Which made him wonder what those cherry lips would look like around his dark cock.
He panted as he imagined what it would have been like to fuck her. To shove inside her with his dick the way he’d stroked in her mouth with his tongue. His inner beast rumbled again, that damned animal that had scared her away just minutes ago.
He should be glad, despite the unfulfilled ache between his legs. Because fucking Sabrina would be dangerous. One touch and he’d forgotten she was the enemy. Talk about fucked-up.
He was just hard up for a woman. Nothing more, nothing less. A simple, physical response, like his hand currently around his dick. Any man feeling her curves, biting that tit, and sucking on that delicious mouth, would have done the same. He could almost taste her again, could feel her in his mouth as she squirmed in his hold. He imagined her under his command -- his to dominate, to control -- and he came hard over his hand, jetting into the cold air when only minutes ago he could have been spilling into a warm, wet woman.
It took Derrick several moments to compose himself. Cursing all the while, he cleaned the mess he’d made on his hands and the damned floor. Pulling his shirt back on and righting his jeans, he knew he’d have to take his own shower, or the others would smell what he’d been up to. While his mated brothers might be too wrapped up in their own women to pay him much mind, Hale would definitely be paying attention to Derrick around Sabrina.
That was all he needed, to smell like cum around her. Muttering under his breath, he grabbed the clothes Doc had left for her and stalked to the bathroom. Pounding on the door, he waited until the water stopped and she opened the door. He saw no more than her face.
Dripping wet, she should have looked like a wet rat. Instead, she looked like a sexy water nymph.
“Take these and hustle your ass back into your bedroom. I need the shower.” She blinked at him but didn’t argue. “Okay. Hold on.” After closing the door, she opened it moments later wrapped in a towel that reached her knees. She grabbed the clothes from his hands and raced toward her room.
“Wait for me in there,” he called after her. “You leave before I come back for you, and we’ll have a nice repeat of what just went down. You got me?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Though she didn’t seem to take him seriously, instinct told him she’d do what he said.
The woman knew enough to fear the predator within him, even if she didn’t act like it.
Entering the bathroom, he shut the door and was surrounded by her again.
“Fuck.” Pissed with his continued arousal, he tried to separate thoughts of Sabrina from his dick as he showered. But he wasn’t halfway through washing his hair before he began jerking off again, this time to the smell of her.
Underlying the strawberry scent was the hint of female cum. Just thinking about what she’d been doing in here while he’d been jacking off was too much to handle. Angry at not being able to control himself, Derrick pumped through his fingers and shot a second time, hitting the shower wall with his seed.
As he settled down, finally, he wondered at this voracious need. It had to be her, along with whatever else he sensed in the woman. Sabrina was more than human, that much he understood. “What are you?” he’d asked her, and she’d pretended ignorance. But he knew.
His beast recognized her difference, even as it questioned how she was different. She didn’t smell like a Circ. There was something off about her. Maybe she was something new, something that asshole Pearl had fucked up besides a Circ.
Why the fuck should I even care what she is beyond what she can do for us? She’s a woman. She’s the enemy. You have an itch? Fine, let her scratch it. Then dump her ass back where it belongs, with Pearson Labs. Grunting at a solution that made sense to him, Derrick finished washing. He dried and dressed himself in record time and found Sabrina waiting for him in her room.
Her guarded look pleased him, enough that he smiled and held out a hand to help her stand. She ignored him and preceded him out the door before stopping in the hallway. He couldn’t help liking her attitude. She challenged him, and she was nothing if not exciting.
The enemy, yes, but one who wouldn’t bore him. Derrick thrived on the hunt, on the thrill of the chase. Running down this particular woman appealed to him, as did returning her to Pearl. Where she belongs, he reminded himself as he studied her.
Her hair gleamed. Long, wet, and black, it hung down her back, resting against the burnt orange sweater she wore. The strands teased at her ass, one that he’d cupped not long ago. Hurriedly putting a lid on those thoughts, Derrick wondered what Sabina Torrence was to Pearl. How the hell could she work for that monster and live with herself?
“Why do you do it?” he asked her in a low voice as they walked down the hall. She walked beside him, not behind him, he noted with grim amusement.
“Do what?”
