***

Clara clawed at him, nails digging in and fighting to tear the black-as-death professional suit off his chest. The need to draw his blood and feel it under her fingertips was the only thing she wanted. Adrenaline surged through her to battle him off and get away.

Reid pushed her up the cold, facility wall, and kicked her legs apart, placing his thigh and knee between them, and pressing right into her clit. His tongue did the same thing to her lips, breaking her barriers open and taking over. She struggled against him, to get away from him, but every little space she had to move was quickly cut off by a wall.

“No!” she squeaked and bit down on his tongue, but his hand had captured her head and his body pinned her. Her word was ignored. She kept saying it again and again, even after he rubbed his entire body over hers in rhythm with his tongue and the thigh between her legs. Her fingernails dug into his coat.

Hot and cold. She hated it. Hated him. But wanted him so fucking much it hurt.

The first thing she realized when she stopped fighting and started swaying with his dry-rubbing dance, was what was happening. That her horribly intimidating doctor, her controlling supervisor, was trying to consume her. Because that was what this was. He’s lost his mind. It made it easier for her to do the same.

The hand that held her head tilted it to the side harshly. His mouth left hers to run the tip of his nose over her raw lips then up the side of her exposed neck until it ended up behind her ear and at her hairline. Clara lifted her dangling, tip-toed feet off the ground and hooked them around his middle. Reid used his free hand to heft her up on him and trap his burgeoning erection between their bodies.

“No,” she said, straining up again, more to convince herself than him. “I can’t let you consume me.” The last part came out as a plea.

He lifted his nose from her ear and stared back into her eyes. This time the annoying rush of budding tears blurred her vision. “Remember this, dear Clara.”

“Why?”

She couldn’t see his lips, poised a hairsbreadth from hers. Their words created tiny kisses between them. It was too hot, too kind—too much for her. He’s going to go cold on me now. Clara didn’t think she could bear it if he did.

“Because I’m going to give you everything you want,” he said, so low she wasn’t sure she heard him.

“And if I want to leave?”

The soft brushes of his lips shattered her. “I’m going to follow.”

It scared the crap out of her.

“I’m always going to follow your scent.”

Clara gripped his shoulders as he pressed her back into the hard wall. Her body tensed and her heart raced while the Cyborg laid down the law.

“Santino is as good as dead—

“—what?—”

—and your body now belongs to me.”

“What?” The hazy heat went lukewarm. Reid pulled away and her legs dropped, her feet weakly touched the ground.

“You forgot one important thing, Clara.” He moved away from her and the space he created made her feel even more exposed than when she was being prepped for surgery. “The facility owns the surgery, your body for the next three months, and the baby we’re going to make. I own it.”

What was lukewarm went to cold. The desperate shocks of lust continued to stab holes through her. “I refuse!”

Her eyes followed his deft fingers as they loosened the cuffs of his suit, the one she barely managed to rumple, and she watched as he exposed his wrists. She only stood straight because the wall at her back forced her to. A knotted pressure tightened her pussy.

Reid breathed in deeply, and she knew he smelled it. He worked his coat off smoothly, and any signs of the desperation he unleashed on her minutes ago was gone.

“Don’t get undressed,” she said. He shrugged out of the blazer in one move, catching it on his fingers, and turning to the one chair in her room to throw it over it. “I’m—this isn’t happening? I’m leaving. I’m supposed to choose the sperm? In a lab? This isn’t part of the contract,” she was rambling, her tongue thick and tied and she knew it. “I’m not supposed to have a real father for my children.”

Reid ignored her and rolled his neck like he did often, drawing her eyes as it always did to land on the thick curves of his Adam’s apple, the veins, and the almost invisible hint of facial hair. Clara backed up toward the corner and where the side of her bed met the wall, moving to climb over it and toward the door he blocked. He watched her the entire time, steadily, and without emotion.

“Clara.” His voice was laced with warning.

Her feet hit the other side of her bed and she stopped. For some reason, she didn’t really want to make it to the door, didn’t want to escape. She didn’t want her hand to leave the bed, not when her doctor watched her like a flower he wanted to pluck or prey he wanted to fell.

