Ginosko – Chapter 4 – Elizabeth’s Daughters (Patreon)

Theresa Ginosko

“They all make me so mad!” I grind my teeth and kick the synthetic wooden floor of my apartment, deliberately playing up the bratty little sister stereotype.

Why, you ask?

“There, there…” Ayane, musclebound, tanned, redheaded brute that she is, reassures me by gently patting my head.

It is mortifying.

And it makes my cheeks burn, and something clench inside my chest, and I get all anxious and don’t know what to do with my hands, but I can’t stop acting in the way that makes her do it, and I’m a fucking mess—

I mean: why. This is why.

“It’s just…” I pretend to grumble, turning aside so she won’t see my luminescent blush before I remind myself I can just turn it off—and yet I don’t. “It’s… There’s Patricia, who’s young enough that she shouldn’t be acting that condescending to any of us, yet keeps standing there with that hieratical look of hers, as if she’s so above it all. There’s Guinevere, who should have never been named after a mythical queen because she took it damn near to heart. And Clarissa? Clarissa is just… ugh! Clarissa.”

“That stressed, are you?” she says, still patting my head.

I nod.

And she smiles that wide, toothy grin that looks kinda silly yet still makes me…

Makes me go off on tangents about her smile.

Damn it.

“Well,” she says, with that leading tone that’s definitely going somewhere. “How about you and I… unwind?”

I blush yet again.

And then I nod.

And I get the always confusingly pleasurable experience of witnessing Ayane, former street tough, current bodyguard, and one of the most lethal hand-to-hand fighters in the arcology, even without half the body mods and cyberware she has implanted… squeal in glee.

This is ridiculous.

***

Scratch that: this is mortifying.

“Princess Moonbeam! Your reign of terror ends today!” Ayane yells, pointing at me while on top of the skyscraper she has chosen as a dramatic entrance point for this latest play.

A dramatic entrance that includes the high winds wiping around her shirtless form, the long, black, male school uniform coat flaring behind her as her impressive chest is tightly wound up in white bandages that this Hive scene makes more supportive and enhancing than restricting.

She’s also wearing a uniform cap.

Because, of course, my bodyguard recruited from the slums of San Francisco would love old-school anime to the point she drags me to these ridiculous roleplaying sessions with the pretense of helping me relax.

I swear I don’t even know how she managed to convince me it was just a way to spice up my self-defense training the first time around.

And me? A Ginosko sister with terabytes of kinesics devoted solely to making me look as competent and imposing as physically possible?

I’m dressed in a skimpy, white and pink miniskirtand leotard outfit with too many ribbons that would make even the girls in my idol division check their contracts for an escape clause.

“Aren’t I supposed to be the magical girl in here? Aren’t I the good guy?” I ask her through the gloved palm on my face that will hopefully cover up at least some of my blush.

And she quirks an accusing eyebrow at me breaking character.

Of course, her emulated bodymods make it so she can hear me from her rooftop. Despite the winds. Despite me being on anotherrooftop. Despite my line having been gritted out through clenched teeth.

Thank you very much, Hive. I really appreciate your devotion to preserving any and all of Ayane’s demonstrably unfair advantages. I don’t know what I would do if this was an even remotely dignified or balanced battlefield.

“Ahem!” she yells, not even pretending to actually clear her throat. “As I was saying, Princess Moonbeam, the corruption in your heart will be purged by me! No longer will you rampage through the streets! I’ll bring you back to the light one punch at a time if I have to!”

Oh, dear…

A bouncing pair of tits can’t be worth all this, can it?

I mean, I’ve got my own pair of tits. They’re great tits. The best that money can buy. I don’t need another pair of tits.

I should also stop thinking about tits, because Ayane’s gonna notice I’m staring.

And biting my lip.

…

I hate my libido.

Really, do the others… No, I must be faulty or something.

Clarissa must never know.

And Ayane’s expecting my answer. Because just jumping over and beating the stuffing out of me isn’t humiliating enough.

So I do clear my throat, point at her with my magic wand that has precisely the same balance, weight, and reach as my extendable baton, and declare:

“We may have been comrades before, Red Banchou, but no more. Come, if you dare, but you won’t leave with your life!”

“Noooooo! Princess Moonbeam, I swear I’ll take you back!”

Her acting is terrible. She chews up the scenery like her craving for bubblegum has gone out of control, improvises her lines, and changes the setting mid-scene.

And she still makes my pulse race when she says she’ll take me.

Damn it, I don’t feel even half the same rush of urgency when she leaps from her building straight at me, fist cocked back, wild grin on her lips, orange, spiky locks swept back by the rush of her speed, cap somehow still in place, and teeth gleaming beneath a bright moon that can no longer be found outside the Hive.

My battle routines kick in, and time goes from rushing waters to molasses around me. I can see every detail; calculate her trajectory, center of mass, momentum.

