by Tessa Adams
She looked at him askance. “What? Harvard?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“Well, that’s clear.”
“Sorry.” He paused, tried to formulate his thoughts. “Do you miss living in a world where every decision you made wasn’t the difference between life and death? Where you felt safe when you went to bed at night? Where you never had to worry about shifters or blood enemies or solving impossible, deadly puzzles?”
“How could I not miss my old life when you describe my new one so eloquently?”
“I—”
She held up a hand, cut him off. “I know what you mean. And honestly, yeah, I miss some things. I miss my apartment and the great little bakery right down the street where I’d stop every morning for a cup of coffee and a pastry. I miss my friends and my students.
“And some days—like today—I really miss the surety of my research on lupus. I miss the fact that while it’s a terrible disease, it’s predictable. Understandable. And it wasn’t designed as a constantly changing, constantly evolving weapon. When I made a breakthrough on my lupus research, it meant something. Now I feel like I’m starting all over again every couple of days.”
She shook her head. “But would I go back to that life? Would I give up Dylan? Or you? Or this high-tech lab that has everything I could ever want—including a freaking supercomputer—just so I could sleep better at night?” She laughed. “I wouldn’t give up any of it. I love my life with you dragons—love my life as a dragon. How could I possibly have imagined three months ago that I would be able to fly? And if thoughts of the Wyvernmoons keep me up some nights, well then, I’ll take it. Besides,” she said with a sly grin, “Dylan knows just how to help me sleep.”
It was Quinn’s turn to laugh. “I bet he does.”
“That’s not to say I won’t be damn glad when Jazz gets here. I really want her perspective—”
“Who?” Quinn demanded, cutting Phoebe off, as the dragon stirred to life within him.
“Dr. Jasmine Kane, the woman I was telling you about the other day. I know you don’t want her to be involved, but I need you to give her a chance. She’s the absolute best at viral-borne blood diseases—and a damn whiz when it comes to mutations. If there’s anyone on earth who can help us nail this thing down, she’s the one I would put my money on.”
Though he’d heard everything Phoebe had said, Quinn remained stuck on the only thing that mattered. “What’s her name again?” he demanded.
Phoebe gave him a strange look. “Dr. Jasmine Kane?”
“No. You called her something else. You called her—”
“Jazz?”
“That’s her name?”
“Yes. That’s her name. She called me from Atlanta yesterday morning before she left and told me she was hoping to make it here by tonight.”
He stopped listening when the side door of the lab swung silently inward. Phoebe hadn’t heard it—she hadn’t been dragon long enough for her senses to be as developed as his.
He didn’t turn around to see who had entered his sanctuary, but then he didn’t have to. Just like at the bar, his beast smelled her before Quinn saw her. That blackberry jasmine scent of hers wound its way through the harsh antiseptic cleaners they used in the lab and wrapped itself around him.
As it did, his mind—and his beast—went nuts.
Had she known all along who he was?
But if that was the case, why had she snuck out of that stupid motel room without so much as a wham-bam-thank-you-man?
Or had she been as clueless as he about the professional relationship that was about to be thrust upon them?
Did it matter? his dragon side asked, as it strained and pulled against his control. The beast didn’t care what she knew or why she had left—it only cared that she was here now. The man was much more cautious. He had to be. For better or worse, she was who fate had decreed as his mate—and it wasn’t like he’d get a second shot, at least not while she was alive. He couldn’t fuck things up now—no matter how angry he was.
And he was angry, he realized suddenly. Underneath the shock and bewilderment and oh-my-God-I-have-a-mate-and-she’s-disappeared drama he’d been through, anger had been lurking all along.
And it was directed—almost exclusively—at Jazz. She was the one who had set this whole thing in motion, after all.
She was the one who had walked up to him at that bar.
She was the one who had given herself to him so completely that he knew no other woman would ever satisfy him the same way—even before he realized she was his mate.
