Page 34 of Blow Me Down
“Baby, my sword is all yours… oh, that sword. Sorry.” He unbuckled his rapier and laid it on the bed next to him, pulling me back into his side. I thought briefly of objecting to such forward treatment, but decided, upon consideration, that I was due a little comforting. “Now, let me think about how this could have happened, and I’ll see if I can’t find a way to return us to normal life.”
I sent him a quick glare before allowing myself to relax into his side. “You’re awfully cheerful about being stuck in a virtual world.”
He shrugged. “Not much sense in ranting and raving. Besides, what better world is there to be stuck in than this one?”
I let that go without comment. “What about your friend Holder?”
“He’s not logged in right now.”
“How did he get out if we can’t?” I asked.
“I can’t answer that until I know what happened,” he answered, reasonably enough, I had to admit. “But I suspect that he managed to get logged off before whatever it is happened to trap us.”
“Oh. Well, can’t he do something to get us out? Shut down the program or something?”
“Not from within the game. It’s a fail-safe to keep the VR units from overloading. The game can’t shut down until all players are out. Normally we just do a manual log-off and boot people out of the game when we want to shut it down, but with us in here, there’s nothing we can do.”
“Crap. So how do we get a message to Holder?”
“We can’t. Messaging isn’t implemented in this version. It’s on the list for future ones.”
My shoulders slumped. “Maybe if he comes into the game, we can tell him to boot us out and shut down the game?”
Corbin shook his head. “In all probability, when Hold logs on, he’ll be caught in the game just as we are. Thank God the rest of the VR crew is off at a training seminar, so they won’t be trapped here as well.”
“That’s good, but does it help us in any way?”
“No. We can’t look for help from outside the game. The answer is something here, in this world.”
I closed my eyes, figuring I’d give my poor over stimulated brain a little break.
Corbin could deal with the situation for a few minutes. I would just sit there and… man, he was warm. And he smelled good. I turned my head slightly, searching for the elusive scent that was his. I caught it again—leather and a faint lemon essence, and something vaguely musky that appealed to me despite the fact that I disliked musk.
“Hey!” I said, a couple of minutes later, the sound of my voice disturbing the rhythmic sound of waves slapping against the hull of the ship, and the oddly pleasing creak of wood as the ship gently rolled with the current. I opened my eyes and frowned at Corbin. “Does this brain thing mean that when you and I were… er…”
“Necking?” he asked with a grin.
“Breasting is more apropos,” I said with a warm feeling of pleasure in my belly.
“Does this mean that it was all in my mind?”
“Well… it was in my mind, too,” he said, a touch of leer hitting his grin. “But I know what you mean, and yes, it didn’t really happen. Your brain reacted to a stimulus that it knew, making you feel as if you and I had physically been together.”
“I hardly know you at all,” I said, a bit outraged. Did he think I was cheap to allow things to go so far so fast?
“You reacted to what I represent, not what I actually did,” he said, his grin slipping a couple of notches. “Sexual stimulation is a learned experience, like all others. Your mind responded the way it had learned.”
“Oh.” Somehow, I felt cheated. “It sure felt real. Although I wasn’t sexually stimulated. It was just… pleasant.”
“You weren’t?” he asked. “So if I do this, it doesn’t turn you on?”
Without any warning whatsoever his hand slipped into my bodice, his thumb gently flicking over my nipple.
“Holy cats!” I screeched, stiffing up at the amazing feeling of his fingers on my breast. I tried to remind myself that it wasn’t real but had absolutely no luck.
So far as my brain was concerned, my breast was about to go up in flames of pure desire.
I’d die before I told him that, though. “No, I mean, it’s nice and all, but it takes more than a little groping to get my motor running.”
