Now

Max could hardly wait to get back to base so she could talk to Brandy about her gorgeous CO's creative and eager tongue and the way her legs twitched to jump up around his hips in the elevator. Of course, to her own dismay, Alec hadn't dressed down to just boxers or taken one long look at her in her zipped down dress and hungrily licked the curves of her body.

"Max, have you told him yet how badly you want him to be your next mission?" she'd asked, watching the way Max's lips stuttered to come up with something to say.

"No, of course not. Fraternizing is-"

Brandy cut her off. "Fun. Fraternizing is fun, Max. Haven't you ever…" she trailed.

She remembered Pete's dick filling her up, rubbing her from the inside, and blushed. She remembered Nick's amazing tongue, slipping against her inner walls, and blushed harder. "Yeah, I've-"

Brandy reached out and grabbed Max's hand. "Then why don't you hook up with someone? Pick a fuckin' 'Nova, an endurance model, a ripped guy-"

She pursed her lips, those images quickly transforming into Alec's dick, Alec's tongue. He was an endurance model, right? She felt the rush of arousal.

"-And satiate yourself," Brandy finished, watching the hooded look in Max's eyes slowly eclipse her standard awareness. "Girl, you got this bad, huh?"

"He even asked me to marry him," Max said, looking to her friend. "I mean, my cover to marry his cover. He wants me to keep up this cover with him."

Brandy's smile turned lascivious. "And you didn't consummate this union?"

"Wow, when you say it like that," Max deadpanned. Sounded like a contract, which was pretty much the exact opposite of what she wanted. The consummation, that is, not the marriage. She wasn't naïve enough to want the security of the ring, the Mating bite. Except she did feel the flutter of panicked desperation wash over her at the thought of his mouth closing around the sensitive skin of her neck. She groaned.

"Christ, Max," Brandy remarked, watching the torture cross her friend's mind. "You better do something about this crush, 'cause if you don't, your own sexual tension is going to ruin your career."

Max looked to her curly-haired friend with helplessness. "I can't do anything about it tonight. He's on an overnight mission. I saw him packing condoms earlier, and he just shrugged it off nonchalantly."

Brandy's light brown eyebrows shot up a little. "Well, if he's a 'Nova, you've got to expect that sort of thing. He's going to have to fuck people. And so are you."

She hadn't really thought about that until now. Alec was going to go on missions where he had to be… intimate… with other women, and, likely, she would have to be intimate with other men, probably while he was instructing her on what to do. Would it be awkward? Would it be hot? She frowned, staring off into space at the idea of him burying himself in some undeserving mark.

Silence fell between them for a moment, until Brandy spoke up again. "I was cleared for a mission – I'm kinda jazzed about it – I've been back here too long. I think they're sending me to a fetish club or something, so there's all kinds of likelihood I'll have a shot at some deuce-chucking action." She raised her 'peace sign' to her lips and tongued at the vee her fingers made.

Max laughed at Brandy's raunchy gestures. "It's been a little too long, huh?"

Brandy laughed in response and cast sad eyes down, undoubtedly remembering why her last mission ended so abruptly. "That it has. Well, the way I see it, I got one life, and I plan to fuckin' live it."

Hard to argue with that logic. "Do I say 'break a leg'?"

Brandy gave her friend a quick hug and excused herself to infirmary. Standard shots and whatnot. She'd leave in a few hours. Luckily, having been cleared for a mission meant the return of something normal for Brandy.

Max, on the other hand, walked the halls of Manticore, passing others without so much as a glance up. She may as well have been alone.


3 Months Ago (4 months into the Cale Mission)

Max rounded the corner at Jam Pony and nearly ran face first into the hard, sculpted chest of the new guy, Justin. He was a clean cut blonde with a side part and gentle fade, and tattoos covered most of his – God, were those his arms? She bit her lower lip and felt the whole room heat up as she looked up to his tall frame.

"Oh, sorry, Max. I didn't see you there," he'd said. He was a nice guy with an addiction to working out, and as Max twitched to go around him to the left, he shifted to his right, accidentally blocking her path. He laughed, and his voice was so sweet, and his frame was big, and his smile was so goddamn genuine that she almost purred.

Oh shit, she'd realized. She'd been out here a bit too long, because her suppression medication had undoubtedly worn off. She needed to go in for a booster, and like, soon, because she could tell by the way she sized up the base of his palm to the tip of his middle finger that she was going into heat.

She'd then shifted to her right to go around him the other direction, and he'd also sailed to his left. He chuckled deeply. "Wanna dance?" he'd asked, reaching out both hands to still her arms and hold her in place.

She closed her eyes at his gentle touch.

Next thing she realized, she'd thrown Justin up against the wall of Jam Pony's supply closet and covered his mouth with hers, splaying her fingers up his corded arms filled with tattoos of suns and a hibiscus flower and a shadowed surfer curling around the crush of a wave. She tore at his clothes, pulling apart the buttons of his shirt and working at his belt in a near blur. She needed him. She needed this man and his – Christ, is that his real dick?

She grabbed his shaft and pumped him a few times, feeling the tip of his dick moisten with pre-cum. She shook off her own shirt and shimmied quickly out of her pants before attaching her mouth to his, her tongue delving into his mouth. He tasted like a little bit of cloves, a bit of orange, and as he caught her naked ass and turned so she was up against the wall, her eyes rolled into the back of her head at the pleasure. He bounced Max against his pelvis until she bit his bottom lip and drew blood, trying to avoid screaming in her madness.

With the exception of his sandy blonde hair, this guy was nothing like Cale, and she wondered absentmindedly why her first instinct when going into heat wasn't to rush into Cale's arms, Cale's bed, impale herself on Cale's dick. Instead, she'd had a passionate quickie with a coworker in the fucking janitor's closet. At work. During working hours.

Two days later, at Cale's questioning, she'd told him about Heat, and what it did to her, and what a mindless person she became while under the influence of one of her predominant DNA strands. He'd been disappointed, but hadn't pushed her for sex for at least a week while he grumbled about how evil Manticore really was, and what a victim they'd made her.

She'd smiled for a week.

Zack had frowned for a week.

Cale had forgiven her.