Lethal Cure

by S A Gardner

  “Get off me, Damian!”

  No response. Figured. He must think I was kidding. My legs were still trying to integrate his hips into mine. Willing them to unclasp him, I heaved beneath him. Not that I thought it would dislodge him. He wouldn’t budge if he didn’t want to.

  He budged, took his upper body off mine, looked down at me. Warm light from a black, ultramodern bedside lamp whispered on his tempestuous features. I almost pulled him back down.

  Good thing he got up, one impossible move taking him from between my legs and upright two feet away. One thing guaranteed about Damian. No matter how far gone he was, he was never gone beyond his unbreakable control. If he ever was, he’d never force himself where he wasn’t panted after. Heh. Like any woman with breath left in her wouldn’t pant after him!

  Trying my damnedest not to moan, I sat up. And got me an eye-level-full of his towel-less erection.

  “Put something on—now, Damian!” I croaked.

  “Calista St. James, the Prude. Nah, doesn’t suit you.”

  “I can’t talk business with you like that.”

  He gave his erection a mocking nod. “Imagine my inability.”

  “Damian, stuff—that—into something or I’m out of here.”

  He bent and reached for a dark scrap of fabric…“I got it already that you’re not here starving for me.”

  He had to be kidding, right? He had to know I was blowing my ovaries right now.

  “So—does business include saying thank you?”

  Said ovaries were sputtering, going out of commission. “Let’s cut the witty double-talk….” I gulped, watching him struggle on the scrap—black-silk boxers—and noticed I was sitting on a gigantic circular bed, spread with the same material and color. We’d almost made love on that? He made love to Desideria here…?

  I bounced off, staggering to my feet, and almost fell back when he advanced on me, his arms going around me again. My jacket was gone, my blouse undone—and my bra’s front clasp. I only realized that when his hard pecs pressed into my spilled, engorged breasts.

  “Let’s not be witty, Calista. I don’t want to talk business or hear thanks. I want to talk savage passion, I want to talk sex and satisfaction, and hear your cries for more.”

  The damage spread. I panted. “I swear I’ll knee you.”

  This got his hands off me. He stepped away, raised them in disgust. “I’ll pass. I’m still smarting from the last times.”

  Yeah. Once in Sudan, to force him to let me go execute my kamikaze trick. Then in my apartment, that night he’d crashed back into my life. He’d accused me of having an emasculating agenda.

  He stood, his boxers tented, eyes sweeping me with brooding lust, waiting for me to say my piece.

  I blurted the first thing that slithered from my mind to my tongue. Okay the second. The first was Are you sleeping with this Desideria? and I was damned if I’d ask that! “And what the hell do you mean, thank you? What for?”

  He shrugged. “For contributing to your standing here before me in one piece. One glorious piece, let me add.”

  I whacked his muscle-padded shoulder. “Meaning?”

  This time he scowled. “That time in Filthy Rich’s. Your stoolie tipped his thugs off.”

  I knew that. Figured he’d thought to get rid of me. I’d gone back for him and he’d disappeared. So he’d tipped off Damian, too. Should have known Damian knew my stoolie. Way better than I did, I bet.

  “They were going up after you, and we picked off five. Suz and Shad made it to Filthy’s door, only to find you’d taken care of the two who slipped our net, and were playing cat-and-mouse with him, getting all you needed.”

  So that was why only two had made it. Seemed they hadn’t noticed their pals’ demise. Only problem here was…“You weren’t there. I would have felt you. Would have recognized the others.”

  “I wasn’t there. I didn’t want to distract you, and spoil your hunt. And you never saw Suz and Shad in heavy-metal getup and makeup. Their mothers wouldn’t have recognized them.”

  I bet. “So, you didn’t keep your word.”

  “Aren’t you glad I didn’t?”

  Was I? Sure, to be in one piece, if only because he’d protected me from my own rashness. But that he’d lied—again! He could have just told me to live with his surveillance. That would have been honest at least.

