“Is there anything else you can think of? The smallest detail might prove important.”
Gods, the man was persistent. “It didn’t take long for me to realize my handlers didn’t always answer to the same person.”
“Go on.”
“First it was a man they referred to as the Trainer, then I was sold to General Hidaka.”
Emily gasped. “You were sold?”
Milo didn’t seem surprised. He was far more interested in the buyer than in the fact that Cruz had been purchased. “General Hidaka is well known to us. He is Director Darman’s military equivalent, and his reputation is immaculate. If this is true, it could prove very damaging.”
“I might be impressed if I had any idea who Director Darman was.” Cruz grasped the back of his chair, torn between sitting back down and smashing it against the nearest wall. “All I know is Hidaka owned me for many years, and my assignments became incredibly savage while he controlled them. Karah finally pulled some strings and had my contract transferred back to DOMA directly. If it wasn’t for her intervention, I’d still be committing acts that are hard to justify in the heat of battle much less in a civilian setting.”
“How many contracts does Hidaka own? Could he have a controlling interest in DOMA?”
Cruz released his death grip on the chair. Milo was finally starting to make sense. “Now those are questions I’ve asked myself over and over.”
“Because Karah saved you from Hidaka?” Milo challenged.
“In part, but more so because I know them both and he is far more an ambitious bastard than she is. Karah isn’t smart enough to want to rule the world.”
For some reason that made Emily laugh. “I’d have to agree with you there.”
“Do you know her well?” He paused and glared at her.
“She’s my cousin. She came to live with my family when she was eight, so my mother likes to introduce us as sisters.”
“Dr. Emily Hill-ard?” He rubbed his temples, the light steadily blinking in the corner of his eye. “You’re Fremont Hillard’s granddaughter?”
“Guilty.” She scooted up to the table and folded her arms on the tabletop in front of her. “My father and Karah’s father couldn’t agree on DOMA’s intended role in the lives of the morphs. Karah’s father eventually forced my father out.”
“Odd that his shuttle exploded a few months later,” Milo muttered.
“Wait. Why did Karah come and live with your family if her father was still alive?” Cruz asked.
Emily fiddled with the end of her hair. “He claimed she reminded him of her mother, and it was too painful to have her around.”
“That’s ridiculous. What child could accept such logic?”
“We tried to give her a loving home, but we were a poor substitute when her real father was still alive.”
“And when your father began to resent her father,” Milo reminded her. “You can’t blame all of Karah’s bitterness on her father. Your parents were just as bad.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this before now?”
She met his gaze, her expression open, yet cautious. “I had to know I could trust you.”
He closed his eyes and rubbed his lids, but the blinking persisted.
“Now spit it out,” she prompted. “What’s going on with your eyes?”
He shot a resentful glance at Milo, then looked at Emily as he explained, “Your darling cousin wants to speak with me. You fried their tracker chip and suddenly I’m summoned. That seems a bit convenient, don’t you think?”
“How is she summoning you without the transceiver?” Milo asked, clearly uncomfortable with the new development.
“This implant creates a blinking light in the corner of my eye. It’s annoying as hell.”
“And how do you retrieve the message?” Milo persisted.
“The same way everyone else does,” Cruz grumbled. He was trying to wind down this conversation, not complicate it. “I have an account in the Cloud. Not under my name, of course, but --”
“How do you access it?”
“The perimeter wall is a twenty-minute run from my cabin. I have clothes stashed near the guard tower. Why is this important?”
“What about the guards?” Emily sounded skeptical.
“DOMA controls the guards and Karah controls DOMA,” Milo reminded her.
“What’s with the summons? What do you think she wants?” Emily let go of his hand and scooted back in her chair. “Somehow I doubt this is about sex anymore.”
“Let’s think this through,” Milo suggested. “Have you missed a check-in? How long did they give you to return with the prototype?”
“No, and three days.” Cruz crossed his arms over his chest, tension coiling inside him. “She’s never pinged me while I’m on assignment before.”
“It seems counterproductive to me, too. I say we get out of the way, so you can see what she wants.” Milo activated an access terminal at one end of the conference table. He vacated the chair but made no move to leave the room.
The messages were always recorded, so it wasn’t like Karah was going to see them. Still, Cruz was annoyed by Milo’s heavy-handed manner. Sending up a quick prayer that Karah didn’t say anything too outrageous, Cruz accessed his account and activated the one and only message.
Karah’s image formed on the holoscreen in front of him, looking rumpled and sensual in nothing but a synth-silk wrapper. “Hey, lover, sorry to ping you like this, but it’s important. You know I do things for you I don’t do for the others, and we both know why. Something big is about to go down. I mean really big. I want you to pack up and leave Alpha Colony. Go to that freak sanctuary or just disappear. I don’t care where you go, just go. I can bear all the rest if I know you’re safe. Please promise me you’ll go. Two days. They make their move in two days.” She reached for the controls and then paused. “Don’t drink the water. They’ll be releasing test runs before they dump it full-scale. Don’t drink anything that came from inside the colonies. And thanks for everything.” She blew him a kiss and her image blinked off.
