by S A Gardner
But shit was right. He didn’t fall. I would have felt his mass vibrating the whole room on impact. Judging by the concrete-like barricade I’d rammed against, it was massive. Dammit. His incapacitation would be brief. Too brief.
Use it.
In one explosive sweep, I snatched the mask off, the bag up, tucked and rolled backward on the bed. Hurling myself to the floor, I tore the bag open, grabbed the gun as I flattened beside it, the only cover in the room. Wasn’t much, but it would take him precious seconds to get over getting kicked in the family jewels to come around it. When he did, I’d shoot to incapacitate him. I needed him alive to interrogate.
But he didn’t come around the bed. He bounded over its six-foot width in one leap. Kicked the gun and almost my hand with it, in one precise, brutal, impossible move, while he was still suspended in the air.
Pressing down on a geyser of panic, I barely rolled away before he landed on top of me, my hand rummaging in my bag, snatching the first thing I touched. One of my loaded syringes.
Springing to my knees, I made out his towering form in the flickering dimness, heard his voice among the cacophony of my own internal upheaval. Nah, I more like felt it, vibrating in my bones. Deep, resonant. Enraged. The content of his wrath was indistinct. Probably bellowing flesh-melting invective.
Talk to the syringe, buster.
I lunged, stabbed his thigh with the wide-bore, three-inch needle. Didn’t hit bone. Didn’t even come close. We were talking massive muscle mass here. But the way he lurched, I could have hit a nerve.
Stay still a second, dear. That’s all it’ll take to pump you full of—whatever.
I hadn’t had time to feel the special engravings I used on my syringes to recognize my drugs. Not that it mattered. It was one knockout drug or another.
But he didn’t stay still. Had to make him, before he dislodged the needle. Clinging to one thigh, arms and legs, I threw all my mass into the clutch, kept him from kicking me away, kept the needle jammed deep. But couldn’t get enough leverage to work the piston.
Damn, damn.
I hurled my body harder at his legs, bowling-ball style. He still didn’t fall. Then my braid was in his grip.
I should get it cut, dammit.
He yanked it up and me with it, dragged me to my feet, then higher, goddamn dangling me. He was an easy foot taller. Damn him.
My scalp was almost coming off. White-hot needles erupted behind my eyeballs. My fist jabbed at his throat, all my training and pain behind the blow. Would incapacitate him, probably crush his larynx. If it connected.
It didn’t. His block was beyond effortless, more than instantaneous. Prophetic…
Predict this, bastard.
My other fist followed in the next split second, connected. Not where I’d aimed it. He’d ducked his head with that same uncanny intuition. Got his ear instead of his throat. He still dropped me. Whether from the force of the blow, or to regain use of both hands I didn’t know. Didn’t care.
This man was ten times as strong as me. And my match in prowess. In close quarters probably more. Wasn’t testing how much more.
The hand that had had me by the braid moved toward the syringe.
Oh, no—you’re not getting it out.
Pummeling him with erratic blows, I tried to distract him from his purpose. It didn’t work. No longer blocking me, he took half a dozen blows full in the face and head, didn’t even flinch as he reached for the needle. At the last split second before he dislodged it, I rammed him, pumped the piston with my hip. I hoped. In response, he only hauled me up as if I were a half full duffel bag and hurled me away.
I sailed backward through the air, feeling weightless. Then gravity reversed and I landed headfirst on the bed, hit the backboard full on.
The wavering darkness exploded in blotches of electric purple and yellow.
Hated hitting my head. Nothing was reliable after a good whack. Everything you counted on, all that made you yourself became suspect. Awareness distorted, consciousness flickered. Worst of all, time judgment warped. As I lay stunned, the second I felt passing could have been an hour.
Damn, damn, damn. I wasn’t passing out. He was coming toward me again. It took a lot to alarm me, but here was a lot.
Get out of his range—now.
Before my muscles even registered the stimuli shrieking down my nerves, he came down. On top of me. Total body impact.
