Lethal Cure

by S A Gardner

  His whole body buzzed with his leashed tension as he gasped, “Misericordia, amor—mercy…”

  I slid up, my core wept its demand for him. I gave it, pumped him into me, wallowing in the scalding pleasure.

  My mouth opened on his, my tongue maddening his into a duel, confessing in his mouth, “I’m safe.” His hands dug into my scalp, my buttocks. I threw my head back, started riding hard. He still didn’t meet my plunges. My hands shook, my heart flailed, I babbled, delirious now. “Not that time of month—trust me, I’m a doc. As for the other kind of safety…”

  But something—in his eyes, had flared at my first words. Regret? Did he want—wish…?

  I stiffened under the onslaught of images, the never-can-be’s—safe, ordered lives, babies…

  He misunderstood my hesitation, grunted, “I’m safe—always used heavy-duty protection.”

  I clung to his misinterpretation like a lifeline. “Me, too. So—uh, it’ll be—our first time….”

  “It is. Every time with you is.” He dragged me down into his mouth, onto his erection, thrust up, savage now, showing me I’d taken nothing of him. I screamed.

  Never. Never before. Never knew. Real abandon, his full ferocity, mine. We tore and ground and bit and snatched. He took all, gave more than I could bear, what I couldn’t bear not having. I took all he had, clear out of my mind, convulsing and shattering, pleasure pummeling me as I did him. He pounded me to the last abrading twitches of orgasm, then again to renewed clawing. I heard moans, for his release inside me, my tears filling his mouth.

  Give me. Fill me.

  He did, in hard rams, long, roaring jets, triggering another paroxysm of release, one sustained seizure that frightened me, finished me. Fulfilled me.

  This. What was missing. True completion. My full feminine potential realized.

  Then I was floating, in his arms, spreading in the back of the truck over something warm and soft, then his mouth and body were covering mine, plunging deep inside me once more. Many times more.

  And he bared more to me, and bared more of me to him. Heart and soul. As for body, he exploited my every inch. I took lots of notes for future reciprocating exploitation. Did some on the spot.

  Before I surrendered to a coma-like sleep in his arms after the last time, I was thinking—I have to have this, have you this way, unfettered, primal intimacy, from now on…

  I had a suspicion I said that out loud. And an almost certainty that I heard him groan into my neck, “I now know how I’ll die. Pleasure overdose. Inside you.”

  “Get this into your head. You’re not coming!”

  I ignored him, hopped over a dead body, slid a panel and hauled out more hidden weapons.

  I’d already put together an extensive disaster bag, replenished the weapons on my person.

  Yeah, we’d made it back to the attack scene. No sentries had been left behind. Only the sarin-contaminated ML and their dead. I’d counted twelve, my victims, and eighteen, Damian’s.

  He snatched the guns I handed him, dragged me outside the ML, pressed me between its and his steel. “I’m taking you back.”

  I smirked at him. “And delay the now-or-never strike?”

  We’d woken up to Ed’s report. His team had located the plant. And the good part? Just in time for the terrorists’ escalation to a major strike.

  And the overprotective lug was worrying over me!

  His lips compressed. “They’ll have to start without me.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, jeopardize world peace for helpless little me. You didn’t train me, and I didn’t spend all these years applying your training and fighting every single day, only to duck when the shit hit the global fan! So save it, Damian. And move it.”

  We ended the stalemate with me threatening to tranquilize him and haul him to his team. He didn’t put it past me.

  Wise man.

  We said nothing else for the next six hours.

  Now a star-studded night enshrouded us as we followed Ed’s GPS signal. We’d pinpointed his team’s location almost to the exact square meter, stopped about three miles away, loaded up on weapons, and continued on foot through the thickening jungle.

  Suddenly swords of light slashed our night-goggled vision. We took them off, adjusted to the faint flickering lights as we reached the edge of a clearance.

  And there it was. The plant of doom.

  Huh. Kinda of an anticlimax. Just another prefab building. Ed had sent us layouts, vital areas, sentry stations. We had enough explosives to level ten buildings this size. I still wished for the feel of my hands on live scientists. To question, to settle my mind.

