ship; avoiding someone on it took a lot of work. And the more work it took, the more Alexa stayed in his head.
The more he found himself wherever she was, having to fabricate excuses for it.
Her smell followed him everywhere. No amount of air filters could erase her dye. When he wiped her from his mind, he still smelled it, even if the scent wasn’t actually in the air.
Dirt crunched as he barreled headfirst deeper into the shafts. Now and then, he’d pass an android working, but most were powered off.
The deeper he went, the less there was. Old blood and soil tickled his nose, but even then, he still smelled Alexa.
He cursed himself for making her show him the habitats.
I touched her hair. His fingers curled. He’d been wearing gloves, but the fact that he’d still touched her shook him. Hair hadn’t reacted to his touch, but that hadn’t stopped the glands hidden in his skin from opening up and secreting.
And he'd had Alexa there, trapped against the glass, his body so close to hers, his lips so close to hers... The nanosuit under his uniform kept his secretions in, but it had happened. Just one drop of it could have killed her if it had gotten on her skin.
He cursed his body.
If he’d been a normal man—hell, a normal Cyborg—he would’ve shoved his mask down and kissed her. He would have licked her face, run his tongue over her cheeks and down her neck. He would have tasted her.
She wasn’t nearly as cold as she looked.
He could make her hot.
Hysterian was either too far gone to care if she was, or he actually, really wanted her. Either way, he was desperate, and the Questor was too small for the both of them avoiding one another.
I’m going to have to fire her.
The last thing he wanted was to fire her, but it was the only way to keep her safe. Maybe with space, he’d find clarity again—maybe some goddamned patience and calm. God knows there wasn’t enough boiling water to keep him from going insane.
He sensed movement up ahead in the shadows.
A sour smell filled the tunnel. Glancing above him, there was slick, wet-looking webbing in the cracks between the rocks and dirt.
Hysterian tugged off his gloves, shoving them into his back pocket. His eyes went straight to the hairband on his wrist.
His scowl deepened.
He tugged it off his wrist and dropped it on the ground. Next port, he was going to find an AI-operated sex bot and be done with it.
Hysterian only took two steps before he turned back and picked the hairband up again. He stretched the band out between his fingers, wiping the dirt off that had gotten on it.
He’d hoped being away, back on a planet and in the open air, would be enough to fix him, at least for a time, but he was coming to find out even Titan wasn’t going to be enough distance. Once the job was done, he’d be back on his ship, and Alexa would only be several metal walls away from him, one floor down. And he’d be jacking off to the image of her pressed up against the glass enclosure of a habitat, blushing and inviting him to kiss her.
She invited me to touch her…
So that’s why she was outside my quarters the first night.
Alexa Dear wanted him.
It wasn’t unusual for a woman to want him so bluntly, but for one to risk her career and her job to approach her superior? That took courage. There were scores of women who had a Cyborg fetish, and his subordinate was apparently one of them. No one would want him any other way.
He had the looks to attract a woman, but everything else? He had nothing but problems to give. The moment he peeled off his suit and touched her, shit would go downhill from there. Whether his poison was lethal or not, he wasn’t about fucking a body that was out of its mind on drugs—or lifeless.
He killed men for less.
That’ll change.
Once Nightheart delivered on his promise, Hysterian would be able to pick his woman out from a crowd of them. A willing woman. He could have his fantasy—not someone like Alexa who wouldn’t attract him on a normal day.
If she was still around when he was cured, maybe he’d take her to bed—just to get her out of his systems—but until then, he needed to keep his head.
Hysterian slipped the hairband back onto his wrist. At least