Eyes of the Leopard 5: Captive
Isabella Jordan
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Copyright ©2006 Isabella Jordan
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ISBN (10) 1-59596-414-2
ISBN (13) 978-1-59596-414-4
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Editor: Connie Alberts
Cover Artist: Sinamin
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Chapter 1
“This can’t be happening now,” Alex mumbled staring out the window at the cold, rainy day. But even as he said that, he could feel the tingling in his finger tips.
The restless energy was coursing up and down his limbs like electrical currents. He’d first noticed it this morning, but tried to write if off as anxiety. Not that he’d admit it, but wasn’t he feeling anxious over finally meeting the sister who he’d watched on monitors all his life but who never even knew he existed? While the lab had created many of his kind for their secretive purpose, there had been six in his litter and only two, himself and his sister, had survived. As far as family was concerned, she was all he had.
Couldn’t it also be the stress of being on the run from the men who’d held him captive his entire life?
Alex just wanted to deny that it was happening because it could potentially ruin everything. He simply couldn’t allow the future he’d promised himself, life as a man without glass walls and observing eyes, to be jeopardized.
“It sure the hell is happening.”
The roughness of Joey’s voice had Alex glancing over his shoulder at the man who’d escaped the lab with him. Joey’s arms were clasped tightly around his body in a familiar way and he was pacing vigorously. This was exactly what he used to do back in his glass cell, where he’d lived next to Alex, right after he’d received the injections. All the muscles in his body tensed and a vein in his neck throbbed in agitation. The large bulge at the front of his jeans was very telling.
Alex knew exactly what his friend was feeling. He knew very well what it felt like when the mating lust came on and his dick became one big throbbing, all-encompassing ache for what seemed like endless days.
Fuck.
Every January Alex and the other males who lived in the lab had been given injections to bring on the mating lust to coincide with the breeding cycle of natural leopards in the wild. Dr. Wojcik believed that compliance with the rules of their natural counterparts would guarantee better results in producing offspring with the females. Alex didn’t know if that worked or not since the males never saw the offspring. He didn’t even know what became of them each year. The males only saw the females each year, from January to March, to fuck. That was it.
The mating period, especially when Alex had been younger, had been something to anticipate -- the sheer pleasure of being able to do nothing but fuck as many females as he could in any way he wanted because they wanted it that badly too. The females were injected to bring them into heat, and once that happened they were every bit as eager as the males. It never mattered to the scientists who fucked who because they could always determine the blood line of the offspring by DNA. It had been just one big orgy for three months out of every year for his kind. All of them in one big room for hours at a time every day.
It wasn’t until Alex had grown older that the mating cycle became something to dread rather than anticipate. His body would be left aching from hours of mating with no real relief for days, especially early in the cycle. The pleasure became too acute, and he came to recognize it as artificial.
Alex had often been allowed to watch television through most of his captivity as a reward for being cooperative, so he knew something of the human world. Saw hundreds of attractive human females on those glass screens. He’d had fantasies aplenty. Somehow the sexual arousal he’d felt when he’d imagined himself with one of them was different. Less intense, but more satisfying. Meaningful because he imagined a relationship with the female, feeling something for her that went beyond chemicals injected into his body.
Alex wanted that. He wanted a female that was his, to command and enjoy. He wanted a woman who would be more than a faceless body for him to fuck. Alex wanted someone he could learn every facet of. Someone who would submit to all his desires.
No, he needed someone who would submit to him.
It hadn’t taken Alex long after that to realize the sex he was allowed to have left him unsatisfied. Slowly he became unhappy with everything else in the clinical world where he’d always lived. All of it left him feeling empty inside. There was no dignity in it. Alex was at least part human. The activities of humans, intimate and otherwise, had to be much more civilized. Hell, the mating activities of the animals had to be more civilized than what he’d experienced in his life.
Everything about his captivity had eaten at him until he was left with two choices. Give up and die, or find a way to get the hell out of the lab. The latter option, over a period of weeks, consumed him. Carefully he’d thought it all out, formulated his plan. The only thing that hadn’t gone according to plan was having a companion, but it was done now. Alex had escaped and Joey had gone with him. They just had to make the best of it.
Alex and Joey had managed to escape their captors just before the yearly health inspection that always took place prior to the mating cycle. Alex had planned it that way because he knew once they received the injections, lust would damned near immobilize them until the end of March. Then he could say goodbye to any chance of establishing a new life in the human world.
