Hyde

An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

www.ellorascave.com

Hyde ISBN 9781419910937 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Hyde Copyright© 2007 Sherri L. King Edited by Kelli Kwiatkowski. Cover art by Darrell King. Electronic book Publication: April 2007 This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 443103502. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

Content Advisory: S – ENSUOUS E – ROTIC X – TREME Ellora’s Cave Publishing offers three levels of Romantica™ reading entertainment: S (S-ensuous), E (Erotic), and X (X-treme). The following material contains graphic sexual content meant for mature readers. This story has been rated E–rotic. S-ensuous love scenes are explicit and leave nothing to the imagination. E-rotic love scenes are explicit, leave nothing to the imagination, and are high in volume per the overall word count. E-rated titles might contain material that some readers find objectionable—in other words, almost anything goes, sexually. E-rated titles are the most graphic titles we carry in terms of both sexual language and descriptiveness in these works of literature. X-treme titles differ from E-rated titles only in plot premise and storyline execution. Stories designated with the letter X tend to contain difficult or controversial subject matter not for the faint of heart.

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HYDE

Sherri L. King

To the audience, ever patient, ever kind, thank you all. Swim with me now through this kingdom of dreams; adventure waits inside us, an echo of this fiction.

For Darrell, whom I never deserved, but always dreamed of nonetheless. Your love sustains me.

Trademarks Acknowledgement The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: GPS: John E. Taylor Jr. Navigator: Ford Motor Company Ping-Pong: Mattel, Inc. Town Car: Ford Motor Company Volkswagen Jetta: Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft

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Prologue The pressure to succeed had never been greater. So much was at risk here, everything riding on the next few precious hours until the good colonel was to arrive and oversee the creation of an all-new batch of “super pilots”. Lives were at stake. Careers and future technologies were dependent upon any modicum of triumph. Yet money and power tipped the scales of morality. Hard science and good judgment were being cast aside in favor of impatient, political greed. The new serum hadn’t been fully tested on the animals. It had not even come close to being ready for any human testing. Yet the Lieutenant General of the Air Force was sending his emissary, with twelve of their most skilled pilots—all subjects from the first experiments with the original serum—to immediately utilize the new, cutting-edge formula. It wasn’t a good idea to go forward. But the White House’s Chief of Staff himself commanded that it be so. Still, history had shown time and again that power was not infallible, no matter how great. Human judgment doubly so. No good could come of this folly. Could no one see that? He clearly did. Dr. Henri Édouard sat in a corner of the too-bright laboratory, perched on the end of a pristine, asbestos countertop, his feet flat on the floor in their sterile slippers. Sterile…everything neat and tidy and germ free. He nearly laughed, maddened by the impossibility of such things, but did not because he knew the sound would have echoed eerily in the large arena of his white and chrome battlefield. Here he had tested the limits of human endurance and strength. Here he had redefined the rules of war, had revolutionized the way they would be fought in the future, especially in the sky.

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It wouldn’t be long until the sky bled down onto the ground, until the super pilots became super soldiers. It wouldn’t stop with the military either, but continue onward, stretching outward like the ebony wings of a carrion eater over the private sectors of law enforcement to eventually reach the black market, where darker warriors dwelt with blood in their eyes. Technology, once implemented and unleashed, continued unstoppable until something newer and far more dangerous was given birth and life by other intelligent minds. One patent rippled outward, creating another, rings like waves on the smooth, mirrored surface of a pond. Henri knew it. Saw it. From the beginning he had known the implications, not blind in his excitement and curiosity, but hypervigilant of every consequence his actions caused to ripple out into eternity. Or so he had thought. Still, his human vanity, his egocentric intelligence had spurred him forward in his research and testing, despite the costs he’d felt sure he could pay. And now… He swallowed hard, the sound sick and wet in his ears. He trembled. The vial in his hands trembled too. The ebony liquid within the vial, thick and viscous like congealed blood, seemed to hold within its depths the answers to all his questions and doubts. His eyes swallowed that murky substance whole, his mind racing, heart pounding, sweat beading at his temples. Could he do it? The choices he had were few. Many people now depended upon him, their careers and futures hanging in the balance, all influenced by his decisions. He could refuse to hand over the new serum, destroy all evidence of it and cut ties with his financial backers and the U.S. government. It would no doubt mean immediate deportation for himself and several others. For himself, he did not care. France was his home. But what of those from not-so-pleasant climes? The North Koreans—there were two—the Russian, the Laotian, the Cuban and so on? Could he, in good conscience, destroy their careers and their lives, condemn them in that way? 6

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Conversely…in condemning them, did he not save many, many more lives? People he didn’t know? Innocents he would never meet, far beyond the walls of his alabaster and chrome workroom? People who held the keys to the future in their hands, keys that could unlock so many more doors than he? Save some or save all. Or test the serum first, as logic dictated, and let the decision be given to the colonel in the aftermath. These were his choices. The trembling paleness of his long, spidery hand closed around the vial, shielding the darkness within from his sight. Henri looked around, vision strangely blurred, to drink in the sight of his achievements. They surrounded him on all sides, everywhere he glanced. Here, in the laboratory of his dreams, he had felt such triumph. Such power. His ambition had driven him and his work had been so involved as to exclude anything beyond the longing for the lab. From his graduation at the head of the class at Pierre et Marie Curie to his first successes in private-sector bio-enhancement research and testing, he’d been lost behind the microscope, behind the scalpel and the needle. Everything he had reached for he had attained, discovery after discovery, the knowledge filling up the hungry voids in his brilliant mind and the pages of hundreds of medical publications, until he was the unquestioned leader in his field. Still he’d found a thrill in reaching ever further, crossing new and uncharted boundaries unimagined. Thirty-seven. He’d come so far, so fast. Had so far yet to go. He was young for such merits, such amazing accomplishments. Too young? He winced at the doubt, perhaps for the first time really giving credence to his many naysayers’ favorite pontification. Too young to be moral? Perhaps believing it now, as his world teetered on a razor’s fine edge of choice, Henri realized his breath had died in his lungs and quickly sucked in air that tasted antiseptic. Only now, when it was likely too late for caution, were his eyes wide open. All along he’d been misled by his own massive, immovable ego.

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The price he’d thought himself prepared to pay was higher than he’d dared to estimate. Technologies the likes of which had been understood only by the brightest minds surrounded him, but he no longer felt the comfort he’d gleaned from them in the past. In this jungle of beakers and servos and microprocessors, of acrid chemicals and spinning centrifuges, he suddenly felt lost. Bereft. And completely alone. Was this his moment of enlightenment? If so, it was nothing like what he’d expected. Nothing so safe and fulfilling as he’d hoped for. Heart a bruise, he opened his hand and looked down at the vial once more, ignoring the crescent moons his manicured nails had left behind, weeping crimson tears in his palm, the color so vivid against his paleness. A disconnected thought bubbled to the surface and he wondered when he’d last seen the sun. A week at least. No wonder his skin was so lily white. No matter. The choice must be made. Time was ever passing by on speedy wings. The serum wasn’t ready. He knew it. Too many variables remained. Too many unknowns. The old serum, fully tested and now in use, had never been so volatile as this one, even in its infancy. But neither did it hold such potential as this one, such promise. Given time. Time and trial were a scientist’s most valuable tools. The colonel and his men would be here in the morning. And the colonel’s superior, the Air Force’s Lieutenant General, had no interest in a scientist’s tools. He wanted results. Immediately. Hungry animals, all of them, with only a thin veneer of civility to hide their grinning fangs from the eyes of the world. Henri did laugh now, a bitter, hollow sound that did indeed echo eerily. Well, come what may, those greedy, gun-toting men would have their results. For good or ill, he’d made his choice. He could not endanger the lives of the pilots who came so trustingly to him a second time, expecting another miracle. Another enhancement to their already great

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arsenal of strength and skill. Injecting them with the contents of the vial might kill them all or worse… He could not condemn his assistants to political judgments, to lives bereft of formulae and discovery on their own terms in a democratic world. Destroying the serum and all documentation regarding it would not wipe clean the slate of his vivid recollections either. Henri was all too well aware of that. Through self-doubt and greed he would eventually re-create what could not be lost in the permanent data of his immeasurable intelligence. There was only one thing to do. There was only one way to show what this new drug was capable of, unstable as it was. His feet were as cold as the icy tiles upon which they rested. The edges of his vision blurred further and he realized his eyes were leaking. His heart fluttered. His lips trembled and his tongue danced in his dry mouth. Distantly there was the conscious realization that he was afraid. More than that, he was terrified. A moment’s courage, he told himself. That’s all. A moment in an ocean of time never ending, done and gone. Then the consequences. A time for payment. Settlement of all the debts he’d accrued and neglected in his blind pride. Dr. Henri Édouard, scientist, innovator, genius, did the only thing he could as a human being. He rushed now, grabbed a tourniquet, tied it off using his one free hand and gritted teeth. Fingers trembling, he still somehow managed to penetrate the top of the vial’s cap with a syringe and draw out the jet syrup. How much? He didn’t know, didn’t give himself time to care, but filled the syringe to maximum capacity. Squirted to release any air, the liquid splashing like a cephalopod’s ink on his white lab coat. Flexed his fist around the nearly empty vial, until a vein swelled dark and throbbing in his forearm. A moment’s courage. 9

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The needle, so fine, entered the vein. He depressed the plunger too hard, shook so badly the needle might have broken in his skin. And then came the burn of the drug flooding through him, locomotive fast. He knew the moment the dark medicine reached his heart—it was like birth, or death. It was both. His mind split. He was Henri, he was Other. He was neither and he was both. “Mon Dieu,” he whispered in his native tongue as the world teetered off the razor’s edge into the abyss. His breath echoed off the walls like a shout, but from far away. His heartbeat slowed a few beats then began to pound. A heavy convulsion in his chest, sharp and agonizing. Words spilled from his mouth in all the languages he knew—four in total—but he could not understand them. He fell from his perch, landing with a thud on the floor, body contorting, veins rippling beneath his skin like marching bullet ants. The sounds of the rhesus monkeys two rooms down were so vivid he could see the waves travel in the air. The smell of the tiled floor was as distinctly pungent as naphthalene. On his breath he could taste the flavor of the serum, it filled his mouth, thick as mud. His convulsions grew decidedly more painful, twisting his body into impossible angles. He could hear the fear in his pulse. Adrenaline was an ocean. He drowned in it. Pain was a grave. He was buried alive. Red filled the edges of his vision now. His whole world bled rage. But for the lab animals, there was no one on the facility grounds to hear his deafening scream.

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Chapter One Ryan Murdock slid the thick manila folder her way, his sharp eyes missing nothing as he read her face. Alison strove to reveal nothing—to him or the precog at his back, who also studied her just as intently. But it wasn’t easy. Especially when she opened the folder. The first item was a photocopy of a security tag, its origin military and cleared for the highest security levels. Not unusual in itself, but for the name boldly captioned beneath the headshot. The photo revealed a pale, gaunt man with clean-cut, chocolate hair—dark against light. His eyes, the same deep brown as his hair, were shrewd and piercing beneath flaring black brows. He wore a white coat, the uniform of a scientist. He looked much like a scientist. But, again, it was his name that was worthy of note. “Dr. Édouard? The Dr. Édouard?” Her fingers tingled. “Read on.” The leader of Sterling encouraged her with a nod, watching her still, his thoughts unreadable in the depths of his azure eyes. Intrigued, Dr. Alison Cunningham turned the page. The next featured a large photo, grainy but vivid enough. Perhaps too vivid. The image it revealed hit her like a punch to the stomach. A man, large and heavily muscled, with wild hair, naked to the waist but visible only from behind, was crouched over another man, beating him with a bloodied fist. The next page, another photo taken at a different angle, was of the same scene. Only now, the face of the wild man was revealed, blood splattered and as animalistic as the victim’s own brutalized, terror-stricken countenance. A bank’s security cameras had captured the images outside the doors of the institution. Alison barely noted the tattered, ink-soaked money littering the ground around the two figures. She had eyes only for the ferocious visage of Henri Édouard as he beat a man to death, there in the crowded city street. 11

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It was the doctor. And it was not. He was bigger now, muscles massive as only a body builder or steroid junky could attain through years of dedicated struggle. Here, though the image was rendered in black and white, it was quite evident that the worldfamous scientist’s skin was darker, no longer sun starved. His face had lost its cunning intelligence, regressed into a mask of twisted rage, his cultured mouth a snarl. His hair was shaggy and unkempt, his eyes wild and terrifying to behold as he glared down into the eyes of the man he was brutalizing. His teeth were bared. Like a rabid dog’s. Squinting her eyes against the savagery of the images, she flipped ahead in the file, past other similar photos from various locations, and began to read, her eidetic memory capturing every word, saving them in the hardwires of her brain for later study. Though the folder was thick she read fast, capturing each page with one blink, maybe two, her lids acting like shutters in a camera, forever preserving what she saw. When she was done, she was shaken. That second image of Henri Édouard burned the back of her retinas, graphic and full of details she hadn’t noted upon first glancing at the grainy security photograph. Her heart throbbed. The file revealed he hadn’t killed an innocent yet, thank god. The brutalized man, not Henri, had been trying to rob the bank. He’d also been wanted for rape and assault in three other cities. The others, too, had been guilty of violent crimes. Nine dead. Nine known dead in Henri’s wake. Alison struggled to control her emotions. That second photo would not fade from her mind’s eye, so she studied it, focused on it and what it made her feel. Even in his ferocity there was a beauty in him that called to her, deep within her darkest heart. In his stance he exuded the power of life over death, in his eyes the world was held captured in all its wounded glory, the sins of the criminal beneath him reflected in the blood on his face. Alison’s mouth was dry. Her knees trembled. But why? Why wasn’t she appalled instead, disgusted or repulsed? Édouard had killed the thief with his bare hands. He had taken a life and the act had been caught, still and 12

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forever, by a digital lens. Her breath came hard and heavy…but not in fear. Not in disgust. She shied away from that realization and could not fathom her own rich, sensory reactions. Alison had seen death before. But not like this. She’d seen it firsthand. But never had it affected her like this—she’d always loathed the act of killing, the waste and the violence of it. Her eyes had witnessed innocence and damnation but never so dichotomously rendered as she’d seen it blended in Henri’s once-refined features. Something in him pulled at her, more now than ever it had when she’d seen him before in the news or behind a podium… The primitive female center of her self resonated with this savage Henri. Alison understood it emotionally, but that made it no less hard to truly understand and justify on an intellectual level. She met Ryan Murdock’s eyes with some difficulty. The precog behind him missed nothing and Alison felt guilt at her own alien responses. “We want you to find him,” Ryan said, his words hammer strikes in the silence. “We want you to bring him in.” “Me?” Alison started, blood freezing, fizzing in her ears. “You’re joking,” she scoffed. The look in his eyes told her without question that he was not. “No.” She fought for breath, for words. “No way. I can’t.” The precog smiled softly, knowingly, and Alison wanted to snap at her. “You can.” “Diane.” Ryan held his hand up for silence and the woman obeyed at once, though her lips still curved gently. Ryan leaned forward in his seat behind the dark mahogany desk. “You can find him. That is not in question. You’re very gifted—” In her agitation, she dared to interrupt him. “You have remote viewers far more skilled than I, field agents who’ve had this kind of experience—”

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He held his hand up for silence once more and Alison’s words died on her lips, her respect for him too great to ignore his command, despite her mounting fear of the twisted path he’d exposed before her. “No one’s had this kind of experience. You read the file—you know all we know, all our agents in the military can glean. It’s not nearly enough. But you can fill in some gaps and you are a scientist yourself, an avid follower of his work. You can empathize with him in ways others cannot.” “Did you read the file?” she shot back. “I can’t bring him in. A platoon of black ops agents couldn’t bring him in. I’m not a soldier anymore, I’m a surgeon. I’m out of shape, out of practice…there’s just no way.” A burst of inspiration made her desperate for escape. “Send Steele. Nothing can stop him. If there’s anyone who can get Henri in safely it’s him.” No one mentioned her familiar use of Dr. Édouard’s first name. She felt her cheeks warm with a blush and avoided their gazes for a time, a storm raging beneath her flesh and bones. “Diane?” Ryan now looked over his shoulder expectantly, sparing Alison his too keen regard. “If we send Steele, the threat of his very presence will set the doctor off,” Diane explained. “We need Édouard calm. We need him alive. His DNA will eventually adapt to the drug. We’re sure of it.” The last words, Alison knew, were meant to be official assurances from Sterling’s team of talented precognitives. “His metabolism is remarkably fast—as you can see, his hair and body have changed drastically in only a few days—but metabolic acidosis will be the least of your problems. Dr. Édouard especially needs to avoid aggressive confrontation, to stay as serene as possible so that his heart doesn’t burst from the chemical overload or his central nervous system doesn’t fail from extreme serotonin toxidrome.” What a mess, Alison thought. Diane nodded, reading the thought before it could be given voice. “And there’s something else you should know, doctor.” 14

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Alison waited expectantly, warily noting the weighted stares Diane and Ryan exchanged. They weren’t certain how to tell her the next, she could see that much easily. What else weren’t they telling her? Much, she was certain. Secrets were a currency here, behind these walls. That had never bothered her before. It did now. Diane continued. “He’s not attacking at will—you have read that all his victims have been violent criminals of some sort. He’s not choosing his actions. There’s no forethought. The past misdeeds of his victims are the catalyst. Any transgression Dr. Édouard perceives as unacceptable, any sin written on a person’s soul, no matter how far in their past, is like a scarlet letter in his vision, marking his targets. Enraging him. He reacts with unforgiving punishment, meting out justice far more brutal and absolute than any human jury could stomach. He is the embodiment of retribution. He’s a vigilante judge who sees only in black and white.” Alison scoffed. “I still don’t see—” “Your soul is cleaner than most. Definitely more so than any of our field agents who’ve made violent encounters their very lives.” Diane gazed into her, and Alison knew she was as transparent as water to this psychic. “What sins Édouard sees in you will not entail your death when you find him. And you will find him. Your gifts are not inconsiderable. You’ve had military training, survival training, you can handle yourself well in tough situations. “I won’t lie to you, this will not be easy. But it’s you who has to go. We’ve all seen that much. I wish I could tell you more but…” Secrets again. They made the air tremble. “Not even the best psychics can see everything,” Diane finished with a wan smile. “What aren’t you telling me?” She couldn’t help asking. Diane eyed her apologetically. “Much. But nothing that will harm you or the doctor, I promise.”

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“Tell me.” “I can’t. You know how these things work, Alison. We can see the possible future but if we tell you what we see, that future might well change. Then we are blind again. I’m sorry.” Accepting what couldn’t be changed, Alison focused instead on the display in her mind’s gallery. There she saw the first two photos of Henri overlap—the scientist and the beast—and felt her pulse thump all the way from her head to her toes. He wasn’t a monster, she told herself, or Sterling wouldn’t want him. He was a man—one she’d long admired professionally. Lost in a sea of madness, of rage, certainly…but not beyond saving, not beyond redemption. Dr. Édouard had to be helped. She closed her eyes. The chair beneath her fell away into darkness. She opened her eyes and saw the forest. Smelled the dew and the moss. The vision faded but at the last, she realized that in her mouth she tasted his sweat and his confusion… “He’s north. Away from the cities. Deeply isolated.” Alison’s eyes flew open, the forest lost, the taste of him still in her mouth. She rolled it around there on her tongue, savoring it, then in a panic at that dark compulsion, wanted to spit it out. “If the drug will run its course, can’t we just leave him—” “No.” Diane shook her head vehemently, not even allowing Alison to finish the sentence. “The drug is unstable and will remain so if left unchecked, until it kills him. We need to counteract the serum with tranquilizers so that his system can assimilate it in a calm, passive state. We can’t cure him, but we can help his body adapt.” “Like the pilots he injected with the first Hyde serum. It took a few hours to stabilize them.” Alison had followed that particular project with keen interest, as had other researchers at Sterling. “He needs your help. He can’t do it alone,” Diane said gently. “His death will be quite painful without your aid.” Alison’s gaze wavered and tripped into Ryan’s. He’d been waiting for her to look at him again. “There’s not much time. Find him and bring him to us. Keep him safe.” 16

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Canada’s forest beckoned. Henri’s plight called to her. She left the manila file on the desk. There was no need for her to take it—she had its contents packed safely away in her head.

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Chapter Two She was sweating, even though the air was chilled, and that was not good. It was a sacred rule of survival that she not perspire too much. Hypothermia was a constant risk here. But she couldn’t stop to rest, not yet. There was much daylight to be had, and every second counted as Henri’s life hung in the balance of each footstep that brought her closer to him. Her vehicle was now several miles behind her. There were no roads here, so deep in the forest. Her only safety lay in the contents on her person—especially the satellite phone and GPS—and in the survival skills she’d learned through years of intense training. Curiosity and the thrill of a challenge had tempted her to take up survival training in her youth. The few years she’d spent in the military had honed Alison’s existing knowledge and provided much more experience. The longest she’d spent in a forest like this was nine days. She’d done well, but she’d also been in a group of similarly experienced enthusiasts. Now she was alone. Or was she? That thought made her pause. The noises of the forest revealed nothing. But he was close. Somehow he’d come closer to her while she’d been hiking, thinking random thoughts when she should have been monitoring him more closely, concentrating more intently. Did he know she was here? She closed her eyes, focused hard and realized there were only a couple miles left to go. He was very fast. Why was he running? Was he coming for her? He was headed straight at her. 18

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Alison looked at her wrist GPS and changed course, hoping to avoid a direct confrontation in case he didn’t expect one. If he did, well…changing course might give her some advantage if he had her death on his mind. Or not. Perhaps a chase would only whet his appetite. She hated the endless unknowns involved here but made what choices she could, based on her limited knowledge. She was sweating profusely now. Stupid. Unavoidable. After all, she was only human and fear swamped her. Worry too, and not just for herself. If Henri killed her, his chances of survival fell to zero. Perhaps slightly higher but not enough, not nearly. Since leaving Sterling, each mile taking her deeper into the hazy future, saving Henri had become her sole reason for existence. Even at the expense of her own life. If he died, her purpose was ended, her defeat complete. She hated failure above all things. Failure now would suck the soul out of her, chew it up and swallow it, damning her. Better to give her life in the struggle to get him back to Sterling, to die saving him and his brilliant mind, than to be defeated before even having a chance. The notion that she could think in such absolutes would have horrified her two days ago, when the journey began with the shutting of Ryan Murdock’s door behind her, Henri’s image fresh behind her eyes. Now all she could do was take each moment as it came, putting one foot in front of the other, accepting that forty-eight hours had changed her life irrevocably. Her feet hurt. Her muscles screamed at the strain she was putting on them. The pack on her back seemed to have gained weight along the hike, pulling her down, cruelly digging into her shoulders. Ugh! She was completely unprepared for this, totally out of shape. Alison hated weakness almost as much as failure. As she sweated and strained she wondered if they might not be the same thing. An explosion of movement as the forest came alive. Birds flew skyward. A hare sped across her path, not even taking note of her as it fled from whatever had startled it. The heavy thud of hooves approached, so fast, and Alison darted behind a tree, mind

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racing. It was rutting season. A dangerous time to be in the path of any moose, doubly so if said moose was a bull. Fight or flight? Henri needed her. She stayed put behind the tree. The bull appeared in a cloud of broken branches, galloping hard, lungs bellowing, exploding through the brush. Alison strove to remain absolutely still, keenly aware that she was downwind of the panting beast. What if it noticed her? Could she climb the tree fast enough, would that even deter the predator? Thoughts racing, time slowing, a million choices frozen on the breath of a second—what to do? Out of the camouflaging trees, Henri leapt onto the animal’s back with a roar. Alison stumbled backward, swallowing a shriek. She hadn’t sensed him, hadn’t known he was upon her, so close, so fast. The element of danger increased exponentially. It was the only element of importance now. There was little about Henri that seemed human anymore but his shape. He was caked with mud and dirt from head to toe. His shaggy hair was a tangle around his face, obscuring his features. Alison was grateful for that last. Especially when Henri brought the fifteen-hundred-pound animal to the ground, fists grasping the antlers to take it down, his strength unimaginable. There was a loud crunch, like a tree breaking, and the Moose went immediately limp, neck broken. Henri threw the lifeless head to the ground, his breath panting, voice growling low in his throat. He stood over his prey, clad only in rags that had once been an expensive pair of casual slacks, muscles quivering menacingly across his broad back. Spinning around, he met her gaze dead on. Alison felt her heart stop. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. His pupils were large, eyes nearly black, and her image was lost in them, held mercilessly captive. “I can smell your fear.” His voice was the crunch of gravel. Alison swallowed, paralyzed. “I said I can smell your fear!” he barked.

