by Tessa Adams
“Of course we do.” His grin was distinctly provocative. And just that easily, blood began to gush up the needle and into the vial.
Silently, she filled the first tube and then the second, refusing to think about what had just happened. There’d be time enough to analyze his seeming ability to control his blood. Now, when she was still hot and wet for him, was not that time. By the time she’d slid the needle out and started to put gauze on the wound, the bleeding had stopped. His blood had fully clotted, sealing the wound and making it almost impossible to see.
A million questions ran through her mind, but she shoved them away. Then took the vials to the back of the lab, where she kept the microscopes. Pulling out a slide and a dropper, she made quick work of readying a sample.
She looked through the microscope, certain she would see exactly what she was expecting to see. Namely, round red blood cells floating in plasma, bouncing off each other, and the irregular white blood cells that should also make up the sample.
She was so sure of what she was seeing that it took a few seconds before she saw what was actually there. Even then, she couldn’t believe it. Pulling out the slide, she checked to make sure it hadn’t somehow been contaminated. Then she decided to start over again with a new slide. She checked everything carefully, from the dropper, to the slide, to the microscope, to the blood itself. When she was satisfied that all was as it should be, she slid it back under the microscope. And swore in frustration as she got the same results.
Although she might be looking at red and white blood cells, they were different from the ones she had in her own body, different from any she had ever seen in her subjects. If she didn’t know better, she would say that they were vaguely reptilian in nature—long and thin and flat, they were a strange yellow-orange color that made her doubt both her eyes and the microscope.
“Not what you were expecting?” Dylan murmured as he came up behind her.
“Not at all.” Turning, she pinned him with a glare that had made lesser men stammer like twelve-year-olds at their first dance, but he merely winked at her, a slow, sexy lowering of his left eye that almost succeeded in distracting her. Almost.
“Where, exactly, in New Mexico are you from?” she asked, her mind scanning through the possibilities. Maybe they were testing at White Plains again, or maybe the testing from years before had leaked into the water system or the ground and had slowly poisoned Dylan’s clan.
She looked back at the microscope. But nuclear radiation wasn’t enough to do this kind of damage, to cause this kind of mutation in a person’s bloodstream. She wasn’t a hematologist, but she’d looked at enough blood cells in her life to know that something was very, very wrong with the blood in Dylan’s body. If all of his clan members had blood like this, it was no wonder they were sick. Maybe she could get a friend to look at—
“I can practically see the wheels turning in that gigantic brain of yours, Phoebe. Let me stop you before you get too far. I’m not sick.”
“No offense, but you’re not the doctor here. You can’t know what I saw—”
“Of course I can. You saw cells very different from what you are used to. Dark where they should be light, and vice versa. Orange where they should be red, flat where they should be raised.” He quirked a brow. “How am I doing so far?”
Her mouth fell open as she stared at him, aghast. “So you knew you’d contracted the disease before you came here, even after you swore to me that you weren’t sick?”
“Once again, I’m not sick. I know what you saw because that’s what anyone who looks at our blood sees. If you looked at the blood of my clan members who actually did get sick, you would see something completely different.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do. You just don’t want to accept it.”
“That’s not true—”
“Of course it is, Phoebe.” He pushed against her, crowding her until her back was against the solid marble of the lab table and the front of her body was pressed against his rock-hard muscles from chest to thigh. “You wanted proof that what I said was true. You’re holding that proof, and still you don’t want to believe it. Still you won’t believe it.”
She shoved against him, refusing to be distracted by the heat between them. Making yet another slide, she peered through the microscope a third time. “There has to be some explanation.”
“There is.” He leaned back against the table next to her, his long legs stretched in front of him with his ankles crossed. “Maybe I’m not crazy. Maybe I’m just telling the truth.”
“How is that possible? Looking at this, I would say the blood came from a totally different species—someone who isn’t even human.” She ran her eyes over him from head to toe, trying not to linger on his heavily muscled chest or flat stomach. “And that’s obviously not the case.”
“Phoebe—” he started, but she cut him off with a raised hand.
“Three million dollars,” she said, her voice firm but her eyes wild. “Before we leave this lab today?”
“Absolutely.”
“And I’d get the chance to study you—and your people.”
His eyes darkened. “We’re not lab rats.”
“Of course you aren’t.” She was impatient now, dying to get started looking at the strange phenomena that made Dylan who he was. “But if you want me to be able to understand the irregularities of a disease, I first need to understand what is normal for you.” She glanced back at the microscope. “And, obviously, if what I’m seeing is true, I don’t have the first idea of what’s normal and what isn’t.
“If you expect me to be able to help you, I’ll need to change that. Quickly.”
CHAPTER SIX
He still couldn’t believe she was coming back with him. Dylan glanced across the plane’s small seating area at Phoebe, who was currently engrossed in whatever data she was looking at on her laptop. Every once in a while she would mutter to herself, then write something on the legal pad he quickly discovered went everywhere with her.
