by Deadly Game
Did she sound wistful? Ken only knew he wished they were alone together. Go to sleep, Mari. I’ll be right here.
Don’t beat the crap out of your brother. My sister wouldn’t like it, and then I’d have to stick up for you and we’d get into a big thing and it would all turn ugly.
The tension eased in his belly and shoulders. The pounding around his temples lessened. We wouldn’t want that. I’ll let it go this time, but he’s being a bit of a bastard. Jack can be like that sometimes.
He was looking down at her face, and even though her eyes were closed, she smiled, her full, sexy lips curving into a smile that made him want to kiss her.
Jack can be a bastard sometimes? Who would ever have thought? He isn’t at all like you, now, is he?
Maybe, he conceded. He slid his hand up her arm to her shoulder, caressed her neck, and tunneled his fingers into her hair. “We’re disturbing Mari. She needs to rest.” It was a good excuse to shut his brother up.
Lily stood up immediately and once again checked Mari’s heart and pulse. “She’ll be fine. She does need rest. We can go into the other room and let her be.”
“We’ll have to lock her down,” Logan reminded. “She nearly escaped.”
Ken shot him a warning glare. “I’ll stay here with her. She’s not going anywhere.”
“Actually she’s going to be very weak. GhostWalkers have a tremendous capacity to heal, but their bodies can only take so many traumas.”
Ken tried not to wince at the word. He knew what Jack was trying to say, but if he took a chance and kept Mari, and he was like his father, she would be the one to suffer.
Lily led the others out of the room, leaving Ken alone with her. He knew he should go to. She was temptation and he was weak, but he couldn’t bring himself to give her up quite so soon—and she was safe from him in her weakened state, he was fairly certain.
CHAPTER 9
“So, you’re all set to beat up the world for me,” Ken whispered, stretching out beside Marigold. He turned toward her, scooping her close to him with one arm, trapping her leg with his thigh.
“Mmm.” Her voice was drowsy. “Of course. It’s the least I can do. After all, you did save my life when your brother was going to shoot me with that gun of his. He needs help, you know. He can’t just go around offing people he doesn’t like.”
Ken smiled, for the first time in a long time feeling it was genuine. “I’ve been telling him that for years.” He found the drowsy note in her voice unreasonably sexy.
“What did they do to me?”
“A little torture. We tried extracting names, but you held firm.” He watched her face, and sure enough, he was rewarded with that same brief, intriguing smile.
“Good for me. I would have sung like a bird if you’d tried to make me eat peas.” She gave a little shudder and opened her eyes, blinking up at him. “That’s how all the interrogators get information from me.”
“I’ve made a note and we’ll go that route next time.” He wrapped his arm around her, holding her close to his body heat. “You scared the hell out of me, Mari. That was close. Way too close.”
She shifted toward him, wincing a little. “I think the Zenith did the job healing gunshot wounds and broken bones, but I feel like a truck ran over me.”
He ran the pads of his fingers down her face in a small caress. “You’ll feel better in a couple of days. You need lots of sleep.”
Mari’s lips tightened and her dark eyes went somber. “You know they’ll come for me, Ken. Everyone, including Lily, is in danger with me here.”
“We know. We’re taking precautions.”
“They’d better be darn good precautions. Don’t underestimate them.”
“We won’t,” he assured.
She liked having him lying beside her. “I’ve never lived anywhere but the compound. I’ve never been away from it except when they sent me on a mission, and we were always closely supervised. I’ve been on a lot of missions, and actually it was a relief to go somewhere and get away from there. Funny how this feels so different to me when it should feel the same. It’s a research facility, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It’s part of Whitney Trust. Lily inherited everything when Peter Whitney supposedly was murdered. She kept everything going—everything legitimate, that is.” On his side, propped on one elbow, he pushed the hair from her face with gentle fingers. “You’ve got to rest, Mari. You’ve got three IVs in you and Lily’s still running fluids. Zenith is nothing to fool around with. I should have known when you were healing so fast, but no one uses it. It didn’t occur to me that Whitney would deliberately endanger your life.”
