The Braverman Experiment Read online

  He must want more stimulation, both immersive and pharmaceutical.

  He probably wishes that we had a Rocker. Or an Orion. Or a black room that can project desires and the universe in tandem.

  But she was Chloe Shaw, the most intuitive escort O had ever seen. Top talent. Their absolute best. And as she looked up at Andrew, Chloe knew that none of those things were actually true. Right now, in this moment, his most lurid fantasies involved her climbing atop him so that they could make love.

  Not more. Less.

  Not the future of sex, but sex’s distant past.

  The future of love.

  The future of us.

  But Chloe wanted — needed — to hear it.

  At the DZ spa, Chloe had played coy when the men wanted it and played hard when the men wanted that. She’d dressed like a schoolgirl when that fit their fantasies, and like a vamp when they wanted things rougher. She’d been in command when clients asked her to take charge and laid still when they wanted to rule her. She’d read her clients, then recited the stories they’d written.

  But this wasn’t a client session. This was Andrew — and part of what he wanted was for Chloe to have what she wanted.

  And what’s more, she wanted what she wanted all on her own. Chloe was in this bed, too.

  Right now, she wanted Andrew inside her. Her pussy was so wet, she could barely stand it. But even more than that, she wanted his need for her. She wanted him to want her.

  She craved his desire.

  “What do you want, Andrew?” She let go of his cock, leaving it to jerk and throb as if missing the warmth of her mouth.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Right now, more than anything in the world, what do you want?”

  His face softened. “You, Chloe. More than anything, I want you.”

  She moved up, reached back, slipped his cock inside her.

  “You feel so good,” he said. “I love being inside you.”

  Chloe closed her eyes as she rode him. Up and down. Long, slow, wet strokes. His cock filled her each time she sat down. As she rose up, he cupped her tits with his hands, and she felt that yearning absence between her legs.

  She wanted him to roll her over. To have him above her with her legs parted and her pussy begging for him.

  She sighed. Felt it. Felt the yearning. Felt the anger and uncertainty become something better.

  Sink into the emotions. Don’t run from them.

  But they were all there, like a storm, as Andrew’s cock filled her: All her suspicion. All her jealousy. All her guilt. All her fury and frustration and indecision.

  All her worry. All her terror that this was a new dawn, and that her old life, through the falling of her internal wall, might be over.

  She looked deep into Andrew’s eyes.

  I want you on top. I want you to fuck me instead of me fucking you.

  His weight shifted. He put his hand on her side and nudged her gently off him. She felt his cock slide out of her pussy and missed it. It slapped his belly, leaving a wet mark. She watched it. Hungry. Needing him with her again.

  And he laid her on her back. Spread her legs. His hand idly stroking her wet entrance.

  He flicked at Chloe’s clit, causing a wave of sensation like nothing she’d ever felt. It was almost a presence in the room, looming above them. In that wave was lust and love and fear and hate and worry and tension and guilt and joy and lividity and clenched fists and shed tears and sweaty skin and shaking fingers.

  In the wave was everything, all at once.

  Andrew took his cock in hand and ran it up and down, licking its tip with the folds of Chloe’s aching pussy.

  She arched back, lost in the sensations.

  His free hand rolled across her sensitive nipples, then he leaned forward, slid his cock inside her to the hilt.

  Chloe gasped.

  “I love you, Chloe.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “You have to believe me. No matter what … you have to believe me.”

  Earnest. Honest. Almost pleading.

  His thick cock filled her, making it hard to speak or breathe.

  “Of course I believe you,” she told him.

  He laid fully atop her, face in the hollow between her head and shoulder. She felt his hot breath as he thrust into her. The movement of his muscles, the slow shaking of the bed.

  He ran kisses up her neck to her ear. His arms gripped her body, pressing them together like one being.

  Everything shook as one. Moved as one.

  Andrew thrust faster, harder. Chloe let her legs open, closed her eyes, felt the looming of that enormous wave as it crested, sliding into inevitability.

  It was as if her entire life were in this moment. As if everything else had been leading to this.

  Faster.

  Harder.

  Small, quick breaths against her neck as he fucked her. As his skin brushed hers. As his cock filled her wet pussy. As everything in Chloe from the center outward came alive.

  This is what it feels like when you mix them.

  This is what it feels like when you fuck with love.

  Not like before, but full out.

  Nothing held back.

  Emotional walls down, their insides a transparent mess.

  “Oh, God, Chloe,” Andrew said as he fucked her harder and faster, as Chloe’s wetness spread, their congress practically liquid. “Oh, God, I’m going to come so hard inside you!”

  Come in me. Come inside me. Fill me with all of you.

  She couldn’t say it because now the wave was upon her.

  Her mouth could only open and gasp.

  Her breath was only for their passion.

  And then it fell upon her as Andrew came, as Chloe came with every inch of her body and mind. Her toes curled; her fingers dug into Andrew’s moving back; her pussy gripped his cock as it emptied inside her, refusing to let go.

  She lost awareness, feeling gone to another place as she had in that dark room at O, only for a thousand times longer and a million times deeper.

