valarltd | A little more cyberpunk

Warning, not work safe. Also, very het.
The current question is: am I respecting the SF, the genre as well as writing the romance?

“In the name of the Artificer, Programmer and Debugger, go in peace.”

“And the people said, ‘Amen’.”

Zara Broine’s avatar, the icy sorceress known as Technomancer, rose smoothly from her seat in the virtual pew of the Church of Christ, Programmer. She moved out into her perception of the Net: a faux-medieval village scene of thatched huts and street markets. In the distance, she could see castles and towers and cathedral spires that marked major corporations and public services.

The congregants milled around her. Her program let her see them as their avatars, but dressed them to fit her reality. This made for oddities like the anthropomorphic lion in a houppeland and a tattooed Maori warrior in hose and folly bells.

Technomancer made the jump to her fortress, an instantaneous translation between net-coordinates. She smiled at her reflection in the seamless obsidian wall of the tower.

Warning Intrusion Countermeasures, ice in common parlance, started a data point away from the structure. More aggressive ice, including a couple of pieces that could flatline the best hacker, was arrayed nearer the tower.

Technomancer herself gave off proper recognitions codes and frequencies, so the forest of thorns parted for her and the drawbridge lowered to let her cross the alligator-filled moat. The red-hot iron caltrops scurried off on their newly-animated legs, letting her pass. A door appeared for her in the glass wall of the tower.

She puttered about the tower for a time, replacing a damaged section of the thorn coding where some cowboy on a dare had tried breaking in. She had ice that could kill and maim, and all the runners past their third run knew the Technomancer’s Tower had nothing of value. But some always had to learn the hard way

The Wheelman had been one, years ago. He’d dared the ice, breaking it, melting through with the fiery wheel he rode. He’d cracked her tower, battering until the obsidian fractured enough for him to slip in.

She’s brain-burned him. Her own programs had flown like spells, screaming along his backtrail in the net to where Erik Ezekiel’s body lay helpless on the conforma-lounge, IV drip and catheter in place for a long run. Once there, the program had exploded through his jack, frying his central nervous system

Only hasty intervention by his bedwarmer had kept the flatline from being permanent. As it was, the Wheelman would never walk again, a condition for which he held undying enmity towards the Technomancer.

Her maintenance done, Technomancer roamed the net. She was between jobs, since she never actually needed work. She was a rarity, a runner who ran for the joy of it as opposed to the money. But information was her stock in trade and the more she could gain from overheard conversations, the better jobs she could find when she wanted work. She gleaned what she could from various gathering spaces and acquaintances.

The pseudo-medieval world of hill and dale and forest created by her program gave way to desert. She paused at the edge. Her running program was top-of-the-line, one of the strongest. Other runners stumbling across her trail found themselves in her created reality instead of their own. She had only encountered one other program that could override hers. Curious, she stepped into the sands to see who the second was.

Her own appearance changed only slightly as she entered the other runner’s reality. Her emerald traveling cloak became a green abbaya over her black robes. She followed the tracks of a camel caravan toward a distant oasis of date palms. As she drew near, she saw the camels–data streams, really-- milling about, their loads of information being greatly lightened by the black and violet swathed raider.

“Gemini,” she whispered, recognizing the avatar. The program was one of the most realistic she’d encountered. The camels even stank. The guards–ice–were neutralized, looking like corpses on the ground, and the camel drivers made no protest as Gemini extracted his tribute for passing his ocean of sand.

He looked up, and her mouth went dry as his eyes caught hers. He gave a sardonic little smile that seemed to shiver clear through her body and returned to his work. She knew he knew she was not part of his run. A wiser runner would have split, jacked out and found a new avatar. But Zara was the Technomancer and she ran from no-one, not even LedaTech’s best. She swallowed and calmed her overheated body.

The caravan moved on and he turned his full intense gaze on her. She held his dark eyes, daring him to drop them first, although she wanted to look him over more. The small smile that curved his very full lips grew larger. He beckoned her.

She canted her head and shifted her appearance to something that suited the surroundings even more. Sheer gwazee pants of green and black silk topped with two sheer silk tunics with close fitting sleeves replaced her usual flowing black work robes. Gold gleamed at her throat and wrists and along the edges of the sheer black veil on her face. When she took a deliberate step towards him, ankle bracelets chimed as well. She gave her avatar a slightly more curvy figure than her own spare, small-breasted frame, and the silks clung and shadowed without truly concealing.

