Alec slowly closed his eyes and seeped into her kiss, his personal impulse to deepen their kiss at war with his professional impulse to stop. Her soft lips felt like petals falling on his, and he wanted to experience their bloom. As her commanding officer, he needed to remember the objective of sneaking out of the Walkers' home this evening, an objective on which he had achieved success. But as the man she kissed so reverently, his heart roared at the honesty of what it meant. It felt like a declaration that she wanted this, wanted him. Not 494 the decorated officer, but Alec the person.

And she felt so good against his lips, out here where he was just Alec, and she was just Max. They had so few moments where they were truly alone, and he wanted to relish in it, make their time last, reach beyond this mission and their aliases and just... be... without the encumbering circumstances of panic attacks or being on mission and getting interrupted or performing for an audience or worrying about guards with machine guns. His fingertips feathered along her arms as if holding her tighter might cause her to slip right through his fingers like sand.

Gunshots popped in the distance, breaking them apart and causing them to drop down into a crouch. Their hearts echoed the sounds as they took cover, Alec draping his arm over her back protectively. A few seconds passed, then more shots rang out.

"Where was that?" asked Max, peeking out the loft's opening across the hilly grounds.

"Maybe at the western edge of the property," Alec deduced.

She hadn't seen anyone else besides the three guards and her handler out by the second greenhouse, nor anyone at all on their way to the stables. Perhaps a threat from the border had found its way to the property.

Sharing a wide-eyed glance confirmed he thought the same thing: the Walker Ranch had just found someone or something on their property, and executed them or it. More, they worried that someone already had a bio-weapon on the premises, and since Harry hadn't admitted to having purchased one yet, it could belong to someone else. Maybe the Valenzuela growers already had a hybrid weapon programmed to take out their competition.

"What in Sam Hill is going on up here?" shouted Harry, stomping up the loft stairs with Libby and two armed guards in tow. Harry's eyes danced down Max's chest, and suddenly she felt exposed.

The twosome rose. Alec stepped in front of Max and she slipped a hand into his. "We just heard gunshots. What's going on out there?"

"Just a wild animal near the edge of the property," the older man lied. It obviously was not a wild animal, not with that many shots, and not with the way his eyes shifted. If Harry thought their guests didn't believe him, he didn't let on. "Now, what's going on in here?"

Max smiled softly and Alec pursed his lips. "We, uh, had a little argument and Eva slipped out to get some air. I just found her and I was..." he trailed, looking back to Max before continuing, "apologizing... when we heard the gunshots."

Max's cheeks were already rosy, first from the cold of the night, then from the exertion of blurring, arguing, and kissing; otherwise, she, too, would have blushed harder. But goddamn, did she love seeing his freckles, their own little secret freckles.

Harry spied them warily. Libby gave Max a sympathetic smile. "It's not safe out here for y'all," she said. "What if the guards mistook you for a critter?"

Right, a critter. Not a rival drug runner. Or possibly more accurate in our case, a ten million dollar hybrid soldier.

"Come on back to the house," Harry ordered politely. "We could all use some shuteye before tomorrow."


The dusty duo, finally back in the guest suite, sat at the foot of the bed and smiled shyly.

"We should grab a quick shower," Max said.

Hazel eyes twinkled back at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling a little as he undoubtedly thought about showering with the dark haired beauty.

She'd be lying if she said she wasn't imagining Alec holding her against the tile shower surrounds, sliding in and out of her depths in sensual orgasmic abandon. She was completely aroused from a mere image, and she let him see it in her eyes, challenging him to understand.

Belatedly, she recognized that part of their DNA cocktail was cat, and he could likely scent her arousal if by some chance he didn't see it in her heavy lids and rosy skin.

"You want to go first?" she finally asked, having successfully pulled herself out of her fantasy.

You don't want to shower together? he wanted to ask. He understood, though. This brand new development between them was no one else's business. "Why don't you go first?"

He remained seated as she stood and made her way to the en suite. She caught sight of her reflection and felt her skin heat up again, this time in a paradox of prideful embarrassment. The dusty nightgown was so thin she could see the suggestion of her areolae, and the hardness of their peaks. Well, that explained both Harry's and Alec's behavior in the loft. Harry had checked her out and Alec had tried to protect her modesty.

