Chapter Text
Carpe Felis
(seize the cat)
and the base keeps running, running…
The Black Eyed Peas, "Let's Get It Started"
Nothing beats beating people at Crash, whether it be at pool, at drinking, or at life in general.
"Thanks for playing… it's always a pleasure." I chuckled. It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money. I think I read that somewhere, or maybe I made it up. "Who's next? Anybody? Sketchy! Whaddaya say, buddy?" Sketchy was a perennial victim, unable to accept that he couldn't win, bless him. Forget the bioengineered gene sequences advantage – after four beers, Sketchy had problems hitting the cue ball.
"Naw, man, I already owe you two paychecks." Actually, he owed me three – but since I was trying to get him to go to four, I felt this was not the prudent time to bring that up.
"'I'll let you break." Not that that would help.
"No… no," Sketchy said, more firmly.
"I'll play left-handed," I offered, seriously. "You can blindfold me." Okay, that one would get a little trickier, but I'm sure I could figure it out.
"No, man."
"No? Okay." Supposedly, for all his failings at pool, Sketchy was a monster when it came to bike tricks – sooner or later, I'd get around to beating him at that, too. Hey, I can't help it that I'm this good. My gaze slid to Max.
"Nobody likes a showoff, Alec," she murmured, smirking at me from lidded eyes. She looked good – very good – tonight, in a black tank top with flushed skin. Did she always look this good? Probably. Or maybe the light over the pool table was particularly flattering. Hard to know.
I fought the urge to lick my lips. "Maaax…" She smiled. "C'mon, fifty bucks, and you get to humble your old buddy Alec." I slid the fifty into my back pocket. In the unlikely – no, make that nigh-impossible — event that she did win, I would make her get the fifty herself. "Whaddaya say?" Was it hot in here?
"Yeah, right." The warmth that was almost there a moment ago vanished.
"Well, thanks anyway." I hid my disappointment. Wouldn't do to give her too much cause to feel righteous. "Anybody? You? You? You? C'mon!" I mean, sure, I'd just won six games in a row, but still… I felt like proving something tonight. "It's not that diff—" I paused. "Logan." I slammed down the chalk on the edge of the table.
Logan looked up from his papers in mild annoyance. Well, too bad – if he wanted to work, he should have stayed home. "Whaddaya say, pal? Play me in a little game of pool?" I kept my voice light, but he knew what I meant and I knew he knew. I didn't have to turn my head to know that Max was perking up in interest.
"Oh. Uh…" He glanced over at Max. That's right, loverboy. Let's keep this in perspective. "I break?"
"Yeah." I'd give that much to him.
There was a long pause, with Max watching us both. I straightened my back in response.
Finally… "Rack 'em."
I laughed, and heard Max mutter "Move over" to Sketchy. As I racked up the balls, my skin tingled – here, a chance on a level playing field (well, mostly level) to show up Mister I Only Screw The Bad Guys Eyes Only. And in front of Max, no less.
A very quiet alarm bell sounded somewhere in the back of my mind, but I had more important things to worry about.
Logan broke, and sank the one ball in the far corner. Lucky of him, but I whistled for effect anyway, and backed away from the table as he moved to take another shot. No reason to come off as overconfident.
Thunk. That one sank nicely too.
Logan gave me a small smirk. Huh. Pool shark. And Max was watching him. Watching him and smiling.
That was unacceptable.
When he ducked down to line up his third shot, I went with him, checking the angle… and, incidentally, blocking him from Max's view. "Alec?" he said, focusing on the cue ball.
"Yeah?" The picture of innocence, that's me.
"Could you stand back?" Heh… now Logan was annoyed. Too bad for him. But I backed off anyway. No reason not to make this a fair fight – I didn't need to cheat to win.
Although I was tempted to reevaluate that standpoint, when another solid ball dropped in the pocket. "Well, well… not too shabby." As he took aim, I nonchalantly smiled, "Get you another beer?" Hey, no one said friendly conversation was cheating.
"No." But he missed the shot anyway. Finally.
I heard Sketchy over my shoulder – "He's going to run it now." Yeah. You better believe it. I sunk shot after shot, and Max's dark eyes were back on me, where they belonged. Doesn't do any good to have all this extra DNA if you can't use it against your rivals once in a while.
