Alec waited outside Logan's penthouse for the man to wheel himself to the front door, which he unlocked and pulled open. He moved to shake the transgenic's hand, but Alec moved away and tried to play it off like he hadn't seen it. He wasn't sure, now that he and Max had a more intimate arrangement, whether having just been with her a few hours prior would spell trouble for the bespectacled older man were they to accidentally touch.

"Hey," Logan greeted. If he noticed Alec's distance, he didn't mention it. "Thanks for coming."

"'Course," Alec began, meandering into the living room and plopping down on the leather recliner. "What can I do for you?"

Logan was just about to shut the door when another voice called from the hallway. "Hold up!"

Hearing her voice perked up his ears and he immediately had to talk his libido down. Christ, when it came to Max, he was insatiable. His brows rose in anticipation of just seeing her for the first time since last night.

Last night, when he'd been deep inside her, struggling to hold on as she rode him like she was trying to tame a wild stallion, both of them chasing their incredible orgasms. Last night when he'd been buried to the hilt, the very tip of him touching the deepest tip of her, listening to her whine, begging her to come.

Now his eyebrows were not the only things rising. While Logan was facing the door, Alec discreetly adjusted himself and tried his damnedest to think of anything to lessen his response to the brunette.

Cat vomit. Fighting in the ring. Normal talking about rubbing him down with oils. Logan getting slimed by the gossamer.

Yep, that did it.

He had another two seconds to think about how he could or would interact with Max. The rest of the world didn't know about them, but Logan did. Sort of. Max inadvertently lied to him - or more accurately, advertently lied to him, which inadvertently turned into the truth - so weirdly, if he was going to show any PDA with her, here was the place to do it. Although it might be somewhat tacky to shove their... arrangement... in Logan's face.

As it turned out, he didn't have to make the decision, because when Max saw him, her eyes glazed over with lust and her cheeks blossomed pale rose. She licked her top lip, and then Alec was back in the same position as a moment ago - stuck on the recliner with a burgeoning erection.

"Hey," she greeted Alec softly. "I didn't know you were going to be here."

He hadn't expected her demure behavior, but couldn't resist the inside knowledge they now shared. "If I'd have known, we could have come together," he said, emphasizing the pause between the words 'come' and 'together' a little more than was strictly necessary. Logan didn't seem to catch on to the double entendres.

Max's eyes widened a bit and she stepped in front of him, pupils dilating and looking down to his partial erection. She knew he had nothing to be ashamed of in that department, but making his erection public knowledge would pay him back for the 'come together' comment. A wicked idea struck her and she turned to Logan. "You know what, Logan? Why don't we all go into your office?"

Is this how we're going to play it? Alec thought. He pulled her by the hips until she landed in his lap. "Don't be silly, honey, there's still room for you here."

Max wiggled in protest, but Alec's firm grip suggested that she stay still, the stiffening effect of her movements now pressing against her backside. He mentally begged her stop squirming, or to keep squirming but wait until they were alone. Max's face flushed again, and though she didn't see Logan's reaction, Alec did. He would have likened it to anguish.

Logan closed the door and cleared his throat to bring their attention back to him. Reluctantly, he began. "You guys remember OBQT Pharmaceuticals?"

Max nodded and turned sideways in Alec's lap to face Logan. "PTSD drug, of course."

Alec, though, wouldn't let the slight go unmentioned. "Do we remember the company where we were locked in an eight foot square decontamination chamber for the better part of our night before falling into a pit of mud? No, when was that again?"

Max elbowed him in the ribs. After all, there were a couple of good things about that night.

"Yeah, well, turns out that's not the only problematic drug they were manufacturing."

"Please tell me we're going to blow that place up." Max's face took on a very serious countenance. A lethal drug was more than problematic.

Logan's sneer suggested, once again, that the idea was ludicrous, and that he expected better of Max.

"She's right, you know," Alec defended. "We had ten minutes to find that sample, and we must have gone through sixty different drugs before we found the one you were looking for. Who knows what kind of stuff they're cooking up there?"

Only seeming to puff up even more, Logan squeezed the bridge of his nose as if tired of being disappointed by misbehaving children. "No, Alec, we're not blowing up the labs."

Max shot Alec a quick WTF look. She had suggested it, but Logan put that chiding remark squarely on Alec's shoulders. "Then what the hell do you want us to do? Collect samples of all three-hundred seventy-nine drugs?"

Alec's right hand had moved from her hip to her thigh, which now reminded him of feeling her powerful and toned legs wrapped around his hips. When she squirmed in his lap just to torture him, he finally stood up, unceremoniously dumping her on the plush area rug that rested on top of the wood plank flooring, his own personal discomfort be damned.