“I can’t do this with you.” She forced herself to step away from the bed. “This’ll complicate everything. Everything.” She indicated them and the bed. The idea of it all. Clara shivered. It made her want to give in and lie down on the bed like a willing sacrifice. “Go ahead, kill Santino, make it long and painful. I’ll stay here and follow the terms of my contract. But we both know this won’t work. I’m never going to be with a man again. And if you impregnate me instead...instead of other, safer seed, I won’t just have to share my child with the government, I’d have to share him with you too.” The stupid tears she wanted to curse to hell reappeared to glaze her eyes as she spoke. Her heart felt like it was in her mouth.

His eyes flashed that familiar dark light that reminded her of the dog. Clara glanced at the door, wishing it was with her.

Reid stepped away from her and moved toward the door. “Follow me, then,” his said stiffly, taking her by surprise.

He waited for her, and she dared one last look at her open bag, so close to being packed, before she swallowed and left the room with him. He took her arm, his heavy fingers reigniting her need, and led her back to the same medical lab where he had reconstructed her womb.

The air was chillier than the rest of the facility and as Reid ushered her in and powered on the tech, he appeared right at home. Clara wasn’t sure what to do, disheartened, sad, nervous, even scared, scared that she condemned her ex to death by this Cyborg without a guilty thought.

Her body was flushed with desire, her pussy still clenched, searching for something to fill it. Her eyes landed on Reid’s back where his white button-down shirt clung to him. That prospect had passed and what was between them now was strained and growing icier by the minute.

She frowned. It was as if the whole day had never happened. We never talked about my predicaments, I never waited for him in his office, Marsha and her girlfriend aren’t here. We never kissed. I never felt his massive erection.

Reid indicated the pod, now shaped back into a slat, for her to sit. Clara rubbed her arms and for the second time that day, she sat her ass down where he told her to.

He hadn’t bothered putting on a lab coat as he stood before her, handing her a thin glass and metal box with a tablet screen on top. “These are your choices.”

Clara glanced at them, not reading any of the descriptions, before shoving it back into his hands. “Okay.”

“You don’t want to look at them?” he asked, amusement in his tone, and canted his head.

“No. The first one. My kid is going to be perfect no matter what. It doesn’t matter what super cyber DNA he has, he’s mine.” She didn’t mention how much she didn’t want to have this conversation with him. Not after what had just happened and especially not now that his erection remained visible and was almost at eye level with her.

“All right,” he chuckled and picked something from the box at random. She closed her eyes tightly against her budding curiosity.

This is it.

Reid turned away and plopped the tube he held into a machine. The slight clink and the buzzing receptacle made everything there was between them nerve-shatteringly clinical.

When he turned back toward her, he looked at her strangely.

“The sperm you chose—”

“I don’t want to know.” She made a face, looking everywhere but at the elephant in the room and his hard-on.

“Has cellular technology for enhanced senses.”

Clara frowned and his smile widened.

“Your son will be born with perfect sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste. But then again,” he lifted his shoulder, “all the sperm in that box does that. Would you like to know more?”

Bastard baited me.

He moved to her side and adjusted her seat to tip back, the bottom raised, and pushed at her hips, while the rest shifted until she was making a shallow U-shape, knees still bent and lower legs hanging off the end. She took a deep breath and refused the let the position make her feel vulnerable.

Because she was damningly vulnerable.

“He’ll be healthy for life and strong, that’s all I need to know. He’ll be a bipedal human being and have a long life. An education that others would kill for and a mother who loves him more than anything in this universe and the next. He’ll have a family.”

“Hmm.” Reid rubbed his thumb over his lower lip, bringing back his talking kisses to the forefront of her mind. “He’s lucky. Generally, cybernetic beings don’t have families.”

His face shifted and he looked sad, haunted for a moment, but then it was gone. She wondered if his childhood was like hers. No. It was worse. He didn’t have a childhood.

“Maybe they should,” she said without thinking.

“Maybe now, but during wartime, no. Having a family was a nightmare. The kind you can’t wake up from.”

She reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing it. “It’s not wartime anymore, Reid. Hasn’t been—”

“—For forty-three years, eighteen days, twelve hours, and sixteen minutes since Lysander ended it. Still feels like yesterday.”