  There was only sensation.

  And emotion.

  There was only lust.

  And love.

  And empathy.

  And fear.

  And joy.

  And then it receded and there was only Andrew.

  Smiling, he said, “That was different.”

  And oh, yes. Yes, it was.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Chloe woke slowly in the morning, surprised to see that the night was over and the day had come to replace it.

  Andrew was already awake, sitting on the edge of the bed facing away from her, a button-up across a back that Chloe, in her sleepy and aroused way, would have preferred to see naked instead.

  She reached up and stroked her fingers across the fabric. His shirt was neat but thin, good but far from fine. One of the best his meager living could afford. He was dressing up for reasons unknown as if he’d risen from their bliss to go somewhere vital instead of staying beside her in bed.

  Andrew looked back. “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself.”

  “Did you sleep well?”

  “Best I’ve slept in forever.” A smile caressed her lips. She couldn’t have kept it away if she’d tried. “Why are you up so early?”

  His answer was curt. Serious. Without any of the playfulness she heard and felt in her own voice. A factual answer and nothing more, but still Chloe felt somehow rebuked, even knowing that wasn’t Andrew’s intention.

  “It’s almost eight-thirty.”

  “So what? It’s not like you have an office to go to.”

  He looked away again. “It’s not all sitting on the couch with my laptop and ordering cheap coffee. I have appointments sometimes.”

  Chloe tried to measure Andrew’s tone, realized she couldn’t. His manner was almost alienated, sort of how a man might act if he were annoyed. But there was love in his voice, stuffed down, almost like he was being short because he lo
ved her. Like he was leaving because he didn’t want to go.

  He was yes and no, black and white.

  “Is everything okay?” Chloe asked.

  “Yes. I’m fine.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Her first spark of bother. It was small, and her slow, lovely morning mood reached up to grab it, dragging it back into the clouds.

  “Are you coming back?”

  “Of course.”

  “When?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I was just wondering if I should stay here and wait for you.”

  “You don’t have work? You don’t have clients you need to see and …” With effort, he shook the dangling sentence away, stood, and began to button his shirt.

  Chloe felt regret. Worry. Sadness. There was such sorrow in his simple gestures. It was as if something had died. As if he’d realized a tragedy he was refusing to share.

  She stood beside him. Turned him gently around.

  “Let me do that.”

  Slowly she did Andrew’s buttons for him.

  He watched her wordlessly. Again, Chloe felt uncertain. She didn’t like or trust it at all. But she tried to remember her mother’s words: This is normal. This is how you feel when love takes you.

  But was it normal? Or was something truly wrong? Was he leaving her? Was he off to see another woman … not in the bodily way Chloe no longer saw other men, but with his heart as well?

  She didn’t trust herself to look up. She focused on her fingers and the buttons. She focused on his body, concealed inch by inch as she covered him. Andrew wasn’t large, but he was lean. Like someone who’d survived despite all life threw at him. Wiry like someone who’d had to make his own way, who’d learned to adapt as the world tried to grind him in its titanic gears.

  She finished. Brushed her hands across his upper chest to smooth the fabric. His slacks were already on: again, the finest he owned.

  “There. Such a handsome young man.”

  He said a strange thing. And again, Chloe couldn’t read the meaning behind his words. “How do you know I’m young? How do you know I’m not filled with age-reducing nanobots like your clients at O?”

  Edge on his words. Almost an accusation. Chloe was catching shrapnel as Andrew aimed weapons at himself.

  “You’re hardly enhanced.”

  “Because I’ve got a little dick or something?”

  It was harder to hold her composure at that one. He was trying to pick a fight and she had no idea why.

  “Because you don’t have age-reducing nanobots.” She didn’t add the rest, because it was exactly what he was trying to provoke, trying to draw her into. “What’s with you this morning?”

  The question jolted him. His face calmed and he reached out to put his hands on her hips. “I just have a lot on my mind.”

  “Maybe I can help you. If you’ll share.”

  “It’s my issue. I’ll handle it.”

  But now she knew: there was an issue.

  She forced herself not to pick at the scab. That’s what she’d do with anyone else, but a man needed his secrets to be whole. Or so she told herself while imagining a thousand things it might be.

  I’m secretly married.

  I’m in love with someone else.

  You’re crowding me, Chloe. I need my space.

  Maybe Andrew felt an inadequacy because she was an elite star with more credits than she could spend while he remained penniless. The irony was that Chloe didn’t care a bit about Andrew’s salary or success. His remonstrating against it — puffing his chest in an attempt to improve his station and impress her, if that’s what this was — was unattractive.

  Pride. Last night’s encounter had shaken something in Andrew the way it had shaken something in her. But whereas she found herself contemplating changes to her O contract, Andrew found himself wanting to become more.

  Maybe now that he was in love, Chloe was inadvertently making an honest man out of him. He might as well have been a boy coming back from war to his waiting bride, knowing his duty to step up and be a man now that a family was inevitably on the way.

  “You’re sure I can’t help?”

