***

Clara jumped when the door opened. It had been nearly an hour since the dog brought her to Reid's office and as the time lengthened, so did her anxiety.

“Dr. Reid.” She stood up and watched as he stormed to the seat behind his desk without looking at her.

Again with the hot and cold?

“You can sit, Ms. Warren.”

Clara ran her hands down her shirt, straightening out her clothing before she stiffly sat at his command. She wiggled her toes within her shoes. I can do this. He’s only another obstacle.

“Yes, sir,” she said with not a little bit of taunting. Reid continued eyeing a tablet out of her sight as though he hadn’t heard her. The bloody organ in her chest thumped once and she shifted in her seat.

“How are you feeling?”

“Okay. Great actually. I’ve never had surgery before where I recovered so quickly. Magic?”

“Cybernetics.” His cold eyes lifted to hers.

She nodded and vowed not to let him get to her. “Same thing in my book.” His gaze narrowed and she quickly added, “I’m ready for the next step.” They narrowed further.

“Are you now?”

This time her eyelids slit to match. “Why wouldn’t I be? This is what I want more than anything. I want this.”

“A child?”

“A family,” she retorted.

Reid sat back in his seat. The tablet dropped from his hand and onto the pristine desk. Clara refused to look away as he pursued her from head to toe, ear to ear, and through her skin to the very core of her being. She didn’t like how he made her feel, hot and cold all at once, but she wouldn’t let him intimidate her.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked after a minute.

“Trying to find the truth.”

“I told you the truth!”

His lips crooked up into an annoying smirk. “When are you going to stop lying to me, Ms. Warren?”

Clara sat back, suddenly afraid, unsure of what he meant and where this conversation was going. This isn’t the next step. She pressed her palms into his thighs. He’s going to drop me. I’m damaged goods. My scars. A hundred thoughts streamed through her head in a single moment, none of them good. What if the surgery didn’t work?

When she didn’t answer, he answered for her. “Who’s Marsha Tannett?”

Clara opened her mouth then promptly closed it. Why am I not surprised? “She’s a cop helping me with a predicament.” There. “Can we talk about the next steps?”

“What predicament?” he snapped and leaned forward.

“A small one that’s being handled,” she shot back in response. “It’s none of your business!”

“It became my business the moment you parked your ancient, moldering hovercraft in my parking lot. It was definitely my business when you stepped through the front doors and it was very much my business when you sat your ass in my office and withheld it from me, Ms. Warren. This. Is. Not. A. Fucking. Sanctuary.”

Her breath left her but her rising annoyance bubbled into anger. “So that’s it?”

His jaw ticked. “What’s it?”

“You’re kicking me out. This,” she waved her hand between them, “is over?” She stood up to leave. If she was fixed, then she could go out and have a child on her own. She’d just have to be immensely more careful. I don’t even know why I thought this would work.

She made it to the door, her hand on the handle, her heart pounding from her chest, but resolved to let one more disappointment not break her.

The moment she opened the door, it slammed back into place. Clara went still, her eyes wide, staring at the hand that bent a groove into the metal wall. Reid’s fingers curled inward until his outstretched hand became a fist.

“Clara.”

She licked her lips and didn’t move, didn’t open her mouth, and tried to stop her heart from beating.

“Sit your ass back down.”

Reid removed his hand and the alarming entrapment vanished. She swallowed, memorizing the striations of the bent metal wall, and robotically turned around and sat back down. He’s very strong. It took everything in her power to raise her eyes to his but he wasn’t looking at her. He stood behind his desk, bent over, his fingers spread wide with tension, as though they were the only thing holding him back.

Clara rung her hands and expected to see electrical jolts leave his fingertips.

“Please...” she said at last and he looked at her. He nodded once and lifted his hands away, leaving imprints behind.

“You’re not going anywhere, Clara.”

She swallowed and squeezed her hands. “Okay.”

“Marsha, your predicament handler, came to see me.”

“In person...?”