And she was the one who had walked out on him without so much as a screw you, even after they’d held each other all night.
Fuck, yeah, he was angry. So angry that he didn’t trust himself to turn around and greet her. He wasn’t sure he could be civil.
Which was why he did his best to ignore her, when every instinct demanded that he go to her, that he confront her and get her the hell out of his lab and into his bed. The dragon growled at the thought, low and deep. For the first time in a long while, Quinn wanted to join it.
Jazz stepped into the lab, trying to get her bearings—and their attention. When neither he nor Phoebe turned around, she finally said, “Phoebe?” Her loud, clear voice rang with authority.
Phoebe whipped around at the sound of her name—and so did Quinn, positioning himself slightly in front of her. Jazz might be the mate destined for him, but he wasn’t sure he trusted her. Phoebe was his king’s mate. It was his duty to protect her.
Then Phoebe pushed past him, squealing with delight as she rushed across the lab—straight at the woman who had made the past few hours of his life a living hell.
“Jasmine!” she cried, wrapping her arms around Jazz—his Jazz—and pulling her in for a huge hug. “You’re early! I wasn’t expecting you until later this evening.”
“Yeah, well, I left a little earlier than expected. I was going stir-crazy and was afraid that if I had to spend any more time staring at the walls of my apartment I was going to lose my mind. Literally.” She bent down and hugged Phoebe just as fiercely in return. Then she pulled back. “You look good. The desert must be agreeing with you.”
Phoebe’s laugh twinkled through the room. “I’m not sure if it’s the desert or Dylan, but I feel great. I love it here.”
“What’s not to love?” Jasmine asked, her eyes sweeping around the room as she took in the lab’s setup. “This place is state of the art.”
“I know, right? When I think of how hard I had to work to get my lab set up back in Cambridge, I can’t believe how lucky I got when I fell into this.” She pulled Jasmine forward, toward Quinn. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Balancing on the balls of his feet, his hands clenched in fists at his side, Quinn stayed where he was, waiting for them to come to him. He was spoiling for a fight, and the second his eyes met Jazz’s across the shiny, well-equipped lab, he knew she was the one who would give it to him.
For a moment, just a moment, surprise registered in her violet gaze. It was followed by a brief flare of heat that had his dragon’s claws coming out, raking against the inside of his skin and shredding his self-control as surely as they did the first layer of his human form. After hours of glutting its senses on her, it could scent her desire, her need, all the way across the sterile lab, and it was all he could do to hold the beast in check.
To hold the man in check, if he was honest. Part of him wanted nothing more than to close the distance between them with one, quick leap and set about devouring her in the most pleasurable way possible—Phoebe or no Phoebe.
But he was still too raw, too angry.
Besides, the look she was giving him said she knew what he was thinking, and she’d gut him if he even tried to touch her. Of course, that only made his impulse harder to control.
Despite his feelings of betrayal, Quinn had a hard time suppressing a small, unexpected spurt of amusement. There was no doubt about it—life was
about to get very interesting. He had a feeling he and his mate were going to have a hell of a time before they managed to come to terms. The thought wasn’t anywhere near as disappointing as he’d expected it to be.
“Quinn, I’d like you to meet the hematologist I was telling you about, Dr. Jasmine Kane.” Phoebe’s smile was dazzling. “Jazz, I’d like you to meet Dr. Quinn Maguire. He’s an absolute genius and a joy to work with. This is his lab and his project.”
“Nice to meet you, Dr. Maguire.” Jazz held her hand out to him, and for a moment Quinn thought he would implode. Just go up in smoke, right there. She didn’t actually think he was going to play it like that, did she?
Except, apparently she did. Her eyes were carefully blank, her smile professionally polite. It enraged the dragon and the man.
“Oh, we’ve met before,” he said, and it was an effort to keep his voice coldly clinical as he clasped Jazz’s hand in his own. It was trembling, just a little, though the look on her face was pure hard-ass. He couldn’t help wondering which of the reactions was more honest.