Rivals.
Wait.
Shit.
I paused in the middle of lining up a shot, looking up at Max from the opposite end of the table. She was glancing back and forth between me and Logan, shifting her hips in her seat. Measuring. Evaluating. Judging who was going to defeat the other. Looking for the alpha male.
Taking a deep, shuddery breath, I caught the scent in the air for the first time and wondered why the hell it had taken me so long to realize. Why hadn't I figured it out, when she walked in the room and suddenly I wanted to humiliate everything with testosterone in a mile radius? More than usual?
Max was in heat. Early stages, yes, but still undeniably in heat.
Twisting desire knotted in my stomach, kept in check only by anger. What the hell was she thinking, coming out in public like this? How irresponsible could she be? I dropped my cue stick on the table, knocking balls out of the way, to Logan's audible surprise and the groans of our disappointed audience. Too bad, guys. "Your game, Logan," I said evenly, keeping my eyes on Max.
"What?" Well, Logan wasn't stupid, but it probably didn't take a genius to notice that I was suddenly looking at Max like she was lunch. A stupid, irresponsible, infuriating lunch. And she… well, I wouldn't go so far to say she was returning the favor, but she didn't look uncomfortable. Curious, mostly, about the sudden change.
Curiosity killed the cat, Maxie. I peeled off five tens from my roll of bills and slapped them down on the table. "I said, your game. I'm done." Logan was speechless, but beating him at pool was a problem for another time. In the meantime…
In the meantime, I needed to get myself under control. And get Max out of here, before some other less reserved transgenic caught wind of her, before she went into full-fledged cycle and killed Logan trying to get some action, before I stripped her naked and bent her over the pool table. Wait… under control. Yes. Under control.
I approached Max carefully, and tried to remember to breathe through my mouth. No doubt I looked pretty stupid. Stopping about two feet short of her, I said "Can I talk to you for a moment? Outside?" Calm. Very calm.
Her eyes were already turned back to Logan, who was watching us with great interest. Normal males weren't unaffected by pheromones either, but if it was really going to come down to a contest of 'Who wants to fuck Max more, right now, here on the pool table, in front of God and Original Cindy and the good bartenders of Crash', I was going to win hands down. Feline DNA beats out human DNA for pheromone reaction any day of the week. "Sorry," she purred, already beginning to dismiss me, "I'm busy."
Oh, no you don't. I grabbed her wrist, lightning fast, and squeezed hard. "I insist." That got her attention back.
OC's arm was already curling protectively around her shoulder, but Max shrugged it off, angry now and still curious. Good girl. "Fine. Let's get some fresh air." I released her, and she hopped off the barstool and sauntered away in high indignation, hips swinging. Oblivious to Logan's confusion and OC's worry and my… well…
Fresh air. Yes.
And fresh air really did help – outside, it was possible to think clearly, without the music pounding and Max's scent mixed with smoke. Apparently it was a little easier for the lady (hah!) in question to think, too, because the first thing she did was smack me. "You idiot! That hurt!" She examined the wrist I had grabbed, already beginning to turn black and blue. After a quick once-over to make sure nothing was broken, she hit me again. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"What the hell is wrong with me?" I asked, incredulous. She was kidding, right? "I'm not the one out parading around Seattle in heat!"
Well, that certainly got to her. She stopped, very still, eyes wide as though I'd just pulled a rabbit out of a thimble. "What?"
"Do you think you're the only one with feline DNA?" I advanced on her, mostly unconsciously, and she stepped backward to keep her distance. Four feet apart wasn't going to be far enough, if she wanted to get away from me. "I can smell you, Max." And an intoxicating smell it was, too.
She took another step back, bumping into the brick façade. "Don't look at me like that," she said, voice small.
The sight of her cowering was enough to snap me out of it. Whatever an effect Max was having on me (and oh, was she having an effect on me), she wasn't far gone enough yet to find a game of cat and mouse arousing. And I wasn't far gone enough yet to find her fear anything less than unsettling. Max needed to be afraid, yes – but not of me.
