A/N: An NC-17 rated version of this chapter can be found at Nuns With Pens, where my pen name is Sarah ) Yes, I lost my smut virginity...
Chapter 4 - Inevitable
"Well, here's to a job well done, guys." Sketchy raised his mug of pale beer. "And to more guns and new friends."
The last was directed with a leer to Sheena, who merely lifted an amused eyebrow.
"Yeah, very new friends." Alec leaned back in his chair, "With new secrets."
She shrugged without guilt. "I wanted to check out the scene before making any kind of commitments. As I'm sure can be said for all of us - I'm not without enemies."
" 'Shore explains some things about your stamina." Original Cindy said slyly.
Sketchy choked on his beer.
"Well, as amusing as all this is, I've got to get home." Logan stood, "I'm exhausted."
"Yeah, us too."O.C. leaned over and gave Sheena a kiss. "I want to see how Max is feeling."
"If she's asleep, let her sleep, for God's sake." Logan pulled on his jacket. "The sooner this is all over, the better. Do you need a ride back to your apartment?" The question was directed at O.C.
"If you're going my way, that'd be great."
"Mind if I tag along?" Sheena asked, sliding her arm though O.C.'s and smiling suggestively.
"I'm surprised you have to ask."
Logan rolled his eyes as they gazed at each other and leaned in for a kiss. Relationships were astonishingly annoying to people outside of them. "I have to make a quick stop to see Dr.Carr, if you don't mind."
"Not at all." They followed him out the front door and towards Bessie. "We can ask him if there's an antidote we can give Max and Alec. Or I'd even settle for some cyanide."
Alec prowled the rooms of his apartment, tension radiating off of him as he moved. He'd been practically crawling the walls the past hour. It was a little better without direct contact to Max, when she couldn't stimulate him chemically. But with that first, initial scent of her, something primal had been turned on in his brain. He knew she was out there, knew what she wanted, and he knew he could give it to her. Give it to her better than anyone else.
"Jesus, listen to yourself." He muttered, jumping up and grabbing onto the doorjamb with his fingertips. He crossed his ankles and started the pull-ups slowly, forcing the muscles to tense with control, and thereby using up more energy. One, two, three, four…
What if O.C. couldn't keep her in their apartment? What if she was out there, right now, on the loose.
… eight, nine, ten…
Who knew what she'd end up doing and regretting. What if she hurt herself or someone else?
… fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen…
The pull-ups were fast and furious now but his breath hadn't even begun to be labored.
… twenty-one, twenty-two…
At this very moment she could be underneath some scrawny, wimpy, slobbering kid with acne who couldn't even begin to satisfy her. On second thought, knowing Max, Weak Boy was probably underneath her. She was probably riding him like a prize stallion, all that long dark hair cascading over her bare shoulders, sweat gleaming on her golden skin, her lips slightly parted and her eyes closed in bliss…
Alec's groan was soul deep and he launched his body forward, landing easily in front of the bar. He poured and downed six shots of JackDaniels in rapid succession before he finally felt warmth beginning to spread through his system. It was times like these, when he wanted to get so shit-faced he couldn't see straight, that he cursed being a transgenic. Of course, he thought, throwing himself into a chair, if he wasn't a transgenic then he wouldn't be having his current feline difficulties and wouldn't want to get shit-faced anyway. The principal however, remained.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the back of the recliner. Why was he resisting this anyway? Why was he holed up in his apartment doing pull-ups and downing whiskey like it was water? Why didn't he just walk over to Max's apartment, assuming she was even there, lock O.C. in the bathroom and have his wicked, wicked way with a very willing Max.
A slow smile curled his lips.
He could just saunter in there, restrain O.C. easily without hurting her, and stick a sock in her mouth. Then he'd walk into Max's bedroom and, not even acknowledging her look of surprise, push her up against the wall and kiss her the way he'd been wanting to kiss her for the past year. Slow and thorough, seeking out every crevice in her mouth, getting her taste down to perfection-
The past year! Alec jerked up, opening his eyes and swearing. The past year, indeed. Hah! The only thing he'd been wanting to do for the past year was give her a good smack-down. He took a long swig straight from the bottle. These chemicals must be messing with his logic now, because no one in their right mind would actually want to kiss that heinous bitch if they weren't being affected by biological agents beyond their control.