“Have we.”
It wasn’t a question, but he answered anyway. “We have. Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to recall it. It wasn’t exactly memorable.”
Her eyes turned from lavender to aubergine—from cold to boiling—in the time it took her to blink. The reaction soothed him in a way no amount of protesting—or apologizing—could. She said, “Now that you mention it, I do vaguely remember meeting you. You were drunk, weren’t you?”
His grin was fierce. “Relaxed, I would say.”
“Oh, right. Of course. Relaxed.”
Phoebe’s head had been swiveling back and forth between them, like a spectator at a boxing match, and she finally broke in, “What’s going on here?”
“Nothing, Phoebe. Why?” Jazz’s attention shot to her friend—a rookie mistake if ever Quinn had seen one. If she was frazzled enough to take her eyes off the ball, then she was in worse shape than he had originally believed. He took advantage of her lapse in attention to invade the personal space she set up around herself like a damn barricade.
Phoebe didn’t answer for a long moment, and when she did, her voice was filled with curiosity and atypical restraint. “Never mind. I guess we’ll get to that later.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Quinn muttered under his breath. From the look Phoebe gave him, it was obvious both women heard what he’d said. Jazz flushed, but he couldn’t bring himself to be sorry.
“Would you like to see the lab?” Phoebe asked. “We’ve got everything you could possibly need.”
“I’d rather see this top-secret project you’re working on. It’s been eating at me ever since we got off the phone. A brand-new blood disease that isn’t hereditary and isn’t contagious. I’m dying to get a look at it.”
“I never said it wasn’t contagious—just that it couldn’t be caught through the normal channels.”
Jasmine’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly does that mean?”
Phoebe looked at Quinn for help, but he just shrugged. She was the one who had wanted to bring Jasmine in, so she could deal with the…complications such a decision caused. There was no way he was going to waste his breath trying to convince any human that their species wasn’t necessarily top of the food chain after all. Especially one who had already shown a propensity for not listening to a thing he had to say.
“It means people can’t catch the disease in the usual way.”
“No kidding, really?” Jazz rolled her eyes. “Come on, Phoebe. You called me, so why don’t you just ante up, here? How can people contract the disease? If it isn’t contagious through air or fluid contact, how does it spread?”
“That’s kind of what we were hoping you would be able to tell us.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jasmine stared at her friend and fellow scientist in complete astonishment. What the hell had happened to Phoebe? Had the desert heat fried her brain? Because this woman, with her roundabout prevarications and lack of details, wasn’t the doctor Jasmine knew. She wasn’t even a close facsimile.
Annoyance skittered down her spine, but Jasmine tuned it out. She could be ticked off later. For now, she needed to concentrate. Something was going on, and she suddenly wanted to know exactly what that was.
That didn’t mean Phoebe needed to know how curious she was, and neither did Quinn. Thank God for her poker face, as the man watched her so intently it was a wonder she didn’t melt. The last thing she had expected was to see Quinn bent over a microscope and cozied up to one of her closest friends.
Hell, the last thing she had expected was ever seeing him again at all. When she’d walked out of that hotel room, she’d been certain she was closing the door on that whole insane encounter. To find out otherwise…This was a real kick in the ass. And anyway, how the hell had Quinn gotten there before her when she left him naked and sound asleep back in Fort Stockton?
But she wasn’t going to let him know how freaked-out she was at seeing him. If he could play it all cold and amused, so could she.
Even as she promised herself she could keep her cool, Jasmine felt her cheeks heat under Quinn’s scrutiny—and memories of the night before pressed in on her from every side. Refusing to give in, she strode over to the microscope they had been looking into so intently when she first got to the lab. She’d be damned if she let him get the best of her with his little “I don’t expect you to remember” routine. She didn’t know what game he was playing, but she wasn’t buying into it. Leaving him this morning had been hard enough.
“Do you mind if I take a look?”
