Heart of Danger (25 page)

A flash of heat. From her. He could
see
colors swirl around her breasts, faintly red and orange, while her skin turned rosy from her face to her shoulders. And there, between her thighs, under the blanket, a glow—unmistakably warm with desire.

Catherine let him pull his tee over her head and rose up onto her knees, kissing him gently, the hand over his heart smoothing its way up, over his shoulder, around his neck.

“Yes,” she said.

Chapter Twelve

Millon Laboratories

Palo Alto

Lee loved the forbidden and secret fourth subterranean floor of the laboratory.

Level 4.

Millon management had no idea it was there.

With Flynn’s money he’d bribed the construction company, who had brought in an entirely new crew for the floor and had sealed it off. It was more than state-of-the-art, it was years ahead of its time. There could be a magnitude 8 earthquake, a ten-ton atom bomb could be set off, a tsunami could roll into the Sierra Nevada and the lab would survive. It had its own generator, the power coming in over separate cables from hidden solar panels. Ferrite rods piercing the flooring into the earth were capable of sending very long-wave broadcasts directly through the earth to Beijing. Should anyone get through his net security he had a backdoor method of communication.

Lee was king here. When he came to the Millon lab, he came as head of research of the majority holding company, nothing more. Nobody at Millon had a clue he was directing research in a secret lab.

He loved slipping down to the fourth floor unobserved.

He had three assistants sworn to secrecy, thinking they were working under top secret conditions for the company itself and had been promised nonexistent stock options in a nonexistent rollout of a drug that cured dementia. What was very real, however, was the money each lab rat had in an account in the former Maldives, now underwater and relocated to the coast of India.

The researchers and his personal security team were the only ones with access to the floor.

SL-59 was being tested. Behind a sliding steel door was the animal testing lab, where accelerated testing was carried out in ways which were illegal under the Animal Testing Bill. If they’d followed protocol they would still be on SL-8. Lee swiped his security card and walked through, feeling a slight wind at his back due to the negative pressure of the animal test lab.

The drug was delivered via a modified virus and care was taken to make sure nothing escaped. There was nothing contagious in this molecule, it was simply a precaution.

He strolled to the back of the huge room, ignoring the rows and rows of animals in cages in varying stages of death, knowing that federal officials would shut the lab down if they could see this. What they were doing contravened every single animal protection law on the books.

And yet the human experiments were perfectly legal, with the Informed Consent forms signed. Even though many of the consent forms had been signed five minutes before the patient had been declared incompetent.

It still baffled him how Americans almost seemed to care more for animals than for humans, though animals were absolutely necessary for testing drugs. Because here he was, very close to the formula of a drug that would enhance soldiers’ abilities by a factor of ten, and it had only taken two years.

Yesterday, ten bonobos had been administered 5 cc’s of SL-59. They would be thoroughly studied in the weeks to come, but Lee wanted to be the first to observe them, get a feel for the effects before analysis started.

The lab was huge, stretching four hundred feet toward the north gate, row after pristine row of animals in Plexiglas cages. Ordinarily, he’d check every cage, each row undergoing a specific test protocol. But he was angry at Flynn and pressed for time so he strode straight to the back, without looking left or right. The back row held the bonobos, infocubes of data accessible via a touchpad on the front of each cage. The gender and genetic history of each animal, a full medical workup, MRI and CAT scan data, results of intelligence tests, remote sensing of EEGs and EKGs, dosages of SL-59—all that and more was in the infocubes.

He went down the row, clear cage after clear cage, swiping his finger on the touchpad, screening for major anomalies. Two of the animals were dying, EEGs irregular, EKGs with unusual spikes he’d study later. The spikes would hold the key to their deaths, he was sure.

Four more seemed normal, with normal readings, but they were listless.

Number Eight, a largish male, on the other hand, was standing, eyes alert. Hmm. Lee swiped and scanned the data that appeared in light letters in the air. Perfectly normal values. The animal was watching him, seeming almost to take his measure, brown eyes deep and steady.