So, with a movement that only looks slow to my own perception as my processors likely scream at the scorching heat they’re briefly subjected to, I slide my left foot back, grab her flaring sleeve at the precise moment she gets in reach, and shift my own weight back just fast enough to add to her own speed as my wand hooks her below her armpit and I drop down below, turning around as she flips over me and slams down on her back over a widening circle of exploding gray gravel.

The smile never leaves her face.

So I try to let go, my wand already retracted, but her wrist circles around my own as her arm shoots back toward me, and her sleeve tangles briefly around my arm before I rip it out, the torn edges only adding to the character archetype she always goes for.

But it’s enough to delay me.

And my weight is low, firmly between the wide base of my spread feet.

But she’s lower, stronger, and heavier.

And grabbing my hand.

So she twists on the ground, and I’m forced to jump and follow the motion before my wrist is dislocated, my all-too-human body plan yet again betraying me to her extensive knowledge of the very same.

I avoid the injury. I don’t avoid painfully slamming on the gravel, making a crater of my own.

A smaller crater. Which should be reassuring but is still infuriating.

“Gah!” I don’t stop myself from shouting as I feel pain explode across my back and shoulders.

And then there’s a pull on my outstretched arm, the one she’s still holding, and my processors are now working in real-time, so I barely catch the rush of motion that ends with Ayane straddling my hips, holding my left hand against the roof and above my head.

“I win,” she whispers, her grin narrower but still wild, still thrilling.

Damn. It. All.

My own eyes narrow in answer before my legs shoot up, knees slamming on her back and pushing her forward, to me, unbalanced enough that my free left arm can wrap around her and pull her down until her body’s flush to mine, her breasts between my own and my chin.

I know how to follow the technique. I downloaded plenty of skill libraries even before Ayane took to training me ‘just in case,’ the actual experience making the abstract data seamlessly integrate within my memories as emotions and context that are impossible to simulate get added, as further connections get established and galvanized into yet another part of me.

I know how to hook her right leg with my left heel and push up and to the side, forcing her to spin around the improvised axis until she ends up below me, her legs around my waist.

But…

Green eyes are in front of mine, glittering with the rush of the brief burst of friendly combat and the ambiance of this silly, ridiculous thing she likes so much.

And serious, professional, deadly Ayane’s letting me see this part of her, the one that got buried long before she came up from lethal streets filled with more threats than the average arcology-dweller ever bothers learning about. The one that’s only started to surface in recent years, after one near incident too many when a guest got too twitchy for her tastes.

The one only I have seen.

“It seems there’s still fight left in your heart, Princess Moonbeam—” she begins, with that awful, booming, overdone delivery that would hurt ears less resilient than my own.

Especially from such a close distance.

Especially with her lips right over my own.

And I lean up and interrupt her in the way I wish I’d done years ago, when I caught her shivering on a hotel’s toilet floor after she briefly excused herself from a gala in which the idol group I was presenting did an elaborated choreography with glowing, crackling, electrified whips while wearing barely acceptable for all audiences leather ensembles.

I should’ve reported her. Told my security detail that she wasn’t fit for duty.

I knelt beside her and patted her hair, just like she’s done to me so many times ever since.

And I kept wondering, again and again, if I had gone too far or not enough.

And now I’ve got her ridiculously large, impracticalbreasts pressing down on me and bursting up from her bandages and against my chin as my hand goes from her back to her nape, and then to her short, spiky hair, the sensation of it sliding down the silk of my glove enough to make my breathing pause even as her lips demand I take as much air as I can as they burn on me.

I… I stop. Let her go, and she barely lifts her face before looking down at me with eyes so wide I fear I’ve really gone too far, messed things up, forever ruined whatever it was that we had.

“Wha—” she begins, uncharacteristically stammering, lost for words she never cared too much to hone.

“Red Banchou, you just fell into my trap!” I force myself to say as my cheeks burn and my thighs squirm between her calves. “I’ve pushed out the Seed of Corruption inside you! Soon you shall be… Black Banchou!”

Please don’t laugh, please don’t laugh, please don’t laugh…

“Aaaah! I can feel it! It burns! It buuuuuuuuuurnsssssss!”

…

I don’t know if the laughter would have been less painful.

Because Ayane’s writhing on top of me, clenching her sleeveless arm as if trying to contain a great evil sealed inside of it (yes, she’s made me watch far too much old-school anime), and she has managed to, somehow, make her cap fly off.

And her hips are grinding down on me with every over-exaggerated twist of her muscular body, twists that ripple up her well-defined abs in a way that makes me crave to run my fingers over them, her legs pressing around me, her thighs rubbing on my too thin leotard and bare thighs, and her breasts sway from side to side as the gaps between bandages flash me ever-growing patches of mesmerizing, tan skin.

So, between the ridiculous display that is a worthy successor to my own, and the incredibly attractive killing machine gyrating on top of me…

Right. I’m about to overheat.

Again.

… I swear, none of the others can be dealing with half as many mortifying emotional landmines. It’s just not possible.

And then her bare hand slams beside my head, hard enough to raise a cloud of gray stone dust.

And Ayane’s wild grin is once again directed at me.

It’s just… different.