“Why do you work for that asshole, Pearl?”
She shrugged, but he noticed her tension. “I didn’t know what he was up to when I started working for him. And it wasn’t him I worked for in the beginning, anyway. It was the Department of the Navy.”
“Huh?”
“I was assigned to work with the scientists on Project Dawn, to help them engineer something great, something that would help our military,” she answered as they stepped through the kitchen into the attached dining room, where everyone else sat eating. They took their seats, and Derrick was pleased to see she’d been placed right next to him. And Hale. That he could have done without.
Diego scooped them up plates of eggs and smiled his welcome before sitting back down next to Doc.
“Strawberry, Derrick?” Hale said.
Ready to pound Hale if he gave him any grief over the fruity shampoo, Derrick waited.
“What?”
“Would you like a strawberry?” Hale held up a bowl filled with strawberries. As he passed it, his eyes twinkled with laughter. “I love how they smell.” He turned to Sabrina and grinned. “Have a nice rest?”
“Dickhead,” Derrick muttered.
“Yeah, just great,” Sabrina said, echoing his tone. “Nothing like being stabbed with a needle to ensure pleasant dreams.”
He hid a grin. The woman wasn’t one of them, but she had no problem dishing out attitude.
Doc coughed. “About that. I’m sorry, Sabrina. You passed out, and I wasn’t sure why. I wanted you to remain sedated so I could thoroughly examine you without interruption.” To Derrick’s surprise, she sighed. “I understand.”
“Do you?” Ace asked, his gaze narrowed. Derrick could feel the male’s aggression. Ace sat next to Kelly across from them, and Derrick knew Ace was acting this way because he couldn’t forgive what had been done to his mate.
Derrick couldn’t blame him. A month ago, the PPA had kidnapped Kelly. According to her “rescuer” Sabrina, Pearl wanted Kelly’s baby. God only knew what the fucker would do to an innocent child. Hell, he’d used Caitlyn as a guinea pig for most of her life, though unbeknownst to her.
Elliot Pearl had affected every damned person at this table. Sabrina Torrence was the only one who’d willingly complied with his madness. Even Doc, who’d first worked with Pearl, had turned against Pearl the moment he’d learned about Circs turning into raving killers.
“Look. As I was telling his highness over here” -- she paused to throw a thumb in Derrick’s direction -- “I worked on Project Dawn while I was in the Navy. I drew blood.
Period.”
“Yet you’re still working for him,” Roane said quietly.
“Not anymore. In case you haven’t noticed, Pearl doesn’t like you people much.” She faced Kelly, studying the red-haired beauty who’d turned Zack and Ace, two hard-assed Circs, to mush. “And he had plans for you, Kelly Malloy. Big plans.” Zack and Ace vibrated with rage.
“Here we go,” Hale said with a sigh.
“Easy, you two,” Roane growled a warning.
Sabrina didn’t stop talking, and Derrick wondered if she had a death wish. “He was going to take your embryo and watch it grow. Document, clone, and test it.”
“Clone?” Doc asked, obviously fascinated with the discussion.
“It?” Ace growled, his hands changing into claw-tipped weapons. “Our kid is not an ‘it.’”
“Ace.” Kelly grabbed his arm. “Relax. Sabrina helped me escape. If it wasn’t for her, Pearl might already have our baby.”
Ace put an arm around her but kept an accusing eye on Sabrina. “Why’d you help her?
What was one more experiment in that freak show you call a lab?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Zack, Kelly’s other mate, asked as well.
Derrick studied Sabrina, hoping for something to clue him in to the woman’s feelings.
But she didn’t so much as flinch under the impact of so much hostility.
“First of all, that ‘freak show’ is more like a nuthouse. Elliot Pearl is no visionary. I thought he was at first. That he’d help our guys overseas, so we wouldn’t lose so many of our people.” She paused, and Derrick had a feeling she’d lost someone dear to her. “You five are proof the science was right on. Your missions were legendary. Even a lowly leech like me heard about your exploits.”
“Leech?” Caitlyn asked.
“Bloodsucker, what we used to call the people who drew our blood,” Roane explained.
“Phlebotomist is the technical term,” Sabrina said wryly. “My job was to draw blood samples for Pearl and the others to study. Then everything went wrong, and Project Dawn was over. Except it wasn’t.”