  He took my slack body to his again, holding my buttocks, letting me feel what I was missing. I knew what I was missing, thank you. And what was missing. On so many levels.

  Most of all I missed trusting him implicitly—like I’d miss a severed limb.

  He took my lips, passion no longer frantic and savage, luxuriant, revitalizing—wiping all else out.

  Then he murmured against my lips, “You didn’t really believe I’d pull my guards?”

  That made me push away. “I actually considered believing you. A bit more time and I would have. I must be the ultimate moron.” He grimaced at the hurt I heard vibrating in my voice. I slipped from his loosened grip. “What did you do with my stoolie?”

  “He—had an accident.”

  “You killed him!”

  “I wasn’t there.” He raised placating hands when I advanced on him. “They caught up with him and he got frantic thinking they’d take him back to you. He ran off and got hit by a trash compactor. Very poetic. So—we can say you scared him to death.”

  A countdown banged in my head. Would it burst when it hit zero? “There’s no getting around you. You’re impossible!”

  “Yeah. So are you. Impossible, impetuous—irresistible…”

  “And you can’t help yourself yada yada. Enough. Business.” I inhaled what felt like half the air in the room. I’d need it wrestling with this breath-depleting man. “Since you’ve never stopped your surveillance, you know what happened.”

  His hands on my shoulders pushed me down on the bed. He straightened, crossed the enormous room, went to a beverage stand. “Yeah, your generals have fallen.”

  Deputies, and now generals. Dad and then Damian, each with his own career-related metaphor.

  He came back with a laden tray, sat with his back to the headboard, legs stretched, then hauled me onto his body. He prepared my mug with one hand. Almost-all-milk latte, four spoons of sugar. He remembered. Funny. Never thought he knew in the first place. He bit down on my lower lip, gave it a lingering suckle, then handed me my mug, started making his.

  I somehow managed to fill him in about the specifics, ending with the Colombian factor, and Dad’s intel.

  “So I’m going to retrace my friends’ footsteps. We need to get samples of the agent. If Dad’s intel is correct, much more than their lives may be at stake, and we must know what we’re dealing with, and how to counteract it.”

  He cupped my cheek, stroked my lower lip. “Okay. I’ll go in, find that operation, get you your samples.”

  That easy, huh? Business as usual for him. But not for me. I bit down on the finger seesawing between my lips. “You’re not going anywhere. Not on your own. This has to be my operation.”

  He fed me more of his finger, his face a mask of pleasured pain when I bit harder. “With all due respect, what operation? Your team is down.”

  “And your team is out! No way am I going on another PACT-maneuvered operation, now that I know…”

  That got him rising to his knees, too. The eight-foot bed shrank. “You know nothing! All that bullshit Jake filled your mind with about me and PACT is unsubstantiated. And you can’t afford to let that, or anything personal, stand in the way when your friends’ lives, and who knows how many others’, are at stake. Hell, Calista, for all we know we may all be next in line, infected with what the others fell victim to!”

  He made sense. He always did. Damn it. And him.

  Did the lout get how much I missed trusting him? How it had been preying on me? I wanted to trust him. I did. But I didn’t. I needed his help, but not as a PACT agent. Could he separate Damian from Agent De Luna? Co
uld he ever be aboveboard with me? Or would he still deceive me if he thought it necessary?

  As for his organization—no dilemma there. No trust. Nada. No matter what Damian said, that distrust didn’t stem from Jake’s revelations that he’d manipulated our mission and reached his ends with many a helping hand from rotten apples in TOP—the Order for Peace, PACT’s parent organization. Their own refusal to initiate investigations into my allegations substantiated my doubts, all right.

  Warm hands enveloped my head, warmer eyes delving in, probing, gauging. “That mind of yours shouldn’t be left to its own devices in there. The havoc it can cause left unattended is like a precocious kid with superpowers.”

  The image of my mind as a nosy, cheeky, reckless kid zooming around sowing unwitting destruction was too much. I burst out laughing. He laughed, too. Ah…could anything sound so—vital? In all meanings of the word?

