart skip.

  A crystalline bead of sweat slid from his temple and into the side of my hand, the coolness of the liquid contrasting sharply with the heat of his flesh. My mouth watered, and I wanted to know what his tasted like. I wanted to know what his skin tasted like.

  No, that would be going too far. If I kissed him, then we’d…

  My gaze drifted to the others in the room. To the people writhing together, bodies pressed so close it was impossible to tell where some ended and others began. People danced. Kissed. Touched. Fucked. All out in the open, all with a kind of feverish abandon I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. One kiss, I was certain, and I’d understand that abandon. I’d embrace it and lose myself in it just like everyone else here.

  I looked at Aiden again. Oh, yeah. I could lose myself in him and in this without much more prompting. The lights. The music. The cries of ecstasy I was probably imagining as much as hearing. The air was thick with body heat and tart with pheromones, and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t find my equilibrium in this sea of motion, and the floor beneath my feet wasn’t as flat, as solid, as level as I needed it to be. My head spun out of time with the rapidly flashing and swirling lights.

  I stepped back from Aiden and stumbled. I reached out to right myself, but the only thing there was another man’s arm. A man’s bare, sweat-slicked arm.

  Skin. Nothing but skin, and bodies, and people, and sweat, and I couldn’t think. Couldn’t focus.

  Shouldn’t be here.

  “Keith?” Aiden shouted over the music. He touched my arm, and even through my suit, his soft touch sent lightning bolts all the way to my feet. “Are you all right?”

  I looked around. Tried to make sense of…of something. Anything.

  No, I wasn’t all right. I didn’t belong here. What the fuck was I doing here?

  I pulled my arm out from under Aiden’s grasp and backed away.

  And then I got the hell out of there.

  Chapter 5

  The heavy door banged shut behind me. Neither of the guards tried to stop me, and I hurried up the stairs and back out into the parking garage. I wasn’t entirely sure how to get back to the New City, but the mech tracks couldn’t be too hard to find. Once I was on the other side, finding my way back to my apartment wouldn’t be difficult.

  For now, I just needed to get the fuck away from the lounge, this building and this world.

  The footsteps behind me were too fast, though, and I cringed, knowing damn well who it was and that there was no outrunning him. Not while I was still this out of sorts.

  “Keith, wait!”

  I stopped. Slowly, I turned around.

  Aiden halted a few meters from me. Without looking anywhere but right at me, he straightened the collar of his suit, pulling himself together until the only evidence of his crimes were his sweaty, disheveled hair and the gloves still tucked into his belt.

  I raked a bare hand through my own damp hair. “I can’t be there. Fuck, it’s so—”

  “Overwhelming?” Aiden grimaced sympathetically. “I know it is. The first time is always—”

  “The first time?” I stared at him. “How many times did you plan on bringing me back here?”

  “As many times as you wanted me to,” he said so casually I wanted to choke him.

  “Are you out of your mind?” I threw up my hands. “Fuck. I can’t—I shouldn’t have been here in the first place, but coming back for—”

  “Are you telling me you weren’t enjoying it?”

  I stared at him. “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “So now that you’ve experienced that”—he nodded toward the club—“you can really look me in the eye and still tell me you believe we shouldn’t be able to touch each other?”

  I looked him in the eye, but no, I couldn’t tell him that. In part, because I didn’t know which way was up, never mind what was right or wrong. Except I also couldn’t look at him without thinking about what we’d done in there. We’d touched, skin on skin, and our bodies had moved together in ways that made my pulse race more than the hottest moments during my sims.