"Hey," she protested, getting to her feet.

"There's another drug," Logan interrupted, wondering what the hell was happening between these two. Do they fight all the time? Is that what attracted her to Alec?

"Actually, there's at least sixty, or three hundred seventy-nine according to Max," the blonde X5 echoed his own statement. "Which is why we have been talking about wiping the place off the map."

Logan continued as if Alec hadn't said anything. "It's worse than the PTSD drug. It's been given as a migraine medication, but there is a side effect the company is covering up. It's been sterilizing about fifteen percent of the people who regularly take it."

For a moment, the transgenic duo each looked into the distance as if weighing fifteen percent sterilization against twenty-five percent lethality to determine which was, in fact, worse. Alec came out of it quicker, but Max couldn't reconcile the weight of those wrongs.

Seeing her so resigned infuriated Alec. This goddamned man knew just which buttons to push in order to get Max to do his bidding. First chance he got, he was going to talk her out of this quid pro quo relationship she seemed to have guilted herself into. He'd barely given her any information about her unit in almost a year.

Max eyed Logan warily as something else occurred to her. "Why haven't these guys already been shut down by the FDA and the US Department of Health and Human Services? Hasn't the evidence we so dutifully acquired for you last time already aired in your hack?"

The self-proclaimed cyber journalist looked away, trying to school his features to ones of control. "It wasn't enough evidence," he offered.

"What? We risked our lives for 'not enough evidence' and now you want us to do it again? How do we know this time constitutes 'enough evidence?'" Alec was so fed up with this line of bullshit. He glanced to Max, expecting agreement, but she actually looked kind of... sad? What she could possibly have to be sad about baffled him, so he let it drop. For now.

"Let me guess, eight o'clock?" Max unfolded her arms in resignation.

Logan almost smiled. "I'll get the tech."

With him out of the room, they could finally talk. "Max, why the hell are we doing this? Couldn't you express your guilt in other ways, like, I don't know, donate stolen money to the cause, or funnel those energies into robotics so he can get a functioning set of legs?"

Max snapped her head to him. "We have a meeting at Command. We should go."

What. The fuck, Alec thought. How did she just stop on the dime of this topic? Moments ago she'd been teasing him, then sad, and now all business-only? The woman gave so many signals he wasn't sure if she even understood how conversation worked.

Logan returned with new comms devices and Max told him they'd call right before they went into the building.

It wasn't until he'd all but raced her back to Terminal City and joined her in the situation room that he finally understood.

"Many of you are longtime sufferers of migraines. Alec and I just found out that the manufacturer of one of the strongest migraine meds on the market is rendering fifteen percent of its users sterile." She paused as collective grumbles and gasps waved through the room.

"That's fucked up," called Luke from the back of the room.

Cece piped up, too. "Someone from my old unit used to take those to prevent seizures."

Alec snapped his attention to the dark-haired woman, and he stood up, incensed. Everyone in the room glanced to him, everyone except Max. He was suddenly filled with white hot rage. Max had seizures sometimes. Migraines. Did she take these meds? He wanted to talk to her privately and ask, but now was not the time.

Naturally, she'd already decided what to do about the problem back at Logan's, but didn't want to argue with the journalist about it. "Which is why we're about to turn these labs into a crater," she said, no hint of softness in her voice. "Alec and I are going in around eight, and we need your help getting and setting enough C-4 to take this bitch down."

Abruptly, Alec left the room and took out his cell phone. He knew a guy who owed him a favor, and he was about to call it in.

By 6:15, the transgenic duo had all the explosives they needed to take down a building half the size of OBQT. There would be no chance of anything surviving that blast.

As he finished up packing the two duffels with the C-4, Max let herself into his apartment. "Hey," she greeted, her voice slightly clipped.

He wanted to try to comfort her somehow, to let her know things were going to be okay. "I researched the meds you take. OBQT didn't provide any part of those drugs."

Her grateful but quiet state proved to him she'd already done the same and had come to the same conclusion. Didn't mean it still wasn't scary to hear that something terrible could have happened.

He strode across the room and pulled her up into his firm embrace. Max raised her arms around his neck and hugged him back. She didn't know this was exactly what she needed until she was wrapped up in him again, burrowing into his neck and his scent.

"About last night..." she trailed, soft puffs of breath landing on his neck. They pulled away.

He grinned from the memory and she blushed, which in turn caused him to harden a little.

Except he wasn't sure what to say. He couldn't very well say Thanks for last night without sounding like a john and subsequently making her feel like a prostitute. So he went with his next best. "Found it real hard getting up this morning."

