Who is Chloe Shaw? Read online

  She mounted the bed on hands and knees, her bare ass facing Andrew.

  He came forward, cock still in hand, still rubbing, his eyes on her pussy. His hand let go and his cock dropped; then he grabbed her hips and pulled Chloe roughly backward, toward him.

  She looked forward, eyes closing, his fingers gliding through her wetness.

  One rolled across her clit, another slipped inside with a flinch.

  Then the press of his cock’s head, hot and large.

  Andrew slipped inside as her pussy welcomed then held it tight.

  His warmth filled her.

  Slow strokes, in and out, her tunnel wet enough to drip.

  “Oh, my God, Chloe. You make me want to come so hard.”

  His hand pressed her back, lowering her chest to the bed.

  His cock hit a new angle and an orgasm bloomed, hard enough to surprise her.

  Their union grew more fluid, as Chloe came all over his thrusting shaft.

  Andrew moved faster above her.

  He pressed her chest closer to the bed, her ass still up.

  Chloe’s fingers hooked the comforter, tight enough to strangle.

  The first orgasm had only been the appetizer and had barely retreated.

  She rode a high plateau, trying to hang on.

  Andrew leaned more over her, her ass moving down, the front of Chloe’s thighs kissing the bed. Then he was above her, fully on top, thrusting into her pussy from behind.

  A hand squeezed around her hip, between her legs. Gratefully, she ground against it: penetrated from above, rubbing her clit from below.

  The next orgasm forced her to scream.

  But Andrew’s pace was quickening, his breath coming in heaves.

  His breath was hot on her neck, his heart hammering against her naked back.

  “Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck, Chloe … I’m going to come!”

  His breath. His sounds. The thick thrust of his cock inside her, his hand between her pussy’s lips.

  And as he came Chloe was rocked by her third orgasm, feeling Andrew spill inside her, his thrusts growing wet and turning from long slides to stutters, his entire body hitching above her.

  She waited, riding delirious waves until Andrew finally finished.

  He rolled away, off her. Then he was face-up beside her on the bed, looking at the ceiling. He didn’t move to kiss her or turn her over to lay with him.

  Chloe turned on her own when her pussy stopped trembling.

  She spooned against Andrew’s side, noting the curious way his eyes were still fixed to the ceiling.

  She cuddled closer. Kissed his shoulder, then craned up to kiss his neck. When he still didn’t turn to face her, she scooched up and took his cheek in her palm. She turned his head and kissed him on the lips.

  His eyes shifted and then he was Andrew.

  Had she really thought something was off?

  Had she really found this encounter and what preceded it strange?

  No. Of course not. Everything was as it had always been between them.

  Everything was as it should be.

  “I think I love you, Andrew.”

  There had been hints, but she’d never said it directly.

  It felt like the right thing to say — even now, post-coitus; especially now.

  But Chloe was afraid.

  Those words were legendary killers.

  Andrew gave her a curious smile. She remembered thinking that he sounded guilty. And now she saw it.

  Then he looked back at the ceiling and said, “I love you too, Chloe.”

  Her senses had returned in all their clarity. She’d been Andrew’s Chloe while they’d been making love, but now she was her escort self again — intuitive sensors fully alert.

  And with her antennae up, Chloe felt sure she could hear an unspoken suffix following his words.

  I love you too, Chloe …

  … no matter what anyone else says or thinks, and no matter what stands in our way.

  It was subtle, but she could hear that hesitant afterthought. Andrew’s affection was real — but he didn’t anticipate their love to be easy (or perhaps even possible) in the way that Chloe did.

  Why?

  Why wouldn’t it be possible? They were two ordinary people. All that mattered was that each loved the other.

  Andrew rose to take a shower. Chloe returned to her former wonderings in all their horrid glory.

  She was satisfied, yes.

  She felt happier, in a way.

  But more than ever, Chloe was starting to wonder. To be curious.

  About everything.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “She’s starting to wonder!” Alexa said.

