Dark Embers
Page 4
To begin with, he was huge—six-foot-six at least, and that was without the heavy motorcycle boots he was currently wearing. Dressed entirely in black—from the tight T-shirt that stretched across his heavily muscled chest to the leather jacket, worn jeans and kick-ass boots—he looked like every nightmare about the grim reaper she’d ever had as a child.
He might be better-looking than the reaper—with his too-pretty face, high cheekbones and lush, full lips, he looked more like a fallen angel than he did a stone-cold killer—but that was only if you forgot to look at his eyes.
Dark as midnight, black as sin, they burned like hell itself. And at that moment, all that fire was focused totally and completely on her.
Just one more foot, she told herself as she covered another inch. But what was she going to do when she reached the phone? Pick it up and dial security, all the time hoping he wouldn’t notice? Yeah, right. Those eyes saw everything, from the slow progress she and her rolling stool were making toward her desk to the small iodine stain on the pocket of her lab coat. She could see—actually see—him cataloging it all.
Deciding it was best to be as direct as possible, she forced herself to ask, “Can I help you?” Her voice sounded rusty, thin, nothing like it normally did. She cleared her throat and tried again. “This is a private lab. If you’re looking for the classrooms, they’re two buildings over.”
“I’m looking for you, Dr. Quillum.”
So not the words she wanted to hear at that exact moment. Finally—finally—her hand closed around the phone, but she didn’t lift it to her ear. She still hadn’t figured out how to call for help without alerting him to what she was doing. Or even worse, pissing him off.
“Okay. Just let me make a quick phone call and then—”
“You don’t need to be afraid.” His voice was pure, bittersweet chocolate—deep and dark with just a hint of a bite.
Her spine stiffened, even as she noted that he hadn’t promised not to hurt her. She didn’t know if she found his honesty refreshing or even more fearsome than his looks. “What makes you think I’m afraid of you?” Her fingers tightened on the receiver.
“I can smell it.”
Holy shit, he was as crazy as he was dangerous.
“Oooookay.” Phoebe worked to keep her voice as low and even as his. Forced herself to stand—or in this case, sit—her ground, when every instinct she had screamed for her to flee. Racking her brain, she tried to use the only weapon she’d ever needed to figure out what the hell was going on.
“You have me at a disadvantage,” she murmured.
“Only one?” he asked with a small twist of his lips. He advanced a few steps and her hand trembled, despite her best intentions.
The air between them all but crackled with electricity.
Get away, screamed a primal part of her brain that she hadn’t known existed before that very moment. Run, fight, scream—do whatever you have to. But get away from him now!
She quickly picked up the phone, dialed the emergency extension. “This is Dr. Quillum in Building 3, Room 513. I need immediate assistance—”
“That’s not necessary.” He reached over and gently but inexorably extracted the phone from her grip.
She watched as he hung up the receiver, found herself bristling despite her best efforts to keep her temper in check. “Just who do you think you are?”
“I know exactly who I am,” came the enigmatic answer.
She found herself craning her neck backward as she tried to make eye contact. But the second her eyes met his fire-and-brimstone ones, she knew she’d made a mistake. Up close, he was even more frightening.
More awe-inspiring.
And a hell of a lot more overwhelming.
She started to back up, but refused to lose ground to him. Showing fear would only make things worse.
Her breathing hitched as he got closer, her heart skipping one beat, then another and another. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure that fear was the only thing she was feeling.
The woman in her was intrigued, wanted to explore that random thought, while the practical scientist in her simply wanted to run. As he leaned over her—big and scary and too sexy for his own good—she took a deep breath to prepare for the worst.
It was the wrong thing to do.
His scent crept into her nose, spread through her lungs, then moved outward until it wrapped itself around every nerve ending she had. He didn’t smell dangerous, she rationalized, as if such a thing were even possible. Didn’t smell like he wanted to cause her harm.
She took another trembling breath, absorbed a little bit more of him. No, he didn’t smell half as frightening as he looked. In fact, he smelled like . . . home. Like the desert at night. Like sand and heat and sweet, open spaces.
Like everything she’d run from at eighteen and spent the past fifteen years trying to get back.
The instincts she’d done her best to ignore for most of her life had her stomach unknotting just a little. Had her muscles relaxing even as her mind told her to stay alert.
That, more than anything else, sent Phoebe into freak-out mode, had her taking a big step back and glancing almost frantically at the door. How long did it take the campus police to get here, anyway?
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
Yeah, right. She’d heard that before—and still had the scars to prove it. “What do you want?”
“Just to talk.” He held up his hands in a gesture that was meant to be reassuring. But as each one was the size of her last Thanksgiving turkey, she found the movement anything but. Especially with him towering over her, radiating enough heat to light up a small city.
“I don’t talk to strangers.” She wasn’t sure where the flippant reply came from, but as his eyes sparked, she took yet another cautious step back and to the side—until the bulk of her desk was between them. “If you’d like to make an appointment, my research assistant should be here in another hour.”