Clara never heard of this Lysander. She remembered learning about that final battle where the Trentian colony ship, filled with hundreds-of-thousands of aliens had exploded, blipped from existence. There was no video of it, no feed, only that the location of the event was classified and that those who knew where it had happened, said not even rubble remained. The Cyborgs caused it. The survivors, the only ones, those Cyborgs, still lived.

“Were you there?”

She let go of his hand but he kept it trapped.

“No.”

“Was he your family?”

Reid laughed again. “I don’t have any family.”

“Me neither.” Clara peeled her eyes from him, the tension between them growing too heavy for her to handle. She settled back instead. “I’m ready.”

He let go of her hand. “Are you now?” Reid was taunting, teasing her. “You’re going to have to take off your pants.”

She closed her eyes and sighed, again. Then she opened them and looked directly at her doctor’s dick before shuffling up and pulling down her jeans, her shoes, and leaving them in a pile at her feet. “Can I keep my underwear on?”

“Hmm.” Reid blatantly checked her out.

“I hate you.” Why are you a rollercoaster in a man-suit? But the way his eyes followed every curve and groove of her body, as if memorizing it, dispersed some of the chill in the air.

Knowing they could be naked and thrashing on her bed right now didn’t help at all. Clara didn’t wait for him to answer before positioning herself back in the chair.

The machine with the sperm stopped vibrating. He went over to it and took the tubular contraption out before returning to her side.

“You don’t hate me,” he said while rolling the tube between his fingers, making her eyes follow its movement. “This sperm was taken from a Cyborg before he awakened, stolen and labeled anonymously, in a way that can’t be traced back to him without being in direct contact.” Reid handed it to her. The container was cold to the touch.

“We don’t have rights until our central nervous system, our organics, are paired with our nanocells and our pre-created internal technology. Once that first connection is made, we have rights, but until then... This one...” he tapped the side of the tube with a finger as she stared at it. “Has a singular cellular strain of nanocells, ones with reflective properties, almost like a mirroring effect.

“Although your son will be human, he’ll be able to change the transparency of his body in minor ways. He’ll be able to change the sound of his voice to mimic another perfectly—if trained—his eye color, hair color, and length, he’ll even be able to change the way he smells. Depending on how strong he is and how much of you is in him versus the nanocells, he may be able to change more.”

Clara’s stomach sank and Reid snatched the tube out of her fingers. Suddenly this felt wrong. Everything was wrong.

And he was smiling at her like a bastard.

“Let’s get you pregnant,” he said before she could respond. The slat she sat on lengthened at her feet and pulled them apart, lifting them in the air. A band snaked out to clasp her feet. The back of her chair lowered further and she had to fight to remain sitting up.

“Wait!”

Reid ignored her and swiped a series of numbers at the control panel of her interchangeable pod. The machine took the tube from him and it disappeared into the confines of the chair.

Clara slipped her feet from the confines and scurried from the moving tech around her. “This isn’t right!”

Suddenly there were arms around her. Warm hands gripped her skin and pressed her back into the seat. A hot breath brushed over her temple and she was trapped back into the chair with Reid leaning over her.

The smell of metal and iron blood, sanitizer, and antiseptics filled her nose, along with the wave of heat that flowed over her skin, banishing the chill. His heat. Her stomach pulled and tugged. So much warmth pooled between her legs. Her fingers pulled at his shirt and met the unrelenting wall of his flesh beneath.

The room remained frigid and he grew hotter, his dark eyes searching hers, his heavy breaths sucking her in, and his lips frustratingly too far away from her skin. One hand curled around her neck while the other was out of her sight.

Neither one of them moved, locked in position, staring at each other. She read him and he did the same to her. Clara didn’t know how much she could handle today.

“Is this right?” he rasped out at last, goading her.

She shook her head. “No.”

Reid leaned back, his smirk back in place, and pulled at the nape of his shirt. With one hand still curled around her neck, he unbuttoned it slowly. His fingers kneaded the tension from her neck while the other revealed the muscled chest previously hidden. When he was midway, he stopped and stared at her.

She reached over and tugged the bottom of it out of his pants.

And when his chest was revealed in its fabricated and inhumanly perfect glory, she pulled at the sleeves until his shirt was gone.

