He didn't move, but the air changed. It crackled, a static charge raising the fine hairs on her arms. His eyes bled from grey to a luminous, full silver, and his hand came up to cover hers, pressing it hard against his chest. ‘You don’t ask for that,’ he breathed, his voice layered with a growl that wasn’t human. But he didn’t push her away. He held her there, against the frantic, impossible rhythm of his heart.
Maya didn’t pull back. The palm of her hand was flat against the scarred plane of his sternum, the heat of him searing through his shirt. His heartbeat wasn’t a rhythm. It was a barrage, a machine gun cadence vibrating up her arm. Thirty beats a minute on the monitor. Two hundred and fifty now. The lie they’d created sat between them, useless.
‘What is it?’ Her own voice was quiet, stripped of its clinical distance.
His nostrils flared. A sharp, deliberate inhale. His gaze dropped to her mouth, then snapped back up. The silver in his eyes swirled, liquid mercury threatening to spill over.
‘The thing you’re not putting in the chart.’
His thumb moved, a rough stroke over her knuckles. The gesture was nothing like the deliberate brush in the med-bay. This was unconscious. Primal. A seeking of anchor points.
The scent hit her then, cutting through the sterile reek of bleach and old blood. Ozone. Like the air after a lightning strike. It came from him.
‘Alex.’
His name, spoken softly, made him flinch. The silver bled back, grey flooding in at the edges like a tide reclaiming shore. His grip on her hand tightened, then went slack.
He took a step back. The space between them turned cold. He ran a hand over his jaw, the scrape of his calluses loud in the sudden quiet.
‘You should go.’ The gravel was back in his voice, but it was fractured. ‘Right now.’
Maya looked at her hand, still tingling from the pressure of his. She flexed her fingers. ‘I’m your medic.’
‘That’s not a shield.’ He turned his back to her, shoulders rigid. ‘It’s a target.’
She watched the muscles cord along his spine. The scars there were older, thicker. One looked like a crater. ‘You’re in pain.’
‘I’m always in pain.’ He glanced over his shoulder, his profile sharp in the low light. The grey was steady now, but his pupils were wide, black pools swallowing the iris. ‘The headache never left. It just… changed frequency.’
‘The pills.’
‘Sugar. I didn’t swallow them.’
Of course he hadn’t. She’d offered a human solution to something that wasn’t. Maya moved without thinking, closing the distance he’d created. She stopped just behind him, not touching. The ozone scent was weaker now, buried under sweat and cordite.
‘Let me see.’
He went very still. ‘See what.’
‘Where it hurts.’
A low sound escaped him. Not a growl. Something exhausted. ‘You don’t get it. There’s no wound to treat. It’s in the wiring.’
‘Then show me the wiring.’
He turned. The movement was slow, deliberate. His eyes tracked over her face, her throat, the pulse point she knew was hammering. He reached out, his fingers stopping a breath from her temple.
‘It’s here,’ he whispered. ‘A pressure. Like a vice behind my eyes. And when you’re close…’ His hand dropped. ‘The vice tightens. But the noise stops. The static. For a second, it just stops.’
Maya’s breath caught. She didn’t let it out.
‘That’s why Thorne assigned you to me,’ he said. ‘Not your skill. Your proximity. You’re a dampener.’
The truth landed, cold and clinical. A tool. That’s all she was on the roster. She made herself nod. ‘Does it work?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then use me.’
His control slipped again, just for a second. A flash of silver, a sharp intake of breath. His hand came up, cupping the side of her neck. His palm was scorching. His thumb rested on her jaw, not stroking. Just holding. Measuring her pulse.
‘I am,’ he said.
Maya leaned into the scorching heat of his palm. A deliberate, solid press of her throat against his hand. Her pulse hammered against his thumb.
“Then don’t stop.”
His fingers flexed. A spasm of pressure that wasn’t quite a squeeze. The silver in his eyes swirled, a storm contained behind glass.
He didn’t move, but the air changed. It crackled, a static charge raising the fine hairs on her arms. The scent of ozone bloomed, sharp and electric, drowning out the med-bay’s chemical stench.
His eyes bled from grey to a luminous, full silver. No human iris remained. Just liquid metal, glowing faintly in the red emergency light.
