Page 39 of Fembot
Lucky snorted a laugh. “Because it is. It’s absolute shit. It’s also only something to worry about if you let it become an issue. Jealousy can sometimes be solved by speaking up or by compromising. For example, I don’t mind the thought of you and Winnie together, but the idea of either of you with anyone else pisses me off. That’s jealousy. Jealousy can be a tool we use to establish boundaries, or it can be a force that can tear us apart if we let it.”
Calvin furrowed his brow. “I don’t think I like jealousy.”
Winston laughed and snuggled closer to Calvin. He was starting to feel itchy and sticky from their activities, and it made him restless. “We should shower.”
“Can you get wet, Calvin?” Lucky asked. “Like can you shower with us?”
“My circuitry is well protected. Unless I’m submersed at a depth greater than one hundred meters, in which case it wouldbe the pressure that shuts me down before the water would have a chance to do damage.”
Winston blinked at Calvin. “So that’s a yes?”
“Yes, Winnie, I can shower with you. If you like.”
“I think I’d like that very much.” Winston tried to force himself up and out of bed, but he was still too sated to move. If he got out of bed, he worried that their happy little sex bubble might burst, and he wanted to bask in the feelings that curled around him like a warm blanket.
Protection. Belonging. Happiness. Lucky had let him have his space, then dragged him home, and not a moment too soon.
After their shower, which Winston insisted be a real shower and not just a naked frot fest—though it had been tempting—they piled back into bed. Winston sat in the middle with Lucky on one side and Calvin on the other. Winston pulled his laptop out and flipped it open before turning his attention to Calvin.
“Lucky mentioned buying you your own clothes. Would you like that?”
“I would like that very much.” Calvin smiled at Winston, making his heart twist. God, how could someone made of wires and silicone, computer chips, and a bunch of code Winston would never understand be so fucking sweet?
“What kinds of things did you like?” Lucky asked.
“Shiny things.” Calvin screwed up his features, as if confused by something in his answer.
Lucky laughed and took the laptop from Winston. “I know just the site to take you to if you’re after shiny. Though leave it to a robot to be attracted to shiny things.”
“Why does that amuse you?” Calvin asked.
“Well, you see, buddy, on the outside, you look like us, but on the inside, you’re full of shiny things. Metal. Computer chips. Minerals. I think it’s only natural for someone to want their outsides to match their insides.” Lucky slid the laptop back overto Winston. “These skirts have more sparkle than Winnie’s eyes when he saw you in that skirt today.”
Winston put his hand on Calvin’s leg. “I want you to know that money isn’t an object. You can have whatever you like.”
“I’ve looked at the website and identified thirty-seven items that I would like to buy. Shall I order?”
“We can order, but usually people enjoy looking at this kind of thing together,” Winston said. “It’s a bonding ritual of sorts. We want to see what you like. We want the experience of shopping with you.”
“Yeah, and when all your purchases arrive, we get front row seats at the fashion show.” Lucky snuggled closer to Winston and leaned against his shoulder.
“It’s a date,” Calvin agreed. “Now, should we start browsing? There are approximately seven thousand items on that site alone to look at. And I’ve identified several more sites we can visit after.”
Normally Winston hated shopping of all kinds, but today, sandwiched between Lucky and Calvin, it felt a lot less like a chore and a lot like a normal night in with his boyfriends.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE_
YAREK DANVERS IS IN DEEP TROUBLE
It must have beensomething he did, because all traces of the things that tipped him off to the weird activity had been scrubbed. He’d checked and double-checked. Triple-checked. The strange occurrences in the code were gone. Wiped clean.
But worst of all was the way his heart sank when he went searching for the list of units that had been on the programming floor during the blackout and came up empty.
Erased.
Not erased in a way that Yarek could undo, either. It was as though the whole issue never happened. Someone had come in and wiped the outage from history. If you didn’t know what you were looking at, you’d never spot the anomaly.
The records of the previous day had been cloned and input into the system to look like it had been another uneventful day of programming. Where the interruptions had been from the outage, there was nothing. Whoever cleaned up had done a fantastic job. An untraceable job.
