A/N: acb: yeah, I know I said I couldn't write from a guy's POV, Camouflage almost completely wrote itself, it was very weird. My plot bunny dragged me to the computer and sat on me until I agreed to start writing. This isn't another "hiding something" one-shot, although I am still probably gonna do those, this is something else that wouldn't leave me alone. Sorry I didn't post on Wednesday, computer problem, you know how it is. By the way, just accept that Max has some information White wants, it isn't about Ray, it's just some random thing that I don't care about and isn't the focus of the story. So don't wonder about it 'cus it doesn't matter at all. WARNING: This version contains fairly graphic consensual sex, if anyone has a problem with that please let me know and I'll take it down.
Max doesn't remember being captured.
She was on a perfectly routine reconnaissance run when a taser hit her, out of nowhere.
Now she's chained hand and foot to the floor of an uninspiring concrete room.
When Ames White walks in, it's just the cherry on top of her day.
"We took a blood sample from you," he says without preamble. He paces around her slowly, setting her teeth on edge. "Estrogen levels indicate you're going into heat sometime soon."
Max twists to look at him, feeling the first skitterings of panic.
"Tell me what I want to know," he continues with a very wicked smile, "and I'll lock the door and leave you in here."
Here comes the threat. "And if I don't?" Max is trying to seem cocky and unruffled, inside she's terrified.
White just raises his eyebrows.
"You wouldn't," Max chokes the words out through her shock and horror. "You wouldn't contaminate yourself."
"You'd be surprised at what I'd do to get this information." His voice is softer, more menacing than usual. Shit, he's serious.
"Besides," he continues straightening from his crouch, "there's a building full of soldiers without my scruples waiting outside."
Max fights the urge to spit at him; waste of good saliva.
"I'd rather a building full of soldiers than you," she snarls at him.
He tilts his head, giving her a measuring look. "Would you? I could just stay in here myself then."
This time the panic threatens to overwhelm her. She'll die first.
White seems to sense it, he crouches again, putting his face very close to hers and murmuring quietly to her.
"You'd give me anything rather than live with the memory of that, wouldn't you."
It isn't a question, and Max doesn't give him an answer beyond a glare.
"You wouldn't." Max isn't sure who she's trying to convince, but she's not doing a very good job of convincing herself.
"Live in fear, 452," he says, softer than ever.
He locks the door behind him. It's just a gesture: she can't get out of the chains anyway, but it serves to remind her of the threat.
Part of the problem, is that she would give him anything rather than live with the memory. The last thing she wants is to wake up in the middle of the night with his name on her lips, remembering the taste of his mouth and the feel of his skin on hers.
She'd give him anything rather than face that.
The rest of the problem is that a small, traitorous part of her wants him to lock himself in the cell with her as she goes into heat.
She puts it down to the side affects of the oncoming onslaught of hormones, a perfectly normal attraction to an attractive, powerful man.
She has to, because if it isn't the heat, she's in real trouble.
She knows she probably has about six hours before the heat kicks in, maybe seven and a half hours before she's far gone enough that she can't control herself.
If she lets White touch her, she'll have to kill herself.
If he stays in the cell with her, she'll do everything in her power to jump him.
If she doesn't tell him what he wants to know, he'll stay in the cell with her.
Max yells for the guard, and when White comes, she tells him everything.
But she never said she would tell the truth.
Max makes one very serious miscalculation: the heat takes longer to rise than she estimated. Long enough for White to check out the information.
She's well into the grips of her DNA when he comes back, and shuts the cell door behind him. The part of her now in charge thinks this is wonderful.
"You lied to me, 452," his voice is whiskey and silk, slithering seductively over her, or maybe that's just her overly hormonal imagination.
"Yeah, well, I never said I was telling the truth." She has just enough presence of mind to respond to his comment; the rest of her brain has turned to tapioca at the sight of him.
"Yeah, well," he mocks her, "you should have."
He takes a small key out of his pocket, the key to her chains, she presumes.
"I'm a man of my word, 452. You want to play games? Try this: a whole building of soldiers out there, most of them men. Isn't that nice?"
As he speaks he's circling her slowly, beginning to undo the chains.
