Virtually Perfect

He muttered to himself, “I must be crazy. Getting desperate in my old age.” Of course, thirty-four wasn’t exactly ancient. The lines appearing on the screen erased his thoughts.

I am sighing as I press into you. I pick up your shirt at its edges, peel it up over your skin, up over your head, and nestle my face against your chest, sucking on your skin, biting you lightly.

Jack sighed, feeling a surge of arousal. Hey, he was human. Having a woman say things like that was the next best thing to being there. The next best thing. But not the best thing. He ignored the doubt that was chipping away at him, and started to respond in kind, when another line appeared, and then another…

I slide my hands down your stomach and wrap my fingers around your erection, squeezing and stroking, loving the feel of you in my hand.” Rider, I want you…I want to make you crazy….”

He felt his heart pound and shook his head, surprised that this was affecting him so deeply. He had been using online networks before most people knew networks existed. His dad had helped him build his own computer, and he’d “talked” to people on the old, slow FIDOnet bulletin boards in the eighties when he was just a kid.

He had literally grown up with the Internet, and it had always been a part of his life—but it had never, ever, been like this. This was a whole new world, a different kind of reality. His jaw clenched as he pounded out the words to her.

“You’ve made me crazy every night, and a good part of every day, for weeks now. I want you to make me crazy for real, Nilla. I want to do the same to you.”

Nothing. The cursor hung like heavy silence between them.

“Hmm, Rider. Are you okay? You don’t seem like yourself tonight.”

Jack shook his head and ran his hands over his face. It was all he could do not to track her down in real life. During the day, he would think of her, something they’d shared, something she’d said, and feel immediately aroused, which wasn’t always convenient. When he wasn’t losing sleep, he dreamed of her at night. Of knowing her. Finding her.

He was an Internet security expert. He certainly had the skills to find her, to get past the pseudonym and find out who she really was. Hell, at his level of expertise, locating her wouldn’t even be a challenge. Even though they used generic e-mails with pseudonyms, it was a simple matter of finding her network address, locating her service provider and making some phone calls.

What most people didn’t understand in the miraculous age of the Internet was that the most common method of hacking wasn’t done with computers, but by finding out the information you needed the old-fashioned way: talking to people who could tell you what you needed to know.

Most people were afraid of putting their credit card number online, but didn’t think twice about handing it over to a waiter who disappeared with it for five minutes. It never failed to amaze him, but those curious social and psychological traits made his work interesting. Computers, he knew, were all about the people sitting in front of them.

A few keystrokes, a few casual requests, and he could know who she was, where she lived and worked, and probably anything else he wanted to know in just a few hours. But he wouldn’t do it, though he damned his sense of ethics to hell. His job was to enforce the rules, not break them himself. Though he was desperately tempted.

“Nilla, baby, I am in knots. That’s the problem. You tie me up.”

“We could certainly try that, if you want.”

Jack nearly broke into a sweat. She could do this to him just with the words. What would the reality be like? There was some kind of wild connection between them, though he didn’t know how it happened, or what to do about it.

He reached down, slid his hand over his crotch, felt the stiffness pushing at the seam of his jeans and dropped his head back, the sharp edge of need burning through him. But this time, it just wasn’t right. He was sitting on his sofa in the dark. Again. Alone.

No. No more of this.

This wasn’t what he wanted, how he operated. It just wasn’t enough anymore, not nearly enough. He sometimes felt as if he lived in front of the screen—it was where he worked, kept up on current events, had his morning coffee and sometimes his dinner—but he was damned if he was going to have his sex life there, too! He typed impatiently this time.

“Nilla, I want to meet you. We need to meet. For real.”

“Not a good idea. I could be fat, bald and seventy-five years old, for all you know.”

He let out a heavy breath. She was trying to deflect him. Disappointment doused arousal as he realized she wasn’t as avid to make that connection as he was.

“Nilla, we’re two healthy adults who are driving each other crazy and then ending up in bed alone every night. I want to kiss you. I want to stop imagining and pretending. I want to see what color your eyes are. What’s wrong with that?”

