by Unknown
She couldn’t say he played her body like an instrument, because she’d never seen a musician turn so suddenly ruthless. She had heard violins weep, but not like her body wept for him, moisture pooling in her core and spilling forth to beg him to join with her. A single, clear note of sanity somewhere far back in the recesses of her overheated mind urged her to turn the tables on him, to beat him at his own game, to touch and tease and tantalize until he lost all control. That was what he was doing to her, and sauce for the goose, after all . . .
But she couldn’t. The minute spark of that thought drowned and gurgled under the onslaught of pleasure. The idea had barely formed when his mouth shifted to her other breast and sly, skilled fingers rounded the curve of her thigh to dive between, sliding within her on a stroke of ruthless giving.
Her body contracted like a pill bug, curling into itself as a mechanism of self-defense. She had to protect herself against this terrible pleasure. Against the way his fingers shifted and searched and uncovered her every intimate secret. She couldn’t bear the need, the trembling, aching, yawning abyss of need that grew inside of her like a black hole, threatening to consume her from within.
Josie gasped. She screamed. She may have begged. In the end she couldn’t remember. All she could remember was that she clawed at him with desperate hands, drew her legs open and up as if she could swallow him whole. She felt his touch, heard his deep, raspy voice attempting to soothe her, but her hunger controlled her, and it refused to be soothed. It wanted to be satisfied, and nothing else.
Finally, quickly, exquisitely, her granted her mercy. His fingers withdrew from her quivering sheath and he grasped her hips with both hands. His fingers dug into her soft flesh, biting hard enough to leave marks, if she had cared about such things. Panting, his hot, sweet breath like a blessing against her cheek, he jerked her hips up and plunged inside her, diving deep to her heart and shouting his pleasure to the ceiling.
Immediately and perfectly, they began moving together, the rhythm instantly finding them as if this weren’t the first time they had been lovers, but the hundredth, the millionth. She yielded where he advanced, gained ground where he retreated. She clung to his back like the last steady handhold in a quaking galaxy, and he gripped her hips as if to release her would mean losing his own sanity.
Rising and falling together, they became one being, a single living thing made of heat and tenderness, pleasure and agony, heart and soul and mind and breath. Each lost all sense of self and a separate thing. They were only us, and as they threw themselves off the edge of the peak, hands and hearts joined, they knew they would never again go back to what they had been, alone and individual. Part of them had fused in that blinding moment of pleasure, and the bond that sealed it could never be undone.
Exp. 10-1017.03
Log 03-00133
Locating the proper radio tracking equipment proves difficult. Nothing has yet met the high standards required for the experiment. May have to proceed with Stage 4 in absence of equipment and recruit larger number of technicians to perform subject tracking duties.
Stage 4 product will be complete within the next 12–24 hours. Modifications to the active strain appear in vitro to provide hoped-for results. Laboratory testing will be bypassed in favor of active field testing. With the end goal in sight and the tools for success at hand, it would be a disservice to society, to humanity, to withhold such an important scientific advancement.
As an aside, the nonscientific participants involved in the project remain a disappointment. Science will provide our solution.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Josie woke at three o’clock, suddenly and completely. One minute, she had been sleeping hard and deep, like a toddler after a day at the park, and the next her eyes flew open, her brain engaged, and the idea of any further sleep became instantly and completely ludicrous. She knew why it had happened, too, because she woke with the idea on the tip of her tongue.
Slides.
After seeing the results of Rosemary’s initial blood tests, Josie had ordered Ben to make up some slides of the Lupine’s so that she could examine it under the microscope, but things had gone so crazy since then that she’d never gotten around to viewing them. Those slides might hold an important clue about the Lupine’s condition. Plus, if she prepared another set of slides with samples of Bill’s blood, she could compare the two and confirm or disprove the idea that they were infected with the same illness.
Gah! Why hadn’t she thought of this before?