  Then I was putting down my mug and tumbling all over said vitality. He ended up on top. Not a problem right now. Not when he was freeing me from my shackles, devouring me from head to core, forcing open my floodgates. I tore at his boxers, the last thing between us, dragged them down. Had to have him inside me. Doubts be damned. He sprang in my grip, hard, heavy, thick. Then he jerked away. And off the bed.

  What the—? What’d I do? Yank him too hard?

  “Dios—Madre de Dios!”

  That was all I understood among the rush of ragged and clearly incensed Spanish. Him and me both!

  “Dios, Calista—I can’t believe I didn’t think of that—lo siento…” What that? What? “I have no protection here.”

  No protection in his own home? Or was it his love nest?

  I’d forgotten about Desideria—whoever she was!

  “What am I thinking?” He strode back to bed. Next second I was beneath him and his lips and hands were all over me again. “Who needs protection when there’s a hundred routes to pleasure.”

  Oh. Okay. No, not okay! I pushed at him. He probably thought it another contradictory movement in my frenzy to get him closer.

  “Let me pleasure you, corazón. Not what we need, but…”

  “Why don’t you have protection?” This I had to know!

  He groaned his answers in my mouth, my breasts. “Even without my mother around on occasion, I don’t pack condoms if you’re not around. I haven’t had any use for them since Mel.”

  “Your mother? Desideria? And you mean…”

  “Yes, my mother, and I mean. What did you think?”

  Plenty. And all wrong. Desideria was his mother. And he hadn’t been with anyone but me in almost five years.

  But one set of realizations set off a chain reaction.

  I collapsed under my newest realization, something I should have guessed, knowing the extent of Damian’s network.

  Then I finally croaked, “God—you knew all along—about the Colombian operation!”

  Eighteen

  It was that impenetrable look he gave me. It solidified my suspicion.

  This time I didn’t push out of his arms, I knocked them down. Then him.

  At least I would have if he hadn’t parried. Too incensed for finesse, I launched at him. “You knew. Of course, you did. No way would Dad know about this and you wouldn’t. This is right up your alley, mister endless-agendas terrorist hunter. And you let me—let me…” The flow choked, tears’ struggling to replace it. No way in hell. “You left me in the dark, going mad over my friends. You wasted time—their time—would have gone on wasting it until they…”

  That did it. Tears came, dissolving my last punch.

  He tried to contain me. I hissed, “I wouldn’t advise it, Damian. Take your hands off. And keep them off.”

  His hands retracted. To press his point now, he’d have to put all he had into subduing me. Guess he thought things weren’t as beyond retrieval as that. He guessed wrong.

  I stormed into my clothes. He just reclined there, assessing. Thinking of ways to coax me back into gullible mode, no doubt.

  Being the theatrical son of a bitch that he was, he had me at the door before he drawled, “Yes, I knew. What of it?”

  Don’t turn. Don’t swallow his bait. Don’t—just don’t!

  Who was I kidding? Bait, hook and fishing rod were in all the way down to my toes. I swung back, images of ramming him headfirst filling my mind’s eye. “And you want to die—how, Damian?”

  He unfolded, sprang to his feet in one of those uncanny movements, came to tower over me, his scowl impressive. Try it on someone else, buddy!

  “So I knew,” he snapped. “The question here is—why should I have told you? What possible connection could I have made between an early-research-stages biological-chemical agent project a continent away and your friends’ conditions?”

  What I’d give for a stomp-all-over-him-tear-him-to-pieces fight! “Because you were the only one who had all the pieces of the puzzle, and must have put them together. Maybe not when Matt fell, but as soon as the others did. You knew they were in Colombia together. You don’t make those kinds of oversights, don’t miss that big a connection!”

  He crossed his arms. “I only knew they’d been in Colombia when you told me, just minutes ago.”

  A harsh laugh hurt me on the way out. “You know every time any of us uses the bathroom!”

  “I only know when you do,” was his serene answer.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I got a superb show of him wrestling with aggravation. The gall!