She reached into her desk drawer, pulled out a card. “You can call him and state your business. He can also make an appointment for you to come back at a time that’s more convenient for both of us.”
“I’m already here.”
“Yes.” She kept her voice firm when it wanted desperately to shake. “But I’m busy right now. So, like I said—”
“Look, I’m sorry. I think we got off on the wrong foot. Can we start over?” For the first time since he’d walked into her lab, he smiled. Perhaps it, like the raised hands, was meant to inspire confidence, but all it did was call to mind Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad wolf. Too bad for her, red had never been her best color.
“I’m not sure what good that will do.”
“Dr. Quillum, my name is Dylan MacLeod, and I’m here because I need your help.”
“Oh, of course.” Because every biker in America needed the help of a biochemist specializing in autoimmune and nervous-system disorders. She kept her gaze locked on his when what she really wanted to watch was the door.
Where the hell is the cavalry? It’s been almost ten minutes.
“They’re not coming.”
Her eyes jumped back to his. Once again, she felt a jolt. “Who?”
“Whoever you called.”
Her mouth was dry, her palms wet. Images flashed through her mind—confusing, strange—but she shoved them down. “How did you know what I was thinking?”
“You’d be surprised at what I know.” His grin was wicked and self-deprecating at the same time.
And just that easily—in the space of one breath to the next—her fear turned to fascination.
Shit, damn, fuck. His goddamn dragon was going to rip him apart in its desire to get to her. Already Dylan could feel its claws poking at the leather of his boots, could feel his teeth sharpening and elongating behind the smile he kept pasted on his face. He knew his eyes had turned dragon the second he’d seen her, and nothing he did could make them change back.
The beast refused to be placated.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. He closed his eyes, passed a hand over his face and tried one more time to rein in his other side. As he did, he fought the urge to rip out huge clumps of his hair, and instead he focused on calming down. On showing her the smooth, charming, unthreatening facade he wore most of the time. But it was hard to do when her scent—warm vanilla and honeysuckle—tickled his dragon’s nostrils with each breath he took.
“I’ve got a proposition for you, Dr. Quillum.” He kept an un-threatening smile on his face as he spoke; concentrated on breathing through his mouth in an effort to calm the dragon.
“Do you?” She sounded less than impressed.
“I know some of the researchers here take on side assignments—”
“I don’t.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t even know what I’m going to ask.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve got an infinite amount of work to do and a very finite time in which to get it done. I don’t have time for, or interest in, anything that doesn’t directly affect my research.”
The dragon hissed, clawed. He pulled it back, kept the grin on his face, but it was no mean feat. Both he and his beast found her prissy tone entirely too damn sexy.
Plus, the doctor was nobody’s fool—it’d be hard to be a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health if she were—and she wasn’t buying the act. She looked like she wanted to flee and attack in equal measures, a dichotomy that only impressed him more.
Shit. Nothing was going like he’d expected it to. He sure as hell hadn’t meant to come in here and stress her out—it certainly wouldn’t help his cause if she was afraid. But from the second he’d first smelled her sweet warmth, the dragon had been firmly in control. His human side was just along for the ride, the choke chain of restraint he’d wrapped around the dragon slipping in its desperation to get to her.
To touch and taste and tease her into a frenzy of need that equaled his own.
It had been decades—centuries—since he’d felt such a sudden, overwhelming need for a woman. And never had his dragon reacted like this, so brutally frantic to get at the good doctor that it was shredding him from the inside.
He didn’t like the feeling—or trust it.
Still, he couldn’t fault his dragon’s taste. Phoebe Quillum was everything—and nothing—like he’d expected her to be. Her long, flame-colored hair was tucked into a bun at the nape of her neck, but numerous long, curling tendrils had escaped. They brushed against the smooth, apricot skin of her cheek and neck, and made him long to bury his fingers in the heavy, out-of-control mass.
Her eyes were intelligent and direct. Penetrating. And the same clear, deep blue as the desert sky on a cloudless day.
The same deep blue as his talisman, the sapphire that hung on a heavy chain around his neck.
Her lips were unsmiling and unpainted, but so lush that he couldn’t help wondering how they would taste under his own. How they would feel wrapped around his tongue, or even better, his cock.
And her body . . . It was difficult to tell what she looked like under the oversized lab coat and loose black slacks, but the black turtleneck she was wearing under the white coat hugged her full breasts nicely enough that both he—and his dragon—had taken notice.
“You don’t belong here. You need to leave.” The tone she used was firm, no-nonsense, but her voice was as smoothly seductive as moonlight on satin sheets.
The contradictions were enough to drive him insane, enough to prompt both sides of him to wonder who the real Phoebe Quillum was. Ice-cold researcher with a brain full of data, or flame-bright woman with a body made for pleasure?
He’d come here for the researcher but had a sick feeling the dragon wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than the woman behind the long list of degrees.
“You don’t even know what the job is.”
