Genie could’ve cried, but she knew him well enough to realize that pity was the worst thing she could give him.
She thought this might be the best, though her knees were practically knocking at the thought of going down the stairs. It might be the best thing for the both of them, but it was now or never—either something happened between them tonight while they were safe behind walls and security systems, or it never would.
Because Genie had a pretty good idea what would happen when all this was over. She would settle back into her stagnant routine in her dull old clothes and the boring new car she’d have to buy with the insurance money from the boring old car that had been blown up. Maybe she’d wear the new clothes Jill and Steph and Molly had forced her to buy, and maybe she’d go out to lunch with them from time to time, but nothing substantial would change.
Nick would slide seamlessly back into his normal life and they’d snarl at each other over sequencer time and argue over the new collaboration—she had no illusions that he wanted to spend time with her, he just knew good science when he saw it. They’d go back to Genius and Beef and every now and again he’d scowl at her and she could imagine that he was picturing her naked.
But inside, she’d be crying. Screaming.
Dying.
Who could have predicted just three days ago that Nick Wellington could become as necessary to her as breathing? It wasn’t logical.
Love isn’t logical, her brain whispered, and Genie dropped her head into her hands and felt caffeine and nerves hum just beneath the surface of her skin. Her brain was right. It wasn’t logical. But the unfamiliar emotion churning through her had to be love. It was too enormous to be anything else.
So it was with equal parts love and fear that she shuffled through his bathroom and then the bedside table until she found the—thankfully unopened—box of condoms, ripped it open, and slid a couple into the breast pocket of her shirt. She tried not to look at the plastic packets, but her stomach jittered anyway and she had a brief fantasy of hiding in the shower until morning.
Then she had another image of hiding in the shower with Nick until morning, which was enough to propel her across the room and halfway down the hall. Where she stalled. She stared at the carpet. Who was she to dare to love Nicholas Wellington the Third? He didn’t even seem to recognize how different they were—tarnished armor or not. He thought he wanted her, but he didn’t really know her.
He only knew her as a woman being menaced. As a victim in need of protection. He didn’t know her.
“And he’s not bloody likely to get to know you any better if you stand up here in the hallway all night with no pants on until you turn blue from the cold.” Her brave words echoed and she suppressed a shiver. “So get down there and warm yourself up, Genie. Or better yet, get Wellington to do it for you.”
Her resolve lasted until she hit the living room door and saw him standing near the fire with a gray folder in his hands and a fierce frown on his face. He called her name without looking up and she answered, stepping into the room, into the light, before remembering that she was nearly naked. “I’m right here, Nick.”
“Genie, I need you to explain this note here…” He looked up. He froze. His jaw literally fell open. The gray folder dropped from his fingers and she spared only a second to wonder why he was bothering to look at a Gray’s Glaucoma family when she’d been specifically warned against the Fenton’s project. Marilynn’s project. The one project she would never willingly give up.
His eyes—had she ever really thought them icy?—flashed bright and hot and he took a step toward her, slipping slightly on the piled folders. “Genie?” He stopped at the edge of the couch and jammed his hands into his pockets as though telling himself not to touch her and she resisted the urge to wrap the shirt tightly around her torso and run screaming up the stairs.
Instead she walked toward him until they were an arm’s length apart. “Nick?”
He swallowed with an audible click. “What are you doing?”
She had hoped it would be obvious, but apparently it was true what Jill had said, that subtlety was wasted on human beings with Y chromosomes. “I’m pretty sure I’m seducing you. At least that’s what I think I’m doing.”
“Oh.” He swallowed again and seemed rooted to the spot.
Genie blew out a fortifying breath, tugged the sides of the shirt off her shoulders, and let her last item of clothing fall to the floor.
He didn’t move, but she could see a pulse pounding at the side of his neck and a light sheen of sweat on his forehead, although that could be due to the fire, which seemed to be pumping out about ten times as much heat as it had been when she’d gone upstairs. He said in a voice rough as sandpaper, “Pity, Genie?”
She shook her head. “Not pity. Not gratitude, either, though I’m grateful for all you’ve done for me the last few days. None of that.”
He moved then, raised his hands and she thought, Thank God, he’s finally going to touch me, but he simply caressed her face, the corners of her mouth, and said, “Then what, Genie?”
She turned her cheek into his palm and closed her eyes. And lied. “You said it yourself earlier. I want you. You want me. Nothing more.”
She thought he whispered, Thank God, but she couldn’t be certain, and then she didn’t care anymore because he was finally touching her, kissing her, and she did the only thing she could.
She kissed him back. With all the love in her heart.
She ran her tongue across the seam of his lips and reveled when he let her in with a moan. He tasted of wine and coffee and rich comfort and sin, and she arched up against him when his hand slid down to her hip then traveled up again to palm her aching, needy breast.
Pressing closer, bowing upward into his hand and his body, she found that the white shirt that had seemed so soft when they sat shoulder to shoulder sorting files was rough against her skin now, sliding deliciously across her chest and belly when he pulled her up against him. The fabric of his pants was slick against her thighs, and he was hard where he pressed against the aching place between them that demanded release.