"They've had a long day, putting up with me. I'm sure they'd appreciate your…enthusiasm."
He's too close, she's a straining bundle of need and she doesn't have any control left.
When he's unchained all but her left arm, she uses a newly freed leg to sweep his feet out from under him, and he drops on top of her, momentarily stunned.
She uses that brief moment of shock to slide the fingers of her free hand into his hair, and flip him over onto his back, riding the movement of his body so that she winds up straddling his hips, one hand still chained to the floor.
"What the hell…" he breaks off, realizing what's going on. He might have said something else, but then Max bends down and covers his mouth with hers.
He tenses against her, but doesn't pull away, and when she comes up for air he stares at her silently for a moment.
"That's how you want it, huh?" His whiskey voice is almost a growl.
White rolls them both, ending up on top of her. He pins her free hand above her head with one hand, and when she fights him for control he brings his other hand up to shorten the chain restraining her left wrist.
And he kisses her. Max opens her mouth under his and when his response is encouraging, she lets her own tongue do a little exploring.
The heat shifts in her veins, and she squirms against him, bringing her legs up to twine around his. She bites his lip, and, without conscious decision on his part, his hips press down and in, grinding himself against her.
Max drags her mouth free and moans, arching her back to press more firmly against him.
He releases her wrists to grab handfuls of her hair and drag her mouth back to his.
"You lied to me," he breathes into the hollow of her throat.
"Yes," she whispers back. She grabs two handfuls of his shirt, and rips it off, his tie already halfway across the room.
"Tell me the truth…" his voice catches as she slides her hands down his chest. She scratches with her nails and his body goes from leaping at suggestions to rock-solid arousal. He rips her own shirt to shreds, and licks the swell of her breast.
"Tell me the truth," he murmurs into her stomach as he slides down her body, "and I'll stop."
Max toes her shoes off to let him strip away her pants. "I don't want you to stop."
He aligns his body over hers, grinding against her in a way that makes her shiver and tense. "You will in the morning."
Max pulls his mouth back down to hers, and when he finally pulls away, they're both gasping for breath, and brutally aroused.
"I'll worry about that in the morning," she whispers.
He rises over her, his body sweat-slick and gleaming in the faint light. Max can't remember ever wanting anyone this badly. It's the hint of the forbidden, the danger, the very impossibility that has her begging and desperate.
He ignores her pleas, pinning her with one hand in the middle of her chest, and uses the other hand to strip off her underwear. As Max pants and whispers half-crazed demands, he licks the thumb and forefinger of his free hand, and, very slowly, slides them inside her.
Max moans, and arches into his hand, her body tightening like a bow. He circles slightly, applying skillful pressure, Max builds and builds, and just when she's on the edge, he removes his hand.
Max cries out in protest, she was so damn close!
"Tell me the truth," he whispers, "or I'll stop."
In the end, she tells him everything. And, because he's a man of his word, and partly just because by this point he wants her badly, in the end he doesn't stop.
In the end he lets her fumble with his belt and zipper, and drag him to her. And when she wraps a hand around him he cries out, and all his muscles clench taunt, and he stops breathing for a moment.
And in the end he slides inside her, filling and stretching her very nearly to the point of pain, but even pain, under the right circumstances, can be a kind of pleasure, and Max doesn't tell him to stop.
In fact, she tells him, "Harder." And when the first hard thrust makes her scream, he pauses, still inside her. "Are you sure?"
"Don't stop," Max tells him. "God, don't stop."
And he doesn't ask again.
In the end, right at the edge, Max whispers his name, and then she explodes, and her body clenches around him, dragging him with her.
In the end they lie tangled together, panting. White stands to find the remnants of his clothes, and there are long, deep scratches on his shoulders and back.
Max stretches, sated, and there are bruises on her hips and her wrists and the insides of her thighs. She looks down at herself, and she notices the imprint of his teeth on her breast. Used. She looks used.
She watches him as he leaves. Neither of them says anything, and he locks the cell door behind him.
Max wakes up in an alley behind a bar in sector nine.
There are bruises on her hips, and her wrists, and the insides of her thighs.
She doesn't remember being captured.
But she remembers the rest.