  Andrew, sitting across the table in one of O’s less impressive meeting spaces, looked from Alexa to the paused video frame showing Chloe’s face after he’d risen to shower.

  He hated looking at it. He’d known from the start that O would send nano-cams to record his time with Chloe (For research, not porn, Barnes explained), but this was the first time he’d been present to review the footage.

  O seemed to have decided that because Andrew kept trying to go rogue, he was best kept close. The strategy was working. He didn’t want to see evidence of his betrayal … but the more he watched it without finding a way to stop, the more complicit he became.

  Andrew couldn’t pretend to be a hero when he kept doing unheroic things.

  “Really,” Barnes said, his voice dripping sarcasm. “Is that what a wondering face looks like?”

  All heads but Andrew’s turned toward the projection. He kept his gaze neutral, not wanting to see Chloe’s apparently wondering visage as the Six assessed her.

  “She just looks sort of disoriented,” said Houston, the fat man with the cowboy hat.

  “That’s post-orgasmic glow,” said Olivia.

  “Masterful,” said Benson while his wife Charisma nodded.

  Out of context, Andrew probably wouldn’t have known what was “masterful” about Chloe’s paused expression, but fortunately or unfortunately, the moment had given him plenty. Before reaching this possibly-critical section of footage, they’d viewed the recording of Chloe and Andrew having sex. He’d felt ridiculous and ashamed watching himself boss Chloe around per Parker’s suggestion, but Benson was practically clapping through his glowing reviews.

  Alexa appeared to struggle with her reply. Andrew thought he saw her begin then abort several false starts. She seemed to be censoring herself, probably because he was present. Once Andrew left, Alexa would likely tell her colleagues what she was holding back now.

  “That’s wondering,” Alexa said, pointing.

  “I see,” said Barnes. “And what exactly is Chloe ‘starting to wonder’?”

  Again, Alexa seemed to stop herself. She looked right at Andrew then gave Barnes a knowing look and said, “She’s wondering about herself.”

  “Because she had sex, she’s suddenly introspective?”

  “It’s not just that. I’ve asked my …” Again she looked right at Andrew.

  “Just fucking say it, Alexa,” Barnes said, annoyed. “Andrew has far more dangerous things to keep his mouth shut about than The Beam. He knows how to keep a secret. Right, Andrew?”

  Andrew nodded. Alexa seemed annoyed — at Barnes, who’d apparently decided to open a locked box right in front of Andrew rather than talk around it — but she continued anyway.

  “I’ve asked my Beam porter to keep search tabs on Chloe. I get an alert if she searches for anything …” A glance at Barnes, silently commanding him not to divulge another secret. “Sensitive. There have been a few … let’s just say possible hits. And I know she spoke to her mother a few days ago.”

  Again, Alexa looked hard at Barnes, but this time was different, her look hinting at something meaningful that she preferred not to explicitly state.

  Olivia narrowed her eyes at Alexa, then followed Alexa’s gaze to Barnes. “What’s that look for?” Her squint deepened as Barnes tried to def
lect. “Is there something between you two that we should know about?”

  Barnes shook his head. “Of course not.”

  “So what if Chloe called her mother?” Houston said.

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

  Alexa was obviously brushing away a mistake. Andrew had no idea why it might matter that Chloe had called her mom, but it was clear that Alexa and Barnes both wished she hadn’t implied that it might.

  Olivia, Houston, Charisma, and Benson all looked a bit suspicious now that Alexa had spoken and then taken it back.

  “Point is,” Alexa continued, “it’s clear that she’s asking questions borne from a piqued curiosity. If we roll this back …”

  Andrew looked away as Alexa pulled the video back a minute or so. In a moment, he’d have to hear Chloe say that she loved him, followed by Andrew’s too-slow reciprocation.

  He’d played that moment entirely wrong, and of course Chloe had seen right through it. He didn’t need the replay to know that much.

  He did love Chloe. Problem was, Andrew was stabbing her in the back. He was lying, keeping secrets, caught between a rock and a hard place. He hadn’t yet found a way to come clean and tell Chloe the truth without ending up dead or worse.