He slammed the whiskey bottle down on the table and bolted up out of the chair. That was it. He was going for a walk. A long, cold walk that would clear his head – he was obviously going stir crazy. A long term attraction to Max, indeed.
Dr. Carr smiled when he looked up to see Logan, O.C. and Sheena standing in the doorway to his office.
"Logan." He rose and shook hands with the other man. "Good to see you. You as well, Original Cindy."
"You're looking well doctor." O.C. shook his hand and introduced Sheena
"I assume you're here for Max's blood tests." Dr.Carr went back to his desk and shuffled through several folders. "Unfortunately I don't have much to report. My theories about a cure for the virus were all pretty much shut down." He handed Logan several sheets of paper.
"Well, we weren't really hoping for much." Logan glanced them over.
"I did find some interesting synthetic markers on her T-Cells though. There's a couple of possibilities with cloning her body's own defense system to work in yours."
O.C. smiled. "Thinkin' outside the box Doc. Good for you."
"I know Max hates it, but if you wouldn't mind sending her in for some more blood work in the next couple of days, I'd appreciate it."
Max shoved her hands deeper into her jacket pockets and hunched her shoulders. It was so freaking cold she was having trouble believing that anyone without genetic enhancements would survive it. She glanced at the street name and then back behind her. She was only a block away from Joshua's house and so far everything was fine. She hadn't run into a male X5 yet, but she was feeling good and steady, a feeling she never felt while in heat.
Joshua's apartment was dark when she walked in the front door, but she expected that. He wasn't due back for another day, but there was no reason he couldn't come home to a freshly stocked refrigerator. She grimaced as she unloaded the bag of groceries, it really spoke of her state of mind that she was worried about housekeeping at two in the morning. This thing with Alec had really gotten to her. Now that it was over she wouldn't have to worry about uncontrollable hormone urges, but the fact that she had been feeling them at all was disturbing. It wasn't so much that she had found him attractive, of course he was gorgeous, it wasn't ever anything she hadn't admitted; it was the realization of how undiscerning her body was. Sex with Alec!? Whom she didn't even like!? It was ludicrous, it was unthinkable, it was… it was…
Her thoughts trailed off as the door opened and a tall figure stepped in. He flicked the lights on, illuminating the hallway and kitchen. He looked down the hall at her in surprise, "Max. What are you doing here."
Oh, God. She could feel her pulse throbbing in her neck, feel the blood rushing through her veins. It was supposed to be gone, this wasn't supposed to be happening.
"Just… uhh… just filling the fridge." She motioned to her right, "For, you know, for Joshua when he gets back."
Alec slowly finished closing the door. "You shouldn't be out right now." His eyes never left her, but to his credit he didn't move any closer.
"It's gone." She whispered, feeling her stomach cramp with longing.
"It is?" His voice was nearly as low as hers.
"I thought it was."
They stared down the hall at each other. The silence became a thriving, living entity that surrounded them. It breathed and hissed of the possibilities. An empty house. No one would know. Nobody had to know. It could all end right now. All this tension. All this desire. All this hurting could be over.
"I should go." His breath was strangled as he fought the overwhelming instinct to move. His brain was shouting for him to leave, shouting and threatening as only rational reason, that knew it was going to lose, could.
"Yeah."
In the end it was simple. As all capitulations are. There is never so satisfying a relief as the dropping of a heavy, deep-rooted burden.
They met in the middle of the hall in a whirlwind of motion. She leaped, quite literally, at him and he caught her in midair, using her momentum to spin them around and pin her to the wall. Her hands grasped impatient fistfuls of his hair and held his head still as she kissed him like a ten-year recovering alcoholic falling gloriously off the wagon.
"No problem." Logan said absently, his eyes on the papers. "I'll see if she can come in first thing tomorrow."
"I don't know if it'll affect your tests, but Max is in heat right now." O.C. said, cocking her head, "You might want to wait until next week."
"Oh, that's right." Logan lifted his head, blinking. "We should probably wait until-"
"I'm afraid you're mistaken." Dr. Carr's eyes twinkled, "Or Max is pulling one over on you. She's not in heat."
"No, honestly."O.C. said quickly. "We were shocked too, but her and Alec have this whole weird cat fight thing goin' on right now. It's miserable. We were gonna ask you if there was something we could give 'em to cool 'em down 'till it's over."