“Lie back.” His voice was hard, pulling her eyes from his abs. “And slip your feet back into the harnesses.”

She lay back and did just that, closing her eyes as he moved between her spread legs—legs that spread wider as the machine shifted to allow him to press closer. Clara bunched her hands within the cloth of her shirt, over her scarred stomach, nervous.

His finger slid over her panties with enough pressure to jerk her hips into the air. The next moment, his arm clamped her waist to the seat, her legs went wider, and his singular torment continued. She wrenched her eyes shut, half-mortified but aroused beyond belief.

If I can pretend this is a fantasy... But Reid rubbed the pad of his thumb up and down her again, applying enough pressure that the soft material creased, and she forgot how to breathe without making her body squirm.

“Relax.” His voice filled her ears and Clara swore she could feel his warm breath over her clit through her panties. She was sure of it as he began to pant. The heat of it curled her toes. Her eyes shot open. The medical machinery that littered the room outside her bubble hummed with life. The lights they gave off, red, blue, and green, were in stark contrast to the clinical white of the room and the spotlight above her.

“Clara, relax.”

Her hips jumped in response. “I’m nervous.”

His face lifted from between her legs but his finger continued to pet her in teasing strokes. Reid’s free hand tilted her chin and forced her to look at him.

“Is it because I’m going to fuck you?”

She shivered and squeaked out a nonsensical reply.

“Or?” He left the word hanging with a panty-wetting smirk.

Clara shook her head, hating the blush that burned her cheeks that his gaze trailed across.

“Or because I’m going to do it while playing doctor?”

The embarrassment she felt made her want to die. She pushed at his shoulders as he laughed at her.

“I don’t think I can do this!” she squeaked, jerking her head from his grip. She sat up, looking for a bed.

In the next moment, the chair dropped back into a pallet, knocking her flat onto her back. Strong hands pushed her into the cushiony material before taking the collar of her shirt and ripping it down the middle. The material was in shreds on either side of her before she could object.

“Relax, Clara,” he snickered as he pulled her bra down to expose her nipples. His hips ground between her thighs, pressing the hard outline of his erection into the crease of her panties where his finger had played moments before.

“Asshole,” she groaned out when he curved his hands over her breasts, squeezing and simultaneously pressing his cock right where they both wanted it to go.

“Never said I wasn’t. Let’s see if you’re ready?” He ground his hips into her once more before pulling back. The loss of his body and his heat was sudden and had her leaning up on her elbows, searching, finding him between her parted thighs thumbing the belt buckle at his waist.

Her eyes drifted over him, the way his nostrils flared as if he breathed only to breathe her in, down to his flickering fingers at his waistline. Her stomach jumped in anticipation and she zeroed in, waiting for him to drop his pants.

“I think I’m ready,” she gasped out, knowing he toyed with her.

“You think?” Reid canted his head and her eyes were pulled back up to his face. The dark light that had become more and more regular emitted from his pupils. The dog has the same light in his eyes— It finally dawned on her why she knew that look.

Clara adjusted and unclasped her bra, letting her breasts spill out. “I do,” she goaded back, liking how it affected him, liking how as she let her bra drop onto the floor from the tips of her fingers, his chest heaved and the look on his face went from teasing to hungry.

It made her feel powerful knowing the Cyborg wanted her, knowing that the same guy who intimidated the crap out of her wanted her. The butterflies in her belly didn’t stop, but the playing field leveled.

Reid opened the black metal buckle above his groin and pulled his belt from around his waist. Time stopped. The edges dropped to reveal briefs, making her bite back a grunt of irritation.

Suddenly he was over her, pressing her back into the chair and sucking on her neck. His hands roamed and clutched at her curves, squeezing and groping everywhere at once. Clara shivered and rested her head back to expose her neck. He towered over her like a wave, but one that liked to crash into her body again and again.

She dug her nails into his shoulder blades despite his constant movement. One moment his teeth grazed her pulse and licked the back of her ear, and then his mouth was suckling at her nipple.

His speed frightened her, excited her. He was faster than human and she was swept up in it.

When her back bowed, trying to press her swollen nipples against his hard chest, his mouth tasting her lower lip, she pulled her legs free and hooked them around his waist.

“I’m ready!”

