Chapter 16 Alexei #2
It’s slower this time than our encounters in the Processing Room. There’s no urgency of extraction. There is only his mouth opening under mine, his tongue sliding against my lips, his body pressing closer.
I undress him carefully, pulling the oversized shirt over his head, exposing the body I mapped so methodically. He is thin—too thin—and marked with evidence of what I did to him. Bruises fading to yellow. Raw patches where restraints bit too deep.
I did this. I broke him. And now I am kissing every mark I made, pressing my lips to the damage I caused, trying to transform it into something other than violence.
“Alexei.” His voice breaks. “Please.”
I strip off my own shirt. His hands find my chest immediately, tracing the scars he hasn’t seen before. His fingers pause at a raised line across my ribs.
“What happened here?”
“Knife. Belgrade operation. 2019.”
His mouth follows his fingers, pressing kisses to the scar tissue. I feel the contact like electricity.
“And here?” His hand moves to my shoulder.
“Bullet graze. Minsk.”
“And here?” His fingers trace the scar on my wrist, the one I showed him.
I don’t answer. He knows.
He presses his lips to that scar too, gentle and reverent, and I feel something crack inside my chest.
I push him down onto the cot and settle between his thighs. He opens for me immediately, his legs wrapping around my hips, his hands pulling at my trousers.
“Need you inside me,” he gasps. “Need to feel you.”
“I know.” I fumble with the supplies I brought—I always bring supplies now, always prepared for this. “I know what you need.”
I prepare him slowly, fingers slicked and gentle, watching his face as I work him open. He is beautiful like this—flushed and desperate and completely surrendered. His cock is hard against his stomach, leaking onto the thin fabric beneath us.
“Ready?” I ask.
“I’ve been ready since the first time you touched me without gloves.”
I push inside.
The heat of him is overwhelming. The way his body opens for me, takes me in, clenches around me like it never wants to let go. His moan echoes in the small room, and I swallow the sound with my mouth, kissing him deep as I bottom out.
“Move,” he begs against my lips. “Please, Alexei, I need—”
I move.
The rhythm builds slowly. Each thrust draws sounds from him that I catalog and treasure—the gasps, the moans, the broken fragments of my name. His nails rake down my back, leaving marks that will last for days. Good. I want evidence. I want proof that this happened.
“I love you,” he says. The words spill out between thrusts, unguarded and raw. “I know it’s insane. I know it’s probably Stockholm syndrome. But I love you. I’ve loved you since you stayed with me through the fever.”
I should say it back. The words are there, somewhere in the chaos of my programming. But I cannot make my mouth form them. The Kennel built walls that even this cannot fully breach.
So I tell him with my body instead. With the way I move inside him, deep and relentless. With the way my hand finds his cock and strokes in time with my thrusts. With the way I bury my face in his neck and breathe his name like a prayer.
I change the angle, pressing deeper, hitting the prostate that I now know the exact location of. He cries out, a sharp, broken sound of pure pleasure.
“Alexei, fuck—”
I want to hear him beg. I want to hear him come apart. The thought is not clinical. It is possessive.
“I’m close,” he gasps, his hips bucking against mine.
“Don’t hold back.” My voice is wrecked, unrecognizable. “We don’t know what tomorrow brings. Take this. Take everything.”
He arches beneath me, his body bowing off the cot, and then he’s coming—untouched now, my hand having fallen away in the frenzy—his cock pulsing against my stomach, his voice breaking on a sound that isn’t quite a word.
The clench of him around me is too much.
I thrust once, twice, and then I’m gone, emptying into him with a groan I couldn't have suppressed if I wanted to.
We collapse together, tangled and sweating and breathing hard. I don't pull out immediately. I want to stay inside him as long as possible, stay connected, stay this close. He smells of sex and the clean, metallic scent of his own skin.
“We should go,” I say eventually. My voice sounds wrecked, nothing like the Monster's clinical monotone. “The window is narrowing.”
“I know.” His hand traces my jaw, my cheekbone, the corner of my eye. “But I needed that. I needed something good before we run.”
“Was it good?” The question is genuine. I have no framework for evaluating sexual encounters outside of operational parameters.
He laughs—a broken, beautiful sound. “Yeah, Alexei. It was good. It was... everything.”
I pull out carefully, cleaning us both with supplies from my bag. He watches me with an expression I’m learning to recognize—the look he gives me when he cannot quite believe I am real.
“Ready?” I ask.
He takes a breath. Steadies himself. Nods.
“Ready.”
I help him stand. His legs are weak, but stronger than they were days ago. The protein and rest have helped.
We have hours until dawn. Hours until Ivan comes himself.
He reaches for me. His hand finds my face, cupping my jaw with fingers that still tremble from muscle weakness. The touch is warm. The touch is everything the Kennel taught me to reject.
“Then let’s go,” he says. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
I nod. I offer him my hand.
He takes it.
We have until dawn before Ivan realizes I have not executed the disposal. We have no resources outside this facility. We have no allies, no safe houses, no backup plans.
We have each other. According to my training, this should be insufficient.
According to my training, I should not be standing here with his hand in mine, preparing to become a traitor.
My training was incomplete.
“Can you walk?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” He swings his legs off the cot, testing. “I haven’t tried since you carried me.”
“Then I will carry you again if necessary.”
He looks up at me. Something shifts in his expression—the same recognition I saw when he touched my scar.
“Alexei.” My name in his mouth, soft and human. “Thank you.”
I do not know how to respond to gratitude. The Kennel did not include it in my social programming.
“Save it,” I say. “We are not safe yet. We are not safe for a very long time.”
I pull him to his feet. He sways, catches himself on my arm, finds his balance through pure determination. He is weak. He is damaged. He is the reason I am about to destroy everything I was built to be.
I do not regret it.
The Kennel spent seventeen years constructing me for this organization. Every skill I possess, every reflex I have developed, every piece of knowledge in my mind was installed by their methods. I am their product. I am their weapon.
And I am walking away from them for a man I was supposed to kill.
The irrationality of it should disturb me. For the first time in my operational history, I am making a choice that exists outside the parameters of my training. I am choosing him over duty. I am choosing this damaged, manipulative, broken thing over the only existence I have ever known.
The choice feels like freedom. The choice feels like falling.
I do not know which.
The door opens at my command. The corridor beyond is empty, monitored by cameras that will track our movement the moment we step outside the room.
We have until morning. We have each other. We have the beginning of something that neither of us can name.
It will have to be enough.