Secret Santa Surprise: Book 29 in the Kindred Tales Series - Evangeline Anderson Page 0,68

Bersinian, a Perii or a Toliwog as she found “human” on the long list and clicked on it with her glove. There was the standard fare, erotic stories, mind link personal ads, even feely fantasies that could be hooked directly into your nervous system to give you an intensely pleasurable mind movie that felt exactly like the real thing. Well, almost. Leita knew from bitter experience that nothing but a living, breathing, hot-blooded man in your bed felt like a man in your bed. Too bad she no longer trusted men.

Tonight Leita wasn’t interested in the standard stuff, not even the brand new S&M feely fantasy that normally would have caught her eye. She flipped straight to the premium section of the For Her Pleasure site and stared at the choices, biting her lip.

“Mm-mm-mm,” Schneider murmured, breaking her concentration. “Small, medium, and extra large. Decisions, decisions.”

“Shut up,” Leita commanded again, studying the 3-D images floating above her cube. She nervously nibbled at her left thumbnail as she manipulated the cube with her right hand.

“Companion 2000” the purple letters flared. “Guaranteed to grant your every sexual desire and fulfill your need for companionship.”

“Hey, I thought I fulfilled your need for companionship,” Schneider, protested, slinking his long neck around so that he could read the words over his shoulder.

“Until you gain about two hundred pounds of muscle and grow some considerably larger equipment…” Leita started, then saw the hurt look in her friend’s wide golden eyes. “Aw, c’mon, Schneider, you know I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that sometimes, well, I have needs.”

“Needs to bankrupt the company,” Schneider muttered huffily, beginning to groom his whiskers as he always did when he was upset. “You ought to be using that credit on hiring a new mechanic to fix the droids instead of dropping a wad on some overpriced blow-up doll.”

Leita gritted her teeth. “We’ve been over this, Schneider. The last two times I tried to hire someone, they took the credit and ran, remember?” It was really hard to find a man who wanted to stay out here at the ass end of the solar system and fix broken droid ships. The first man she’d tried to hire, after her parents’ death in a scouting accident, had simply taken his pay of a month’s credit and run off in the night. The second one, Eddie, well, he had been a real prize.

The sleazy, smooth-talking con artist had managed to make Leita believe that he loved her. She’d told him everything—even her most private fantasies, the ones that made her hot and cold, the ones that made her wake up drenched in sweat and filled with longing night after night. The ones she was most ashamed of. Eddie had pretended to play along for a good long time—almost six months. Then he’d gained access to her private quarters and stolen her mother’s jewelry and her father’s platinum-plated chronometer along with six months’ profit on his way out the door. The only thing he’d left her, besides a broken heart, was a note telling her exactly what he thought of her fantasies and desires.

It had taken Leita a year to recoup financially and she still hadn’t recovered emotionally from the betrayal. Unfortunately, just because her heart wasn’t up to a romantic relationship didn’t mean her body had stopped craving sex. If anything, Leita craved it more. All alone, except for Schneider, in the spacious but empty life pod from which she controlled the mining operation, she sometimes physically ached for the touch of another human being.

She wanted a pair of strong arms to hold her tight, a deep, soothing masculine voice to murmur sweet nothings into her ear, a warm, hard body to curl around hers in the dead of night when she felt cold and frightened and alone. Most of all, she wanted someone who wouldn’t think she was crazy or strange when she admitted her darkest needs and desires. She wanted a man, but there was no way to get one to stay. No way except to buy one—or the next best thing.

“Anyway, the Companion 2000 is more than a ‘blow-up doll’,” she told Schneider, manipulating the cube so that the three size choices rotated in turn. “The skeleton is tempered titanium and the brain is the best and most advanced cybernetic synthi- organic cognitive structure on the market today. All covered in genuine vat-grown flesh that comes in a variety of skin tones and textures—vanilla, caramel, or dark chocolate.” Did