I rolled my eyes heavenward, wishing for a nice, cold rain. Figures it would be the one night of the year that Seattle was fifty degrees and cloudless. "Right. Sorry."
"It's… affecting you, too?" she asked hesitantly. I laughed harshly, not daring to look at her, or to answer properly. "But it doesn't… it hasn't really even gotten started yet…"
"Doesn't matter," I said simply. Amazing, what she didn't know about her own body. "You missed Manticore sex-ed. Should have stuck around a few more years, there was a lot left to learn."
"Yeah, I bet it was a blast," Max said dryly, finding more familiar footing. Banter. That we can do. But now wasn't the time.
I backed away from her, stepped aside, and allowed her free access to the street. "You have to go home now, Max. Stay out much longer, and you're going to be very popular."
Her eyes flickered with uncertainty, and that touch of fear. "The others… they'll smell me too?" I repressed a sigh of impatience. There was a lot she didn't understand. Hell, she probably hadn't even had sex with another X-5, since the only ones she'd been in contact with were her so-called "brothers". Didn't know how freeing it was, to not hold back—
Wait. No. Bad Alec. Not a good line of thought. "The males with cat DNA sure as hell will. Most of the X-5s, some of the X-4s and X-6s, who knows what else." Now she looked downright scared, and this time, of the right thing. Good. Time to grow up, realize what was really going on in the big, bad world. "But only if you keep barhopping. So go home, lock your doors, close your windows, don't come out again until it's over, and you should be fine. No one will know."
"And… they would all be affected like you." It was a statement, not a question, but I felt compelled to answer anyway.
"Not all like me, but more or less. They can't all be like me," I grinned. She wouldn't get that lucky.
Max turned to me slowly, a small smile on her full lips. Max smiling in this situation was bad, I was sure, but I couldn't remember why all of the sudden. I could feel the fresh burn of hormones. This time, she did the advancing, steady, and I did the retreating, right back into the brick wall. Not good. Big warning bells. "Well, you don't seem to be so bad," she purred, reaching up to touch my face.
Anger flared again – what, so she was going to seduce me now? This was too much. She didn't get it, and she needed to get it. It was the work of a moment, to grab her hand and pull her to me, flush and close. There was no way she couldn't feel my erection against her stomach, since by now it was using up a lot more blood than my brain. I leaned in, inhaled her scent (not all pheromones) and bit her sharply on the shoulder.
The fog lifted, for her at least, momentarily. "Ow!" Max pushed away from me, and cool night air filled the void.
"In an hour you won't find that nearly so unappealing," I growled. Yeah, growled. This was what she'd reduced me to, the bitch. I don't like being reduced. "Now go home before you find out what else you won't find unappealing."
We stared at each other, and for a moment I wondered if this night was going to end with us fucking against a graffitied brick wall in a crowded street. And whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.
"Boo?"
Original Cindy was better than a bucket of cold ice water.
"Yeah," Max replied evenly, backing off. Damn her for managing a normal tone of voice. I wasn't sure I could manage English right now. "We have to go home now." And she turned and walked away, back towards OC and the light from Crash, away from me. I had the feeling that was going to be a recurring theme.
all my sins / i swear that I would pay for them if i could
Counting Crows, "Angels of the Silences"
Amazing, the things two bottles of whiskey can accomplish.
Well, two bottles of whiskey and a few cold showers.
I managed to make it home all right – once Max left, the air cleared and coherent thought became possible again. Not that I wasn't phenomenally horny. The idea of going back inside Crash and finding some nice pliant female to take the edge off certainly had its charm.
Taking the edge off wasn't really going to cut it, though. A tipsy, warm woman would be nice, but compared to the raw animal need that had rolled off Max in waves…
Well, why have Spam when you want filet mignon?
Regardless, the filet mignon was off-limits, for all kinds of reasons. Smell, but don't taste, and all that. So I made do with whiskey and the showers, and was now myself again, more or less. If slightly inebriated. Cruel joke of Manticore's, to set up the X-5s with the alcohol tolerance of elephants. Great for a drinking contest, but not much help when all I wanted was to stay in an alcoholic stupor for, say, the next two days.
So there I was, flopped back on the couch, counting cracks in the ceiling, wondering whether it was too soon to take another cold shower. Pathetic.