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She blinked to clear her blurred vision and found her voice, though it was weak. “I’m sorry.” The pink tip of his tongue snaked out of his mouth, traveled up and touched the top of his lip then disappeared. He looked calmer, not breathing so hard, pupils not so dilated. He blinked slowly, long lashes shielding her from his predatory stare long enough for her to regain some self-control, but not much. “Your blood sugar is low. Make camp over there,” he said, motioning with his head. “I’ll strip the meat.” His words were accented but his English was flawless. Wordlessly she nodded. On wavering legs she stumbled away as he bent and tore at the flesh of the dead moose—with his teeth. Dear god, how she wanted to turn tail and run. If she ran, could she outdistance him while he was occupied with his prey? Looking wildly about her, she searched for options. Failure was not an option. Much as she was terrified, Alison couldn’t run, couldn’t just leave him— Something slammed into her. Henri flung her to the rock-hard permafrost, roaring. She landed on her back, breath knocked out of her by the bruising impact, and he straddled her, leaving no room for struggle. His blood-splattered face was in hers. Instinctively she turned her gaze away, averted her face, knowing on some primal level not to display even the faintest hint of aggression. His nose pressed to the skin beneath her ear. He was hovering over her pulse, she realized with horror. There was no way she could keep the strangled whimper from escaping. He swallowed the sound—she heard him do it. “Why didn’t you run?” His grip on her was hard, his fingers digging into her arms as he ruthlessly pinned her. His weight punished her. But Alison had enough of her wits to lie still. Her voice

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was a whisper, not entirely by choice, when she answered, “You would have caught me.” “You know me.” It wasn’t a question. God, he saw so much. She nodded, moving only slightly. She could feel his skin, hot, through her layers. “Dr. Édouard, I’ve come to help—” He turned them, stealing her voice, rolling them on the cold, hard ground. Dirt, moss, debris and blood blanketed them both, obscuring her vision. Landing on top of her again, this time between her legs, he pressed hard into her and she was terrified by the massive rigidity of his erection. “Who sent you?” His voice vibrated down the length of him, transferring to her. His teeth were bared at her cheek. She could feel the blood pulsing in his iron flesh, a heavy throbbing in his cock, and felt her own pulse respond. Her breath came in gasps but the fear was fading, replaced by something far more terrifying. What was happening to her? Another whimper bled from her trembling mouth. He grabbed the hair at the back of her scalp and pulled hard, arching her throat. He sniffed her loudly. “That’s not entirely fear now.” The French lilt in his voice was like butter-cream icing, sliding rich and sweet into her skin. His words, his tone, everything about him should have left her mindlessly screaming for help. Instead she struggled for control. “Sterling sent me. Have you heard of them?” “Oui.” He didn’t elaborate. “We think we can help you.” Her words rushed out, fast, like a hum. He snarled, pumped his hips against her convulsively then flung himself off her. He flipped in the air and landed in a crouch, on the balls of his feet. The speed of his reflexes was fast enough to startle her. “You can’t help me.” His eyes were wild but it was he who avoided her gaze now. “No one can.” His swallowed his own words, his voice full of shame and self-loathing, and waved his left hand dismissively at her, like swatting away a fly. 22

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On that hand there was a latticework of black veins tracing a path from his fingertips to his left pectoral. They were darkest high up on the inside of his forearm— the sight of the injection—fading as they reached toward his heart. “Oh god, no,” she gasped as a new kind of panic took control. Disregarding caution, she crawled to him and grabbed for him—his hand was bloody from the moose and sticky. He let her look, she knew it, knew he could have been a quarter mile away before she could catch him if he willed it. Alison watched his blood inflate the veins with each pound of his heart, mind racing. “I have some benzodiazepine in my pack—” “Countermeasures?” He laughed derisively, capturing one of her hands in an iron grip, menacing again. He put his right hand on her face, fingers covering the side of her head, splayed wide. It was a caress, plain and simple, but they were both very much aware that he could crush her in an instant. “Child, there is no way to counter this.” Alison bristled beneath his arrogant tone. “I’m not a child. I’m three years older than you.” Why did that even matter? Her brain was gruel in her skull. Time was the enemy. He needed her help, not her conversation. “Let me try. Please.” His face was in hers again. He breathed into her mouth, warm breath in the chilly air ballooning her lungs. “I can see into the heart of you,” he whispered, a warning, a taunt, more creature than man. Sexier than a mere man. The obsidian glint of his eyes reflected her face sharply. She could not look away. His fingers trailed down her face, feeling every plane, every curve, until they lightly gripped her chin. With his other hand, he threaded their fingers together, palm to palm. His skin was so hot. “There’s something…Other about you, isn’t there? Like me.” He pressed his forehead to her temple. It nearly burned her. “Oh yes, I’ve heard of Sterling. We make fun of your pseudo science, your superstitious voodoo. We laugh at the new age wannabe scientists. We real scientists do.” Her teeth clicked. “Well…who’s laughing now, Doctor?” He’d cut her with his baiting words and now she’d cut back. 23

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He clutched her jaw hard, crushed her hand in his grip, popping her joints menacingly. “I’m not,” he confessed hoarsely. Alison experienced a keen shame for wounding him. “That was petty. I’m sorry.” He reared back, as if her apology stung more than her offense. Feeling the seconds die, she hurried on. “You have hyperthermia. It’s the serotonin levels in your system, they’re too high—” “Do you think I need your explanations? Your diagnoses?” He flung her away and returned to his kill, moving fast, tearing savagely at the hide, dismissing her completely. Gathering her wits, inching slowly, watching him close for any indication that his attention might return to her, she reached into her pack. She felt around blindly and found the waterproof bag that housed her supply of drugs. To save space there were pre-loaded syringes with proper doses of numerous tranquilizers. She grabbed one and jumped up, sprinting as hard as she could, popping the lid off the syringe mid-flight… His hand grabbed her throat, catching her without even looking her way, choking her, but he didn’t stop her as she stabbed the needle into his upper arm and pressed the plunger. He lifted her off her feet and flung her away when it was done, as easily as if she were an empty soda can. Her body struck a tree with a resounding crash. Alison fell to the ground with a broken groan as the pain bloomed through her. Her vision hazy, going dark, she saw him rip out the syringe and fling it away. Saw him bend down once more to his prey. Saw the red and the black bleed together as she slid down the abyss into weightless nothing.

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Chapter Three The smell of cooking meat made her mouth water. She woke slowly, too groggy for clarity, but finally forced her eyes open wide. He was staring at her from across the flickering flames. Waiting for her to see him. While she was unconscious Henri had wiped down. He looked more civilized without the dirt and the blood. His eyes were not so wild, not so black but with a touch of warm chocolate in them now. He was calm. Calmer, she corrected herself. The black veins in his arm were a stark contrast beneath his clean skin, more noticeable against the pale. “Will you run?” His voice seemed normal enough. His tone mild, the French accent cultured and civilized. “No,” she said hoarsely, her hand reflexively massaging her throat before she could think to keep the gesture slow and subtle. “I’m sorry I hurt you.” He blinked slowly, his lashes long and dark against his cheeks. She swallowed, winced at the tenderness. “Can I have some food?” Neutrality was what he needed most. Henri handed her a plate heaped with warm, fragrant slices of steak. He’d been in her pack. The familiar plate said as much. It was offered with careful motions, as if he were afraid to spook her. They were both equally wary of the other now. “Thank you for the medicine. It helped.” Licking her dry lips, she settled back with her plate and began to eat. Not meeting his gaze, not wanting to provoke him, but not looking away from him either. It hurt to

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swallow but the food was delicious, unexpectedly so, considering how it had looked before being…prepared. Her brain shied away from the images that followed in the wake of that word. What now? What next? She didn’t know what to do, what to say. Indecisiveness wasn’t her way, or hadn’t been until now. Best to move forward. “We should make our way back. My car—” “Seven miles southwest. Yes. I know.” He eyed her intently. “I can smell the trail you left. The tires and gasoline on the vehicle—it’s not, strictly speaking, a car. It’s larger, I hazard to guess.” Her heart thudded. His words held all the weight of a confessional. “Are all your senses so keen?” “Yes.” “Five…or more?” she ventured cautiously. “More.” His lips curved, no more than a twitch but enough to soften them. “Tell me about them.” Gently, so gently. Don’t spook him. “Are you a doctor?” he asked flatly. Mentally she found some clarity, much needed and long overdue. “I’m sorry. Yes. My name is Alison Cunningham. I’m a neurophysiologist. But I’ve several degrees in other areas of medicine.” He frowned. “Why did Sterling send a neurophysiologist? Did you bring a cranial saw?” She felt her own lips twitch now. “You looked in my pack. Did you see one in there?” The sound of his chuckle seemed to surprise him. It certainly surprised her, though she was happy to hear it. “They sent me because, as you said, I’m Other.” He raised a brow, questioning her without words. 26

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She struggled to find a way to explain. Even to herself it seemed ludicrous at times, the oddities she’d experienced since puberty. “I can see things. In here.” She tapped her forehead, setting her plate on the ground beside her. He watched every movement carefully. She gulped hard and continued. “I’m a remote viewer. It’s how I found you.” The brown of his eyes slowly bled to black. “You seemed surprised enough to see me.” She pursed her lips. “You were hard to track.” “I’m faster than you expected.” It wasn’t a question and said with a trace of satisfaction. “Yeah.” She let out a long breath. “And you didn’t expect such a,” he smiled slyly, “forceful introduction.” “I didn’t know what to expect,” Alison admitted, shifting beneath his gaze. “Don’t you have fortunetellers at Sterling, people who could tell you what to expect?” She fisted her hand around a clump of dead leaves. The crackle they made was an explosion in her ears. “No science is exact.” She couldn’t resist glancing at his left arm. He caught her glance. He noticed everything. “Science. Ah, yes,” he mused. “You’re right about that.” “Dr. Édouard, we don’t have much time—” “It’s pronounced ay-DWAR. But you may call me Henri, given our intimate circumstances.” She swallowed at the way he rolled the word “intimate” on his tongue. “Henri, then.” She pronounced it awn-REE, as he did, as she had in her dreams. “The doctors at Sterling think they can help you accept the serum, but not under these conditions. You need a calm, controlled environment to convalesce in. You need good medical care. Soon.” She looked at his arm again, pointedly.

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He glanced there himself, flexing his arm so that the black veins danced like restless snakes. His eyes returned to her, watching her reaction. Henri didn’t say anything so she continued. “Sterling can offer you a safe place to heal. I know you think we’re a bunch of quacks but we’ve got some of the best doctors in the world working for us—” “How could you know what I think?” he snapped, biting the words out. “Do you read minds too?” She bristled under his scathing tone. “No. But you said yourself—” His gaze met hers, black as The Pit, just as forgiving, cutting her off. “I can read yours, you know.” Pure silk, those words. Alison trembled and averted his gaze. The air was charged between them. How long had it been since she’d administered the drug? Had the dosage been enough to last for any real length of time in his over-clocked system? “You don’t know why they sent you. You’re not the best so-called remote viewer they have at your precious Sterling. You wonder what they’ve kept from you, wonder if they know just what they’re dealing with here, if they even know the half of it.” “Stop,” she said bleakly. “You hate uncertainty. You want to know everything. Not just about this situation but about everything. I can relate to that.” His last words sounded ominous. Threatening. “Please.” Think of a brick wall between you and your adversary, the way they taught you, shield your thoughts, any way you can, she told herself in growing panic. But she’d never been any good at it before… “You’re no good at it now,” he sneered, jarring her. Subsiding, he waited for her to gather what composure she had left. “Do you know how I am reading your mind? Do you understand?” Her teeth chattered so she clenched them, gritted them tightly to keep them still.

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Henri slunk on his hands and knees, stalking her like a jaguar, moving around the fire until he was upon her. She dared not retreat. He would pounce, she knew it. Just like any hunting predator, he would see her run and be unable to resist the chase. “I can smell your thoughts,” he whispered in her ear. “Every chemical, every electrical synaptic fire in your gray matter gives off its own unique scent. At first it was hard,” he tucked a stray lock of hair back behind her ear tenderly, moving so slowly, “but the more you sit here, the more I breathe you in, the easier it is for me to seeee.” “You need help,” she said gently. “You know it. I can help you.” Her last words broke as his left hand ran through her hair, his nails scraping deliciously across her scalp. “So sleek and dark, your black hair. You keep it short so it doesn’t get in your eyes when you’re in surgery. But you wish you could grow it out, though you know it’s a vain wish. You don’t like thinking you might be vain.” Her breath caught. Brick wall. Brick wall. Mortar and stone. “It’s still not working.” His hand cupped the nape of her neck, pressing, bowing her head. “I can taste your thoughts too.” He licked her temple, tongue stroking the skin until it paused at her hairline. He waited. She waited. Their breathing silenced for an endless moment. “You want me.” The words held all the power of a revelation and there was such wicked pleasure in his tone, as if he’d found forbidden treasure and marveled at his own cunning. Her pulse throbbed. They could both hear it. Taste it. Fear had nothing and everything to do with it. “You’re fighting it. Mon dieu, you’re strong,” he purred, fingers massaging her neck. Chills ran a marathon down her spine. “But you’re so tired, aren’t you? Of the struggle against what you want so badly.” He blew the words into the shell of her ear, his voice so sensual it penetrated her, phallic and demanding.

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“Doctor, you’re not yourself.” It took so much effort to get the words out, to keep her voice steady and rational. “You don’t understand it.” He ignored her, teeth barely scraping the side of her throat, down, down to nuzzle into the curve of her neck, where he breathed her in deep. “What you’re feeling. It makes no sense, to want me as you do. But you saw those pictures of me, you eideteker, and you resonated with me. You were wet then, like you’re wet now. Well, I too can resonate.” Pulling back, needing some distance before she lost all control, she hid behind derision and scoffed. “You would ‘resonate’ with anything in this state.” With what daring she had left, she met his gaze steadily. He tossed his head and sat back, bending one leg, resting his unmarked arm on the knee, watching her with his ebony eyes. “You’re right. I’d probably fuck anything that moved right now.” He drew the word “fuck” out until it was both orgasmic and crass. He touched his tongue to his upper lip, let it linger then drew it back in. “That’s what you’re thinking. But how much do you really know about me, Alison? About my current state?” “Not much,” she admitted freely, shaken as his mood swung like a pendulum. He looked away. She breathed more freely. “Your drugs are wearing off,” he said emotionlessly, as if discussing the weather. Before she could reply, he moved back to his original seat behind the fire and reached for her pack. Rummaging there, he located the bag of syringes and selected one from its contents. Uncapping it, he held the needle up to the waning light. “A peaceful moment captive in plastic,” he observed humorlessly. With his right hand he prepared to inject himself, paused upon seeing the dark roads traced on his left arm and transferred the needle to the other hand. Just as dexterous with his left hand as with his right, he injected the tranquilizer into his unmarked arm. “It’s better when administered straight into the blood, like this. Earlier, 30

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the muscle tissue absorbed most of the potency…but you did what you could.” Sarcasm dripped like acid from his mouth. Pulling the needle out, tossing the empty syringe behind him negligently, he eyed her flatly. “There. All better.” His eyes were still pitch. “We should go before it gets dark.” She didn’t wait for a response, instead banked the fire and gathered her gear. “Are you afraid of the dark?” he mocked, unmoving, not even looking her way as he said the words. Her bottom lip trembled but she didn’t hesitate, simply strapped on her pack and began to walk. “You’re leaving?” “You’ll follow.” She didn’t recognize her hard voice. He growled and was at her side immediately, though she’d been several yards away from him. “You don’t know what I’ll do.” Each step gave her more confidence. More strength of will. “I know you’re a scientist, despite your present handicap. You’ll want to know what comes next.” He started speaking rapidly in French, gesticulating angrily, falling behind her as she continued forward without pause. Angry and loud, he was not happy at all but also not threatening now, only human. The drugs worked, not much, but enough. “I can’t understand French,” she said pleasantly. “Merde!” She understood that quite well, but then who wouldn’t?

***** When the sun set, it set fast, and the world was suddenly so black beneath the canopy of trees that she couldn’t see two feet in front of her. “Can you see?” she asked. He hadn’t said a word in two hours and she missed the lilt in his voice.

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“I see everything.” Alison started, her breath catching. He’d been behind her, she would have bet her boat on it. But his voice came from directly in front of her. Best not to dwell on it, she schooled herself. “Will you get the flashlight out of my pack?” He was silent for a beat. “Why don’t you trust me to lead you, little doctor?” The sound of her slow, deep inhalation was loud, even in the noise of the breezy forest. “Would you trust if you were in my shoes?” The intense warmth that radiated off him told her he was very, very close. “If I were in your shoes my feet would hurt.” A laugh exploded from somewhere deep and hidden inside of her. It felt good. The good feeling fled when he jerked the zipper on her pack, nearly unbalancing her. She hadn’t felt or seen him move. He made no sound on the crackling ground. While she assimilated that, he fished around, found the light and handed it to her. Turning it on offered no comfort. Instead she wished she’d left it off when the stark and unforgiving light hit him square in the face. There was little that was human in the way he looked at her. As soon as she thought it, a mask fell over his features and he wasn’t so threatening any longer. “D-do you need another dose?” She struggled to speak. “In another hour, maybe.” She swallowed and glanced at the GPS on her wrist to get her bearings, knowing she was beyond lost and that no GPS in the world could fix that. Knowing exactly where she was geologically speaking, Alison continued forward. It was necessary to sidestep him. He didn’t seem to notice. He was very still, looking ahead, farther than she could see even with her flashlight. Watching something with his sharp gaze. Later, she would berate herself for not taking more note of his watchfulness.

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Time passed too fast. It was slow going in the dark but she didn’t want to waste any more precious time. Henri needed her help and she’d give it her all to make sure he got it. Without the daylight, she needed to rely more on her preternatural senses to keep track of him as he followed her, sometimes close, sometimes lagging far behind but always with her. This was how it was when she operated. The skull of a patient open to her, a tumor or anomaly hidden from human sight but clear in her mind’s eye, bright as neon. He was the anomaly now, harder to find than most but still flashing bright when she focused hard enough. “You’re like a predator yourself. Always hunting.” His lips brushed the back of her head, jarring her just as badly as if he’d taken a bite out of her hide. “But I don’t kill.” She stabbed him with her words. “No,” he mused, uninjured. “You’ve never even lost a patient, have you, child?” She paused then resolutely took another step forward. It was the only response she would give him, that brief hesitation. Her GPS told her it was past midnight and that the SUV was very close. “You need another injection—” “Silence!” More out of shock than obedience she fell quiet, halting in her tracks. He sniffed loudly, pointing his nose into the breeze. She stayed still, puzzled, waiting. Henri, on the other hand, exploded into motion. He took off at a dead sprint, the darkness swallowing him like a maw. “Shit!” She ran after him. Her flashlight beam bounced in front of her, offering no real help in navigating through the many branches that slapped her face, the many briars and roots that tugged at her feet like skeletal hands broken free of the grave. “Henri, stop!” Where was he?

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Ahead. She couldn’t hear him, couldn’t see him—not with her eyes—he was too far already for those limited human senses. So she used her magic to track him. Not even using her flashlight now, she pumped her arms and legs, running as fast as she could burdened as she was with the pack and aching muscles, bruised head and heart. “Dr. Édouard!” No answer. He was still running away from her. Toward the SUV… “Goddamn it,” she growled, breathless, unwilling to slow down so long as he was beyond her line of mortal sight. “Henri!” Tripping, falling, she caught herself on her hands, bloodying them on the rocky ground. Rocky. Gravel. So the road was closer than she’d thought. Ignoring the pain of her mortal shell, she focused on reaching Henri before he was lost. Gaining her feet with a groan, Alison tore off her pack and ran, breaking through the tree line that traced the borders of the primitive roadway where her vehicle was parked. She could see the SUV in the moonlight… Out of the inky blackness, an arm clotheslined her, catching her throat, cutting off her panicked cry with startling violence, dragging her back against a hard body. Cold, hard metal pressed into her cheek, cutting the flesh inside on the ridge of her own teeth. The arm held her upright as her knees went weak. Not Henri. The words rolled over her mind, crashed and broke against her consciousness like an ocean wave. “What now, motherfucker? I’ve got your girlfriend,” the stranger called out, voice sharp in her ear. A cloud moved to cover the moon, plunging them into total darkness. The smell of blood, of death, was unmistakable on the breeze. “Oh sweet Jesus.” She managed to rasp the words out, around the tightness choking her. “Mister, you’d better run. Run as fast as you can or he’ll tear you to shreds.” Alison’s panic made her whole body shake. However, the panic wasn’t from fear of the ruffian who threatened

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her, but from something far more dangerous. “If you want to live, just go while you still can.” Moonlight crept back into the clearing, illuminating captive and captor in a silver beam. “For fuck’s sake just run away!” She batted behind her, striking the man’s shoulders. Too late. Henri stalked into view from out of the shadows, his muscles moving sinuously. Blood splatter was black on his skin—but from what? His hands were covered in it, glinting wet in the shine of the unforgiving moon. “Henri.” She whispered his name—a plea for mercy, but not for herself. “Stay back,” the stranger snarled behind her, digging the barrel of the gun harder into her cheek. “I’m warning you, I’ll blow her head off!” Henri never even paused. His gaze predatory, unwavering on the stranger’s face. Alison lost what was left of her balance as her attacker retreated, dragging her with him. “Run,” she squeaked desperately, clutching at his hold on her, feet scissoring against the ground in an effort to find purchase. “Bitch, shut up!” He jerked her so hard stars burst behind her eyes. She couldn’t breathe now, his arm so tight it was choking her. Killing her. She prayed. For Henri’s sake, Alison prayed that the gunman would turn tail and run, give her a chance to block Henri’s way, if such a thing were even feasible. With the last of her fading strength she raked her nails across her captor’s bare hand, drawing more blood than she would have thought possible. The man roared, his hold loosening, and Alison dropped to her buttocks on the cold, hard ground. Henri seized the moment, soaring over her head in one fantastic leap, pouncing on her attacker. The gun exploded. The shot, wide, spat gravel into the air. Henri snarled, knocking the gun from the man’s hand, breaking bone. A scream from the trembling lips of the

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would-be killer as the pain washed through him. But it was just the beginning. Henri had him… Grunts and gurgles from the gunman. Another scream. Alison cried out something unintelligible and stumbled to reach Henri as he pounded his prey into the gravel. She lunged onto his back. He sent her flying into the air with a shrug of his shoulders. When she landed she grayed out, but only for a second. Henri’s eyes met hers. She saw movement over his shoulder and cried a warning. Too late. Henri grunted as his adversary stabbed him in the back with something. He turned swiftly and caught the man’s hand in his mouth, biting down so that blood was a geyser and bone was a crunch. There was an overturned toolbox near her, tools scattered on the ground. Lost to impulse, she grabbed a hammer and flung it Henri’s way, hoping to redirect his attention. Henri grabbed the hammer out of the air without looking at it, twirled it in his hand, reached with it over his shoulder and removed the screwdriver sticking in his back with the clawed end. The sound of that screwdriver tearing from Henri’s flesh was too graphic—it imprinted itself in her memory forever. Alison screamed. The mad doctor threw his tool away and bent back over his prey, pounding with his mighty fists, dismissing her completely. There was no sound now from the gunman. Still, Henri punished him. Whimpering, broken, bruised and sore, her heart a wound, Alison crawled back to her discarded pack and sought out the tranquilizers. She grabbed two needles, scattering the rest with her violently shaking hands. When she pounced on him this time, Alison gave him a double dose of the drugs in the side of his neck, both syringes pumping into him their payload of synthetic calm. Henri roared and grabbed her much-abused throat, slamming her flat beneath him on

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the ground. Rising above her, he pulled back his fist. She waited for the blow with something close to a sigh. Those pitch eyes saw her. Nostrils flared wide. Pointed tongue darted out, tasting the air between them. “Acquittement.” His voice was like sandpaper on rusted metal. Dropping his fist, he reeled drunkenly, falling off her, writhing in the dirt like a slowly dying snake. Alison gasped for air, hands clutching her ravaged throat. She coughed and choked, struggling to breathe. At last, after the hardest battle she’d ever fought, the oxygen passed the tightness of her trachea, filling her lungs with shockingly cold air. Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes as she lay on her back, staring up at the moon and the stars. Shock stretched her nerves wire thin. Wanting to scream out the pent-up stress, all she could manage was a pathetic croak. Her body shook so hard her bones rattled. The taste of blood was in her mouth from the shredded bite marks inside her cheek. From the particles that floated in the air, carried on the breeze. Moving, not wanting to because it hurt so much but knowing she had no choice, she rolled over. On her hands and knees now, then gaining her feet, swaying, steadying but only through the strength of her indomitable will. Alison stumbled around, saw her rented SUV and approached it. It was jacked up, one wheel already removed, no doubt thrown into the truck bed of the second vehicle blocking it. There was a dark lump on the ground by the jack. She didn’t want to see but had no choice but to look. It had once been human—that lump. A man. Now it was a bloodied husk. She hadn’t even guessed that there might have been more than the one assailant…despite the blood that had already been on Henri’s hands when he’d come to save her. The bruises on her throat wouldn’t let her scream but nothing could have kept her from sobbing at the sight of the grisly scene. She dropped to her knees, the pain of the

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impact unnoticed as her eyes drank in the picture of the thief who’d been dealt such swift and merciless justice. The dead thief. His blood was a still pool of ink around him. Gentle fingers brushed over her eyes, light as a butterfly’s wings. “Don’t look.” Henri caught her as she fell against him. One hand shielding her gaze, an arm gathering her close, he bowed his head to her, pressing his lips onto the top of her head. His breath was hot. His skin doubly so. But otherwise he was calm and self-controlled. He was a killer but she couldn’t hate him. Couldn’t, wouldn’t move away from his embrace. She could still see past the gaps in his fingers, see the dead man, and the tears flowed freely down her face. Henri adjusted, blinding her fully now with his hand, rocking her like a babe. Henri the protector. The heartless judge now sleeping. She mourned her failure to stop his wrath. Mourned for them both and knew it wasn’t nearly enough.

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Chapter Four “How is he?” Alison looked to her right. Henri, forehead pressed against the window, gave her no notice, though she knew full well he could hear both sides of the conversation clearly. Her fingers tightened on the satellite phone at her ear, her eyes returning to the road. “The wound in his back wasn’t bad. He’s calm now.” “Are you?” Ryan asked gently. “I’m an accessory to murder. What do you think?” she murmured emotionlessly, feeling anything but emotionless, her wounded body hurting almost as much as her scarred heart. “Not murder. Those men would have killed you both if given the chance. The Canadian government understands and thanks you for neutralizing two known murderers. You bear no guilt.” Ryan said the words with a certain formality that was no doubt meant to ease her troubled mind through logic more than emotional comfort. She scoffed, an expulsion of breath, ragged in the torn rawness of her throat. Ryan dropped the bureaucratic tone. “Hey, you’re still alive, aren’t you?” Alison glanced at Henri again. He was watching her now, brown eyes penetrating, missing nothing. She quickly glanced away. If he saw guilt in her she would be dead, she knew it as well—better—than Sterling did. But it didn’t make her feel any less responsible for two brutal killings occurring in her presence. Ryan let it go and she was grateful. “Make as few stops as possible. Stay away from crowded areas.”

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“I’d figured that much out for myself.” Her tongue moved behind gritted teeth. “But I don’t have enough benzodiazepine left. Some of the needles broke in the pack during the fiasco and there wasn’t much stored in my other supplies. Plus it requires more than an average dose to have any lasting effect anyway.” “Hmm. That is a problem. How much farther do you have to go?” “Too far,” she said bitterly. “It’s slow going as well. I’m avoiding as many major roads as I can, which doesn’t allow for much speed or economy of distance. And I’m living on no sleep here. I’ll have to stop somewhere. Soon.” “I trust you can find a secluded enough location? With few people to distract him?” She had the maps of the area in her head, vivid and detailed, along with lists of acceptable places of lodging. “Yeah.” “Has he slept?” Ryan asked with some curiosity. “Not since the serum.” Henri smirked when Alison started at the sound of his voice, so close, speaking into the phone so that Ryan could hear him. “Jesus,” Ryan spat, before swiftly regaining his composure. “He can hear us then?” “Yes,” Henri answered for her. “Clearly.” There was a long pause. “You don’t have the option of sleep, Dr. Cunningham.” Alison swallowed. “I don’t have a choice.” Even now her brain felt like applesauce in her skull. The mix of injuries and exhaustion was a heavy strain on her every sense. She felt like a total failure, completely out of control and worthless besides. “What if he runs once you close your lazy eyes?” Ryan snapped. She heard the venom in his tone and wondered at it, surprised at this sudden shift of mood. “I-I’ll have to find him again.” “God, you’re weak,” Ryan sneered in her ear. “Useless. I should have sent someone else, someone who could at least stay awake!”

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Her breath stopped, catching painfully in her throat. This wasn’t like Sterling’s leader at all and the words stung brutally. What was going on here? Henri snatched the phone away from her before she could gather her wits and form a suitable reply. “Don’t talk to her like that,” he growled menacingly into the receiver. Alison didn’t have the ability to hear Ryan’s reply. “She needs rest. She’s been through a lot…thanks to you people.” Again, she couldn’t hear her boss’s response to Henri’s warning tone. “I won’t run from her. I’m too eager to meet you, Murdock.” He purred the last. As a threat it chilled Alison to the bone. But she knew now why Ryan had bludgeoned her with his reprimand and his attitude. He had been aiming for Henri’s cooperation, by hook or by crook. Ryan always knew what he was doing. Now, at least, Henri wouldn’t run when her guard was down. And after that…she prayed that Ryan stayed out of his way until the serum had run its course. The last thing she wanted was Ryan Murdock’s blood on Henri’s hands because of an imagined slight to her. Henri put the phone back to her ear, a disgusted look on his face. “You’ll be okay,” Ryan assured her, pleasant now. “Rest. Gather what strength you can. Bring him in before anything else can go wrong.” “Yes sir,” she said weakly. The silence that greeted her response told her he’d hung up. “He shouldn’t have spoken to you like that,” Henri said, muscles rippling beneath his skin. The veins on his left arm pulsated, black and menacing. “There’s a motel and diner ahead. Food, a shower and a couple hours’ sleep are all I need.” She glanced at his face. He was radiating heat. Her lips were dry and she licked them. His black gaze caught the dart of her tongue and she gripped the wheel as a shiver raced down her spine. “What will you do while I rest, Henri?”

