Changed (Second Sight) (7 page)

“Oh
yeah
,” he said. Exactly what he’d thought. The flesh plump but firm–
young
. He squeezed. Her hands found his wrists. He squeezed harder. Her fingers tugged futilely at his arms. He squeezed harder. A whimpering moan escaped her and her hips squirmed underneath him.

“Stop,” she breathed. “
Please
.”

The way she begged–it was
perfect
. To hell with the foreplay.
 

He grabbed the light blouse at the neck’s v-line and ripped. He felt like he could have ripped
leather
. His chest swelled with the effort as the fabric gave way. Isabelle managed to grasp at it, trying to hold it together.

“Oh no,” he said. “You’ve teased me long enough.”

The blouse ripped completely in two.

Geoffrey threw the torn edges aside and gazed down at what he’d revealed. Her body was gorgeous, the olive skin flawless, the hourglass shape of her no longer just a hint. But as his groin throbbed, she tried to cover herself with her gloved hands. He easily captured them, took both wrists in one hand, and pinned them on the cushion over her head. As he leaned down on top of her, his arousal pressed into her flat stomach and he cupped her through the satiny bra. Though she tried weakly to raise her head, he easily pressed it back into the cushion with his own.

“
Got you
,” he hissed and then his mouth clamped down over hers.

He plunged his tongue into her, no longer worried about her biting. She’d become more and more lethargic, less coordinated, and definitely weaker. Though it’d taken a second dose, the roofie was finally doing its job. He worked furiously on her mouth, the tender lips no longer pushing back. He devoured her, anxious to move on, and yet thrilled just to be kissing her. Slowly, her jaw went slack.

Geoffrey drew back and smiled. Isabelle’s eyes were closed. He let her wrists go and her hands fell limply at her sides. He stared down at her breasts, squeezing the one he still cupped. He watched it give, bulge between his fingers. His arousal felt like it would burst. He needed to be quick.

He got up on his knees and lifted Isabelle a little higher on the lounge. Her head tilted back over the top edge of the cushion, her neck completely relaxed, her lips parted. He spread the ripped blouse wide open. His hands landed on her breasts again but quickly smoothed down her flat stomach to her hips.
 

The skirt. He should have unzipped that before he’d laid her down. No matter. He’d noticed from her very first visit that she didn’t wear panty hose. He backed up a little and flipped the hem of her skirt up, revealing delicate, pink-laced panties that could easily be moved aside.

No problem
, he thought, unzipping his fly.

•••••

As Maurice slid to the floor, unconscious, Mac flew through the door and into the hallway. Third door on the left.
 

He counted them.
 

One.

He had no intention of picking any more locks. As he passed the second door, he picked up steam, pushed with his thighs and led with his shoulder. Like a battering ram, he crashed into the third door as splintered wood flew in every direction and he barreled through.

“Isabelle!” he yelled. The stench of Geoffrey’s cologne was everywhere. “Isabelle!”

The plush living room was empty. Neither Isabelle or–

There was a loud thump from beyond the sliding glass window to his left. Mac crossed the room in seconds, grabbed the handle and threw the door open, slamming it on its rubber stopper. He thrust the screen door to the left so hard it came off its rail.

“
Isabelle!
” he yelled.

Sprawled on a deck chair, obviously unconscious, Isabelle was nearly naked. Her shirt was open, her skirt hiked up, her eyes–

In a heartbeat, Mac was kneeling next to her. Quickly, he put an ear to her chest and a hand to her diaphragm. Her heart was good and strong, her breathing deep and regular. But, as he carefully thumbed an eyelid open, there was no doubt she was unconscious. Quickly, Mac reached for her hands. The gloves were
on
.

Thank god.

He’d just been about to lift her head when he heard a loud thud behind him. Mac immediately swiveled his head to see Geoffrey–sprawled several yards away, not far from another sliding door. Like some clown act, his shorts were around his ankles. He clutched at them and tried to get up at the same time.

Mac jumped to his feet.

“I didn’t do it!” Geoffrey screamed, putting a hand up in defense.

A roar of pure animal rage erupted from deep in Mac’s chest and he launched.

Geoffrey’s face went white.