  But that didn’t stop him from feeling like a disingenuous fuck. Hearing their exchange of I-love-yous again to prove Alexa’s point was a knife to the gut.

  The scene rolled forward.

  I think I love you, Andrew.

  His look at the ceiling.

  I love you too, Chloe.

  Of course Alexa was right.

  Of course Chloe’s expression, after he’d left the bed, was puzzlement.

  Of course he’d left her wondering.

  But he’d had no choice. It was either that or stay where he was, in which case she’d have started asking questions rather than “wondering.”

  It was either get up to shower or confess — thereby pissing Chloe off, making her feel stupid, and possibly getting himself blacklisted, blind, or murdered.

  “See? What’s that look on her face?”

  “She’s confused by a man,” Olivia said. “So what? They’re confusing.”

  Benson shook his head. “We’re not confusing at all.”

  “To Chloe, he’s confusing.” Olivia indicated the frozen screen. “He says he loves her then walks away. That’s mixed signals.” She turned toward Alexa. “But that doesn’t mean anything is wrong, like wrong-wrong. She’s starting to wonder whether Andrew means what he says … or if he’s just another shitbag trying to get into her pants.”

  “Nice,” said Benson. “Just because someone might want sex without entanglement, they’re a shitbag? What does ninety percent of our business revolve around, Olivia? Congratulations on your enlightened 1900’s thinking.”

  “It’s not me,” Olivia said. “It’s Chloe. You were the ones who wanted to see what happened when she fell in love. Hell, I hate to agree with Parker, but this is exactly what he warned us about.”

  “It’s more than that,” Alexa said.

  “Fine. Explain why it’s more.” Olivia looked hard at Alexa. It was clear to Andrew that she hadn’t forgotten the secret that Barnes and Alexa were trying to hide.

  Alexa chose her words carefully. She didn’t look at Barnes for support, but Andrew could tell by the almost-flick of her eyes that she wanted to.

  “As we’ve already discovered — and knew might happen from the beginning — The Beam AI in her porter has allied as much with Chloe as with us. Maybe more. It’s blocked tunnel access for us to see what she’s doing with the canvas when alone. The same extends to any environmental surveillance. The fact that Andrew hid the nano cams in the back of his mouth is probably the only reason we got the footage we did. We can’t snoop Chloe’s connection, and we’ll likely be discovered if we leave any nanos behind. We can’t take the risk.”

  Nods circled the table.

  They had already discussed this, whatever it meant.

  “So, we can’t really know what she thinks,” Alexa said. “What she might be investigating, or what she might have already found out. About us.”

  “What about us?” Charisma said.

  “Hard to say.” Alexa looked at Andrew. “Hard to speculate in mixed company.” She looked back at Charisma. “But we’ve seen how intuitive she is. Chloe reads into every situation, and always with incredible accuracy. Some of you might think that when she met our friend here she got all misty-eyed and stopped her processing. I say, fat chance.”

  Barnes nodded. “Right. We’ve seen what appears to be the blooming of an ordinary, if old-fashioned, relationship — but that probably isn’t the whole story from Chloe’s perspective. The top level of her mind likely accepts Andrew as just another guy, but that wonderful intuitive brain is still assessing everything he does … and rolling it into a giant pile of information she’s subconsciously gathered about ‘prior experiments.’ She’s not thinking about Andrew in a vacuum; she’s seeing him in the context of her life, including the experiments with Tony, the darkroom, client encounters … all of it.”

  Houston looked puzzled. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that someone as sharp as Chloe is hard to fool.” Alexa pointed at the screen. “This might be the final straw. It looks like she’s having doubts about Andrew’s sincerity when he says, ‘I love you, Chloe,’ but I worry if her doubts might be deeper. Maybe she’s wondering about Andrew as a whole … and how he might mesh with questions about her employment at O and all the special attention we pay her … within the context of whatever she may or may not have discovered about O using The Beam canvas we so wisely gave her …”

  Barnes perked up. “So this is my fault? If we hadn’t given her a canvas, we wouldn’t have a problem now?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You implied it.”

