Oh. Good point.
“No worries. We can go play those games we saw back that way.” I smiled, hoping to keep the party going between us. She nodded, and we walked along the row of carnival games.
“I’m not playing the game where you shoot water; I bet you’d cheat.” That almost grin appeared, and I had to fight back a laugh.
“Are you teasing me?” She totally was. Hah! Gwendolyn was messing with me!
“Maybe.” That almost smile grew wider, and my feet stopped moving.
My brain stopped firing, and my heart stopped beating.
That smile. All I could do was stare.
“What?” She stopped walking and looked at me.
My feet were moving, my brain was firing all signals, and my heart was beating faster than before.
Her eyes looked wild and surprised as I placed my hands gently on her cheeks and descended my lips on hers.
My muse, my love, my beauty in a world of gray.
“Now, that’s a kiss.”
Our kiss was cut short by Pops’s narration.
“Sorry.” He realized his mistake as soon as she pulled back to look at my face.
Would she regret the kiss? Was touching lips not okay on some level to her?
“You are amazing,” I told her and watched as her gaze moved from my eyes, down to my lips, then back up.
“I wanna do that again.”
I’ve died again, and this time there was no coming back. I was simply in heaven and staying there forever.
Chapter Sixteen
Gwendolyn
He kissed me again, and the feelings curled my toes inside my boots. I wanted to run my fingers through his messy hair and then continue to feel all over his body. Over his shirt, then under.
So, I did.
He groaned into my mouth, and I felt a frenzy stir inside me. I wanted more. Needed more. My skin felt hot even though it was cold outside, and my breaths sounded more like pants as his teeth nipped at my lower lip. I opened for him, and then our tongues were dancing together.
I’d never felt this way before. He melted me like aluminum melted under a torch.
“I don’t know what I need. But I need more.” I moaned against him, being brutally honest. I’d never done this before. Men weren’t something I had given the time of day to before. They didn’t like me before I was a known robotics scientist, so why should they like me now?
I didn’t care that we were surrounded by people as his hands moved down to hold onto my ass, lifting me up against him. He was leading this, and I was happy to follow him until we became cinders after the flame.
“Gwendolyn, wake up.”
I pulled back to look at his face in confusion.
“What?”
“Wake up,” he spoke, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand what was happening.
“No, I wanna go back to sleep,” I groaned, pulling the comforter over my head in hiding, hoping I could go back to my dream with Arthur.
“You wanted to get up early this morning for some yoga, and to work on your cozy robots for Phillip.” I pulled my cover back just enough so I could see Pops, who was sitting on my nightstand with a cup of coffee waiting for me.
He was right. I did want to get up early and get to work. I promised I would have robots ready for trial, and I needed to finish them up for that.
“What were you dreaming about?”
“Arthur,” I answered, as I rolled out of bed and took a sip of the coffee waiting for me.
“That’s good. Means he’s on your brain.”
Of course he was—after the kiss he gave me last night, how could I not think about him? I wanted to kiss him more, and maybe even do all the things in the dream. But last night screams had interrupted the sexual haze that surrounded us—a ten-year-old boy had a severe asthma attack. The paramedics were close by and were there immediately to help him.
There was nothing we could have done to help him.
After that we walked around some more before calling it a night.
Arthur was sweet as he thanked me again for Teddy, and gave me a kiss in the car before saying goodbye.
I appreciated that he wasn’t pushing for more contact with me. I needed to figure out what I was okay with him, and that would require experiments.
“I like him a lot.” I changed into something stretchy and snug for yoga and walked over to Cora on her station to give her head a little rub.
“He likes you a lot, too. It’s good seeing you with a boyfriend and happy. He is doing everything he is supposed to, based on the data I downloaded on courting. He also shows no symptoms of mental illness or physical ailments either. Cora scanned him and told me. So, he won’t die on you, unless his work as a hero takes him. You two could live a long, happy life together if you chose each other.”
I didn’t know what to say to all the things he said, so I stayed quiet and walked over to my section of the apartment for exercise. It was a nice area that had windows to the park below.
“Will you go through the news today and see if anything interesting pops up?” Pops had been doing this lately—he plugged himself into the computer, and scanned through the news. Looking for things that pertained to me, and maybe something odd that might be a Hero Society type of job.
So far, he’d found nothing, but it was a good habit to keep up with.
My muscles needed the stretching, and the breathing techniques of yoga helped settle my otherwise chaotic mind.
“Find anything good?” I grabbed a drink from the fridge and sat at my desk. Pops unplugged himself and nodded.
“There was a photo of you, taken last night, on Seahill College’s robotics page. Of course, Cora and I were the highlight, as always.” If I’d given him lips so he could smile, he would have a big grin on his face. Pops loved the attention he got from others. I shook my head and drank some more water.
“I checked in on that kid that had an asthma attack last night—no known cause. But there were five other people who came down with a cough from the festival too. Might be something going around, so use your hand sanitizer. There was also a statement released by Terratrex Corp this morning about their newest projects, continuously fruit-bearing trees, and companion robots.”
I truly hope I didn’t just hear him correctly. The look on my face must have said what I was thinking, because Pops went into more detail.
“They’re working on robots with the same traits as your cozy robots. They are projecting each one to cost around twelve hundred, and to be out in a month.”
Glad I was sitting down for that. My passion project, the one I had been trying to make come to life and give to the people who needed it, was being stolen right from under my feet.
“Those bastards. They don’t have the resources for that technology.” Even as I said it, I knew it was a lie. I may have brought artificial intelligence to life, but my patents and processes were documented. They could test it out and create their own version of mine. Would never be as perfect, but that didn’t matter to people like them. Terratrex was greedy. They tried to act like they were saving the world with their inventions, but most of the time it all backfired, and they would get off with a fine.
They were also the top competitor with Griffin Enterprises. One cared about the earth and its inhabitants, the other just wanted to get as much out of the land and people as it could, not caring about the cost or casualties.