Reaching for the heavy blanket draped at her waist, she began to lift it away so she could rise when she realized that down duvets didn’t usually feel quite so . . . firm. Memory came flooding back—along with a blush—and Josie knew exactly what had been keeping her warm half the night. Not her duvet, but a very special and efficient furnace named Eli Pace.
She subsided and turned her head to gaze at him, resting quietly on the pillow beside her. He looked more relaxed in sleep, but no younger. His face had too many ridges and angles to appear innocent, even while unconscious, but he did appear pretty content, the corners of his mouth curved just barely upward in an expression of satisfaction. Go figure.
Josie had to admit, she’d woken feeling pretty satisfied herself, at least as far as her body was concerned. Her mind still dwelled on the medical mystery before her, but every muscle in her body felt deliciously limber and stretched. By dinnertime, that would probably turn into overextended and aching, but for the moment she would just savor the pleasant sensations.
She had certainly savored them last night.
Blinking up into the darkness, Josie felt a smile curving her lips. She had absolutely no regrets about last night. How could she? She’d never felt anything like that. She couldn’t even decide if it qualified as mere sex. Surely something that stupendous, that mind bending, had to have a less mundane title? She couldn’t think what it would be, but it definitely deserved something more. Otherwise people would think it had been just the same as all her other experiences. They would think they might have had similar experiences themselves, and she couldn’t allow the world to delude itself in that fashion. What had happened between her and Eli last night had transcended the realm of physical intimacy. It had turned into something else entirely.
Josie’s smile slipped away as it dawned on her that she couldn’t think exactly what.
Pushing the odd and unsettling thought away, Josie returned her attention to the question of the slides and realized that she was just too impatient to wait until morning to see them. Technically, she told herself, it was morning. The wee hours still counted as morning, otherwise they would have called them something else.
It took about ten minutes, a lot of excruciating slowness and incredibly gradual movements, to extract herself from Eli’s grip without waking him, but Josie managed it. She slid from the bed with a sigh—was that relief, or wistfulness?—grabbed her yoga pants from the floor beside the bed, and padded silently back into the living room for her shirt.
From his position on the sofa, Bruce opened one eye, acknowledged his mistress’s presence, then went back to sleep with a disconcertingly human sound of disgust.
Josie dressed quickly, shoved her feet into the fleece-lined rubber clogs she wore as cold-weather slippers, and was headed for the door when she realized that if Eli woke up while she was gone, her absence might give him the wrong impression. She didn’t want him to think she’d run away from him, after all.
Taking a moment, she found a bright yellow sticky pad, jotted down a note, and affixed it carefully to the doorjamb between the bedroom and the living room. She even left it sticking conspicuously out into the doorway so that he couldn’t miss it. Satisfied, she cast one glance at his sleeping form, then slipped out of the apartment and padded down the stairs to the back door of the clinic.
It took a few seconds to let herself in and deactivate the alarm before she flipped on the lights. She tended to leave that for last since the buttons on the alarm pad glo
wed in the dark and she could see them just fine without the overheads. Once the lights were on, she dropped her keys on the counter and made her way to the slide prep area.
Conscience demanded that she make a brief detour to the kennels to check on Rosemary and Bill. They slept side by side in separate cages now, each still unconscious, their conditions unchanged. At least they had been able to extubate Bill just before closing last night. Once the sux wore off and they had weaned him onto a different sedative, the danger of having his breathing stop had lessened to negligible levels. She felt certain he was more comfortable breathing on his own.
Since he was unconscious, though, Josie decided to take advantage of the opportunity. She gathered up a needle and empty syringe and carefully drew a couple of milliliters of blood for some slides before she headed back into the other room. Although her impatience to see the slides Ben had created for Rosemary nagged at her, she took the time to prepare five new slides using the sample she’d just taken from Bill before she turned on the microscope and pulled out the small, blue plastic box beside it, carefully labeled with Rosemary’s name and patient number, the date, and the number of slides it contained.