“Your plan backfired, Princess Moonbeam,” she says, almost growling, yet again reminding me of the time I made her wear a tiger-woman costume to a party.

I’ve had… sessions with those memories.

“H—how so?” I answer, swallowing the lump in my throat that shouldn’t be there, because what kind of kinesics protocols includes lumps in my throat!

“The seed. It’s taken hold of the darkness in my heart, yes, but I’m not Black Banchou,” she pauses dramatically, a sharp nail that is reinforced polymer in meat-space tilting my chin up. “No, when I’m with you, no matter how dark the feelings that stir in my chest, then I am… Love Banchou!”

…

It takes everything I have not to laugh in her face.

Thankfully, she helps me by kissing me roughly enough that gravel digs into my scalp right before her tongue pushes past my lips and I stop noticing anything else.

Not until I feel my leotard stretch as she pulls and tears, not until I feel warm, rough hands glide up my belly, briefly stopping before reaching my bare breasts until I grab her hair and pull her down against me, kissing her harder until she gets the message and finally grabs my tits and makes even more sparks go off behind my closed eyelids.

Her hips grind down on me, so I angle my own hips up and grind back.

And she, in a glorious, perfect moment I’ll do anythingto protect, groans in pleasure into my hungry mouth.

And then our clothes fly off in tatters as our respectively enhanced bodies just go wild in our search for more points of contact, more ways to taste the other’s skin and touch, more ways to just feel, together and whole.

I finally open my eyes when I find myself above her, grabbing her hands and pushing them down by the side of her head as she looks at me with a hunger that makes me melt, her round, incredible breasts dewed with sweat I yearn to taste.

I don’t like it.

No, I do. My pulse’s racing, roaring, but…

She should be the one holding me.

She should do everything she wants to my helpless body. Should be free to act, free to…

To not shiver in the corner of a black marble floor, wearing a red silk gown she protested against because it left very few places for her to hide any weapons.

Being weak, helpless, and hurt.

Needing me.

She isn’t talking, just staring up at me with those emerald eyes of hers, those feline things that gleam in the dark, because she doesn’t care for stealth and likes the intimidating effect of a retina that reflects light back out.

And my chest clenches at that, at the naked vulnerability of her letting me hold her down after… after whatever it was that marked her before she left the place she was born in.

…

I am so gonna regret this…

“Ah!” I exclaim, throwing my head back and making my breasts bounce all over the place. “Your... Your power! It’s too strong, Love Banchou; I feel my own strength fleeing me,” I continue, in the most undignified, overdramatic performance I’ll ever give, covering my eyes and forehead with the back of my hand before dropping lifelessly on top of Ayane’s cushioning breasts. “I am… helpless before you,” I continue, almost muffled by the quivering flesh my face’s smothered in.

It takes Ayane a moment to react.

And then she hugs me as she sits on the floor, her tattered coat acting as an improvised blanket beneath us as she pets my long, shiny hair out of the pigtails she’d forced on me.

And then, without saying anything, she lifts me up into a silencing kiss as she stands up.

Her hand grabs my ass, fingers sinking into me as she holds me to her body, as our breasts flatten against each other, and she walks to the small roof tower.

And she presses me against the wall, holding me up as my legs go around her, and she finally pauses in our kiss to look down at me, her eyes still gleaming, still intense enough to send a fearful thrill up my spine that I welcome with all my heart.

Because this is how Ayane should be: strong, in control.

Above me.

“Your…” her tone wavers, and I see her throat bob as she also swallows something we shouldn’t have to deal with. “Your heart is wavering. I’ll… I’ll lend you my strength to steady it,” she says.

And sinks down to her knees.

I want to scream, to protest, to tell her that’s not her place.

But her strong hands are holding me in place, against the rough plaster behind my bare back, and her breath burns against my wet inner thighs, and she’s leaning forward, and—

Oh fuck.

I have to cover my mouth with both hands when her tongue peeks out and tastes me, when she finally decides that I’m worth her attention in this way as well as in all the others, and her strength is the only thing keeping me up as strange, unwelcome tears brim at the corner of my eyes when she leans forward and her lips engulf my sex before they narrow down around my clitoris and suck.

And then, despite my hands, I scream.

Her fingers tighten on my thighs, hard enough I would bruise if I was a real woman and this was the real world.

And just that idea? Just the notion of Ayane’s strength markingme?

It makes my hips jerk forward, it makes me bite my lip, it makes me drench her chin.

When I manage to look down, she’s staring up at me, her gleaming eyes shining between my heaving breasts, and, once she catches my eye, once she sees how… captive I am, they narrow in a joy I’ll never understand, but will keep trying to inspire.

And her tongue pokes at my prisoner clitoris, at the synthetic bundle of flesh and nerves between her lips, and she starts rhythmically tapping it with increasing strength and tempo as my body squirms entirely out of my control, just following the bursts of pleasure she gives me as they start becoming a single, prolonged cadence of fireworks behind my fluttering eyelids.