She spied him coyly. "That right?"

He looked at his watch. Only six thirty. That gave them an hour and a half until they had to be back at the pharmaceutical place. "You might find it hard right now."

Max slid her hands down the planes of his chest and rubbed his shaft from outside his pants. "Hard as steel," she confirmed, grinding her teeth at how he always seemed to be ready. "Makes my mouth water," she divulged, unbuttoning and unzipping his pants to pull his length out. "Such a paradox. Such soft skin but so hard..."

Alec pinched his eyes shut at the pleasure as she grasped and stroked him. He opened them again and sucked in some air between his teeth as she knelt before him and flicked his tip with her tongue.

"I don't know what it is about you, but I just love your taste," she murmured. She enveloped most of his shaft in her warm mouth and rubbed her tongue on him thickly.

He growled at the sensation of this amazing woman, offering herself up to him in a way he never would have imagined, but for which he was so grateful. He pulled himself out of her mouth and said, "I want to bury my face in you."

Max never disrobed as quickly as she did in response. Alec, too, rid himself of his clothes in record time, and pulled her toward his room. No one else was going to show up here, so it wasn't as if they had to go to his room, but what he had in mind would be easier on a mattress.

Backing onto the bed, he scooted until his head hit the pillow, and Max straddled him, kissing down his chest, filling in all the lines of his muscles with her tongue. He caressed her face gently until she gestured to bring her mouth back around him. He stilled her with firm hands on her slender hips and nudged her to turn.

Thinking he wanted her to ride him reverse cowgirl, she inched down, her core getting close to his belly button, when he wrapped his palms around the tops of her thighs and pulled her backward until her center was up by his face. His tongue reached out to stroke her lower lips, and she realized with a pulsing throb what he'd set them up to do. She lowered her head to capture his dick in her mouth.

With his skilled tongue moving against her, Max had a tough time concentrating on giving the best oral possible. From the angle, he could stretch his tongue a little further, and she arched her back, wanting to back up even further so he could reach deeper.

When he hit a hot spot and circled her opening with his mouth and chin, she let his shaft out of her mouth and bucked against his face, moaning and heaving, feeling as if she was bracing for impact.

Seeing her folds gasping for his tongue was one of the most erotic images he'd ever seen, and his dick twitched painfully as she lunged back down and sucked him back into her mouth with a fervor.

"I'm close," he grit out quickly and muscled her hips back so he could make good on his promise of burying his face in her. He could hold his breath for a while if he needed to, so he worked her clit, her opening, and her muscles, and slipped his tongue in as far as it could go, while she bobbed up an down slowly, letting him hit the back of her throat occasionally.

He came first, his body jumping like a taut wire, wild jets shooting down her throat and into her mouth. She swallowed as quick as she could, and when no more spurted out, Alec helped her turn around and straddle his face completely.

He continued his ministrations and she grinded on him until she felt the telltale signs of her orgasm and threw her head back to shout out her release. It felt like lightning forking through her body, starting at her clit, right where Alec's tongue attached.

Alec felt her clamp around his tongue and all of her muscles flutter like firing synapses. He hoped as long as he lived that he would never forget the image of her on his tongue, or the sound of her crying out his name in bliss, or the way her inner walls felt on the rough part of his tongue.

An hour later, Alec, Max, Luke and Cece finished setting the charges on the building. It was creeping up on eight, and all the workers had already gone home for the night, which was a relief to Max. Despite the company they worked for, the employees may not have known that the medications they made were having adverse effects. They could be innocent.

Max decided before they drove out to the building that she wasn't going to call Logan. He'd probably see it on the news. He wouldn't be happy that they'd taken things into their own hands, but this company was bad news.

Alec had looked up twelve more of the drugs, and each of them were connected to a string of deaths or other serious problems stemming from side effects. One diarrhea medication created issues in the nervous system that resulted in neuropathy. Another diabetes drug caused blood clotting in something like 80 percent of its users, and ten percent of those users had a stroke or aneurysm. All twelve drugs had severe side effects and should not have been allowed on the market. If all twelve samples proved inconclusive for treating an issue, and all had negative and severe side effects, then what would three hundred more show?

As far as they were concerned, OBQT did not belong in business. He and Max (and Luke and Cece) were doing everyone a favor in shutting them down and eliminating them.

The four transgenics drove a safe distance away, and Max and Alec prepared to detonate.

"Anything you want to say?" Alec asked the group, holding the detonator out to Max.

Max shook her head, as did Cece. Luke, though, took a step forward. "Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker!"

Cece rolled her eyes. "He's in love with Die Hard."

The four of them gathered together and Max pushed the button.