The collision emptied my lungs. Immovable-object guy prevented my next scheduled breath. The flickering, neon-tinged darkness began to melt into homogeneous black.
Act. Now. Before it’s too late.
I had no leverage to knee him. Yanking his head back for a forehead ram wasn’t working. His hair was too short. Pulling his ears wasn’t doing any good, either.
Then he raised his head on his own and I got a great shot at his nose. I dove my head into the mattress, tensing, preparing the recoil ram…then air rushed into my lungs as if under pressure. He’d raised his torso off my chest, took his upper body weight on his arms, the flickering lights at his back. His silhouette loomed over me, phasing in and out, the sight tugging at responses that had nothing to do with dread or rage.
My heart dropped a few beats.
Then my breasts swelled, my nipples stung. With relief from no longer being crushed and…something else. Every inch he was imprinted on was sending frantic messages, too, every breath rushing into my lungs laden with his clean, male scent transmitted directly to my…pleasure centers.
What was going on here? Had I hit my head too hard? Or did my body know what it was talking about? Was it possible…?
I shoved him with all I had one last time and he rolled heavily off of me, ended up on his back beside me.
So I’d managed to pump the piston. The drug was working.
Scampering away, I jumped to my feet, reached for my ailing bedside lamp. Nothing. Had it shorted out?
A deep, droning sound reached me as I felt around the floor with my foot for my gun. He was saying something. For crying out loud. Time to resume receiving audio signals.
Digging out the waxy earplugs I’d shoved almost down to my cochleas was harder than ever. My trimmed nails scraped the inside of my ear canals raw before they were finally out. Then his voice, soft and low, blared in the silence.
“…love to play with poisons. If you did poison me, you’d better have the antidote.”
I groaned. It wasn’t only possible. It was certain.
It was him.
Who else could have dragged all those runaway responses out of me, during what I’d thought a life or death struggle? Who else had that harsh-velvet voice that pooled in all the places where reason never visited and caution never touched?
“And there are no lights in this dump.”
Yeah. Now I remembered why. I hadn’t paid the electricity bill.
A quick rummage in my nightstand produced a flashlight. I turned it on, shone it over his face. He glowered, narrowing lethal, heavy-lashed, now-turbid honey eyes.
Yep. Him all right. It was all still right there and then some. The hardest hitting eyes of our species, the leonine forehead, the one-of-a-kind cheekbones, the masterpiece jawline, the darker-than-hell mane, the shred-you-to-pieces-and-with-pleasure lips. I’d only gotten a taste of the first shredding action. The second was a very educated guess.
But man and damn. He was really here. Made-one-then-burned-the-blueprint him. Banderas/Brando-level sensual charisma and surliness, and way, way better looks. A face to make angels and demons alike weep with envy, to go with that body and those brains that put higher beings to shame.
My ruthless mentor. My unattainable desire.
My relentless enemy.
De Luna.
Damian.
Seven
“Well, well. If it isn’t the patron saint of physicians himself.”
Focusing the light in his eyes, I teased his I’m-in-charge-and-everybody-knows-it slash of a nose with the tips of my braid.
Alarm detonated. Had I?
Next second, my anxiety deflated. Nah, I had nothing poisonous in pre-prepared syringes today.
“So—did you or didn’t you poison me?”
His tones were almost bored. Like a father asking a wayward daughter if she’d done her homework. Not bothering to answer him, I jumped off the bed again. Had to retrieve the syringe, see what and how much I’d managed to get into him.
Problem was, I liked glass syringes, autoclaved them for sterility. When I found it, it was so much glass dust. Had to have been his foot that packed that much crushing force. But I felt no moisture around its remains. So I’d pumped him with the full content. Only way to tell of which drug, was to take an inventory of the remaining syringes in my bag. If I could remember what I’d had with me.
One thing I knew though, since I loaded my syringes with maximum doses. That much of whichever drug I had would make anyone unable to string two legible words together. Hell, anyone should have been totally out of it by now. But not him, huh?