Reid’s hands gripped her thighs, pulling them off his body. She squirmed and fought him but he was too strong and she quickly gave up.

“There’s only one way to find out. I’ll have to run a test.”

He was standing between her legs again despite her desperation, spreading her legs as wide as they could go, hating her panties all the while. His hold on her tightened and strained her muscles.

“Run the fucking test!”

“It’s a delicate procedure. Are you sure?”

Clara held back her retort and lay back, using the pressure of his grip on her to rub her pussy up and down his erection. “Yes... doctor.”

“Naughty girl.”

She pressed her sex harder against his cock in response.

“Very unprofessional, Clara. Tsk.”

He let go of her leg and shoved down his briefs. She stole a look but his erection was partially hidden from her raised hips. Without warning—or too much warning—her wet panties were pushed aside and a large cockhead pressed into her opening. It pushed and probed and stretched her aching pussy in shallow pumps but went no farther.

She grabbed his hips in demand for more but Reid didn’t allow for it. “Reid... please,” she gasped. “Please!” I’ve never begged for sex before in my life.

“You want this?” he asked, his teasing tone now strained.

“Yes!” She was writhing for it. “It’s not enough!”

“Ready to be bred?”

All thought had left her long ago. “Yes,” it came out as a whimper.

“By your doctor?” His voice was rough, low, where hers was a desperate opposite.

“Reid, I swear to god, fuck me already or I’m going to scream!”

“Then scream.”

He grabbed her thighs again and slammed into her.

Clara screamed.

***

HE PISTONED LIKE A mongrel, slamming into her over and over, his speed increasing with every pump.

Reid squeezed his eyes shut and lifted his face to the ceiling, his fingers clawing up Clara’s thighs to hold onto her waist. Tight, hot heat and animalistic need fueled him. Behind the back of his eyelids, he saw her thrashing, her breasts bouncing; it was too much, too fucking much.

“Clara,” he growled out, feeling parts of him shifting, feeling his jaw extend, his snout springing forth from its metal brackets, and his incisors demanding him to bow over her and hold her down. Reid shook his head, shook himself back into awareness, and stopped his body from going any further.

Her small, clawed fingers streaked his biceps, up and over his shoulders, and back down to his wrists where they stayed and dug in. Her strangled moans filled his ears as his hold tightened around her waist, and when Clara began to dance beneath him and meet his thrusts, he ground into her and stopped. The cryopod slat vibrated, the screws coming loose from its mount.

“Don’t stop,” she gasped. He looked at her and bent over her body until his chest covered hers. Her taut nipples rubbed his skin. “Why’d you stop?”

Instead of answering her, Reid buried his nose into her neck and breathed in, filling his nostrils with her scent. His cock twitched and jumped in her tight sheath. Without pulling out, he ground his hips harder in a roiling motion, pumping and claiming her as far and as much as he could.

He smoothed his hand up her side to slip behind her neck and hold her in place. Clara’s pulse thrummed under his thumb.

She moaned as he squeezed, his teeth skimming along her jawline.

“You smell so good,” he groaned out, his grinding thrusts matched the cadence of his words. “Tart and claimed.”

Clara’s body writhed beneath him, driving him closer to the brink, his balls clenching to pour his seed—seed he was about to release, coded to seek out what it needed and do its job.

The first sperm he’d release that wasn’t programmed to die the moment it left his system.

“I’m close,” Clara whimpered.

He turned his face to cover her mouth with his own. He opened his eyes and met her hooded, desperate gaze. His shaft jumped and her sheath clamped down on him.

Reid reared up and withdrew from her body. Before she could utter a sound, he spun her around, yanked her forward, and slammed back into from behind as soon as her feet hit the ground. And with the heart-shaped vision of her ass being pounded, he let his beast free and rutted.

Clara screamed and grabbed the slat, her knuckles white on either side. When his name echoed through the room with pleas and cries, he joined the frenzy with his own grunts.

A stinging bliss melted his core, heating his tech to dangerous levels, and a single bead of sweat drip from his brow.

“Ready?” he sneered and reached around to pinch her clit. Her butt jumped up in answer, her back arched and stiffened. Yeess. Clara’s body answered his question.