“Yeah, we know,” Zack added with a scowl.
“But what you don’t know is that the government knew about the potential problems from the get-go. Pearl had told them what to expect, but they didn’t care. And when the only answer was annihilation of any and all test subjects, good old Uncle Sam okayed the deal.”
“No.” Doc shook his head. “That’s not true. General Kohl helped us. He was -- is -- a good man. He still keeps in touch, monitoring our progress while aiding me in anything I need to keep Elliot in check.”
The others stared at him in shock, Derrick included. He hadn’t realized Doc was still on good terms with the government. General Kohl had the reputation of being a stand-up guy, but he was one man. The Department of Defense hadn’t been happy that any Circ had been allowed to walk away from the project.
“Stunned at Doc’s revelation, hmm?” Sabrina said. “Well, here’s shocker number two.
Since Pearl’s never been able to duplicate the success he had in you five, he’s done the next best thing. Pearl thinks he’s found the answer to his problem in a specific gene sequence within his new and improved Circs. By isolating one protein from their coding, he can effectively leash the monsters he’s creating with a certain drug. So far, it’s working. Six of the nine Circs currently on missions have responded favorably to his treatment.”
“My God,” Doc breathed.
“Explain, Doc. This shit gives me a headache,” Derrick complained.
“Amen,” Roane agreed.
Derrick avoided scientific discussions. If it wasn’t about cars, sports, or sex, he normally wasn’t interested. Even a walking, talking experiment had to have space from the scientific world at large. Bad enough he felt like a pincushion when Doc called him in for weekly blood work.
“Okay, okay.” Doc took a deep breath. “Remember, the Circe serum was given to you through an injection. We manufactured it to be spread via a virus that was engineered to die after it released the serum into your bodies. But for some reason, the virus remained dormant instead. It then mutated, triggering chaos. The rogue Circs’ mental instability, as you know, devolved into murderous rampages we couldn’t control, no matter what we did.
“We tried everything we could think of to stop the madness. But we couldn’t separate the serum from the virus that we used to inject it. We couldn’t make more Circs without using a virus to affect the change. I still don’t know why you five remain immune to those aftereffects. But that’s neither here nor there. We know that for the past three years Elliot’s been trying to create the perfect Circ. From what we’ve seen, he’s only managed to recreate the rogues.”
Sabrina nodded. “The first batches he made went crazy after a few weeks. They now last six months, tops, before the madness hits them. That’s when he starts them on that wonder drug of his.”
“So if what you say is true,” Doc said. “Elliot has found a way to map the particular genes affected by the mutated virus. If he can control them, then that means --”
“You have a whole new set of problems on your hands,” Sabrina said, looking worried, and Derrick’s unease grew. “Because someone in the government is signing Pearl’s paychecks, and they like what they see. New super soldiers who not only do what they’re told but won’t turn into killing nut jobs unless given the okay. As long as Pearl keeps injecting his monsters with his new wonder drug, which neutralizes the proteins he mapped, they’re fine and dandy. But miss a dose and they turn rogue, big-time, and worse than before.”
“Shit.” Derrick could only imagine the nightmare coming their way.
“Yeah, especially since this new batch is stronger and faster than you guys. More deadly, too, to the point that even Pearl has had a hard time controlling them. The only good thing about them is that the males appear to be sterile.” Sabrina grimaced. “I know that for a fact, because Pearl just put me in charge of collecting samples for his new ‘mating’ program.
Another reason why Kelly would have been so valuable -- as a control for his new offspring project.”
Kelly gasped, and the others swore.
Sabrina continued, a hard glint in her gray eyes. “Pearl’s out of control, and no one is stopping him. That’s why I saved Kelly. That’s why I gave you that damned disc. And that’s why I tried to destroy Project Dawn three years ago.”
Sabrina hadn’t meant to drop that particular bombshell, but recounting Pearl’s crimes out loud enraged her. These people had no idea what hell she’d been through, living a lie, forced to turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed under Pearl’s reign. Hell, at this moment, she had Circ blood running through her veins. She’d sacrificed her humanity, for God’s sake. She’d done the best she could, waiting to destroy him and his lab from the inside out.