Dr. Carr's smile faded. "No, I assure you Max is nowhere near heat. It's not physically possible. I was working with a blood sample less than a week old. If she were going into heat anytime within the month, I would have seen skyrocketing amounts of estrogen and progesterone."
There was a long moment of silence as two blank faces stared first at him and then at each other.
"That doesn't make any sense." Logan's eyebrows almost met in the middle of his forehead. "Her and Alec have been acting like… I don't even know how to describe it… like cats in heat."
"Her and Alec?"Dr. Carr asked skeptically. "If she was truly in heat then it wouldn't just be with one male that she was having a reaction too. It would be all males."
"But Alec is a fellow X5…"
Dr. Carr was already shaking his head. "Doesn't matter. When it comes to reproducing the only thing our bodies are selective about is species. Instincts don't care about things like advanced DNA sequencing, they just want progeny who will carry on the codes."
"Then something must be wrong." Logan and O.C. shared a worried look.
"Maybe something's backfiring in their DNA." O.C. said hurriedly. "We've gotta find 'em and tell-"
Sheena's low, sexy laugh interrupted their conference. "For such brains ya'll can be really dense sometimes."
O.C. turned around, "What are you talkin' about?"
"Jesus fricken Christ!"Sheena threw up her hands and laughed again. "You're all making it so complicated. It's not Manticore's gene sequencing, it's not radical hormones being strangely selective, it's not the virus, it's not an alien parasite that's taken over their bodies. It's as old time! It's plain, good old fashioned attraction!"
The only thing she got for her explanation was three uncomprehending stares.
"Oh, for crying out loud." She rolled her eyes and propped her hands on her hips. "You know? Lust. Chemistry. Magnetism. Desire. Fascination. Albeit reluctant fascination in the case of those two."
O.C. shook her head, trying to clear it of the insane image her girlfriend had just created. "Honey, you don't know Max and Alec like we do. They're can't go five minutes without clashing. When their just in the same room it's like… " Her voice slowly trailed off.
"Like someone just turned it on."Sheena finished ironically. "From the first moment I was with them I could feel it. They've been incredibly stressed lately, more so than is probably healthy, even for an X5. It makes sense that all that incredible sexual tension would finally build to something that neither of them can control." She smiled gently, watching the mixture of disbelief, horror and, in Logan's case, pain. "This end was inevitable."
Max wasn't sure when they had made it too the bed. She was having trouble thinking of anything but the immediate and splendid present. She could barley breathe, couldn't see anything beyond the vibrant colors of wild emotions that had been too long suppressed. There was too much happening inside her, too much that hadn't been anticipated nor wanted nor even seen for so long.
Alec's head lifted and he levered himself up so that he was staring down at her. His eyes were on fire with emerald flames, glittering as his hair fell around his face. She stared into them, felt the length of his body pressed along hers and the fever that it aroused.
She wanted. She wanted so badly, so much she didn't even know where to begin unraveling the threads inside her, the aching of things she would never be able to understand in herself, let alone to put them into words to ask for them. Everything was rising to the surface, building in an area that couldn't possibly be large enough to contain them all. They were suffocating her, clouding her sight and her judgment, masking motivation and true desire. She couldn't articulate what she was looking for and suddenly didn't know if she could trust what she was feeling.
Then his head lowered. His eyes never left hers. And his mouth touched hers. Gently. Not like the first kiss. Not like the first ten kisses. There was no urgency in this one; nothing frantic or desperate. Just touch. Just contact. And comfort, strangely enough. It was simple… and therefore profound.
She'd known before that she wanted. Now she had a name for what she wanted. This. This. She lifted her hand and her fingers sank into the soft hair at the back of his neck. She wanted this and everything that went with it. She wanted it like she had never known it was possible to want something. Consequences didn't matter here, such a cerebral worry was almost crass at such a time. This was satisfying a craving of the soul - nothing else was relevant...
No words had been exchanged in the ten minutes since The Deed had been Done. The silence was getting heavy.
Laying with his arm draped across his eyes, Alec had a sudden, mental, aerial picture of the room. He on his back, half under the covers. Max on her side, her back to him. They were not touching. There was not a sound. He couldn't even hear her breathe.
If this were a movie there would be a dolly-out shot, he thought. The cameral would slowly draw back to take in the whole bed. It would stop, there would be no music. And then the image would shatter.
Everything would shatter.
TBC