I’d heard that PACT made their operatives resistant to all forms of drugs by exposing them to gradually increasing doses. A sort of immunization. Didn’t sound scientifically plausible, in the case of poisons. In the case of mood-altering drugs, too, without building a powerful enough tolerance to the drug that would by necessity make them addicts. Never believed it could actually work.
Evidently, by Damian’s empirical example right before my eyes, it did.
I felt him move and my gaze and flashlight swung to him. He’d raised himself on his elbows and was…smiling?
I could say I wasn’t sure and mean it. I’d never seen him smile. And if that joints-liquefying expression was his version of one, I was grateful I’d never been exposed to it.
Then his lips widened, making me choke on a cough of incredulity. And that was before his sensuous purr hit me beneath my sternum.
“Calista—come here—come back to bed….”
Hearing my name pouring from his lips, like a dark, fathomless invocation, would have been shock enough. He’d only ever called me St. James, impatient, implacable, imperious. But come back to bed?
I squinted at him, scrabbling for a rationalization. One syringe had been benzodiazepine mixed with GHB, as I’d discovered it boosted the Valium’s knockout effect. On its own, GHB, the so-called rape drug, among other things, induced uninhibited relaxation, empathogenic states…and increased libido. But it hadn’t been on its own in that syringe, shouldn’t be affecting him this way. It should have knocked him out by now.
So what was going on here?
I walked back toward him, my mind racing. His lids swept down, the dense, perfect wings of his eyebrows knotting, protesting the flashlight. I diverted the beam and he relaxed, slumped back by degrees at my approach. He was fully on his back by the time my leg touched his, gazing at me through sleepy, steamy slits. Then he licked his lips, slow, explicit, and every nerve in my body fired a jangle of responses. Each one beyond stupid.
The guy was coming on to me under chemical influence, for Pete’s sake. Seemed nothing short of tripping could induce him to do that. In his state, a tree or a hole in the wall would do it for him.
And I didn’t want him to come on to me, voluntarily or not. I hated the guy’s guts. And he reciprocated the loathing and then some. It didn’t matter that he was the male where I was concerned. It didn’t matter that I had hormones that got produced only around him, and receptors that had come into being because he existed. What mattered was that he’d run me over four years ago. That I wasn’t roadkill now was no thanks to him.
But though he deserved whatever I’d done to him and way more, I should make sure he wasn’t in any danger.
I leaned over him, intending to examine him. Next second, I was sprawled full length on top of him.
He’d caught my hand, yanking me down, before I could blink. Whatever I’d pumped him with, he shouldn’t still have enough power and coordination to do that, not to mention the speed with which he’d done it. Couldn’t pass out like a normal human being, could he? Or even have the decency of exhibiting some wobbling or fumbling.
But what else was new? The guy ran on nuclear metabolism.
Damian De Luna was a species of one.
And it was as unequaled, feeling him this way. Stretched beneath me, my legs opened around his unyielding mass, nothing between my every naked inch and a full feel of his body but my bikini panties and push-up bra and his clothes. The latter’s tough fabric, and the far tougher maleness beneath it aShaded my every nerve ending, had my coherence seeping away. Memories rushed in to fill the void. Memories I had no business remembering.
But I did remember. What I’d spent years trying to forget. Lying under him, desperate, sweating, bucking. Wrestling with him, his magnificent body flexing over and around me, my fingers digging into power made flesh, my senses drowning in an overdose of virility…
So none of it had been in an erotic context. Not on his side. But without ever meaning to, and in the throes of brutal training, he’d messed up my every synapse, bad. Very bad. Terminally so.
For two years, he’d tormented me, maddened me, even if unintentionally. After every tutoring session, I’d been in turmoil, after ever training encounter, in agony. It had progressed to the point where just laying eyes on him, just hearing his name or having his image slam into my mind’s eye, would ignite me. Before him, I’d never considered myself a particularly sexual being. After him, masturbating to fantasies of him had become a necessary measure, so I wouldn’t blow some vital fuse.
