Danger That Is Damion (33 page)

Damion sunk deep inside her, sliding his hand to her face, the other around her backside. “You belong here with me,” he told her, kissing her before she could object, before she said something that defied his claim. She tasted sweet, like honey, smelled like heaven, and felt like a hot, tight ride to ecstasy. He moved inside her. She arched into him, setting off a slow rhythm of movement that quickly turned to a frenzied rush of their bodies sliding together, of kisses, touches, and wild abandon where time disappeared.

“Damion,” Lara gasped a moment before she buried her face in his neck, her body tensing before she spasmed around him, milked him, claiming his release as she had already claimed him the moment he’d laid eyes on her.

They melted into one another, panting into completion and then resting their foreheads together. “Tonight, Lara. Tonight, we do the blood exchange.”

She leaned back. “No. We can’t.”

“We can.”

She shook her head and pushed away from him. He let her leg fall and reluctantly eased their bodies apart. She quickly slid away from him, grabbing a towel and righting her dress, then standing there without turning. “I know you think you have to do this. I know you think you’ll be to blame if anything happens to me, but…”

He turned her to face him. “No. It’s not like that.”

“It is like that.”

“God, no.” He pulled her close. “I’m pretty sure I’m falling in love with you, and before you say it’s too soon, you should know that’s the first time in my thirty-four years I’ve ever said the word ‘love’ to a woman, so it’s not something I say lightly. Hell. I didn’t want to ever feel this for a woman. I did my best to never let it happen. But it is happening—maybe it already has. All I know is you matter in a huge way to me, Lara, and I don’t plan to lose you before I ever find out what that really means.” His gaze swept the restroom. “And damn it, I would never have wanted the first time I said something like this to you to be in a restroom. This is definitely not my Prince Charming moment, but I’ll make this part up to you. I’m not exactly used to these kinds of confessions.”

“Damion,” she whispered. “You don’t even—”

“Know you?” he asked and didn’t wait for an answer. “I know you. I don’t give a flying flip about your past. I also know you’re afraid you’ll regain your memories with the bond, and then we’ll hate each other, but that isn’t going to happen.” His voice softened. “We decide our future. We do, not the past, not Powell, or anyone else. Most importantly, we need to make sure we have a future. That means we have to complete the blood bond.”

Her bottom lip trembled. “I stopped caring about the past when I learned what Powell did to me. You know that. You know that’s why I confessed everything I knew about him and Serenity. And I’m pretty sure I already love you too. I don’t know if I’ve ever said that to anyone else, because I don’t remember anyone else, but I know what I feel, and clear to my soul I know I’ve never felt for anyone what I feel for you.”

Relief washed over him, relief and so much more. Damion scooped her into his arms. “You think you love me?” he asked, scared shitless of her saying yes and scared shitless he’d misunderstood and she’d say no.

“Well,” she said, her fingers brushing his jaw in a way that was fast becoming familiar and endearing. “You enrage me, arouse me, and make me laugh. I frequently want to kiss you. I more frequently want to undress you, proven by our highly inappropriate restroom encounter. Sometimes I even want to kill you. Not literally anymore, of course. So yeah, I’m pretty sure you’ve done the love number on me, Damion Browne, which is exactly why I won’t put you at risk.”

“I won’t let you die, damn it,” he said fiercely, the protectiveness in him expanding, threatening to take on a life of its own.

“I don’t intend to die,” she assured him. “I intend to find Powell and my medical records. You just reminded me of why I can’t give up, which I almost did today. I have to find him, and I will.” She pressed her lips to his, clearly trying to distract him, then said, “Take me to your bed and give me the good-caveman-you’re-mine routine. I’m surprised how much I like it. While you’re at it,
make
love
to
me,
Damion.”

“I’ll take you to our bed,” he said, drawing her toward the door. “However, this conversation isn’t over.”

“So you keep telling me and then proving.”

He pulled the restroom door open to have a handwritten piece of paper fly to the floor that read, “Out of Order.” He and Lara looked at it and then each other, before bursting into laughter. And as Damion led her through the restaurant, he sensed no embarrassment in her over their little encounter, clearly made public. There was simply an understanding of their connection, and their need to find privacy.