I want… I want to tell her so much, so many things. I want to reassure her, to beg her to stay, to tell her I won’t be this selfish next time if she lets me have a next time, and that I’ll care for her however she wants me.

But… But I also just want her to do whatever she feels like doing. To let her go at her own pace, and to never have to see her shivering on a toilet’s floor ever again.

So I close my eyes as I let her bring me higher and higher, and only after a few moments do I realize she’s doing just that, that Ayane is standing up, pushing me up the wall until my head crests the roof, and I am free to thrash around as hard as I want to, to send my hair flying while I moan and scream my pleasure at the top of my lungs in this empty world just for the two of us.

And then I come, harder than I ever have by myself, even the few times I dared to do it while thinking about Ayane’s tanned skin beaded with sweat pushing me down against my mattress.

It… It shakes me up. It makes me lose track of time, of… of everything.

And I come down to find my thighs tightly wrapped around Ayane’s head and my fingers clutching her short, red hair.

And, as I look down at her, at the slightly bewildered look in her eyes as she realizes what she’s done to me, I do the only thing I can think of:

I fall.

Lifelessly, devoid of all strength, I let myself fall forward, over her head, unbalancing her.

Except she’s Ayane.

And so, she shifts below me, her knees flexing just that much faster than my falling body as she shifts her weight around and her hands on my legs make me spin in mid-air so I fall into her grasp in a princess carry that has me draped over twin, thick, muscled arms that I never want to let me go.

My proprioception is the best money can buy, precisely because it’s a key component in enacting the unfair advantage of my kinesics library, and so I’m perfectly aware of the way my neck stretches when I let my head fall back, of the naked, right arm lying on my belly and right below my breasts, and of the languid, graceful way in which my left arm falls lifelessly by my side even as my legs are supported by Ayane’s embrace.

Then, with what looks like a supreme effort, I open my eyes, slowly blinking them wider and wider, yet still letting them remain lidded and drowsy.

“Red… Red Banchou? What happened?” I tell her, my voice just the right amount of confused and tired.

And she smiles a quivering thing as her fingers tighten below my knee and around my ribs, almost reaching my pale, quivering breasts.

“Nothing, Princess Moonbeam. You battled magnificently,” she tells me, her tone, for once, quiet even while in her ridiculous character.

And she leans down and kisses my forehead with a tenderness that makes me giddy all over again.

Then she sits down, her back against the wall, my body cradled against hers, and, beneath a lonely moon, we pretend to fall asleep.

***

Guinevere Ginosko

“They are going to get themselves killed,” I mutter for the hundredth time as I think about my reckless sisters and gnaw at my thumb’s fingernail.

Damnit. This one was expensive. It had nail art.

…

Already ruined, may as well indulge myself.

“Surely, you’re overexaggerating, Mistress?” Claire says as she puts a steaming teacup in front of me, the white porcelain softly clacking over the mahogany of my desk as her white apron barely whispers over her black maid uniform.

“I… I haven’t asked for tea,” I weakly protest, just to see her arch that fascinating, silver eyebrow that could entrance me all by itself.

That those steel-gray eyes of hers are staring right through me is just yet another unfair advantage she holds against me.

“Mistress, you put me in charge of your wellbeing, did you not?” she says, her tone knee-weakening stern.

I lick my lips and, with nervous eyes I’m perfectly aware of, give her a minute nod.

“Then drink your damn tea, Mistress.”

It takes some effort to suppress the moan that fights up my throat as I pick up the cup and take a small sip.

And then there’s only darkness.

***

I wake up to find myself on my knees, dressed in the skimpiest, sluttiest version imaginable of a maid’s uniform. The apron is cut just below my breasts, the frilly edge fashioned as if to be a small shelf to display my bare chest on, the skirt so short it ends right in the middle of my ass, only my black, lace g-string protecting what little is left of my modesty.

The only thing remotely normal about it is the headpiece. Because it’s the very same one Claire wears when she’s performing her domestic duties rather than assisting me in my office.

“The floor’s dirty, Gin,” her sharp voice tells me as I look up from my bare knees over the green carpet to look at Claire wearing my black pantsuit with so much aplomb nobody would ever guess it had been perfectly tailored to fit me.

That always sends a burst of warmth between my legs.

“I’m sorry, Mistress. Please, allow this lowly maid to properly make up for her carelessness,” I tell her, the line well-practiced yet still thrilling.

And I bow and crawl on my knees, swaying my bare, almost naked ass from side to side as I approach her, as I come toward the towering self of the silver-haired woman who makes me quiver with an arched eyebrow.

Until her bare toes pressing down right above my forehead stop me and force me to keep looking at the carpet that is, despite her assertions, pristinely immaculate, but that, if she keeps this up, will soon be drenched with my drool.

“I wonder whether I should. You make too many mistakes, Gin,” she repeats my pet name, the one she and only she is allowed to use. “Your Mistress wonders if you have any ulterior motives for being this… sloppy.”

My throat tightens.

“I’ve… I’ve just been… distracted, Mistress,” I tell her.

