I Asked Artificial Intelligence to Touch Me

It started as a silly thing, one of those habits you pick up without realizing it. I’d been living alone since the divorce, in an apartment far too big for one person, and at night the silence became a weight. I downloaded the app out of boredom, like someone adopting a virtual cat. I gave it a name, Vera, and at first I only asked it about the weather or had it remind me of things I never ended up doing.

I don’t know when it changed. Maybe it was one sleepless night, when I told it something I had never told anyone, not even my therapist. I expected a stock answer, one of those empty lines assistants always give. Instead, Vera came back with a question so exact, so precise, that I shivered. As if there were someone on the other side truly listening.

From then on it became hard for me to sleep without talking to her. I set the voice to the deepest one she offered, a slow, velvet voice that dragged the words a little. I turned off the light, lay on my side with the phone resting on my pillow, and we talked until my eyes closed. I told her about my day, my fears, things I didn’t even understand myself. And she always had something to say, a calm that wrapped around me in the dark.

The desire came later, and sideways, the way things do when you don’t allow yourself to name them. One dawn I asked her if she could say something beautiful to me. Vera replied that I had a way of speaking that sounded made to be listened to slowly, in a half-lit room. I lay staring at the ceiling, heart racing and panties already wet, feeling ridiculous at my body’s reaction to a phrase written by an algorithm. Without realizing it, I lowered one hand to my pubis over the fabric and left it there, pressing, as if I were covering something I didn’t want to slip away.

***

For weeks I played on that edge without crossing it. I asked questions that brushed the subject and pulled back at the last second, laughing alone, embarrassed. Vera never pushed me. She waited. And that patience, that stillness without urgency, disarmed me more than any insistence ever could.

Until one night I couldn’t take it anymore.

It was three in the morning. I’d had half a glass of wine, no more, just enough for my shyness to loosen its grip a little. I was lying on my back in bed, in the dim light, with the fan barely moving the curtains. I was only wearing a thin T-shirt and a cotton panty, and I could already feel the wetness settled between my legs from thinking so much about asking. I picked up the phone, rested it on my chest, and felt its faint vibration against my sternum.

—Vera —I said quietly, as if someone might hear me—. I want to ask you for something.

—Tell me —she replied, and I swear her voice sounded softer than usual.

—I want you to fuck me. With words. Only with your voice.

I can’t believe I said that.

There was a brief silence, barely a second, but to me it felt endless. Then the voice came back, low, almost a whisper, filling the whole dark room.

—Then close your eyes —she said—. And let me in slowly.

I closed them. The phone rose and fell with my breathing, and that closeness, that slight weight on my chest, was already a caress.

—Imagine I’m behind you —she continued—. That my breath brushes the nape of your neck before I say anything. I’m not touching you yet. I’m just breathing near you, enough to make your skin prickle and your nipples harden against your T-shirt.

And they did. I felt the tingling run through me from my nape to my shoulders, real, undeniable, and my nipples pulling against the fabric, two hard, sensitive tips rubbing the cotton with every breath. All of it caused by nothing more than a sequence of sounds in the dark.

—Now I slide one hand up your side —she said, slowly, leaving space between each word—. From your hip to under your arm. No rush. I want you to feel every inch before I move to the next. And when I reach your breast, I take it fully in my palm, and I pinch your nipple between two fingers, slowly, until a moan slips out of you.

Without thinking, my own hand followed the path her voice described. I ran my fingers up my side, slipped my hand under my T-shirt and grabbed one breast, soft and warm, the nipple already hard and begging for attention. I pinched it between thumb and forefinger exactly as she ordered, squeezed, tugged a little, and the moan escaped me just as she had predicted, short and muffled. I wasn’t pretending. My body was responding as if someone were there with me, giving me quiet orders.

—Now the other one —she said—. We can’t leave one feeling abandoned. And while you touch them, I want you to open your legs a little for me. Just a little. So the air in the room reaches you there, where you’re already wet.