“Maya.” Her name was a low vibration in his chest. A warning.
She kept her gaze locked on his. Her free hand came up, slow, giving him every chance to pull away. She laid her palm flat against the center of his chest, over his sternum. The fabric of his shirt was damp with sweat.
His other hand came up to cover hers. Not gentle. He pressed her hand hard against his chest, pinning it there with a force that made her knuckles ache.
“You don’t ask for that,” he breathed, his voice layered with a growl that wasn’t human.
But he didn’t push her away. He held her there.
Beneath her palm, through the muscle and bone, his heart beat. It wasn’t the slow, deep rhythm she’d recorded on the chart. It was frantic. A hummingbird’s pace, impossibly fast, a vibration more than a beat. The force of it shuddered through his frame and into her hand.
It was alive. It was wrong. It was his.
“I feel it,” she whispered.
A shudder ripped through him. His head dropped forward, his forehead coming to rest against hers. His breath was hot and ragged on her lips. The static in the air made her skin prickle.
“The noise is gone,” he gritted out, the words strained. “Just… gone.”
His hips pressed forward. The hard, thick line of his erection strained against his fatigues, pressing into her lower belly. Heat flooded through her, a swift, pooling ache between her own legs. She was wet, already soaking through her underwear. The truth of her body, undeniable.
His nostrils flared. He smelled it. He inhaled sharply, a low groan escaping him. “Fuck.”
His hand left her neck, sliding down her arm, leaving a trail of fire on her skin. It settled at her waist, his fingers digging into the curve of her hip. Anchoring her. Or himself.
“This is the leash slipping,” he said, his mouth a breath from hers. The growl was a constant undertone now. “You should run.”
Maya shifted her hand under his, spreading her fingers wide against the thunder of his heart. “I’m not running.”
He kissed her.
Maya kissed him back.
Not a surrender. A claiming. Her mouth opened under his, her teeth catching his lower lip. She tasted blood—coppery and sharp—and the ozone crackle in the air. Her hands left his chest, sliding up to bracket his jaw, her thumbs pressing into the rigid tendons of his neck.
He made a sound. A raw, shattered groan that vibrated through her palms. His hands locked around her hips, hauling her flush against him. The hard line of his erection ground into her belly through their clothes, a relentless pressure that made her gasp into his mouth.
“More,” she breathed against his lips.
It was a dare. A command.
His control snapped.
He spun her, his movements a blur. Her back met the cold steel of the medical supply cabinet. The impact shuddered through her, metal groaning. His body caged her in, one hand still welded to her hip, the other coming up to brace against the cabinet beside her head.
His forehead dropped to her shoulder. His breath scorched her throat. He was shaking. A fine, constant tremor that ran through the muscles of his arms, his back, the hands that held her.
“Tell me to stop,” he gritted out, the words mangled by the growl.
“No.”
Her own hands were moving, sliding down the sweat-damp plane of his back, under his shirt. Her palms met scar tissue. Ridged, ropey lines crisscrossing his skin. Dozens of them. Old wounds, healed with impossible neatness. She traced one. He flinched.
“Does it hurt?”
“No.” He turned his head, his lips brushing the column of her throat. “It just… remembers.”
She undid the button of his fatigues. The zipper hissed down. Her fingers slipped inside, past the waistband of his briefs. His stomach muscles jumped under her touch.
She found him. Hot. Silken. Thick and straining in her hand. A bead of moisture slicked her thumb. He swore, a low, vicious curse, his hips jerking forward into her grasp.
“Maya.”
Her name was a plea. A warning. A prayer.
“I feel it,” she whispered again, her mouth at his ear. She stroked him, once, a slow, firm glide from root to tip. “All of it.”
His teeth found the curve of her neck. Not a bite. A pressure. A claiming. The heat of his mouth, the scrape of his stubble, the unyielding hold of his jaw. Her head fell back against the cabinet with a dull thud. Pleasure, sharp and bright, lanced through her. Her own hips rocked against his thigh, seeking friction.
The hand beside her head curled into a fist. The metal cabinet door dented inward with a sharp, protesting shriek.
