***

THE REST OF THE CYCLE went by in silence.

Gunner waited and prepared, knowing he needed to be extra careful this time. He no longer had the element of surprise on his hands—the crew was watching for a killer—and what had been a simple mission of finding out where his ship had been taken had turned into something more.

He seeded into the ship’s systems and clocked the remaining men on board, testing and jackknifing his way through the new stopgaps and fail-safes that Ballsy had implemented. They were stronger, harder to break down than the ones he penetrated before and they all came from a new source.

The handheld hologram Ballsy used on the cell door’s panel.

Gunner skirted around it like he did before, acknowledging the pricking sensation it gave off whenever he came too close.

He slipped through the currents, weightless and observant, checking each feed that gave him an extra pair of eyes into the world, keeping half his consciousness grounded in his body and in reality while the other half...creeped. Lurked. Stalked. It was an unsettling experience, splitting his consciousness to roam the digital realm, the electric currents and waves connected like a finely thinned, interlocking web all around him. It was at once chaotic and intuitive. It took a hell of a lot of time to get used to, and he was more comfortable than most.

Gunner prowled the edges of Ballsy’s cybernetics, itching to blast through them and break down the man’s digital walls. He barely restrained himself from doing so because if he did, he’d leave a direct trail right back.

He wasn’t ready to give himself away yet. Not quite yet. He still had no idea where the pirates had taken his ship and he still didn’t have override access to the bridge.

Or captain Juke’s correspondence to those outside the metal walls of this mobile prison.

His feelers chipped away at a rate that wouldn’t give him or them away until it was too late.

He was a corruptor, albeit a slow one, but a corruptor nonetheless.

Gunner stretched out his fingers before clenching them, doing so again in an effort to find patience. He yearned to bare his teeth and sink them into flesh—meat. He wanted this whole ordeal to be behind him and his enemies dead.

But he wanted his fucking ship. And killing everyone aboard the vessel that was his only lead would be idiotic, even for him.

So, he bided his time, and waited, and eroded. Watched. Waited some more and did what he could to distract himself enough to not set everyone around him on fire and tear out their throats.

He needed to find patience, find her and keep her locked away in his head, but she was a virtue that eluded captivity and hated his guts.

There were three men working in the underbelly and in the passageways outside the brig. Three were easy to evade. On the floor above, where the pirate’s quarters were and the main crew was stationed, there were at least two dozen more men wandering in various locations. The top deck, which included the bridge, the bridge-crew lodgings, the medical bay, and the armory, had the most activity.

He traced Ballsy’s location to a fairly remote area on the second floor and he knew instinctively if he made it that far, there was no way he would go unseen. Pirates were usually paranoid and distrustful, never mind with a murderer onboard. There was no way he could enter an area he hadn’t scouted without setting off some alarm he didn’t have a hold on.

Below him, and in the mechanical rooms under the brig and storage, there were several other men. Gunner saw them all like a digital blueprint behind his eyes and in his head. The maze of corridors and passageways he had internalized the night before danced behind his eyes. He had two targets tonight.

Ballsy and Ely’s guard.

He opened his eyes and looked over at her, curled up and sleeping, hungry in the cell next to him. He wanted to watch her until the end of time, just how she was now—at peace. Life was so much simpler when you weren’t facing reality. He wanted her to enjoy that simple escape for as long as possible.

Gunner’s eyes went half-mast as he observed her, his nostrils flaring as he sought out her scent. He was able to find it without effort now, even through his own. Her smell was a beacon that drew him to her. It was that first alluring perfume he discerned that first day he was brought in.

He inched closer until his shoulder rested on the bars that kept them apart.

She still sleeps next to me. She trusts me.

She really fucking shouldn’t.

He expected her to move toward the other side, or at least to the middle of her cell now that Kallan was gone and no longer plaguing her, but she didn’t. Not even after he divested his secret—the one thing that would ruin his ability of getting his ship back if he was found out too soon. He’d done a lot of stupid things in his life, but willingly giving up an advantage had rarely been one of them.

Ely had something on him now and he had something on her. And he didn’t know why it seemed to matter so much—the power exchange—but it did. It thrilled him. It wasn’t fake. Everything he had was fake.

Until now. Until this moment in time. There was a connection, a damning one, a trap he had set up but fallen into himself. Gunner dropped his brow on the metal and continued to watch her.

Don’t hate me.

Her eyelids twitched.

Don’t hate me, please.

He wanted to move the fallen hair from her brow.

Please, don’t hate me.

He wasn’t a good man, not even a good Cyborg. What control he had over himself had worn thin and his emotions ran wild more often than not. He couldn’t be trusted. Gunner slipped his fingers through and caressed the sleeve of his jacket that she wore, wishing she wore him.