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He tilted his head to the side, like a bird listening. “Watch you dream.” Alison shivered again and kept her eyes glued to the road. The diner was small but clean. Henri stayed in the vehicle while she purchased some burgers, fries and sodas. He waited there while she rented their room, watching her every move like a hawk through the windows. It was far safer to keep him separated from other humans for now and they both knew it. Wordlessly, he followed her like a docile shadow into their quarters, his presence swallowing up the small space though he wasn’t, physically speaking, a very large man. It was strange to see him in such a mundane, humdrum place. He didn’t seem to belong. And it had far more to do with his unkempt hair and rags. “Eat. I’ll take the first shower,” he said, reading her thoughts in her eyes and in her scent. That wicked tongue of his snaked out behind his pink lips and she knew he tasted her thoughts as well. “I don’t have any clean clothes for you,” she said apologetically, ignoring the strange tremors that tickled her. “Maybe I’ll go naked then.” His tongue teased the corner of his mouth. She couldn’t look away from it. He was tasting her response to that. She didn’t have to be psychic to know it. Nor was she fooled by his complacency into thinking he wasn’t continuously cataloging her every thought, emotion and desire. Every moment they spent together, Henri knew more and more about her. He’d said as much earlier. Alison believed every word of that admission. Wall of stone, thick and immovable. See it. Feel it there inside your mind… Turning away, freeing her from his gaze, he closed the bathroom door behind him and she heard the spray of the shower seconds later. Letting out a sigh of immense relief, she collapsed onto the lone double bed and tore into her food, wolfing it down with a ferocious appetite. Listening to the shower,

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hearing the splashes Henri made, she took her boots off and removed her stiff wool socks. She curled her cold toes in the cheap rayon carpet and sighed as some of the tension flowed out of her. Until now, Alison hadn’t really understood just how tense she’d been since first entering Ryan’s office. It seemed so long ago. Fuzzy and distorted by all the worry and trauma she’d suffered since. Rolling her neck on her shoulders, she winced as the bones popped and the bruised muscles stretched painfully. She scratched her nails through her short hair, shying away from a sore bump at the back of her skull, not even bothering to wonder which blow to her noggin had resulted in that Easter egg. It felt wonderful to shed some of her layers. Dropping at least five pounds in mere seconds, she plopped back down on the bed and lay back bonelessly. Dressed now in only a T-shirt and long-john bottoms, her body tingled and murmured pleasantly its relief, her skin breathing freely at last. The world around her slowed. Her heartbeat slowed with it. Her lids were so heavy. I’ll just close them for a second. Just. One. Second… She awoke much later than that to the explosive sound of breaking glass. “Je suis coupable!” A scream, those words. Alison jumped from the bed and threw open the bathroom door, steam obscuring her sight. She waved through it in a panic, heard a whimper, looked toward the low animal sound and saw Henri clutching his head in a corner. He was trembling, pulling at his hair and speaking rapidly to himself in French. The mirror above the sink was shattered to a million pieces, shards strewn all over the tiled floor. “Henri.” She reached out to him. He shied away violently, the towel draped around his hips teetering precariously.

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“Keep away from me!” he shouted, voice echoing off the walls. “I’m as guilty as they are, don’t you see that? Don’t touch me!” Alison held her hands out, palms flat, as passively as she could. “You’re not a bad man, Henri.” “I’m a monster!” he gagged, doubling over, folding deeper into himself. “You need more medicine. It’s okay. I’ll get it.” Alison strove to remain calm herself. “Non. No medicine will help this. Non. Non.” He groaned and jerked at his hair, crouching on the balls of his feet. There were no words to come to her aid. Never had she seen such naked suffering, not in all her years as a healer of the sick and the dying and the confused. “Je suis coupable.” He repeated the phrase over and over to himself, voice punishing, anguished. The spider-web tracery of black veins moved on his arm, right before her eyes, creeping up to slowly spread their pulsing tentacles over his heart. His breathing was harsh and bellowing. The agony he felt was a palpable blanket in the moist air separating her from him. The veins lengthened, thickened and throbbed ominously. He gasped and slapped his right palm over them, as if they caused him no inconsiderable amount of pain. Alison knew the harder his blood pumped the poison through his veins, the greater the strain on his heart. He was dying, right here, right now, each second pushing him closer to that invisible edge. Mirror slivers were everywhere, a dusting of glittering, deadly snow. Nothing for it. Henri needed her. She went to his side and gathered him in her arms, ignoring the glass that crunched beneath her bare feet. He struck out at her but not with a fraction of the power she knew he could wield. He didn’t want to hurt her. He only wanted to protect

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himself from whatever demons raged inside him. Alison held him tightly until his struggles subsided a little. His fingers dug into her upper arms as he grabbed her, clutching desperately. “Let’s get out of here,” she urged softly, tugging him gently but insistently to his feet. “Mind the glass.” The towel around his waist fluttered to the floor. Henri watched it, eyes tracking its progress. Alison saw him follow it, her eyes on his. Danger here. He shuddered, naked in her embrace, flesh so hot it scorched. Their gazes locked and time stopped. Something primitive crawled beneath her skin. His pupils swallowed his eyes, large as saucers, opening wide like camera lenses. Her heart thudded, the pump of blood hot and heavy all the way to her womb. His muscles gathered. The predator was back. And it was hungry. There was no time to scream as he lifted her off her feet by her arms and launched her out of the bathroom. Her body sailed through the air, landing with a thud on the mattress that robbed her of breath. The bed creaked in offense. Before the room stopped spinning he had her, covering her. His hands everywhere at once. His mouth slanted over hers, capturing her shocked cry. Alison shoved at his shoulders but he was immovable. Thrashing her head, she tried to dislodge his lips. Henri grabbed her chin and held her head still, bruising her with his fingers and his kiss. Her hands fisted and beat at him, striking with growing panic and desperation, until she was giving all she could behind the blows. There was no reaction from him at all, just untamed animal lust, immovable and single-minded and centered solely on her. She kicked out at him but only managed to scissor her legs enough for him to settle heavily between them. She screamed into his mouth. His breath washed in. Alison bucked her hips, he undulated his, rubbing his enormous erection against her damp center.

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Like a wet flame, his tongue flowed into her mouth, hot and flicking the roof of her mouth, the edge of her tongue. Wanting escape, she snapped her teeth shut but he’d already reared back, too fast for her, knowing what she was going to do even as she thought to do it. The long, lean fingers of his right hand spread over her face and turned it to the side, pressing it into the mattress. He licked the exposed line of her throat, leaving a trail of wet fire behind. Her pulse beat hard as he followed the line of her jugular, tonguing it, nibbling it with his mouth, breathing in the smell of her rush of blood. “Oh god!” she gasped, lost. There was a sharp edge of fear, so keen and so fine, but the rising desire was more dangerous, more deadly. It cut deep, so fierce and merciless it stole her mind. Alison fought now only because it heightened her need, and she was riding that wave of delight. She slapped him, the skin of her palms resounding against his hot, naked flesh. Her nails raked him and he growled against her pulse, quickening it. He rubbed his entire body against hers, using every inch of himself to caress her flailing form. Every breath came on a gasp. Her heartbeat was in her ears, deafening her. The edges of her vision bled red. She could smell him, feel him, taste him in her mouth. She thrashed her head, seeking him. Her teeth found his flesh and she bit, he roared and she leered, tasting his clean, bruised flesh with a dart of her tongue. His fingers fisted in her hair, jerking her head around hard, dominating her physically. Her back arched and he buried his head against her small breasts, rubbing his face over her ruched nipples, breathing his hot breath into the thin barrier of her Tshirt and sports bra. One of his hands found her breast, cupped it. His skin burned hers like a brand. A moan broke from her lips. He rolled his hips, the move like a dance. She rolled hers in echo so that his fingertips dug into both her scalp and into the quivering flesh of a nipple in reward. 46

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“Oh!” She threw her arms over her head and arched her back even more sharply. His teeth bit down on one nipple while his nimble fingers pinched and tugged at the other. Everything inside her cried out to be naked, bared and open to feel him and everything he was doing to her as completely as nature intended. Fast and sure, he reared back, fisted his hands in the neckline of her shirt and ripped it down the center. Her sports bra followed until she lay in rags, naked tits quivering in the air, begging for his attention, nipples hard and swollen, rouged with the flow of her surging blood. But he didn’t bow to her, take her breast in his mouth and suck. He stilled, maddeningly, his black eyes drinking her in. She growled, demanding, humping him wantonly. He ignored her. Frustrated yearning had her reaching out and pulling his hair viciously before she could stop herself. He bared his teeth and pounced, letting his weight take her deeper into the mattress. Her breast disappeared completely into his mouth, as if he would swallow her whole. The spasmodic clutching of her fingers held him tightly and closely as she thrust more sharply into his mouth. The tip of his tongue flicked her, licked her, swirled around her areola and his teeth massaged her breast as if he would eat her, while his lips made a wet seal, pulled and drew her in. The rough, bruising strength of his hands owned her. From her scalp to her face, he left no feature unexplored. She sucked his fingertips as they passed over her lips, needing a part of him in her mouth. His nimble touch roved to the hard swallowing motion in her throat, to the fine bones of her clavicle, before seeking out the vibration of her pounding heart near her breast. Henri tuned her body like a fine instrument with such knowing, skillful caresses, each one deliberately designed to draw out her finest sound, her highest performance.

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Henri growled and pulled back impatiently, hands grabbing the waistline of her long johns, ripping them cruelly from her body. The tearing of the fabric sounded like the tearing of flesh and as he peeled the cloth away, he peeled away her last inhibition. When he saw the labial piercing he stilled, inhaling sharply, eyes flaring wide with a starving appetite too long denied. But Alison didn’t have the patience to let him merely look. She grabbed him to her, digging in her nails to hold him. She slanted her mouth across his and penetrated his mouth with her tongue, tasting him as she’d longed to forever. There could be no denying his genius as his fingers sought and unerringly found her slick, hot folds. He tugged gently on the delicate silver ring, opening her like a locket. She was so wet his thumb slipped along the channel of her aching sex like a hot knife through butter. Alison couldn’t help but wrap her legs around his back, urging him on, panting heavily in her overwhelming excitement. His cock head brushed her like a dousing rod sensing water. It sought her out with an intelligence all its own. Those wicked fingers opened her wider, middle digit testing her to be sure of her readiness, rubbing circles that made her tingle. His long sigh stretched into forever and then he was breaching her with his pound of flesh. A sex missile slammed into her pussy, blowing her apart. Alison cried out and his mouth caught the sound, muffling it. His tongue licked the roof of her mouth and his hips thrust harder, forcing his cock home inside her welcoming warmth, jarring her very bones. Her loins made a cradle, a perfect fit. His skin was so hot, her cunt melted like wax around the flame of his penetrating cock. So full, so bruised, needing it all, she marveled at the galaxy of sensation born within her—a Big Bang to rival any other. Stretched and aroused to the point of a scream, impossibly she wanted more. Impossibly he gave it, more length, more girth, and it burned so hot, weighed so heavy that every nerve she possessed was smacked with delight.

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He held her torso inches off the bed with one powerful hand cupping the back of her neck. The other hand dug into the flesh of her buttocks, guiding and controlling as he hammered into her, over and over again, jamming his hardness into her sheath. His tongue followed each advance and retreat of his hips, filling her above and below with all he had to give. The aching tips of her nipples brushed across his chest with each breath, each motion, until raw pain blended equally with acute pleasure. Each withdrawal of his thick dick resulted in a wet, sucking sound as her body struggled to keep him locked inside her trap. The moans he harvested from her lips drizzled like honey from a pot and he lapped up their sweetness, growling his feral satisfaction into her gasping mouth. When he’d sipped his fill, he released her, spreading his fingers across her face and pressing her back into the mattress. Holding her still, he used his other hand to reach for the small of her back, arching her up more fully into his plunging hips. Impossible, this angle, yet he held her there so easily, nearly standing her on her head, back bowed so dramatically. She was suspended, body supported fully by his intimidating, effortless strength. Her buttocks no longer touched the mattress, only the back of her head. Her ankles crossed in the middle of his back, holding tightly, feeling the gather and push of his muscles microseconds before he pumped that burning cock into her and then jerked free again. Henri’s long fingers, tasting of her own juices, traced the edges of her lips. She darted her tongue out to catch them but he teased her only, moving well out of her reach then back, rocking her body all the while, a demanding and relentless tempo designed for only one thing. Her ultimate pleasure. Those fingers tugged her chin down. Their eyes met. Brown and gray, his and hers, as locked and naked as their perspiring bodies.

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“My god!” she gasped, losing all control, keening wildly, clutching him with her hands and her body. “Oui!” He bared his teeth and scooped his hips upward, reaching her G-spot with remarkable skill. “Ahh!” She was beyond words now. Not even herself anymore but a primitive, reveling in hedonistic rapture. Henri caught her tighter to him—impossible—reaching the heart of her very womb. She screamed. Their gazes held steady, neither looking away, not even blinking to break the spell. He pumped into her faster, fucking her soul, tearing away her every last shred of human shyness, making her as much a beast as he was. The sound of his sharp inhalation of her scent was Alison’s only warning that he sensed it… She came so hard her body clamped down on his, trapping him. He roared, forced over the edge by the smell of her orgasm, by her sudden tightness, her endless pulsations like a thousand fingers milking him. The splash of his cum was so hot she screamed again, shocked at the burn, afraid but needing that sinful cream so much she would have died if he hadn’t given it to her. His lengthy black lashes fell over his eyes. Her own lids slammed down, too heavy to stay open. Only the feeling remained, the intense release of so much pent-up desire and yearning. The world should not have survived the cataclysm. Weightless fulfillment had her limp and sated beneath him. There was barely enough strength left in her to breathe. He followed, collapsing onto her, panting hard in the shell of her ear. Their hearts slammed into each other. His hands found hers, their fingers entwined like lovers’ knots. The rush of the blood in their veins was an audible symphony in the sudden quiet.

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For the first time since it had all began in his lab, Henri came fully back to himself. There was that Other part of him still, but in this moment it was whole and one with his human half. What had he done? His fingers trembled and he felt hers tighten around them. Had he hurt her? Mon Dieu…had he raped her? Desperately he took in her scent and with endless thanks, oceans of relief, registered her repletion, her satiated pleasure. If he had hurt her, then she’d liked it well enough. And it had definitely not been rape. The rage of emotions cooled inside him on the heels of that comforting knowledge. He felt as close to calm in this moment as ever he had. Marveling at the woman pressed so trustingly against him, he realized she’d tamed his beast far better than any drug could have. How could that be possible? Henri didn’t know. But there was no denying this truth—Alison’s embrace had muffled the serum’s screams in his veins. Fucking her had helped him do more than ejaculate—it had helped him find some measure of control. With the dawning hunger of any addict, he realized he wanted more. But not a fucking this time. Not so rough or crass, but gentler, to thank her for this surcease of his suffering. Henri had to have more of this peace. More of her. The whole of Alison’s body was flushed but the blood was rapidly cooling beneath her flesh. Her heartbeat was slowing to normal, softening its raging thud. Her nipples were no longer so hard, so elongated or rouged. Her belly was softer, not tense now. Her womb was settling low again as the delicate muscles relaxed, the organ soaking up the pool of release that had been spent deeply inside her, as was nature’s design. Her breath no longer came in ragged gasps. Each intake of air was steady and even.

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She was getting drowsy. Her thick ebony lashes shielded her steel-gray eyes from him. Yes, she was near dozing. But he, most decidedly, was not. Understanding that he could witness and catalog even the tiniest fraction of her physical reactions with his heightened senses, he decided to test the knowledge, as any decent scientist worth his salt would do. Disentangling their hands, he traced his fingertips over her peachy skin. From her temples, where her hair was softest, down the side of her stubbornly angled jaw. With his sharp eyes, he could actually see the blood inflating her capillaries, flooding warmth in the wake of his lightest touch. Interesting. He smiled, a wolf’s grin, glad her eyes were closed so that she could not see it and be warned of his intent. Feathery as the light brush of a rose petal, he traced the line of her throat, pausing over the beat of her pulse until he felt it trip and begin to speed up. As he watched, heightened senses missing nothing in her, the pink nipples enlarged and swelled erect, darkening as the blood surged. Goose pimples rose on her flesh and she began to tremble. No human eyes could have noticed all these responses to so simple a touch. Using his breath now, he blew the fine hairs that covered her round belly, bending low over her. From here he could easily smell her strong scent as well as the bouquet of his own cum mingling with it. He wanted to taste that perfume, roll it around wet and fresh and ripe on his tongue. Careful not to demand too much too fast, to interrupt her gentle rise into passion, he slowly spread her knees wide with his palms. Under his watchful gaze, her labia swelled and darkened. A rush of liquid coated her, some of it anointed with his own living sperm, glistening in the light like polished gems.

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The silver ring, thin and fine, glinted keenly, drawing his eye. He hadn’t expected this wicked decoration, though it had brought him endless pleasure to see it, touch it, feel it tickle his flange as he had pounded into her. He dipped his sleek head and darted his tongue out to taste her. She tasted like tears. Or rain. Salty but sweet, with a hint of his own sting. The piercing on the left lip of her eager cunt clicked against his teeth as he gently bit down upon it and tugged, just to see the flesh around it plump in response. The sound of her uterus moving up and away from her pussy, withdrawing deep into her body to allow room for his bite—his cock—was thunderous in his ears. Her body thrummed with the flow of her hot blood. She was breathing harder now, her hands blindly reaching for him. He touched every plane of her body. Her shoulders, arms, breasts, belly, hips and long, long legs. All the way down to her feet. She curled her toes around his thumbs, a moan catching in her throat. Her skin was downy soft, delicate. It would be so easy to tear and bruise that flesh and he resolved to take utmost care of her. Spreading his tongue wide, he licked her entire slit and breathed in her response. It smelled of heaven. Of eternity. Puckering his lips to full softness, he nuzzled her chat—her pussy—until he found her clitoris. It swelled full under his attention, flowering beneath its protective hood of delicate flesh. A button, hidden and sacred but eager. He pressed it gently with the tip of his tongue, felt it grow and fill with her hot blood. It was like witnessing a miracle, the way her body opened to him without any reservations, despite all he’d put her through. Best not think of that now. He tossed the shadowy darkness away and concentrated on making her feel as good as she’d made him feel. On making them both feel that sweet and sacred bliss waiting for them. Two of his fingers penetrated her, feeling how slick and tight she was. Feeling her pulse beat here so hard it was like she had two hearts that beat in unison. He watched 53

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the rim of her sheath flex around the invasion of his digits, saw the muscles stretch eagerly. The walls of her pussy thickened, practically begging for more girth. Henri hissed as the blood pounded in his cock, making him so hard he hurt with need. Reacting instinctively to his carnal sound, her heart rate increased, her blood pressure rose and she moaned low. A new flush of pink radiated out from her heart to her little round tits, up to her sharply angled face. She was reaching an orgasmic platform—he could see it, smell it…he licked her. He could taste it. Alison was ready, so fast, so completely it humbled him. He had her scent in his head. Soft noises came from deep within her, echoing in his ears and in his blood. His own breathing was coming fast now. Moving his lips against her, saying sinful words in his native tongue, he felt a new rush of fluid around his fingers deep inside her in response. “I’m going to peel you open like a sweet, ripe fruit,” he promised in English, wanting and needing to witness what his words did to her, how they affected her, even down to a cellular level. She liked them. Very much. Her nipples were hard as diamonds. Her clit quivered, her juices coated the tender skin of her sex. He repeated the words in French. She liked them then too, just as much or more. The sound of his voice, his mouth forming words, these things alone made her wetter, tighter, hotter than he ever could have foreseen. Whispering all the wicked things he wanted to do to her, uttering promises that would have shocked her completely as nothing else he’d done before if only she could understand the words, he teased her with his lilting accents, his varied languages. “I’m going to drink your female cum, swallow it, gulp it. I’m going to fuck your gorgeous breasts and shoot my load in your mouth. You’re going to suck me off and slurp every last drop I have to give. I’m going to rip you wide and lay you bare, consume you, claim you so completely that you aren’t even Alison anymore, but me.” As he voiced her name she moaned and clutched his shoulders. He groaned, tortured by his own wickedness as much as her dramatic response, lost in the spell he 54

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had woven so naturally. What a state, what a moment, what a woman! Henri took her mouth, eating her cries, tasting the sweet tenderness of her lips with his tongue. She spread her legs wide for him now, begging him to take her. How could he disappoint her? When he slid into her, it was like reaching Nirvana. She was so wet it felt like a bed of hot, rippling cream licking his shaft. She was so tight her body clamped him, the pressure making his head spin. He lost himself in her, forgetting to catalog her body’s naked and honest responses. There was no room left in him for calculation, orchestration or thought at all. She had him caught, snared in her honey. “Oh mon cher,” he moaned, kissing her face with his tingling lips, rocking gently into her softness. She enveloped him, arms clutching him tightly around the neck. “Oui,” he urged her, breathing the word into her ear, voice breaking. “Oui, just like that.” Her nails dug into his flesh and he relished the pain, felt his own desire heighten to unspeakable peaks. “Scratch me,” he instructed, panting. “Draw blood, chatte sauvage.” Reflexively, as much a slave to his desires as her own, she did just that. Henri felt the rake of her claws and roared, surging into her as pleasure and pain bled into one storm. He was drunk, feeling her pussy contract, smelling her pleasure, tasting it as it wafted in her scent. Faster now, he rocked her on the bed, hearing the squeak of the mattress springs like trumpets sounding in his ears, the sounds of her moans and cries echoing, booming. The vibrations of the noises made by his flesh sliding against hers quivered in the air. He could see the waves of sound as they traveled. He could smell Alison, taste her thoughts like a spice, feel her desire from his head to his toes. He could hear everything—especially the slip and slide of his dick in her pussy, the wet pull of her skin,

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the hard slap of his balls against her bottom. The pandemonium drove his need relentlessly. The bed frame cracked and splintered, defeated. He bared his teeth against her throat and pumped his hips carnally, the rapture he felt wash through his loins so intense he feared death in its wake. The vision of her body as it reached its pinnacle was like a golden light in his sight, a halo of perfect beauty. He saw her climax crash into her before he even felt the pulsations of her cunt wrap around his pounding cock. Henri couldn’t hold back. Couldn’t prolong the moment. The shout that broke out of his lungs startled him with its vehemence. The force of his ejaculation stole his breath, his sight, everything but his ability to feel her, feel himself, feel them blend together. The taste and scent of her followed him into the darkness, and he hunted her there in the shadows as he slept, at last, dreaming that they would be one when he finally caught her.

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Chapter Five Frame by frame, blink by blink, the road dissolved beneath the speeding tires. They’d lost the day, slept it away, but it was best to move in the dark hours of night anyway, when the majority of the populace slept safe in their warm houses, far beyond the reach of Henri’s judgment. Alison’s eyes darted about, missing nothing, watchful for any threat to her charge… Who hadn’t spoken to her in over three hours. Not since she’d woken with him at her side, watching her sleep. His eyes were so brown—she’d not realized how dilated his pupils had actually been until she’d seen them in their normal state. He had beautiful eyes. But Henri was not in a normal state. He was better, calmer and quieter and not so prone to growling. But he was acting strange, even for him. After sleeping the day away she’d opened her eyes, awakening from a dream in which some unnamed horror had been seeking her in the dark, only to find Henri right there with her, his face no more than a few inches from hers. His eyes had been staring into hers even though, until that moment, they’d been closed. When she’d gasped, he’d slowly moved away but he’d not taken his eyes off her. She’d had no words. Her thoughts had been like a frayed rope and unraveling fast—they still were, but she’d collected enough of her wits in the past few hours to function on some level of normality. What had he been watching for, when he’d stared at her? His eyes had been seeking. Delving into her. Alison wondered what he’d discovered while she’d dreamed. He’d slept too, she knew that much. He’d fallen asleep before her, relaxed and quiet for the first time in her presence. If she hadn’t been so sated, so spent and exhausted,

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she would have liked to watch him dream and see what she could learn about him as he lay unguarded. For her there was no small amount of satisfaction knowing that she’d been the reason he’d finally slept, eased into a calm state that the tranquilizers couldn’t match. She’d rested with a smile, believing to have perhaps found a key to somehow reaching the true Henri Édouard. Then she’d woken, hours after she’d planned to, and been met with nothing but silence. Brooding silence. And a long, dark stare she couldn’t read. God. She shouldn’t have had sex with him. It had been a mistake to let her guard down, an even bigger one to think she might have some positive effect on him by doing so. If only she’d fought harder, longer, maybe the situation could have been avoided. But she’d wanted it so much. And it had felt so good. Alison had damned herself ten thousand kinds of fool as she’d showered, washing his scent and stickiness away. Hell, she hadn’t even used protection—something she’d never done before. It had been worse when she’d realized her body was hoping that he’d join her under the steaming spray, thrumming with ready eagerness. She’d welcomed the pain of a glass splinter from the broken mirror in her heel when she’d stepped out of the tub. It had brought her back to herself a little. They’d left the motel soon after but neither had said a word. Alison hadn’t spoken because Henri hadn’t spoken…she couldn’t stop her puzzlement over why he hadn’t. She could have sworn he’d had a good time. And there could be no denying that she’d enjoyed herself. What was he thinking? she wondered over and over again. “Do all women focus so relentlessly on that one question?” Henri’s voice made her jump in her seat.

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Alison wished now that he’d kept silent. “You tell me. You’re the one who can read thoughts.” How stupid of her to have forgotten that. Best to watch what she let slide around in her mind. Henri sighed. “Only recently. With you.” Silence reigned supreme. Not knowing what else to do, she took the plunge and broached the subject that hung between them like a giant, upside-down tarantula. “I’m sorry I took advantage of you in that way. You were weak, upset, I should have kept our relationship strictly a patient-doctor one.” His wild hair rustled as he turned to see her in the dark. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say—and I’ve been interviewed for television.” Alison pursed her lips. There was no winning with this guy! Henri scoffed. “I wouldn’t have let you go and you know it. You could have shot me and I’d still have mounted your sweet ass.” She hissed and gripped the wheel so tightly her knuckles popped. “I don’t have to smell the rage on you to know you wish that steering wheel was my neck,” he snickered. “You’re taking this far too seriously. I’ve been ‘giving you the cold shoulder’, as you would no doubt put it, because my mind has been focusing on more pressing matters.” “Like what?” she snapped, incensed more by this conversation than by anything that had transpired between them thus far. “Like why am I so calm? Yes it was great sex—spectacular—but what about it, exactly, made such a profound, lingering impact? Chemically and biologically speaking, that is.” His teeth flashed white in the black. “I wonder.” With some effort, Alison switched off the part of her heart that was working so hard to confuse and irritate her and focused instead with her wits on what he was saying. “The tranqs didn’t work this well, not even in high doses.” She pondered that, turning it over in her brain.