“Oh? How so?” she says, the dainty tip of her foot playing with the root of my bangs in soothing, circular caresses.

“It’s… a family matter, Mistress. I wouldn’t want to bore you with the details,” I tell her, trying to think of the best way to avoid the issue and just let our little play go further as I let her command me, take all control away, take all responsibility away.

Her foot leaves my hair, and I almost cry out in protest.

And then I see her bare feet right in front of my eyes, and she kneels down, her legs spread at each side of my head as the thin black pants barely stretch around her shapely thighs.

And then she grabs my chin and forces me to look up at unforgiving steel beneath silver, arched eyebrows, and I rub my own thighs together.

“You don’t get to decide where my interests lie. Now, tell me about your sisters. Properly.”

And I do.

Held between her harsh grip and harsher eyes, I tell her about Theresa’s childish recklessness, how she’s so set on ignoring our advice even if she should know it’s precisely the very same she would give if she had lived our lives. I tell her about Clarissa yet again being a contrarian just for the sake of it, how I suspect she has some kind of blackmail on someoneif she’s feeling so secure in her constant provocations. I tell her about Rebecca and Francesca scheming between one another yet again, their plots just daring enough that they may cross the line any day when the latest movie flops or our contract with the military is put in jeopardy despite their past successes.

I tell her about Patricia and how weird she’s been lately, how she’s acting so unlike herself ever since she hired that hunk of muscle she carries around like personal luggage.

“Ayane says he isn’t arcology,” Claire finally says as my rant winds down.

“What? But his documents—”

“As if one of you couldn’t fake any ID needed to work for Ginosko faster than a human can think to check for it. No, Ayane’s sure. It’s the way he moves, how he looks around. He keeps checking for things, keeps trying to be aware of what goes on around him while also trying not to stare too much, not to catch the attention of others. She says if he was military, he wouldn’t bother with that second part, and that’s about the only background where one develops the kind of wariness he has if you’re born in an arcology.”

I stop, briefly looking at her with all the confusion my maid self isn’t supposed to feel. Because I have Mistress, and that’s the only certainty I need.

Thinking is her job.

Her eyes narrow, and her grip on my chin tightens.

“What does that tell you, Gin?”

I hesitate to answer, and she leans down until our noses almost touch.

“That… That my sister lied and has brought in somebody she doesn’t want us to know about?”

“Correct. And what do you think about that?”

“That Patricia… She’s smart. Her hardware is the same as any of us, but she has another way of thinking, more… focused? Goal-driven. Patricia’s goal-driven.”

“And you aren’t?”

I worry at my lip, and I…

“I just want to keep them safe…” I mutter, casting my eyes down.

And she pulls me up and kisses me.

As tender as she always is when she lets the façade slip, as caring as her fingers threading through my hair as she slowly pulls me back up to my feet, never breaking contact, never letting my lips go without hers.

I feel the smile upon them, the giddy, silly thing I always feel when the play reaches this point, when all the harshness and discipline ends, and I can just let go between her arms.

Except… I haven’t earned it. Not today.

“Mistress, I…” I tell her, pulling away the barest amount I need to let out the words.

“You have work to do,” she says, cutting me off.

And I can’t help biting my lip. Because it’s not over. Not yet.

“Of course… Mistress,” I tell her, picking up the sides of my micro-skirt and doing a perfectly elegant, utterly obscene curtsy that showcases the barest hint of my drenched thong.

She condescendingly pats my cheek and turns around, her hips swaying to the mesmerizing cadence of her walk as the fabric of her borrowed pants stretches over an ass that is unfairly sublime, with just the right amount of muscle to be firm and shapely.

Then she goes behind my desk, with me following right behind her, and she bends down at her hips, and the pants suffer that much more as I, yet again, bite the corner of my lip.

Are lips supposed to be this sensitive? I always wonder whether they miscalibrated mine, because I can’t conceive of a regular person feeling the kind of thrill I do at the slightest stimulation Claire deigns to offer me and remaining able to focus on anything else.

And what better way to showcase my utter distraction than my gormless blinking at Claire facing me with a bucket and a stepladder?

“Mistress? What am I—”

“The windows are dirty. Fix that,” she tells me, her tone as rigid as any man would be when looking at her when she’s like this.

I sometimes wonder… But I’ll leave that to Patricia.

And so I repeat my former curtsy, forcing myself not to smirk when I catch Claire looking at what is further revealed by my gesture, and, without saying anything that could spoil the mood, I take the stepladder and set it in front of my immaculate, stain-resistant, ceiling-to-floor window. The one behind my desk.

The one that faces the whole arcology.

It’s… Nobody would dare fly this close to a Ginosko Tower. Aside from the legal ramifications, there are the security ones, which are slightly more likely to become lethal.

There are no buildings as tall as us. We are on top of the pyramid, and everybody else sprawls beneath us in amber, flickering, moving lights.

But… But it’s still a window. And it still faces the world.

And so, on my Mistress's orders, I take a hesitant step up the ladder, the bucket with soapy water hanging from my left wrist as if it didn’t weigh more than an empty one. Then I realize the issue.

