Lethal Game

by Christine Feehan

  Then he was moving in her and there was nothing in his mind but Amaryllis and the way she made him feel. That heat bursting through him. The fire she brought, burning him from the inside out. The love that ran through the lust and beauty of their coming together any way he took her. Water splashed around them. He heard her soft little cries, that music she made that seemed to add to the flames licking over his skin joining them together.

  Then they were soaring together in the way they seemed to do so easily. He could barely breathe with loving her. When the world returned and he was aware of the night and the stars and the changing lights around them, that it wasn’t Amaryllis’s magic dazzling his eyes, he let himself just feel how much he loved her. He held her there in the pool for a long time. She didn’t move, her arms around him, not asking a single question, not demanding he let her go, just holding him the way he was her, content to let the ever-changing lights play over them as Malichai came down from his Amaryllis high.

  Eventually he brushed kisses against her neck. “I told Trap we’d meet him in the lab.”

  “You have to find my suit. It floated off somewhere and I’ve got to shower and get dressed.”

  “You don’t want the kids to find little scraps of cloth at the bottom of the pool tomorrow?” he teased.

  She flashed a grin at him and walked up the stairs naked. He watched her go the entire way because Amaryllis naked was a sight to behold.

  * * *

  “Whitney, you are so full of shit,” Trap snapped. “There are thirty-two billion base pairs in the genome of an axolotl salamander and scientists in Vienna, Heidelberg and Dresden were the first to actually completely map out the genome, which will be a huge leap forward for limb regeneration in humans, but we’re not there yet. You weren’t the first to map that out, they did. I’m not sending you Malichai to experiment on. It isn’t happening because if you tell one lie, everything else is built on that lie, which means you’re full of absolute shit.”

  “Do you really think I’d use one of my very few GhostWalkers as my first human experiments in limb regeneration?” Whitney demanded. “You think so much of yourself, Dawkins. You always have. You’re depriving Malichai of his own leg, one of bone and tissue, one completely regenerated, because you don’t think it’s possible because you can’t do it.”

  Malichai was tired of the argument between Trap and Whitney. It seemed like it went on day in and day out, but this was the first time it alarmed him. This was the first time Whitney had made references to experimenting on other humans—and when he experimented on human beings it was always on young girls or women. He believed they were inferior, and their only value was to science.

  “Whitney.” Trap sounded interested now. “When Sergej Nowoshilow was speaking expressly about having the map for complicated structures such as limbs to be regrown, such as human legs, it was noted that the human PAX3 gene, which is essential during muscular and neural growth, is missing, with the axolotl PAX7 taking its place.”

  “Which makes sense since a salamander needs its own stem cells and we need our own stem cells. You’re splitting hairs, Trap,” Whitney said. It was shocking that he referred to Trap by his first name rather than as Dawkins. “I’m telling you, I can get Malichai to regenerate his own leg, without scarring. His own tissue, muscular and neural growth.”

  “We’ll get there, but we’re years away, even with our greatest scientists working on this,” Trap objected, the voice of reason. “Even with you stepping on the backs of geniuses, which you’ve been doing for years, you can’t pull this off.”

  “You’re so damn stubborn, you always think you’re right. I’ll send you the proof of it if you don’t believe me. I get tired of you arguing with me.”

  Malichai’s heart clenched hard in his chest. His eyes met Trap’s and then he looked at Amaryllis. She looked every bit as apprehensive as Malichai felt. Her tongue moistened her lower lip.

  “What kind of proof, Whitney?” Trap asked.

  “The kind even an asshole like you can’t deny, Dawkins,” Whitney snapped. There was a loud buzzing and the connection was lost.

  Amaryllis scooted closer to Malichai until she was practically sitting in his lap. “What do you think he meant by that?”

  “I don’t know, honey,” he said gently. “It doesn’t matter. My leg is doing great just the way it is. I’m getting stronger every single day.” He didn’t want to think about regeneration and whether it was possible. He wanted to quit hearing about it because then he would dream about it. Anyone would.

  “What he meant”—Cayenne said, coming out of the shadows where she often stayed, and moving right into Trap so that he pulled her into him, her back to his front, his arms around her—“is that he used one of us. Or more than one. He cut off an arm or a leg, or more than one arm or leg, and he tried to regrow it. More than likely he did it several times. He failed and he did it again and again until he was successful because that’s the kind of man he is.”

