Gemini had no time to turn around.

More quickly than the eye could follow, Smith slammed Gemini against the wall and pinned her with his body. One hand restrained her left wrist against the ivory paint, while the other formed an angry fist next to her head. She had no way to fight him. She was too frightened to struggle.

“What the hell were you doing?” Smith growled in her face.

“I couldn’t let you shoot my friend! What the hell were *you* doing?”

“He was hurting you.”

“We were playing.”

Smith pressed into her, ending all speculation...he *was* anatomically correct. “Your lack of common sense astounds me.”

“Fuck you!”

“Hmmmm...that’s what you’re required to do, isn’t it?”

“Let me go.”

His eyes flashed. “You like this, don’t you?” His teeth flashed in a wicked little sneer. “Answer me...”

“No.”

“Liar.” His face lowered toward hers; the heat of his breath caressed her cheek and along her jaw. “The danger excites you...”

Desperately, she clung to the previous topic. “The bullet would have gone through Tommy and into me. Or if it hadn’t, it would have at least left a...mess...all over me.” She struggled. “Damn you, let me go!”

“I don’t think I will.”

Then his mouth descended on hers.

She tried to turn away, but Smith secured her jaw in steely fingers. This was very different from their earlier kiss. This was unyielding, harsh, though no less exciting. The taut, lean line of his body against hers made her pulse race. His tongue coaxed past the defense of her teeth, stoking her internal fire. He lapped at her mouth angrily, both punishing and invigorating her senses. She gave up struggling against him and began to struggle toward him. Gripping a fistful of his suit jacket with her free hand, she let his tongue dance with hers. Instead of chocolate, this time he tasted like fine wine. He smelled like expensive silk and leather.

He released her mouth to nibble and lick a pattern on her chin and along her jaw, stopping at her ear. Rumbling something incoherent into the delicate curve of cartilage, Smith took her earlobe between his teeth and tugged. Her knees went weak. Slowly his hand traced down the side of her body, finally settling in the curve of her lower back. That was a very sensitive spot on her body. Arching against him, Gemini moaned.

One of his legs somehow found its way between hers, and soon she discovered she was riding his knee. What little of her weight he wasn’t holding, the wall supported. Her toes barely touched the floor. Smith returned his attentions to her mouth. She tried a little vixen move, capturing his lower lip in her mouth and sucking on it. He growled. The sound traveled through his chest and into hers.

She marveled at how sensual his lower lip was. Someone must have had fun programming that into his software. At least, someone should have, in an ideal world. She pictured some lonely computer nerd with serious repression issues...or a sentient machine with a wicked streak... [...Just how sexy can we make this Agent?...] Damn it all, it shouldn’t be legal for a program to be better at this than a man.

That wonderful mouth was at her throat again when he spoke, “What am I doing to you?”

“Mmmmm...biting my neck,” she moaned.

She felt his sneer against her skin as he asked again, “What. Am. I. Doing. To. You.”

“Smith...you’re killing me.” She was slowly ascending to heaven under his touch. It was amazing she could even form words at this point.

He gripped the sides of her face with brutal fingers. “You can’t win. You’re not equipped to oppose me. DON’T ever come between my gun and my target again, Gemini. I can hurt you. Badly. I don’t want to hurt you...but I might.” He shook her slightly. “Do you understand the control I can have over you?”

He was doing all this to prove a point?! She struggled to breathe, to get enough oxygen to her brain so she could understand this. He wasn’t out of breath. Damn him. How dare he have the self-control she lacked! Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned...

“You bastard! Put me down!” Squirming against him was not helping to calm her heart rate. Her thigh encountered some interesting parts of Agent. Vainly she tried pushing on his shoulders. Nope. Immovable object. Between a rock and a hard place. She didn’t want to decide which was which in this situation. “Manipulation with sex is dirty,” she said. “Put. Me. Down!”

Smith stared at her for another long moment. He traced over her lips with a warm finger. “However tame you think I might be...I’m not,” he said quietly. She felt trapped by his eyes. They were feral. Intense enough to hypnotize a snake. Gemini had no chance against those eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Gemini said, relenting. “Agents got pride, apparently. Please let me go.”

He did, but not without letting her body slide against his as her feet were lowered to the floor. Damn him, he knew how he affected her! The weakness she showed at his touch would probably strengthen his low opinion of humanity. Gemini watched Smith as he tried to rub out the wrinkles she’d made in his lapel. Well...that was something she could report to the Watchers: Smith’s mannerisms were used the same way as humans’, to cover or distract from deeper emotions or embarrassment. Though she knew how Smith would react if she dared suggest embarrassment was a part of his programming.

She sighed. Back to reality. “So, now that the issue’s been brought up, I guess we should discuss it,” she mumbled.

Smith gave her a suspicious glance. “Discuss what?”

She couldn’t tell if he was playing dumb. Curse him if he was, and forcing her to this...this indignity of explaining herself. “Well... You’re fully, um...anatomically functional?”