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“Yes, good.” He was the teacher to her pupil now, patient as only the wisest mentor could hope to be. It was strange, this intellectual demeanor, coming from a predator of a man who sat clad only in ragged pants at her side. “Follow that train of thought.” “Not only didn’t they work this well, they didn’t work nearly so long.” That much was obvious. “Right again.” She frowned, hesitating to venture further out of her own embarrassment over their intimacy. “During sex a number of hormones and pheromones are released by both the male and female. Perhaps, with your senses being so keen now, you picked up on one or all of them and they affected you on a grand scale.” Henri chuckled. “Prolactin, phenylethylamine, oxytocin, endorphins and many others…yes, these chemicals were like a cloud enveloping us, raging through us both. Most of them are antidepressants, some of them help the release and absorption of adrenaline…these would have the opposite affect of calming me. But the endorphins and the oxytocin have calmative effects, endorphins being the root of why many men fall asleep after sex, and the oxytocin—or ‘cuddling hormone’—would affect the central nervous system and emotions.” “But many of these chemicals have been isolated and used in various therapies over the years,” Alison pointed out. “It would take large doses to have this kind of noticeable result.” “Or a very sensitive subject.” “Or a combination of both.” Alison gave it some thought. “It’s true that chemicals naturally produced in the body are purer than those constructed in a lab.” “They can be far more potent, I think, given the right circumstances.” He watched her profile closely—she could feel the weight of his stare. “Perhaps we found the right circumstances.” She fidgeted, determined to keep her own eyes on the road.

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“But what, I dare to ask, made it ‘right’? What indeed.” Alison could feel him fishing, seeking something in her that even she wasn’t ready to confront. Henri turned away, mood shifting. “If only I could bottle the true essence of coitus. A mixture that echoes the cocktail brewed in the human body, down to the minutest detail. That is the key, I think. The little details are always the most significant—and the hardest to catalog.” There was no need for Alison to respond. Henri was talking more to himself than to her. Eventually he trailed off and silence fell once more, but this time it was a more comfortable one. The hours of the night passed more pleasantly and they only had to make one stop to refuel the car. Henri remained calm throughout, thoughts so clear it was as if there was nothing amiss, nothing out of place at all. He almost felt human again. He wanted to thank Alison for that. But he didn’t know how to do it without insulting her or—worse—revealing how gauche he could be. Henri knew she hadn’t lain with him out of any scientific interest, and he was truly grateful for that, but he’d never been a ladies’ man and was afraid of his own fumbling inexperience. The last thing he wanted to do was offend the most beautiful woman to ever show an interest in him sexually, and he certainly didn’t want to have so bright a mind as hers close against him when he most needed a colleague with such intellect and experience. Smart. Lovely. Magnificent in bed. And for some unknown reason attracted to him despite all he’d put her through. Whatever lucky star had brought Dr. Alison Cunningham into his path deserved a lifetime of his worship and thanks. Henri was supremely relieved that she couldn’t read his thoughts. But he was miffed that, while calm like this, it was harder for him to read her thoughts. Especially when she hid behind that makeshift mental barrier of hers, that stupid wall.

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About an hour before they would reach the border, Alison’s satellite phone rang shrilly, startling them both. She answered it on the third ring after fumbling to find it in the folds of her coat. “Before you say anything, just listen.” Ryan’s voice was hurried, full of tension. Alison saw Henri stiffen out of the corner of her eye as he too heard the undercurrent of urgency in Murdock’s tone. “The Air Force knows you’ve made contact and they have labeled Dr. Édouard a high-priority target.” “What?” Alison gaped. “I thought we were cleared to bring him in. I thought they were happy with Henri’s existing research.” “They were. Now they aren’t. Their scientists have tried to duplicate the serum but Édouard destroyed most of the lab when he went AWOL, along with some important formulae and notes. Without the necessary data they can’t reproduce the new Hyde enhancement and they want their ‘property’ at all costs.” “Merde!” Henri spat. “Shit!” Alison hissed through clenched teeth. “We can’t let them have him in this state. Can’t they wait until he’s better, then he can give them all the information they need—” “It’s never that easy when the military is involved, you of all people know that. And it’s not just the Air Force who’s on your tail. The Marines want a piece of this technology, the Seals too. The Chief of Staff wants Henri locked up and studied and he wants the serum mass-produced and ready to distribute immediately.” Alison sputtered. “But can’t they see for themselves that the drug isn’t ready for that?” “Why do you think I injected it into myself?” Henri said at her ear so Ryan could hear. Something dangerous darkened his voice and his words. Alison felt her palms begin to sweat. “They wanted to use the serum untested. They’d seen my preliminary work on it, heard some news from my staff and jumped the gun—they were sending 62

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subjects in for a full dose without even caring what might go wrong. Injecting myself was the only way to test it, the only way to show them what the serum could do in its raw form in a human host, without killing their finest pilots or, worse, breaking them mentally and turning them into raging beasts.” Like me. Henri’s thoughts vibrated unspoken between the three of them. Alison was surprised. Henri’s reasoning wasn’t unexpected, knowing his reputation as she did, but his bravery and selflessness was unnerving for its humanness considering what he was—an ambitious genius with limitless potential. A mad scientist in his prime with a conscience to rival a saint’s? It was unheard of. In the same situation, would she have taken such a risk with her own health and sanity? Would anyone? “You have to admit that this drug is invaluable to the military for any number of purposes,” Ryan said patiently. “In essence, this serum turns normal people into supermen with few to no weaknesses. How could that not appeal to them?” “Do they know its, uh…preternatural effects?” Alison asked hesitantly. “We don’t think so. But they’re bound to find out sooner or later,” Ryan rushed to add. “And when they do, it’ll up the ante considerably. It’s only a matter of time. I’m sorry to have to say it, obvious as it is, but time is something you don’t have.” His last words were emphatic in their insistence. “Your chances of success just dropped close to zero. What will you do?” Thoughts racing, Alison made the only logical decision she could. Her frayed courage came to her aid when she needed it, sharpening her senses, giving her the necessary survival instincts and strength. “You sent me out here to get him and bring him in. That’s what I’m going to do.” “Good girl,” Ryan enthused. “Being a field surgeon in the Army when we recruited you, you should know how this works. How will you avoid detection? What can you do in the face of these odds?”

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With dawning realization, Alison stared at the phone in her hand as if it were a serpent. She glanced at the GPS bracelet she wore. Thought of the laptop in its case behind her seat. All of these things were tools the military could easily use to track her and Henri, given the right circumstances. Survival had just become a very complicated struggle. She swallowed fiercely and brought the phone back up to her ear, rolling down her window so that a blast of arctic-cold wind bit into her face. “I’m going off the grid, Ryan. Have your people monitor and contact me in their own way. If it kills me, I’ll get the doctor to you in one piece.” Before Ryan could respond she tossed the phone out the window. As Henri watched, she removed the GPS bracelet and tossed it as well. “Reach behind my seat and get the laptop. Take it out of its case and throw it as hard as you can—make sure it breaks when it hits. There’s nothing incriminating on it but I’ve got some personal work on there I don’t want recovered from the hard drive.” Henri was already ahead of her, reading her thoughts even as they raced through her mind. When he looked her way she saw without surprise that his pupils were large, black pits in his eyes. Alison watched his hands work on freeing her laptop and saw that the black veins on his left arm were pulsing, swelling. Tick tock. Time fleeing on gossamer wings, every second shortening Henri’s life expectancy. Alison stomped on the gas pedal and chewed up the miles. Henri chucked the laptop out the window. It shattered into a million pieces in their wake. “We’re not too far from the border. But crossing won’t make us any safer. The minute I flash my papers all the alarm bells will ring and the government will know exactly where to find us.” Henri licked his lips, his tongue tasting the air. “I’m not so sure they don’t already know, Alison.” His head tilted, as if he were listening to something beyond her hearing. She shuddered at the thought.

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A shadow in the rearview mirror caught her eye, black and looming and her heart sank. “Oh no way. No way!” Henri turned to look behind them, face a stony mask, hair whipping in the cold wind from the still open window… The behemoth tailing them gained fast, far too fast for a vehicle of its size and make. In her mind’s eye Alison could see the men behind the windshield. She recognized their military fatigues, tasted their feeling of triumph and knew she’d lost this battle. Their vehicle had been modified for speed and durability…the driver and passenger too, thanks to the first Hyde serum. The black van slammed into them. The impact thrust Alison’s vehicle forward, its tires leaving black trails on the asphalt. The van backed off, revved its engine and immediately came back in a burst of speed, striking the left rear bumper of the SUV, tipping it, sending them into a wild tailspin. Alison’s hands jerked on the wheel and the world tilted sickeningly. From far away she heard the squealing of tires, the explosive music of breaking glass and the echo of her own shrill cry. The SUV flipped. Alison felt a cold pain as her head struck something hard. The iron smell of blood stung her sinuses. Her already bruised neck screamed in agony as it twisted, centripetal forces creeping like a jumbo jet slamming to earth, whiplash her new friend. When the world stopped moving she was hanging upside down, strapped to her seat by the bruising straps of her safety belt, her arms limp above her head on the ceiling of the vehicle. Pebbles of glass were all around her, twinkling like frozen teardrops. Henri was no longer in the vehicle. Her fingers were trembling and slippery on the catch of her seatbelt. When she finally managed to free herself, she landed on her head and cried out in the tsunami wash of pain that threatened to drown her. She rolled awkwardly and crawled out through the missing windshield on her elbows and knees. 65

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Shaking hands were scarlet with blood, the knuckles split open, one palm pierced with a sliver of rearview mirror the size of her index finger. Red was everywhere, wet and sticky. Warm, salty drops of it stung her eyes. Filled her mouth. Creeping lines traced from her lacerated scalp down the sides of her face into the rim of her collar, making her flesh crawl. Disoriented but still functioning, Alison tried to focus on Henri’s location. Had he been thrown in the tumble? Was he hurt? Dead? The sound of crunching metal made her round on a sight that might have stunned her if she hadn’t already been stunned beyond any useful common sense. The black van that had tipped them, forgotten in Alison’s weakened state, was pulling up slowly behind the wreckage. As it rolled to a stop, there was a roar of rage from the tree line. Henri appeared, hair wild, eyes bloodshot. He charged. The two uniformed men cried out, shocked and unprepared. The van rolled over as Henri slammed into its side, running full out, ramming it with one massive shoulder, like a bull. Alison gaped. Henri was physically larger since she’d last seen him. Considerably so. The serum was causing him to grow colossal, like super steroids in a time warp. Choking on blood, a welcomed rush of adrenaline surged through her as she gained her feet and ran to him, her only hope to intercept him before it was too late. Henri jumped onto the upturned side of the van and slammed his fists down into the passenger window like sledgehammers. Glass shattered and flew, raining back down to earth like hail. “Henri, don’t!” Too little, too late. Henri dragged out his prey by the collar, the uniformed soldier screaming now. Henri grabbed the man’s chin with his black-veined hand and jerked left to right viciously. There was a sickening crunch as the man’s neck snapped. His body, limp and lifeless, soared over Henri’s shoulder as he tossed it away like useless refuse. 66

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Once more Henri ducked in, serpentine, quick, and dragged out the driver. The muscles of his arms bulging, he didn’t otherwise give any indication of notice to the violence of the soldier’s desperate struggles. Holding the man aloft, dangling his feet over the side of the vehicle, Henri shook him and growled menacingly. “Stop it!” Alison demanded, approaching the van painstakingly. One of her arms wasn’t working properly. There was no pain, only awkwardness. She didn’t understand it, so she ignored it. “Don’t kill him.” That plea was all that mattered. Henri’s teeth flashed white behind tightly stretched lips. His face was close to the soldier’s, his eyes black pits and full of fury. “Their orders were to neutralize and sedate me. To kill you if you got in the way,” he told her without breaking eye contact with his captive. Swallowing that last bit with an inward wince, Alison tried to reason with the beast that she knew contained the man. “They didn’t kill me. You stopped them. Let him go.” Henri didn’t seem to hear her. Or if he did, he gave no indication of it. “You’ve never taken a life before, have you?” Henri purred into the man’s terror-stricken face. “Of course not, it’s the only reason you’re alive now—do you realize that…Sam?” When the doctor drawled out the soldier’s name, having gleaned it from the man’s thoughts, Sam screamed shrilly, terrified beyond description. Henri cocked his head like a reptile, ignoring the cacophony. “Do you imagine that you know what it’s like to kill? Do you believe you could do it easily enough?” “P-please!” The soldier’s legs flailed out in open space. Henri held him aloft with the strength of his hands fisted in the material of the man’s collar. “You stink of my old potion, Sam. Did you think that would give you an advantage against me as I am now? Please tell me, I’m dying to know.” The soldier choked on his response, eyes as wide as dinner plates. “Did you think that Hyde would make you my equal? Did your superiors tell you that it would?”

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Alison spat out a mouthful of blood. “Henri,” she said faintly, in the sternest tone of warning she could manage, which wasn’t impressive considering how fast the world was spinning beneath her feet. “If she had begged, if I had begged, what would you have done?” Henri breathed hard into the face of his prey, words grating and hard now. “Would you have been merciful? Or would you have done your duty?” He spat the last word out like burning stomach acid. Beyond comprehensible words, the man fumbled at his waist with shaking hands. Alison saw it from too far away. “Look out!” Too late once again. The man drew his gun and the roar of the weapon discharging drowned the echo of Alison’s warning scream. Blood sprayed. The bullet hit Henri’s right shoulder high on the outside, but he neither flinched nor let go of his captive. He didn’t even blink—simply shook the soldier so hard that the gun went flying from his weak fingers. The cold steel slid and came to rest at Alison’s feet. She bent and retrieved the weapon, checking the clip out of instinct and habit before engaging the safety and slipping it into the waistband of her jeans. “I’m s-s-sorry!” Sam croaked. Alison didn’t have to read minds to know that Sam wasn’t supposed to have used his gun on Henri. The powers that be wanted and needed him alive. “You should be sorry,” Henri said, so softly she barely heard him as he spoke, mouth at the man’s ear. Sam wet his pants. Henri smirked. “I won’t kill you, connard. I want you to run back and tell them to let me be. They’ll get their serum, they’ll have their weapon—but they don’t get me. They don’t get her. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

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The soldier nodded violently, face a mask of sick dread. “Say it back to me,” Henri instructed, tone patient but also disgusted, as if the man were insectile to him. The man swallowed twice before he found his squeaking voice. “Uh, you’ll hand over the serum, but on-only if we leave you a-a-alone.” The black of Henri’s gaze was hollow, cavernous. He searched his prey’s face, seemed to find what he was looking for and nodded. With casual strength he flicked his wrists, tossed the man several feet into the air and turned away to jump off the van with one feline pounce. The soldier landed in the road with a thud and didn’t move. Alison rushed to him, her body tilting strangely, felt his pulse and breathed a sigh of relief to find it still beating. A crash from behind her as Henri pulled the van’s back doors open, ripping one clean off its hinges and chucking it over his shoulder, had her hurrying to his side, dismissing the insensate soldier as adrenaline surged anew. “What’s in there?” she asked as the savage doctor disappeared into the back of the vehicle. “A pharmacy of cutting-edge drugs,” he spat from within. “There are tranquilizers everywhere. Needles and IVs. A gurney with shackles. They planned to sedate me, cage me. Imprison me.” His voice seeped into a growl, and it was clear the very idea of being subdued in any way was abhorrent to Henri’s wild senses. “Grab what we can use,” she called, alert for any new threat that might jump out for them at any given moment. Her body was shaking uncontrollably, each breath she took stinging her lungs. “We should get off the road.” Even as she spoke the idea seemed unnecessarily elementary to her. “Get your pack.” Alison wiped a curtain of blood from her eyes with her soiled sleeve. She needed stitches badly, her scalp laceration was too deep to stop bleeding on its own. She

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couldn’t feel any pain anymore. Her hands and feet were clammy but not with external cold. In her ears her pulse beat fast, like a hummingbird’s wings, but the sound was faint, weak. Alison faintly realized this likely meant she was in some state of shock. But there was no help for it, not yet. The priority was to get away from the roadway and head into the tree line so that they could not be easily seen. Then they could investigate their wounds. The smell of gasoline and burnt rubber was as thick as the smell of her own blood. The SUV was in such bad shape. The crash looked deadly enough that it was a wonder no one had died. But here they were, alive, though for how long was a pressing concern. “I hope my insurance covers this.” Alison frowned. What an absurdly unnecessary worry! Moving like an automaton, eyes glazed, unfocused, she found the backpack and began to strap it on slowly and methodically, as if in a dream world where time and hurry made no sense. Her breathing was fast and shallow but she couldn’t feel the air filling her lungs anymore. Alison knew she had to hurry but her body wasn’t listening to the urgency of her thoughts. She felt so sluggish, as if she were caught in tar. Lost as she was, it didn’t even startle her when Henri suddenly lifted the pack from her back as her bloodied fingers fumbled with the belt that clipped around her waist. Alison didn’t comment as Henri began to fill the pack with syringes and bottles of labeled drugs. She did notice one label in particular though. “Norepinephrine? Why do we need that stuff?” “We don’t, you do.” She shook her head to protest but he ignored her automatic rejection. He simply packed away the drugs, shouldered the supplies, grabbed her hand in his and led them swiftly into the woods, away from the sea of broken glass and twisted metal.

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Seconds after the border of trees enveloped them, a concussion of air sent Alison flying. Henri caught her to him, held her upright and looked behind them over her head, in the direction of the explosion. In his shining eyes she saw the bright amber reflection of the van as it went up in a whoosh of flame. “You did that?” Her tongue was too fat for her mouth. “Oui.” Alison let her head fall limp on Henri’s shoulder. When she spoke her voice sounded far away. “We have to go back and make sure that guy is okay. The explosion might have—” “He’s not hurt. Don’t think about him anymore.” Henri gracefully shouldered her weight, hitching her up against his side with one arm around her waist, and took her deeper into the forest. Hours may have passed before any thoughts bubbled to the eerie calm surface of her mind. “I left the keys in the SUV.” Her voice sounded childlike, confused, and Alison was not a little uncomfortable hearing it. Everything seemed so cottony. She laughed, feeling sort of drunk. “Your system is pumping the last of your adrenaline to your heart to keep it going,” Henri said softly. “I can smell it.” There was barely enough sense left in her to realize that the scent of adrenaline could not be good for him. It might arouse him…had she said that out loud? Was she talking? She laughed again, mouth filling with the blood that still flowed from her head wound, and clutched at him with numb fingers. Henri stopped and she tripped, nearly falling. He lowered her carefully to her knees and tilted her chin up, his gaze boring into hers. “Your eyes lack focus. They’re fixed, then darting. Your heart is in distress. There’s no more time. We have to help you now.”

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“What are you talking about?” Her words came so fast they hummed, vibrating her lips so that they itched. “Relax your jaw,” he instructed softly, lowering her to her back in the soft, cozy leaves. “Breathe deep and slow.” He had removed the backpack and placed her feet up high on a fallen log. Taking the gun from her belt with his thumb and forefinger, he set it aside with a paranoid caution. “I’m going to give you a shot of norepinephrine, it’ll help your heart and increase blood flow.” “I’m not stupid, I know what nor…nor…what?” She couldn’t remember what she’d been talking about. The world was all tilty and she could see swimming designs undulate in the canopy of evergreens. “Nice.” The word drawled infinitely. “What’s your name?” “Huh?” Who was this guy anyway? And why did she want to get buck naked with him? Fingers snapped in her vision, the sound in her ears out of time with the action, like a badly dubbed kung fu movie. “Focus on me now. What’s your name?” She hummed a tune from a song by the Pixies. “Al-is-on.” She singsonged the lyric then swallowed, struggling to understand what the man with the crazy hair was doing as he lifted her arm, shoved up the layers of clothing to expose her pale, lifeless arm. “Hey, I know you,” she snickered, congratulating herself on her brilliance as she recognized him. “You’re the guy who made that drug for muscle atrophy. One time I had this patient…that stuff worked so good…” The sound of her voice faded in her ears. Henri watched her sink into the depths of hypovolaemic shock and strove to control his own overwhelming response to her distress. Alison had been right—the smell of her system fighting off the desire to simply shut down by releasing its arsenal of chemicals was doing nothing to calm his own violent state. It was all he could do to

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focus on treating her, when his instincts screamed at him to run and embrace the wildness that beat through his system. To hunt and to fight and to destroy. “Count backwards from ten,” he instructed, not just to her but to himself as well. She managed, barely, and it took her three times as long to do it as it should have. He injected the medicine into her and watched her system accept it, watched it travel from the injection site through her veins on its journey to her heart. Smelled its antiseptic odor as it mingled with her own lush scent. If he let himself he’d become hypnotized, so he jerked his focus away and set about setting up a haggard IV bag he’d rescued from the van, using long sticks inserted into the ground to hold the bag of fluid aloft as he affixed the needle to her arm with some medical tape. Alison began to hyperventilate. The sound of her struggle pushed his own predatory nerves to the edge but he somehow maintained control, knowing that if he didn’t, she would surely fall into a coma. “Shh,” he soothed gently. “You’re safe. You’re warm. Think only of beautiful things, can you do that for me?” He set about stemming the blood flow from the five-inch gash in her hairline, listening to her breathing slow as he spoke to her, watched her body respond to the calm in his tone. Tasted the beat of her pulse in the back of his throat as it slowed with each word he said in that even rhythm he knew she needed to hear. There was blood everywhere, the smell of it setting his lungs on fire, but not in a way he expected at all. The smell was acidic, a result of physical shock, but it carried a concentrated perfume that belonged completely to Alison. That essence, so pure and raw, enraptured him. Henri realized with no small amount of hopeless guilt and shame that he was aroused in a sexual sense, smelling her in the red. His cock was huge and hard and aching. Mon Dieu, he was a heartless animal! Alison was dying and all he wanted was to fuck her. Henri wanted to cry, wanted to run away but knew that Alison needed him, knew he had no time for self-loathing or self-pity.

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He sewed her up as best he could—he’d never been overly skilled with suturing— then rechecked the flow of the IV drip, keeping himself busy with well-practiced medical procedure. Feeling her from her scalp to her knees, searching for more injuries he might not have sensed, he fought the desire that resulted in the feel of her hair, skin and curves beneath his fingertips. It nearly killed him inside when he had to reset her shoulder, which had dislocated in the accident. Alison’s choked scream made him sob for air that didn’t taste of her suffering, as the joint slid back into its proper place. He bandaged the cut in her palm after ensuring there were no lingering fragments of glass in the wound. Her hand was small in his. Fragile as a wounded butterfly. Henri used the greatest care with it. It was with a great amount of relief that he found no further bleeding, though she’d have bruises from her head to her feet in a few hours. He righted her clothing as best he could, leaving the one arm exposed to allow for the IV, and gently turned her into a recovery position, to keep her breathing easy, her airways open. He pulled a survival blanket out of the backpack and draped it over her, tucking the ends beneath her. “Alison?” He wanted to hear her voice, wanted to bring her back to herself. And to him. He touched her sleek, black hair. It was matted with blood but somehow still soft and fine. “Huh?” she murmured faintly, lashes fluttering like moths’ wings. “How do you feel?” “Tired.” The truth of that admission was palpable in her scent and her flavor. Henri swallowed it. “I want you to think of an image. One you like to look at. Can you do that?” A long moment of silence. “Uh-huh.”

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“No, don’t nod, don’t move your head. Just lie there and think about that image.” He paused and watched as her eyes began to focus a little more beneath their dark, spiky curtains. “Can you see it, in your mind’s eye?” “Yes.” He’d not taken conscious note of it before but she had a husky sort of lisp that was quite endearing. He stroked her cheek, marveling at how translucent and soft her skin was. “What does it look like?” He urged her to continue talking, continue thinking. “It’s The Eternal Idol.” Henri smiled, pleased by her taste in art, which mirrored his own, and by her lucidity, which proved he was winning this battle for her life. “Idole Eternelle, oui, by Rodin. I know it. Will you describe it to me, in your own words? How you see it?” “A man kissing a woman’s belly.” Alison’s words came as if on the whisper of a dream. “He loves her so much…” Her voice trailed away. His loins tightened. His voice was hoarse when he found it. “He worships her. The goddess. The feminine.” He took her wounded hand in his and kissed it. “Yeah.” Alison sighed the word out, and Henri could see her breath as it disturbed the cooler air around her mouth. Good, she was warming up at last. “Keep thinking about the lovers. Relax but don’t sleep, don’t lose your focus on their image.” “He has your face,” she murmured distractedly. Henri felt his lip curve, his heart thud, his loins tighten further. “Does she have yours?” Alison didn’t answer. As he watched her blink slowly, breathe evenly, rigid muscles losing some of their tension, he set about stemming his own bleeding wound. The bullet had passed through cleanly, leaving nothing more than a flesh wound, one that would thankfully not impede him. After applying some pressure the bleeding stopped. He was pleased to note that he wouldn’t need suturing as Alison had. There

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wasn’t much thread left for it in the scavenged first-aid kit anyway. There had only been the one surgical needle for stitching and no real effective way to sterilize it against microbial infection. This was the least of his worries, but a lifetime spent practicing hygienic medical procedure was hard to forget. He bandaged the wound and forgot about it, more pressing matters now at hand. As daylight came and went, he had already managed to construct a simple shelter around Alison, build a blazing fire and suspend two roasting hares above the flames. He’d captured the food easily and the hunt had soothed his savagery. He’d scouted the area for a mile in each direction, circling like a bird of prey, back and forth and around again. But as the hours passed, he never once let his real focus shift from his patient as she recuperated, the IV long since emptied into her, her system gradually returning to normal. From the odd whimpers she was making, “normal” meant she was feeling a lot of pain. Before she had the strength to protest he gave her a light dose of morphine and noted each change in her body as her system accepted the mighty painkiller. He carefully monitored her for any adverse reaction and was pleased to see her nerve endings relax beneath her skin. “Are you hungry?” Alison saw him through the pleasant fog enveloping her and smiled, pleased that he hadn’t given her a full dose of the drug, relieved that her thoughts were ordering themselves in an almost sensible pattern at last. “Starving.” After thinking about it for a moment, she sat up cautiously, grateful that the world stayed put on its axis. “Eat slowly.” He handed her a lightly laden plate and the canteen. “Don’t drink a lot of that, either.” She nodded, the morphine cushioning her aching head. “I’ve treated shock before.” “But not self-treated,” he warned. “It would be easy for you to make a mistake in this condition.”

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“I’m feeling better,” she assured him, eating slowly, methodically. Determined to be careful, to ensure her usefulness for the next leg of their journey. “Good. But we have to remain vigilant. We don’t have time to let you rest as you should. We have to keep moving.” His words echoed her thoughts. Alison swallowed some water and had to fight not to drain the canteen in the next gulp. She hadn’t realized how thirsty— Henri took temptation away from her, gently tugging the canteen out of her hands and drinking the last of the water himself. At her concerned look, he smiled and hastened to reassure her. “There’s a spring nearby, we’ll have plenty more for later.” Licking the last drops from the corners of her lips, she finished her meal and sat back, watching him as the new night descended. Her eyes missed nothing, from the now starkly prominent black veins to his dilated eyes to his bandaged shoulder. “How bad is it?” She nodded toward the wound. Henri removed the bandage and showed her. “You’re almost healed,” she marveled. He looked down at the pink, puckered flesh and whistled to himself. “I am. Strange. The wound is closed and already beginning to scar.” Flexing his arm as if to test it for any signs of pain, he looked around them, hypervigilant, ever aware of their surrounds and all that dwelt therein. “Did you not anticipate that?” Henri shook his head, bringing his gaze back to hers. “The previous serum had no such advantage. I assume it has to do with a heightened metabolic rate or…” He shrugged, dismissing it. “This explains why that screwdriver in my back didn’t do any lasting harm.” Alison couldn’t help but notice how hard he was breathing. She felt her lip tremble as she witnessed the beast stir beneath his flesh, then smiled to hide her emotion from him. “We’re a mess.”