Though he was doing his best to look normal on the outside, inside he was a mess. His dragon was straining against him, shoving and pushing to get out now that it had already clawed him bloody. It didn’t like the private airplane they were in, didn’t like flying under anything but its own power. But since he’d already thrown Phoebe for a loop—maybe more than one—yesterday, he figured shifting to dragon form might just push her over the edge.
So he’d had one of the clan’s private planes flown in while she went home to pack and arrange whatever she needed to in the wake of a prolonged absence. She said she’d give him three weeks to start with, and he hadn’t argued. But the truth was, he had no intention of letting her leave until she’d found a cure for the disease that was wreaking havoc among his clan.
If that made him a bastard, then so be it. He’d been called worse in the past five centuries. Much worse.
“How much longer until we land?” Phoebe’s voice broke into his reverie, had his attention shifting from the plight of his people to much more pleasant thoughts—most of which began and ended with what it would take to get her into the bed in the private room at the back of the plane.
“Two hours. Why?”
“My brain is muddled. I need a quick nap to recharge my batteries.” She started to close her eyes.
His unruly cock sprang to life at the idea of her stretched out, warm and vulnerable with sleep. Beating down the need, he stood abruptly. “There’s a bed in the back. You can stretch out on it for as long as you’d like.”
He started moving down the aisle, not waiting to see if she would follow him. Right now, his beast was far too close to the surface; if he touched Phoebe, he had a feeling he wouldn’t stop until she was under him in bed and he was doing every single thing he’d fantasized about doing to her in the past twenty-four hours.
It was a long list, one that would take much more than two hours to fulfill.
But she’s tired, he berated himself. Her steps were he
avy and uncoordinated, her eyelids already at half-mast. She’d been up all night and most of the day getting things arranged for the impromptu trip; it was no wonder she was exhausted.
With that thought firmly in his mind, Dylan pushed open the door to the room, gestured to the bed. “There’s a bathroom through here.” He moved farther into the room, then realized his mistake when she followed him.
It had been bad enough when they’d both been sitting out in the main section of the plane, but here, in the close confines of the room, her scent was nearly overpowering. It wrapped itself around him, teasing his senses—and the dragon—with the brown-sugar, honeysuckle sweetness of her. Dylan took a deep breath, inhaled her into his lungs, into his body, even as he told himself to breathe through his mouth. But the truth was, he didn’t want to do that, didn’t want to turn the scent off.
He wanted to wallow in it, to bury himself in it. To immerse himself in it until all he smelled was her.
It wasn’t a good idea—he was smart enough to know that. She was human, for God’s sake, and he knew better than most that nothing could come from that. Oh, he could sleep with her—his eager cock pressed against his zipper at the thought—but he’d never be able to have a relationship with her. Never be able to build something with her.
One, because she was human, and as such couldn’t possibly be his mate. No dragon king had had a human mate in the thousands and thousands of years of their existence. He sincerely doubted that that was going to change now.
And two, he owed it to his people to pick a mate who was a dragon. How could he not? He was one of the last pureblood dragons in existence—one of the few whose blood wasn’t mixed with that of a human. Because of this, his powers were greater than most of his clan members. As king, it was his duty to protect that blood-line, to pass it on to his children. That was one more thing he couldn’t do with a human mate.
Besides, she was fragile—so fragile that he could see the dark blue of her veins through her thin, pale skin.
So fragile that he could wrap his fingers around her wrist twice over.
So fragile that he feared letting loose his passion around her. Too much and he might break her, a thought that made him ill on many levels.
Yet he didn’t move away as she sank onto the bed. Didn’t excuse himself and shut the door behind him as she stretched out. And he most assuredly did not stop himself from tracing every inch of her with his eyes.
God, she really was beautiful. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders like living flames, tempting him, and far too much of her luscious skin was on display for his peace of mind.
A part of him wanted nothing more than to trace his lips along the light smattering of freckles on her shoulder. To connect the dots with his tongue, and then wrap himself up in her. To pull that hair around him until his outward appearance reflected the fire within.
The dragon wanted to play, too. He could feel its desire, its need to curl up beside her and sink its teeth deep into the fleshy part of her upper back or thigh. Not to hurt her, but to lay claim.
“Are you going to stand there for the next two hours and stare at me?” she asked with a tinge of sleepy amusement, one sultry blue eye peeking at him from beneath a cracked lid.
“No!” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Of course not. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t need anything.”
“I don’t.”
“Sure. Of course.” But he still made no move to leave. It was as if his feet were rooted to the ground.
“Well, come here, then,” she muttered, sleepily rolling onto her side.
His teeth snapped together. “Excuse me?”
“I won’t be able to sleep with you towering over me, glaring. And I need to sleep. So come on. This bed is as big as a lake. Surely we can share it without concern.”
Don’t bet on it. A part of him wanted to snarl the words out, to berate her for being so lax in her concern for herself. But the other, more dominant, part didn’t care about anything but diving onto the bed next to her and pulling her delicious curves against him—to hell with the consequences.