But writhing in sensual torture had been my problem. He’d only been doing his job, and superlatively at that. He’d drilled—uh—coached me, challenged me, pushed me way beyond what I’d thought to be my limits. He’d remodeled my body and remolded my will, plumbed depths I’d been unaware of, unearthed abilities I’d never thought I’d possessed and polished them until he’d made me surpass every ambition I’d never even had.
I should have owed him. He should have let me owe him. He should have been my ally, even if he could have never been my lover.
Instead, he’d chosen to be my worst enemy.
Not that my body seemed to care about that. It only remembered how it had craved him, even when it had been impossible.
My dimming mind tried to remind why it had been, why it remained so, to tell me that what I was feeling was echoes of the frustrations, the lure of the forbidden…
All rationalizations sputtered, drowned. In his kiss.
Ah…
So this was how he—we—felt. Nothing I’d ever fantasized about had even come close.
I sagged, sank into him, his taste an aphrodisiac laced with a narcotic, seeping up my nervous pathways, inflaming, intoxicating. I gave myself permission to take that much of him. One kiss. After six years that wasn’t much to let myself have. Then he’d snap out of it, and I’d come to my senses, and we’d both bolt back to our corners…
“Calista…”
His moan spilled from the lips possessing mine in languid, fiery strokes. Spread through me with the force of an earthquake. I started to moan his name, too—then it hit me.
What was I doing? I’d knocked him out, and was now what? Taking advantage of him?
The mental slap jarred my hormone-flooded mind, made me struggle to sever our meld.
He wouldn’t let me go, the hand behind my head detaining, begging. Then my name poured from him and into me again, an imploring groan. “Calista…”
Oh, Lord. I could get used to this.
Giving up, any scruples dissipating, I sank back into his mouth. This time, all the way.
It was a good thing I hadn’t realized how his passion would f
eel like. Had I had a clue, or worse, a taste of it, I would have developed a serious deprivation disorder.
But how could have I imagined he’d call my name and make it mean so much? Or that those lips would coax and master and worship me all at once? Or that his scent and taste and feel would permeate my being, and his breath would feel more vital than my own as it…
Hey—hey. His breath. Shouldn’t he be panting? At least breathing faster? I was. He wasn’t. Almost breathing at all.
I tore my lips away, groped for the flashlight. Swinging it toward him, I was in time to watch his eyes closing, his face going flaccid.
Oh, God. Respiratory depression was among the possible side effects of any of the drugs I had with me. It shouldn’t be, considering his mass and health condition, but why would he comply with the projected side effects, when he hadn’t with the intended ones?
I could have poisoned him, after all.
“No, no…damn, dammit…”
I flew to my closet, dragged out my extensive emergency bag, knowing exactly what I was damning. Myself. For not taking that inventory, finding out which drug I’d hit him with, administering an antidote, even if I thought he didn’t need it. I just hadn’t been thinking straight, first finding him here, and then when he’d…
Oh, shut up. Undo this.
I flew back to him, had the bag open before it landed on the bed beside him. Needing both my hands, I held the flashlight in my teeth, snatched up a bag-valve oxygen mask. Clamping it on his nose and mouth, delivering hundred percent oxygen, while taking his pulse—and almost keeled over.
Twenty beats per minute. His heart was stopping. I—I…
Get it together, moron. It wasn’t.
I just remembered he was so profoundly fit, he had a resting heart rate of less than thirty. This was his norm—sorta. Still, he did usually take more than four or five breaths a minute.
Bagging him wasn’t enough—should intubate him until I made sure which drug I’d hit him with. Should also inject him with a universal antidote for respiratory depression. Yeah, yeah…
In ten seconds flat, I assembled the laryngoscope, swooped to give him five more breaths, then pounced for ampoules. I loaded them into syringes in as long. My jaw was almost disengaging out of its sockets being stretched over the flashlight. Ignoring the mounting pain and tension, I let the protocols of reviving an overdose casualty streak through my mind and reflexes.