A low, rumbling growl escaped him and he vibrated his finger over her swollen bud, shifted his angle for his cockhead to hit her g-spot. Dozens of years of pressure left him, expelled completely as her body tensed, and when her sweet cunt quivered in submission, his shaft joined her in release.

Cybernetic currents of ejaculate shot out, spurting like a faucet into her and he felt it surround his cock, getting everywhere, and filling her up. Reid pressed his hand into her back and held her firmly into the medical slat, letting his cock spill, expand, and take effect. Clara’s body lost all tension and she sagged under the pressure, and soon the scent of her climax eclipsed all other smells in his head.

He continued to roll his hips, spreading his cum throughout, but no longer in a bruising way.

“That was...”

“The best fuck of your life?” he finished for her between his teeth.

“Yes.”

Reid knew the moment she was seeded, when his DNA found its goal and took over. A part of him connected to the cyber cell as it morphed with her egg, changing it into something inhuman. Into something that was his. His hand pressed her harder into the bed while he waited for completion. Waited for his claim on her to solidify. The muscles in her back twitched but she didn’t fight him, couldn’t even if she tried.

When it was over, he roared and released her, streaking his nails down her pale back until his hands cupped her ass and squeezed. His eyes flashed and he saw red, staring at his cock still shallowly pumping into her stretched sheath. Already ready for me? For more?

Clara lifted up and looked back at him, eyes wide and frazzled. “Reid?”

He smirked and squeezed her ass one last time before he slipped out. “Success.”

She didn’t move from her bent-over position as he stepped back and surveyed everything that was now his.

“H-how can you tell?”

“It only takes once.” He grinned, satisfied, like a young Cyborg who had experienced sex for the first time, finding that it was as good—better—than warring. She frowned and pursed her lips.

When she moved to turn, he stopped her. “Stay!”

“Why?” The questions in her eyes deepened.

“I want to remember you like this. A post mounting from a mutt,” he muttered as his eyes left her beautiful violets to look back between her spread legs and the soft, roughly-used quim still in full view. “You’re still in heat, aren’t you?” he couldn’t help himself.

Clara settled on her elbows and brushed her wild hair over her shoulder. A shoulder and side neck that was marked red from his teeth. He briefly reached up and slipped his fingers over his marks and through her tangled strands.

She snorted. “I’ve never known someone like you. The things you say...”

Reid smirked and kneeled between her legs. When she jerked, he stopped her. “I said. Stay.”

“This is embarrassing me!”

“Clara, dear, you just let your doctor rut you so hard into a medical pod that the cushion on top will never be the same again. And this embarrasses you?” He watched fascinated as her whole body trembled and her buttocks and calves tightened. “You are embarrassed.” I like it. He leaned in and filled his nose with the mixed scents of their sex.

“You would be too if you were in this position!”

“If your face was inches from my cock? Your lips dying to taste it? I don’t think so.” Her sex clenched and as it did, a bead of excess sperm appeared and trickled out.

“I hate this. I hate this. Stop saying things to make me squirm.” But her tone and her body said otherwise. Reid watched his seed continue down her inner thigh until it stopped.

“I like making you squirm.” He flicked her clit once and lifted back to feet when she moaned. Before she could stand, he retrieved a cloth and cleaned her up. When he was done—tossing the cloth into hazard waste—he helped her upright and they eyed each other in stifled silence. The room grew chill again and when Clara lifted her arms and covered her breasts, he couldn’t hold back his grin.

“Still embarrassed?”

“You’re an asshole.”

He grabbed her arms and tore them from her chest. With a strangled squeak leaving her lips, he buried his face between her breasts and pressed them together. Reid urged her back onto the pod’s edge once more as he suckled and teased, spending the time he should have before worshiping her lush curves. It was almost too easy how quickly she stopped protesting. Too easy when she leaned back onto her hands and allowed him to feast at his leisure. Too easy to bring the strong heady scent of her arousal back. He lavished and nipped her peaks until they were raw, until the color of them matched the color of the marks on her neck.

And when her legs spread for him again, he slipped inside, taking back every delicate inch of her tender flesh.

The rest of that afternoon he made sure he did his job, and that he did it well. And plied Clara with enough of his seed that she’d never be without it again.