The water was blissfully hot and soothed some of her tense muscles. It almost made up for the harsh stinging of the small cuts on her feet. Plus, she was still a little keyed up from their lip action, and even thought about touching herself, but it just wouldn't have been the same. Now that she'd tasted his real kiss, she was starving for more of him. The real him. All of him.

Turning off the shower, she wrapped herself in a towel and leaned into the guest bedroom. "Your turn."

"I, uh, set out my shirt for you. I know that nightgown got pretty dusty." His arm brushed against hers as he crossed the threshold into the bathroom, and she wondered if he'd seen her nearly naked body through the nightgown, too.

"Thanks." Isn't that his only shirt? "Then what'll you wear?"

"My boxers." His simple answer excited her a bit. They were about to share a bed, wearing only two pairs of underwear and a shirt between them.

She changed into his shirt, which hung loosely to the tops of her thighs, and spread the Aztec blanket over the comforter before turning the blankets down. Reaching for her phone, she swiped through the photos to see if there was anything else she could glean from the Walkers' operation, and tried not to get too distracted from the scent of him on the tee. She pulled the collar up to her cheekbones and inhaled the mixture of their pheromones.

Alec took less time in the shower than she had, and came out dressed in just boxer briefs. She tried not to stare, but so much of his golden skin seemed on display. Willing herself to keep her eyes north of his waist, below which, in her peripheral vision, she could make out the suggestion of his sex, she swallowed and met his thirsty eyes.

He turned out the light in the en suite and joined her on the bed, slipping his legs under the covers and pulling the bedspread up to his stomach. He raised his arm, inviting Max to cuddle up to his side, just like how he imagined Eva and Edward would. Max settled into his side, one hand rubbing up his chest, stilling at his heart. Her hand was warm, and he held her palm to him and caressed the backs of her fingers.

"Eddie?" Max tilted her head up to his.

He stared straightforward into the ceiling. "Yeah?"

The woman in his arms shifted into his view. "Nothing. Good night." She kissed him softly on the chin, took a resigned breath, and tried to sleep.

He had no clue what she was about to say. Maybe she'd changed her mind about him already, like X5-385 Charlotte had after the tall blonde had discovered she could not further her career by sleeping with him.

He had a fling with X5-400 Elan a few years back, unbeknownst to anyone except for Pete. Elan looked like her donor was Peruvian, with big, dark, discerning eyes, and she had a sharp intellect, which all made sense because she was a psy-ops unit. The big difference between what happened with her and what hadn't happened with Rachel, or even Max for that matter, was that Elan was not a subordinate. He'd liked her, and they'd kept their dalliance offsite. Their weeks-long affair fizzled out quickly, and when he returned from a month-long mission to Dublin, she'd waltzed right into his barrack with a big, fat bite mark on her neck - a Mating bite.

Just like Elan's, there was the rare Mating Manticore couldn't seem to prevent. When it first happened, the higher-ups tried to separate the Mates in ill-fated attempts to preserve the integrity of their soldiers and spies. They thought it unlikely that a mated pair would perform well separately on solos or together on operations, almost like asking a married woman to honeypot on a deep cover assignment could somehow stay morally ambiguous to the pair.

It was a huge mistake, as they found there was little the pair wouldn't do to stay together. They became fiercely protective of one another, to the point of aggression, even violence. Once Manticore understood this, they used the few Matings to their advantage.

Fraternization was strictly forbidden otherwise, Alec and Max both knew it. He was afraid of what she expected; but more than that, he was afraid of what he wanted. Would he risk his career for her? Would she risk hers for him? Was this just a fling?

Though he laid there with his eyes closed, behind his lids he was wide awake. He was supposed to protect her, provide her security, let her do her job, guide her when needed, reel her back in if she went too deep, and have the wisdom and distance to discern how deep was too deep, when to intervene, when to step aside. Would he have that professional clarity if they were together? How would they hide it from Manticore? Not to mention last time he'd even considered bending the rules, his agent went off script and was killed. He worried that Max was just as impulsive.

But she'd listened tonight when he finally got through to her, albeit with such an unfortunate slip. He wondered if she realized that she could have been shot to death tonight like some wild critter who'd wandered onto the property. He couldn't bear the thought of losing anyone else. She was brilliant and infuriating and breathtaking and sexy, and he needed to keep her alive.