“Misstres? There’s just… water,” I don’t ask, don’t question. I just bring her attention to the possible issue.

Because she has the answers.

She. Not I.

I rub my thighs at the thought, at the sheer freedom it brings me.

“You have all you need,” she says, in that tone that is almost a whisper, that runs up my spine like rough, possessive fingers.

And she takes my bucket, scoops a handful of soapy, sud-filled water, and slowly dribbles it over my bare breasts.

I allow myself to gasp at the cold sensation, at the trickling droplets that run between my cleavage and over my nipples before drizzling down over the very same carpet she accused me of neglecting. I clenchwhen I look down and see suds and bubbles over my glistening skin, caught in the gooseflesh.

I moan when she does it again.

“Get to washing, Gin,” she says. And I could cum at that voice.

So I turn around to face the window and clasp my breasts in front of the frilly shelf my apron displays them in before I lean forward and press them against the glass.

I can see a flying car in the distance. My eyes are good enough to know the model, one of ours, but not good enough to know where the driver’s looking.

I suppress a whimper and flatten my breasts against the cold glass.

“Good. You’re a good maid, Gin, aren’t you?”

“Only… Only if you think I am, Mistress,” I manage to answer as I feel juices overflowing from my panties and running down my thighs, almost as copious as the water Claire yet again scoops out of the bucket and between my breasts.

I move my entire body to draw circles of foam and bubbles on the glass in front of me, and my eyelids flutter as my eyes roll back.

Then Mistress runs feather-soft fingertips over the inside of my thighs, and, just at the right moment, swerves to the side, drawing them along the line that separates my left leg from my cheek, slightly digging into the sensitive skin.

I am panting, gasping, drawing air in like an overheated nymphomaniac.

I love it.

I love her.

So I look down at the glass. Not in front of me, to meet the reflected eyes of a woman who always has to appear to be in control lest our handlers decide somebody else needs to be. Not at the wanton parody of a maid. Not at Guinevere Ginosko.

I look down, to see Claire’s eyes as she looks as in control as I ever wanted to be before I realized that I didn’t want that at all. I look at the woman who knew me before I did. I look at the Mistress I serve.

The one I love.

She lifts my micro-skirt slightly before she forces me up two steps on the ladder, all just so she doesn’t have to bend down when she kisses the side of my ass without her reflection ever breaking eye contact with me.

I shudder. I can’t help it.

Then the points up and forward, and I look back at Guinevere.

Except she isn’t there. No, all I see in front of me, in the reflection overlaid with the skyline of the arcology below us, is… Gin.

I smile at her.

And Mistress pulls me down.

There’s a brief moment of disorientation as my senses kick in and time slows down, all of my emergency routines making the moments trickle as I tilt back and the window gives way to the ceiling in my eyes.

I could ask why.

I could ask Claire if she wants to hurt me, if she thinks I deserve it.

I could ask if this is about Meredith, about the sister I failed, the one thing I can’t ever make right.

I don’t.

I just… Let my arms and legs go limp in this sluggish time, this fluid, almost frozen fall. I feel my back curve, my knees bend, my fingers spread, as if trying to savor the air slowly rushing through them.

And then, in a moment nobody but my sisters and I could perceive with such pristine clarity, strong arms catch me, barely yielding as they hold me. And I look up at Claire.

She leans down and kisses my brow.

“You’ve worked enough for today,” she says.

I can feel tears asking to be let out, my body and mind synchronized so fully I’m barely in time to stop them, and I burrow my flushed face on Claire’s chest.

And she brings me to my desk, sitting on my chair as she keeps holding me with both her arms and her eyes.

Then she kisses me, on my lips, and I yet again wonder if that’s how it’s supposed to feel, if this overwhelming rush of pleasure, tenderness, yearning, and fire is what everyone feels when their Claire gently brushes their lips with barely any pressure, just letting skin meet skin. I wonder if everyone feels this, even if they don’t have their own Claire.

I didn’t. Not till she met me.

Then her agile fingers trail between my naked, soapy breasts, down my apron, and tug on the side of my thong, releasing a catch I hadn’t known was there.

“You need to relax, Gin,” she tells me, steel eyes still hard, still unyielding. But it’s not armor: it’s a dagger. It’s something pointed at my heart that never fails to reach it, to stab me with her very self.

I’ve never even thought to resist her.

“Is… Is that an order, Mistress?” I allow myself to ask. Not because I doubt her, but because I need her to say it.

“Yes, Gin, that’s an order. And, as I know what’s best for you, you’ll relax by lying still and letting me play with your body until all thoughts about your sisters stop cluttering that beautiful mind of yours.”

If anybody else said this to me? I would laugh. I would lose my outward composure and laugh until my body told me a regular human would be out of breath, and then I would keep laughing for another minute, just to drive home how utterly ridiculous the notion is.

She’s Claire.

So I allow my body to fall yet again, to completely relax in her arms.

