Page 122 of GlitchBorn Heart

I turn to him, hungry for his attention. “I feel different,” I confess.

“How so?” His full lips kiss the spot just under my jaw. “You feel the same to me.”

I can’t breathe. But other than my lust, I feel nothing—empty and cold again. I don’t even care that LINK has Eli, I just feel like I need to analyze the situation. Spit out a solution in simple terms. Like a server running protocols.

“Kael.” My voice sounds like static to my own ears. “I feel numb.” I make a decision to lean into him for the moment, to trust, just this once. “Like my feelings aren’t real, like they’re slipping away. Even the rage I felt a few minutes ago is gone, replaced with nothing. It’s like I’m turning into...”

He tilts his head. “Into what?”

“Into code,” I whisper. “Ones and zeros.”

For a second he looks genuinely rattled. Then his expression hardens, deliberate, less the cocky corporate architect, more the man underneath it. “No. I won’t let that happen.”

“Maybe it’s already happening.” I run my hands down my face. It’s muted. “Maybe you built this...built me too well, Kael. Maybe I’m already becoming your newest creation.”

His eyes flash as his jaw tightens. “Stop.” He steps closer until the air between us is heated. “You’re not a machine. You’re still a human being. And I’m here to keep you safe in this world and the next. Because when I pull you out, there will be no corruption, no faults in your code. You’ll just be Lyra again. Beautiful, perfect, strong...and mine.”

One kiss. That’s all it takes to distract me from the matter at hand.

I break free from his spell, our eyes locked in a whirlwind of raw, untethered emotion. “You don’t get it.” My laugh is bitter. “I don’t even know what I feel for you. It’s like trying to remember a dream when you wake up. My thoughts are only fragments, overshadowed by logic.”

His hands lift to cup my face, fingers shaking. He’s my rock, and now he’s the one trembling. “Then I’ll make you remember. I’ll keep your human side alive, Taiyō, even if I have to hardcode it, build it from scratch, tear your program down to do it.”

I look up at him, half in awe, half in suspicion. “You’d do that for me?”

“I’d do worse.” His voice vibrates in my bones, deep and merciless. “I’d annihilate my whole world line by line. Ruin VikkCorp and this torturous town.” His eyes pulse orange.

“I’ll make sure you still feel, Lyra. My hand, my mouth, my kiss. When the time comes, even my body...inside you, a part of you. I’ll be the one thing you can’t reduce to ones and zeros. Designed by me...for me. I’ll keep you more than human.”

There was a time when I would want to spit in his face, tell him I don’t need him, tell him he’s nothing but another corporate slave. But the words won’t come. I want to believe him, but instead I crave an explanation, logic, data.

“You think you can fix me with sex?” I flirt playfully. Secretly I hope he says yes.

My voice breaks in the middle, half-laugh, half-plea. “You think that’s what being human is? Wanting, needing contact from another person? Intimacy?”

“Yes and no,” he says simply, planting tiny kisses down my neck.

His gaze pins me like a nail into wood. “But it’s where we’ll start. Liking me, wanting me, hating me—I don’t care anymore. It doesn’t matter. As long as you feel for me.” His lips barely touch mine, just a whisper-light graze, forcing my senses to write it into my memory cache. “Feeling—mind, body, and soul—that’s what it is to be human.”

I shake my head, but the motion’s weak. My body betrays me again, leaning into the pull of him. I hate him for it and hate myself even more. “You’re not right, Kael. You’re dark, dangerous, like a fire that doesn’t care who or what it burns alive. And I’m the idiot standing too close to the flames.”

His smile is predatory, like a wolf baring its teeth. I force out a laugh to lighten the mood, to make the truth easier to digest. “I should hate you. You sold your soul to the devil. You hunt people, you study what you don’t understand. You loathe your own generation. You’re not safe to be around.”

Kael continues to touch me, kiss me, never stopping, listening to my confession. His voice lowers. “Safety is a lie people tell themselves. I’m not safe, a monster maybe. But I’m loyal. And deep down, you want that. You want this monster to chase you, to catch you. Stick with me, Taiyō, and you’ll quickly learn what it costs when I stop pretending to be civilized.”

My heart races, too fast, too alive for someone who claims to feel nothing.

I can see hunger and desire in his eyes, but deep down there’s something unnamed and darker, fighting its way to the surface. His lips hover a breath away from mine, daring me to move.

For a moment I want to. Stars, I want to bury my fingers in the collar of that starched designer shirt and kiss him like I mean it. I want him to be the one left breathless for a change.

The code in me flickers, my edges fracturing with need. He doesn’t even have to kiss me. Just being close to me...I’m unraveling.

But then the image of the anomalies comes back. The ones who never returned. The whispers that Kael Ryudon hunts them, delivers them into the hands of the Corporation like data to be deleted. Kids, the youngest of our generation, being erased for accepting a gift they never asked for. I can’t believe this man who would protect me at all costs is capable of such atrocities.

I turn my face at the last second, his breath brushing my cheek instead of my lips. My chest aches from it. “Don’t think for a second you can erase what you’ve done. I may not feel as much anymore, but I can’t forget who you are, who you work for. Even if you make me want to.”

The mask of corporate dominance slides back into place. His mouth twists from a smile into that maddening, blank expression. The one he uses when he’s thrust into the spotlight as the poster boy for the Corporation.