Damion had every intention of showing Lara just how well he could
make
love
to her. Maybe—just maybe—in the heat of passion, he’d convince her to complete the blood bond despite how much the life-and-death bond had him shaking inside. One screw up, and she’d be dead right along with him. If they didn’t complete the bond tonight, one way or another, they
were
going
to
be
. Because if there was anything that revisiting Tommy’s death had done for him tonight, it was to remind him how easily someone you loved could be lost.

***

Logan kissed Jenna and then set her back from him. He grabbed one of his kitchen chairs and moved it away from the table. He sat her down in it and then retrieved a pair of military-grade handcuffs made for the GTECHs from the slim black box on his bar. He dangled them in the air. “Hands behind the chair,” he ordered.

She laughed nervously and motioned to her slim, prim and proper, black dress. “Shouldn’t I get undressed first or something?” Her gaze swept his slacks and button-down. “And you too?”

“Hands behind your chair,” he repeated in a soft, lethal voice. Tonight wasn’t about sex, though she thought it was. Tonight was about control and manipulation. His control, his manipulation of all the parties involved in Bar-1, to ensure he came out on top.

Her bottom lip quivered, telling him of her nervousness, but she did as he said. He had no doubt she would. Logan walked behind her and secured her hands. A moment later, he stood above her, staring down at her.

“Now what are you going to do with me, my mad scientist?” she purred seductively, but that hint of nervousness still teased the note, as if she sensed all was not right.

“It’s not what he’s going to do to you that you should worry about,” Sabrina murmured to his left. Logan turned to find her in the doorway, holding a long knife, and hot as red fire in a tight leather pantsuit that would bring a man—this man, specifically—to his knees.

“Logan?” Jenna asked, panic sliding into her voice.

Sabrina licked the end of the blade. “Logan won’t help you, honey. I do, however, have a mad idea he might enjoy watching.” She strolled to Logan’s side and wrapped herself around him. “You’re going to enjoy this, now aren’t you, baby?”

He didn’t reply. Any enjoyment Sabrina gave him always came with baggage he wanted removed, and he had a bad feeling that wasn’t going to happen. His gut said that Sabrina would be the last Serenity-bred GTECH standing—the only one who hadn’t been brainwashed, and the only one who wasn’t about to die from a stroke. The only one who hadn’t been exposed to Bar-1.

“How long have you been shorting the GTECH serum?” Logan demanded, furiously certain that Jenna was the cause of Bar-1’s failure.

“What?” Jenna asked, her voice cracking. “Logan, please.” And just like that she transformed, back to little Jenna, so innocent and in need of protection.

Logan didn’t know what she was asking him to do, but he felt a punch in his gut, and he wanted to go to her. For an instant he forgot his discovery in the lab. This woman had quite possibly single-handedly destroyed Serenity.

“How long have you been shorting the serum?” he asked again, through gritted teeth.

“I told you,” she said. “Just the new girl.”

“No,” he ground out. “You told me you’d shorted several of the subjects.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t.”

Sabrina sauntered over to her and settled on the bed, then rested the blade on her stomach. “How many?”

“Just—”

Sabrina leaned up and put the knife to Jenna’s throat. “How many, bitch, or I swear to you I’ll gut you and let you bleed out and die.”

“All of them, but the first.” Jenna rushed the words out.

“Crystal,” Sabrina said. “You’re telling me you didn’t short fucking Crystal?”

“Yes. No, I didn’t short Crystal.”

“Fuck!” Sabrina yelled, shoving Jenna’s chair back so that it hit the ground. Jenna screamed, and Sabrina went down on top of her, straddling her. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? I’m going to kill you. I’m going to—”

Logan grabbed Sabrina and pulled her backward, only to have Sabrina stiff-arm him and send him tumbling.

“Stop, damn it!” he shouted, pushing to his feet and grabbing Sabrina again. “We need her. We fucking need her, Sabrina! I need to run a brain wave test on her to verify my theory. I need to know exactly what I’m dealing with, if I have any chance of fixing this.”

