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for him?” She rolled up the sleeves on her shirt.
    “Poor guy can’t come.”
    She’d been trying to keep expressionless but this made her blink. “Pardon?”
    “I think it’s cruel to have sex with a being who can’t climax. He misses out on most of the fun.”
    “He didn’t seem to mind.”
    “That’s because he doesn’t know what he’s missing. He’s programmed to please you but it seems like he should get some pleasure out of it too.”
    Ilsa clenched her fists. Hal was tied to her bed, completely at her mercy, and yet he was trying to tell her what to do with her own robot. She stomped over to where he lay.
    “Did you come?” she demanded. “When you were controlling him?”
    “No. I had my hands full.” The side of his mouth quirked up more.
    “So you know how he feels.”
    “I can sympathize.”
    With his arms stretched out, the material of his shirt was tight against his chest. Ilsa put the palm of her right hand in the middle of his sternum. She had not touched Hal in nearly three years.
    She felt warmth, muscle, bone. Underneath his ribs his heart was hammering. He was breathing quickly. He wasn’t quite as in control as he made out.
    It was her turn to smile.
    Slowly, she trailed her hand down his chest. With the lightest of pressure, she stroked down his flat belly. She knew the exact moment when he started to hold his breath. When she reached the waistband of his jeans, he was trembling. Only a bit but she could tell.
    He was hard. His erection strained against his jeans. Ilsa raised her hand a little. She let it hover a bare inch above his crotch. Heat came off him. She knew how it would feel to curl her fingers around his penis through the material of his trousers. She knew how he’d thrust against her, how she could flick his fly open and take him naked into her hand. His wet, hot semen spilling on her skin.
    She didn’t touch him. Hal twisted on the bed, lifting his pelvis up toward her, so close but unable to reach. A groan escaped him.
    Keeping her hand hovering over him, she bent her head toward his. “But it’s worse for you, isn’t it?” she murmured. She knew her words were feathering his skin, that in his helpless, heightened state it would be even more of an arousal. “Because you, Hal, know exactly what you’re missing.”
    He jerked at his bonds. Ilsa straightened up and, without looking back, left the room, locking the door behind her.

Chapter Five
     
    Her heart was pounding. She felt weak and shaky and more than a little sexually frustrated herself. Her feet took her automatically down her well-trodden route to the computer room, which was on the same floor of the mansion as her bedroom. At times she could spend days without ever leaving this floor at all, only glimpsing the weather through the big windows. Red would bring up her meals on a tray.
    What was she going to do with Hal? She couldn’t keep him. She didn’t want to keep him. Even the mere fact of his being in the house was enough to rattle her. And yet she couldn’t let him go either. Even if he only sold a tenth of what he’d seen here, it was enough. Plenty of people—Hal included—would be able to replicate the Morgenstern robots, even improve upon them. And use them for anything they liked, without thinking about whether it was best for the robots or not.
    She’d worked so hard to keep the housies secret as her father had wanted. It had even led to a bitter war with her brother Jonathan, who believed they should patent the inventions and sell them after their father’s death.
    Could she even keep the secret any longer, now that her sister and Blue were in love? They seemed content to live together where they’d always lived, mostly away from prying eyes. But this was a honeymoon period for them. They couldn’t stay in the house forever. They had lives to lead. Cally was full of big talk about asserting robot rights. About challenging the law so she and Blue could get married. She’d even