His eyes left her face, his nose her ear, and trailed down over her exposed neck, keeping his lips a hairsbreadth from her skin and giving whisper kisses to the messy tendrils of hair that resided there. His heart recalibrated to beat with hers, weak and slumbering. Reid stopped before he nuzzled.
But his fingers trailed up one of the blankets covering her, and gently slid it off her right arm. It was so easy. Clara slept in a prey position, clasping one of his blankets between her arms and legs, lying on her side. Her backside would be exposed if it weren’t for the other sheets on his bed. The position did stop him from burrowing his nose between the gap of her breasts but he didn’t mind, releasing the need to do so with one quiet groan.
He continued his descent down the run of her elbow, close to her vein, and followed it back up where her fingers were cinched under her chin.
If she wakes up...he wouldn’t be able to stop the sudden fear that would crash through her, seeing his face in front of hers. A survival reflex.I do so like the smell of fear.
And seeing Clara’s violet irises wide and bright, terrorized for an instant before comprehension dawned wouldn’t be able to stop him from covering her and taking her again.
She fears Santino, not me.
With the metal wires vibrating behind his teeth, Reid took a heavy step back and eyed her from a safe distance away. There had never been a woman in his den before—nor anyone. Her pale skin and soft curves amongst his sheets brought forth a horrible need to trap this moment for eternity.
The wires strummed harder, practically begging him to shift. He glared at the cement walls, ceiling, and floor on all sides of him, disgusted. There was nothing of comfort, nothing besides his bed.
His suits were hung in a closed, attached closet to the adjoining bathroom which was just as cold and uninviting as the rest. Even the air was cold. The whole damned facility could’ve been a cross between a mechanical plant and a prison if no one looked hard enough.
Reid paced, his bare feet hitting that cold cement he was coming to dislike.Can babies tolerate cement? I’m going to have to get a rug.
There was one piece of furniture in his room besides the bed, and that was a metal nightstand where his hardware was stored, and a gun.
Anything else hehadwas stored elsewhere in the facility. He kept several EMPs stored throughout, smuggled in when he first began working here because he knew one day they would be needed. A Cyborg needed to protect the secret of cybernetic children. The information he kept hidden and the rest that he fabricated would someday be outside the reach of his keeping. He trusted none but another Cyborg with it, and a Cyborg would never take his position willingly.
Seeing Clara in his space filled him with unease. It also filled him with satisfaction.
Reid’s lip jerked. He was a mal-crafted anomaly even for his own kind. If anyone was going to make cybernetic humans by natural law—it would be Cyborgs. Not humans.
But until that day of severance came, they’d hide what they knew and continue to work alongside their creators amicably.
“We are, after all, part human too.” He checked Clara over once again, obsessively, sensing her REM cycle at its deepest state and moved to redress, trapping the canine further behind a man-suit that then put on another... suit.
When he fixed his tie into place, he allowed one last, lingering breath to fill his nostrils and his memory. Bliss. Berries and seed. Clara’s berries buried among and entwined with his smell gave him ownership of it.
He quietly lifted his bedside gun and holstered it behind the lapel of his jacket, keeping his eyes on the woman in his bed the whole time. She mumbled and stretched her half-exposed leg outward, shifting the blanket back to reveal the thin white edges of her scarring.
Santino didn’t know he was going to die tonight.
He was filled with a sick sort-of glee.
Clara’s words replayed in his head as he walked backwards toward the door.“Go ahead, kill Santino, make it long and painful.”
Oh, dear Clara, you know how to woo me.
The door zipped open—without a sound—and he stepped back and into the hallway. It closed the same way, hiding her from his eyes. The lock clicked into place loud enough for only him to hear and he turned away. The ventilation system partially cleared his nose, and with it, his head.
Reid found Marsha and her girlfriend, Natalie, several barricaded security doors away and stormed into their room without announcement or hesitance.
They were awake, startled, jumpy in that way only past trauma made a person, but ultimately annoyed by his rudeness.
“Dr. Reid...” Marsha muttered, standing up, back stiff, a show of wary thankfulness flashing over her face.
“Officer.” He looked at the other woman, her legs curled into her chest and perched on the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. Much better. Thank you, sir, and—”
“—good—”
“—I’m sorry for being ungrateful before. It’s hard to trust easily after... what happened.”