“I don’t know, Rider. We don’t know each other well enough. This is just a game. I like it this way.”

“It stopped being a game a while ago. For me, anyway. Think about what we could be missing.”

“Like I said, it could be all lies, Rider. How can we know? We are creating a kind of fiction here, right? That’s what this place is for, not truth. But at least here we know that outright. Why do you want to complicate this?”

“Have you lied to me, Nilla?”

He held his breath for the few long seconds the screen remained blank.

“No, but I haven’t told you the truth, either. You don’t really know anything about me. Not really. I don’t want you to know.”

“What I know is that there is something in you that speaks to something in me. I know you are smart, funny and passionate. I know your politics and your beliefs, but I don’t know the shape of your face, the scent of you, the sound of your voice. And I want to. I didn’t go looking for this, for you, but now I can’t settle for words on a screen.”

“Hold on. This is getting too intense, Rider. I need to think.”

Jack’s shoulders slumped and he rubbed his tired eyes, shoving the computer back on the table. He wandered into the kitchen to get another beer. He had pushed the issue, and he was going to lose her. Though he felt ridiculous getting all worked up over a name on a screen, that idea really hurt.

RAINE CLOSED HER EYES and let out a frustrated sigh. Since they’d never even mentioned meeting in person, they’d had openly shared their thoughts and feelings, developing a high level of intimacy fairly quickly, something she had never actually had happen in a so-called normal relationship. She wasn’t sure she believed it could happen in a normal, real relationship.

She had never known a man could share this way, communicate feelings and thoughts the way Rider did. It certainly had never happened to her. If he was like this in real life… She blew out a breath and dropped her head back, amazed at the possibilities. But that was unlikely—this was fantasy. In real life, everything would be exposed, all the faults and awkwardness, all the things that got in the way.

She wished she could meet a man who would not leave her hopes in shambles, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe he really existed. She steadied herself, and wrote carefully.

“Rider, you’re right, this has been special. And if we meet, it might all just evaporate in a big cloud of disappointment. Here we can say, do, be anything we want. We get to be larger than life, but in real life we would probably just bore each other senseless. Or worse.”

“I don’t think so, Nilla. And what if we didn’t? But so what if we did? What’s to lose?”

“I don’t know, Rider. I don’t want to lose this. I enjoy what I’ve had. You. Here.”

“Nilla, this is not real—we’re just two strangers sitting in front of a computer every night, having to face being alone when the screen clicks off. I want to know you. I want you to know me, for real.”

Raine felt a dark cloud of frustration descend around her as she read his next words.

“We have to meet, or I’m out. I’m done.”

She gaped, the ultimatum slamming into her like a hard, cold wind.

“I have to think about it, Rider. Please, I have to think. I’ll meet you here tomorrow night and we can talk about it some more, okay?” I kiss you softly, press my lips to yours. Goodbye.

“Wait!… Don’t go…”

She turned the computer off, ruthlessly cutting the connection.

Collapsing on the soft cushions, she groaned in frustration—this night was just not going well. She had always looked forward to these times with Rider. Meeting him had made her typically quiet evenings exciting.

Though physically it was difficult to be so consistently aroused by someone who could never be there to actually help you release those passions, for her it had been wonderful just to be able to feel them—to walk around basking in the glow of it, to dream of it at night, and to be blissfully unafraid of the pain or disappointment that inevitably followed when you dared those things in real life.

Though she didn’t feel so great at the moment. It was distressing to realize that this wonderful interlude she had discovered and enjoyed was coming to an end. He wanted more, and she did not believe there could be more. She would not be meeting Rider the next evening, for talk or anything else. He would not stop pushing her, and she knew she would not hold out against him in the long run. And that would be an awful mistake.

She knew exactly what she had to do to get some distance on this situation, to grab control of it and put it behind her. First, she could never meet with him again, obviously. Next, she had to write about it. She had experienced Internet romance, right? She had faced the tough decision, and she had made it. Now it was time to share what she had learned with her readers. Only then could she move on and forget all this. Hauling herself upright, she grabbed her laptop again. She opened a blank word-processing page and went to work.