"The waiting is the hardest part,
Every day you get one more yard,
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart,
The waiting is the hardest part."
--Tom Petty
Kevin spent the night dreaming about Eleanor again. She was a constant presence in his sleeping mind, now; his waking fantasies of her shaded so gradually into erotic dreams that he sometimes didn't even realize he'd fallen asleep. Tonight, he dreamed that he woke from a dream of her to find her actually there in the bed with him. Her pale green eyes stared at him with the look of devotion he'd always imagined she would have when the process was complete, and her soft smile told him that she was his at last. She kissed her way down his chest, her auburn hair spilling out to brush his arms and hands as she pressed her lips against him over and over again.
"I love you," she whispered between each kiss, her hands stroking and petting around his cock but never quite seeming to touch. "I want you so badly, Kevin. Anything you want, anything you desire, I..." Her voice shuddered with need, and Kevin knew that she was consumed with pleasure simply by pleasing him. "I am yours. Please, please command me, please..."
Her hot breath tingled against his cock as she begged, his erection sticking straight up as she worshiped his dick with her eyes. "May I please touch it?" she whimpered, staring greedily at his cock. There was something so deliciously lost about the expression on her face, as though she only had one certainty in the world, and it was her new Master. "Please?"
The moment of anticipation seemed to stretch out into an eternity, the power as thrilling as the sight of Eleanor's naked body. He'd pictured her nude for so long, wanting to see every inch of her body, and now it was real. She was kneeling on the bed, her heavy, full breasts swaying slightly as she panted with arousal. She was just exactly as beautiful naked as he'd imagined. "Yes, my sweet," he said, his voice gentle but firm. "I want to fuck your tits." The look of joy on her face when he said it would linger with him all day long.
The buzz of his alarm clock woke him just as she enfolded her breasts around his cock, and Kevin woke with an angry, throbbing erection and a lingering phantom sensation of skin as smooth as silk. At first, his only thought was of aching loss as he realized the dream wasn't real after all. Then he remembered, as the waking world poured back in. The process was underway. Eleanor wasn't his yet, but it was only a matter of time.
He threw off the covers, exposing his body to the cool morning air. His cock stuck straight up, and he stared at it for a long moment as he tried to decide whether to finish what the dream had started, or let his erection subside on its own. Normally, he tried to wait at least until lunch before jacking off, but his cock didn't seem to want to soften this morning. He felt like Eleanor's delicate fingers were still wrapped around it, and every thought of her made it twitch all over again. Finally, with an effort of willpower, he got up and headed to the shower.
The lukewarm water finally did the trick, but Kevin knew he'd be revisiting that dream tonight. He almost felt like making a list, some days, of things he wanted to do once Eleanor was finally under his complete control. He knew it would start with those tits of hers; he always tried not to stare when he was around her, but the way those wonderful, huge breasts of hers strained against even the baggiest and most conservative outfits, it was hard not to. Once she belonged to him, he would stare at them as long as he wanted. Maybe he'd make her play with them, stroking and fondling and rubbing her own breasts while he watched her moan and whimper in pleasure, until she begged to be allowed to move her hands down to her pussy and masturbate...
With an irritated grunt, Kevin noticed his cock had gotten hard again. He was going to be late for work if he didn't get it together. Not that anyone minded if he was late--one of the advantages of being in the Special Projects Division, he could pretty much set his own hours. But getting in on time meant that he usually bumped into Eleanor in the cafeteria before she started work. That was inducement enough to get him moving.
He dressed quickly, trying to find some way to calm his over-enthusiastic libido before he got in to work. He didn't want to be sporting a boner when he had his morning chat with Eleanor. He tried to think of some of his non-sexual fantasies about her--trips to restaurants, late-night movie festivals, getting her to teach him how to cook and teaching her how to play go, taking that trip to Australia that she'd always wanted to do but had never had the money...somewhere around the time he pictured them admiring the Sydney Opera House, he finally managed to put clothes on his mental image of her. That helped a lot.