Josie’s mouth quirked when she saw there were exactly five slides. Ben had been with her for almost four years now. He knew how she liked to work.
Pulling out the first small glass rectangle, she positioned it under the scope and fit on the slide clip. Then she chose a lens, peered through the eyepiece, and began to adjust the focus. When everything came into view, she would begin to scan the smear systematically, looking for foreign bodies, abnormal cells, or any other irregularities.
That was the plan, at any rate, but it turned out to be unnecessary. As soon as the cells came into focus, she found what she was looking for. She just couldn’t quite tell what to make of it. Brows knit together, she stared at the slide until her temples began to throb. She fiddled endlessly with the fine-adjustment knob of the microscope, but the view never varied. Neither did it change when she swapped the first slide for the second. Or the third. Or the fourth. She had just inserted the fifth slide when a hand on her shoulder had her jumping out of her skin.
Josie spun around on her stool and glared ferociously at Eli. “Damn it, you nearly gave me a heart attack. Sneak up on me like that again, and I’m going to tie a bell around your neck. I swear to God.”
The sheriff, dressed in nothing but his jeans, his feet bare, merely quirked an eyebrow and leaned forward, kissing her directly on her frowning lips.
“You know, if this is what starting work at three fifteen in the morning does for your temper,” he drawled, “you might want to consider changing your hours.”
“Ha-ha.” Josie crossed her arms over her chest, but her expression softened. “I guess you saw my note.”
“I did. I also appear to have pissed off your dog by walking past him while he was trying to catch up on his beauty sleep. He gave me a very dirty look, which I got the feeling I was meant to pass along to you on his behalf.” He leaned a hip against the side of the counter and mirrored the set of her arms. “But the note somehow failed to explain what could possibly be so important that you had to come to work to deal with it in the middle of the night, rather than waiting until you actually have to be at work in—” He glanced at his watch. “—three more hours. Did something happen with one of the Lupines?”
“No, I just remembered the slides. I asked Ben on Sunday morning to prep some slides with samples of Rosemary’s blood for me to look at. Since we couldn’t seem to find the source of her infection, I thought putting them under the scope might help me figure out what was going on. Maybe I’d even be able to spot the bacteria. Though, given the power of the equipment I keep on hand, that wasn’t very likely.”
“So were you pleasantly surprised?”
“I was surprised, but I’m not sure how pleasant it was.” She gestured at the scope. “Take a look.”
“Even though I have no idea what I’m looking for?”
“Just tell me what you see.”
Eli nudged her out of the way and bent his eye down to the scope. He peered inside for a minute, then shrugged. “It looks like a bunch of tomatoes, half of which recently served as ammo during a pretty vicious food fight.” He straightened and looked at her. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
Frustrated, Josie ran her hands through her loose hair and tugged it absently. “Yes. It means that Rosemary’s red blood cells have lysed. Basically, something has broken open the cell membrane and let the contents spill out.”
“Okay. Well, that’s something, then. What can cause it?”
“Usually, it’s one of three things: a virus, an enzyme, or a shift in the osmotic pressure of the cell.”
“So, then you were right about an infection. Unless you think it was . . . one of those other things.” The confused expression he wore told Josie that Eli wasn’t quite getting this.
“I don’t know! That’s the problem. Technically, the hemolysis—the destroyed red cells—means that I should diagnose Rosemary with hemolytic anemia.”
“Hemolytic anemia?”
“A disease where red blood cells are destroyed prematurely, and the bone marrow can’t replace them fast enough. It can be inherited or acquired, but if it were inherited it should have presented a long time before now. And she just doesn’t present the classic signs of a chronically anemic patient.”
“Which are?”
“Fatigue is one, and I think we can assume she has that, but otherwise, nothing. Her skin and gums pinked up after surgery, so they’re not pale anymore. She’s not showing any signs of jaundice or abdominal pain, her urine is fine, and her heart sounds strong.”