  She turned around and leaned into Trap, her head on his chest as if for comfort, her slender arms around his neck. The fixture above spilled light over her, turning her hair a gleaming black and revealing the red hourglass that sometimes showed in the thick strands of silk. She looked very small next to Trap, and when he locked his arms around her, he looked very protective.

  Malichai closed his eyes against that terrible truth. Whitney had most likely done exactly that to some little girl in order to perfect his miracle of regeneration for his GhostWalker teams. For his soldiers. For those he deemed worthy of his miracles. If others benefited, he didn’t mind, but he really did it for them. The ones he made suffer in order to perfect it didn’t matter. They should be grateful they had given so much toward science and in service of their country. Not only did he believe that, but he raised the girls to think that way. To him they were worth nothing but what he used them for—his experiments.

  There was a small, miserable silence. “I really despise that man,” Malichai said. “With every breath I take.” He stood up and reached down to extend his hand to Amaryllis.

  She took it and he pulled her up.

  “I think we all do,” Trap acknowledged. “Did you get a good workout swimming?”

  “We did. Thanks for allowing us to use the pool,” Malichai said. “I’m walking my woman home. Tomorrow we’re getting married. I’m reminding you, Trap, in front of Cayenne so she’ll get you there.”

  “I’m the one who puts everything on the calendar,” Trap said indignantly.

  Cayenne turned around, a small smile forming. “True, he does, but then he never looks at the calendar. I do that. I’ll get him there, no worries.”

  “Thanks, hon,” Malichai said. “Nonny’s cooking up a feast, so if he won’t come for the festivities, bring him for the food.”

  “Nonny frowns on missing things like weddings,” Cayenne said seriously. “She told both of us events like that were important to the people we care about and we needed to always show up. So we’ll be there.” She looked up at Trap. “For certain. With gifts. Dressed nicely.”

  He cupped her face in his hands. “We’ll be there,” he agreed, looking down at her.

  Malichai couldn’t help grinning. He wasn’t altogether certain Trap and Cayenne knew they were still in the room. “We’re taking off now. We’ll see you later.”

  Trap lifted a hand as they left the laboratory and then he was kissing Cayenne.

  Amaryllis fit just under his shoulder, her arm circling his waist as she matched his steps. “I clocked your run after Jerry took a break, Malichai, you’re getting faster. Is the prosthesis still rubbing when you’re running that fast?”

  “No, that last adjustment made it perfect.”

  She was silent for a moment and Malichai’s gut tightened. He knew it was inevitable that she would ask the question, and he didn’t really know what his answer was going to be.<
br />
  “Do you want to try Whitney’s experimental process to regrow your leg, Malichai?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know the answer to that, Amaryllis. I really don’t. Right now, I’m working hard to build my body back up again so I can get into the field and be of use to my team. I don’t know what I’m going to do beyond that. I knew Whitney was harassing Trap with this nonsense about being able to regenerate an entire limb, but Trap, Lily and Wyatt have all assured me that the technology is still a good fifty years away. I’m not going to waste my time on dreams. I need to work with what I’ve got.”

  He stopped there on the narrow trail that led back to the Fontenot house. Their home wasn’t quite finished. It was coming along, and the sound of hammers often rang out until sunset, but for now, they were staying with Wyatt, Pepper, Nonny and the five little girls who seemed to be like quicksilver, running everywhere. He pulled Amaryllis into his arms.

  “I have you, babe. I love you more than anything else in this world. When I look ahead to our future, it’s always bright and happy. It’s always surrounded with love because you’re in it. Of course there’s always those stacks of romance books we’re going to be reading at night, but that’s a good thing because I’ll be taking all the best ideas out of them.”

  Malichai framed her face with both hands and bent to take her mouth. She looked like an angel, kissed like sin and loved him as only Amaryllis could. She was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman, and leg or no leg, he was counting himself a very lucky man.

  About the Author

  Christine Feehan is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Carpathian series, the GhostWalker series, the Leopard series, the Shadow Riders series, the Torpedo Ink series, and the Sea Haven novels, including the Drake Sisters series and the Sisters of the Heart series.

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