Interesting.

Bonobos were a placid species, not aggressive by nature, but their heart rate tended to increase slightly in the presence of an alien species. Number Eight’s heart rate remained steady and regular. The animal stood straight and still and watched him calmly. Only his eyes moved, checking Lee’s face, then his hands. Was he checking for weapons? That would be a sign of unusual intelligence.

Very interesting.

Lee stepped forward, and so quickly the EKG didn’t have time to measure the acceleration of heartbeat, the bonobo flung himself straight at Lee, so hard and fast the animal’s snout smashed against the Plexiglas at the front of the cage, inches from Lee’s face, spattering blood out to the corners. The glass was so transparent Lee took a quick step back, flinching, before he stopped himself. The blood looked as if it were drops suspended in the air.

Undeterred, Number Eight smashed against the glass wall again and again in a frenzy of ferocity, trying to bite his way to Lee, striking his snout so hard against the unbreakable glass that bloody shards of teeth flew in all directions. He tried to claw his way to Lee, too, striking his paws so hard he broke first his left ulna and then his right humerus in compound fractures exiting bloodily from the hairy flesh of the arm. Number Eight struck again and again and again, even after he surely understood there was no breaking through the glass.

Bonobos reasoned, on a primitive level. Lee had watched them make rudimentary tools, obey a limited vocabulary of words. An ordinary primate would have learned that attacking the wall was utterly pointless, yet Number Eight kept battering himself wildly against the wall of the cage, which was no longer transparent but covered in blood and fur and spittle.

He attacked, over and over, mindlessly, eyes trained on Lee’s.

He was beating himself to death, killing himself with his own ferocity.

With a swipe of a finger, Lee switched on the sound system. His eyes widened slightly at the noise level. Number Eight’s snarls and howls were loud in the large room and made the other animals stir uneasily. The bonobo next to Number Eight, Number Nine, had been sitting listlessly with a straw in his mouth, but at the howls he stood up unsteadily, turned to Number Eight, the straw dropping, forgotten, to the bottom of the cage.

Lee watched, unmoving, as Number Eight battered himself to death against the blood-spattered wall, finishing himself off with one final blow to the head as he tried to ferociously butt his way through to Lee, breaking his own neck.

He dropped instantly to the ground, body nearly unrecognizable. So many bones were broken that the body looked like a hairy, shapeless sack filled with marbles.

The other bonobos turned, restless, some trying to scratch their way out of the Plexiglas cages but none with the ferocity of Number Eight. Nothing Lee had ever seen matched the ferocity of Number Eight. It was unprecedented, and artificial. Induced by SL-59.

The interesting thing was that Eight had managed to control himself for the first few minutes, even though his limbic system must have been screaming
attack
! He hadn’t, not right away. Perhaps he’d tried to reason it out and had then been overwhelmed by the attack imperative infused in him by the drug.

But that time gap was interesting. So there was some kind of trip wire that had induced the out-of-control violence. Find the trip wire, modify it, and they would be well on their way.

Lee studied the battered body for another few minutes, then swiped a finger for the recording function.

“I want an autopsy with toxicology and hormone levels. I want the exact level of SL-59 in the blood-brain barrier. I want a brain dissection and analysis of neuronal connections. I want it all.”

Another flick and the recording function switched off.

That had been interesting, he thought as he exited the lab.

And promising. Very promising.

Mount Blue

Yes.

She’d said yes, when she was hungry, when delicious-smelling food was right there, all she had to do was reach out her hand, when she’d already had more intense sex than she’d ever had in her entire life, when she was a little sore, feeling unused muscles stretch every time she moved in the bed.

She said yes when she thought she’d need at least a day to recover and feel desire again.

Oh, how wrong she’d been.

She’d said yes because she couldn’t resist. There was nothing in her that could resist this man, standing half-naked in front of her, intensely aroused. She could tell not only by the steel rod prodding at the front of his jeans, but in the slight red tingeing the sallow skin over his high cheekbones, the flaring nostrils, the tense cords of the tendons of his neck.

