The sound that escaped carly's throat was low, barely more than a breath of sound in the darkened room and still carried a wealth of emotions--anticipation, frustration, pleasure, agony ....

It was always like that. There was always the doubt as she struggled to reach that special place that, this time, she might not reach it and she would be left with a hollow sense of defeat and disappointment. She would be left aching and miserable instead of gaining the sense of fulfillment and peace she needed.

But then that was part of the appeal, the realization that it was a gift that was only dispensed when everything came together in just the right way. It couldn't be taken for granted.

As if he sensed that she was teetering on the brink and could fall either way, he cupped one of her breasts and sucked the nipple into his mouth, pulling on it in just the right way to produce an electric current along her nerve endings. Sensation arrowed downward through her belly and her womb contracted. It set off the avalanche of glory she'd been struggling to capture and carly sucked in a sharp breath, going rigid for a moment as every muscle in her body seemed to contract at the same time. A shudder traveled through her when the contraction eased and she sucked in another harsh breath.

"daniel! Oh god! Oh my god!" She gasped as the contractions reached a peak that snatched her breath away, curling her arms tightly around the man above her to anchor herself to the world as she was swept away on the glorious rapture of her climax.

But of course, her arms were empty. The sense that she was holding the weight and warmth and flesh other than her own began to vanish as quickly as her climax dissipated. By the time she'd reached the lower plateau once more and her body began to cool the illusion had vanished.

"sim off," she whispered, even though the command was completely unnecessary. She'd achieved orgasm. The computer would have registered that because she could never keep quiet enough to fool the damned computer.

Carly allowed her arms to drop to the bed at her sides, struggling to close her mind to the emptiness around her and hug the illusion to herself just a little longer. A shiver raked through her as the heat left her. Feeling sluggish, she struggled to find her coverlet and pull it across her.

"he isn't gone," she muttered to herself. "he was never there at all."

Rolling on to her side, carly squeezed her eyes closed, trying to force her mind to empty itself so that she could find the rest she'd sought when she got into bed.

She was too tense--not still, but rather again. Disappointment gathered at the fringes of her mind as it so often did these days ... afterward. She struggled with the urge that struck her and finally yielded to it. "trude ... who is sim daniel 378251?"

She didn't know why she'd given her home entertainment and surveillance system--hess--a name at all, let alone the one she'd settled on--trude the prude--but the computer had assimilated the reference to it and responded immediately. "sim daniel 378251 is a sexual simulation, carly."