“She came to find you the other day when you were recovering from surgery.” Reid sighed, the air about him cooling rapidly. “Her gir—”

“—she made it past all the security?” Clara looked behind her, her eyes darting back over the office, the closed door, and the tall, narrow windows that let in jail bar-like light through half the space. That strange creeping sense ran over her like molasses, the kind of sense she tried to avoid at all costs. If she made it through... can Santino make it through?

“She is a cop,” Reid said dryly. Their eyes met again. “Does her making it through surprise you?”

“No,” Clara lied. “But leaving Pecos and traveling through the wastelands does.” A thought occurred to her. “Is she still here? Can I talk to her?”

She noticed Reid hadn’t moved, not a muscle, a twitch, a fiber, but the color of his irises changed. Sometimes they went dark, shadowy, and it reminded her of the patrol dog that comforted her.

“Later. She’s taking sanctuary here,” he spat the word out. “With her girlfriend. Who was recently being held prisoner by your ex. So she’s still here, and I’m now partially responsible for their health, and you, you’ve become a pain in my tech.”

That sense of dread increased as she listened to Reid and replayed his words again in her head. Any excitement about her surgery or the fleeting control she had regained had quickly died. Her gaze shifted back to the windows but it was too bright to see what was outside from where she sat. Clara ran her palm across her stomach, already saying goodbye to the dream she had come here so desperately chasing. There was no way she could have or raise a child while she was being hunted. I have to take care of him first.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, still searching the windows. “This was a bad idea.”

“What do you plan on doing?” It hurt that he didn’t deny her stupidity.

Clara pulled herself back in. “I think I’m going to take care of the issue.” The thought of seeing her ex again made her sweat in places that shouldn’t have sweat. “I was hoping... I was hoping that it would clear itself up all on its own. That when Santino got out of prison...” She stopped and patted her belly. “He did this to me. I’m still surprised I lived through it, but I thought he’d forget about me if he ever got out, I hoped I wouldn’t be on his radar anymore, and if I was, I was out of his reach with a new name, living as an extraterrestrial on a colonized planet.” Clara raised one of her hands and clasped it over her forearm. “Things never work out, ya know,” she laughed humorlessly. “I think I did something horrible in my last life. I must’ve murdered people, maybe I was a war criminal during the Galactic War, and now I’m paying my karmic debt in this life.”

Reid still hadn’t moved and it made her feel anxious and comfortable all at once. On one hand, when she chanced a glance at him, he was solitary and focused, but on the other hand, he was intimidating and stern. Hot and fucking cold.

Clara waited for him to call the authorities and have her escorted out of the breeding facility; she waited for a slew of demeaning words to leave his lips. It didn’t matter what happened. She’d flow right through it. But the anticipation was what made it hurt.

“Why aren’t you on another world?”

His question threw her.

“I couldn’t afford it and I wasn’t allowed to leave. After the Santino incident, I was in and out of hospitals for years, rehabilitating, and I could never make enough money to pay for transport, let alone transport for a sickly person. The price for my care, to get me safely to one of the outer orbit stations, was beyond what I could make in a year’s time.”

“There are options.”

Why does he care?

“I won’t marry a stranger or become a lab rat,” she hissed. “Not to get off-world.”

“And yet, you seem to have tried both.”

Her back stiffened but she kept her mouth shut.

“You had an ex-fiancé, which was fairly recent if what it says here is accurate.” He finally moved and pointed at the tablet in his hand. “And when that didn’t work out you signed up as the only woman in a cybernetics breeding facility? What about that doesn’t say lab rat to you?

“You say you want children, a family, more than anything and yet you’re about to throw it all out the window over one man,” he laughed harshly and swept his hand toward the windows. The skin on her arms raised. “You’re in an endless loop and all because of one bad choice, one mistake. And now you’re letting yourself live this way because of it. Santino controls every aspect of your life. Everything. Admit it. If not to me at least to yourself.”

“No,” she breathed.

“Oh, dear Clara.” Reid stood up from his chair and circled around her. She tightened her arms around her middle for protection. “Nothing about your life is yours. Has it ever been?”