  Damian stiffened. Incoming message. He read it, turned, transmitting—what? Uncertainty? Hesitation? His voice was tinged by neither when he talked. Must have imagined it.

  “Ed needs to liaise with me at the eastern end of the plant. You stay put.”

  “You’re going in without me!”

  “No, I’m not. But if anything goes wrong, turn back and run, and keep running. Please, Calista.”

  And leave him? Was he crazy? I shook my head at him and he dragged me into a fraught kiss mingled with one more “Please” that drenched me in dread.

  Then he was gone, fading with inhuman speed and stealth into the gloom before I could cling to him.

  Apart from running after him, which wouldn’t be conductive to the covertness of our operation, I could do nothing but what he said. Stay put.

  Humph. Never been good at that. Cruel and inhuman punishment.

  Two minutes passed. Getting itchy here. Five. Getting anxious. Ten. Getting mad. Fifteen—going mad!

  And I couldn’t contact him. It might distract him at a crucial moment. My legs were on fire. I was. Waiting, worrying, watching the sentries doing nothing, all relaxed.

  Something had better happen right now!

  Uh—you ordered something to happen, moron?

  Here it was. Something happening. Guards were running out.

  Right toward me!

  Thirty-Four

  Panic hit first. Robbed me of three seconds.

  Over three dozen charging mercenaries, three hundred feet and closing, high-powered, scoped, night-vision rifles targeting me warranted a three-second panic, I’d say.

  Couldn’t afford more. Think. A counteroffensive.

  But—they weren’t firing. So it wasn’t a hunt. It was a capture and interrogate. I could let it play, wait for Damian’s incursion…

  Sure—and cripple him and end every possibility of winning this.

  Blow them up, then run for cover, pick the remaining off.

  Yeah. Blowing Damian’s team’s element of surprise right along, saving myself and endangering the whole thing—but—what element of surprise? Had no idea how, but our cover was blown. Still, they could be coming only for me. A blowup now would be a diversion, a heads-up, a distress call.

  I waited until they were in throwing range and let them have it. I ran as the detonations went off, shock waves pummeling me like body-sized fists.

  Damian had said to keep on running. No way. I’d reach good foliage cover, climb a tree, pick them off, wait for Damian’s backup, or go back him up—

  Something snagged at me, hauled me back.

  Damn—my disaster bag, caught on a branch. I fought the imbalance, my momentum lost. I slammed on my back, the bag taking a bit of the brunt before my head hit the ground sideways. The usual explosion of pain and disorientation followed.

  Then I was looking up at a dozen automatic rifle barrels.

  My heart fired. They didn’t.

  So they still wanted me in one piece, after I’d blown some of them to pieces?

  Okay. So they got me. I could still use this, help Damian from the inside. Wasn’t much fun finding myself captive for the second time in less than thirty-six hours, though.

  The guerrillas, or whatever they were, hauled me to my feet, all nice and helpful. One of them asked me not to struggle in mutilated English, as others carefully
disentangled me from my disaster bag, frisked and disarmed me, as usual missing the important stuff. But the unusual thing, the downright weird thing, was how—courteous they were about it all. Hell if I could find another way to describe their behavior…

  I walked ahead of them, my head still ringing, my back throbbing with echoes of this latest fall, getting a better view as we approached the plant. An installation made to be erected in days, and dismantled in less. Probably one of many in their bid to confuse intelligence, and hop to another location at the drop of a pin.

  Wondered what pin had dropped and tipped them to me? Better surveillance of the perimeters than Ed had reported? Had we been on camera all the time? If so, why wait until Damian— Oh, no!

  Had they already captured his men, used them to lure him away? Was that why he hadn’t come back?

  My heart tried to pummel through my ribs, the urge to ask them what they’d done to him bursting it.

  Yeah. Alert them to his presence if he is still free.

  Had to go with the assumption that a sentry with night-vision goggles was vigilant, had seen me in a regular sweep after Damian left. Probably when my body heat had shot through the stratosphere.

  That could explain it. But it didn’t provide explanations to the other mysteries. Where Damian was now, and why they were treating me so well.