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Henri cocked his head, absorbed her words then his lips broke into a grin. He chuckled. “We are.” “How do you feel?” she dared to ask. “I sedated myself. I’m calm enough.” His grin deliberately turned lecherous, but his eyes remained dark and deadly. “I could be calmer if you weren’t too damaged to help me with that.” His attempted teasing cracked her up. She laughed until tears streamed out of her eyes. “I’m so wasted right now I wouldn’t do either of us any good.” The tip of his tongue darted out to flick the corners of his lips, serpentine. “La! You could just lie there and think of England,” he grinned, eyes twinkling like obsidian flecks. “Shut up.” Smiling like a loon, not even caring how inappropriately lighthearted the mood was given their dire circumstances, Alison threw a fistful of leaves at him. They both watched as the amber and brown husks floated to the ground, like a cloud of giant, cinnamon-dusted snowflakes in the sudden silence. “Oh well. Time to go,” Alison said, letting the euphoria fade at last, carefully rising to her feet. As she oriented herself in the lightly drugged haze, Henri doused the fire and dismantled the shelter. Alison saw the glint of the soldier’s gun on the ground and tucked it once more into the waistband of her jeans. Henri saw her do it and bristled. “We don’t need that,” he growled low. “We might,” she insisted softly. “I hate guns.” He seemed loath to admit it. “Good. Me too.” She offered a weak smile. After destroying all evidence of their presence, he loaded their supplies and shouldered the pack. He reached out for her hand, predacious eyes roving from her head to her feet. Blushing under the intensity of his stare, she took the offered hand,

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threaded her cool fingers through the heat of his and walked at his side, deeper into the cold, black heart of the wilderness.

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Chapter Six A stinging slap awoke her. Alison drew the gun from her waistband with one hand and came up swinging with the other, meeting nothing but air, all in the space of a half second. “That took a lot out of me, you’ll be happy to know. I was afraid it might require an earthquake to wake you.” With some difficulty she focused her sleep-blurred eyes on her surroundings. By the position of the sun above the tree line she guessed it was no later than ten a.m., which meant she’d been asleep for nearly two hours. She squinted at the too-bright form of the owner of the unfamiliar voice, aiming the gun square and steady. An explosion of sound to her right made her swivel her head, awakening a starburst of pain in her skull which then fell like meteorites down her neck and back. Henri appeared, wet and dripping from a nearby brook, pouncing between her and the stranger, growling low in his throat. “What the hell are you?” The man smiled. “You don’t mince words, do you, Doctor? I’m your Housekeeper.” He looked over Henri’s menacing shoulder, meeting Alison’s gaze. “You know what that means?” Alison nodded, tossing the gun to the makeshift pallet on the ground, placing a gentle hand on Henri’s bulging forearm. “It’s okay. He’s here to help.” “I can’t smell him. Or taste his thoughts.” Henri’s arm rippled beneath her hand. “I’m not physically here,” the man offered helpfully. “Astral projection is the easiest way for us to communicate for now. And the safest for me by far.” He glanced pointedly at Henri’s clenched fist and grinned rakishly. “I don’t think you’d kill me outright for my sins, but I have no doubt you’d pummel me enough to make me wish you would. Am I right?” 80

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“Get to the point,” Henri snarled. The image of their visitor shimmered. “My name is Dante. Ryan sent me with instructions.” Alison carefully eyed the Housekeeper. She’d never met one—had limited knowledge of them beyond the fact that they took care of the loose ends of whatever Sterling project required their attention—but she knew they were highly skilled broadspectrum psychics. Concentrating, she traced Dante’s “projected” origin to a boat on the northern shore of Lake Erie. It was a surprise to realize that Dante was allowing her to pinpoint his location. He could have prevented her from doing so, stayed hidden indefinitely—she read that in his signature. She fixed on his location, already mapping a path to him. It was a long way to go. “It’s not an impossible hike from here,” Dante reassured her, reading her thoughts easily through their connection. “You can make it before nightfall if you push yourselves. The boat will be stocked with everything you need, including false transit papers if you should run into border patrol—which you shouldn’t. We’ve got people on the inside watching out for you. The journey over the lake will be calm, the weather clear with a little fog closer to Cleveland—which will give you some good cover.” Alison nodded, filing away the information. “Will Sterling be waiting on the other side?” Dante shook his head, eyes apologetic. “The military is covering the border on the ground and in the sky, as heavily as they can manage without alerting the public. Any Sterling presence will have them swarming. I’m sorry, but you’ve got a better chance if we stay out of the way.” Deflated, she sat on a log and heaved a weary sigh. “Will there be a vehicle for us?” Her head was pounding. “Yes.” A photo appeared in Dante’s hand. “This is it. Can you see it, Dr. Cunningham?” 81

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Ignoring her aches and pains, Alison closed her eyes, focused inward, saw the specific vehicle’s location in her mind and nodded. When she opened her eyes the photo was gone and Dante’s image was turning transparent, glowing gold as sunlight shone through it. “We’ll be sending decoys out on the roadways to draw them off, but that’s not going to ensure that you’ll make it. Our people believe the optimal time to make your crossing will be anytime after nightfall and before sunrise. But there are no guarantees any way you look at it. You’ve got to be careful out there tonight.” “Thanks.” Alison swallowed his warning and resolutely steeled her spine. “Is there anything else we should know?” Dante gave her a sympathetic grimace. “They were monitoring your last call with Ryan. It’s one of the reasons they caught up to you two so fast. Unfortunately, they also now know that there are other factors involved.” Alison frowned, wordlessly urging him to elaborate. “You discussed Dr. Édouard’s ‘preternatural effects’ on the line with Ryan.” She swore a blue streak. “Yeah, that does suck royally. They don’t know specifically what you meant by those words, but given that Sterling is involved, they’ve got a good idea that he’s not just physically enhanced by Hyde-2.” “Hyde-2?” She frowned deeper. Dante shrugged. “It’s what they’re calling the serum.” “Merde.” Henri slammed his fist into his palm. “I named the first one as a joke. Now it’s not so funny and I’m sure those eager bastards know it.” “They want this drug bad, my friend,” Dante warned Henri. “After we get you to safety, get you well again, you’ll have to hand the formula over to them. Sterling is powerful but not powerful enough to stop the full strength of the government. You’re

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very lucky. Some of the higher-ups are willing to let you go after your stunt yesterday, but there’s no way they’ll let you go without giving up the drug.” Henri spat on the ground. “I’ll give them the serum. After I’ve refined it enough to make it safe.” Dante chuckled, his golden form shimmering eerily. “We had every confidence that you were noble at heart, Doctor. It’s why we sent her.” His translucent image nodded toward Alison. “If the powers that be are willing to let Henri go, then why is the military still hunting him?” Alison asked, ignoring the repartee. “They’ve got a score to settle. You killed one of their own—” “He was a rapist,” Henri ground out between clenched teeth. “He took two women against their will and badly beat a third when she screamed for help around the knife he held at her throat.” “Yes, we know. He fancies himself dashing in his dress uniform and feeds off the adoration of ladies who think the same—at first.” Dante’s lip curled with disgust. “He very much wanted Dr. Cunningham at his mercy, as I’m sure you’re aware.” Alison’s gaze flew to Henri’s face. He resolutely avoided her searching eyes. At his guilty stance, she realized that he hadn’t told her, hadn’t even let on that he knew the man’s intentions, in some virtuous effort to protect her and avoid frightening her. She was grateful…but it sickened her to realize that she’d been no small factor in the man’s death, in Henri’s decision to execute him for his past crimes and intended violence against her person. “But unfortunately we’re the only ones who matter who know the truth about that scumbag,” Dante continued. “The Chief of Staff, understanding more about Sterling than most, believed us when we explained the situation. However, the military groups themselves aren’t privy to our files and we like it that way, so that’s the way it will stay. But that doesn’t do you any favors. In their eyes you’ve killed one officer and wounded another. They want revenge as much as they want your potion.” 83

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“And the Chief of Staff won’t enlighten them because he’s hedging his own bets. He wants the serum, one way or the other, he doesn’t really care how,” Allison scoffed, sickened by the petty politicking. “Bingo,” Dante sighed. “You two are in shit up to your knees. But,” he hastened to add, “you’ve still got a chance. Ryan’s completely convinced that you’ll make it home just fine and to me, that speaks volumes. He’s got faith in you both. You’ll make it.” Alison got to her feet, rotating her aching shoulder reflexively. “Okey-dokey then. Let’s go. We’ll have to book if we’re going to make it in time.” Dante’s astral projection faded away under Henri’s suspicious, watchful gaze. She grabbed his hand and tugged, ignoring Dante’s departure. “Will you carry the pack again? I’m sore as hell.” The black pits of his eyes fell on her, devouring her. “How far do we have to go?” His hand gripped hers tightly. “Pretty far,” she admitted, pinching the bridge of her nose with her free hand, sighing wearily. Henri swore under his breath. “You can’t be expected to hike the whole way. You’re tired and you’re hurt.” Alison snorted and untangled her hand from his. “We don’t have time to rest. We have to get you to safety. Come on.” “They should have sent someone else.” She reared back as if struck. And he may as well have physically struck her, for the pain of his words hurt worse than any blow she’d suffered so far. “I’m doing my best,” she rasped defensively, wounded. Henri’s gaze softened immediately. “I didn’t mean it that way, Alison.” “How did you mean it?” she snapped, tearing her eyes away. Ignoring his outstretched hand, she donned their supplies, wincing as her shoulder protested the

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weight but refusing to ask for his aid a second time. Palming the gun, she felt a sick weight in her stomach. “You know.” His accent was so thick she almost didn’t understand him. When she looked back at him, something happened, something broke inside her, and she was dismayed to find tears pooling at the corners of her eyes. She let the pack and the gun drop with dual thuds. “No, I don’t.” Her voice was hoarse. Henri brandished his hands helplessly. “I hate them for putting you in danger. It’s conceivable that I could lose control at any moment and kill you. Our enemies will kill you if given half a chance. How could your precious Sterling put you at such risk?” “I’m expendable,” she confessed, hating the truth of it, hating too her self-pity as she confessed it. “I’m not their best or brightest. They sent me because, if they lost me, it would be no big sacrifice.” Henri shook his head violently, stomped toward her until they were toe to toe and captured her face between his hands. Two tears trailed down her cheeks and he wiped them gently away with his thumbs, his tenderness belying the urgency in his tense form. “Non. They sent you because they knew you’d reach me and tame the monster. I understand that now.” He lowered his forehead to hers. “I’m grateful to them for that. But I still want to punish them for sending you out unprotected.” Alison breathed him in, tasted his hot breath. “I wish we could have met under different circumstances.” He kissed her open mouth warmly then, fingers spreading out to cup her skull whole. Like no other man she’d ever known, he used his whole body to kiss her. Every inch of him orchestrated her response. He cupped his larger frame around hers, molding their every curve into one sinuous form. His spicy tongue stroked the insides of her lips, paying homage there before seeking farther. The strength of his hands gently turned her head and she opened her mouth wider to accept him, surrendering all with naught but a whimper.

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His loins were hot, pressed against her belly. From their mouths to their knees, not even the space of a sigh separated them. Henri undulated against her, pouring heat like molten lava from his pores into hers. The wicked flicker of his tongue danced in her mouth, over her tingling lips. His fingers massaged her skull, slicking back her short hair and tracing down to dance around her throat. How easily he could strangle her. Choke her. Kill her. The threat and the kink made her wet. Her panties were soaked. They were both fully aware that he could smell and taste her powerful response in the heated air. Alison reveled in that, knowing that she couldn’t hide anything from him. That she was naked in a way no one else on earth could witness. It was dangerous, deadly, but unavoidable. She had no defenses against him. Her thoughts, her feelings, everything was there for him to experience along with her. He owned her body and lived in her mind. So hot, his hand, as it cupped her breast. Even through the layers of clothing she wore, she felt as if his palm was on her naked skin. Her nipple was so hard, so puckered it stung. She wanted his silken lips wrapped around it. But there was no time. “We’ll make time for this, mon cher,” he grated out, reading her like a book, jerking her clothing so that he could expose her breast to his seeking mouth. “No,” she gasped as his burning lips wrapped around her puckered nipple. “No, we can’t, Henri. Stop.” The last word ended on a gasp as he suckled her. His mouth was so wet. So hot. And every time he drew on her, she felt her clit tingle. When his tongue flicked fast and wild, punishing her with his mastery over her pleasure, she began to push against his shoulders in a vain attempt to find some space that didn’t smell, taste or feel of him. She needed that space to think, to find logic and reason. “Trust me when I say that logic and reason are vastly overrated,” Henri chuckled, moving to her other breast, leaving the first to gleam wet and rouged in the chilled air.

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He wouldn’t budge an inch. He crowded her, leaving her no distance, no singularity, holding her fast and tightly so that she could feel his muscles bunch and flex, feel his heart beat upon her. Alison tried, pushing against him with the hard flat heels of her palms, wincing as pain lanced through her wound, and Henri responded by bending her backward over the support of his arm, lowering her so that her body was almost horizontal to the ground, still pressed tightly to him. Alison grabbed hold of him and dizzily thought of the tango, wondering if perhaps she should take lessons. “I can teach you.” He sinfully murmured the words against her quivering flesh. The world tilted as he swiftly righted them, spun her and returned her to the first position, dipped low over his arm. His mouth unerringly rediscovered her nipple, lapped at it with his tongue, and Alison lost all the will she had left to fight. There’d never been any reason to—she wanted him as badly or more than he wanted her, and there was the erotic certainty that Henri would never let her go anyway. The sound of him breathing deeply of her scent was aphrodisiacal. “Hurry,” she whimpered, frantic now, clutching at his tangled hair as electric sensations raced through her. His hands jerked the fastenings of her jeans, the fabric digging into her as he tugged mercilessly. The sound of the zipper lowering screamed in her ears, the feel of his fingers reaching past her long johns and underwear licentious. Those devil digits sought out her sex, parting her slick folds, rubbing and sliding across her swollen cunt. The whole of her body clenched taut. Jerking her upright, he shoved her back up against a rough tree trunk, tearing her pants and underclothes down her legs. Alison lost her breath, hands seeking out any piece of him she could reach, running through his hair, across his bare chest and shoulders. He squatted, hooked his arms through her legs—still fettered by the cloth bunched at her ankles—and lifted her high. This opened her to him, gave him unlimited access to her pussy and if she’d even wanted to kick out, to protest, there was no way 87

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she could. She was his physical captive, his carnal slave—and she didn’t give a good goddamn about salvation. Henri buried his face in her pussy. Alison groaned, nails digging into his broad shoulders. His tongue was hot, lips lush but firm, teeth a shock of primal aggression scraping across her tender flesh. When he drew on her swollen clit like a nipple she cried out and bucked against him. The vibration of his proud grunt nearly brought her over and Alison was certain he knew it when he backed off, lapping at her with his tongue in an almost soothing rhythm, teasing her. “Just do it to me, you brute,” she demanded, thumping his biceps with her whiteknuckled fists. Even as she struck his healing arm, he laughed like a satyr, the hot blast of his breath scorching her. Retaliating, Alison undulated her hips, tugging his hair, mashing his face into her. She smiled on a sigh, pleased with herself, until he gripped her harder and stabbed his tongue into her, penetrating like a long, wriggling cock. She screamed then, ragged and suffering, holding tightly to him as he rode her, his head moving hungrily between her legs. Body surging, rising and falling, the soft flesh of her buttocks and lower back scraped against the bark, stinging her, the pain doing nothing to cool her ardor. If anything, it heightened her awareness of every decadent sensation that plundered her, slicing her apart. Henri was merciless, pushing her to the edge then demanding that she give him more of herself, never letting her soar, never setting her free from his sensual imprisonment. When he opened his mouth wide, she felt a thrill of fear that he could eat her alive. When he sucked her, pulling all the flesh he could into his mouth, between the bite of his gaping teeth, she sobbed, knowing the end was upon her at last, both dreading it and yearning for it, now that the time was at hand.

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What an ending it was. Pressure built from her knees to her lungs, her body going taut. A fizzing noise, the sound of her blood boiling, roared in her ears. Her vision dimmed. Her mouth, bruised and sore, pursed over clenched teeth. Her head thrashed against the tree, back arching sharply, hands digging into his muscles desperately. Her toes curled. And then she came. The orgasm was so extreme she lost herself completely, smashing herself against Henri’s face, feeling him slurp and swallow her buttery sap. She blacked out, her mind a blank, her body a capacitor, sucking up the electric power of his oral bombardment until she was so full her skin felt stretched. Pulses and waves rocked her, and the rhythm of her pumping hips and his flicking tongue echoed each one. Her body quivered. The world shook as hard as her hands. The sound of her breath was harsh and depraved as she slowly came back to herself and she reveled in that guilty music, knowing Henri had mastered her in a way no other man ever had or could. With one last, lingering stroke of his tongue, he gently lowered her to her feet. She swayed limp, leaning against him, still fighting to breathe as he righted her clothing. Full of starlight, dazed by it, she reached for him, her hand wriggling past the ragged waistband of his torn trousers. The velvet rope of his cock had risen, waiting for her touch, hot as molten steel and so very, very big. Thick, hard, smooth. Fingers shaking madly, she tore at the button on his pants, trying to free him, wanting to wrap her lips around him, to lick and suck him, to drink him dry. “Non.” Henri grabbed her wrists, holding her back. He kissed her wet on the mouth, his flavor mixed with hers. “Yes.” She demanded, fighting to go to her knees in front of him. Effortlessly, he held her upright on her feet with his hands around her wrists. His forehead touched hers. “We don’t have time, as you said.” He kissed her hairline. Alison moaned. “Please, let me have it,” she begged shamelessly. 89

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The smile that rode his swollen lips made her crave him even more, if that was possible. “Later,” he promised in a dark, sinful purr. A shiver raced through her, anticipation making her tingle all over. “That’s not fair,” she growled. He eased her back slowly, kissing her once more on the lips before picking up the discarded pack and, reluctantly, the handgun. “I’ll make it up to you.” He reached out and cupped her breast through her rumpled layers, his thumb rubbing the pucker of her nipple. “I promise.” He flicked the bud. She gasped, grabbing his arm with both hands for support as her knees melted, amazed that with but one wicked touch he could drive her to mindless abandon. “Come on.” He smiled lasciviously, making things low in her belly seize up wantonly. Before she could gain the wits to protest, he hoisted her up, one strong arm beneath her bent knees, the other around her back, gathering her to him. “What are you doing?” she screeched, unable to read the enigmatic look in his brown gaze. “You’re in no condition to run.” Run? No. No way! He didn’t mean… He did. Alison’s desperate cry of protest was lost in the wind as Henri sprinted full-speed through the trees, carrying her as if she weighed no more than a thought. It was all she could do to hang on tightly and listen to the steady, even rhythm of his heart in her ear.

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Chapter Seven The sun was only just setting as they drew close to the secluded, private dock where their boat waited on the shimmering carpet of water. Henri, running the whole way with Alison in his arms, had made excellent time. He was a machine. No other man could have done it without giving in to exhaustion. Yet Henri hadn’t faltered, not even once. But an hour earlier, with her ear pressed to his chest, she’d clearly heard his heart speed up and begin to pound erratically. She’d protested, argued to be set back on her own two feet, but Henri was single-minded and even more stubborn than she could be at her worst. He’d clutched her tighter and ignored her struggles, keeping a steady even pace, leaping over the brush, feet pounding against the earth. His skin was burning, his sweat slick under her hands. Each breath he took was faster, harsher, bellowing. He had pushed himself for her, and Alison couldn’t stand the thought that he courted the risk of a heart attack or stroke because she’d been too wounded, too weak, to keep up with him as she should have. Failure held the flavor of death on her tongue. “Quit thinking about what you should do, and do what you can. Coming from you, that will be far more than anyone has offered me in a long time. Believe that,” he said as he at last set her carefully on her feet, eyes obsidian glass searching her deep. “You haven’t failed, mon cher. Far from it.” Alison swallowed hard and ran her hands over his glistening skin. “You’re trembling. Your heart is racing and you’re really tense.” Her eyes darted to the pulsing black tracery of veins, reaching toward his heart. “There will be plenty of medicine on the boat. Come on.”

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“You’re the only medicine I need,” he said roughly around pursed lips, grabbing her arm in a tight grip. “Heal me, Alison. Save me,” he quietly rasped. How powerful those words, that supplication, that need in him! She heard the raw desperation in his voice, felt it rolling off him in waves. She couldn’t have denied him anything in that moment, not even her own life. But the boat was right there! The drugs— “Won’t work as fast as the potent effect you have on me. You know that,” he insisted. His muscles bulged, tense and hard as stone. Sweat beaded on his face and once more Alison realized he was physically larger in this state than when he was calm. “Don’t try for reason,” he warned. “Just heal me, if you want me.” Reason and caution had no place in their relationship, it never had. She couldn’t say no to him or to herself. She wanted to be the one to save him—in every way. When all was said and done, when they parted ways, she wanted him to remember her more vividly than anything or anyone else in his life. Rising on the tips of her toes, she pulled his head down to meet her lips. Delicious pain stung her cut palms as she slid them over the stubbled planes of his chin and jaw, and when their lips touched it seemed that an arc of static popped between their separate forms, shocking them both. They gasped, breath mingling, and Henri jerked her desperately to him. “If I’m to die, let me die in you,” he raggedly breathed, hooded eyes stygian, hands clutching. “Inside of you.” “Yes.” Shaking, senses overloaded, she wrapped her arms around him and flicked her tongue into his parted mouth. Their tongues met and she suckled his, drawing forth a groan from deep within him. The click of their teeth, the stretch of their moist lips, the feel of their entwined bodies pressed tightly and the scent of their commingled arousal was almost too much to endure at once. Henri was quaking from head to foot. His hands roughly tore at her clothes, shoving her pants down, tossing away the coat, ripping the shirts she wore so that her 92

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naked torso could be crushed to his. She had trouble with her boots, there was a long and frustrating stretch of fumbling, but finally she was free, kicking her clothes off the rest of the way so that she was practically naked but for the tatters of torn cloth hanging from her shoulders. The wind was cold but Henri was hot, his gaze, his touch and his kiss burning through her, so that the chill kiss of the air was a welcomed caress, a contrast to the heat that threatened to consume them both. Alison jerked his rags until they shredded, baring his enormous erection to the grasp of her fingers. Henri moaned into her mouth and she ripped her lips away, nibbling a path down the taut tendons of his throat, delivering stinging bites now and again that made him pump his hips into her hands reflexively. His nipples were hard as marble, the skin puckered so tightly they practically screamed for her lips. Mouth watering, she drew on one, scraping her teeth delicately over it. Henri roared, staggering back until he could brace himself against a tree with one hand while holding her head tightly to him with the other. Flicking her tongue, tasting the salty sweat of his exertions, she lost her mind a little. He responded to her every breath, her every touch, as if a slave to her charms. One of her hands pumped his cock, so thick and long it made her lightheaded, the other cupping his tight balls. The crisp hair of his sac tickled her fingers. When she squeezed and milked his velvet-smooth rope of a dick, his balls trembled and tightened, pulsing in rhythm with her ministrations. His scent, thick and musky at the center of his need, reached her nose and she breathed it in deeply, greedily. No cologne could have matched the masculine spice of his natural scent, a mixture of the wood of the trees, the bite of the air and the sweet perfume of ruthless sex. Sensuality was his fragrance and he wore it potently. Drunken senses swamping her, Alison licked a long line down the center of his muscled belly, until her chin butted the hard crown of his cock.

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Henri jerked, falling flush against a tree, reaching for her desperately. His fingertips dug into her shoulders and he groaned low, shoving his pelvis forward lustfully. Alison rubbed her face against his dick, marveling at how something so hard could feel so delicate and downy. Clouded heat swelled from his center and she swallowed the scent of him, breathing raggedly over the prize she’d coveted and now held captive in her worshipping hands. A spurt of creamy, silken fluid oozed from the mushroom flange and she darted her tongue out to steal a taste. Roaring, Henri jerked her hair painfully and she reveled in that. “Do not tease a devil, cher amour.” Lips curved in a smile, she rubbed her cheek against his flame-hot shaft and marveled at the feel of his pulse, so hard and heavy against her skin. Henri shivered and breathed raggedly. “In this darkness my heart is a garden in bloom…” His head fell back on the thread, the whisper that resonated down his form and into hers. “I’m yours, mon ange de lumière. I’m yours.” His fingers clenched and unclenched in her hair, spasming like his bobbing cock against her face. When she took him into her mouth, it was with all the reverence of a spiritual encounter. Her wet lips sealed around the wide head, so surprisingly big, firm and full, like a ripe plum. Opening her mouth wide, she slowly lowered her face over him, until he nudged the back of her throat. Her hands held onto his hips, not out of any desire to hold him still but out of a desperate need to grasp something sturdy as her world dissolved. There were no words to describe her feelings in that moment. The savage beast was weak and malleable in her embrace, his wildness tamed by her desire and her pleasure. So strong and deadly, Henri was honeyed liquid now and it was all because of her. Alison had never felt such power. The virile animal was her willing consort, completely and unreservedly. She reveled in that.