He tore his mouth away. “Genie, are you sure?”
She knew he was trying to do the right thing, trying not to let her do something she’d regret, but she affected annoyance. “You trying to get out of this already?”
He grinned, a quick flash of white teeth against stubble. “Not on your life.” Scooping her up, he tossed her easily onto the couch facing the fireplace and followed her a moment later, pressing her into the soft cushions with the good, heavy weight of his body. He was still completely clothed and she was naked.
It should have been embarrassing.
It was wildly erotic.
He took his mouth on a quick cruise down her throat as her busy hands went to work on his shirt, finding him bare and needy beneath the cloth. His lips slid up the side of her breast and she felt his mouth close over the tip, sending shooting sparks of white-hot light through her body and pulling the pulsing, greedy knot between her legs even tighter. She jolted against him and the breath whistled between her teeth as her fingers dug into his scalp and held on tight.
“Nick! I want… I want…” She was practically sobbing with need and cried out when his fingers found her and danced around the outside of that secret, wet place, soothing and stroking when she wanted them to fill. To inflame.
“I know, Genie. I know. Me, too, but we need something. Protection.” He was breathing hard and trying to pull himself away from her even as his hands continued their delicious torture and his slid across hers time and again. “We need…upstairs. Bedroom, maybe. They’re up there somewhere.”
She loved him for not knowing exactly where they were. She lifted a hand to wave at the doorway at the same time that she draped a leg over his hip, silently urging him to delve deeper. Touch her.
Touch her.
“Over there, I have a few in the pocket of your shirt.”
“You brought your own?” Hi
s fingers slid a little lower, a little deeper, and she wanted to scream with frustration. Instead she pushed his unbuttoned shirt aside and nipped at his chest hard enough to make him buck against her.
“No. I found yours. They were in the bedside table, by the way.”
He laughed in relief and kissed her hard. “You’re a genius.” And for the first time she liked the sound of that.
She expected that having been given the green light he’d jump up, get the condoms and move things along. But he didn’t. He merely smiled and returned to where he had been before—namely teasing at her breasts while his fingers stroked her thighs and her belly, even the backs of her knees, anywhere but where she wanted him to be.
Murmuring a protest, caught somewhere between pleasure and pain, she dragged her fingernails across his nipples and absorbed the quick tremble he tried to hide. He left her breasts and returned to her mouth, but instead of devouring her as she expected—needed—he kissed her soothingly, with aching tenderness that alternately made her want to cry with the beauty and to bang his head against the wall in frustration.
Then, without warning, he ran a finger directly down her center, into her, and pressed his thumb firmly on the coiled knot of desire that was ruling her body.
Genie screamed against his mouth. Her body jerked.
And she was flying.
Sensation layered upon layer, coiling tightly and springing free as she was borne along on wings of pure pleasure, on the arms of the man that held her and pressed her up again, higher this time until she shattered into a million, trillion pieces and fell back to earth, still held safely in his arms.
She should have been numb, replete. Boneless. But instead her body hummed with restless energy that surged and pulsed like blood between them. She twined her legs eagerly around his, reveled in the roughness of his pants against the supersensitive skin of her inner thighs while she kissed him and caressed him until he was shaking as hard as she.
Then, finally, he broke free and dove for her discarded shirt and the precious plastic packets in the pocket. When he came back and was standing beside the couch looking down at her, Genie didn’t hide her nakedness. She smiled and held her hand out to him. “If you’re going to ask me if I’m sure, I might have to deck you.”
He grinned and shrugged out of his shirt. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” His chest was hard and soft at the same time, an intriguing mix of curves and angles that begged her fingers to touch, her mouth to taste. The lower half of his body stood out in sharp relief behind the thin barrier of his tan pants, showing Genie that he hadn’t been teasing. He wanted her.
Sliding the soft leather of his belt through the loops, he tossed the little packet onto Genie’s stomach, then joined her on the couch. “Will you do me the pleasure?”
Her fingers shook a little as she slid his zipper down and her heart thundered in her ears. This was really happening. It wasn’t a dream. It was happening. It was—
R-r-ring!
They both froze and looked at each other. Nick’s face mirrored the dread she felt. “My mother?” he suggested.
Since Genie’d gotten the impression that the two of them weren’t close, it seemed unlikely. “How often does she call you here?”
“Never.” R-r-ring!
“A girlfriend?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Lucille left me with little taste for relationships.”
Trying not to let that hurt, she pushed him off her as the phone rang a third time. “Pick it up, then. The not knowing is probably worse than knowing.” She wasn’t sure that was the truth. As he picked up the receiver and greeted the caller, she hunted up her shirt and buttoned it down the front.
His bare shoulders tensed as he listened, and by the time he said, “We’ll be right there,” she knew there was something very, very wrong.
“The lab?” She couldn’t imagine what there was left to destroy at her lab, except maybe the sequencer and her office.
He shook his head. “No, worse. Steph’s hurt.” He dragged his shirt back on and grabbed his shoes without looking at her. “We’re going to meet Sturgeon at the hospital.”