  We were inside the plant now, passing through inner security, the layout exactly as in Ed’s intel—and then one mystery was explained.

  The mollycoddling. It had been their boss’s orders.

  Jake’s.

  Thirty-Five

  Air disappeared. The floor. The world followed.

  Moist heat burst behind my eyes, inside me skull, a thousand screeching bats flapped in my ears, my chest…

  God—it’s starting. The agent. It had been infective all along. Or I’d somehow been dosed with it. I was starting to hallucinate.

  Jake. My worst nightmare, my greatest regret—my indelible pain. The man I’d loved, the man who’d loved me—so much he’d gone to hell for it. The man I’d sent to hell.

  Like with Matt, like Ayesha and all the others who’d been stricken, the hallucinogen must be accessing my trauma, caging me in a tunnel-vision world, with my mutilating memories made flesh. So convincing—and oh, so real.

  My heart stampeded, thoughts screeched—and—and—wait! Wait a sec!

  I still had thoughts—could still think. I was not oblivious to place, circumstance and self, like the others had been. My aggression was wiped, my resistance spent—not manic-high on chemically-induced strength and stamina.

  This wasn’t the agent!

  What did it mean? That it was real—that this was him?

  Jake?

  Yes. It was him.

  It had been him all along. I’d sensed it, couldn’t credit it—and it had been him. Jake…

  Tall, beautiful and, oh God, alive!

  But I killed you!

  Pain burst in my knees, sent bright crimson sparks into my vision. Like that time I’d watched Matt teetering on the ledge, I fell on them. It was the least I could do. Anyone with an ounce of feeling, confronted by the ex-lover they’d murdered, would have fainted.

  He walked toward me now, slow, graceful, radiating authority, power.

  How? How? I’d killed him, shot him right in his carotid with enough to paralyze three men. I’d seen him sag to his knees, trembling, losing control of his every muscle. I’d seem him gasping, known his heart was firing, erratic, ineffective, his lungs no longer unable to draw air in. I hadn’t been able to stick around and see him suffocate to death. I’d been certain he would in minutes.

  How hadn’t it? How had he survived? He hadn’t been faking it. I hadn’t missed—hadn’t used the wrong drug. I was certain!

  He stood above me now, the heavenly color of his eyes bright, like the last gaze we’d exchanged as he’d breathed his last breaths, his gaze filling with such understanding, and, oh God—love. So much love…

  They hadn’t been his last breaths. But his eyes were still filled with the same emotions.

  Please stop. Don’t look at me as if you missed me, as if you love me. Not after I killed you.

  The horror of it was, I’d missed him, too. The Jake I loved. The man, not the monster. Looking up into his incandescent bronze beauty, the sheer poetry of his every feature and line, he bordered on angel. An angel of forgiveness, extending his soothing hand to me, raising me from my abject misery.

  I clung to his hand, surged up.

  And I hugged him.

  And he was real. Solid, warm, alive. His masculine scent, his heat, his aura, the first ever to mingle with mine in passion, flooded me.

  Oh, Jake—why did it have to be this way?

  He stiffened in my frantic hug, like in Russia, the scene replaying. But unlike that time, this time his rigidity dissolved, his arms lifted around me, one hand pressing my head over his steady beating heart.

  “Ah, Cali, you astound me. As usual.” His indulgent tone lanced through me. I hugged him tighter.

  Lord, anytime now I’d be whimpering, Sorry I killed you!

  A gentle, persuasive hand beneath my chin coaxed my head up. I let it, kept my eyes closed. That hand joined the other, brushing aside my bangs, teasing my lids open. I hiccuped on a stab of anguish as his eyes bore into me up close.

  Then his sensuous lips spread as his hands dropped to mine, clasped it and tugged. “Come.”

  I registered everything on the way to what turned out to be his quarters, quite the lavish setup for the utilitarian place. He’d always liked his creature comforts.

  Until he’d been kidnapped and tortured literally out of his mind, that was. This Jake was the product of irreparable mental and psychological damage. Fatal damage.