  “This is something I need to do myself,” Andrew said.

  Again, the insinuation of a grim duty in the offing. The clear truth that he wasn’t dressing up to buy groceries, but headed somewhere important to do something dire. Something that was his burden alone. Something that impacted Chloe, but that he refused to reveal.

  He’d buttoned his collar. He’d threaded a tie.

  Chloe helped to settle it, keeping her thousand questions inside.

  “Just tell me this,” Chloe said. “Whatever this is — wherever you’re going … is it okay? Will it be all right?”

  He held Chloe by her shoulders. He met her eyes. He kissed her before answering. “This is something I should have done a long time ago. But I promise you, Chloe: after today, yes. It hasn’t been all right so far, but tomorrow I swear that it will be.”

  Worry picked at Chloe’s spine.

  “You’re scaring me.”

  “Don’t be scared. It’s fine.”

  “But …”

  “I should go.”

  But he wasn’t finished dressing, so Chloe sat on the bed to watch the rest. First his socks. Then his best shoes.

  He went to the mirror and ran hands through his messy hair, creating a semblance of order. He grabbed the items for his pocket from the table near the door.

  And through it all, Chloe could only sit and watch and wait. Andrew kept glancing back, saying nothing.

  He came to her again before walking out and held her in a hug that felt like goodbye. He kissed her farewell and said, “I love you, Chloe Shaw.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “I need you to believe that I love you.”

  “Of course I believe it.”

  “And I need you to trust me.”

  “I trust you,” she said after a hard swallow, her mind saying something different: Why do you need assurances if not because you’re about to test my love and my trust?

  He stepped back. Put his hand on the door.

  “It’s fine. Really. I promise.”

  Chloe forced a smile, her eyes suddenly wanting to water. “Of course.”

  Andrew left, and his empty apartment felt like a tomb. No noise or movement despite the city outside. Only Chloe, alone with her shockingly heavy heart.

  There was a blip from behind her and a male voice, smooth as silk, said, “I was beginning to think he’d never leave.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Chloe turned, hands raised reflexively.

  She had never been in a fight, but she suspected if she ever was, her opponent would be in for a shock. A girl who knew just where to touch a man to arouse him would know equally well the easiest way to cripple him.

  But there was nobody there.

  “You’re looking nice today,” said the voice, its tone downright salacious.

  Chloe looked down at herself, suddenly aware that she was fully naked. That was hardly unusual; she’d spent most of her time on Voyos doing her daily chores in the nude. But something in that disembodied voice made her want to cover up, so she snatched a sheet from the bed, then wrapped herself.

  The voice laughed.

  It was coming from Andrew’s single Crossbrace wall terminal. The display itself was black, but unless his creepy comment about her “looking nice” was a lucky guess, he could see her. Through a connection that was made without ringing, or Chloe picking up.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’d rather not say.” Chloe peered at the connection ID, but it simply read RESTRICTED. “It only matters that I’m interested in you, Chloe Shaw.”

  He knew her. That was odd because even given the other feats he’d managed so far, this wasn’t her apartment. He hadn’t called her mobile; he’d called Andrew’s point of connection, not hers.

/>   How did he know who he’d reached, if not Andrew Braverman?

  “What do you want?”

  “To help you. To clear up some confusion.”

  “Confusion about what?”

  “Well, that’s just the thing,” said the anonymous man. “There are things I know and will say, things I know that I’d rather not say, and things I don’t know at all. That’s probably true for both of us. You’re confused about some things that I might be able to illuminate. But in return, I’d like you to shine a light on some of what’s been confusing me.”

  “How did you call me?” she asked, wanting him to speak longer, and give her more raw data to chew on. “Why can’t I turn on your video and yet you can see me? And how did you find me here?”

  Laughter, then, “Oh, that is a privilege of my new position. I’ve been invited to join a delightful club which thumbs its nose at issues like discretion and privacy. A little group that’s taken every possible shortcut, while hiding the entrances to all those corridors from the rest of you. The rest of us, until recently. But I’m not stingy, Chloe. I cannot and would not ask you to join me, but I won’t keep all of their secrets. Not from someone who can help me. Because we know the truth of the world, do we not? Nothing is truly free. I give and you give back. That’s how it works.”

  Chloe held the sheet high, clasped above her breasts. It was strange to feel modest. And it was hard to talk to a man holding so many advantages. Clear sight of her body seemed to be the only thing she could control.

  He eyes flicked to the bathroom, where Andrew kept a robe. Then she looked down at her sheet.

  “Fine. If it bothers you to be without clothes in my presence, by all means, go and make yourself decent. I assure you I’m fine either way. There is only one woman I care to see in such compromising positions.”

  Chloe paused, unsure if following the man’s suggestion was wise — even though it was what she wanted. The total lack of visual cues put her at a tremendous disadvantage. She had only his voice — smooth like whiskey and cold like rocks. But she complied after a moment’s hesitation, dressing fully in the bathroom instead of donning Andrew’s robe.

  She emerged, and again the voice laughed. “Shall we begin?”