“I don’t need to know.” She glanced pointedly at his jacket. “You don’t have a pass. That’s all I need to know.”
“Where do I get a pass?”
“From my assistant.”
“Only your assistant?” He raised a brow, watched as her cheeks warmed.
“That’s how it works.” This time the tone was prim, but even his dragon heard her guilt.
“Come on, Dr. Quillum. I’m here and so are you.” His cheeks ached with the effort of keeping the smile in place. “Why don’t you at least hear me out?”
She studied him for long seconds, her sapphire eyes boring into his with an intensity that made him itch and burn.
“First, tell me how you knew what I was thinking—and that no one was going to answer my call.”
“It only made sense. You’re obviously nervous. Plus, if they were coming, they would have arrived by now.”
Silence stretched between them like the Grand Canyon. Then, with a well-practiced flick of her head, she turned away and crossed the lab with a few efficient strides. It was almost as if she had sensed his lie. But that was impossible. He’d spent centuries perfecting the talent in an effort to keep his clan safe.
Still, when she said, “I trust you can see yourself out, Mr. MacLeod,” it was with a finality only an idiot would fail to catch.
He’d been dismissed.
Shock ricocheted through Dylan at the thought. In his 471 years of life, no one had ever dared to dismiss him. They’d groveled, made advances, asked for favors, fought beside him and against him in battle. A few had even actively plotted his death. But never had someone simply dismissed him, as if he was not worthy of time or attention. As if he was unimportant.
That this human scientist had done so, and for no reason, lit an inferno inside him that he didn’t want to control.
He was across the room in three paces, blocking her path with his much larger body as he wrapped his hands around her elbows and squeezed—not enough to hurt, but definitely enough to let her know that he was serious.
“Let go of me.” She tried to pull away from him, and the dragon screamed in protest. Dylan tightened his grip just a little.
“I thought we were going to talk.”
“You thought wrong.” The words were clean, concise and as cold as the Mojave in the middle of a February night. “Let go of me. Now.”
“Or else?”
“Or else I will scream this entire building down. The labs are not soundproof, and I assure you, someone will hear me. Someone will come.” The tight line of her mouth relayed just how serious she was, as did the tense set of her shoulders.
He let her go so abruptly that she stumbled. Not because of her threat, but because for the first time since he’d flung open her door, he sensed that she was really afraid. Not annoyed, not concerned, not curious. Just out-and-out afraid. He could smell it on her. The resultant guilt had his beast screaming at him, his humanity doing the same.
It was his turn to walk away.
He strode toward the window on the far wall, looked out over the bustling grounds and tried to calm himself and his dragon down.
What the hell was wrong with him? He’d come here to ask Phoebe Quillum for help, and instead all he’d done was aggravate her. Stress her out. Make her afraid. He couldn’t have done a better job of alienating her if he’d deliberately set his mind to it.
It didn’t make sense. He knew how to play nice with others; he would have had a hell of a time ruling his people for the past three hundred odd years if he didn’t. Even more important, he knew the necessity of treating others with respect. Yet from the second he’d walked in there, he’d done everything he could to
make this woman distrust him and, even worse, actively dislike him.
This woman, whom he needed more than any other.
Whom his research had pointed to as his best bet to find a cure for his people.
Whom he was desperately afraid was his last chance at saving his entire clan.
He really was a jackass.
Inside him, the dragon flexed and stretched. Raked razor-sharp talons across his muscles and bones in displeasure. It was desperate to get out, frantic to get to Phoebe and undo some of the damage he had done.
As if.
He ran his hands over his face, buried them in his hair. Tried desperately to think of something—anything—that might put the two of them back on even footing. Anything that might convince her to take his case.
When he’d first contemplated approaching her, he’d planned to offer her money, riches, whatever she wanted; God knew, after half a millennia of life, he and the rest of his clan members had more than enough money to buy whatever they wanted. The naturally occurring jewels from the caverns they lived in had yielded a fortune through the centuries—a fortune that had become nearly obscene in the past fifty years, thanks to the clan’s financial wizards.
But after the way he’d been acting, he wasn’t sure there was enough money in the world to get her to agree to help him. Still, he had to get her cooperation—one way or another.
“Hey. Not to be rude, but could you have your nervous breakdown somewhere else? I have a lot of work to get done today.”
God, she was tough. He smiled through the despair. Before this was over, he would need every ounce of that toughness—as would his people.
“I’m sorry.” The words popped out before he thought better of them. They were harsh, stilted—he hadn’t apologized to anyone in more years than he could count—but they were also sincere. He’d really fucked up and couldn’t figure out a way to make this better without flat-out admitting that he’d been an ass.
He turned in time to see her rear back in surprise, her mouth forming a perfect O that had his cock pressing into his zipper hard enough to leave marks.
He tamped down on the reaction, tamped down on the heat rushing through his blood like a goddamned volcano set to blow, and tried to concentrate on being normal. Polite. Abashed.