The heats weren't another cruel joke of Manticore's, that much was certain. No, their perfectly engineered soldiers wanting to rut like animals was an unfortunate side effect of forgetting why cats want to jump over fences and run fast and beat the hell out of animals many times their size.
Cats don't do those things to be good soldiers. They do it because they want mates.
And, boy, had Manticore had one hell of a surprise when the X-5 females turned thirteen. After they figured out what was going on, they had nearly all of the girls fixed. Problem solved. Much to the disappointment of the X-5 males, including yours truly.
At least we'd had the benefit of an explanation, of sorts, from the doctors at Manticore. What had happened to Max, the first time? She would have been scared, certainly, but did she hide, or did she get her problem taken care of? Was one of her "brothers" around?
I moaned. Nice job. Way to keep your mind on the clandestine, Alec. Must be sobering up. Time for more whiskey. I was half-way to the kitchen when the phone rang.
Frowning, I checked the caller-ID. Original Cindy's cell. Why was she calling at three in the morning? Had Max escaped? "Alec. What's up?"
The voice on the other end was frazzled, and mad. Very mad. "Boy, what the hell did ya do to my boo?"
Jeez. Everyone always assumed things were my fault, when truth be told, it was only my fault about half the time. "I didn't do anything." Unfortunately. "She's having an estrus cycle. Get her a couple double Ds and she'll be fine. Manticore—"
"—fixed her up with kitty genes, I know that, fool," OC said impatiently. "That she was in heat Original Cindy could figure out by her lonesome. What I want to know is why she's runnin' around, stuffin' rags under the doors, askin'—"
"Is that Alec?"
It wasn't hard to catch Max's purr in the background. I, in contrast, became extremely hard. Funny, how that works.
"Ah," I swallowed, trying to articulate. Smooth. "Is she asking for me?"
"Yeah. You, Logan, Sketchy, Normal, and every other member of the three legged race." Now, was my name at the top of that list for a reason? Please, let my name be at the top of that list for a reason.
"Probably you shouldn't let her near Logan." I wasn't going to smirk. Really. Okay, maybe I did, but it was an accident. I swear.
"No shit, Sherlock."
Max in the background again. "Let me talk to him. Please?"
She was pleading.
For me.
There was a rustle that meant OC's hand had covered the receiver, but I still heard her say, "I don't think that's such a hot idea, boo. Drop and give me thirty, now." Another rustle, and OC's clearer voice – "So what am I supposed to do? I'm gonna die of asphyxiation if Max don't let me open a window."
I barely registered her question. So Max was doing push ups to work through it. Getting sweaty, moving up and down… "You shouldn't have called me, OC," I rasped. "Call someone else. Call anybody else. Not me."
"Why? What's your dealio?" Okay, I was not explaining again. If I made it through this in one piece, Max was going to have to host a 'Trannies and Friends of Trannies' sex-ed meeting. Maybe with live demonstrations…
Damn. "Maybe I should come over," I heard myself say, totally independently of my brain. My brain had relinquished control when I heard Max say 'please'. "You know… extra hands." Extra tongue, extra—
OC snapped me back to reality. "Boy, if I see your pretty face over here tryin' to mack on my boo, I'm gonna smack it with a frying pan, you got it?"
I was busy trying to figure out whether a frying pan was likely to break my nose, and how much a broken nose would slow me down, when I heard a thud and a screech on the other end of the line. A few confusing statements like "My hair!" and "Let go of my shirt!" had me completely befuddled, when Max came on the line.
"Alec." Hot. Aroused. Urgent.
Max named me. She's the only one who could use my name like that.
I tried to choke out something resembling control. "Max, you shouldn't."
She smiled into the receiver. I didn't have to see her to know that. I couldn't smell her, but I could remember smelling her, and it was almost as good. "Come over here." It was a command.
Wait… was I objecting? Surely not. I nodded faintly, even though she couldn't see me. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."