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No force on Earth or in heaven could have prevented her from sucking him with her hungry mouth as she sank onto her naked knees before him, like a supplicant at the feet of an idol but no less powerful in her lurid pose than before. “Lechez mon bite,” he rasped. “Lick it, suck it, smack your lips, sweetheart.” She moved her mouth back, until he almost popped free of her lips then sank down over him again, until she nearly gagged. As if he couldn’t stop himself, Henri pumped his hips toward her, crying out, and every downward stroke of her mouth drove him deeper into her throat. Alison could feel the beat of his pulse along the thick vein that ran the length of him, could taste the sweet drops of his cum as she squeezed him with her lips, laved him with her tongue. Henri groaned and sank down to the ground, conquered and weak. Alison moved to keep him in her mouth, scooting so that her bottom rose in the air. The chill wind kissed her swollen cunt and anus. Henri’s knees spread wide to allow her freer movement and his hands stroked her hair compulsively. She looked up, saw him watching her, saw his eyes following every movement of her swollen lips milking him. Letting him pop free with a slurping sound, she licked him with her tongue, marveling at how fast he breathed when he watched her do it. She could feel his pleasure as if it were her own. And though she wanted to drink his load, she knew he wanted more than that. Needed more than that, as did she. “Let me inside,” he rasped, his words echoing her thoughts. “Let me feel your other lips wrapped around me.” With his help, his hands anchoring around the wide cushion of her hips, she lowered herself onto him. They both watched as his broad rope disappeared into her body, they both moaned when their heat mingled, when her cream bathed his tight flesh with slippery delight. “Mon seul amour!” Alison didn’t understand the phrase but felt the thrill of his meaning all the same. She would have spoken, would have told him how wonderful he felt, but her body was 95

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so full, stretched so taut she could barely breathe, let alone utter meaningful words. And it didn’t matter—he could read her every thought, see into the heart of her and know all the things that she wanted to say but couldn’t voice. His hands stroked her, palms and fingers spread wide to feel all of her that he could reach. From her hips to her breasts, to her throat and face, he left no inch of her unloved. Bracing her palms flat on his chest, she rocked her hips upon him, feeling the unbelievable length of him sliding inside, her body making wet noises as she rose up, trying in vain to keep a hold of him, a sigh exploding from her tingling mouth every time she sank back down again, clit grinding against the crisp hairs surrounding his sex. The enormity of her sensual response was too much to contain in her mortal coil. She was shaking so badly her teeth chattered. Every time she lowered herself onto him now, he rolled his pelvis to meet her so that her G-spot and her clit hummed electrically, and she cried out softly with each tremendous impact. Their eyes met and held, his brown as fertile earth, hers gray as a stormy sky. Neither could look away, their bodies joined completely, and where before there was rough-and-tumble passion, now there was savory tenderness. Movements slowed. Embraces slip-sliding, melting, wax beneath the flame. Their forms flowed like waves crashing against the coast, echoing the faint rhythms from Erie’s edge. Henri sat up a little, cuddling her to him, pressing her bouncing tits to his chest, his hot hands gliding up and down her back beneath the tatters of her shirts, lifting and lowering her so that she could rest her quivering muscles. He was so powerful! It was no effort for him to bear her full weight, giving her the sensation of being delicate and petite in his grasp, a unique experience in itself. His mouth found hers and their tongues danced in the synchronicity to which their bodies danced. The rough pads of his fingers squeezed and kneaded her buttocks, lifting and separating the cheeks, letting the wind caress her wet core wickedly. Alison sobbed for

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breath but his mouth was a seal on hers and the only air she could breathe was his. He filled her completely, her mind and her form, and she despaired to hide some part of herself from him, striving to build her mental wall against what she was afraid he might see writ in lights in her turbulent thoughts. It was impossible. He knew all of her. Her soul was naked and bare, there was nowhere for her to hide. No. She would use her body to blind him to all else but the feel of her, and protect herself in the only way she could manage. Clawing bloody furrows on his back and sides, she squeezed her pussy walls tightly around him, milking him. But as she did, as the pressure built at the base of her spine, she realized she was fighting a battle she could never win, at war with herself. Everything she did to him resonated back to her, and they were two souls melded as one. Her clit swelled and tingled like starlight in a blanket of night. Henri saw it in her eyes, felt it in her body and flexed his cock to grind against her G-spot deep inside her body. He slammed into her, jarring her bones. She couldn’t look away from his probing gaze. Couldn’t pull her mouth away from his kiss. Couldn’t keep from clinging to him like a wild vine. Deep in the well of her cunt, she felt him pulse. Felt a hot, scorching splash of cum strike her womb. An extinction-level event crashed through her. She screamed into his mouth and her whole body went taut, like a bow strung too tightly. Her pussy clamped down on him, startling them both so that they clutched and clawed like a mindless beast with two backs, writhing on the forest floor, growling and snarling around their kiss. Her orgasm stole her vision. Henri’s fingers tugged and pulled at her nipple, wringing more pulsations of ecstasy from her form. He still rocked her, pelvis bouncing her up and down. He bent her back over his arm, tore his lips from hers and took one nipple into his mouth while 97

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his fingers continued to squeeze and twist the other. He scraped his teeth over her swollen, tender flesh, sucked her hard between his plump, wet lips. Fluid gushed from her, a mixture of his semen and her own ejaculate. And still she came and came…her broken wail was essential to her survival, to her sanity, a release of pent-up energy that echoed around the edge of the wood. Bellowing, Henri tore free of her, shoving her onto her back on the ground, forgetting to be careful of her bruises, popping his cock out of her. His cum splashed hot onto her thigh and he lowered his face between her legs. His tongue lapped at her clit. It was as big as her nipple. Three long fingers thrust into her, hooking inside to cup the feel of her body’s release. He slurped, sucked, bit and nuzzled, burying his face in her. Her legs were over his shoulders, hooking around his head. Alison’s head thrashed in the leaves, her body arching sharply, her arms outspread, fingers digging into the earth. Jerking her roughly, positioning her to his satisfaction, his cock slammed into her again. Her breast disappeared into his mouth. Her ankles crossed at his pumping buttocks. He filled her with more of his thick load, his tight balls slapping against her bottom noisily. Madness. Violent love. Endless euphoria. In Henri’s mind a ferocious battle waged between his Other and his pure self. They were mingling so thoroughly now that it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began, or if the distinction even existed anymore. The monster in him wanted to take Alison many more times, to push her body so hard and ruthlessly that she was enslaved forever, addicted to the intense pleasure he knew only he could provide. The scientist wanted to know if such a thing were possible, and if so, could she truly care for him in the wake of it. His loins were smeared with the foam of their intense mating. Their slick wetness coating him like a balm, smelling of love and passion and, yes, even danger.

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It was more than clear, in all ways, that Alison was far more deadly to him than the serum could ever be. Sure, the poison pumping through his veins could kill him at any moment. But Alison posed a greater risk, one that could and no doubt would ultimately ensure his survival in a most uncertain future. Did he want to live? He would forever pine for her touch and nearness as an anchor in the storm that now raged through his every waking moment. What kind of existence awaited him in such a state? It was a driving need, a feral compulsion to tie her to him somehow, to make her incapable of straying from him until they both died together in an orgy of passion. He wanted to make love to her for hours more, days at a stretch with no breaks, not even for food or drink. She would be all the sustenance he could ever need. But she was human yet, for all her magic that set her uniquely apart from other mortals, and he knew he could not abuse her so selfishly. The taste of her, smell of her, feel of her was too much. He was drunk on her form and her presence. Her sinuous body, with her small, firm breasts, wide hips, rounded tummy and velveteen thighs, drove him mad every time he looked at her. Her hands and fingers worked wicked spells upon him. He marveled at her, naked and glorious in his arms, her long legs that seemed to curve into eternity wrapped around him, cupping him close. Her hair was so shiny, her skin soft and fine as cashmere. He could swim in her charms and drown a happy man in the deep, dark hungry heart of her. He had killed for her. He would die for her. A look, a touch, a word from her and Henri knew he would smite down the world entire. There would be no regrets in the doing. It was a hard realization that he was far more enslaved to her than she to him. It didn’t seem fair. How to bind her? How to keep her? How to reconcile the dichotomy in him, the tender and the savage, to think clearly enough to find an answer to this most elusive equation? Unable to deny his own wanton needs, he slid his semi-hard dick deeper inside of her then out, pumping his hips slowly, just to feel the wet slipperiness of her sheathing 99

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him tight, wet and lava hot. Inside of her, touching her heart, he forgot the pain of being a self-made monster. Inside of her, he was simply a man. In the rapid marathon of her garbled thoughts he caught tendrils of how she was feeling, of how incredibly good he made her feel. Knew her orgasms had been earthshattering in all ways. Her heart was as full as her pussy, both organs swollen and bruised by his love. But it wasn’t enough. Not for him—he wanted all of her. Forever. With what breath he could muster, he whispered out the need of his own lonely heart, forgotten lyrics, poetry of lovers. “Seduce my mind and you can have my body. Find my soul and I’m yours forever.” Too late he realized he’d spoken in a tongue she could not understand and now he could speak no more. But the words weren’t solely for her. They were just as much for him—rampant emotion given voice. From the first she’d seduced his mind, his every sense. Now, in the shiver of her lithe body, he felt her grasp on his soul and feared the uncertain future more than ever before. What would come next? The world, its trappings and hate, meant nothing to him. But he could not keep her here, in their lovers’ bower, and let her watch him physically die as the serum ate him alive. He wanted to. But the still-human part of him could not scar her in such a way, even knowing that she would enjoy their time until the very moment of his death. He would see to that much and find true joy himself in the doing. Damn the serum! All his ambition had led him to this. He didn’t know himself anymore. The things he was capable of alarmed him, yet seduced him to the point of uncaring for any consequences. He wanted her, but how could she want a broken creature like himself? The demon raged. The man wept. Both shivered in ecstasy, slathered in her passion. Her beauty and her strength. It would have to be enough for now. It might have to last him always. Grunting, he pumped the last of his burning seed into her, wanting to fill her to overflowing with all that he had to give. 100

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It seemed forever but Alison gradually became aware of their surroundings again, aware of herself and him as separate entities. Henri collapsed onto her, spent and limp, breathing as heavily as she. His face cushioned on her breast, one hand anchored on her hip, the other gently stroking her free nipple. His cock slowly softened inside her and his skin gradually cooled, as did hers. Their heartbeats slowed but beat now in unison. The sweat on their bodies dried. Alison stroked his hair lazily, tracing circles on the nape of his neck and shoulders with her overly sensitive fingertips. “It’s night already. Time to leave,” she said huskily, feeling a sting of disappointment that their time together was always rushed. “It won’t always be so, Alison,” he promised, breathing the words across her flushed skin, pressing a reverent kiss to the skin above her heart. But Alison knew better, though she said nothing. Gave away nothing, she hoped, as she hid behind her flimsy mental wall. She gently pushed Henri off her and rose shakily to her feet. Her clothes were a loss. She didn’t care. The few yards to the boat would be hiked in her birthday suit and boots—Henri was in the same state, she was amused to note— but Alison knew there would be clothing waiting for them onboard. What waited beyond that…she didn’t hazard a guess. She was sticky and smelt of him but it wasn’t at all an uncomfortable state. Henri caught her wrist in his hand, his eyes meeting hers with a strange sadness that gave her pause. Strolling together, they made their way to the dock. Alison had every faith that if there were any souls about, Henri would have sensed them if she did not, so there was no shyness to make her feel awkward as he confidently approached their destination. His semen coated the insides of her thighs. Filled her pussy and her womb, a buttery ointment that soothed her raw nerve endings. A piece of him living inside of her, in the throbbing dark. 101

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Reaching the pier, she was relived to note that the boat was not unlike her own personal craft. It was a little thirty-foot skiff that would be simple to cast off and captain on her own. Henri stomped down the dock and leapt through the air, landing easily on the balls of his feet on the deck of the skiff, while Alison released the tethers and walked across the tiny gangplank. Within the boat she found clothes, food and medicine. There was a nav chart with a route mapped and marked, ready for her to follow the directions to the opposite shore where their next transport waited. There were energy drinks—for her, she knew—fresh water and a specially formulated tea for Henri. Everything and more than they needed to cross the lake safely and in relative comfort. Sterling, as always, had done their homework. While sponging herself off in a basin of water and dressing in the clean, warm clothes as fast as she could, Henri made them each sandwiches. They ate with voracious appetites, Alison downing two energy drinks, shaking off the physical satiation that cocooned her, prepared mentally for the voyage. She needed all her wits sharpened and keen, ready for anything that might occur. Henri watched her, eyes brown but no less predatory than they were when they were pitch black. She tried not to feel exposed beneath that penetrating stare but failed miserably. He was naked still, his cock long and semi-hard, thick as her wrist in its nest of dark hair. Animal magnetism oozed out of his every pore. He was effortlessly seducing her. Again. It was all she could do to focus on the task at hand, not a little resentful that before the doctor had entered her life, she’d never had such trouble working toward any goal she set for herself, great or small. Alison cast off, listening to the skiff’s well-maintained engine purr to life, and eased out into deeper waters. She navigated out of the little inlet, into the open water— glistening black glass under the pale, early night sky. Their trip would be a short one, 102

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only sixty miles or so as her map indicated. Still, she couldn’t rush things and risk unwanted attention, so Alison set the cruising speed low. The lax speed would also help avoid stirring up the occasion shallow, and as she wasn’t entirely familiar with the vessel, she wanted to ensure that the prop didn’t touch any bottom debris and stall the boat before they reached the relative safety of shore. “We’re almost home,” she murmured under her breath. Henri, dressed at last, brooding on the other end of the deck, heard her. Of course. “Home?” “Sterling.” He cocked his head to the side. “You live there?” “No. I live nearby. A few of the brightest and best live inside the compound, but I like having a separate life to retreat to now and again.” “Ah.” He was silent for a beat. “So when we get to Sterling, what happens next?” His voice was a dark shadow across the moon. Resolutely watching the water stretch out before the vessel, she gently steered through the rippling deep. “Our specialists will make sure you’re comfortable and safe.” She kept her voice even, knowing how dangerous even the slightest uncertainty might prove. Calm he may be, but he was still a loaded weapon and just as deadly. “They’ll monitor your vitals and provide you with the best environment possible for the serum to bind safely and completely with your DNA.” Henri scoffed and she looked at him. She saw a flash of his teeth, bone white in the dark. “And I suppose they won’t try to extract any information from me about the formula for their own gain?” Bitterness twisted his lips. Alison sighed quietly. Henri was still far from the unreasonable wild man of their first encounter, she could tell that, but there was fierce anger in him nonetheless and it was as ruthlessly unpredictable as his physical rages. Alison couldn’t blame him for his suspicions though. He was in a precarious position at best, totally at the mercy of strangers. She looked away again, blinking swiftly, sorry for what he was going 103

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through but unable to tell him so. “They won’t do anything you don’t want them to, Henri. I’m sure they’ll want your future support and involvement far more than they’ll want Hyde-2.” “Don’t call it that,” he barked. “I’m sorry.” She sighed again. “Henri, your brilliant mind is worth far more to Sterling than one measly formula. Not to mention your new…talents. Sterling will want to form an alliance with you, not steal from you. They’ll treat you right.” When his hands cupped her shoulders, she started. She hadn’t heard or sensed his approach. “Non. I am the one who should be sorry. I shouldn’t snap at you, forgive me. It’s just that I don’t like…” “You don’t like uncertainty.” She remembered their first real conversation and smiled. “I can relate.” Henri chuckled mirthlessly, stirring the fine hairs on the nape of her neck. He pressed a warm kiss there and massaged her shoulders. “Will you be with me? At Sterling?” Alison swallowed painfully, feeling her heart bruise in the wake of his tenderly murmured questions. “I don’t know. It’s not up to me.” How she wished it was. “I don’t want to be alone,” he whispered hoarsely, his uncertainty a metallic sting in the air. “You won’t be.” “I will, if you are gone.” He released her, his warmth fading, and went to sit against the railing, pensively looking out over the waves. His hair was a dark, wild halo whipping around his chiseled features. The truth of things was more complicated than she would have liked. When they reached Sterling, Alison feared they would say their final goodbyes and the events of the past few days would fade into memory. At least for him she was sure they would. For now he was at the mercy of a drug roaring through his blood. She was at the mercy

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of a dream, one she’d fostered since she’d first seen him lecture years ago. For herself the realization of that dream—infatuation ripened now into something more—would forever be a haunting sweetness. The remembrance of Dr. Henri Édouard being hers and hers alone, for however brief a time, would be a sustaining pleasure she kept secreted in her heart until the end of her days. But when the serum no longer controlled him… After that, if he chose to work with Sterling, their paths might cross again. If they saw each other again they would be colleagues with a short history, nothing more. If they spoke again, it would be brief and with a veneer of the professional. If. The brisk wind dried the tears before they could fall like acid to her cheeks.

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Chapter Eight Despite all her aches and pains—some unpleasant reminders of her injuries, others sensual and far more welcome—Alison’s mind was fully open, her thoughts crystalline sharp. Everything for miles was a clear picture in her head as she used that Other part of herself to guide the powerful vessel on its way. There were no threats hiding in wait, no unexpected dangers she could not avoid at a moment’s notice. She didn’t need the navigational chart anymore. The path to the opposite shore was like a road paved in silver, a shimmering beacon on the water, a safe enough passage for her precious cargo leading her onward. It was easy for her to “see” the inconspicuous Volkswagen parked near the pier that awaited the skiff. The soldiers patrolling the area on foot were also naked in the searchlight of her gift. The occasional helicopter cruised over that area—still some miles away—venturing out over the open water for a short distance, searching and then roving away. Alison monitored the action long enough to discern a sort of rhythm, a pattern she could use to plan their entrance to the shore and onward to freedom. “I can smell the bloodthirsty bastards from here,” Henri growled at her side. It was the first thing he’d said in a long while. “Their eagerness tastes like rotten fruit.” “Have some more tea, Henri. Ignore them for now. It’ll be awhile yet.” “You ignore them! You’re not saturated in their stink. You can’t hear their thoughts ringing in your ears. You don’t know the awful things some of them have done!” he snarled, gnashing his teeth. “I can even see them, through your mind’s eye.” Alison reached out and touched his marred arm. The veins moved like Cthulhu’s tentacles beneath his skin, beneath her hand. Mustering her courage, she did not pull away but stroked her thumb over one prominent black line. “They’ll kill you if they see you,” he growled, running a hand through his wild hair. 106

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She nodded, knowing he was right. “But they won’t. Trust me. We’ll be fine.” “I should have just given them the damned serum, untested, and let them deal with the consequences.” His knuckles popped loudly as he clenched his fists. “You know you couldn’t have done that without immense guilt, Henri. No matter what you’re thinking now, you’re not a man without conscience.” “Would that guilt have been any more unbearable than what I suffer now?” he cried. “I’ve killed, Alison. I’ve taken lives with these bloodied hands.” He held those hands up before his face, looking at them as if they weren’t even a part of him. “You’re not a murderer. And you weren’t monstrous enough to expose innocent patients to the serum, when it would have been far easier and safer for you to do so. Think of all the lives you’ve saved by what you’ve sacrificed.” “I played god, probed too deep into human chemistry and now I’m a fiend.” He bled self-loathing. “No, don’t say that. Don’t think it either.” Alison squeezed his arm reassuringly. “Why don’t you tell me about your life, Henri? How it was before all of this.” Anything to redirect his attention—she could hear his heart pounding. She heard him breathing deep, knew he struggled to contain his sanity and his overwhelming guilt. It was awhile before he spoke. “I was born in Lyon. My mother and father are both doctors. I learned my lessons quickly and graduated very early. I attended université at age twelve, graduated with my doctorate and went into governmentally funded research by the time I was seventeen. I earned more degrees, made political and professional alliances. I claimed many patents. I moved to the U.S. a few years ago with a good team of scientists and carte blanche to research and develop whatever I wanted for both private and public foundations.” Alison smiled at his autonomous dissertation. “I know all that. It’s been covered in just about every publication about you. But what about your life?”

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He frowned at her. “That is my life.” Nothing was ever easy with this man. “What do you do for fun? Romance? What do you do privately, in your spare hours?” “I work. I study.” He seemed insulted that she might suggest he would dare do otherwise. “Any girlfriends?” she nudged doggedly. “Boyfriends? Pets?” Henri pulled away from her and she was afforded the rare sight of him hesitating awkwardly. “I have dated.” He said the words slowly, as if confessing a shameful secret. “Women and men.” He eyed her reaction to that. “I prefer women, just so you know.” Alison blushed but her curiosity was highly piqued. “What are men like?” He blinked owlishly. “Harder.” She was startled into laughter. “They don’t judge me on my appearance so much.” This took her aback, silencing her amusement. There, naked in his tone, was a real confession. Looking at him, even in the darkness, he appeared beautiful to her. Sexy. Rakish. But it was clear that he did not believe he was so, and that perhaps in his past others had not believed it either. “You’re the sexiest man in the world,” she said huskily. His hands were gripping her then. She gasped, jarred as ever by how quickly he could move. “Don’t tease me.” Heart jumping, she cupped his face, careful to remain gentle and non-threatening. Somehow she understood this was a vitally important moment for them both. “You’d know if I was lying.” The hard heat of his body pressed tightly to hers. “How can this be so?” he asked, the words introspective. His voice hushed, his breath at her ear as he hugged her close. “All my life I’ve worked. I’ve loved the thrill of discovery, of gaining new knowledge.

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The drive and need to know more. But in secret I’ve longed for sweetness too. For romance.” His fingers dug into her flesh. “I’ve never had it. It’s the price for being a gaunt, pale shadow of a man. For being a geek, a nerd. I never expected more than the embrace of my microscope and my lab.” “You deserve more,” she insisted passionately. “You’re an incredible man, Henri. And a marvelous lover.” A tortured groan tore free of his lips. “Why now, when so much is wrong in my world, do you come and tempt me beyond reason?” His breath was ragged in her ear. “Is it because my body is harder now, more manly? Do you find my wildness exciting? Would you say the same tender things if I were still just the doctor and not the drug?” Alison clutched his shoulders. “To me you are and always have been Henri, the man.” “Sacre tonnére!” he rasped, trembling, shaking her roughly. “You make me feel too much. You’re more damaging than any poison.” He slammed his lips to hers, tongue probing her mouth as it opened on a gasp, his fervor threatening to consume her as it always did. Holding her so tightly she could barely breathe, he imprinted himself on her. Alison knew that if she lived to be a thousand, she’d never forget the burn of his frame as it pressed against her like this. His hands were everywhere at once. Squeezing her tits, massaging her belly, rubbing over her hips and down her legs as far as he could reach while still holding her lips captive with his. The wind was blowing, a storm caress across their writhing forms. Alison clutched at him, letting her hands explore as hungrily as his. His shoulders were so broad. His waist lean, stomach hard as marble. His buttocks were lean and the muscles flexed beneath her palms, reminding her of how they flexed when he pumped himself into her. The length of his cock was like an iron pike. She grabbed it, rubbing her hand up and down feverishly. Her other hand spread over the flexing ridges of his biceps, 109

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marveling at his wiry strength. Beneath each of her hands there was a masculine magic unequaled in the world. Before she could protest he turned her away, pushing her hands away, bending her slightly over the steering column. The boat barely shifted in the water, as if forgiving them for their play. It still followed the silver pathway Alison had directed it upon. It was a wonderful vessel. “You’re the only vessel I care for now, chéri.” Everything inside her clenched, pulsing orgasmically. Henri’s teeth tugged at her clothes, his breath bellowing. The intense heat of his breath pierced through the cloth as he pressed kisses from the nape of her neck to the swell of her ass. He rubbed her shoulders and she sighed. His face nuzzled her tailbone and she groaned. He covered her completely, draping her in kisses and caresses the likes of which she’d only ever dreamed of before. His passion, his wildness and desire were palpable and threatened to drown her. She was breathing hard, needing to taste his kiss, but when she would have turned to him, he pushed her away again, holding her face to the side with his palm. “Drive the boat. I’ll drive you,” he purred, wicked and sinful. Bending over the steering column, she tried and failed to focus on that silvery road leading home. It was a useless endeavor. Henri had her, his hands all over her, beneath her clothes, scorching her bare skin. Then her pants were around her ankles and she quickly stepped out of them, toeing off her sneakers, desperate as he to discard the barriers that remained. How had things spiraled beyond her control so fast? So completely? It didn’t matter. She wanted this chaos. Needed it. Like she needed air. Nibbling then biting her shoulders, he jerked her panties brutally, bunching them in his fist and pulling so that they drew into a taut rope between the crack of her ass and cunt. Yanking rhythmically, he caused the material to rub back and forth in her canyon,

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soaking the fabric right through, making her flesh swell and tingle. The material rubbed over her clit repeatedly, until the circle of flesh was ready to burst. With a vicious snap, he tore the panties completely off her and tossed them away. She felt the naked, fat head of his cock as he used one hand to rub it up and down her wet slit. It took all her willpower not to scream and beg for him to ram it into her right then and there. But they both wanted a little more teasing before the real game began. Those nimble fingers of his found their way under her shirt again and discovered her nipple. She wasn’t wearing a bra and thanked all the saints for that when he pinched and tugged on her puckered skin. If she weren’t so high on sex she would have fainted. But unconsciousness was the last thing she wanted now. Right now she wanted him to fuck her raw. Scooting her bottom back against him, she wordlessly begged for his touch. He did not disappoint. His hands moved to fondle the globes of her buttocks, squeezing, plumping and spreading them so that he could look at her, fully exposed, naked and wet and waiting. “Pet my kitty,” she panted, a desperate plea. “Touch my pussy please, Henri.” Ever attentive to her needs, Henri slid his hand between her legs, using the flat of three fingers to part the folds of her sticky, swollen heat. He patted her, softly at first, as she’d requested. Then he delivered a stinging slap to her sodden flesh. Alison yelped, jolted. A gush of wetness wept from her pussy and he scooped it up with his rough fingertips, spreading it over the thick nether lips. She rose to her tiptoes, displaying for him without shyness, arching her buttocks high, bending her knees a little to part her thighs wider for more of his delicious punishment. He spanked her cunt again. The slap sounded wet and sharp in her ears. She panted for more, wriggling suggestively. His hand smacked her harder, three times in quick succession. Her cunt had never been so wet! 111

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“Stick your finger in me. Your whole hand. Anything.” It wasn’t a request. “Do it hard.” Her voice was ragged, shaking as her body shook. He did as she commanded, slamming his long middle finger into her. With his thumb, he rubbed wanton circles around her puckered anus and she bucked wildly, unable to contain her rising excitement. Bending to his knees behind her, he spat on her anus, his saliva burning hot and slippery. Gently, delicately, he slid his thumb inside her. She fell to her knees, her ass in the air. He shoved two more fingers inside her pussy, stretching her mercilessly. Deep inside her, she felt the fine scrape of his nails and saw a burst of stars behind her tightly clenched lids. “God!” she choked. “Fuck me, Henri. Now. Please, Henri, please!” His fingers popped out of her and his cock popped in. The ridge of his plumshaped head speared the rim of her pussy, barely preparing her for the massive girth of him as he slammed home. Alison pressed her cheek to the cool surface of the deck and moaned low, barely recognizing her own voice. So long, so thick, so hot and wide and heavy…Alison didn’t know if she’d survive his cock this time. How on Earth had she survived it before? His hips bumped her buttocks as he began the pistoning motion they both craved. Sliding deep inside her, withdrawing completely so that she nearly screeched with frustration, he shoved back into her, each time a new and uncharted delight. “I’m dying.” The words exploded from her mouth. They burned her brain. “If you wish to die, I’ll give you your la petite mort, mon amour.” He moved faster, riding her harder, rougher than he’d ever dared before. “You’ll love it, I promise you.” Alison bucked back against him, welcoming everything, holding back nothing. Henri spread her buttocks with his hands, digging his fingers into her flesh so that she felt the danger of his bruising. He spat on her bobbing anus again and slid one long, lean finger into it gently, belying the violence of their bodies’ mating. He didn’t want to hurt her. 112

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Alison wanted him to tear her apart. To climb into her like a skin suit, to stretch and fill her completely. He chuckled at her ear, hearing her need, smelling it, tasting it, as he did all her most intimate thoughts, but still he would not abuse her, though she would have welcomed pain equally with the pleasure. He gently flexed his finger in her ass. But his cock slammed into her like a battering ram. A dichotomy that she would never be able to live without again. The wind intensified. So did their lovemaking. It was all Alison could do now to stay on her raw knees. Her hands fisted on the cool deck, grasping for a hold on anything in the storm that flung her body to and fro. Her mouth gasped for breath, her tongue dry and throat sore from her endless groans and cries. “Stay with me,” he whispered. “Stay with me.” Chanting it over and over like a mantra. No force beneath the heavens could have separated her from him. Whatever small piece of her heart she had left she gave to him now, freely and forever, uncaring of the consequences to be paid. His free hand found its pathway around her, sought out her clit and pinched it gently. She was so juicy his fingers were slippery. They rubbed her clit, her pussy lips, tugging now and then on her piercing. “Harder,” she whimpered. “Fuck me.” The good doctor nearly slammed her pelvis up into her shoulders, he pumped into her so hard. Her fingers floundered, found his toying with her clit and tangled with them. They both stroked her sopping wet flesh together. Her hips undulated back and forth, her back bowing sharply. The wind stole her shrill scream of ecstasy.

