His tongue pushes into my mouth and I taste him — something wild, something that doesn't have a name — and my hips roll against him, seeking, finding. He's hard. Straining against the thin fabric between us, and when I grind against him his hands drop to my hips and grip so hard I feel the bruises forming and he lifts me. Just lifts me. Like I weigh nothing. My legs wrap around his waist and the pressure of him between my thighs is so direct and so perfect that I break the kiss to gasp and his mouth drags down my throat.
"Fuck — RJ —"
His hands are under my shirt. Rough, shaking, but not hesitant. Palms flat against my ribs, thumbs dragging up, finding my breasts and the sound I make is loud enough to echo off the walls. He groans against my throat — deep, vibrating, more animal than human — and his hips push into me and the friction is devastating and I'm grinding against him with zero shame and zero control because my body has wanted this mansince the first second I saw him through that window and it is done waiting.
His mouth comes back to mine. Harder. His hand fists in my hair and pulls my head back and his tongue drags up the column of my throat and I'm panting and rolling my hips into his and the heat between us is nuclear — I can feel it radiating off our skin, the mark on my wrist pulsing in time with my heartbeat and his heartbeat and they're the same rhythm. The exact same.
I reach between us. Get my hand around him through the fabric and he slams me back against the wall and the sound he makes is shattered. Broken. A man who can barely form words making a sound that says everything.
"Alex." My name. Rough. Wrecked. He says it against my mouth like a prayer and I kiss him harder and tighten my grip and his hips jerk into my hand and —
The lights come on.
Full brightness. Blinding.
I don't stop. Neither does he.
Sven is shouting. I can hear him — distantly, through the roar of blood in my ears and the heat screaming through every nerve — but my body doesn't care. My body is locked onto RJ like a circuit that can't be broken by something as irrelevant as fluorescent lights and a man in a doorway.
RJ's arms tighten around me. His body shifts — putting himself between me and the door, shielding me. A growl builds in his chest, low and sustained, vibrating through my sternum. Not aggression. Warning. Mine. Don't come closer.
"Stand down!" Sven's voice. Command register. Full authority.
RJ doesn't stand down. His mouth finds my throat again and I tip my head back and let him. I am choosing this. Choosing him. Choosing the bond and the heat and whatever this is over every rule in this facility.
Boots. Equipment. Voices clipped and urgent. Two of them. Three. RJ's growl peaks.
"Neutralize. Both of them."
The first hit catches RJ in the back. A crack — electric, sharp — and his whole body seizes. His arms lock around me. His jaw clenches against my shoulder and I feel the current jump from his body into mine, a vicious jolt that snaps my teeth together and makes my vision strobe.
He doesn't let go. His body is convulsing but his hands are fists in my shirt and he is not letting go.
The second hit is mine.
Direct contact. Something pressed against my side — cold metal, then a burst of electricity that rips through my torso and blows every thought out of my head. My muscles seize. My hand releases. My legs unlock from his waist and I'm falling and he's falling and we hit the floor together, tangled, shaking, his body still wrapped around mine even as the current turns his muscles to stone.
A third hit. His back arches. His grip finally breaks — not because he chose to but because his body can't hold the command anymore — and hands are pulling me away from him, dragging me across the floor. I'm screaming. Not from pain. From the separation. The sound tears out of me and it’s the same sound he made in the common room when they cuffed him. Loss. Raw, howling loss.
They drag me to the hallway. My body is still seizing — small convulsions, the aftershock. My vision is blurred. My muscles won't cooperate. But I can hear him in the room behind me — staff and equipment and RJ fighting, still fighting, snarling through the electricity, through the restraints, through everything they're doing to hold him down.
Sven's face appears above me. Grim. Pale.
"Breathe," he says. "Alex. Breathe."
I breathe. It hurts. Everything hurts. My side where the charge hit is a hot coal burning through my shirt. My muscles are rubber.
"He didn't hurt me," I say. My voice is destroyed. "He wasn't — we were —"
"I know what you were doing." Sven's voice is flat. But his hands are shaking where they're holding my shoulders.
From the common room, a howl. Long, raw, anguished.
My body answers it. Not a howl — a sob. One. Hard. Pulled from the same place his sound came from. The bond, keening.
Sven's face does the thing again. The one-second softening. Grief. Real grief for what he just had to do.
Then it's gone.