Faintly, in the background, I heard Original Cindy saying, "Don't you dare!" But it was way, way too late for that. I dropped the phone on the floor and walked out the door.
everybody knows i'm her friend
/ everybody knows i'm her man
Tori Amos, "Raspberry Swirl"
It's probably a miracle that I didn't kill anyone on the way over to Max's apartment. Or myself, for that matter. I barely noticed the traffic, and would have forgotten the close call with the delivery truck entirely if I hadn't had to duck the shotgun blasts out the driver's side window. As it was, I made two wrong turns, and for fifteen minutes got lost three blocks from my own apartment.
Admittedly, I was distracted. Alcohol and extreme hormonal urges will do that. And it wasn't just directions I was forgetting. Sure, I remembered basic necessities – my keys, for instance, and my motorcycle helmet – but I forgot some other things. Like underwear. And my shoes.
None of that mattered, though. Max was waiting. She was in heat, and she was waiting for me. So to hell with my shoes.
Somehow, I made it in one piece to Max's building. Abandoning my motorcycle out front, I ran my transgenic ass inside – and staggered against the hormonal rush through my body, head to toe.
Oh, yes, Max was here, and the animal in me knew it.
No time to waste. I took the stairs three at a time, up to the second floor – only to find a giant, hulking dog in a bicycle helmet waiting for me at the top of the steps. Blocking my way. "Hi, Alec," he said, totally unsurprised to see me shoeless and panting in Max's stairway.
I blinked, totally confused. "Joshua?" Had he sensed her, too? What on earth did a part-canine want with a part-feline in heat?
More importantly, who cared? He was between me and Max. "Back off, dog boy, she's mine." He was two steps above me, easily had the advantage of height by three feet, and was, well, gigantic. But if I had to go through him, then so be it.
"Max not Joshua's," he said slowly, reasonably, if muffled. It was probably hard to talk around his 'public-safe' helmet. "Cindy calls, says Joshua need to protect little fella. Lots of cats." Okay, maybe he wasn't affected by her heat. OC must have called him right after I left. Next time, the hell with navigating downtown Seattle, I'm just going to run across rooftops. "Max not Alec's. Max Logan's."
Not what I wanted to hear right now. "We'll see about that." If he wanted to do this the hard way, fine, I was game. I swept out a kick to knock him off his feet – he jumped and sidestepped, then shoved me, hard. I went down two steps. Down was not the direction I wanted to go.
"Logan isn't here, is he? And I am." How to get around him? For all his lumbering bulk, Joshua was fast – but I could still take him. Why did he have to stand in the way? Dammit, I was still coherent enough to not want to break his neck, but I would if I had to.
"Max and Alec not get busy," Joshua rumbled. "Not the plan."
"Plans change." I moved fast, tried to blur past him to the right –
…and Joshua swiped me up over his shoulder like a naughty toddler. In the blink of an eye I was hanging upside down, kicking futilely and beating Joshua's lower back as hard as I could, from that position. Transgenic or no transgenic, if you can't get leverage, you can't do much damage. If I hadn't been so incredibly horny, it would have been humiliating. "Put me down! Put me down, dog boy, or I swear I'll kill you." I wasn't sure how I would follow through on that threat, but I could be creative.
Joshua was unmoved. He must have had experience with things like this, among the basement anomalies. "Alec not want Max." He carried me down the stairs, unperturbed, a very Zen puppy.
"The hell I don't!"
Joshua paused, considering. "Maybe Alec want Max." Yes. Most definitely. No question there. "Cindy say little fella not want Alec."
He made a mistake, and walked too close to the railing – with a desperate lunge, I managed to get a decent handhold on the bar railing. A temporary reprieve, certainly, but I wasn't letting go and any pause in the decent was a welcome one. Joshua would either have to break my hands or wait for the metal to give.
"Why don't you ask her what she wants," I muttered. Joshua glanced over his shoulder at the bar railing, then gave my body a sharp tug. The railing came loose from the concrete and escaped my grasp, and Joshua continued inexorably downward. Fucking contractors – didn't anyone build anything right anymore?
"Little fella say yes, not yes. Yes now, no later."
For a moment, the fog around my head was penetrated by a vision of the loathing in Max's face when she traded her happiness with Logan for my life. The image – which bothered me more often than I cared to admit – was one of the few things that filled me with shame. And shame was sobering, even in the face of pheromones.