Mari enjoyed the feeling of his fingers stroking across her forehead. His touch was light and gentle, and no one had ever caressed her that way. “Why are you being so nice to me, Ken?” Because she didn’t want to trust him—or the strange feelings she was beginning to develop for him.
“I’m never nice to anyone, Mari,” he said, a smile in his voice, although it didn’t show in his gray eyes. “Don’t go ruining my reputation.”
She closed her eyes because she couldn’t look at him anymore without feeling the burn of tears. She told herself it was because she’d nearly died, but she knew better. Ken Norton was giving her a taste of what life could be like—and she didn’t have a life, could never have a life.
“He owns us, you know. We talk about escaping, but we don’t do it, because we don’t know how to survive away from the compound. We’ve never walked a real city street. We’ve trained in urban warfare, in simulators, and we have mock cities we enter to face each other in battle, but we’ve never really been out of the facility, other than to go to a jungle or some drug lord’s little kingdom. Like I said, going on missions was a kind of vacation, as silly as that sounds.”
Her voice was soft and drowsy, the note hitting just the right pitch to make his body come alive. Hell. Everything she said and did, everything she was, brought out the worst in him. Ken fought to keep his mind centered on their conversation. “Were you ever in the Congo?”
“I’ve been in every jungle, rain forest, and desert there is,” she said without opening her eyes. “And every place they have leeches, I’ve managed to find them. Leeches are right up there with needles and peas for me. Before Whitney’s breeding program, I was a damned good soldier.”
“You’re still a damned good soldier.”
She flashed a small, grateful smile and moved just slightly, a small shift in her position, but it brought her soft breasts right against his chest. He managed to suppress a groan, feeling more a pervert than ever. “If I put my arm around you, are you going to shove me off the bed?”
“No. Should I?”
“Do you want me to be truthful?”
Mari smiled and snuggled closer to him. “No. I hurt and I want to go to sleep. You feel safe. I need to feel safe.”
“Then you’re perfectly safe with me.”
Ken wrapped his arm around her and tried not to feel more than the surge of sexual awareness the heat and softness of her body brought. Emotions were something he refused to deal in. She looked so young, her lashes long and thick, lying against her pale skin. Her hair gleamed with platinum and gold strands. Lily must have slipped something into the fluids to push her toward sleep, or Mari would never have made such an unguarded statement. He hoped she wouldn’t remember it when she woke.
“I’m here, baby. Just go to sleep and I’ll keep watch,” he murmured, his lips against her temple. She should have smelled of death—not life—but when he inhaled her scent, he could taste her in his mouth, feel his heart beating in time with hers, strong and steady with a perfect rhythm.
“I can’t go to sleep; it’s too quiet in here.”
He groaned softly. “You’re going to make me turn into a fool, aren’t you?” He glanced toward the door. “You’d better never tell anyone I did this.” Ken wrapped his arm around her head, his arm blocking the light from the window, wishing he had his guitar.
Jack had turned to books in the long years of their childhood and Ken had turned to music. He could play nearly any instrument, but he preferred the guitar. The feel of it in his hands and against his body was the same he felt when he held his rifle—an extension of himself. It was calming and took him away from the world, just as the rifle did. He couldn’t play for her, so he sang softly, filling the room with his rich voice, using his own creations, songs he’d written over the years—songs of loneliness and heartache, of rage and death, and songs about the beauty of the earth and sea. He kept watch while her breathing evened out and she slept lightly. Whenever he stopped, her body jerked and a slight frown crossed her face, urging him on.
He glanced at his watch when Lily entered the room; he was shocked that several hours had passed. Embarrassed to be caught singing, he busied himself smoothing out Mari’s hair while Lily checked her pulse and heart rate.
“How’s she doing?” he finally asked.