He stilled. The growl cut off. The tremor in his body locked down, rigid. He pulled back just enough to look at her. His eyes were pure, glowing silver. No white. No pupil. Just molten light.
“I’m breaking it,” he said, his voice hollow. “I’m breaking everything I touch.”
Maya kept her hand around him. She didn’t loosen her grip. “You’re not breaking me.”
She leaned forward and kissed the dented metal beside his fist. Then she turned her head and kissed his knuckles. The skin was split, bleeding.
His breath hitched. The silver in his eyes swirled, chaotic.
“I need—” He choked on the words. “I need—”
“You need to stop thinking.” She guided his bleeding hand to her waist, pressing his palm against the hem of her shirt. “Touch me.”
His fingers trembled as they slid under the fabric. His touch was scorching, branding her skin. He found the clasp of her bra. It came undone with a flick of his fingers, a precision that belied the chaos in his eyes.
His palm covered her breast. His thumb brushed her nipple. A jolt, electric and deep, shot straight to her core. She moaned, the sound swallowed by the red-lit silence.
“You’re wet.” The words were ragged. “I can smell it. I can… I can hear your heart.”
“What’s it saying?”
“It’s saying yes.”
He lowered his head and took her nipple into his mouth. Through the thin fabric of her shirt. The heat, the suction, the rough drag of his tongue. Her knees buckled. His arm banded around her waist, holding her up.
Her own hands were frantic now, pushing his fatigues and briefs down over his hips. He kicked free of them. The length of him pressed against her inner thigh, searing hot. She hooked a leg around his hip, drawing him closer. The damp heat of her underwear met his bare skin.
He shuddered, a full-body convulsion. “I can’t—I won’t be gentle.”
“I don’t want gentle.” She reached between them, dragging her underwear aside. “I want you. The whole thing. The monster. The man. All of it.”
He positioned himself at her entrance. The blunt, hot pressure made her cry out. Her fingers dug into the scars on his back.
“Look at me,” he demanded, his voice guttural.
She forced her eyes open. Met that terrifying, beautiful silver gaze.
“It’s yours,” she said.
He pushed inside.
The stretch was exquisite. A burning, perfect fullness that stole the air from her lungs. He was big, and she was tight, and for a second he didn’t move, just buried himself to the hilt, his forehead pressed to hers, his eyes squeezed shut.
“The noise,” he whispered, awe and horror in the tone. “It’s… gone. Completely gone.”
He began to move. Slow, at first. A deep, rolling thrust that dragged a sob from her throat. Then faster. Harder. The cabinet rattled against the wall with every drive of his hips. Each thrust was a claiming, a punishment, a prayer. His hands were everywhere—her hips, her breasts, tangling in her braid, tilting her head back to reclaim her mouth.
She came suddenly, violently. A cresting wave that broke with a sharp, wordless shout. Her body clamped around him, milking him, pulling him deeper.
He followed. His thrusts lost rhythm, turned ragged and desperate. A low, animal sound tore from his chest. He spilled inside her, hot and pulsing, his whole body locking around hers as if trying to fuse them together.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing, the hum of the broken climate unit, and the smell of sex and ozone in the cold, red air.
He was still inside her. His weight pressed her against the cabinet. His face was buried in her neck. The glow in his eyes had faded back to a stormy, human grey.
Slowly, carefully, he pulled out. He didn’t step back. His hands came up, framing her face. His thumbs brushed her cheeks. He was looking at her like he’d never seen her before. Like she was a miracle. Like she was a ruin.
On the floor by their feet, a sterile-wrapped syringe had fallen from the dented cabinet. The plastic casing was cracked.
He kissed her. Soft. A brush of his lips against hers, searching, almost hesitant. His thumbs stilled on her cheeks, holding her face as if it were something fragile. The taste of him was salt and something darker, metallic, like the air after a storm.
Maya’s hands came up, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt at his waist. She didn’t pull him closer. She held on. The kiss deepened, not with hunger, but with a slow, dawning recognition. His mouth moved over hers, learning the shape of it without the desperation that had driven him before.
He broke the kiss, but only far enough to rest his forehead against hers. His eyes were closed. His breathing was still uneven, but the rhythm was slower now. Human.