Joshua was right. She would say yes tonight, but tomorrow, or the next day, when she was herself again, she would hate me.
I didn't want her to hate me.
Joshua set me down at the bottom of the stairs, and there was no judgment in his face. "Go home, medium fella. All okay in the morning. That's the plan."
I nodded. I was foggy, but mostly okay. "Thanks, Josh," I mumbled, clapping him on the shoulder, and turned to leave. Almost made it, too.
"Alec!"
I stopped dead in my tracks. "Max."
Was I leaving? Why would I leave?
She was leaning over the railing, three stories up, holding off Original Cindy (who was fighting admirably to drag her back inside, considering what she was up against). Leaning over the railing, hair spilling over her darkened face, calling for me. Desperate. Wanting.
Wanting me. I smiled humorlessly, baring my teeth. "Mine."
Joshua moved quickly to get into my way, but not quick enough this time. I blurred past him, up the stairs, fast and hard enough to crack the linoleum under my bare feet, to the third floor landing. Fast enough to tear Max away from OC before she had a chance to register what was happening. OC fell to the floor, hard but not too hard – again, in direct contrast to me.
I stepped between OC and my mate, facing this potential threat, and Max pressed herself against my back. Her hands dove under my t-shirt and she got straight to work nibbling at my barcode. Max always was task oriented. Valuable trait.
Joshua was hard on my heels, and assisted OC to her feet. OC reached for her frying pan, lost in the fall, but Joshua pulled her back. "No, Cindy. Fubar. Too late."
He was right. These were my friends – I still knew that – but if they tried to take Max from me I would kill them both without a second thought.
OC looked at me, unconvinced, then at Max. "Max, you said—" But I moved to block Max from her view.
"Leave." I barely recognized the voice as my own.
She froze. Humans are animals, too, after all – animals that are particularly good at recognizing threats. Joshua, attuned to the precariousness of the situation, gently steered OC backwards. I didn't move until I heard the door slam downstairs.
Finally, I turned to face Max, who wasted no time in grabbing me by the shirt collar and dragging me back to her apartment. Frankly, I was fine with fucking her right here in the hall, but if she wanted to be modest, I could live with that.
To the business at hand.
give me hop
e / that emptiness brings fullness / and loss of love brings wholeness
Indigo Girls, "Hand Me Downs"
What followed was easily the most satisfying two days of my life.
And when it was over, when Max finally fell into a nearly comatose sleep around two a.m. on the third day, I got a chance to nap myself. I woke when the sun rose and dragged myself into the shower to take stock of the situation.
Black eye, teeth marks, hickeys, scratches, bruises, strained muscles, and chafing aside, I felt phenomenal. But vast amounts of great sex would do that. I'd lost count at round fifteen, about twelve hours ago. On the kitchen counter. Original Cindy wasn't going to be happy when she saw how many dishes we'd broken.
The shower water was cold, but cleansing. And head clearing. When the last of Max's scent washed off of my body (with the help of some kind of girly floral soap), the first thing I realized was that I hadn't eaten in a very long time. Hey, I had had better things to do. Max, mostly.
She hadn't moved by the time I got out of the shower – under the quilt, still curled in a fetal position on what was left of her bed. After the fourth time around, three of the slats holding the frame together had snapped, dropping the mattress and us onto the floor. It was so startling that we had almost paused what we were doing.
I grinned and brushed a few tangled strands of dark hair off of her face, glorying in purely male pride. A beautiful woman was satiated, sleeping in spite of her shark DNA, and I'd broken her bed. Not bad for forty-eight hours of work.
I allowed a finger to trace the curve of Max's cheek down to her jaw line, where the flesh was bruised and swollen from nips. Mine.
It did look a little sore, though, revved up healing or otherwise. I'd get her some antiseptic later today. Might need to lift it from one of the downtown emergency rooms, but hospital security certainly wasn't a problem. And hell, I'd buy her a new bed, too. Something sturdier for next time.
My hands stilled at that thought. There was no guarantee that Max wouldn't grab me by the throat and throw me through the window when she woke up. Or maybe she'd smile, thank me, and give me a blowjob. No idea, really – we'd spent the entirety of the last two days in the same room, but the only words we'd exchanged weren't fit for repeating. If I had to guess, though, I'd place my bet on the ass-kicking outcome.