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They came together. Their hearts soaring. His cum was hot and thick, jettisoning into her. Her pussy was tight and throbbing. They milked every ounce of their love, each from the other, before collapsing in a heap on the swaying floor. Henri groaned, pumping one last time into her, his hips slamming into her buttocks, his cock sliding home, his cream filling her hot and thick. Alison was sore, bruised, wounded and scared, but she’d never felt so good. Henri laughed and let up his hold on her. She turned and sat back on her heels and watched him with hooded eyes and a sleepy smile. Smoke filled his eyes, laughter dying immediately. His gaze goaded her to watch as he palmed his semi-hard cock. The long, strong fingers wrapped around his shaft. Alison licked her lips. Henri followed the darting of her tongue with his eyes then deliberately traced a path with them down her body, gaze coming to a full stop on her sex. Alison didn’t need to read his thoughts, for they were her own. She grinned savagely and spread her knees wide, her own hand moving between them to open the folds of her sopping wet cunt. Their hands moved in unison. They masturbated, eyes locked on each other’s fingers, on each other’s glistening genitals. Henri grunted, his hand pumping his cock faster and faster. Alison moaned, gasping for breath, and diddled her clit with her fingertips until stars danced in her vision. “Je jouis,” he growled. The massive, purple head of his cock swelled to impossible proportions. His fist tightened, his hips bucked. “Je jouis!” he barked again. “I’m coming. If you want my cream, sit on my face and let me have yours.” Dizzy, drunk, she might have fainted at the wickedness in his words but she wanted something far better than a swoon. She quickly did as he bade, squatting over his waiting mouth, his dancing tongue and moued lips. As the searing heat of his kiss

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lapped up the juice that drenched her pussy, Alison pressed a wet kiss to the crest of his cock. Henri held it still as she opened her mouth wide and swallowed him deep. Letting her have her way, he clutched the flare of her hips and held her still for the invasion of his tongue. The taste of her sex was like manna. Sweeter even than that forbidden ambrosia. He ate her with an endless appetite. The silken velvet slide of him in her mouth consumed her. Alison sucked him, licked him, kissed him. Her hands roved over every inch of him she could reach, lingering over the tight sac that tickled her nose every time she sank her face onto him. He smelled like a dream. Delicious and unique and better than any perfume created by man. The length of his tongue speared her. It teased her clit. It lapped at the tight rim of her anus. Alison moaned around her mouthful of flesh. Henri groaned, scraping his teeth decadently across her pussy. Bobbing her head, pumping her hips as much as he’d let her with his strong hands guiding them, she raced him to the finish they both coveted. When his cum splashed like liquid fire into her mouth, she sucked the salty-sweet honey down. Henri used his tongue and lips and teeth and breath to bring her over, his hands slapping her ass to urge her on. When her orgasm took her, she gushed her own special cream. He licked every drop clean, reveling in her magical flavor. Swallow after swallow, Henri’s semen tasted better with each draw of her greedy lips. Alison had never tasted cum, had never wanted to, but this intimate exchange formed an unbreakable bond she’d never believed possible between two mere mortals. Her special lover was inside her now. A part of her. She’d captured his body’s tears, eaten them and absorbed their power. Like an ancient barbarian eating the heart of an enemy, she felt his essence unite with hers, his strength become her own with each hungry gulp. 115

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One last spurt from both of their bodies, their souls, and they were at last entirely spent. Alison rolled off him, panting, heart racing. Turning to follow, Henri’s fingers toyed with her slit, his mouth pressing warm kisses to the crown of her sex. Whispered words in all the languages he knew fell from his lips and heart. Wrapped in his spell, Alison savored the moment and worshipped his phallus like a supplicant before a god. Her hands marveled at the length and breadth of him. His beauty was unmatched. Her mouth savored the texture and lingering flavor, tongue licking from base to tip, lips stroking his sac, leaving no inch of him unloved. Reality intruded on them both at once as the waves rocked the boat, choppier here near the shore… “Damn. We’re close,” he rasped, pressing one final, lingering kiss to her clit, flicking his tongue out as he drew away. “Hurry, bébé. Get dressed. I can sense our enemies.” He growled the last. “I’m sorry, mon ange, but we’ve not much time.” Time. How Alison hated that word! Quivering, smelling and tasting the nectar of sex, she dressed as fast as she could manage as her body still quivered deliciously and fought to reassign her wayward thoughts. She readied the boat to dock, found the gun among their things and tucked it in her waistband with a cruel twist of her lips. There was so much at stake here. How could she have forgotten, even for a second? “Shh.” Henri embraced her warmly from behind, clothed once more as well. “Don’t think that way. What we have is as important—more so—than anything else we face. Believe that!” He turned her in his arms and gently brushed his lips over the sore flesh near her stitches. His eyes, when they met hers, were warm brown pools. The color of fertile earth.

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His mouth was swollen and soft as silk when he pressed it against hers. He whispered something long and lilting in his native tongue against her mouth and she sighed, their breath mingling. That voice would haunt her forever. This perfect night would sustain her until she breathed her last.

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Chapter Nine They docked the boat silently. There were people about, even at this late hour, but Alison was careful to ensure that no one noticed them. What Dante, the Housekeeper, had told them held true—Sterling’s people had ensured that they would not be hassled by any officials. Still, Alison caught a glimpse in her mind’s eye of soldiers in plain dress patrolling the area diligently. It took every bit of skill she possessed to keep track of all the people looking for them. Henri seemed loath to separate from her in any way and kept touching her, a stroke on her hand, her arm, her back, anywhere he could reach. It threatened her tenuous hold on her gift but it was too savory to feel him in any measure, however small, for her to give it up willingly. Still, his life was in her hands. His survival was dependent upon her now, as it never had been to this point. She grabbed one of his wandering hands in hers and held it tightly. And otherwise ignored him—as much as she was able—while they left the waterfront behind. The hum of a helicopter vibrated overhead, flying low but not too low to draw unwanted attention by the locals. Alison focused and saw the pilots in her mind, knew which way they looked with their well-trained eyes, and darted out of their sight whenever they approached too close. She resolved not to let her guard down for a second. As they dashed through the night, avoiding light whenever possible, sticking to the darkness, Alison began to feel a new threat emerge. One she’d forgotten, one she hadn’t heeded, as accustomed to Henri as she had become over the past few days. But now, in the confines of civilization, that threat became a taste on the air and the flavor of it was blood.

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Henri’s monster was stirring. There were people here. Not just the occasional soldier now, but civilians too. And where there were people, there were bound to be sinners. And where there were sinners, the merciless judge in Henri waited… To come out and play. To punish. To kill. She could hear her lover’s breath stutter and catch. Alison could easily feel the heat baking off him now—worse than ever before. The grasp of his fingers was tighter, as if he might let go, and his palm sweated against hers. “Focus on me, Henri,” she hissed, despairing at the endless opportunities for failure. “Don’t even look at anyone else, you hear me?” “There’s a woman over there who left her newborn baby on the steps of a police station,” he rasped, stumbling, looking into the darkness with black eyes. “Well don’t kill her for it,” she snapped, shoving him hard against the wall of a building when a group of marines approached. Gritting her teeth, Alison slammed her hand over his mouth as a precaution and waited until the three plainclothed men passed them by. With supreme control, she used her gift to monitor them as they kept on walking away. Once she was certain it was safe, Alison let Henri go and continued on toward the car, half dragging him behind her. It wasn’t far now, she was immensely relieved to note. “That man embezzled over half a million from his brother’s company,” Henri pointed, eyes unfocused and wide. He looked stoned out of his gourd. Alison jerked him hard and ignored his grunted expletive. “Quit noticing everything, damn it.” “I can smell the decay of avarice and gluttony and murder. It’s everywhere, all around us. I didn’t know how bad the world could be…” He choked on his words. The anguish she heard in his tone was seething into rage. She had to get him away from

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these strangers fast, but every time she thought they were in the clear, someone looking for them drew too near and they had to pause. Frustrating didn’t cover it by half. The helicopter passed overhead again, like a buzzard circling over a rotted corpse. The passenger, gripping a laser-sighted tranquilizer gun, nearly saw them. The pilot was looking the other way, thankfully. Alison had to use all her weight to shove Henri into a shadow and pray that it was enough to hide them. The chopper hummed off and Alison felt faint with her relief. Her heart was ready to burst. Her brain wanted to ooze out her ears. And her body was a flesh-covered ocean of aches and pains. “There’s the car,” Henri said in her ear, his voice like crunching bone. She shook off her own selfish preoccupations and saw the dark blue Jetta parked at a curb, waiting. Nothing had ever been so welcome a sight. With a silent, joyous laugh, she gripped his hand tight. Alison ran to the vehicle with Henri in tow, his black eyes darting feverishly. There was a key taped above the front driver’s-side tire, where she’d known it would be. The triumphant laugh did escape her lips this time. She ripped the tape away and depressed the button on the key that would unlock the door. The lights on the car flashed… “Hey! You there! Stay where you are.” Two women appeared ahead of them in the narrow one-way street. “Shit!” “Merde!” Henri echoed. “It’s them!” One of them had a flier in her hand—no doubt a picture of Henri to help aid their search. “That’s the guy!” Alison drew her gun and waved it in front of her. “Back off, bitches!” Alison and Henri jerked open their doors and fell into the car

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The women’s exclamations were drowned out as Alison and Henri closed the vehicles doors. Alison dropped the gun into her lap, rammed the key in the ignition, started the car, revved the engine high, threw it into drive and took off with the pedal stomped flat to the floor. The two soldiers—both with the Air Force, Alison knew without needing it verified, her gift honed so sharply by the press of danger and urgency that nothing escaped her—moved to block the car. They stood in the middle of the street and brandished their own guns. Alison bared her teeth savagely and kept her foot on the gas, knowing they wouldn’t dare open fire and risk hurting Henri. The Jetta’s headlights glinted on the soldiers’ wide eyes. Of course the women flew out of the way at the last possible second, brave but not stupid. Alison’s sigh of relief was almost a bellow. What would have happened if she’d hit them, killed one or both of them…would Henri have judged her guilty and killed her in reprisal? “Self-defense,” he growled at her side through his own gritted teeth. “No guilt in that.” Shaken beyond her scope of imagination, Alison laughed, the sound mirthless in the cushioned interior of the car. “They’ll be up our ass once those heifers get the word out. And we’ve got a twenty-minute drive, depending on traffic.” She tasted the bitter bile of failure on her tongue. “Christ, what a mess!” She slammed her hand on the steering wheel. Taking a curve at a speed that alarmed all onlookers and passing traffic, she merged onto a main road. Darting between cars in a manner that would have angered the most patient of drivers, Alison ignored the honking horns as she kept a relatively constant speed down the thankfully sparsely populated road. Well, sparsely for a Cleveland road, that was. A mile passed. Two.

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“Pull over!” Henri shouted over the sound of their tires squealing as she barreled around another corner, fishtailing onto another street. “I said pull over, woman, god damn and blast it!” Alison responded to the command on a cellular level, stomping the brake at once, sliding on the damp pavement before coming to a halt. Henri was out of the car before she could think about what she’d just done, what immense danger she courted by stopping, even for a second. Henri reached out and grabbed a nearby pedestrian. He threw the bewildered man onto the ground and there was a scuffle. “No!” Alison screamed, fingers fumbling on the catch of her own door as she tried to escape the vehicle. Horns honked and high beams flashed. “Henri, don’t you dare!” The echo of her desperate plea hadn’t even faded when Henri jumped back into his seat, slamming his door closed. “Drive.” Unable to do anything but react, she gripped the wheel and jerked it. “What the hell was that all about?” she roared, peeling rubber, cutting off another car without even a shred of remorse. Henri grinned at her, his teeth bright in the gloom. He held up something silver—it flashed beneath the glare of a streetlamp as they sped past it. “Voila! Cell phone. I thought you might need to give your friends a little wake-up call.” Alison choked and sputtered. “You stole that man’s phone?” Why was that so riotously funny at this moment, she wondered? But there was no time to dwell on it, no time to laugh like the deranged lunatic she feared she’d become. She was darting through traffic again, aiming the car like a missile. “Don’t worry, bébé. He deserved it. Trust me.” His words, while meant to be lighthearted, were tinged with a dark and sinister stain. She trusted him implicitly.

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Gaping, she slung the car around yet another corner. “You didn’t hurt him,” she marveled. “Even though he deserved it.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “Cool, non?” A garbled sound, something akin to laughter but far more strained, escaped her tight lips. “Gimme the damned phone, you crazy French bastard.” Henri laughed outright, this time with a healthy dose of genuine mirth, handing her the phone. “You’re more of a beast than I am when you’re pissed.” He taunted her with a grin and a quick peck to her cheek. Ignoring the thrill of his mouth on her skin, however brief, Alison didn’t even look at the number pad as she dialed the digits she knew would patch her straight through to Ryan Murdock. He answered on the first ring. “Where are you?” He’d been waiting. “Ask Diane. I can’t find the street sign,” she barked impatiently, banking a curve like an adrenaline junkie on crack. Ryan mumbled something beyond her hearing, speaking to the precog Alison had instinctively known would be with him at this crucial moment. Colored lights flashed in her rearview mirror. From overhead a searchlight illuminated the vehicle and Alison swore a blue streak, slamming her hand violently on the steering wheel in her storm of fury. The police siren chirped, the patrol car dogging her tail like a too-eager lover. A voice roared over the loudspeaker. “Pull over!” “What do I do, Ryan?” she snapped, accelerating, ignoring the command of an authority she had no respect for, given the timing. “I need a place to go, now.” A traffic light, shining ruby red, loomed ahead. There wasn’t much traffic at any of the four stops but it was a small bit of luck and worth little more than a grimace and a prayer. Alison gripped the wheel tight and sped through the intersection, barely missing a pickup truck as it cruised toward her on the right side. Alison whooped in

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triumph as the police car was forced to slow for the pickup to pass, giving her some much needed breathing room. Henri, clutching the “oh shit” handle above his door, laughed maniacally. If they weren’t in danger of dying, Alison mused inanely, this might actually be some strange kind of fun. A new voice spoke in her ear. “Dr. Cunningham, this is Diane. One of our projectors is sending you a coordinate. Can you see it?” A strange tickle insinuated itself somewhere between her frontal lobe and her skull. A lance of pain made her wince but in its wake, Alison clearly saw the location where Ryan and his men planned to intercept them and spirit them away to safety. “I’m almost there.” She had to force the words out past the fear, pain and crazy laughter that choked her. “We’ll be waiting.” Ryan again, his voice strong in her ear, lending her much needed courage. “You can do it, Alison. Just keep moving. You can do it.” Alison tossed the phone into the backseat and gripped the wheel with both hands. “I can do it,” she whispered faintly to herself, blinking rapidly against a sudden blurriness in her tired eyes. “You’re amazing, darling,” Henri praised her. The car scored some air off a rise in the road and he laughed again. The siren behind them roared. They passed an intersecting street. There weren’t a lot of street lamps here and the shadows were deep. From out of those shadows, on the left, came the shiny, silver grill of another police car. Its headlights had been blacked out to ensure a surprise appearance. It approached on thundering rubber hooves. Henri roared a warning. It came too late. The patrol car slammed into the Jetta, sliding the smaller car far to the right, into waiting darkness. Metal crunched. Glass

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shattered. Alison’s head whipped sharply, her neck popping. She screamed, a broken verbal explosion of agony. She lost her grip on the wheel. Henri grabbed it for her, turned the vehicle out of the crash masterfully, his reflexes a marvel to witness. Unfortunately the patrol car turned with them, grinding metal against metal, sending the Jetta into a dizzying tailspin. Alison’s heart stopped painfully. Henri grabbed her, offering his cradling form as protection as they whipped around. And around. A building stopped their progress, crumpling the trunk of the Jetta. As they slammed to a stop, Henri’s embrace was the only thing that kept Alison from twisting her neck yet again. Silence fell like a wet blanket. Alison didn’t know if that was good or bad. Everything inside her was chaos, but not even the faintest sound reached her ears. Alison tasted blood—she’d bitten her lip— and feared she might grow accustomed to the acrid flavor if things kept spiraling out of control like this. Her vision failed. Her breath cut and stung her lungs like razor blades dipped in vinegar wrapped in a coating of salt. The next thing she knew, Henri was dragging her out of the car. A shard of metal penetrated cruelly into her calf muscle and she roared invectives, all her pain coalescing into a mutant shark that feasted on her abused form. Somehow, her hand gripped the gun and she waved the weapon around in the hopes that it would warn off anyone near enough to give them trouble. Then Henri was running with her in tow down a narrow side street. Her body was working on autopilot, her motor functions intact only through sheer force of will. Her body was racked with pain—all the injuries she’d endured in this debacle threatening to defeat her.

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Sirens wailed. A voice filled with authoritarian conviction demanded that they halt. Thankfully, the owner of that voice was still far enough behind them that they continued to run without danger of being grappled to the ground. Alison stumbled, tripping over a curb. Henri bent, hoisted her up and threw her over his shoulder. The world spun dizzyingly. She nearly puked but managed to hold onto the gun. Henri effortlessly scaled a fire escape, the metal groaning under their combined weight. Alison saw people below them, pointing and watching. Two men followed them up the stairs to the roof. One was a policeman, the other a Marine in military fatigues. Alison wondered how she could notice that while she was in such danger of losing her lunch as well as her consciousness. Knowing one could be useful, the other deadly, she lifted her head and vomited down on the heads of their pursuers. The two men roared, jumping aside, but too late to avoid the worst. Henri laughed. Or she thought he did. Her ears were ringing strangely and every sound seemed to echo off the walls of her mind like Ping-Pong balls. Their pursuers continued the chase. Spitting bile, Alison pointed the gun and fired twice, not aiming to injure or kill, but to impress upon them the need for caution. With her free hand she weakly flipped them the bird. Her head bounced against Henri’s back and she moaned, fighting for the last reserves of her endurance. She wrapped her arms around him to still her movements until at last, after an eternity, they achieved the roof. Henri sat her gently upon her feet. She swayed in his comforting grip, gritted her teeth and held her own through sheer, stubborn willpower. “We just have to make it to the other side and down to the street below,” Henri encouraged her. He’d seen their destination in her thoughts, of course. Tasted those thoughts as they’d moved about in her mind. She was so grateful for that, for his knowledge, for his strength and understanding. Tears filled her eyes. 126

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Her hand in his, they ran to the opposite side of the building—it seemed such an enormous area to cross—and looked for a way down. Time slowed. Alison would later find it strange that at the last, time—their ever pressing and most dangerous enemy—would crawl. Alison didn’t have to look behind her to see their enemies as they made it to the roof. Didn’t have to turn to catch sight of the gun in the policeman’s grasp as he raised it and took careless aim. Alison turned and deftly fired her own weapon. The Marine shouted for the lawman to stop. To wait. He didn’t want to risk hitting the doctor. Too late. The policeman’s shot fired even as Alison’s bullet struck him in the stomach. It didn’t require any conscious thought on Alison’s part. Her choice had been made the moment she’d left Ryan’s office to find Dr. Henri Édouard. In the warped tunnel of inching time, even as her finger pulled the trigger, she stepped in the way of the bullet she knew would come. Turning again, clasping Henri from behind, she shielded him with her body—the only defense left to her was that of her own sacrifice. As she’d suspected all along might be the case. The bullet struck her high in the back, spun her off balance so that she teetered, letting go of her lover. She felt the pain of the wound but was strangely disconnected from it. From all her pain. Miles away she heard the sound of Henri’s anguished cry. Looking down, she saw the edge of the building and knew her toes were dancing on the ledge. Her knees lost all feeling, buckling. She fell. The earth rose up to meet her, lightning fast now, time speeding up again… Henri caught her in mid-flight. She felt the heat of his embrace. A sigh…from her numb lips the sound reverberated throughout her. Into him. They alighted. The pavement cracked beneath Henri’s feet as he cushioned their fall, landing like the jungle

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cat she’d always known him to be. Alison barely felt the impact, held safe in his arms like a babe. Bright headlights blinded her. Two vehicles flanked them. One black Town Car, one black Navigator. Official-looking vehicles, unmarked though they were. “Sterling,” she whispered, numb to the relief she knew was her due. Henri looked down at her. She gazed back at him through blurred eyes, as if from far below him. “It’ll be all right now, Dr. Édouard,” she murmured. “You’re safe.” “Alison, don’t.” He choked out the words, clutching her, but she couldn’t feel his arms anymore. A hot splash on her cheek—he wept. “Goodbye.” She reached to touch his face but the reach was so great. Blackness took her. Ryan appeared. One second he wasn’t there, the next he was right in front of Henri, reaching out for Alison’s limp form. Henri snarled, jerking her beyond the taller man’s reach, pure animal now as his lover died in his arms. From up above, the helicopter’s searchlight illuminated them. Sirens wailed, but distant still. “Give her to me!” Ryan yelled, reaching out insistently. Alison was completely lifeless now, her body cooling. Henri felt his heart tear. “I can’t,” he choked. “It’s okay.” Ryan’s urgency bled into his tone but there was a tender understanding in his scent that was reassuring. Henri reacted to that telltale flavor, a statement that could never have fooled him. There was no lie he could not discern, and Ryan was clearly confident and in control, even in their pressing hurry. “Let her go, Édouard.” Alison’s slight weight was torn from his grasp. Ryan disappeared with her— disappeared. Henri could only marvel. He looked down at his empty hands. They were red and wet with blood. Her blood.

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Hands tugged at him. Sterling’s men. They meant him no harm. He could smell and taste their thoughts easily. They pushed him into the dark confines of the larger vehicle and closed the door on him. Henri saw the other car through a heavily tinted window, smelled his lover dying inside it even through the barriers and watched as they drove away, each vehicle taking an opposite route. The perfume of Alison’s blood stung his nostrils. He roared in anguish and beat at the confining walls, rocking the vehicle. There was a faint sting as someone injected him with some unnamed drug. It didn’t matter. Alison was gone from him. A voice assured him he would be calm in a moment. Ryan appeared at his side, out of nowhere. How did the man do that? It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. “Will she live?” Henri grabbed the man’s collar, jerking him savagely. Another sting, another needle in his biceps, another dose of…whatever. “Will she live?” The scent of her in the blood that coated him, so familiar and yet tinged with something else, drove him to the brink of madness. Something sweet and innocent that he could not define lived in that scent. Something he hadn’t smelled on her before. Was it her death? “She’ll live.” Ryan was rasping the words into his ear and Henri’s fingers were around his throat, squeezing. Another sting. He let Ryan go. The taste of Alison on his tongue, so sweet. Still, there was that unnamed something mixed with it. “It’s okay now, Doctor. Everything will be all right. You’re safe.” Those were her words but they came out of Ryan’s mouth now. “Alison is safe. Trust me.” There was nothing left in Henri with which to trust. His world had died. As she’d taken the bullet that was rightfully his, as the light had left her storm-gray eyes, as her

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body had fallen limp in his hands…everything alive in him had died. Her blood was all over him, on his hands and clothes. Henri roared, clutching his hair, scratching at his weeping eyes. Smearing her life’s blood, given so selflessly for a devil like him, on his face. But nothing could erase the lingering image of her. The guilt he would carry all his life, the loss, the dashed hopes and dreams, would haunt him forever if she died. The feel of her was still so real. The taste of her lingered. “I killed her,” he groaned, fearing the worst despite Murdock’s reassurances, thrashing to escape the speeding vehicle. “Je suis coupable…je suis coupable!” Another sting. “I am guilty!” The darkness embraced him. He prayed it would never let him go.

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Chapter Ten

Five weeks later… Alison was happy to finally return to work. Her wounds were not completely healed but her doctors let her go—her stubbornness was more than they could handle. She wanted to get back to Sterling. Wanted things to be normal again. As normal as they ever had been. Or could be in the wake of meeting Henri. She knew he was well. Ryan had kept her informed. He seemed to understand how important it was to her to know how things were with the doctor. Though she felt sure he couldn’t know exactly why. No doubt he knew they were lovers but there were other factors too… The serum was no longer the controlling force in Dr. Édouard’s life. She’d been assured of that. But Alison still wasn’t clear on what that really meant. Henri hadn’t found an antidote but he was busy in the Sterling labs trying to perfect his formula. Was he still possessed of the many strange talents and volatile passions she’d witnessed during their time together, or had he lost those as he acclimated to Hyde-2? Was he even the same man she’d made love to under a blanket of stars on the surging waves? From what she’d heard he was playing it close to the belt in regards to his paranormal abilities. No one seemed to know for sure what his capabilities were now that he’d stabilized. He wasn’t saying. And Ryan was determined not to press, not even for her, though he kept telling her how grateful he was on behalf of Sterling for her involvement. On behalf of the medical community as a whole. She’d accomplished the impossible, or so he’d said, as he’d always felt certain she would. But there were few answers to her endless questions. And there were questions she didn’t even dare to ask.

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Her first day back at Sterling was uneventful. It was like coming home, as she’d known it would be. The knowledge that Henri was somewhere in the compound was always in her mind, but she refrained from using her gift to pinpoint him. She was terrified he’d sense her curiosity, afraid of how he would react. He had probably dismissed her by now. She wasn’t his equal, professionally speaking, and as far as their brief relationship was concerned, Alison was certain he would rather not dwell on those dark days when the serum held him in its sway. Not that she could blame him for that. She couldn’t blame him for anything. None of it. Their shared adventure had been painful, in so many ways, but she was so grateful for it. To have experienced that bliss, to have that piece of him, was worth all she had suffered and more. Her second day started out well. She was seeing a new patient. A seventeen-yearold with a tumor in her frontal lobe. While benign, the tumor required attention because of the strange effect it was having on the poor, confused girl. The tumor had given the child the ability to move objects without even touching them. It wasn’t an unusual case in Alison’s sphere of experience. Sterling had its fair share of PKs, psychokinetics or telekinetics—all were pretty much the same, with a few variations here and there for spice. Alison’s job was to keep an eye on the growth and to help the patient learn to live with her new talents. Others would help her hone her gifts, teach her to control and manipulate them to her will. Perhaps, given time, she’d choose to use those abilities to help Sterling expand its research. There was a promising future for the patient and a return to routine for Alison. The familiarity of her personal office was welcome. But in some ways it was punishing too. So much had happened since she’d last spent any real time here. Alison felt different, even as she fell back into her native habits. She spent a few hours each day in her office, cataloging progress on her many patients. The rest of her time was spent between labs and patients, meetings and examinations. While she wasn’t certain she

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had the stamina for surgery just yet, she strove to maintain the rest with all the professional doggedness she was known for. As she made her way down the maze of corridors in the depths of Sterling’s massive compound, numerous friends and colleagues greeted her warmly. Lesserknown faces greeted her too—she’d achieved a sort of informal celebrity it seemed. This, refraining from annoyance over it only because she knew the popularity would be fleeting, amused Alison to no end. By the time Henri was back in full swing—he’d agreed to live within the compound, to work for Sterling once the Hyde-2 debacle was over—he’d outshine any popularity she achieved. And then her celebrity would fade away in the shadow of his greatness. That was as it should be. Alison was glad Henri would be staying on. Naturally, she was nervous that she might see him again, but her worry was insignificant when compared to the contribution his genius would provide. Her personal weaknesses were moot. Working with him in the future, seeing him without being with him, didn’t matter in the larger scheme. She’d cross those uncomfortable bridges when, and if, she came to them. Presently she checked her watch, making her way through the gleaming white hallways that seemed to stretch for miles. Alison was pleased to note that she was right on schedule for her next meeting with her surgical team—they were working on a particularly nasty case, her temporary replacement seeking all the advice Dr. Cunningham had to offer. Alison was a stickler for schedules, far more strict with herself about keeping appointments than she was with others. She didn’t want to keep her team waiting. Absorbed with maintaining her façade of normalcy, she failed to notice the black eyes watching her. The white-coated figure following her, savage features stalking her like prey.