“All right. That was cryptic as hell.” Milo took the seat Cruz had used earlier and scooted it up to the table. “Do you have any idea what she was talking about?”
“Why would she want you to leave?”
Emily’s tone was so hesitant he hardly recognized her voice. It really bothered her to think of him with Karah. He didn’t want to hurt her, but jealousy was an unpredictable emotion. At least he made her feel something other than lust. “I don’t know what catastrophe she was warning against, but she believes it’s real.”
“Why warn you?” Milo asked.
“That’s none of your damn business.” He’d had enough of the human’s expectant attitude. “You heard the warning. Do with it what you will. In two days, someone or something is going to contaminate the colony’s water supply.”
“We need to warn the clan leaders. At least let them post guards,” Emily suggested.
“I think it’s a waste of time, but you’re right. We have nothing to lose by sharing the information. Let the clan leaders decide what they want to do with it.”
“And in the meantime, I’m taking Cruz home with me. I’ll help him make a detailed report. After you’ve read it, you can decide if you have more questions. But for now, the inquisition is over.”
Cruz grinned. Sweeter words had never reached his ears.
Chapter Six
“Where’d you go while I twiddled my thumbs in the skimmer?” Cruz muttered, his dark eyes filled with speculation and hunger.
Emily handed him a glass of wine and smiled, wanting him to relax. “Did you miss me?”
“I was bored.” He took a sip of the wine and looked out the window.
She glanced beyond him, but her gaze quickly returned to his tense face. This section of the city was mostly residential. They were in her apartment on the eleventh floor of a modest high-rise. Moonlight accentuated his slashing cheekbones and deep-set eye
s. Even surrounded by urban sophistication, he looked primal, only half-tamed. And she had never met anyone who intrigued her half as much as this man.
“I gave a copy of Karah’s message to Tayla. She’s an investigative reporter and she --”
“She won’t post it to the Cloud, will she?” He was immediately on edge, tense and watchful.
“She won’t release it publicly without your consent, but she’s going to do some digging. Unlike Milo, she was immediately intrigued by the possibilities. She thinks we should have video crews at strategic sites out at the colonies two days from now. See if we can catch them in the act once and for all.”
He nodded, his expression thoughtful, then his gaze snapped back to hers. “But we can’t allow the water supply to be jeopardized. I’m not sure what they’re planning to use, but we can’t became dependent on humans for… Maybe that’s all this is. Maybe they just intend to foul our water supply so we’re forced to buy theirs.”
“That’s a solid possibility. And as you said, we need to make sure they aren’t able to follow through with their plan regardless of what it is.”
“I like the reporter’s idea of catching them at it. We need to talk to Maddox and some of the others. Find out where they’re likely to strike.”
“Careful, Cruz. This is starting to sound like a strategy.” She took a sip of wine and tried to focus out the window. “Milo might think you care.”
“I don’t give a shit what Milo thinks.” He moved closer, resting his hand on the wall beside her head. “He’s damn lucky you found me first.”
They sipped their wine in silence for a few moments, staring into each other’s eyes.
“If Fremont Hillard was your grandfather, how can you work for Milo? Doesn’t that make you the traitor, not Karah?”
“You’re a morph. Do you really need to ask me that?” She didn’t take offense. His attitude was understandable. To many, she was a traitor. “I worked for DOMA for years, side by side with Karah as a matter of fact. But DOMA has become so corrupt, so far removed from what Grandfather envisioned. It’s tragic. I thought Karah was being manipulated by people more powerful than she is, but now I’m not certain. She could be the puppet, or she could be the puppet-master. I have no way of knowing. All that matters is that DOMA is stopped, and the morphs are protected.”
“And identifying the enemy is the first step.”
It was more of a statement than a question, but she nodded. “Not just identifying them, exposing them. Making sure the threat is clear to the entire world.”
He responded with a thoughtful nod and refilled their wineglasses.
“Can I ask a question?” Her hushed voice penetrated the building tension.
“Of course.”
“You don’t have to tell me, but I need to ask. Why did Karah warn you? She has lots of pets. There had to be something else between you, something more than sex.”
He sighed and retreated into his wine. She thought he wouldn’t answer, that she’d simply added to the tension. Then he drained his glass and set it aside. He stared straight ahead as he said, “It was never love with me and Karah. It’s important that you understand that. The first time she summoned me, I saw the pain in her eyes, the loneliness, and I understood that we were… kindred souls.”
“How can you not love your ‘kindred soul’?” She held herself back, unwilling to risk her heart until she understood where this was leading. She would not be prisoner to her cousin’s ghost.
“The connection I felt with Karah was not romantic. We were angry. We’d both been betrayed. We used sex as a form of therapy. It was harsh and raw, at times brutal, always on the verge of violent. It was cathartic, but it became awkward as our wounds began to heal. When the self-loathing eased, she began to need something I couldn’t give her.”
“Tenderness?” He looked at her and her heart leaped in her breast. He’d been incredibly tender with her. She’d seen glimpses of the raw savagery, but there had been tenderness too.