“Much better. You saved her life, Ken, getting her here so fast. Another few minutes and I couldn’t have done anything.” Lily began removing the IVs from Mari’s body. “Zenith is an amazing healer, but like dynamite, it’s highly unstable. I’ve never been able to isolate what causes cell breakdown, and what the exact timing is. It always varies from patient to patient. It would be miracle drug if it stopped after healing the body. Look at her wrist.”
Ken remained lying on the bed, holding Mari close to him. She was awake; he could tell by the racing energy in her mind. She’d awakened the moment Lily entered the room, but she hadn’t stirred, keeping her breath slow and even.
Lily carefully cut off the cast and gently prodded the wrist. “She’s probably a remarkable healer anyway and the Zenith just pushed her body relentlessly.” She placed Mari’s arm back on the mattress and covered it with a sheet. “Has she mentioned my father much?”
Ken didn’t reply. He wasn’t going to lie to her, but Lily was fragile in her pregnant state and it wasn’t her fault that her father was a madman.
She sighed. “I have to know about this breeding program he’s got going, Ken.” She glanced toward the door to where the others were resting, a small frown on her face. “I think he’s inserting animal DNA into the soldiers. I think some of you already carry it, especially the men. Has she mentioned aggression? Anything that might indicate a few of the soldiers in his programs are showing signs of instinct rather than intellectual behavior?”
Mari’s fingers touched his. He enfolded her hand in his. “I’ll ask about it, Lily.”
“He needs help desperately, Ken.” Lily shook her head. “I should have known. I should have gotten him help. Look at this.” She pushed the thin sheet from Mari’s leg, running her hand along the skin there, feeling the bone. “She doesn’t really even need this splint anymore either. She was shot. Her leg was broken, and yet in a few short hours her body has healed. Peter Whitney did that. He created the drug and engineered the biotic enhancements to accelerate her body’s healing capabilities to phenomenal speeds. Just imagine how much the world could have benefited from his discoveries if he hadn’t gone crazy.”
Ken tightened his fingers around Mari’s as Lily removed the splint. “But he did go crazy, Lily. No matter how brilliant he was—or is—he’s become a monster. We can’t allow him to continue and you know that. He’s holding women captive and forcing them to get pregnant. They’re prisoners, held in a remote facility somewhere, with no hope of ever getting out. And he plans to experiment on their babies.”
Lily let out her breath in a long sound of distress. “I’m doing everything I can to find the women, Ken.”
Ask her if what Whitney is doing to the men can be reversed. If he’s inserting animal DNA into theirs or raising their testosterone levels, can she undo what he’s done?
Ken cleared his throat and tried to look intellectual. “Lily, if Dr. Whitney is using animal DNA, or if he raised the testosterone levels in any of the soldiers, is there a way to reverse it or get rid of it?”
Lily’s gaze jumped from his face to Mari’s then skidded back as if she’d seen too much. “The testosterone levels might be managed with drugs. Depending on what he did and how much he raised the levels, I might be able to level the men out. But if he really is inserting animal DNA into theirs, which I’m beginning to suspect, there isn’t anything I can do. With the extra pair of chromosomes he inserted, he has a lot of genetic code to work with.”
She examined Mari’s leg a second time, paying close attention to the wound. “She’ll need more rest, Ken. Try to get her to sleep as much as possible, and she’ll need to drink a lot of fluids. Really push the water. The bathroom is over there,” she indicated a door to their left. “Walk with her so she can test the leg, but only to the bathroom and back until I take X-rays. It ‘looks’ good when I feel it, but psychic ability doesn’t always catch the little nuances.”
“Thanks, Lily. I’ll watch over her.”
Ken waited until Lily had left him alone again with Mari. “What are you thinking?”
Mari opened her eyes, and his heart reacted with a peculiar leap. She had the darkest brown eyes, large and heavily fringed. He hadn’t noticed before because he had been too busy fixating on her mouth, but a man could get seriously lost in her eyes. He was in trouble and getting in deeper by the moment.