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Entering a sparsely populated wing, she barely noticed there was a lull in traffic. For a moment, no one was in the corridor with her. Or so she thought… A hand grabbed her upper arm. Alison cried out, startled, stumbling. Her captor dragged her mercilessly into an empty office. She was slammed up against a wall. The healed but still tender wound in her back protested the abuse. Yet all her pain and discomfort fled when Henri planted his spicy mouth on hers. Alison barely had a taste of him before he jerked away from her. As she tried to gather her wits, she saw him slam the office door, grab the doorknob and twist it savagely. The metal bent in his grasp. He jiggled it, satisfied when it appeared the door was jammed, locking the room tightly against any would-be intruders. When his eyes met hers they were black as Satan’s claws. The serum hadn’t left him unscathed then. “Why haven’t you come to see me?” he demanded harshly, face a granite mask. Alison felt her eyes widen. She didn’t know what to say. How to explain all the thoughts she’d agonized over these past weeks? He was upon her, pressing her up against the wall. He sniffed her, breathing deep, chest swelling, nostrils flaring. “You’re hiding something from me,” he marveled, voice a thread, a murmur. The heat of his skin was as scorching as she remembered. “Henri.” She took in a lungful of his breath as he gave it to her, swallowed it, rolled the flavor of it in her mouth and smiled, feeling whole again for the first time in weeks. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me.” “Bollocks,” he spat. “You’re a fool to doubt me, mon ange. I’ve wanted nothing but to see you again.” He gripped her head in his hands, his fingers threading through her fine hair.

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“I didn’t want to remind you of,” she chose her words carefully, “darker times.” Henri rolled his black eyes. “Mon chéri, mon seul amour et ma vie.” He leaned forward and nuzzled her cheek. Then all tenderness was gone. “How could you disregard me so effortlessly?” He shook her violently. Her head hit the wall and she saw stars. His body grew larger. Menacing. His anger beat at her like a hammer. He shook her some more. Caught in a storm, Alison fought back, frustration lending her surprising strength. Clawing, punching, kicking and biting, she put all her passion, her pain and her doubt into her fight, but each blow only served to make him use more of his strength against her. Soon he was gripping her throat, bruising her with his body, dominating her completely. It was as if they were right back where they had begun. He ripped at her clothes, panting in her ear. Henri caught her lobe with his teeth, tugging until she felt the pain. Wanting what he wanted, she yanked his lab coat from his shoulders, jerked up his sweater and raked her nails down his rippling chest, drawing blood. He slammed his hips into hers, hitching her up against the wall, shoving up her modest-length wool skirt. “Fuck, mon ami de cœur, you’re wearing thigh highs.” His hands ran over the lace at the top of those leggings, chafing her skin. She realized he was sporting a new pair of latex gloves and was appalled not to have noticed it before—his touch separated by that thin veneer of rubber. “I adore such naughty pleasures.” Those smooth, gloved fingers grabbed the crotch of her panties and ripped them, exposing her newly waxed cunt. It didn’t escape either of their notice that she was already sopping wet. Hot and ready for him. No matter how savage, she wanted him as badly now as she always had. His fingers were in her now. Stretching her. They slipped into her like butter into a hot furnace, slick in the latex, eased by her froth. He lifted her with one arm around her

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waist and she helplessly wrapped her legs around him. His mouth found hers and she bit his lip, drawing blood. “Rough it is then, my pet,” he purred, pounding his gloved fingers into her ruthlessly. His mouth ate at hers, pressing the tender flesh against her teeth, so that her blood mingled with his. “There’s that scent.” He moaned the words with a tone of wonderment, a longsuffering stream that heightened her excitement. So he’d missed her. Not nearly as much as she’d missed him, she was certain, but it was enough. “I’ve missed you more.” He ground his hips against her with that declaration, reading her thoughts as effortlessly as ever. Alison threaded her fingers through his newly cropped hair, marveling at its silky thickness. She rained kisses all over his beautiful face, darting her tongue out to taste the salt of his skin. Henri hissed between clenched teeth, tossed his head, withdrew his fingers from her sopping wet pussy and wiped the blood from her mouth, leaving nothing but her love juice behind on her lips. He yanked the stained glove off with his teeth then and tossed it aside. “Take off the other one,” she begged, licking his chin, nibbling his mouth. “I want your skin, not rubber.” His well-manicured nails scratched a delicate furrow on her throat. He captured three ruby red drops with his still-gloved hand and drank in the sight of the crimson on the latex with his stygian eyes. Once more, he jerked the glove off with his teeth and then his naked fingers were touching her everywhere. He kissed the bloody scratch, laving it with his tongue, apologizing wordlessly for wounding her. “I wanted you to wound me,” she gasped, welcoming pain and pleasure, unable to tell them apart. The soft swell of his mouth spread in a smile over her throat at her breathless admission. He was tasting her pulse as well as her blood, she realized with an electric 136

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thrill. “Are you reading my mind?” he murmured fiendishly on the heels of her realization. “I don’t have to.” Alison clutched him to her, stroking his back through the softness of his sweater. “Are you keeping secrets from me, Dr. Cunningham?” The words were a purr but so dangerous, so dark…she shivered. His words were forgotten in the next moment as he fumbled between them, freeing his cock from its confines. The wall was hard on her back but for all the notice she gave it, it could have been a feather tick. All she cared about was that Henri held her, that she held him, her legs and arms clutching him close. “There was never any escaping this, mon cher. For either of us.” The blunt tip of his cock probed her, sliding in her slick heat. He stabbed his rod home. It was a tight squeeze, impossible at first, and then the plum head popped into her and her body opened like a flower in bloom. Her nectar eased his way. They both sighed. Her head fell back, exposing her throat to his reverent kiss. The incredible girth, the weight and velveteen length were even more delicious than she had remembered. Even her dreams could not compare with this reality. Her head bumped against the wall as he pumped into her, thrusting hard, his ravishment more than welcome. It was essential to her survival. Her pussy throbbed and tingled, her clit swollen and hard as a diamond. The only sounds in the silence were their ragged breathing, the occasional grunt, moan and the sticky, slurping sounds of messy sex. The scratchy material of her skirt was bunched up at her waist now. Her ankles were hooked around his pumping hips. Henri held her tight, his hands spread flat against the skin of her back beneath her shirt, pressing her tits to his chest.

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Alison noted that his fingertips traced the puckered scar of her bullet wound— she’d all but forgotten it—the gentle caress only fueling her desire. His mouth rained kisses over her face and neck and décolletage, worshipping her. A flash of Rodin’s Eternal Idol flashed in her mind. Their intimate pose didn’t mimic that of the sensuous sculpture, but echoed its emotional theme all the same. “Oui, mon ange, oui. I see it too,” Henri breathed over her sensitive flesh. His loins flowed into hers, joining them as one. “Through your storm-cloud eyes.” Her body felt swollen. Her skin stretched taut. She dug her nails into him, clutching, kneading. “Please.” She begged for release. “Henri. Please. Now.” “Oui,” he repeated, grinding his pelvis against her so that he mashed her clit on each down stroke. Alison screamed when she reached the pinnacle. Henri muffled the sound of her orgasmic cry with his open lips on hers, his tongue filling her mouth like a flame, his breath becoming hers. A second later he joined her in paradise, filling her with the hot liquid of his devotion. And then he left her. Cold and bereft, she fell on weak knees to the floor, crumpling bonelessly against the wall. Henri’s gaze met hers over his retreating shoulder, his eyes pulsing from black to brown and back. His nostrils flared as he breathed in her scent. There was a distance between them now that went far beyond the physical. She felt her own eyes fill with tears at the loss. Henri looked away, dismissing her. He scooped up the discarded gloves, the torn silk of her panties, jerked the door open with such savagery that it fell off one of its hinges and stalked out of the room, slamming the ruined door behind him. Trembling like a leaf in a hurricane, Alison righted her clothing with shaking fingers and somehow found the strength to stand. She sobbed for breath and tasted him in the air. Where before she had whispered goodbye to her lover because she believed she was at death’s door, she whispered the words now because she knew the farewell was 138

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far more final this time. A tear slid down her cheek as she uttered one of the few French phrases she knew, a more appropriate language for the occasion, she felt. “Au revoir, Henri. Au revoir, my love.”

***** Another month passed. Alison lost herself in her work. When news reached her that Henri had perfected Hyde-2 and arranged a truce with the government she was genuinely happy for him. When she heard he was already well on his way into a new project she tried not to let her heart bleed over the knowledge that he, at least, had moved on. She never would. Not really. But her work was always there for her. It would not abandon her, tear out her heart and reject her. It was a faithful lover. So she devoted herself to it fully. The coming months would be the hardest, no doubt about it. But after that, she had much to do, much to occupy her time. The future, while not as perfectly bright as she might have longed for, was promising enough. There were doubts. There always would be. But Alison was strong. She wouldn’t let a little uncertainty steer her from her chosen course. Ryan’s wife Mia was back in Sterling’s care. While Mia had no brain anomalies, Ryan had handpicked Alison to run some tests on his beloved after she’d set fire to their bathroom while bathing. Alison and her team were checking and rechecking for anything that might lead them to understand the source of Mia’s massive pyrokinetic power. Alison was determined to do right by Ryan and his wife, to find something of value that might lead them in a promising direction. Mia had been searching for answers all her life. Alison admired her for her resilient strength and indomitable will. For that alone, she would have wanted to help in any way she could, but because Mia was so kind to everyone, so obviously in love with her

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husband and so important to Sterling, Alison was doubly determined to produce real results. It was well past midnight now and Alison was in the pyro lab poring over the very thick file Sterling had already collected on Mia’s tests and treatments. The manila file lay open, pages spread over a stainless steel table. Alison perched on a stool, swinging her legs distractedly. With each second, each flip of the page, each shutter snap of her lashes, she captured the complex data in her mind and held it. Lost in the comfort of photorealistic memorization, she missed nothing. Except for the door easing open behind her. And the silent, bare feet padding across the tiled floor. Snakelike in its quickness, an arm came around her throat, holding her captive. Alison shrieked, striking out without reserve, fear instant and unforgiving. There was a sting in her upper arm as a needle pierced her through her clothing. Panicked, Alison looked with stricken eyes at the syringe full of rosy-hued liquid penetrating her flesh. The burn of the fluid as it was pumped into her bloodstream had her screaming as mortal fear took hold. She jerked in her captor’s hold. The needle fell, syringe now empty, with a clatter on the floor. Slapping, clawing, yelling for help, she turned…and beheld Henri’s face. His brown eyes met hers, searching for something. Probing her intently. It didn’t matter. She was sobbing uncontrollably, frightened beyond measure by what he’d done. “What did you put in me? For god’s sake, you shouldn’t have done that!” “Shhh.” He put a gentle finger on her trembling lips. “It’s okay. Trust me.” “No!” she choked out. “No, Henri! You don’t understand. You don’t know what you’ve done. I can’t have any drugs in me, they might hurt—” “Shhh,” he insisted, pressing his finger to still her babbling lips. And then it was too late to speak. To think. To weep. Far too late for any of that.

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A wave of intense desire flooded through her, radiating out from the injection site. Her body swelled with need. Hunger, so intense it threatened to split her open, ripened her like fruit on the vine in the hot summer sun. She fell into Henri’s waiting arms, tearing at his clothing, mindless to anything but the primitive need to mate. She shoved him to the floor. With an enigmatic smile, he let her. He lay acquiescent, male satisfaction gleaming in his eyes as she yanked his pants down around his ankles and tore open his buttoned shirt. Her clothes were soon in tatters around them. Without any foreplay, any tenderness, she mounted him then and there, naked and open. Hungry like a starving lioness. Growling, snarling, she rode him. Her hips thrust hard and fast, her pussy so wet that her love juices smeared over his loins, his balls, and ran down her clutching thighs. With a self-congratulatory chuckle, Henri pulled her head down for a kiss. Their tongues danced. Henri bucked his hips high, spearing her above and below. Alison had no coherent thought. She was mindless to all but the feel of him as he filled her, as she ground against him. Her mouth, breasts and pussy were on fire, full of untamable need. The drug. It was the drug. She couldn’t control herself. She had no self. Only the hunger and driving need to mate. “You love me,” Henri whispered against her swollen mouth, his hands cupping her swollen breasts tenderly. “Say it.” She couldn’t speak. She could only ride him, clutch him, kiss him. “Say it,” he urged. I love you. The thought bubbled to the surface of her mind. But the words wouldn’t reach her lips. Surging into her, he wrung a groan from the depths of her hungry soul. “Do you feel the rightness of it?” She could only feel him. And her. One and the same being.

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Henri’s hands roved over her quivering flesh. “Our bond is unbreakable. You have to know that.” Alison only knew his cock was massive, his scent intoxicating, his taste an aphrodisiac no mortal could withstand. He sat up, his cock stabbing deeper into her. Alison sobbed his name but the word came out all garbled, more a bark than an endearment or plea. He gathered her close, so gentle, so caring. His touch was light. Almost soothing…but she could not be soothed. She was so far gone, nothing mattered but the quest for release. “I have what you crave,” he purred against the arch of her throat. Her nipples chafed against his naked chest as she continued to pump her hips, sheathing and unsheathing him in her pulsing wetness. “Only I can give you what you want.” “Yes,” she managed. The word was a plea and a curse, her hips racing, the climax just beyond her reach. “Why are you keeping secrets from me, Alison?” His voice was hard now, jarring her like a waterfall of icy rain. “Why aren’t you telling me what I need to hear?” Alison gasped. Why was he still talking? Didn’t he feel this? He kissed her, licking her lips salaciously. The pad of his thumb found her clit and rubbed it until she was bending backward to grant him freer access, galloping on his saddle with a bestial yell. “Say you love me and I’ll set you free,” he promised darkly, rubbing the silky wet valley that swallowed his cock over and over. Alison quaked. Her blood roared in her ears. It took an eternity to find her voice, to articulate the words that would mean her salvation. “H-Henri. I…love you!” “Good girl.” He produced another needle from out of nowhere. It was filled with a darker liquid, closer to crimson than rose. As she continued to mindlessly pump her hips, he gripped her close. “What’s in this needle will make you come so hard you’ll think you’re dying.” He breathed in her scent. The long dark curtain of his lashes fell

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over his velvet brown eyes. Alison felt his climax as it flooded into her womb, filling her with sweet, hot cream. She didn’t feel the needle as it gently slid into her arm. But when this new drug hit she felt it. Dear god…did she ever. The climax was immediate and intense and completely unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. All other orgasms in her life—all of them combined—paled in comparison. The raw savagery of the pulsations that racked her body, that made her pussy milk the thickness of him as he still throbbed hard inside her, was almost akin to pain. Screaming her voice raw, she barely had the breath to sustain her life. Bright white was a strobe light behind her tightly clenched eyelids. Her brain seized. Her muscles tensed to the snapping point. Her entire skeletal system froze as if all her joints were mortared shut. All the while Henri held her, cradled her, soothed her with whispered, honeyed words and silken caresses. Wave after wave crashed over her, shipwrecking her in a gale of the purest pleasure she’d ever known. Through the storm she could hear him talking to her, his lilting accent bringing her over as surely as the drug, as surely as his cock and his touch. Everything about him made her come. And come…and…oh god. “You were the only light I had. When my world was shit, when I was lost and alone, you came. You saved me, Alison. How could I turn my back on that? How could you expect me to? How could you turn from it?” Her body twisted on a rack of exquisite bliss. Henri kissed her swollen lips. “One loves because one can’t help but love—so it was for me. It isn’t supposed to make sense or follow any rule. I love you because

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everything about you commands that I do so. I could never leave you, mon ange, mon amour. You are everything to me.” Once more able to breathe, she gulped in great lungs full of air. She was coming down now. Her body felt like a bruise, but she was coming down. Tremors still shook her to her core but at last she could think more clearly. “I knew there was something special about you that tamed my beast. But I didn’t know what it was specifically.” Alison moaned, voice ragged, throat raw. Her hips slowed their racing rhythm. “I smelled it on your blood when you were in my care, deep in those woods, damaged and shocked as you were after those soldiers attacked. But I didn’t recognize it then.” Her head fell limply onto his shoulder. Her body was soaked with sweat, quieting at last. “I didn’t recognize it until you took that bullet for me. I think, then, I knew what it was. But there was something else that clouded my judgment for a while. Then, when my mind cleared, I knew what it was in you that healed my wounds and eased my savagery.” He held her away from him, cupping her chin in his hand. His gaze delved deeply into hers and she was too dazed to hide from him. “You loved me. From the first. It was your love that saved me, Alison. Your love that spoke to that Other part in me and commanded that it be still. And I’m so grateful to you for that.” He kissed her then, a sweet kiss that was more powerful than any she’d ever known. Her heart swelled with joy. “You should know I deliberately stole your blood that day in the office, with those damned gloves. And I stole the scent of you from your panties. I worked day and night until I pinpointed the elusive essence of your love, the chemicals that made up the magic. I had to do it.” Alison gaped. “How is that even possible?”

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He kissed her into silence before continuing. “I made a pure dose for myself, to tame the imperfect serum in my system. To bind the undiluted chemical I’d made based on the traces of you with the poison that ate through my veins.” He smiled then and showed her his left arm. To her shock it was perfect, no longer marred by the tracery of black veins. “It worked.” Alison felt tears burn her cheeks and wondered if they were tears of joy or loss. Henri wiped them away tenderly. “Don’t be sad. The serum is tamed. I am in no danger of losing control as I was. But I am still the Henri you know. You haven’t lost any part of me you love.” He hugged her, nuzzling her wet cheek. “I diluted the formula I gleaned from you and redesigned it, removing all traces of your unique signature.” He chuckled ruefully. “I couldn’t share you, not even a little bit. But I in turn used that new formula to perfect Hyde-2. To make it safe for others to use. Hyde-2 will make stronger soldiers, as it was intended.” The smile he gave her then was tinged with regret. “But none will be so altered as I, I’m afraid. Even after your gift, I can still see sin writ on a human soul. I can still smell the faintest odors from miles away. I can still taste your thoughts.” He licked away her tears, tongue flicking. “And I can crush a man with one blow if I’m not careful.” Alison swallowed that. She didn’t know what to say. “I’m not sorry that I’m a changed man because of the drug,” he admitted. “I can control my animal rage now and that’s what’s important. You gave me that, Alison. But you held something back too.” Those last words were hard. “I almost couldn’t forgive you, even after all you’d done for me.” “It wasn’t that big a secret,” she protested. “You knew my heart. And I just told you I love you.” “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? You knew in those woods that you loved me. Why didn’t you say so?” he rasped. Her forehead touched his, her eyes drinking in his features. “I didn’t want to trap you. You have a great destiny. I don’t want to get in the way.” 145

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“Mon dieu. You’re an idiot.” Alison bristled. Henri laughed. “You became my destiny the minute I saw you. And you’re still hiding the truth, the secret I’m referring to, that bit you held back—the baby, Alison. Why did you hide it? Did you honestly think I wouldn’t find out?” She gasped, rearing back, struggling to escape his arms. “You tested my blood for that—” “No. I smelled the baby in your blood when you were shot. I didn’t recognize it right away but when we met again after that, after we made love again, I saw the secret in your mind. Why did you even think you could hide it from me, when you knew you couldn’t hide anything from me before? Why did you even try?” Alison wasn’t sure how to explain. “I was afraid. I didn’t know if the serum would cause complications. I didn’t know if you would want me to have it.” Henri swore graphically. In more than one language. “You’re having it,” he snapped. “And,” he laid his hand over her mouth when she made an effort to interrupt, “the serum is not a problem. Your blood, your love, flows in our child’s veins too, a countermeasure to the poison. It’s perfectly healthy. Trust me.” He laid his hand on her belly then, so tender and reverent that tears spilled from her eyes. “It’s safe here, living inside your protective heart.” Still, a bubble of concern broke through her contentment. “If you knew I was pregnant, why did you give me that drug? What is that stuff, anyway? Will it hurt the baby?” Henri roared with laughter, his member hardening inside her again, dividing her attention. “You’re both safe. Remember I told you how I thought it might be interesting to bottle coitus? Well…while I was working on Hyde-2, I found a way to do it. It was the essence of your pleasure smeared on the cloth of your panties that gave me the inspiration. What do you think of my achievements?”

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Swollen with his love, she couldn’t find the energy or desire to take offense at his mischievousness, despite the fear it had briefly inspired. She grinned and laid her hand over his, over their growing child. “I think we’re going to be rich.” One of his eyebrows arched. He tilted his head, serpentine. “We?” She balled up her fist and hit him on his pristine left arm. “As a contributor, I get a percentage of the profits.” Henri kissed her deeply, tongue stroking hers. When he broke the kiss he was hard as marble and she was slick with a rebirth of desire. “As my wife you’ll get more than that.” He surged into her, cock so thick it almost didn’t fit in her tightness. Forgetting her soreness of a moment before, Alison marveled that she’d tamed him at last. He moved sinuously in her embrace. “Never that, mon amour. Never tame.” The wicked dance of his thumb over her clit made her catch her breath on a raw gasp. “Oh you beast…” And later, much later, a whisper that echoed out into eternity. “Je t’aime, mon ange. Je t’aime.”

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Epilogue

Several weeks later… Vicious held up a vial of rosy pink liquid. “This has endless possibilities.” “How long until it’s FDA approved?” Steele asked, curiosity laden in his tone. “No more than a few years,” Ryan answered, gazing at his own vial. His wife, ever at his side, sipped champagne and watched him with bright, loving eyes. “It’s virtually guaranteed. There are no side effects, save the risk of a little, uh, chafing the morning after,” he chuckled, pressing a kiss to Mia’s temple. The living room of Steele’s comfortable, welcoming home echoed with happy laughter and the clink of champagne flutes. “You’re lucky all that planning paid off,” Vicious smirked. “Sending Dr. Cunningham into the wild with little more than a schoolgirl crush to protect her, fighting against a rabid military force, securing the genius’s devotion to Sterling through his attraction to our innocent pawn—all of it a devious plot with one goal in mind. This innocent-looking fluid. You’re crazier than I am, Ryan.” He tipped his hat to the leader of Sterling. “Brass balls is what he’s got,” Steele threw in. “Daring like I’ve never seen.” “Hey, it was Diane’s idea,” Enya reminded him, pouring herself another glass of bubbly at the bar. Reclining on a cushy chaise, Vicious blew his wife a cheeky kiss from across the room. “So it was. Kudos, Diane. Thanks to you, the world will now be full of nymphos. You do indeed have brass balls to even dare such a risk.” Diane laughed gaily at the handsome rascal then sobered as she dwelt on what might have been lost had things not played out as foreseen. It was not unheard of to see the wrong future in a vision. “It was a risk. Dr. Cunningham’s life was at stake. And it 148

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could have gone badly, all of it. But we were so sure she’d be all right in the end. It was a dangerous gamble but this drug will help so many people all over the world, we felt it was a worthwhile venture.” “I’m sure Alison would thank us for our meddling if she only knew,” Ryan said with a smile, pulling his wife closer. “She found love. That’s the greatest discovery of all.” Mia kissed her husband with a smile softening her lips. The smile was a little blurry after the exchange, her eyes a little too bright—like lilac flames dancing—but she regained her composure quickly. “Why isn’t she here celebrating with us?” Ryan blushed and avoided his wife’s gaze. “I, uh…didn’t think it wise to let her or Henri know what we intended all along. Henri’s still not sure whether to shake my hand or strangle me. I’d prefer not to risk the latter.” Steele laughed. “Knowing your way of handling the doctor, I believe you’ll court that risk forever somehow or another.” Enya snorted and sat down with her husband. Vicious gathered her close, nuzzling her neck while deftly using the distraction to steal her newly filled champagne flute for himself. “How’s Marla doing, Steele?” Enya asked, missing her friend. Steele looked in the direction of his bedroom, where his wife and newly arrived infant son lay sleeping. “She’s resting. The birth took a lot out of her and she fried three generators when the labor pains got bad. You should have seen it, there were lightning bolts dancing along the ceiling.” Everyone chuckled at that. “It’s been three days but she and the baby are still worn out. They’re sleeping so soundly not even an earthquake could wake them up.” Mia’s grinned wide. “I heard about the generators. One whole wing was without power for hours.” Steele beamed with pride. “What can I say? Marla’s got an electric personality.” The joke was, of course, well appreciated among the group.

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Diane sipped her champagne and let her thoughts wander away from the conversation. Their gamble had indeed paid off. It was a spectacular success they celebrated here. The new drug would help millions of people who suffered from sexual dysfunctions find pleasure despite any ailment that might otherwise prevent them from it. No physical illness, no mental instability would stand in the way of sensual enjoyment once the drug was made available. There were endless possibilities, endless applications. Coitus in a bottle. Joy and pleasure and desire combined so sweetly and innocently no one would find fault with it. Dr. Édouard had once more proven himself to be a scientist with no equal. A genius of the highest caliber. She pondered the possibility of revealing to Ryan Murdock that there was another drug, a twin sister to this one. One that Édouard had kept silent and secret while handing over this one. A formula so powerful it instantly produced orgasm once injected, a release so intense and complete that the person who held the rights to such a substance could control the world with it if they wished. Civilizations had risen and fallen in the search for such earthly delights. People had sold their souls for less. No. Best not to say anything. Though Ryan Murdock was a man of great moral fiber, the world of man just wasn’t ready for such a heady magic. No one could know about this other formula. Not yet, anyway. Diane smiled to herself and joined in another toast to Sterling’s newest triumph, knowing all the while that it was Alison whose triumph was complete. Hers and Henri’s. Ah, l’amour.

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About the Author Sherri L. King lives in the American Deep South with her husband, artist and illustrator Darrell King. Critically acclaimed author of The Horde Wars and Moon Lust series, her primary interests lie in the world of action packed paranormals, though she’s been known to dabble in several other genres as time permits.

Sherri welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.

Tell Us What You Think We appreciate hearing reader opinions about our books. You can email us at [email protected].

Also by Sherri L. King Bachelorette Beyond Illusion Ellora’s Cavemen: Tales From the Temple III anthology Ferocious Fetish Full Moon Xmas Horde Wars: Ravenous Horde Wars: Wanton Fire Horde Wars: Razor’s Edge Horde Wars: Lord of the Deep Manaconda anthology Moon Lust Moon Lust: Bitten Moon Lust: Feral Heat Moon Lust: Mating Season Rayven’s Awakening Sanctuary Shikars: Caress of Flame Shikars: Ride the Lightning Sin and Salvation Sterling Files 1: Steele Sterling Files 2: Vicious Sterling Files 3: Fyre The Jewel

Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the multiple award-winning publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer e-books or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave you breathless.

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