  “I follow only you, Calista. I already told you that. With all due respect and appreciation to the others, I have no interest in their moves. If you’d been on that mission, I would have had it documented in audio/video from the moment you left till the moment you returned. But you stayed here, and I didn’t even bother to wonder where the others had disappeared to, or noticed when they were back.”

  All right. Sounded very much like a truth.

  But when did anything spilling from his lips ever sound insincere?

  Still, if this was the truth, I had no reason whatsoever to die of an apoplectic stroke.

  He took a step closer, his eyebrows rising with his hands, requesting a truce, offering solace. I shook my head, denying both request and offer, stepped away from temptation and need. “Let’s say I believe you had no reason to make a connection. But you did know of the operation. What are you doing about it?”

  His hands fell to his sides as he turned away, went to pick up the jeans draped across the black leather chaise longue. He’d given up on any action for tonight, had he?

  He answered only when he was doing up his fly buttons. “My job, what else? I have an operation under way in search of that alleged plant. Intel claimed many locales—the terrorists dividing focus, using decoys to protect the real installation. So far its location isn’t known. Meanwhile, my team is bringing down as many as possible of the terrorists and their sponsors. I remained here, near you, while tending other sides of the job. Thought it as well to wait for them to locate the plant before leading the major attack.” He struck “a do you have something to say to that?” pose. “Satisfied?”

  “Delirious with satisfaction. On all fronts.” He moved toward me, took the unbidden truce, and me in his arms. I stayed there, counting his scarily slow heartbeats. Thirty per minute, rose to a whopping sixty on extreme exertion. “What now?”

  He stroked the hair he’d undone at one point during our aborted frenzy, spread longing and regret.

  “Now if you can stop looking for hidden agendas in everything I do for a second, I can get on with business. The new evidence suggests production of the agent has started. I have to escalate efforts while the situation is still relatively contained.”

  Escalate efforts, huh? Was that as ominous as it sounded? Probably far worse. I should have known. This time I pushed out of his arms intending to stay out of them. “You’ll escalate nothing!”

  “You can come to supervise my actions, if you insist.”

  “O
h, no. Never again. I sure as hell am not joining a whole slew of PACT operatives on a massive search-and-destroy mission. Get this, Damian—I need the agent to develop a cure for it, and there’ll be no chance of that if you and your people storm in and annihilate everyone and everything to ‘contain’ the situation. I know your methods and your margin of ‘acceptable losses.’ I know you’d consider those who are already affected, my friends, that!”

  And he’d be right.

  I cared nothing about “right.” I was saving my friends at any cost. I wasn’t sacrificing them for the bigger cause!

  “Calista—listen to yourself. You’d really risk a major threat for a few people, no matter who they are to you?”

  “Yes, Damian. I already did it once for you, put saving you before stopping Jake, chose your life over the millions he could have wiped out.”

  Memories flashed hard and thick on his face before it closed on them, final, adamant. “And you were wrong. I would have gladly died if the choice had been between me and others. Any other.”

  “But it didn’t turn out to be that way, did it? I saved you and stopped him. We can do that again here.”

  He shook his head. “We have to consider that it might not be possible this time.”

  “I can’t. And you know why? Because those hypothetical millions are not in immediate danger. Either then or now. You were. My friends are. I will handle one danger at a time. And I’m giving priority to the clear and present one!”

  “At least accept extreme measures as an alternative. A viable sample of something as potent can be what sustains the production, perpetuates the proliferation of the agent.”

  There. He’d said it. Admitted it at last. “That means you lied again when you said you’d get it for me. You consider the agent’s existence in any quantity, and in any hands to be as big a threat as a steadily producing plant. So what are we talking about? We’re at cross-purposes, as I should have known we would be. You’re out to destroy it, I’m out to retrieve what I can of it. I guess we’re against each other on this one.”

  His gaze pinned me, more so than the hands that grabbed my shoulders. “I’ll never stand against you, Calista. Never.”