“I didn’t have sex!” Geoffrey screamed, his voice impossibly high. Mac was barely aware of the sound of ripping fabric as he yanked Geoffrey up by the back of his collar and dragged him to the deck railing. “
No!
” Geoffrey wailed. “I didn’t–” Mac slammed Geoffrey’s face into the wood. He grabbed a fistful of hair to keep Geoffrey on his feet and yanked his head back. “No,” Geoffrey tried to say around the blood pooling in his mouth.

Even as Geoffrey’s legs sagged, Mac’s entire body trembled with fury. But as he was about to throw Geoffrey’s head down again, Mac realized he heard something. Water dripping. He looked down. Urine was leaking from Geoffrey’s white briefs. Though Mac let Geoffrey sink to his knees, he kept a hold of his hair. Blood poured from his flattened nose and one of his eye teeth was broken.

In the distance, Mac heard the faint sound of multiple sirens and glanced back at Isabelle, who hadn’t moved.

Mac’s jaw tightened so hard his teeth crunched together. As though he were a rag doll, Mac dragged Geoffrey to the lounge where Isabelle lay. He shook Geoffrey’s head viciously.

“What did you do to her,” Mac snarled. “Is it botulism?”

Blood from Geoffrey’s mouth and nose spattered everywhere.

“What?” he said, sounding like he had a cold. “I don’t…
No!
”

“Goddammit,” Mac said, putting his mouth right next to the man’s ear. “If you don’t tell me what you did to her,
I’m going to rip the lips off your face
.”

“Roofie,” Geoffrey said, through the swelling in his mouth, his broken tooth whistling. “
Roofie
.”

Mac glared down at him, incredulous.

The date rape drug?

His fist tightened in Geoffrey’s hair and, for a moment, he nearly dragged him back to the deck railing. But, to Mac’s astonishment, the man’s face suddenly screwed up and he cried.

As Mac scowled in revulsion, he let Geoffrey go with a rough shove and turned back to Isabelle.

A roofie. If she’d had it with alcohol
…his eyes landed on a glass that had rolled up against a leg of the lounge.

As Geoffrey curled into a fetal position, Mac snatched up the glass and took a sniff. A roofie would be odorless but not alcohol. The two together could be deadly, especially for someone Isabelle’s size. But the glass only smelled of something fruity. No alcohol. Quickly, Mac stooped over Isabelle, lowered the hem of her skirt, and folded the ripped halves of her blouse over her chest. He lay the glass down on her midsection and then gently picked her up behind the knees and shoulders.

Whether Geoffrey told the truth or not didn’t matter. Mac wasn’t going to take a chance. He headed toward the sound of the sirens.

“MAC, REALLY,” ISABELLE said for probably the fourth time. “I’m
fine
.”

If she’d have let him, he’d have carried her up the stairs. He was nearly doing that now with his arm around her waist. They stopped in front of the apartment’s front door as Mac took the keys from his pocket and unlocked it.

“The doctor said it could be as many as twelve hours,” Mac said, shepherding her through the door.

She wore his jacket, had actually woken up underneath it in the back of an ambulance. Though she’d been disconcerted and groggy, she hadn’t felt nauseous or even dizzy. Even so, Mac had insisted on a blood test. Several people at the commune had already begun to show the first signs of botulism poisoning.

“Mac, you’re sure they’ll be okay?” she said as he closed the door. “The women in the kitchen?”

“
Yes
,” he said turning to her and taking her by the shoulders. “
Really
. The medics gave them antitoxins and the babies ought to be just fine. Apparently neither the medicine or the food poisoning cross the placental barrier. They’ll be sick for a while but hopefully that’s all.”

Even now Isabelle couldn’t quite process it.

Maurice had tried to kill them all. Men, women, children. Everyone. When they’d taken him and Geoffrey away, Maurice had been incoherent and babbling. Isabelle had to grimace at the image of Geoffrey’s damaged and swollen face.

“Still no memory of what happened?” Mac asked.

Isabelle shook her head. She’d been trying to remember all the way home.

“No,” she said, holding the jacket closed in front of her. “The last thing I remember is being on the deck with…”

She didn’t need to remind Mac.

He nodded but she saw his jaw muscles flexing furiously and his fingers tightened on her shoulders.

