Chapter 3: The Hostile Negotiation
The clang echoed, a single struck note in the mall’s silence. It died into a watchful hush.
Axel didn’t look at Y/N. He lifted his chin, nostrils flaring as he sampled the air. His expression was eerily calm, the grin gone, replaced by a flat, predatory assessment. He took a step toward the dead escalator, his movement a heavy roll of muscle. The damp patch on his grey sweatpants was a dark map over his groin, the fabric below it still tented, unmistakable.
“Axel,” Y/N hissed, her hand on her pistol. “Protocol. We flank.”
“Protocol’s for people who have time to be scared,” he murmured, his voice a low vibration. He started up the stalled escalator steps, each footfall deliberate, making no attempt at stealth. He wanted to be heard. He wanted to be seen.
Y/N followed, a shadow to his looming mass, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. The upper balcony was a gallery of decay. Flickering light from a dying emergency fixture strobed over collapsed kiosks and the ghostly outlines of storefronts. The air was colder up here, laced with the sharp scent of pigeon droppings and rust.
Another sound. The scuff of a boot on grit.
From behind a corroded fountain, a figure unfolded. Male, lean, dressed in tactical greys that blended with the concrete. A professional. He held a compact submachine gun, not raised, but ready. His eyes, sharp and calculating, took in Axel first—the sheer size, the aggressive posture, the blatant, obscene bulge. A flicker of confusion, then disdain, crossed his face. His gaze slid to Y/N, registering her as the greater threat.
“Gilberto,” the man said, his voice echoing slightly. “You’re harder to find than your reputation suggests. You look… different.”
Axel stopped ten feet away. He spread his arms slightly, a parody of welcome. “Growth spurt. What’s your call sign?”
“Morse.”
“Bullshit. But okay, Morse.” Axel took another step forward. The man’s gun twitched upward, centering on Axel’s chest. Axel ignored it. He kept walking, his eyes locked on the mercenary. “Who’s buying?”
“The people you stole from. They want their property back. The data core.” Morse’s finger rested beside the trigger guard. “They also want to know what the spill did to you. Wanted you alive for that. But the girl’s expendable. Stand down, and she walks.”
Axel laughed. It was a short, ugly sound. He was five feet away now, well inside the optimal kill range for the weapon. Y/N’s finger crept inside her own trigger guard, sweat slick on the metal.
“You see this?” Axel said, his voice dropping to a conversational rumble. He looked down at his own groin, then back at Morse. “This is what the spill did. It’s a real fucking burden.”
Morse’s composure cracked for a second. Disgust and bewilderment warred in his eyes. It was the opening Axel needed.
It wasn’t a blur of speed. It was a landslide. One moment he was standing, the next his bulk had closed the distance. His left hand shot out, not for the gun, but for Morse’s throat. Fingers like steel cables clamped, crushing the windpipe with a sickening crunch of cartilage. The gun went off, a deafening three-round burst that sparked off the concrete floor by Axel’s boot.
Axel lifted the choking man clear off the ground and slammed him back against the balcony railing. The rusted metal shrieked in protest. Morse gagged, his face purpling, his feet kicking at empty air. He clawed at Axel’s wrist, his nails drawing blood that Axel didn’t seem to feel.
Y/N moved, scanning the shadows for other contacts, her weapon trained on the struggling pair. “Axel! We need him conscious!”
Axel leaned in, his face inches from Morse’s. “You feel that?” he grunted. He shoved his hips forward, grinding the thick, rigid line of his erection against the man’s thigh. The damp fabric smoored against the tactical pants. Axel rutted once, twice, a brutal, humiliating motion. “That’s the fucking science project. Now. Who sent you? A name.”
Morse wheezed, eyes bulging. Axel relaxed his grip a fraction, just enough for a whistling breath to come through.
“Van… Van Statten… lab security…” Morse choked out.
Axel humped against him again, harder, a rough, mechanical grinding. His breath was coming faster now, hot against Morse’s cheek. “He see the data? Does he know what it does?”
“Saw… the bio-readouts… wanted you… for assessment…”
A low groan built in Axel’s chest. He was getting off on this. The violence, the domination, the sheer filthy wrongness of it. Y/N could see it in the tight clench of his jaw, the dark flush spreading down his neck. He was fucking the man’s leg through his pants, his cock undoubtedly leaking, adding fresh wetness to the old stain.
“Axel,” Y/N said, her voice tight. “That’s enough. We have what we need.”
He didn’t hear her. He was lost in the feedback loop of pressure and power. He kept grinding, his movements becoming shorter, more frantic. Morse had gone limp, horror-stricken, understanding dawning that he was being used as a fuck-toy by this monstrous, leaking thing.
“Yeah… fuck…” Axel panted, his eyes glazing over. “You feel that, you little prick? You feel me coming?” He shoved his hips in a final, punishing rhythm against the man’s thigh, his whole body tensing like a drawn bow.
He came with a shattered, rasping cry. It wasn’t the roar from the pillar; this was guttural, private, vile. Y/N watched, frozen, as the dark patch on his sweatpants expanded rapidly, a warm flood soaking through the fabric. She could see the frantic pulsing of his cock beneath, twitching again and again as he emptied himself into his own clothes, pinning the terrified mercenary against the railing.
The spasms subsided. Axel sagged slightly, his grip on Morse’s throat slackening. He rested his forehead against the man’s shoulder, breathing raggedly. The smell of cum and sweat was pungent in the cold air.
He pushed back, looking Morse dead in the eyes. The man was weeping silently, tears cutting tracks through the grime on his face. “You go back to Van Statten,” Axel whispered, his voice hoarse. “You tell him what you saw. You tell him what I did to you. You tell him the assessment is that I’m a fucking problem he can’t contain. And if he sends anyone else…” Axel leaned close, his lips nearly brushing Morse’s ear. “I’ll fuck them to death. Now get the hell out of my mall.”
He released his grip. Morse collapsed, gasping, clutching his ruined throat. He scrambled backward on all fours, then stumbled to his feet, abandoning his weapon. He shot one last, traumatized look at the dark, wet patch on Axel’s pants, then fled into the darkness, his footsteps receding into a frantic stumble.
Silence rushed back in, heavier than before.
Axel turned. He looked drained, hollowed out, but the physical evidence of his need remained, a swollen, damp outline. He looked at Y/N, his eyes searching for something—judgment, revulsion, anything.
She lowered her gun. Her face was a mask, professional, unreadable. Inside, everything was screaming.
“Van Statten’s corporate,” she said, her voice miraculously even. “If he has the bio-readouts, he doesn’t just want the data back. He wants the source. He wants you.”
Axel nodded slowly. He looked down at the mess in his pants, then back up at her. The hunger was there, banked but smoldering, already stoked again by the adrenaline and the release. “He can’t have me,” he said. Then, quieter, “But it’s getting worse. The time between… it’s shorter. That shouldn’t have happened again so fast.”
He took a step toward her. The intent was clear. The confrontation had been a catalyst, a grotesque appetizer.
“We need to move,” Y/N said, taking a corresponding step back. “Now. Before he rallies or sends a real team.”
For a long moment, he held his ground, the conflict between the mission and the need playing out across his face. The mission won. For now.
“Yeah,” he breathed, the word thick with unmet want. “We move. But Y/N…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. The unspoken later hung between them, as tangible and threatening as the gun in her hand. He bent, picking up Morse’s abandoned submachine gun with a grunt, his movements still freighted with his new, terrible weight. He turned and headed for the service stairs, leaving her standing alone in the strobe light, the ghost of his climax hanging in the air around her.