If this was the mating lust coming on, and he was pretty damned sure it was, this was bad.
“What the fuck?” Joey stopped pacing and scowled at Alex. “We didn’t get the injections. Why the hell is this happening?”
“Our bodies must be accustomed to it now.” It was the only explanation Alex could come up with. “They’ve been giving us those shots since we were sixteen. Now our bodies are just doing what they think they’re supposed to.”
Alex believed he was twenty-five this year. Birthdays weren’t celebrated in the lab as they were in the human world and his age hadn’t been an issue to the scientists yet, so he wasn’t certain exactly how old he was. If he was right, that meant he’d been through the mating cycle eight years and it looked like he was heading for nine, like it or not.
“Okay,” Alex said, looking back out the window of the abandoned school building for the millionth time for any sign of the woman he waited for. “Let’s just get through this meeting, and then we’ll go. Let me talk to my sister and we’ll get out of town. We’ll handle it.”
“And do what exactly?” The sarcasm in Joey’s tone was biting. “Whack off for three months?”
“We’ll figure something out.” Alex tried to sound calm. He hadn’t expected this to happen either, damn it.
“This first cycle will last a couple of weeks,” Joey told him meaningfully. “How the hell are we going to stay ahead of them in this condition?”
Alex knew exactly what he
was concerned about. The first two weeks of the cycle were the worst. Once they got through those, they probably could whack off through the rest of it until March if they had to. But how they’d get through the first two weeks, Alex had no idea.
When he saw the small feminine figure, her head concealed by the hood of the gray coat she wore, Alex knew he’d have to think of an answer later.
“Here she comes,” Alex hissed at Joey. “Get back there!”
Joey scrambled out of the old office and down the hall of the building while Alex made his way to the outer door that she was approaching. He could barely hear the echoes of Joey’s footfalls over the pounding of his heart.
Finally! His sister, Nicole, had agreed to meet him, to talk to him. Finally, he’d get to tell her the truth about everything after all these years. Who he was, who she was. Nicole deserved to know the truth. She was innocent. He’d be damned if he’d just let those bastards who created them catch her unaware and cruelly ruin her life as they had his and so many others. In her case, it would be far worse. She knew what it was like to have freedom where Alex barely did. Having it taken away would be unimaginable.
Alex would tell her all about the men who hunted them. The same men who sought him were looking for her, and her baby too. She had to know that.
Alex knew little about Nicole’s mate, but he’d seen the man’s image. Alex knew her mate was his kind, half man, half beast. Incredibly, that man had been born in nature. He was large and imposing, and there was comfort for Alex in the fact that the man could probably keep Nicole safe. However there were some things her mate needed to know in order to do that. Things Alex could tell them. Things he would tell his sister.
He’d almost given up on getting the opportunity to help Nicole. The first few times he’d tried to call, she’d hung up on him. He’d spotted her walking with her baby in the park a few days ago, but she must have sensed him because she took off like a bat out of hell with her child in tow.
He’d given her one last try yesterday by phone. Surprisingly, she’d agreed to meet him today.
His sister. Alex knew there was no reason he should have any sort of emotional bond to her. Nicole didn’t even know he existed. There had been six in their litter, produced in the lab. The other four had died when they were a few days old. Only Alex and Nicole had survived. Nicole had been sent out into the human world for observation, adopted by a human couple and raised as one of them. Alex had lived in the lab, watching the human world through television.
Alex had gotten to watch Nicole grow up in the human world while he’d grown to adulthood in the cold, white lab. A test subject, his sister had lived a magnificent life filled with friends and toys and people who cared about her. So many nights he’d watched her on that screen. Oh how he’d envied her, sleeping in her little bed, feeling safe in the world he knew to be so cruel.
Envy had never turned to darker feelings, jealousy or spite. Not where Nicole was concerned. No, those emotions he saved for his captors. For those who’d made him the pitiful creature that he was.
Now Nicole was here, in his reality. Alex had a real chance to free her for all time. Just as he wanted and intended to be free.
His heart began to race in his chest as he pulled open the door and she walked through it, all wrapped up in her heavy gray coat.
“Come in, quickly,” Alex bid her, closing the door tightly behind her.
