Heart Beats - Disconnected

Leo loved August the way some men worship their own reflection. So when he felt her drifting, he brought Connie into their bed—an android built for pleasure, soft-spoken, flawless, willing to do whatever the night asked of her. August undressed the machine slowly, kissed the synthetic mouth, opened her thighs and pressed their bodies together until the scent of their sex filled the sheets. Leo watched. He watched Connie’s perfect tongue move across his wife’s cunt, watched August arch and gasp, wet and open and utterly lost in the act. Still the hunger in him stayed quiet. The night felt hollow, every kiss measured, every breath controlled. He lay in silence afterward, wife spent beside the object they had bought to keep her. In the dark the hollow widened. And deeper in that darkness lived a suspicion he refused to name: that the distance between them was only the beginning of something older, something colder, something that might not be new at all.