But I wasn't going to dwell on that right now. She was still sleeping, I'd participated in what had to be the best sex in history, things were mostly right with the world, and I was hungry. Food first, huge friendship-ending issues later.
Naked and wincing a bit (if there was a next time, Max was going to have to clip her nails in advance), I went in search of the pizza I'd ordered in a moment of rationality yesterday. Somewhere in the haze of lust, the old soldier auto drive had kicked in – we needed supplies. So I called Pizza Express and stammered out an order for a large anchovy while Max's tongue went exploring.
When the delivery guy had shown up, and made the mistake of gawking at the gloriously and unabashedly nude Max when she opened the door, I'd been left with little choice but to grab him by the throat and hurl him out into the hallway. And when she made it clear just how acceptable she found that bit of macho behavior, the pizza had been forgotten. Luckily, it was still good after its night and day on the floor. Cold, but good.
I dropped the box onto the coffee table and sank into the sofa, munching, glancing around the apartment. Damn, the place looked like a tornado had hit. Appropriate.
A rustle in the doorway, and there was Max, wrapped in a ratty bathrobe and looking like a bit of a train wreck herself. A very attractive train wreck, matted bed head aside.
Her eyes met mine, very briefly, and then she looked down, face crimson. There was a long pause as I tried not to fidget. Should I run for it now, or later? Was she going to say something, or just go ahead and start slapping me around like a red-headed stepchild?
I cleared my throat. No response from the lady of the hour. Not even a twitch.
Okay. I tried again. "Mornin'." Nothing. Just the determined study of her own feet. Was this the silent treatment? If so, it was damn creepy. More for lack of anything else to do, I offered her my half eaten slice of pizza. "Want some anchovies?"
I thought I was being very nice, gallant even, sharing my breakfast – which is why I was unprepared for the nearly silent, wrenching sob that came from her small frame.
"No pizza?" I said uncertainly as Max sank to the floor and hugged her knees to her chest. "I mean, if anchovies aren't your thing, that's fine. We can order something else, pepperoni, or maybe buffalo wings. Would you like some buffalo wings?" Yes, I was babbling. There wasn't a Comforting Crying Women 101 class at Manticore. Besides, this was totally unexpected – shouldn't she be trying to kill me? Isn't that basically how our relationship worked?
"All right," I ventured finally, setting down my pizza and sliding off the couch next to her on the floor. She turned her face away, body shaking. "Not buffalo wings. How about Chinese instead? I promise, I won't attack the delivery boy this time." C'mon, Maxie, smile for me. "You like kung pao, right?"
"I'm not hungry." Well, at least it was a response, choked though it was. I bit back the urge to say something clever about her appetite – even I knew this wasn't the time.
"Okay. No food then. What do you want?" I tried to brush the hair out of her face, but she flinched away as though I had slapped her.
Horror dawned on me. Of course.
I had scared her. She had never been with one of her own before, and I hadn't had the sense to hold myself back, had in fact delighted in leaving my mark. And now Max was afraid. Brilliant. Just… brilliant, Alec.
And I had clearly overstayed my welcome. "Right. I should go." I got to my feet, careful not to touch her, and started searching the wrecked apartment for my clothes. I hadn't come in with shoes, but my t-shirt I found behind the overturned sofa, and my pants –
I sighed. My cargo pants had come off in pieces when Max had been too impatient to bother with the buttons. It hadn't bothered me at the time (I'd been more bothered by other things), but now, this was going to prove inconvenient. "Max, I have no pants." Damn, they'd been expensive, too.
"I'm sorry."
Shaking my head, I checked under some overturned pots in the kitchen and found her cell phone. "It's all right. I'll give Original Cindy a call, see if she can stop…" I trailed off as I caught Max's face. She was finally looking at me, up from the floor, eyes full of guilt and self-loathing and unhappiness. All the things Max really loved to wallow in.
Well, she might get that look over Logan, but it was just stupid be that miserable on my account. Granted, it was stupid to be that miserable on Logan's account, too, but one issue at a time.