His tone grew harsh, and his gaze filled with anger as his tale progressed. “The last night I saw her, I gave her my dagger and begged her to end my life.”
Shocked by the casual confession, Emily automatically reached for him. He warned her back with an upraised hand, unwilling, or unable, to accept her compassion. She lowered her hand, aching with her need to soothe him, to share his pain.
“There are harsh penalties if we try to end our own lives, but Karah could claim to have lost her temper or a hundred other excuses for ridding herself of one of her pets. I wrapped my hand around hers and tried to force her to thrust the blade into my heart. She struggled against my hold, and in my desperation, I broke her wrist.” His voice took on a flat emotionless cadence as he recanted the gruesome details. “It was a bad break. The bone tore through her flesh, and there was so much blood. Yet she refused to call a guard or summon a physician.”
“She wanted you to heal her?”
He nodded, a bit of the life coming back into his eyes. “She said I’d made the mess and now it was time for me to clean it up.”
Emily couldn’t help but smile. “Sounds like Karah.”
“So I healed her.” He started to look away, then shook his head with a sigh. “It was more complicated than that. We formed a blood bond, an unbreakable vow. I fed her energy for days, restoring her to health physically and emotionally, and she made me promise not to take my life. She also promised to do everything in her power to make my life more bearable. She bought back my contract from Hidaka the next morning, and she’s never summoned me since. The warning was part of our blood bond. Our lives are linked. It was her responsibility to see that I was not harmed.”
“I’m glad she was there for you. And I’m glad you were there for her. Believe it or not, I care for my cousin.”
“It’s over, Emily, and it has been for almost two years. That’s why I was shocked by the summons.”
“She didn’t actually summon you. She just left you a message.” She pushed to the balls of her feet and brushed his lips with hers. “I can live with that.”
He wrapped his fingers around the back of her neck. His lips covered hers, caressing, promising pleasure without demanding more than she was ready to give. “I’m still waiting for that shower.”
“Milo promised you a shower. I never --” He pinched her bottom, and her sentence ended in a combination of giggles and squirms as she tried to evade another playful pinch. “Fine. The bathroom is the second door on the right.”
“Show me.” He took her by the hand and led her across the living room, ensuring her cooperation.
She wasn’t opposed to having sex with him again. “This is all happening so fast,” she murmured, needing him to understand the nature of her hesitation.
“I’ll try and slow down, if that’s what you really want.” He brought her fingers to his mouth and kissed them. “But I’m not sure what we gain by waiting.”
“We just met! I’ve known you less than twenty-four hours.”
He pushed open the bathroom door and pulled her inside the small room. Backing her against the nearest wall, he caged her there with his body. “If you were human, I’d understand your concern.”
“I am human.”
His brow arched and he leaned in until their noses touched. “You’re a hybrid at least, perhaps a latent morph. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice the distinction in your scent and your taste? I haven’t been able to lock in your breed, but you’re a cat, just like me.”
“I wasn’t engineered. I’m the biological offspring of altered parents. My father was a yellow jaguar hybrid and my mother was a black jaguar-morph.”
He grinned and lightly grasped the nape of her neck. “Which means we’re biologically compatible, because I’m a black jaguar-morph too.” He caught her lower lip between his teeth, teasing her with his tongue before he released her. “All the other male ‘panthers’ are black leopard-morphs. But then, you already knew that. Didn’t you?”
“This isn’t about what Milo wanted, or what Karah did.” He ripped his shirt off over his head and returned his hands to the wall so fast she hardly saw him move. “Stop lying to yourself. You saw my image and your imagination engaged. You caught my scent, and your instincts took over. We aren’t just mates; we’re the last of our kind. I knew this was different the first time I touched you. Now I understand why.”
The significance of his conclusion washed over her, soothing and exciting. It all made sense now. They’d been brought together for a greater good, the preservation of their species. “There’s a fundamental conflict inside every hybrid. We’re not content as a human, yet we don’t know how to be… wild.”
He chuckled, the sound sexual and hot. “All you have to do is trust me, and let go.”
She raised her hands above her head and pressed them against the wall. He understood the gesture, immediately taking the lead. With deft fingers he unbuttoned her blouse and unfastened her bra. She lowered her arms long enough for him to rid her of the garments, then guided her hands to his waistband.
“Undress me.”
She lowered his zipper and eased her hands inside his pants, groaning as her palms pressed against his lean hips. He tangled his fingers in her hair and pulled her head back, claiming her mouth for a deep, urgent kiss. His free hand moved over her breasts, while she tried to push his pants lower without losing the intimate heat of their kiss.
His tongue moved in her mouth, sliding and caressing, pausing to curl around hers before continuing its steady motion. She kicked off her shoes, and he tugged off his boots. Then urgency erupted and they attacked the lingering garments in a ruthless rush toward nudity. He picked her up and tore her pants off, pinning her against his chest. The instant her legs were free, she wrapped them around his waist.
He carried her into the shower, and she activated the spray. Cool water did nothing to ease the burning, so she adjusted the temperature. The warm cascade was less annoying, but she still trembled with a combustible longing.
Uninhibited Fire Page 7