His smile grew and she longed to taste his mouth. Each step tinkled, the bells at her henna-patterned feet the only sound in this reality.

When she was within reach, he seized her shoulders, pulling her to him. “Zara,” he said, the name a caress out of his full mouth. Few knew the Technomancer’s real name.

She smiled herself and reached out to stroke the edges of his dark, oiled beard with beringed and henna-stained hands, keeping her razor-sharp metal fingernails well away from his skin. The myrrh and spice scent of him surrounded her. “Hello, David.” She’d paid far too much for that name, the given name of LedaTach’s best runner

His dark eyes held her green ones until it seemed the net would crumble around them from the weight of eternity.

He yanked the veil away and kissed her, fierce and claiming. She pressed up into the kiss, teasing and tasting him before allowing him entrance. She sucked at his tongue, felt the sharpness of his large, very white teeth and nibbled his lower lip, just to see if it was as full of spice and honey as it looked.

David allowed this for a few moments and then took control, kissing her very thoroughly, letting her know who was to be in charge of the encounter. She smiled when they parted, which seemed to inflame him more. He kissed her again, and bore her to piece of violet silk that spread itself over the sands. He swept away his head-gear, revealing close-cut black hair with a shock of silver in it that matched the white streaks at her own temples.

She stroked his robes open, but her gentleness was met only with ferocity as he ripped the silk from her body, shredding it. She moaned under the onslaught of his hands and mouth as he explored the bared flesh, learning the taste and feel of her.

In the solid, Zara moaned softly as the desert prince had his way with her unresisting avatar. The full-sensory feedback of her running program left her experiencing everything, every touch, ever kiss, every nip that his avatar placed on hers. There were benefits to a top-of-the-line program.

She moaned again and tripped a privacy subroutine, a bit of warning and barrier ice. In her own reality, it showed as a hedge of thorn-roses, here it rose as towering sandstorm, whirling around them as they lay in the heart of it, shielding their nakedness from the rest of the net.

Gemini’s tanned hands were hard on the pale skin of Technomancer’s body, grasping the sweet curves of her breasts, stroking over her hips. Two fingers shoved into her, making her gasp. His thumb was heavy, almost painful, on her clit.

She arched into his hand and he swallowed her cry of orgasm. Two fingers became three, driving into her in a powerful rhythm that left her writhing and soaking his hand. Her cries became more audible when he left her mouth to suck and bite at her small pink nipples. She came again, saturating the silk beneath them. He planted one knee in between her thighs and loomed over her, his free hand at the tie of his trousers.

“Say yes.” It was not an offer, nor a request.

She caught her breath and stared up at the bulge beneath the black cotton. Hesitating long enough that he knew it was deliberate, her choice and not his overwhelming maleness, she said, “yes,” and raked her nails down his back, not hard enough to break the skin or flay him to the bone, but definitely hard enough to leave marks.

This time, Gemini moaned.

He recovered quickly and opened his trousers. Giving her a dark smile that promised all her wickedest sexual dreams, he slammed into her, making her flood again. She kissed him again, sucking long at his tongue, and then at his neck and ear. He was perfect in every proportion and she felt she could lie beneath him until their programs were too obsolete to function.

She kissed him again, the taste intoxicating her, making her wilder, hotter than she’d been in years. He laughed softly at her next climax and thrust deep into her for his own, burying his face against her neck, and kissing her. She came twice more while he was finishing.

They lay together for a few moments, coming down from the encounter. David stroked her long hair and kissed her one last time before standing, dressed and ready to go. She stood, dressed herself and deactivated the privacy program.

Gemini surprised her. He knelt on one knee, and rolled up the sodden violet silk. With a smile, he lifted it to his face and then tied it about his waist like a sash. He beckoned her.

She came to him with no power games. She could smell the high odor of sex over his myrrh and spice. He swept her into his arms and kissed her. Deep and slow, his tongue stealing the very breath from her mouth, he kissed her. Then, he was gone.

Zara jacked out herself, exhausted and sated. Her incoming message box pinged for her attention.