“Brett acts more like an animal than a man. He doesn’t care at all what I want or don’t want. It really doesn’t matter to him, other than that I cooperate with him. When I don’t, he’s furious. He wasn’t always like that. Not to say he didn’t have brutish behavior. I think he liked being strong and he picked fights, and none of us liked him all that much, but his behavior is even worse now.”
Ken took a deep breath and let it out. Jack and he had always had better than average eyesight, but now both of them could see not only at night, but at distances more like those an eagle could see than a man. They had assumed it was due to genetic enhancement of vision and hearing, simply increasing their own capabilities, but they could both see heat sources as well. They could change skin color and hold the outside temperature of their skin at a different temperature than their internal body heat, which negated anyone else’s ability to see their heat images. Did that mean Whitney had inserted animal DNA into each of them? Was that part of the reason he had been so adamant that Briony have Jack’s baby?
“What is it?” Mari turned her head to look him directly in the eye. Her fingertip traced the frown on his lips.
“Jack and I have always had dominant personalities,” Ken said. Whitney couldn’t have added animal DNA to our genetic code, could he, Jack? Is it possible he made us even more aggressive, knowing our history? “We’re both aggressive and neither has much backup in him. We had certain traits, both physical and mental, far before we volunteered for Whitney’s psychic program.”
Ken, there is every possibility. I didn’t want to consider it, but our vision is unlike human vision. And we’ve both become a little too much like shaggy bears growling in the woods. There was a hint of humor in Jack’s voice, and the hard knots in Ken’s belly relaxed a little. Even if the bastard did insert animal DNA, we’ve been living with it for a few years now and we haven’t eaten anybody.
He would have given us something difficult to control—something that would mix with jealousy and aggression and heighten those traits.
Probably.
Jack sounded complacent. He could be complacent. He had Briony tied to him, and she was pregnant with twins. She was totally committed to him. Jack was a handsome man with a physique any woman would be attracted to.
Mari, on the other hand, was sexually attracted because Whitney had paired them. He had the face of a monster, and his body was a patchwork quilt sewn rather haphazardly together. Mari wouldn’t want to be seen walking down the street with him, let alone dancing with him, if Whitney hadn’t intervened.
Jack had managed to escape the legacy of violence and jealousy and disgusting behavior their fath
er had bequeathed to them, but Ken hadn’t. He knew he hadn’t, and Mari would sooner or later suffer for his baser traits if they were together.
Self-pity was a miserable and useless pastime. He refused to indulge himself.
Mari’s fingertips were feather-light on his face as she traced the pattern of his scars. “You’re so silly sometimes, Ken. You don’t see yourself as you really are at all.”
“How do you see me?” He wanted to sink his teeth into her finger, to draw it into the warmth of his mouth, but he kept himself absolutely still, not daring to really breathe, in case she stopped touching him.
“You’re extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary.”
His mouth curved into a semblance of a smile, the scar stretching tightly. It amazed him how that shiny skin could be so tight and not feel at all until it stretched, and then it could be painful. There didn’t seem to be a middle ground. “You’re doped up.”
“I know. I’m floating. But that doesn’t make it untrue. If you do have animal DNA, you seem to be able to handle it a lot better than any of the others.”
“You won’t be saying that when you’re asleep and I wake you up croaking like a frog and my tongue darts out and finds that perfect little tempting ear of yours.”
“Does my ear tempt you?” She tucked strands of hair behind her ear.
“Hell yes. Everything about you tempts me.”
Mari felt herself blushing. No man paid attention to her in quite the way he did. He made her feel almost shy, when she wasn’t a shy woman. Heat curled through her body, and when he was close to her, she could barely breathe. Her womb clenched, and in between her legs she grew hot and moist and throbbed eagerly, as if her body had a mind of its own. She was in over her head. She knew what to do in a combat situation, and she knew how to fight off a man’s unwanted attentions, but she had no clue how to entice Ken Norton into wanting her with the same feverish intensity with which she wanted him.