Tuesday, October 25, 2016 — Manhattan, 5:47 a.m.
* * *
He woke before the sun.
Katarina was on her stomach beside him, one arm folded under the pillow, her black hair spread across the white sheets like ink.
Her back was bare, the sheet pooled at the base of her spine, the dimples above her ass visible in the grey pre-dawn light.
Bite marks on her right shoulder.
Red patches on both ass cheeks where his hands and his mouth had left evidence.
His cock was hard.
The ring was humming — a low, persistent vibration that had nothing to do with arousal and everything to do with the system recalculating in real time.
The deficit warning was dimmer than it had been in months.
The first CP in six months had opened something, and whatever had opened was hungry.
He didn’t touch her gently.
He pulled the sheet off.
She stirred, murmured something in Croatian.
He ran his hand down her spine — slowly, the way you run your hand along something you own — and gripped her ass.
Both cheeks, hard, his fingers sinking into the firm flesh.
She woke.
“Mmm.”
“Get up.”
She turned her head.
One eye open, dark, still hazed with sleep.
She looked at his face and then down, and a smile pulled at the corner of her mouth.
“It’s not even six.”
“I know.”
He pulled her out of bed.
She stumbled, laughed, caught herself on his arm.
Naked, barefoot, her hair tangled, her body covered in the evidence of last night — bite marks on her inner thighs, a hickey at her collarbone, faint bruises on her hips where his hands had gripped.
He walked her to the living room.
The floor-to-ceiling windows faced east over Central Park, and the sky was turning — deep blue at the top, grey in the middle, the first hint of orange at the horizon.
The park was a dark mass of trees below, the reservoir catching the earliest light.
He pressed her against the glass.
Her breasts flattened against the cold window and she gasped — the shock of the temperature, the sudden press of his body behind her.
Her nipples were instantly hard, dark peaks against the glass.
Her palms went flat on the window, fingers spread.
“It’s cold—”
He dropped to his knees behind her.
Her ass was at his eye level — round, firm, the cheeks still bearing faint red marks from last night.
He gripped them and spread them and buried his face between them.
His tongue found her pussy from behind — already wet, her body ahead of her brain — and he licked her in long, slow strokes from her clit to her entrance.
She moaned and leaned harder against the glass.
He ate her standing up.
His tongue pushing inside her, his nose pressed against her asshole, his hands spreading her ass wide.
She was dripping within a minute, her wetness running down her inner thighs.
He collected it with his tongue and moved up, circling her asshole with the flat of his tongue, slow, patient, building pressure.
“Oh fuck — oh my god—”
He pushed his tongue inside her ass.
Shallow, just the tip, his lips sealed around the tight ring.
She went rigid, her palms squeaking against the glass, her forehead pressed against the window.
Then she pushed back against his face, and the rigidity became surrender.
He worked her with his tongue — alternating between her pussy and her ass, never staying long enough to let her come, keeping her at the edge.
His saliva was everywhere — running down her thighs, slicking her ass, pooling at the backs of her knees.
His chin was soaked.
He stood up.
Pressed his body against her back.
His cock hard against her ass, the heat of his chest against her shoulder blades.
His mouth at her ear.
“Look.”
She opened her eyes.
Through the glass, Manhattan was waking up — the skyline brightening, headlights on Fifth Avenue, a jogger on the reservoir path far below.
Anyone with a telescope and a reason to look east at 5:50 a.m.
would see a naked woman pressed against a window on the eighteenth floor with a man behind her.
She didn’t look away.
He reached between her legs from behind and slid two fingers into her pussy.
She was swollen and hot and his fingers sank in without resistance.
He curved them upward, finding the rough patch of tissue on the front wall, and pressed.
She gasped and her knees buckled.
He held her up with one arm across her waist and fucked her with his fingers — fast, deliberate, the pad of his ring finger pressing against her clit from underneath while his index and middle fingers worked her from inside.
She came in under a minute — hard, convulsive, her whole body clenching, her hands clawing at the glass, a sound that was half-scream and half-sob echoing through the empty penthouse.
He didn’t wait for the aftershock to pass.
He guided his cock between her legs and pushed into her pussy from behind.
She was still clenching, the orgasm rolling through her, and the tightness was extraordinary.
He gripped her hips and drove in deep and she slammed both palms against the window.
He fucked her against the glass.
The sunrise came while he was inside her.
Orange light flooded the room, catching her body — the sweat on her back, the bruises on her hips, her breasts swaying with each thrust, her nipples leaving fog marks on the cold window.