He savored this moment and recorded it, throwing it in his most precious memory banks. The way her short hair fell, the crease of her brow, the intermittent sniffle and heavy breath. It all went into a place inside him where he could keep it safe, bottle it up, and know, for a short span of time, that something he had...

Was real.

The door to the brig zipped open, breaking the moment, and drawing his attention away from her to the guard on his kill-list.

Ely moaned, shifted, and weakly rose up. A simmering, heavy feeling clotted his systems. Anger grew in mere moments from a seed to encapsulate his entire universe, and continued to grow as the guard walked past them and toward the men down the row.

He woke her up.

She threaded her fingers through her hair.

He took my moment.

“Gunner...” her soft voice whispered through his ear, heavy with worry.

It was time for round two.

Gunner was on his feet with his hand on the cell panel before the pirate made it to his destination. Ely’s voice rang softly in his ears.

His target had come back too soon and had woken what he wanted to remain asleep. An ugly laugh bubbled up in the back of his throat. It was time to sow chaos.

The door to the brig shut, willed closed, over-ridden. The guard glanced back but it was too late.

Gunner felt the metal under his fingers heat up the instant his restraint snapped. The panel of his cell unlocked just as he thrust it open, stepping out and into the passageway.

“What the hell!?” The guard jerked back in surprise, a fleeting emotion quickly replaced by disbelief.

He heard Ely scramble and rise, heard the mutters of the other prisoners as he stormed toward his target, closing the distance in seconds.

Gunner reached the guard long before he even had a chance to draw his weapon.

“What the—”

Gunner fisted the thick cloth of his vest in his hand and lifted him off the ground, feeling his eyes burst red. The color reflected back at him in the man’s final moments.

“Don’t! Please,” the guard strangled out.

The guard’s words went unregistered as Gunner held him, his kill command overriding his rationality.

The lights went out, covering him and everybody else in impenetrable darkness. The blanching noises of the other prisoners filled his ears, only to be tuned out a moment later.

Gunner slammed his target straight into the metal floor, bearing all his weight in one swift move.

He didn’t want her to see this. Didn’t want her to feel any guilt or remorse for the life she requested. The lights weren’t to protect him or anyone else from discovery, but to protect Ely from his savagery.

The man’s spine snapped, back shattered from the weight, his skull knocking and cracking, breaking open like an egg, the contents of it remaining within and under a thin layer of skin that hadn’t torn open. The force of the impact echoed off the metal walls.

Gunner leaned over him, his hold on the guard’s form stiff as the body caught up with its inevitable death. In a matter of seconds, it was over, but the body continued to shudder and jerk. The final death gasp, filling the pitch black for everyone to remember for the rest of their lives.

When the body stopped moving, Gunner lifted up and dragged it behind him and toward the exit, refusing to switch on his night vision so he wouldn’t have to see Ely’s face.

There was nothing like the sound and feel of dragging a dead body, even if it was muffled under the cacophony of distress from the prisoners. He willed the brig door open and thrust the corpse outside of the hold.

And before it hit the ground, sirens blared overhead.

The footage was there, he erased it in a moment, but it was there, and he only hoped that no one had been watching. Only time would tell.

He gritted his teeth, his anger still burning in his veins. The jackal within him was not satisfied. Gunner placed his palm against the wall and willed his control to return. His consciousness delved into the ship, stripping away the entire security system, blasting it without caution.

Because he needed more. His beast needed more. And he was going to take it. He had given the guard a quick death and it hadn’t been enough. Gunner sensed the ship descend into chaos, and as he turned around to face the dark, the screeching alarms covered the growls that rose from the pit of his throat. His cock hardened in his jeans.

He wanted more, needed more, and in the next moment, he was standing before Ely’s cell, his hand on the panel, opening it and entering her space. Her smell was everywhere here, he was everywhere here with her, and he sucked in a deep, delicious breath, letting their mixed scents fuel his jackal.

It wanted to fight or it wanted to fuck, and he suppressed the metal panels of his body from vibrating into a full shift. He swallowed another breath, clenching his fists as he stared in her direction. His nose twitched, feasting on the fresh beads of sweat that dampened her skin.

Gunner knew he could take her, catch her up in his arms and overpower her, and in the dark, he could strip her naked and reveal her secret and graze his teeth along her flesh.

His claws extended from his fingertips, pushing out his nails. He pressed them into his palms. The searing heat of his blood caught underneath them to pool outward. The iron smell hit his nose and his beast howled in delight.

But Gunner didn’t close the gap, keeping his distance with mere feet between them.

He switched his vision then, finally looking at her, preparing for the worst. Why? It made no sense. None of this made sense. He’d just killed for her.

As his visual shifted and the darkness receded from his eyes, her features filled his view. It reminded him why he was an outcast. A miscreation banned to the farthest edges of the galaxy.

That he was, at this moment, more animal than man, more animal than Cyborg, and when his monster took over, it wanted to stay.

