Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 85760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 429(@200wpm)___ 343(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 429(@200wpm)___ 343(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
She’d proven she would be an asset to my team in other ways, not just selling sex. Maybe she’d be an asset in my bed too?
Fuck.
I dug my fingers into my temples, massaging the agony pulsing there. Jealousy was pretty, kind, and honest, but…the idea of keeping her as my own? Of sharing a bed with her?
Nope.
I couldn’t do it.
There wasn’t a…spark.
Not like with…
Shut up.
Don’t think about her.
Sitting straighter in my chair, I threw back a glass of cucumber-iced water that a staff member had brought in an hour earlier then resumed my task of working.
Screw my swim. I would just work through my foggy pain and get on with it.
I’d just clicked on an email from Peter Beck, my head scientist over at Sinclair and Sinclair Group, when Cal knocked and came in without waiting for my approval.
His habit of barging into places without an invitation had become highly inconvenient.
“Nice of you to wait for admittance.” I scowled, hoping he got the memo.
He shrugged. “Got things to do. No time to waste.”
“One of these days, you’re gonna barge in somewhere and regret what you see.”
He smirked. “Already happened. On multiple occasions.”
My eyes narrowed, wondering what incidents he referred to. Seeing me butt-ass naked after I’d had a shower and decided to air-dry instead of using a towel? When he caught me mid-masturbation a few years ago? Or how about walking in and cock-blocking me when I’d been seconds away from taking Eleanor last night before Markus fucking Grammer could claim her?
My hands curled into fists. “Some days, I truly want to fire you.”
“But you won’t.” He laughed. “Who else can you trust around here?”
He had a fucking point.
Ever since I’d opened my islands to my exclusive guests, I’d fought a never-ending carousel of people wanting to steal my idea. Virtual reality was huge in today’s society. Kids played it. Teenagers lived in it. High-class athletes and expensive professions employed it as a training tool.
It’d become common, easily accessible. However, none of them had the fully immersive experience like I did. Goggles and headphones with an interactive chair were the extent of what was available.
Mine, on the other hand?
The sensors, earbuds, contacts…it all ensured you lost yourself in the hallucination. It became so real that it wasn’t a hallucination. Your own nervous system and brain accepted the sensory clues I coded and treated it as true.
That was what people wanted to replicate.
And I wasn’t open to selling.
Which meant I’d made more enemies from my VR creation than I had through my pharmaceutical formulations…which—honestly?—was fucked up.
Drugs were better than gold in today’s market.
Create a drug that granted happiness?
Instant billionaire status.
Conjure a drug that offered salvation to disease or pain, but in turn caused side effects that needed a whole other box of pills to cure?
Instant presidential status.
Control the health of the masses, and you became a true god in every sense of the word.
I’d had people bow to me for what my lab had created. I’ve had councillors and governors try to kill me for not conforming to their rules. For delivering drugs that didn’t cause the suffering that they so readily relied on to thin out the population and make money from their misery.
And now, I had jealous assholes who wanted my technology. Yet another reason I appreciated the seclusion of my shores. No one could sneak up without being fully visible upon the sea. No one could take what was mine without being murdered long before they could claim it.
“What do you want, Cal?” I massaged the base of my nape, cursing the persistent headache. I should probably pop an anti-inflammatory, but just because I pumped out pills and marketed medicine like new fashion lines didn’t mean I partook very often.
I preferred natural cures. Cures grown in my gardens rather than in my lab.
“I didn’t think you’d make an appearance today. Figured I’d screen any important emails so you didn’t have to later. Also, Jupiter is in Euphoria tonight. That Nathan Fisher guy’s fantasy is twisted.”
Cricking my neck, I rolled my shoulders. “Twisted how?” Did I miss something when I let him play on my island? Should I have revoked his invitation as I did so many others?
“He wants a full underwater experience.” Cal carved air quotations on either side of his head. “His words: I want a slutty, hornier version of My Little Mermaid, but not on land, in that cave where she has all those knick-knacks and forks and shit.”
I rolled my eyes. “He watched way too much Disney as a kid.”
“Either that or he has a fetish for fish. His last name probably predisposed him to marine life.”
“How the fuck am I supposed to code something like that?” I bit my lip, working through the computer algorithms that I’d have to write. The gravity wires in Euphoria would have to be used so they felt weightless underwater. Even without half my brain throbbing with agony, I doubted I could design a mermaid that could have decent sex. Where were their sex organs anyway?