He pulled her a fraction tighter against him.


Max stirred restlessly in bed, rubbing her backside against Alec's burgeoning length. All she could think about was their kiss in the loft, the way he hesitantly touched her, the promise of making love with her under the stars rolling off him in waves of reigned-in pleasure. Imagining tugging his briefs down and his dick springing out toward her had her inner walls clenching in anticipation.

His deft fingers marched over her hip and he slid his hand toward the apex of her legs. Max placed her hand over his and pushed their stacked palms down into her panties. She swiped at her own eager sex with his fingers, and he groaned in her ear.

He pressed his fingers along her clit, causing her to buck against his dick again. She longed for the friction. She guided his fingers between her folds, and he pinched the bundle of nerves between them and rubbed against her opening.

"Yes," she urged on, cupping the back of his neck and twisting to kiss him from over her shoulder. She could see his bicep contracting, moving in a parallel rhythm to the one he played against her clit.

He deepened their kiss, his tongue stroking languidly into her mouth.

Max inched her hand between them and gripped his hard shaft over his underwear. She pumped him slowly until he screwed his eyes shut and growled a little. Turning toward him, she revealed her hard, tight nipples doing their best to break through the shirt. "Don't you want to taste me?"

"God, yes," came his labored reply.

Which was the moment Max awoke, hot and revved up, with Alec's hand halfway up her stomach, dragging it's sleepy way to her naked breasts. Her backside pressed firmly against the front of him, and all she wanted to do was strip their underwear off and grind against his cock until they couldn't take the tension anymore and finally gave in to their desires.

Max's arm held his around her, and she softly pulled it just a little further up the soft, flushed skin of her stomach until it was just below her breast. He thumbed the underside of her breast and breathed a whispered moan into her neck. She felt his erection pulse against her and gave her own humming exhale.

I want your warm hands all over my body, she wanted to tell him.

But now it was like she didn't know how to act around him. Their cover identities could get a little hot and heavy, but the paralyzing fear that she might not know if it was 494 or Alec paused her forward momentum. That, and the fact that the Walkers were set up for surveillance and everything they did or didn't do would be privy to someone else's voyeurism.

This sucks.

And his hand stilled, too. He wasn't going to take it further on his own. Not here, where their every move could be scrutinized and recorded. As much as he enjoyed the feeling of her body against his, and the torturously sexy and incoherent sounds she'd made in her dream, he peeled himself back from her and counted the boards in the ceiling, trying to calm his erection.

Max lay awake, her back to him, until her racing heartbeat slowed to a normal pace. When she finally turned toward him, his eyes were tinged like green gold, and she couldn't stop staring. She felt engulfed, entranced. She wanted to stay there and let them warm her whole body.

"Hi," he greeted in a low, deep voice.

Is that your morning voice? Fuck. She smiled a tiny grin and felt her pupils expand a fraction. She squeezed her thighs together. "Hi," she responded. "How'd you sleep?"

Alec turned toward her in order to keep his dick from tenting the blankets until he could simmer down his erection. "Not easily," he answered frankly. "Sounded like you were having quite the dream."

Her cheeks burned with partial embarrassment and full arousal. "I dreamt about you," she divulged quietly, "touching me, kissing me."

Leaning toward her, Alec raised his hand and swept her hair away from her face. His hand lingered at her cheek, and his thumb ghosted over her full lower lip. His lips parted in anticipation of drinking her in.

"Tasting me," she added, jutting her chin out to keep his thumb on her lip.

He drifted closer and kissed that lower lip, then her upper lip, and then slanted his mouth into a deeper kiss, his torso halfway over her body already. He had started with the idea of trying to lessen his erection, but now he just wanted to drown in her.

As she moved her luscious lips under his, she ruffled her fingers through his hair and caressed his shoulders forward, urging him to roll onto his knees so he could position one leg between hers. The scent of her arousal hit him full force then, and his cock strained toward her from within the confines of his boxer briefs.

A barely audible whir paused the pair and Alec detached from her mouth. He rested his forehead on hers a moment, took a deep breath, and backed off of her.

The camera.

Max cursed this goddamn house and its owners, and then cursed their enhanced hearing.

It was going to be a challenging day.