Sabrina whirled around to stare at him. “She destroyed Serenity. Opal is missing. Lara is with the Renegades. All the rest who are Bar-1 are going to die because she shorted their serum.”

“No,” Jenna said. “It’s not because of the serum. It’s because of Bar-1.”

Logan glared at her. “Bar-1 kills humans. I started the process before the complete conversion, knowing the serum would heal any damage—not knowing that you’d shorted the serum.”

Tears streamed down Jenna’s face. “They fully converted. I did the blood work, I swear. I would never do anything to hurt you or Serenity. I believe in our cause. You know I do.”

“You did the wrong test,” he growled, pissed beyond belief. He’d thought he might care about this woman. She was turning out to be a bigger liability than Sabrina could ever have been. “I ran my own tests once I knew there was something to look for, including brain wave activity, on all subjects.” Even Crystal, which had been hell to arrange without setting off Powell’s alarms. He’d had to use the excuse of preventive action—reinforcing all subject triggers in light of Lara’s betrayal. He grimaced. “Healing capacity for the women in Serenity, outside of Crystal and Sabrina, was diminished, and brain wave activity was erratic.”

His gaze focused on Sabrina, who was still on top of Jenna, and again said, “I need to test her, Sabrina. I need to know if it’s the low serum alone causing the strokes, or if it’s the low serum combined with Bar-1. She’s the only one who fits the criteria of low serum and no Bar-1 conversion. I need to compare her results to those with low serum dosage who’ve assimilated to Bar-1 to see if there’s a difference.”

Sabrina grimaced, looking as if she might refuse, then turned to Jenna and lowered her mouth to a breath from hers. “If I can’t kill you, I
will
hurt you. Plan on it.”

“I’ll kill her myself if she destroyed Serenity for her own personal gain,” he promised.

“Logan,” Jenna hissed, a storm of tears bleeding from her eyes. “Don’t do this. Don’t turn me into the enemy.”

He turned away from her, done with her tears, and walked to the closet to grab the supplies he’d stored there. He started to right Jenna’s chair, and Sabrina grabbed him. “She stays on her back and as uncomfortable as we can make her.”

Jenna sobbed, and Logan found it irritated him. He left her on her back. A few seconds later, he’d rolled a machine next to the chair and began connecting pads to Jenna’s forehead, while Sabrina stood, arms crossed, above them.

“Logan,” Jenna pleaded.

“Shut up,” Sabrina spat. “Just shut the hell up.”

Logan didn’t bother to look at Jenna. He watched the monitor and the table, steady brain waves. Finally, when the truth was clear, his attention went to Sabrina. “Bar-1 didn’t kill Opal.”

Jenna gasped. “You told her about Opal!”

Sabrina laughed. “You didn’t seriously think he’d hide anything from me, did you? I even know the exact Dumpster where you put the body. Powell would notice she was gone. I have to deal with that. Powell believes she’s running a recon mission. Problem solved.”

Jenna cast Logan a disbelieving stare that said, we had a plan to deal with Opal—us, not you and Sabrina. And they had, but after some evaluating and reevaluating, it had proven ineffective. He’d needed an ally to help him act before all the affected members of Serenity stroked and died—someone who wanted Serenity and Bar-1 to survive this disaster as much as he did. That someone was Sabrina. Once he was done with her, once he’d handed Powell the destruction of the Renegades, he didn’t think he’d have trouble convincing Powell that Sabrina had to be controlled by Bar-1, that she was a monster, that all GTECHs were monsters—case in point, after all, being Jenna. Sweet Jenna, who was now a monster.

Logan stood up, giving Jenna his back. “Our one chance to save Serenity and Bar-1 is to use Lara to destroy the Renegades before she strokes. That alone will make the risk-reward ratio of any potential Serenity backlash worthwhile to Powell and the ‘powers that be.’ You already know I need Powell’s involvement to properly pull off the scenario that will trigger Lara’s memory recall.”