And she stood without moving, watching me. I dropped the cola can on top of the pack it had come from and took a step towards her. Her arms unlinked and draped themselves around my shoulders, tightening across my back. I filled one hand with the soft weight of her breast, reached down with the other to the juncture of her thighs and the remembered dampness that—”

“No, wait.” She pushed the lower hand away. “Not there, not yet.”

It was a tiny jarring moment, a jolt to expectations mapped out in the bubblefab two days earlier. I shrugged it off and gathered both hands to the breast I held, squeezing the nipple forward and sucking it into my mouth. She reached down and took my erection in her hand, stroking it back and forth with a touch that seemed forever on the point of letting go.

I frowned, remembering a harder, more confident grip from before, and closed her hand tighter with my own. She chuckled.

“Oh, sorry.”

Stumbling a little, I pushed her to the edge of the table, pulled loose of her grip and knelt on the floor in front of her. She murmured something deep in her throat and spread her legs a little, leaning back and bracing herself on the table top with both hands.

“I want your mouth on me,” she said thickly.

I ran spread hands up her thighs and pressed the ball of each thumb either side of her cunt. A shiver ran through her and her lips parted. I bent my head and slid my tongue inside her. She made a tight, caught-up sound and I grinned. She felt the smile somehow and one hand slapped me across the shoulder.

“Bastard. Don’t you fucking stop, you bastard.”

I pushed her legs wider and went to work in earnest. Her hand came back to knead at my shoulder and neck and she shifted restlessly on the edge of table, hips tilting back and forth with the motion of my tongue.

The hand moved to tangle in my hair. I managed another split grin against the pressure she was exerting but this time she was too far gone to say anything coherent. She started to murmur, whether to me or herself

I couldn’t tell. At first it was simply the repeated syllables of assent, but as she tightened towards climax, something else began to emerge. Lost in what I was doing, it took me time to recognise it for what it was. In the throes of orgasm, Sylvie Oshima was chanting a skein of machine code.

She finished with a hard judder and two hands crushing my head into the juncture of her thighs. I reached back and gently prised her grip away, rose to my feet against her, grinning.

And found myself face to face with another woman.