And of course she could tell by his touch. His desire flowed straight into her, hot waves of his heat piercing her skin.

At just the touch of him, feeling Mac’s heartbeat against her hand, feeling how much he wanted her, needed her, desire rose again like water rising to replenish an empty well. Coming from him? Coming from her? It was impossible to tell and it made no difference because now it was inside her. Part of her.

“Come to me,” she whispered, or maybe she thought it in her head? No matter. He shucked his jeans and moved to her, over her, settling on her heavily, yet she welcomed his weight, welcomed him as another wave of burning desire swept over them.

“Make me go slow,” he whispered in her ear, and she shivered as his breath washed over her. He took her lobe and gently bit. Goose bumps broke out all over.

She held on to his shoulders, something to cling to in this new world where desire rolled over her in hot waves. She was bobbing in this sea of desire and needed something stable. She clutched him, those extra wide shoulders.

If ever there was a man built for hanging on to, this was that man. Everything about him spoke of strength and stability. That he was the one making her feel unsettled, rushed away in a liquid sea of desire, was ironic.

“Slow,” he insisted, even though his stiff penis was prodding her thigh, then her stomach as he settled more completely over her.

“Slow,” he moaned, and kissed her.

It was slow, his mouth, his tongue moving slowly, the rest of him still. In the end she was the one who started moving. Her legs opened, lifted, settled against his back, and he was naturally there, the hard tip of his penis right at her opening.

It felt so huge and she had to remind herself that they’d done this twice before and he hadn’t hurt her. He wasn’t moving, though, wasn’t shifting to enter her, and all of a sudden she felt
empty
. Her sex felt empty, an organ that wasn’t filled with what nature intended. Like a stomach with no food, lungs with no air.

It was as vital as that. A yawning, searing
craving
for him to enter her, take her because that’s what her vagina was for. It wasn’t pleasure so much as need. Just feeling him there, not in her but against her, made her clench so hard even her thigh muscles pulled.

And still, he didn’t move, just kissed her and kissed her and kissed her.

Catherine dug in her heels against the small of his back and lifted herself. He slid in a little and stayed there, unmoving.

“Mac,” she sighed.

He certainly wasn’t moving out of a lack of desire. He was hard as a club. He was sweating all over his back.

“Foreplay.” He lifted his mouth just enough to talk. She opened her eyes and saw him, face pulled in lines of pain, nostrils thin and white with tension. “I can’t keep doing this to you. To you, of all women. I want to take an hour just to kiss those pretty breasts. An hour kissing your feet and sucking your toes. You have gorgeous toes, did anyone ever tell you that?”

“Honestly?” She smiled. “No.”

“That’s because most men are idiots.”

“True.”

“And then I want to take an hour just to touch your hands. You have the most gorgeous hands I’ve ever seen.”

She laughed. It wasn’t a big laugh because he was lying on top of her, nearly squeezing the breath out of her, so it was more a huff of breath. It was okay. She loved his heavy weight bearing down on her.

Something magical was happening and his heavy, earthy presence kept her grounded, reminded her it was
real.
There was magic but there was also reality. That weight, the bite of his beard while he kissed her, the sweat that plastered her breasts to his chest, the heavy mat of hair on his chest rubbing against her, the hair on his legs abrading the skin on the inside of her thighs. The earthy smells of sex and sweaty man. His heavy heartbeat, slow and strong, the heart of an athlete, beating against her breasts, against the palms of her hands as she moved her hands down over his back . . .

That was all real.

Then there was the magic.

Feeling his heart beat against hers, as if they were two organs beating in the same body. Being under his skin, knowing what he felt, sometimes what he thought. They couldn’t be more different. She had no idea what his background was like—that wasn’t her gift. But she knew what
he
was like because that was.

Knowing his bravery, his essential goodness, his loyalty. Knowing there was violence in him, feeling his toughness, knowing this was a man who would never break.