Genie’s stomach heaved and she tasted bile. “What happened? Where was she? Was it him? How bad is she?” She couldn’t imagine the evil it took to track down one of her employees.
Still avoiding her eyes, Nick grabbed his keys and led the way out of his monstrous house. “She was at your place. She thought she’d help out and feed the cats.”
Chapter Twelve
He told her about the gray folder while he sent the Bronco thundering into the night, into the rain.
She held it closed on her lap. “I’ll read it when we get there.” A pause. “Tell me what happened, Nick.”
Closing his eyes against the hot rush of pain and anger wasn’t an option when he was running yellow lights at eighty miles an hour, so he kept them open and saw his own guilt in the eerie amber streetlights that whipped past the vehicle. In the white lines that twisted before him, taunting him, because he could never outrun them. Never outrun anything.
“She’s just a kid, damn it!” He pounded on the steering wheel and the Bronco shivered in reaction, losing its grip on the wet road and fishtailing through the next bend.
“You’re not going to help her by killing both of us. And she isn’t a kid, Nick. I’m younger than she is.”
“You were never that young.” He knew he shouldn’t have said that, but he needed to strike out at someone and Genie was handy. “And I’m not going to kill us.”
Swearing, he purposefully hit the on-ramp too fast and gained some satisfaction from Genie’s gasp and her quick grab at the door handle. Then, with a quick wash of shame, he slowed down, took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m being a jerk right now because I don’t know what else to do.”
The tense set of her shoulders beneath his favorite shirt told Nick that she’d been hurt by his crack about her age, but she rallied and, with a tenderness borne of…what? She touched his hand where it gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make his knuckles creak.
“What happened, Nick? What did he do? Why?” She poked at the gray folder in her lap. “If what you say is true and we’ve been looking at the wrong Fenton all along, that still doesn’t explain why he’d come to my house. I don’t keep much lab stuff at my house.”
“I don’t know, Genie. I’m not a genius and I can’t read his mind.” Nick swore again when she winced. “Never mind. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but don’t, okay? I just need to fume for a few minutes, until we get to the hospital.”
“Fine.” She turned back to the window and stared out into the dark rain, her arms crossed beneath her breasts. He had a quick flash of her lying back on his couch, gloriously naked and holding her arms out in invitation. His body thrummed with desire and wanting.
Nick shifted uncomfortably, realizing that frustration was probably responsible for at least half his foul temper. He glanced over at Genie and was rewarded when they passed a particularly well-lit shopping area and the bright neon shone through her shirt and outlined one breast and a pointed nipple.
He remembered the taste of her flesh, the feel of her flying apart in his arms, and he eased back another notch on the accelerator. Steph had been found quickly by the officers on duty at Genie’s house, and she was at Boston General right now under Detective Peters’s protection. Genie was right—killing them on the way to the hospital would be counterproductive.
Nick glanced in her direction, but she remained staring out the window, awkwardness etched in the line of her arms and the set of her shoulders. A rush of warm and spiky—not quite lust, not gentle enough to be something else—poured through him, and he sighed, wishing for things he could barely name.
“Sturgeon says it’s pretty bad,” he began in a thick voice, willing her to turn and look at him. “But she’s at BoGen now and they’re working on her. She was unconscious when they brought her in.”
She didn’t turn, but he hear
d her ask quietly, “She went to feed my cats?”
He nodded though she couldn’t see him. “Yeah. She must’ve figured she’d be safe with the cops out front, watching the place. She went around back to get the spare key and he must’ve been out there watching. When she didn’t come back around the front, Sturgeon’s boys figured there was something wrong and went looking for her. They found her by the back door.”
Nick remembered Genie’s crumpled body stuffed beneath the sink in the developer room and felt the bile rise. It was all too much. They had to stop this creature before he hurt someone else.
“I asked her to feed Oddjob and Galore last month when I went to that conference in Stockholm, so she knew where to find the key. And she was hurt…while we were…” Her voice trembled and Nick took her hand and squeezed.
“Yeah. I know.” He felt a measure of sanity return as he threaded his way through Chinatown and pulled into the parking garage beneath Boston General. Enough sanity at least to wonder why the murderer had thought it worthwhile to stake out the house when a pair of uniforms sat out front. “Did you have any lab stuff there that he might have wanted?”
The alternative was that he’d come to finish the job he’d started in the developer room.
She was silent for a moment, thinking. “I’ve got a filing cabinet full of journal articles in the den, but I can’t imagine him having any interest in that. I can’t think of anything else, except…” She trailed off and stared down at the pale folder in her lap. “I brought a few films home the other day to review an outlier DNA that keeps not fitting into the proper pattern.”
Nick’s gut chilled as he remembered the Post-it on the front of the Collins folder. “What family was it?”
She looked from her lap to his face. “The new Gray’s Glaucoma family. The Collins-Fenton family.”
He shut off the engine with a twist of the key. “Bingo.”
They walked side by side through the garage and he was glad for the bustling figures near the Emergency Room door. This was one place in the hospital that never slept. One place where there might be safety in numbers.
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