He said the words directly behind her; they were breathed somewhere over her hair and into her ear, but she couldn’t sense his presence and she couldn’t turn around. The prickles on her skin piqued her sensitive flesh, the deep unapologetic baritone of his voice rushed into her, and suddenly she remembered why she couldn’t trust men.

She stood and without looking at her lurker, she once again moved toward the door, her hand on the security, waiting for the access to leave. “Let me leave.” She needed to get out of his office. Now. Not only because he was an asshole, but because he was just like Santino in that way... that way where she could lose her soul in his presence.

The only difference was that Reid was a doctor, a caregiver, a military veteran who protected the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. He was a Cyborg. And Santino was a street-rat criminal. If she lost her way with her doctor, there would be no running, no hiding, there’d be nothing in the universe that she could do to get away from him. The risk wasn’t worth it.

The door immediately swished open. She was sad to find the hallway devoid of her pup.

“This is my choice,” she said with feigned bravado. “I’ll take care of it and then I’ll be back. I. Want. My. Fucking. Family.”

***

REID WATCHED HER LEAVE with every wire and piece inside him thrumming with energy. The conversation had not gone the way he had intended it to go. Not in the least.

Her alluring scent overcrowded the four walls of his office, caressing him and filling him with a need to take it and mark it as his. The angry, half-rushed sounds of her footsteps receded into the distance, down the hallway, past the reception, and behind the many doors between him and the living area. He waited until he heard the subtle, damning vibration of her room door closing before he moved back to his desk.

Something in his systems, and in his beast screamed to go after her, for once working in accord without his manipulation, but for his mind, that rooted him to the spot.

Clara was everything he tried not to want in his life. The very thing he avoided. And yet, here she was, filling his nose and his head with everything that eluded him, everything that he craved. She forced him back to his younger self and the need to pack.

Reid cracked his neck and closed his eyes, flushing his systems with clarity. The ventilation went on at his will and began to suck the thick fruity aroma from his space. It wasn’t enough; it clung to his suit, and it morphed into a light smell that stayed with him. The air was clean now except for the brief hints, like quiet whispers, or tickling touches on the back of his neck.

He slammed a fist down on the top of his desk, where not long ago he had been playing out his fantasy of having Clara bent over it, and shattered the wooden top.

Santino needed to die. He needed to feel the man’s windpipe crush beneath his thumbs, and to hear his last gasping, begging breath before he died. And at that moment, he would loosen his grip, when Santino’s mouth fell open on his final, thankful breath, Reid would rip his throat out with his teeth and take that flicker of hope and drown it in torn flesh and blood.

Without a backward glance at his crumbling desk, he stormed out of the office, past the medical lab where Marsha and her girlfriend were staying as they recovered—mentally and physically—through the security doors and straight for Clara’s room.

He was going to take something from Santino today. He was going to take something from Santino every day until his existence was nothing but a bad memory in a nearly forgotten dream.

Reid didn’t wait for the door to open, slamming the panel into the wall and forcing his way in. His eyes landed on Clara as she jumped back from the open duffle-bag on her bed and the few items she had left to pack.

“Reid!” Her back hit the wall opposite him. He closed the space. “What’re you doing?”

The damning scent of her drowned him. He boxed her in, searching her wide eyes, noticing the flare of her nostrils, the dishevelment of her blonde hair. His eyes flashed with dark light as they moved over her soft, pale features.

“You forgot something, Ms. Warren.” He breathed her in and groaned. She smells exciting. The smell excited him. Her hands hit his chest. His metal shifted beneath, and his dick rose in response. Clara pushed at him but he was an immovable wall. His lips quirked up. I’m going to take everything, Santino.

And then I’m going to sink my teeth through your jugular.

“I didn’t forget anything.” Clara’s piercing violet eyes battled his.

Reid leaned in and stared straight into them. “Remember this,” he demanded until he got the searching response he was looking for out of her. The moment was forever embedded in his drives. “We’re going to make a baby.”

He gripped the back of her head and slammed his mouth down on hers, taking the breath she didn’t have time to release. It was a small start—but he had time.