Suddenly a terrible thought occurred to him. “Do you have to hug me whether or not you want to?”

Fourteen hesitated before responding. “If you initiate it, yes.”

Cym’s arms flew away from him so suddenly his elbow popped in protest. “Tell me, okay? You have to tell me if you don’t want me to touch you.”

Cym felt sick and scrambled backward to give Fourteen space. How could Cym have thought that Fourteen wanted him earlier? For all Cym knew, his magic had combined with Fourteen’s conditioning to turn him into his slave.

No wonder Fourteen had gotten so friendly with him during their dream. The short moment Fourteen had gotten angry at him was probably the last vestiges of his personality fighting to break free.

Cym’s breath caught in his throat. What if, when Fourteen was touching him, he had no choice but to do whatever Cym wanted him to do?

Cym climbed off the bed and put his hands behind his back. The chance that his magic was imprisoning Fourteen, rather than liberating him, made Cym think the man would be happier behind his cold walls rather than be subject to Cym’s whims, no matter what he said. Of course he’d tell Cym what he wanted to hear.

Cym’s voice shook as he said, “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do, okay?”

Fourteen nodded, his face as cold and still as the first time Cym saw him.

Cym was torn. He wanted to go to Fourteen and free him from his mental prison. But Cym had no idea if he’d be actually helping Fourteen or just imposing his own desires on him.

What Cym wanted was to give Fourteen as much free will as he could, but he had no idea how to do that.

“What do you need right now, Fourteen?” Cym asked, hoping that sticking to only asking questions would be safe.

“I need to shower and eat.” The blankness on Fourteen’s face as he responded was nearly unbearable to witness, especially now that Cym had seen a different side of him.

Cym kept his voice light and tried not to show his distress as he said, “If you show me where you keep your food, I’ll make us something while you go shower. We’ll talk more about this handler issue while we eat, okay?”

Fourteen nodded curtly and said, “You’ll find what I have for food on that shelf.”

Fourteen pointed to a wall that held an old, rusty sink and a battered set of shelves. One shelf had boxes, cans, and pouches; the other held several chipped dishes, a saucepan, and a hotplate.

Cym could work with that. He’d spent enough time on the run to be able to cobble a meal together from almost nothing. “Okay, I’ll come up with something good, you’ll see.”

A slow blink was Fourteen’s only response.

Chapter 12Cym

When Fourteen began stripping off his jacket, Cym blushed and turned toward the kitchen, busying himself with making food. He heard the jacket hit the bed with a loud thud.

“What are you carrying in that thing, bricks?” Cym focused hard on the meager amount of food Fourteen had in his utilitarian kitchen, so he wouldn’t be tempted to turn around. Macaroni and cheese wouldn’t work without butter or milk, so he discarded that as an option.

“It’s armored. It’s lighter and more flexible than anything else you’ll find out there with more than three times the stopping power.” A hint of personality colored Fourteen’s words, and he sounded more like himself. Maybe Fourteen didn’t need Cym’s magic to fix him after all. “It’s also undetectable by body scans or metal detectors. I can go anywhere in it, and no one notices unless I tell them about it.”

“Is this armor standard issue from The Company?” Cym poked a can of peaches dubiously. Fruit was a good start, but they were going to need more food than that if they weren’t going to starve to death.

A rustling sound came from behind Cym as Fourteen said, “No one else has anything like it. I’m the only one.”

Cym was standing on tiptoe looking for more options on the top shelf when he heard what sounded like the rest of Fourteen’s clothes hitting the bed. Apparently body modesty was not something The Company worried about.

“Are the rest of your clothes”—Cym’s voice squeaked on the last word, and he cleared his throat—“armored as well?”

“My pants are to a lesser degree, but only my jacket has plates in it. I left them out of the pants. It inhibits movement too much.”

“You made it yourself?”

“It’s a hobby.” Fourteen’s tone was so deadpan, Cym couldn’t tell if it was a joke or not.

“What makes your armor so special?” Something about Fourteen’s armor was bugging Cym, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why.

“During a mission deep in the desert, I was pinned down by a group that had more RPGs than sense. I had taken cover behind a formation of rocks, but they were barely more than a foot thick and didn’t give much protection. I didn’t expect them to hold up, but they did. They took dozens of hits before my partner showed up to lay down cover fire. I inspected the rocks after we cleaned up, and they were untouched, not even a scorch mark to show for the beating they took. I took some of the pieces scattered around the base back to Storage with me.”

“Storage?”

“It’s the place they keep us when we’re off-duty or injured. I don’t usually like to spend much time there because I’d rather be in the field, but it has the resources I need to indulge my hobby.”

“Ooookay.” It didn’t sound even the smallest bit okay. If Fourteen would rather go out and get shot at then stay in Storage, it probably wasn’t a very nice place to be.

“I experimented with the pieces using sound and heat and managed to melt them down enough to work with. It took a long time, but I was able to combine the ore with graphene to make an incredibly resilient, lightweight material. It’s saved my life more times than I can count.” Pride was clear in Fourteen’s tone.

Cym felt easier about his hands-off decision. If Fourteen was getting his personality back so quickly, he didn’t need Cym.

As Cym fished around on the top shelf, his hand closed around something he could only see the edge of. With a little tugging, he got it off the shelf without knocking everything else over. He examined his prize and was puzzled—it was a flat-ish brown bag with the letters MRE printed on the front.

He turned around to ask Fourteen about it and then kept on turning until he’d made a full circle—Cym had forgotten Fourteen was sans clothing.

Cym’s ears felt like they were going to catch on fire as he processed the visual information that had been presented to him.

His mind stuttered as he pondered how it was possible for anyone to be so fit. His hands fluttered uselessly as he bounced between the perfection he had glimpsed and the scars peppering the landscape of Fourteen’s body.

Cym grabbed bowls he didn’t need and put them in places they didn’t belong. As his thoughts flashed from the large scar that puckered the left side of Fourteen’s torso to the eight pack now permanently seared into his brain, dinner preparation ground to a complete halt.

How could anyone be so covered in scars and still be alive? It made Fourteen’s hobby of perfecting his armor less amusing and more a grim necessity.

And how wrong was it for Cym to still be so turned on by what he’d seen?

Fuck. If there was a bad place after death, Cym was probably going there. The healed gunshot wounds, burn scars, and knife marks covering every inch of Fourteen’s body had done nothing to calm Cym’s desire to find out what Fourteen’s dick would feel like inside him.

Cym braced both hands on the counter and focused on breathing. He had no clue what was going on inside Fourteen’s head, and he doubted Fourteen did either.

So as much as Cym wanted to turn around and kiss every single one of Fourteen’s scars to make them better, he didn’t. Instead, he focused on the meditation techniques he’d learned to get his shit together.

Cym was so busy focusing on his own issues that he hadn’t noticed how silent the room had gone until the sound of a door opening shook him from his reverie. He turned his head without thinking, and he caught a glimpse of movement as Fourteen vanished down the stairs. Cym imagined him walking naked down the stairs and through the massive warehouse all the way to the tiny bathroom to take a shower and barely resisted the urge to sneak over to the stairs and watch.

Instead, he forced himself to turn back to the mystery package he’d found.

The label claimed that there was an entire meal right in the bag—beef stew if the label could be believed.