Gunner pulled the claws out of his skin, letting them recede, and feeling his flesh weave itself back together. The panels that vibrated and poised to shift settled back into his humanoid frame. He took a step toward Ely where she was pressed up against the cold brig wall, lured by her despite how hard he held back.

Her eyes were wide and her face was turned in his direction. He watched as her arms came forward to clasp over her mouth. It was too dark for her to see him, but she knew he was there.

“Gunner?” she breathed, hearing her perfectly through all the noise.

What do I want more? My ship?

He pressed his palms on the wall to either side of her head.

Or her?

He leaned in until his nose hovered over her nape, straining as her smell crashed over him. Her body stiffened, aware of his nearness. Gunner’s eyes squeezed shut as he claimed the air that had touched her.

“What’re you doing?” she stammered, and the warm breeze of her words caressed his cheek. Real. It was real. His body shook with need.

“Everything,” he groaned directly in her ear, “This is my territory. This right here. I’ll touch you, will reach through your bars, but will never hurt you. If you want to try and claim your space back then say so right now because I’m going to claim mine. And this spot, right here,” he kissed the air right over her lobe, “is my safe spot.”

Ely trembled beneath him as his words sank in. They’d been loud enough for only her to hear. Gunner waited, on edge, and when her hands dropped from her lips to softly fall on his chest, he became her safe place.

He caught her wrists and pressed them against the wall.

She startled and their bodies briefly came together before she jerked back against the paneling. Gunner closed the distance, hungry, and captured her mouth, consuming words she never had a chance to say.

“Everything,” he said again between his teeth, skating them over her worried lips, trapping her against the wall. There was nothing to stop him this time. Nothing but the quickly diminishing time.

The screeches of the sirens pounded through his ears, he half-sensed the running of several dozen men searching the ship outside the walls he shared with her.

My fucking god, I’m going to get myself killed because of her. Adrenaline pumped through his body, his muscles tensed and bulged, and he covered her from all possibility of danger with his body. A consuming need to protect her, from everything, including himself, filled him.

But her mouth tasted so damned sweet, drowning out the chaos around him. Gunner crushed his lips to hers with the need to be inside her any way that he could. A hundred bullets in the back be damned.

Then, Ely responded to him; she responded to the pressure he released onto her with a crazed need he fed on. Her supplication punched him in the gut because despite the shallow innocence that clung to her, in the back of his head he knew what he was doing was wrong.

He pushed her up the wall, telling himself it was right. He released her locked hands and hauled her ass up to cup the backs of her thighs; he knew it was dirty. When he ground his swollen cock into her pelvis, he knew he was going to take everything from her.

She moaned.

He devoured it.

She dug her nails in.

He thrust.

Ely’s lips moved under his and he was fucking lost, her body opening up for him to fill it.

Gunner slammed his tongue into her mouth and licked everything he could reach, consuming and swallowing her taste, starved for it. He felt Ely’s hands run up his arms, scraping the entire way, to clutch his shoulders and hold onto him.

He pushed her farther up the wall until she was forced to lock her legs around his hips and he had to tilt his head to keep their mouths locked.

She gasped.

He cupped her head.

Their teeth clashed.

He opened his eyes. He was the only one who could see.

They were surrounded by darkness and chaos, hidden from the eyes and ears of everyone else in the brig.

Ely had hers clenched shut and it was an erotic sight to behold, seeing her in the dark. Gunner pressed his chest into hers, ready to christen the wall at her back when she opened her eyes and tried to peer down at him. His fingers tugged at the edges of her pants.

She sees me. Even in the dark, she knows where I am.

I’m going to eat her alive.

He pulled back, unsettled. Her arms quickly came around his neck to hold onto him. He lifted her away from the wall, not wanting to let her go.

“Gunner,” she gasped, tightening her body around his, and burrowing her face against his throat. He didn’t want to let her go either but the pounding echo of approaching boots was right beyond the closed door of the brig. His eyes flashed in the dark as he tore his gaze from hers to look at it, a low growl rumbling in his throat.

He could practically see the pirates coming upon the broken body of the guard he had just killed. Killed and left out in the open for anyone to find.

Releasing Ely was the hardest fucking thing he had done in his life. Feeling her legs and arms unwind from his body transformed his lust back into fury—impatience.

The ringing in his ears was a backdrop to the screams he wanted to fill the space. Fuck. He combed his fingers through his hair and turned back toward his girl. She stood trembling before him in the inky blackness.

Gunner scooped her up and sat her in her safe place, leaning in to crowd her ear, “We’re not finished.”

He knew it sounded more like a threat than a promise, but he didn’t care. Quickly, he tightened his jacket back over her shoulders and zipped up the threads. It didn’t matter how she appeared to anyone anymore; he just didn’t want anyone to see her more than they had to.

Gunner was back in his cell within seconds, loosening and cracking his fury-fueled joints right as the brig door careened open.