“I didn’t mean to,” he whispered. The words were raw, scraped from a place he usually kept locked. “I didn’t mean for any of that to happen.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” His eyes opened. The grey was clouded, unsure. “You should be running. You should be reporting me. You should be…” He trailed off, his gaze dropping to her mouth, then back to her eyes. “Anything but this.”
“I’m not running.”
He let out a shaky breath that was almost a laugh. It held no humor. “Stubborn.”
“Accurate.”
His hands slid from her face, down her neck, coming to rest on her shoulders. His touch was warm, anchoring. He looked down between them, at the state of their clothing, at the dark patch of his release already cooling on her thigh. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“I hurt you.” It wasn’t a question.
Maya glanced at the dented metal of the cabinet beside her head. “The cabinet took the worst of it.”
He didn’t smile. “Maya.”
“You didn’t hurt me.” She said it slowly, making sure each word landed. “You didn’t.”
He searched her face, looking for the lie. He wouldn’t find it. She felt stretched, used, thoroughly fucked. But the ache was a good one. The soreness was a testament, not a wound.
His attention shifted to the floor. To the cracked syringe lying in the red glow. He stiffened.
“What is that?”
“Something that fell.” She kept her voice neutral. “When you rattled the cabinet.”
He bent, movements still fluid despite everything, and picked it up. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, studying the broken casing. His expression went carefully blank.
“It’s empty.”
“It is.”
“This is a high-dose neuro-inhibitor.” His voice was flat, clinical. It was the voice of the asset, not the man. “They keep it for me. For when the noise gets too loud. For when I’m… unmanageable.”
He looked from the syringe to her. “You were going to use it.”
“I considered it.” She didn’t look away. “Before you kissed me.”
He stared at her for a long moment. Then he dropped the syringe. It clattered on the tile, rolling until it hit the toe of his boot. He straightened, and when he looked at her again, the bleakness in his eyes was absolute.
“See?” he said, so softly she almost didn’t hear it over the hum of the climate unit. “Breaking everything.”
She reached for his hand. His fingers were cold. She laced hers through them, squeezing. “You stopped. The noise is gone. You’re here. With me. That’s not nothing, Alex.”
He looked down at their joined hands. His grip tightened, almost painful, then eased. He brought her knuckles to his lips. The kiss he pressed there was warmer than the one he’d given her mouth. A vow, or an apology.
From the corridor outside, a door hissed open. Distant, echoing footsteps. Two sets, moving with purpose.
Alex’s head came up. His body went still in a different way—the predator hearing a rival in its territory. His eyes didn’t change color, but the focus in them sharpened to a razor’s edge. He released her hand.
“Thorne,” he murmured, the name a curse.
The footsteps were coming closer. Not directly toward the med-bay, but near enough.
In three swift, silent motions, Alex had his briefs and fatigues pulled back up and fastened. He grabbed Maya’s shirt where it had ridden up, gently tugging it back down over her hips. His touch was efficient, impersonal. The medic was disappearing, the soldier sliding back into place.
He looked at her, really looked, taking in her loose braid, her swollen lips, the flush on her skin that the red light couldn’t hide. His own face was a mask of control, but his eyes held a silent, frantic question.
The footsteps paused. A voice, Thorne’s, muttered something too low to decipher. Then they began to move again, fading down the corridor.
The breath Alex had been holding left him in a slow, controlled stream. He reached out and, with a tenderness that cracked something open in her chest, he smoothed a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
“You need to go,” he said. His voice was quiet, but it allowed no argument. “Now. Before he does a rounds check.”
He bent and picked up the cracked syringe again. He turned it over in his palm once, then slipped it into his pocket. The evidence, confiscated.
“What are you going to do?” Maya asked.
He didn’t answer. He just looked at her, his stormy eyes holding hers in the bloody half-light, until she finally nodded.
She pushed away from the cabinet. Her legs held. She took a step toward the door, then stopped. She turned back.
He hadn’t moved. He was watching her go, a statue in the shadows.
Maya walked back to him. She stood on her toes and kissed him, once, on the corner of his mouth. A brand. A claim of her own.
Then she turned and left the med-bay, the door sighing shut behind her, leaving him alone in the red dark with the scent of her on his skin and the silence in his head.