On the drive in to work, he wondered if he was becoming obsessed. He almost chuckled at the thought; some people might say he became obsessed the moment he decided to spike her drink with thousands of nanoscopic machines at the office Christmas party. But that was why he didn't talk about the process to anyone. Nobody would understand. They'd probably just think he was some sort of sociopath. They just didn't understand the depths of his love for Eleanor.
But Kevin understood perfectly well. That was why he had gotten a little obsessed, lately--it was just the anticipation, he told himself. Having to be near her every single day, knowing that she was growing closer and closer to that dawning realization that she loved Kevin as much as he loved her...it was just hard to be patient, that was all. Anyone would get excited.
He pulled into the parking lot, keeping an eye out for Eleanor's car as he did so, and checked the time. Eight fifty-two. Plenty of time to chat with Eleanor before she had to get to work, and he'd definitely seen her car in the lot. Kevin walked into the office with a spring in his step and a smile on his face.
She was just stirring cream into her coffee cup, chatting with Darcy from Marketing, but she smiled as soon as she saw him walk into the room. That was progress in and of itself--Kevin remembered a time when he was practically invisible to her. "Hey, Kevin!" she said, smiling. "I brought back your book, but I'm afraid I left it in my purse. You'll have to stop by my desk later and pick it up."
"Um, sure, no problem," he said, totally unable to get the doofy grin off his face. He hadn't wanted to change too much about Eleanor, but it had been hard not to resist the temptation to upgrade her tastes in literature just a little bit. Finding out that she'd breezed through 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' was just one more little confirmation that the process was working as intended, every bit as thrilling by itself as the knowledge that she'd enjoyed the book. "I'll stop by after lunch."
He intended to say more, but he was still a little tongue-tied around Eleanor. He always found himself being too cautious; he could check the physical changes in her brain, but he was never sure exactly how that mapped to her thoughts on a moment-to-moment basis. Did she know anything was different? Did she wonder why she looked at Kevin every day with a little more tenderness, or did the process seem natural and imperceptible to her? Most importantly, did she love him yet?
He didn't know, despite all the computer simulations. So he held back. He couldn't take rejection, not from her. Not even if he knew that someday, once the process had taken hold completely, she would beg him for forgiveness for the slight. He needed to be sure before he could say anything. Until that day, he would just take comfort in every word they exchanged. He could wait, he told himself again. Eleanor was worth waiting for.
"Looking forward to it," she said with a smile that practically made his cock spring up all over again. "So anyway, Darcy, they actually tried to tell me that the check was in the mail. Can you believe it? I half expected to hear them tell me that of course they'd respect me in the morning! So I said..." Kevin just listened to the rest of the conversation, hanging on Eleanor's every word until it was time for her to head off to work.
After they'd left, Kevin fixed himself a cup of coffee and headed up to his office and logged onto his computer. Not for the first time, he counted his blessings that he worked in Special Projects--being one of Central Dynamics' pet geniuses meant that he could get away with little eccentricities like locking his office door, or having encrypted files on his work computer without having Network Support complain to his boss. When the company made 8.9 billion dollars every time you had a good idea, they tended to indulge you a little in between brainstorms.
He opened up the file simply labeled, "Monitor Application". As usual, a graphic of Eleanor's brain popped up on the screen, gently rotating through three dimensions as he watched. The nanites had insinuated themselves into every single cell of her cerebral cortex since that first night he'd introduced them to her system, replicating and infiltrating until they had perfectly integrated themselves with her neural network. The image he was looking at right now was a perfect model of her actual brain, rendered in real time through signals received from the nanite swarm inside her skull.
He brought up the saved image of her original brain pattern, overlaying it onto the one the nanites were sending. Even with the wealth of information he'd gotten from having a perfect map of her brain, he'd had to design an entire new computer from scratch just to comprehend that data. Mapping the neural network in Eleanor's head to her emotions, her ideals, her personality...Kevin remembered the sensation of sheer erotic triumph, the day that he'd finally compiled a program that could work out exactly how to change the physical structure of her brain to effect the changes he wanted.