  “Stop being defensive, Parker. Regardless of how it happened, I think we have to accept the possibility that it did happen — or at least is starting to. There’s a very real chance that Chloe might be close to realizing that her relationship with Andrew was never what she thought. And there’s a real possibility that she’s already wondering …” Another self-censoring glance at Andrew. “Well, that she’s imagining all sorts of things about O, herself, and our interest in her that she shouldn’t be.”

  Barnes nodded. The others seemed to be assessing, all unsure of what to say. Whatever this was about, the Six seemed to agree it was real, and something to be stopped at all costs.

  Finally, Barnes looked over and met Andrew’s eyes. “What do you think?”

  Andrew looked behind himself then turned back to Barnes. “Me?”

  “Arguably, you know her best. We can only watch Chloe so much without her knowing. You said you had a long discussion in the park. What was it about?”

  An ace slid into his hand. Andrew was a long way from outplaying his opponents, but he hadn’t realized until now that he had such an informational advantage. They wanted to know. Andrew already did.

  “Just stuff.” He elaborated on his hollow reply. “Like, she wanted to talk about her mom.”

  “What about her mom?”

  That she had a partition. That she learned how to put herself on one side and her work on the other — and that Chloe, in turn, learned the same.

  “She said they had a fun relationship. More like sisters than mother and daughter.”

  “Anything about her feelings for you? Did she … want to talk about us?”

  Yes. “Not really.”

  “Did she want to talk about work?” Olivia asked. “About O?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Did she say she felt … I don’t know … confused?” Alexa asked.

  “No.” But Chloe clearly had something on her mind, so Andrew invented an excuse: “We sort of had a fight.”

  The room murmured.

  “It wasn’t a big deal,” Andrew said, realizing now that a manufactured fight required details
. It was hard to think on the spot. “I was late. She got pissy. I got pissy back. No big deal.” He looked around the room, wondering if his lie was convincing. “Anyway, that made her sort of ‘wonder about us,’ like you said. Maybe that’s why she said she was ‘confused.’”

  “Why would that be?” Alexa asked. “Why would being late to pick her up trigger a discussion about your relationship?”

  Andrew looked at Alexa, then at Olivia, who was staring him down. Charisma caught his eye. The three women were awaiting his answer — while, interestingly, Parker, Benson, and Houston, had lost interest.

  That’s when it hit Andrew.

  How to answer this question.

  How to get out of so much.

  He didn’t need to outsmart them.

  Andrew shrugged and looked right at Alexa, doing all that he could to appear vacuous. “Who the hell knows? Fucking women and their problems.”

  Olivia shook her head, disgusted.

  Alexa seemed angry.

  Charisma rolled her eyes. Benson fought a snicker.

  Tension collapsed. As it should, given that the guy they’d temporarily mistaken for devious was just another vacant male asshole.

  “Just keep on her,” Houston said. “Keep fucking her. That’ll shut her up.”

  Charisma and Alexa turned their disgust toward Houston, who was chuckling, smiling at Andrew with a camaraderie that Andrew didn’t want at all.

  But at least the hate was on Houston now instead of him. And as Andrew saw it happen, he decided that being a misogynist was better than being seen as a man with an agenda.

  At least now he had room to maneuver.

  And maybe, with enough maneuvering, a way to escape.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Brad, I’ve decided not to see my mom.”

  Brad’s face seemed confused. Almost concerned. Amazing, how much nuance the porter had learned these last months with Chloe. He was almost human enough to read.

  “Why?”

  “There’s no point. I’d rather stay here with Andrew.”

  It was one ploy within another. In truth, Chloe wanted to know what Brad thought about Andrew as much as she wanted to know his thoughts on why she should or shouldn’t take a trip to Voyos. If Brad refused to reveal what Chloe needed to know using words, she could at least try to suss it out of his reactions.