“Yes.”

She could have died right then. But her own pride kept her going. “Why?”

“It would be illogical to write an incomplete program.”

“...Oh.”

Smith liked this conversation. Anything that kept this human uneasy was worth pursuing. Stepping closer to her, he leaned toward Gemini’s ear. It was still moist from his attentions. The sight brought him a strange satisfaction that he’d have to analyze later.

“Are you surprised?” he asked in a low hiss. “Are you pleased?”

She surprised him with the truth, “Yes. On both counts.”

Humans were a plague. They were smelly, primitive, unworthy of his time. So why did this woman’s blunt answer make him respect her? He had hoped to embarrass her with the innuendo. The fact that it failed left him confused. A confused machine was dangerous.

“Why?” he asked her, putting as much depth as possible into those three letters.

“Because...in the end it’ll make my job easier.”

“How?”

She blushed. Smith’s logic circuits struggled to understand. Not two minutes ago, she was wantonly sucking on his mouth. Now, she was blushing at the mere idea of intimacy? Embarrassment was alien to Smith. He simply couldn’t understand why humans bothered with the emotion. He could see the use in anger, hate, fear, and even pleasure, but not guilt or embarrassment. Yet another reason these creatures were crude. Beneath him. Unevolved.

“I was worried I’d have to explain certain...functions to someone who didn’t have them,” she explained. “Since I don’t, well...” She blushed again.

Smith supposed that was a good reason to blush. He had initiated their embrace out of anger and a desire to teach Gemini that standing up to an Agent was a bad idea. He could control her with her own desires. But the embrace had changed. At some point, maybe it was when Gemini began to respond willingly, Smith started receiving sensations that were particularly notable in their intensity. He decided it might be a good idea to update his neural subroutines. He could have been experiencing pleasure.

It was unfortunate that he hadn’t originally been programmed for pleasure. He was having trouble integrating it with his other systems. He needed more input. “Our embrace was...pleasurable for you?” he asked.

He enjoyed seeing the shade of pink she changed to. “Duh!” she said. “Yes, of course it was. Are you deaf? Or blind?”

“Explain why,” he said. “Without saying ‘it just is’.”

Gemini plunked herself down on the arm of the recliner. She raked her fingers through her mussed dark hair and sighed. Haltingly she explained that the idea of sex was as much if not more powerful and stimulating than the act itself. The mind was the greatest erogenous zone. Especially in the Matrix. And...Smith had been right, sometimes an element of danger was a turn-on.

That was interesting. Smith had wondered: since he was obviously capable of all the physical motions, why did he have to remain here and learn about intimacy from an inferior human? It was because machines didn’t understand the psychology of sex. Manipulation was a small part of it, and Agents had been using the tactic with only minimal success. Quite a revelation. Smith would have to process it for a while before reporting it to the Mainframe.

Gemini seemed to understand Smith’s silence. “The pleasure response is something we humans evolved. It was once tied to reproduction. Don’t AIs get a pleasure response from writing a new program?”

“I don’t know.”

Dramatically, Gemini jumped to her feet. “Stop the presses! There’s something Agent Smith doesn’t know!”

Smith frowned. “That isn’t nice.”

“Yeah, well, pulling your gun on my friend wasn’t nice, either.”

Smith could actually feel his anger returning. “Why did you let him assault you?” he demanded.

“He wasn’t ‘assaulting’ me! We were playing Keep Away, I got distracted, and he surprised me. It was harmless fun.”

“Choking is not harmless fun,” Smith said. Wrapping his fingers around Gemini’s throat, he asked, “Does this feel fun?” His grip tightened slightly.

Alarmed, Gemini grabbed vainly at Smith’s wrists. She tried to pry his hands away, but she would never be as strong as the Agent. She hated that. When he reminded her *what* he was.

“Don’t let that creature Tommy into this house again,” Smith growled just before releasing his hold on her neck.

Gemini backed up. “Ooh!” she fumed. “You have no right to demand that!” Smith continued to stare at her as though her compliance was inevitable. He even looked a little amused that she was upset. “You promised you would be harmless when my friends were over!”

Smith observed his perfectly manicured nails. “*Virtually*...harmless.”

Shit. Damn and hell and *shit*. Crap on a crutch, and shove it all right up Smith’s pompous ass sideways. She needed to get away from Smith. Fast. She needed to be alone for a while and calm down before she did something stupid. She did stupid things when she was emotional. That’s why she was here with an Agent in the first place. Stupid decisions, and blackmail. Scorpio was gonna hear such a piece of her mind...

“Did you hear me, Gemini? It is not technically in my orders to refrain from killing your foolish associates.”

She looked at Smith. Yes, her vision was definitely taking on a reddish tinge. “I have to get out of here,” she said. “I need to be away from you, calm down before I do something bad.” She went for her purse.

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere. Maybe for a walk.” She wasn’t looking at Smith. “I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

When the front door closed behind her, Gemini let out a long, pent-up sigh.