Setting the cellphone back down, I approached carefully, kneeling next to her. Trying not to freak her out. "Hey. It's okay. Really."
"You must hate me," she said, dejected, taking in the scratches on my chest.
What?
Max reached out, tentatively, and touched the bruise around my left eye. I tried not to wince, but she caught it anyway and dropped her hand instantly. "I didn't mean to… Alec…" Her breath caught in her throat. "I'm sorry…"
Okay, now I was lost. "Sorry about what?" I glanced down at myself, at the battle scars of the last two days. "Sorry about all this? Max, I'll heal. Stems cells are a beautiful thing, remember?"
Well, that wasn't the right thing to say. She groaned hid her face back in her knees. "God, I'm such a freak."
"No, you're not." Stick with safe responses from now on.
"Right. Because normal girls always rip their lovers to shreds when banging the gong for two days straight." Lovers? "Even Kendra can't beat that one."
I shook my head. For such a smart kid, she had some real self-awareness problems. "Max, I hate to tell you this, but you're not a normal girl."
She snorted behind a curtain of hair. Did she have to be so stubborn?
Forgetting for a second that I was trying not to freak her out, I grabbed her chin – gently – and tilted her face towards me. "Now listen, 'cause I'm only going to say this once, and then I'm going to start charging you by the hour. You're not human. You're a genetic cocktail from a Petri dish, Max. Going into heat isn't natural for humans, but it is perfectly natural for genetic cocktails from Petri dishes." I let go of her chin. "If you don't quit trying so hard to be a normal girl, you'll crack."
Wow. Where did all that come from? One of these days, I really was going to have to learn to keep my mouth shut. Maybe.
Max just stared, eyes wide. Okay, now I was going to get smacked. I braced myself for impact, but to my complete surprise, she laughed. Not in a very happy way, sure, but forced laughter was still an improvement over tears. "Smart Alec, transgenic therapist."
I smirked. "Hey, spend enough time in Psy-Ops, you figure out all kinds of things." Standing, I offered her my hand to help her up – and when she turned beet red, I remembered that I was naked. Naked was no longer socially acceptable. "Er… got any clothes I can borrow, Maxie?"
A strange look passed over her face, and the warmth that had been there before shuttered. "Don't call me that." She didn't take my hand, wiping her eyes as she got to her feet. "I've got some pajama pants that might work." As she went back into her bedroom, I noticed that she walking very gingerly.
I couldn't help it – I grinned. Broke her bed and she couldn't walk. I rule.
"Here, they'll be short, but—" Max caught my grin before I could wipe it away, and rolled her eyes in disgust. "Great. Now I'm another notch in Alec's belt." She threw the pants at me.
Low blow. "Hey, you're the one that asked me to come over, remember?" I snapped, getting dressed.
"What, and you couldn't say no?" What the hell had her on edge all of the sudden? If two dozen orgasms couldn't loosen her up…
Well, I wasn't having it. "Oh, no. Don't make this out to be my fault just because you're having day-after repentance."
"Oh, I know. It's my fault." Acid dripped from her voice. "'Cause I woke up the other morning and decided hey, my life isn't complicated enough – think I'll go into heat and fuck a transgenic manwhore. Just to shake things up, you know?"
Amazing, that I'd been feeling bad for her just a few minutes earlier. Bitch. "You want to fight? Pretend that you didn't love it? Fine." I glared at her. "But you're a liar, Maxie, and we both know it."
Her face was cold, but those dark eyes were blazing. "I told you not to call me that." And she took an open-handed swing at me. I caught her wrist easily. I knew she'd try to hit me sooner or later.
"Let me go." She wasn't steely anymore. Something else was rolling off of her, a deep desperation. Her voice shook with it. My anger left me – mostly.
"Max." She flinched when I said her name. "Max, tell me what's wrong." This was about something else, something in addition to her heat and being pissed at me for existing, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
"I…" She paused. Then she ripped her wrist out of my hand. "Nothing. Don't let the door hit you on the way out." She stalked into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.
What the hell? "Fine!" I shouted at the bathroom, a bit childishly. "But you owe me new pants!" I pulled on my t-shirt and stormed out of the apartment.
Women. Go figure.