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Power met power again, and with it speed while the new battle raged. When she closed around him, when she shuddered through her release, she dragged him with her through the violence, and into the peace.
She lay faceup, the wind washing over her, the determined beams of sun pulsing red against her closed eyes. The grass, all those rough tufts, made her skin twitch—but it didn’t seem like a good enough reason to move. Particularly since Roarke lay beside her, nearly in the same position.
The clanging of her heart in her ears had slowed and quieted enough so she could hear the continuing war in the valley below them. Apparently, the hillside had come to a truce.
“Who won?” she asked.
“Let’s call it a draw.”
Seemed fair enough. “I guess we’re still a little pissed at each other.”
“I thought it was aggravated.”
“Same thing. But between the fighting and the sex, I worked most of mine off.”
“Then we’ll call that a draw, too.”
What was the point in arguing about it? she asked herself. They’d just start it all up again, and nothing would change what he did, who he was. Nothing would change what she did, who she was.
Sometimes that middle ground between them was narrow and slippery. The trick was figuring out how to navigate it.
“It’s a good game,” she told him. “Realistic, compelling, involving.”
“We barely touched the surface.”
“This.” She touched a hand to her hip, examined the smear on her palm. It looked like blood, felt like it, smelled like it.
“Illusion. It involves sensory enhancement, the scan of your vitals, your physicality, the motions, reactions.”
“What if you cut off a limb—or a head.”
“End of game. Or in multiplayer, end for the player who lost the limb or head.”
“I mean, would you actually feel it, see it?”
“Not the human players. If you were playing the comp, a fantasy figure, and got that kind of hit on it, you’d see it.”
“What about a droid?”
“Well, you could program it to play against a droid. Same results. The droid is solid. Therefore, the game would treat it as it would a human. The weapons aren’t real, Eve. They can’t harm anyone.”
“Which is what the vic would have assumed, whether he played against a human, a droid, or a fantasy character. Just a game. But it wasn’t.” She continued to study the blood on her palm. “I felt the hit—not like a cut, not like you’d just sliced me with a sword—”
“I’d hardly have done so if you would have.”
“But I got a jolt. Like an electric shock. Mild, but strong enough to let me know I’d taken a hit. And it throbbed—when we fought. I was fighting wounded.”
“Which would be the point.”
“I get that. I get it. But the vic had those burns. Up the voltage, you’d get burns.”
“Not without direct contact. The game reads the hit, registers it, transmits it.”
“Okay, but if somebody reprogrammed the game, and used an actual weapon.” She sat up, pushed her hair back—surprised and disconcerted by the length of it.
“It’s different. Your hair.” His gaze ran over it. “Interesting.”
“It gets in the way.”