“But?”
“But it’s driving me crazy. I need to know what’s causing the hemolysis and why she’s not reacting to it the way every other living creature would.”
Josie paced while she talked, her hands gesturing and her expressions shifting constantly. At least she did until Eli grabbed one of her hands in his and pulled her into his arms.
“Can you run any tests to tell you if there are problems with the enzymes and whatever else you mentioned before?”
Josie sighed and allowed herself to lean against his broad chest. She had to admit, it felt good. Comforting. Strengthening. “I’ve run every test I’m equipped to do, and so far everything except for her white blood cell count is normal. Well, her white cells and now her red cells.”
“So you still think this is some kind of infection?”
“That’s what my gut keeps telling me. I don’t know why. I mean, she doesn’t have any of the classic signs of that, either. No fever, no redness at any of her wound sites. Nothing.”
Eli nodded toward the microscope. “You said your equipment wasn’t powerful enough for you to see any bacteria on those slides. Do you think someone else with better equipment might be able to?”
“Sure,” she said dully, “and I can send samples to a microbiology lab, but it will probably take weeks for those results to come back. By then, it may be too late to help her.”
“I might be able to help with that.” She gave him a skeptical look and he smiled. “Not personally, but I have a few useful friends, one of whom happens to work for the military. He’s a scientist, and there’s a chance either he or someone he works with could do me a favor and look at something a little quicker than in a few weeks.”
Hope sprang up like crabgrass in Josie’s chest. “Really? That would be so amazing. He won’t want my slides, though. I’ll pack up some fresh samples for you to send him. I’ll send copies of my case files, too. If there is evidence of an infection, he’ll want to know about the antibiotics I’ve administered. And I’ll send Bill’s blood, too, as soon as I check out his slides, but I’m sure they’re going to look just the same as Rosemary’s. I should start that. I need to get to work.”
She leaned up and kissed him enthusiastically, but her mind was already on her task. She tried to twist out of h
is arms and get back to the microscope.
He held firm.
“In a minute,” he drawled, and his green eyes glittered at her with a newly familiar intensity. “The slides and the patients and the microscopes will still be there later. Right now, there’s some work that I need to get started on.”
Against her will, Josie felt herself softening and melting already. Her mind might be focused on other things, but her body was clearly focused only on him. With a mental shrug, she decided that he was right about the work still being there in another hour or so. Letting herself relax, she slid her hands from his chest where they had been trying futilely to push him away, and wrapped them around his neck. She pressed her body against his and raised an eyebrow in inquiry.
“I might take offense to being labeled as ‘work,’ you know,” she purred, running her nails over the back of his scalp until he echoed the sound.
“You prefer to think of yourself as play?” His hands slid under the hem of her T-shirt and skimmed over her belly, making her muscles clench. “As in, let’s play doctor?”
Josie snorted a laugh. “I don’t want to think about what it would mean to play doctor with a veterinarian.” Then his hands cupped her breasts and the laughter died in her throat. “Besides, I’m always a doctor. I think I’d rather play cops and robbers.”
Eli chuckled against her throat and scraped the sensitive skin with his teeth. “Does that mean I should go get my handcuffs?”
She flicked open the button on his jeans and grinned up at the ceiling tiles. “No, I’ll go easy on you this time. But I warn you, if you resist arrest, I might have to get rough.”
With a throaty growl, Eli spun around, lifted her to sit on the edge of the counter, and tugged her yoga pants down to her ankles. After that, she didn’t think about work for another two hours.
Eli felt mellow and limber as he strode into his office on Tuesday morning. He might not have slept all that long last night—or this morning—but what he had done had left him feeling energized. It also helped that he wouldn’t be the only officer on duty all day today. Jim Cooper would be working with him early in the day, and Mike Driscoll would take over in the evening, giving Eli time to deal with the administrative details of his job. He swore the damn things bred like rabbits every time he stepped away from his desk.