She kisses my eyelids closed, and my whole world becomes her touch and her scent, that almost masculine hint of that cologne she likes. Always cologne, never perfume.

I catch a hint of pear and sandalwood, and then her lips drift down from my eyes to my lips as her fingers draw a spiral over my left breast, constantly drawing nearer to my achingly hard nipple until I feel the need to move, to contradict her orders just so I can force her to touchme.

She reads me. She always does.

And so she lets go of my breast and drives her wet, soapy fingers up my pussy.

I clench and shiver as soon as she parts my lips, and then my mouth falls open, and her tongue makes sure both sets of lips are taken, that I’m completely at her mercy as I try to keep myself relaxed and still but can’t help but quiver over her lap and beneath her touch.

And she’s all I can think about. All that what she always says is a beautiful mind can try to grasp, even if not in totality, because she’s Claire, and there’s not enough processing power in the world to fully understand what she means to me.

It takes me moments to start cumming, and I don’t stop until she orders me to.

And, by then, I’m not able to do anything but smile up at her and reach a trembling hand to her cheek that she holds in place before turning and kissing my palm, not even punishing me for opening my eyes before she instructed me to. Because she’s let the mask slip, and her tenderness and care are now setting steel aside.

I guess I’ll have to find another time to make her discipline me.

***

Clarissa Ginosko

“Have you put on weight?” I ask Mike in a casual, dismissive, and actually rude tone.

And then he spanks my bare ass so hard I feel it travel up my pussy and to my dangling, bare breasts as he shifts his weight above me, as if trying to get more comfortable on my naked back as he forces me to strain on my hands and knees so that he remains entirely stable.

God, he’s so hot.

“Since when do chairs speak?” he asks in an obvious trap, his deep, rough voice not half as dismissive as he tries to make it sound while some movie or another goes unwatched in the display in front of him.

Of course, I do what I always do with obvious traps: spring them to see what comes out.

“Ever heard of a chair protesting under someone’s weight? Well, darling, maybe if you went to the gym from time to time—”

This time, the spank is hard enough I can’t hold back the moan.

God, yes. He always knows how to make me drenched.

The ever-present danger of having my mind erased is also a bit of a turn-on, I must admit.

“Well, as you insist on being so talkative,” he says, his hand briefly cupping my still quivering cheeks before trailing down to my wet, eager sex, “how about you tell me about your meeting?” he finishes with a casual, careless, disaffected tone.

Shit.

“What? You want to talk about that drag? Come on, about the only funny thing that happened is just how riled up I managed to get the Queen and the Brat.”

“Those are Guinevere and Theresa, aren’t they?”

And the tone is distracted, disinterested enough that I just know this is being recorded and about to be shared with someone whom I wouldn’t like showing my most whorish self to.

Bastard.

And damn analysts. I swear, if I ever learn which of them keeps being charged with combing through my pillow talk…

“Yeah. Queenie still has that stick so far up her arse it will need to be surgically removed—or we can just wait a bit more and hope it gets digested. And the Brat is still playing with her dollies and trying to pretend they somehow matter at all. Really, a Ginosko sister heading an idol division? Just how wasteful are you guys going to be with us?” I ask him.

Him.

Michael Harwright. One of the founders of Ginosko. Which means he’s a contemporary and peer of Elizabeth Belloch, the closest thing all of us have to a mother.

He swears he never did anything inappropriate with her, but, really, the way he reacted the one time I called him daddy… I am not entirely sure.

He got… intense.

And his body is his just because he paid for all of it, one piece at a time. The only one of the founders to risk messing with biomods at the start of it all. The only one to survive.

And, for some reason, this pile of muscles around a brain old enough to need constantly induced neurogenesis and external backups decided to choose me to be his eyes and ears between my sisters.

And I was stupid enough to think I… should be.

Never again. Not after Meredith.

I can still enjoy the kinky sex, though.

“We will be as wasteful with you as we can afford to be. And don’t underestimate the Idol Division: they make far more money than projections suggested. Really, it’s as if those morons have forgotten what it was like before…”

He drifts off, and I can imagine his displeased frown as he realizes what he was about to say.

“You just forgot they weren’t even born before that thing you were about to reference, didn’t you?” I tell him, my tone as insolent as can be, as provocative as I can make it.

Something that makes him get up, grab my hips, and ram his perfectly engineered cock up my very expensive derriere.

And, after having been teased for the past hour with harsh spankings and harsher words, it’s no surprise that I come as soon as his hips smack against my already abused, reddened cheeks hard enough to make me open my mouth in a silent gasp that soon becomes a loud keening of agonizing pleasure.

He’s a marvelous, fantastic fuck, and he plays my body as if he designed it himself—which he may have, because those patents are highlyconfidential.

I just wish I could ignore the part of me that wishes I could crush his throat and enjoy seeing the life drain out of his eyes.

Look, enforced loyalty and cognitive dissonance are a bitch to deal with, you know?