  My Jake hadn’t survived the abuse. A new persona had risen from his ashes. This Jake. Damian believed this Jake had been the real Jake all the time, just harnessed by an easy life, put in stasis by lack of incentive.

  I didn’t know anymore.

  He followed my eyes around the room, towed me to a dark burgundy leather couch, a gentle push lowering me down on it.

  “Noticing my foibles?” He chuckled, his elegant British accent back in full force. “I admit, I have developed a dependence on good interior decoration since my days in the dungeons.”

  He sat down beside me. I feasted on his sight. Whatever he was, he’d been my lover. I was still alive now because he felt something for me still. And I was so horribly sorry I’d killed him. It didn’t matter that I’d been right to.

  I lunged and nestled into him again.

  He gasped this time before his arms went around me. “Ah, Cali. I thought the first hug was shock. But I should give up trying to anticipate you. You never cease to exceed all my expectations, when everyone else falls short. You’re the only one who ever challenged and satisfied my jaded mind. Is it any wonder I loved you that long? Even after you killed me?”

  I jerked away. He followed, his hands soothing down my back. I pushed at him and buried my face in my hands.

  Just stop—please.

  As if he’d heard my silent plea, he sighed, stood up, walked away. I felt him come back in what could have been minutes or hours. I took my hands off my face, saw him standing before me, hot drinks in both hands.

  Without volition, I reached for my proffered cup, squinted at it. Exquisite Limoge china, golden trim and initials. A fist closed inside my chest.

  CJ. He’d had it monogrammed. To us.

  My eyes stung.

  I stared through the pain into the depth of the steaming liquid, something telling me he remembered how I liked my tea. I gulped it, and my eyes filled. Earl Grey, hot, sweet. Very. Yup. He did.

  “You could have no concept of how I missed you, Cali.” He sat down, body language at once deliberate and eager, a superior being entertaining the one guest he deemed worth admitting into his sanctum. “Of course, I forgive you for killing me. I totally understand you thought it
had to be done. In fact, I admire you for it beyond words. I of all people understand what it means to do anything, no matter how crippling, because it has to be done.”

  I put down my tea, somehow found my voice. It came out a strident tremolo. “Is this how you rationalized killing thousands? It had to be done?”

  One bronze eyebrow rose, blue flames flaring in his eyes.

  Careful. Don’t antagonize him. You’ve never been at his mercy before.

  He only smiled, that elusive, serene smile. “The refugees were only the start, a necessary trial run. It will now be millions, tens, even hundreds. But it will bring war and strife on the planet to an end. For a while, at least, before the cycle restarts.”

  “You still think if you scare people enough they’ll stop fighting each other, and unite to survive a common, unseen enemy?”

  “It has always been the case. After disasters, people come together. I stand by my original plan to end war by annihilating all the sides fueling it. My weapons—you do know about those, they’re why you are here, after all—are designed to be lethal yet non-infective, to wipe out only the populations I target—the chronic septic foci of the world—those where anti-life and anti-civilization ideologies and religions and conflicts has fester. I will annihilate them so that the rest of humanity, scared and chastened, can start anew.”

  I opened my mouth to say we’d gone over that before, and he pressed on. “But it’s far more complicated than that. This is my bid to bring the most diabolical of all human inventions to an end—the war industry. You know that no one is trying to, or will ever try to stop it. It’s just too profitable for everyone. That’s why conflicts are so chronic. The warmongers aren’t only the politicians, the military, the business conglomerates or the weapons’ makers and dealers. Their lower echelons spread down to the common, upstanding citizen on every street.

  “Everyone needs to keep solvent and in business. Everybody has a vested interest in keeping wars alive, everyone in media, technology, food industry, finance, medicine and pharmaceuticals—ah, how those last two have become culpable in war’s untold atrocities—and everything in between. To keep their current markets open, and to open new ones, they all need to create needs. Everyone needs lawless arenas, and the rest of the world’s fear of them, to test diseases and medicines, to spread ideologies, to keep religions, extremism, and hatreds alive. They need all that to create consumers and followers, by first creating hunger and suffering and fear. It’s what makes their trades and existence indispensable.