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Menace guides me to a medical bay, picks me up by the hips, and sets me on the edge of a bed. “At least it’s a through-and-through.”

“Doesn’t hurt as much as I expected.”

I watch as Menace digs through the supplies and collects a few items from what’s left of our gear. “Compared to blades, I think that was rather tolerable, like ripping off a bandage.”

Menace chuckles as he sorts through the kits and fills an injector with a biocell repair gel vial. “Only you would think a bullet wound tickles.”

“And you don’t?”

I rest my weak arm in my lap, grab him by the belt, and tug his hips between my thighs. “Come on. I see the scars on your synthskin. I know you can take a lot, too. It just changes what we consider actually threatening.”

Menace watches me closely as he settles the injector over my wound and pushes the gel inside.

The pressure isn’t easy to handle. Heat rushes into my face. “Oof.”

“Breathe, Sefi.”

Menace moves the injector to my back and fills the exit wound. And slowly, the heat leaves my face and spreads into my shoulder, bringing feeling and blood back to my arm.

Menace cleans my skin around the punctures, dries it, and then places two dermal repair patches over the surface wounds.

He picks up a booster shot, loads it into the injector, administers it to my good shoulder, and then pushes the supplies aside. Menace cups my face in his hands and studies my features like I’m a strange, intriguing alien creature on a foreign world.

“What?”

“How do you do that pulsing thing from your head? Where does it come from?”

Menace asks. “It affects us too, though Titans not as much as Solcrue and welvirs apparently.”

I chew a lip and try to think back to the way I feel every time I send out the wave. “I have to sense them. There’s this feeling of impending doom that fills me. But it’s blended with a rage I can’t explain and desperation to save my charges. And the pain, I have to figure it’s the augment in my head that’s drawing energy from me and prepping the pulses. But I don’t know without someone to talk to like a cybertech. I was taken before anyone could train me to use it.”

“Maybe Leah will have answers for you,”

Menace offers as his eyes light up with communication. He tries to wipe a smudge of blood from my face. “One second, okay?”

“Sure.”

I watch him leave, his eyes flashing. I think Fracture’s talking to him. Menace helps Sythius with something in the hallway.

Weary from the constant fighting, I lay back on the bed. I close my eyes and think about where we were just days before, at odds with one another when really we’re the only ones who can understand each other in our darkest corners.

The thrumming heat in my shoulder pulls me back to the mission at hand. We’re a day away from Ellipsis’s final evacuation attempt, and I’m not sure how we’re going to pull it off.

A pulsing Titan aura fills the doorway.

“Well, don’t just stand there, Menace. Close the door and get your hunky ass over here.”

He chuckles, closes the door, and crawls onto the bed. “Do you have the ener…”

“Oh, shut up and kiss me.”

I guide his blood-splattered face to mine and find his lips. They are smooth and strong against mine.

Menace binds me up in his arms, slowly, carefully, but with strength. His nose trails over my neck in circular patterns as he breathes me in like he can’t get enough.

I want him and bend my knees so I can reach the buckles on my boots.

“Sefi, you need rest.”

“I need you.”

Menace squirms like he’s fighting it for a moment. Then he backs up. “Fuck it.”

He frees my boots with deft precision in just a couple of seconds each, unbuckles my belt, and slides my pants and panties off of my legs.

Someone knocks on the door.

“Go away!”

Menace growls, and it makes me smile.

He strips out of his harness, kicks off his boots and pants, then climbs over me again—all dark synthskin and virile muscle.

“A little help?”

I ask, trying to slip free of my upper gear. His warm hands work my harness and shirt off of my body, being careful of my healing shoulder.

Menace’s brows knit as he lays me back and studies my skin. For a moment, I wonder if he’s going to reject me.

He gasps and trails his fingers over my scars. “Sefi…”

“I’m okay, Menace. Really.”

“No. This is never okay.”

Menace kisses a scar, then another, until my flesh is afire with his touch, and I’m certain there’s no part of my body he hasn’t caressed with his lips. “No one will hurt you like this again as long as I operate.”

I give him a knowing look.

“I won’t let them,”

he insists, pulling himself up to me. He snakes a large hand behind my neck and gently sweeps his fingers over my skin. Menace grazes his teeth down my throat. “You are mine. No one touches you again.”

The heat of his titanhood nears my delicate flesh, slicking me with need and making me beg for him to fill the emptiness.

“Menace…”

I hook a leg around his and find his ass with my heel. “Please.”

His ultromotor pulses palpably, and when I blink up at him, I see his body brighten in the flash of darkness behind my eyelids. Menace braces himself against the bed and pants as he finds my opening.

He nuzzles my face as he pushes inside. The moment my nectar begins to coat him, he loses control and thrusts his hefty girth inside me with exquisite force.

The sweet agony of taking him makes me grunt and gasp in bliss. He’s huge. I knew it from the favor I did for him earlier. But it’s not the same. White-hot pressure in my hips pulses to the rhythm of his ultro and blots out every other thought. The room around us blurs. All I can see and feel is him, his firm skin, his kind, red eyes watching me, and the throbbing of his rigid length inside of me.

Menace’s body glistens with sweat as he clutches me against him and rests his forehead to mine. “Sefi—”

After he gets his breathing under control, he withdraws and bonds us again. Each time he does, it gets easier to take his swollen shaft, and a little more of the pain shifts to pleasure. Soon, I’m riding a high I never want to come down from.

My core tenses around him, trying desperately to keep him inside. I never want him to pull out. It just feels too good—too right. So I lace my legs around his and try to hold him close even though I know he’s many times my strength, and it’s hopeless to think I can control him.

Menace adjusts his grip on me and shifts to a deeper bump-thrust that slings my thoughts into the sky, where I feel like I’ve been touched by the sun. I can’t stop the waves of ecstasy from carrying me away, and I grip him hard.

“Oh, Sefi.”

A shiver of delight rips through Menace’s body. He finds my eyes and bonds himself to the max, pumping a glorious heat into me. He repeats the move with such force that it rattles the bed and knocks supplies off the nearby table.

I struggle for air as he wrecks me and dismantles my pride one fervent, luscious thrust at a time.

I will do anything to keep him. Anything.

As our bodies calm, Menace collects me into his arms and sits up. He gently rocks his hips into mine, easing me down from my high.

Resting my head against his chest, I listen to his ultromotor thumping three times, again and again, with almost no break. It sounds more like a ship’s engine than a heartbeat.

Menace carries me by the hips into a nearby washroom, where he turns on the shower. He kisses my neck and supports me as I melt in his arms. I have never felt so cared for, relaxed, or terrified in my life.

I can’t lose him. No one can hurt him. But I still try to memorize his every muscled contour. Nothing this good could ever last long in our world. And I’m afraid that what’s coming in the next few hours will tear many of us apart.