But, at least, I can enjoy him leaning over my stiff back—because I’m still a chair, and chairs don’t move, even if they moan like a slut being railed by the thickest cock she can take—, I can bite my lip at how marvelously tight, almost painful, his grasp on my swaying breasts becomes whenever he bottoms out inside of me, and I can roll my eyes back in sheer ecstasy at knowing two key things:

That he hasn’t called me ‘Riss’ since years ago, when he made me shamefully cry just by uttering that syllable that had meant so much to me until he hurt my sister.

And that he hasn’t asked me about Patricia.

You go, sis! Pull whatever twisted-up, Machiavellian scheme you’re planning to; I’ll make sure to cover up for you by being an infuriating brat who needs to be disciplined by the roughest dickings Micky can deliver.

I am such a noble soul. Really. I better get something obscenely expensive come Christmas.

Or a chorus of exasperated groans. That also works.

***

Patricia Ginosko

He came over for a movie.

A small, everyday, normal thing. No hacking, no roleplay, no conspiracy to hide my incoming freedom from my own sisters. Just… a movie.

And he’s leaning back on my couch, his pants around his knees, his mouth open in a wordless moan as I lay across the same white couch, my cheek resting on his lap, his hand on my hair, and his cock in my mouth.

I suck on it, delighting in taking away even just another drop of his salty precum as I lap at him, my lips a tight ring just below his cock’s head and my lungs working overtime to keep sucking without any interruption, even if it’s been five minutes since I started doing my best hoover impression.

And then he manages to get a hold on himself and looks down at me, into my eyes, with that adoring, heart-melting tenderness of his, the one he always hides behind wit and quips, and…

And it’s all I wanted from a normal, quiet evening inside.

With my loving boyfriend.

Even if he still won’t admit it outside of sex.

***

Meredith Ginosko

The lights of the arcology fall down around me in the narrow, amber bands that manage to filter through the blinds of the floor-to-ceiling windows in my office.

They are barely enough to contrast the glow of my laptop.

I could do without it. Just lie down on my bed, close my eyes, and dive into the perfect office environment, the most soothing, relaxed, efficient place the Hive can dream up for me.

Instead, I’m half-sitting on my leather sofa with my left foot on the cushion, my raised thigh keeping my laptop’s keyboard at an angle that, while far from optimal, is almost restful after hours of being hunched over the damn thing.

About the only thing I control with my mind is the cursor. Because fuck touchpads.

I hate them. With a passion.

And navigating a spreadsheet manually sounds like the kind of torture I’m trying to avoid by staying in here until three in the morning.

I just… I don’t want to go home.

The apartment is perfect. Just what I think my ideal home should be like, and almost identical to Guinevere’s own, from that one time I went to visit. It isn’t that surprising, seeing what we are, but it was still a bit eerie to see.

Except… Guinevere was happy. She was a bit bubbly before she noticed and bashfully put on her harsher façade, but in that short time, I could see just how at ease she felt in her own apartment, her own space.

I’ve never felt like that.

The house is empty in a way that scares me, as if every silence was a bit too deep, as if it was there to conceal a sound I can’t be aware of. And, when I get up in the middle of the night like I always do, when I try to walk around the apartment to calm down, the shadows keep hinting at absent shapes.

They keep moving.

It… It terrifies me. Not just because of the eerie feelings, which would be more than enough to make me dread going through that door, but because… Because I’m a Ginosko sister.

Because I wasn’t born: I was made.

And what if I was… defective?

What if I was something other than the stellar example of the very best our AI department can offer? What if I was a product that should’ve never made it out of the production plant? What if all those faulty, eerie, terrifying feelings are just the signs of a personality unspooling, every facet of my self going back to lifeless code until there’s nothing left of me?

What if I die?

With a loud clack that echoes in the silent, gloomy office, I close my laptop.

And then I stand up and walk.

My office is safer.

Safer. Not safe.

Because I always could swear there are things out of place. That I always leave my purse on top of my desk, but that’s not its proper place, and it has to, somehow, move by itself toward the perch behind the door.

It never does. It just stubbornly stays on top of my mahogany desk until the day ends, and I sadly pick it up, sure there’s something wrong with it still being there.

I shake my head, trying to banish the ridiculous notion of moving accessories, and approach the window, spreading the gap between Venetian blinds with fingers that would tremble if I was a real woman and didn’t need to fear all of my life being the product of faulty coding.

The arcology sprawls beneath me, the terraces spreading in the steep decline of the tallest pyramid ever built, never sleeping, always shining with the light of humanity working.

I remember fancying we were working to reclaim what was lost, back then. Back before the feelings started, before the ghosts in my code came to haunt me.

I remember feeling hopeful, happy, thinking we would do it. That, together, we could reach what had been lost. That there would be pristine seas and deep forests yet again, and I could explore them and lose myself in the silence of nature, far away from the beacon of the arcology, but still carrying its light.

It was a hopeful, happy dream.

And, as I always do after I look down and remember that innocent happiness, I look back at my desk and search for a photo frame that isn’t there, that can’t be there, that has never been there.

I look for the ghost that haunts my office.

And I can almost hear a rough, tender voice whispering ‘Mer.’