Her black hair stuck to her neck and shoulders.
Her mouth was open and the sounds she was making had stopped being words.
He slapped her ass.
The right cheek, open palm, the sound sharp in the empty room.
She cried out and clenched around him.
He slapped the left.
Harder.
She pushed back into the strike.
“Harder — please—”
He gave her what she asked for.
Harder thrusts, faster, his hips driving against her ass, the slap of skin on skin filling the penthouse.
He reached around with one hand and found her clit — swollen, exposed, hypersensitive from the orgasm — and rubbed it with two fingers while he fucked her, and she came again.
The second, screaming this time, her voice cracking, her legs giving out.
He held her up.
He wasn’t done.
He pulled out and turned her around.
Her back against the glass now, the sunrise behind her, her face flushed and her eyes wild.
He lifted her — hands under her thighs, her legs wrapping around his waist — and entered her again.
Face to face, her weight in his arms, her breasts pressed against his chest.
He carried her weight and fucked her standing up, each thrust lifting her slightly off the glass.
She locked her ankles behind him and gripped his shoulders and bit his neck — hard enough to draw blood, and the pain sharpened everything.
He came inside her.
The second time, slower than the first, a deep rolling release that started in his hips and spread outward.
His vision whited out and the HUD flickered.
* * * EVOLUTION CP: +7 (DIMINISHING — TEMPORARY PARTNER) * * * EVO STAGE: AWAKENING (4%) SKIN: LEVEL I — 8% * * *
Half the yield of last night.
The ring had warned him — diminishing returns, no bond.
Katarina was a body, not a key.
The tree accepted the offering and gave back less.
He set her down.
She slid against the glass until she was sitting on the floor, legs folded, breathing hard.
Sweat and saliva and his come on her inner thighs.
Bite marks on her neck and shoulders and breasts.
Her hair a ruined curtain of black.
Her lips swollen.
“Stay as long as you want,” he said.
“Coffee’s in the kitchen.”
He walked to the bathroom.
Showered alone.
The water was hot and he stood under it and watched the HUD numbers settle.
Twenty-one CP in two encounters.
The tree was no longer dormant.
But the yield curve was already flattening, and the next encounter with Katarina — if there was one — would give him single digits.
The math was clear: temporary partners fed the tree but didn’t grow it.
Growth required a bonded partner.
A woman whose neural and hormonal signature was integrated into his system, whose body chemistry the ring could read and respond to and optimise against.
Eliana.
He turned off the water and dried himself and dressed — grey T-shirt, dark jeans, boots.
When he came back to the living room, Katarina was in the kitchen wearing his Henley, which hit her mid-thigh and showed her long legs, pouring espresso from the La Marzocca.
“I need your number,” she said.
He pulled a burner phone from a drawer.
Gave her the number.
It was the fourth burner he’d used since April, and after today he’d replace the SIM.
She typed it in and looked at him.
Her dark eyes were sharp beneath the post-sex glaze, and for a moment he saw the intelligence behind the cheekbones and the Victoria’s Secret contract — a woman who understood, at some level, that what had happened last night and this morning was not the beginning of something.
“You’re not going to call me,” she said.
“Maybe.”
She smiled.
It was a good smile — knowing, uninjured, the smile of a woman who’d been a transaction before and didn’t mind as long as the transaction was honest.
“The sex was worth it,” she said.
“Whatever this was.”
She dressed — the silver chainmail, the Louboutins — and left at seven-fifteen.
He heard the elevator close.
He stood at the window she’d been pressed against.
The glass was smudged with handprints and fog marks from her breasts and the outline of her forehead where she’d leaned during the first orgasm.
The city was bright and awake.
Taxis on Central Park West.
Runners in the park.
He pressed his thumb to the ring.
* * * EVO CP TOTAL: 21 — STAGE: AWAKENING (4%) * * * TEMPORARY NODE: KATARINA K.
— * * * YIELD CURVE: DECLINING * * *PRIMARY BOND: UNESTABLISHED * * *RECOMMENDATION: INITIATE BONDING SEQUENCE WITH OPTIMAL MATCH (COMPATIBILITY 0.96) * * *
Eliana Roth.
Compatibility 0.96.
He dismissed the console and cleaned the glass with a cloth and made another espresso and sat in the leather chair and opened the formulation files.
Three weeks and five days until the six-week mark.
The products were on schedule.
The tree was no longer dormant.
The deficit warning had dimmed to a quiet amber.
He worked.