Again, that strange look passed between them. Then Phoebe said, finally, “No, please. I’d love to hear what you think. But, be aware, there are certain anomalies…”
“What kind of anomalies?” she asked, as she dropped her purse on the counter.
“The DNA is a little different from what we’re used to seeing. It’s—” She broke off, as if struggling for words, another first for Phoebe.
“Corrupted?” Jasmine supplied. “Do you have any other samples? I’d prefer that the first time I look at this thing it not be damaged.”
“It’s not damaged.” Quinn finally broke his silence. “It’s just not what you’re expecting.”
She started to ask him to be more specific, but the look on his face told her that he wasn’t going to say more. Perhaps his panties were still twisted because she’d run out on him earlier that morning, or perhaps he didn’t want to unduly prejudice her regarding the specimen she was about to look at.
She chose to believe it was the latter, though she ached—just a little—at the thought of what he’d felt when he’d woken up alone. After the intensity of what they’d shared, she knew she would have had a hard time waking up alone.
But that wasn’t important now, she told herself. The work was what mattered—only the work. Sinking into the chair in front of the computerized microscope, Jasmine looked through the lens. What she saw there was so startling, so strange, that it took her a minute to figure out what it was she was looking at. Even then, she stared at it for a long time, trying to decide if she was really seeing what she thought she was.
But it couldn’t be. It didn’t make sense. Not corrupted, Quinn and Phoebe both insisted. Just different. Unexpected.
That was the understatement of the decade.
Pulling back, she punched a few buttons on the computer and brought the image up on the large monitor to her right. Then she magnified it so that the cell anomalies were big enough that they couldn’t be ignored.
Neither Quinn nor Phoebe said anything, and for long minutes she was so caught up in looking at the blood cells—and the virus ravaging them—that she didn’t either. Behind her, she could feel Quinn and Phoebe studying the specimen as well, but she had a feeling they were looking for very different things than she was.
When she finally had a grip on what it was she thought she was seeing, she turned to the other two doctors and asked,
“Does someone want to tell me what the hell is going on here? If this sample isn’t corrupted, then you’ve dragged me down here for nothing. Because whatever this blood belongs to isn’t human, and I’m not a veterinarian.”
“It is human,” Phoebe insisted. “That’s why I didn’t want to say too much at first. I wanted you to—”
She stopped abruptly as an alarm went off overhead.
Jasmine glanced up, distracted, at the bulbs lining either side of the lab. They were blinking red, in time to the god-awful sound that was grinding, on and off, through the building.
Before she could do more than wonder what was happening, she was yanked out of the stool and propelled against the wall so fast her feet barely touched the ground. Phoebe was next to her, and Quinn stood in front of them both, blocking the way with his huge shoulders and six-foot-six frame.
“Quinn?” Phoebe whispered. “What is it? Who—”
“I don’t know,” he said, reaching for the telephone on a nearby lab station. “Give me a minute to find out.”
Jasmine didn’t want to wait that long. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but there was no way in hell she was going to spend the next few minutes cowering behind Quinn like some nineteenth-century heroine—and she couldn’t believe Phoebe would either.
Annoyed at the entire situation, she shoved at Quinn’s back, but it was like trying to move a two-ton rock with a child’s shovel. It wasn’t going to happen.
“Logan set off the alarm?” Quinn barked into the phone. “Why?”
The answer must have been worse than he’d expected because the look on his face changed from wary and grim to downright dangerous. The fact that she got all that from only his profile was more frightening than the alarm itself.
Jasmine shivered as she wondered what those dark green eyes of his looked like right now—and what could possibly have put that look on his face. She could almost feel sorry for this Logan person, whoever he was, if Phoebe wasn’t stand next to her, trembling.
“Well get the damn thing cut off. I can barely hear myself think.” He hung up the phone with a bang. Jasmine started to ask him what was happening, but he moved away from her and Phoebe so quickly that all she could do was stare at his retreating back.