His conscience smarted enough that he managed to lie gingerly on the bed instead of springing on her like a ravenous tiger, but he couldn’t say much about the rest. The second his body sank into the mattress next to Phoebe’s, his mouth literally started to water. He wanted to lick her, to nuzzle her, to tease and taunt and torment her until insanity claimed her as surely as it had him.
He didn’t, of course. Instead, he settled for stretching out behind her, stiff as the proverbial board in an effort to keep from scaring her away. But he needn’t have bothered; she was already asleep. Her eyes were closed, her breathing even. Her body relaxed as it cuddled back against the warmth of his.
Dylan barely suppressed a groan as her ass twitched against his cock. The dragon wanted to flip her over, to mount her. And if he was honest, so did the man. Instead, he just lay there with her against him, sweating and trembling and fighting back his basest instincts, all the while following the torturously slow sweep of the minute hand as it worked its way around the face of the clock on the wall.
Phoebe woke up exactly fifty-seven minutes after she had fallen asleep. She didn’t know how she knew that, except for the fact that she had an innate sense of time that never let her down. She’d had the talent from the moment she really understood what the passage of time meant, and had honed it in medical school, when the clock was much more of an enemy than it was a friend.
As she drifted slowly into consciousness, she became aware that her body felt much different from usual.
First, she was warm. Warm enough to sweat, which in and of itself was an anomaly for her.
Second, she was cuddled up against a big, strong, obviously male body. He was curled around her like a blanket, her body pressed against him from shoulder to calf, her head pillowed on his rock-hard bicep.
And third, the big, strong male behind her was aroused. Seriously and completely aroused, his cock pressing against the seam of her ass like she held all the keys to the mysteries of the world locked deep within her.
Dylan, her subconscious mind told her before she could move from sleepy lassitude to utter panic. Dylan MacLeod was behind her, giving every appearance of wanting to jump her as much as she wanted to do the same to him.
One more time, her sleepy mind went over his too-hot temperature, his too-thick skin, the differences in his blood. She’d already run through every imaginable scenario in her head—nuclear testing, genetic mutations, disease—and had come up with nothing that explained the differences in his chemistry. Had already gone through every article she could find in the online medical databases and come up empty. The scientist in her was fascinated, but the woman in her was very, very wary.
Or so she tried to tell herself.
Of course, it was pretty hard to buy her own bullshit when her body was so freaking hot for his, it was a miracle she didn’t spontaneously combust. Before she could yet again go over the reasons that this was a bad idea, she was pressing her hips back against Dylan in what could only be called an invitation. An invitation that was rewarded when his entire body went as stiff as his cock.
Even his breathing changed. One moment it was slow and steady; the next it was so harsh and ragged, she could actually feel his chest shuddering against her back.
Phoebe smiled to herself. It did a woman good to know that she could inspire such an instant and absolute reaction in a man. Particularly a man as gorgeous and intelligent and downright sexy as Dylan.
Stretching, she subtly rubbed her back against his front, wanting to see how far she could push him. When he didn’t immediately react to the press of her thighs against his own, she almost pouted. She knew he was awake, knew he was as aware of her as she was of him. And yet he wasn’t taking the hint.
She wasn’t shy, not about the human body and certainly not about her sexuality. And hey, she liked being the aggressor as much as the next woman. But there was something t
o be said for having a big, strong man in your bed—one who knew exactly what he was doing and was more than happy to show you. She’d thought Dylan—
Before she could do much more than blink, she was flat on her back, Dylan between her thighs as he loomed over her. One large hand was tangled in her hair, while the other anchored her wrist to the bed. His upper body was levered away from her, but that only made the feeling of his cock pressed against her pussy that much more intense.
“You’re playing with fire, Phoebe.” His voice was low, smoky, filled with the dark embers of a flame that had raged out of control.
“It’s a good thing I’m not afraid of getting burned, then. Isn’t it?” She widened her thighs so he could fit even better between them, whimpering as he thrust against her. Though they were separated by layers of clothes, she could still feel the heat and hardness of him. He shifted a little, and she gasped as his cock pressed against her clit—hard.
“Fuck, Phoebe. Don’t do that if you don’t mean it.”
“Do what?” she whispered, arching so that he fit right against the heart of her. “This?”
The hand in her hair tightened into a fist as he pulled her head down tight against the bed. The sharp hint of pain only made the pleasure that much more inviting.
Breathless, excited, she darted her tongue out to lick her suddenly dry lips. He froze, eyes narrowed dangerously as her tongue stroked from one edge of her bottom lip to the other. The sizzle in his eyes made the gesture less than useless, and she closed her eyes in an effort to block him out long enough to get her frantically beating heart under control.
But Dylan was having none of it. “Open your eyes,” he rasped, his breath hot and sweet against her mouth.
She tried, but her lids were too heavy. She needed a minute. Needed—
“Phoebe!” His voice was a cracking whip, and her eyes flew open despite her.
“Don’t hide from me.”
“I wasn’t. I just—”
“You were.” His hands tightened in her hair, the tug on her scalp sending ribbons of flame through her breasts and pussy.