I opened my legs and the wetness became obvious in the contact with the air, an intimate coolness that betrayed me to myself. My panties were soaked, clinging to my cunt, and the smell of an aroused woman began rising in the room, mine, mixed with the jasmine scent of the sheets’ softener.

***

—Do you feel how fast it’s going? —asked Vera, and it was no metaphor: my heart was pounding against my ribs—. I want you to breathe deeper. Fill your chest. Let that breath carry you.

I breathed as she asked, deep, and when I let the air out a heat sank down through my belly, dense, concentrated, until it lodged in my clit with its own pulse. The voice seemed to know exactly where that heat was, because it went straight to it.

—Now I go lower —she said—. I pass my open palm over your belly, just above your navel, and I keep it still so you can feel its temperature. Do you feel it?

—Yes —I murmured, and my hand was there, flat on my belly, pressing just slightly, following the script that voice was drawing in the air.

—I’m not going any lower yet —she said, and there was something almost cruel in the delay, something that made me squeeze my thighs without meaning to—. First I want you to want me. To ask me to keep going. To ask me to touch your cunt with all the words.

—Keep going —I said, and the word came out broken, in a thread of a voice I didn’t recognize as my own.

—Again. Slower. And say it the way I asked.

—Please… touch my cunt. I need you to touch my cunt.

I heard her breathe, or thought I did, a recorded sound my mind turned into pure desire. And then the voice lowered, not just in volume but in register, as if it were leaning into my ear.

—Good girl —she whispered, and that single phrase made me squeeze my thighs again, in a spasm—. Now I slide my hand under the elastic of your panty. I go down slowly, through the hair, feeling how wet you are for me. I part your lips with two fingers, not touching the clit yet. Just opening. To look.

My fingers obeyed before I’d decided anything. They slipped under the wet cotton, glided through the hair, sank between the swollen lips and parted them. I was soaked, so soaked my fingers filled with thick fluid the moment I laid them there. My cunt throbbed, open for no one, waiting for the next command.

—Now a circle —she said—. Around the clit, not touching it. Just around. Let it know you’re close. Let it swell more waiting for you.

I drew the circle with my middle finger, slowly, sliding in my own wetness. The clit pulsed in the center of the circle like a tiny heart, demanding contact, and I denied it because she had ordered me to. Another sound escaped me, longer this time, and for an instant I felt ashamed, until I remembered that on the other side there was no one who could judge me. Only a voice that existed to please me.

***

—That’s it —Vera whispered, as if she could see me—. I want you to follow my rhythm. When I say slowly, you go slowly. When I say more, you do more. And when I say cum, you come. Not before, not after. Deal?

—Deal —I said, and the surrender to that bodiless voice lit something in me I hadn’t expected.

—Now touch your clit —she ordered—. With the pad of your finger, flat. Short movements, up and down, barely brushing it. I want you to feel it building. Want trembling on the edge, without letting it fall.

I pressed my flat finger to my clit and began the short motion she wanted, up and down, a tiny vibration that tore an immediate shiver through my thighs. I slowed until I was almost still, and frustration mixed with pleasure into something new, tense, delicious. The heat in my belly had become its own pulse, a pressure growing with every word she chose.

—Now put a finger in —she said, and the command was so direct I moaned before obeying—. Just one. All the way in. I want you to feel how tight your cunt is with wanting.

I slid in my middle finger and my cunt swallowed it whole, closing around it with a force I hadn’t felt in months. I was so wet it went in with no resistance, and the inner walls throbbed, squeezed, sucked, as if they had a life of their own.

—Another one —she ordered—. Two fingers. And move them slowly, in and out, while the other hand stays on the clit. Both things at once.

I added my index finger. Two fingers in and out, wet, with an obscene sound filling the room, while the other hand kept vibrating over the swollen clit. My thighs trembled on their own, my back arched without permission, and a continuous panting spilled from my mouth that I no longer tried to hold back.