Though she’d thought the reading of Daniel and Botox would have to do with Geoffrey, it turned out that Botox was actually a form of botulism. Daniel had ferreted out Maurice’s intentions while he’d snooped around on every computer in the commune. The Botox purchases, the lab equipment, Maurice’s notes. He knew what Maurice might be up to. What still wasn’t clear was whether Daniel knew who he was.
 

Dr. Maurice Giraudot had once run a fertility clinic in Florida. Accusations that he’d fathered the children of some of the infertile couples had swirled around the clinic in its final months. A medical assistant had gone missing and then the entire business had burnt to the ground in a horrendous fire.

“I can’t believe Daniel knew what Maurice intended,” Isabelle said quietly.

Or maybe she just didn’t want to believe it. Had he changed
so
much or had she never
really
known him?

She shook her head.
 

Or maybe it’s me who’s changed.

Once upon a time she’d been content to be with a man who’d insisted on the gloves. She looked down at them. And now, with Mac–a man that she’d never even dared to dream existed–he wanted the gloves off as much as she did. Except that now, it might not be possible.

“It’s possible he didn’t know,” Mac said. “You read Botox, not botulism.”

Isabelle blinked, coming back to the present.

Yes
, she thought,
Botox
. It’d been how Geoffrey had been poisoned. As she and Mac had suspected, he’d been receiving injections for his face. What he didn’t know was that the last dose had been lethal. Because the repeated Botox shots would have granted him some immunity from the commune’s poisoning, Maurice had administered a deadly injection from which only the antitoxin had saved him.

“Either way,” Mac said, putting his arms around her. “You were the key.”

“Me?” she said, looking up at him. “
No
.”

“If it hadn’t been for
your
readings,” Mac said smiling, “there’s no telling how many people might have died.”

Isabelle shook her head smiling a little.

“
You
were the one who discovered the botulism,” she said, still holding the jacket wrapped around her. “
You
were the one who figured out they were selling babies.”

She thought of Daniel again and what he had tried to do. She shuddered.

“Are you cold?” Mac asked, his eyebrows knitting together. “Are you feeling nauseous?”

“Mac,” she said. “Honestly, I’m
fine
. I just…”

“What?” he said quickly. “Do you need to lie down? Are you–”

“I just want to take a shower,” she said. She looked down at his jacket, the shiny, black material draping to nearly her knees. “And I think we’ll need to have this cleaned.” He frowned a bit and cocked his head at her. “It smells of…well, Geoffrey.”

•••••

Maybe it was a good thing that Isabelle didn’t remember. Frankly, Mac hoped she never did. As she slipped off his jacket, Mac saw her ripped blouse. Though his anger flared, the image of Geoffrey laying in his own urine quickly tempered it. Mac took the jacket from her. In the rush of finding her and discovering the botulism, he’d ignored the smell but Isabelle was right. Geoffrey’s cologne was all over it because he’d been all over–

Isabelle took off the ruined blouse as well.

“I think this has to go in the trash,” she said, letting it fall on the floor.

“Right,” Mac muttered, staring at her.

Her hands went behind her and he heard the zipper of her skirt. Then that fell to the floor too. As she stepped out of it, she held out her gloved hand to him for support and he took it in his. The image of her laying unconscious flashed into his mind.

“When I saw you there,” he said lowly. She’d been taking off her heels but paused. “I saw that you still had your gloves on.” He took a deep breath. “And I was
relieved
,” he said, exhaling. “It was strange. It was so
important
.” He looked at her hand in his, ran his thumb over the back of it, rumpling the fabric of her glove. “I didn’t want anyone else to…or for you to know anyone…” He shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“I do,” she said, both her hands closing over his, as she drew him toward the hallway. “I know exactly.”

THE STEAMY MIST from the warm water drifted through the bathroom. As Isabelle took off her bra, she watched Mac unbuckle his belt and drop his pants to the floor. Then came the too-tight shirt. He quickly peeled it up, past the corrugated leanness of his flat abdomen. His mounded pecs stretched upward but the fabric caught around his broad shoulders. After just a moment, though, the shirt cleared his head. Isabelle had paused but quickly slipped off her panties–and stopped.

She stared at her gloves.

His security clearance. I can’t wear these in the shower.