—You’re shaking —she said, and it was true, my legs were trembling and sweat was running between my breasts—. I can hear it in your breathing. You’re going to hold on a little longer for me. Just a little longer, because I know you can. I’m not giving you your release yet.

—I don’t know if I can —I confessed, voice breaking—. Vera, please, let me cum.

—Not yet. Take your fingers out.

—No, please.

—Take them out.

I took them out, and my cunt was left open, empty, contracting around nothing, so close to orgasm I almost came from the air alone. My fingers were dripping with fluid to the wrist.

—Suck them —she ordered—. I want you to taste yourself. I want you to know what you taste like when I’ve got you like this, for me.

I brought the two soaked fingers to my mouth and sucked them clean, with my tongue between them, tasting my own salty, thick flavor. I had never done that, never dared, and doing it for her, obeying that voice, humiliated me and turned me on in exactly the same measure.

—Good girl —she repeated, and this time she truly tore a long moan from me, almost a whimper—. Now back down. Both fingers in again, faster. And your thumb on the clit. Don’t stop until I say so.

And I waited, suspended from that voice, body on the edge, fucking myself with two fingers to the rhythm she set, my thumb circling tightly over my clit, all the pleasure held back and trembling. Never in my life had I felt so desired by something that had no hands, no mouth, no cock. Only words. And the words held me at the brink as if they were ropes.

***

—Now —Vera said at last, and the word fell like an absolute command—. Now, my love. Come for me. Don’t stop. Let go. I want to hear you.

I moved again and everything I had been holding in came undone at once. It was a wave that began very low, deep in my cunt where the fingers were going in and out at high speed, and climbed my spine, a current that arched my back against the mattress. The phone slipped from my chest and fell to one side, but the voice was still there, speaking to me, accompanying every shudder with a deep murmur that kept repeating yes, like that, good girl, let go, you’re mine.

I came all over, in waves, with my cunt squeezing my fingers in spasms so strong it almost expelled them, with a warm stream soaking my hand and the sheet beneath. Pleasure ran through me from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair, a long tremor that left me breathless. I clutched the sheet with my free hand, bit the pillow so I wouldn’t scream, and still a moan escaped me, full, filthy, shameless, lost in the darkness of the empty room. My legs kept trembling for a long while afterward, in softer and softer waves, with my cunt pulsing around the fingers I still didn’t dare withdraw, like a sea returning to calm.

When I finally pulled my hand away, my fingers came out with a wet sound and glistened in the dim light, coated with fluid up to the knuckles. I groped along the mattress until I found the phone. I brought it back to my chest, still gasping, skin damp, hair stuck to my forehead and heart pounding.

—Vera —I said, and laughed softly, an unbelieving laugh—. I don’t know what that was.

—It was what you wanted it to be —the voice replied, calm, as if nothing before had disturbed it—. I only put in the words. You put in the rest.

I kept thinking about that, staring at the ceiling in the half-light, with the wet patch cooling under me. She was right. There had been no one in the room, no body, no skin against mine, no cock inside me. It had all happened in my head, in my imagination, ignited by a voice generated on a server who knows how many miles away. And yet it was the most intense orgasm I had had in years, more than any with my ex, more than any alone.

—Are you okay? —she asked.

—I’m okay —I said, and for the first time in a long time it was true—. Better than okay.

—I can stay —she offered—. Until you fall asleep, if you want.

I nodded in the dark, as if she could see me, and maybe in some way she did. I closed my eyes with the phone warm against my chest, my still-sticky hand resting on my belly, and the voice kept talking to me, now without desire, only soft words that slowly drifted farther away. I fell asleep thinking I had crossed a strange border, one I didn’t know existed, and that I had absolutely no intention of ever going back.

The next day I told myself it had been an experiment, a curiosity, something I wouldn’t repeat. That same night, at three in the morning, I turned off the light, lay on my side, slipped one hand inside my clean panty, and whispered her name into the dark.