She just stood there outside the office where he’d been watching her, not making a move which was odd. Alex wanted to yank back her hood and see her face, but he didn’t want to scare her either. It had taken a lot for him to convince her to come out here in the first place. Alex inhaled deeply, anxious to know his sister’s scent after all this time.
Only something wasn’t right when he did.
“Nicole?” he asked.
With shaking hands encased in black gloves, she turned and slowly pushed the hood back off her head. Instead of the familiar short dark hair he expected, there were pale blonde curls, long and spilling from the hood in a shiny flood.
What the fuck?
Alex grabbed the woman’s arm and spun her around roughly. Her scent told him she was just a human. Her face, while beautiful and striking, wasn’t his sister’s.
“Who the hell are you?” Alex demanded. “Where’s Nicole?”
The woman’s blue eyes were big already but they grew even wider when they met with his. “I’m here in Nicole’s stead.” Her voice was unsteady. “I’m Casey Howard.”
Shit. Alex knew that name, knew her face. He’d seen her on television many times as a reporter for one of the local city stations. Alex remembered her work on the local news because she always addressed some injustice or stood up for the underdog, the side of the topic that seemed hopeless. Some would consider her actions brave and courageous.
He couldn’t say he thought much of it then or now. It was obvious she used her tales of woe to get stories, to further her career.
Why the hell was a reporter here? Where was his sister?
Alex took a menacing step toward the woman, satisfied when the scent of her fear grew stronger. Good. She was going to answer his questions. Had Nicole sent a reporter in her anxiety? Or had the media somehow unearthed some of the lab’s secrets and she’d approached Nicole?
Either way, Alex wasn’t happy.
“I’ll ask again, Ms. Howard,” Alex spoke slowly, deepening his voice. “Where is Nicole?”
“Nic -- Mrs. Kerensky believes there may be someone following her, wishing to do her harm. She wants to keep her family safe. That’s why she asked me to come.”
Pretty explanation, but it didn’t work on so many different levels. “So she sent you into harm’s way? Another woman?”
Alex took another step closer, deciding her scent wasn’t at all unpleasant. She took a small step backward, her eyes wildly scanning the hallway now. Alex left the woman nowhere to go. “I may be another woman, but I’m a member of the media,” Casey Howard pointed out. “My crew is just outside. I didn’t come alone.”
“I could make off with you before they ever stepped out of the vehicle,” Alex warned, his body humming with his awareness of her. Her unique smell was intoxicating to him as was the soft beauty of her face. How would her blonde curls feel under his hands? Were the curls covering her pussy the same golden color?
With a trembling hand, she fished in the pocket of her coat and jerkily pulled out a small cell phone.
“I’ll dial nine-one-one if you try anything.”
As a threat, it was a weak offering. Yet, Alex liked the way her nostrils flared and she put steel in her voice when she spoke. Her fear of him was obvious. Yet she fought it.
Alex smiled at her. “I’m afraid.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed, staring at him with the clear blue eyes. “So you do mean to harm Nicole?” her voice was low.
“No,” Alex spoke firmly, “but she’s right in thinking that someone is looking for her. They mean to harm her and her family. I’m only trying to help.”
“Why should she believe you?” Casey asked, sounding a little less fearful now.
“What reason does she have not to believe me?” Alex shot back.
“Because you look a lot like one of the men the police are looking for.” Her courage seemed to be building a little more each second. “Are you one of the two men wanted for the murder of that security guard?”
“What security guard?” Alex wanted to know. Neither he nor Joey had harmed anyone during their escape.
“The one employed by Leviathan Institute?”
Leviathan. Alex recognized that name from Dr. Wojcik’s stationary, from the scrap paper he was given to use. Leviathan Institute? Was that the real name for the place he knew as the lab?
“I don’t know anything about a security guard,” Alex snapped. “What has that got to do with meeting my sister, and the fact that you’re here and she isn’t?”
She started digging in the other pocket of h
er coat, this time pulling out a wrinkled, folded piece of paper. Alex wanted to tear it from her hands in his impatience while she struggled to unfold it, but finally she managed.
“Is this not you?” Casey’s voice was sharp when she turned the page around so he could see it was a wanted flyer for a man with short dark hair.
His blood turned to ice in his veins when he took a closer look at the man’s face and recognized his own. “Give me that!” he demanded, snatching it out of her hands with a speed that had her jumping back.
With unbelieving eyes, Alex scanned the page. Incredible! They’d even given him a surname, calling him Alex Underwood. None of them were ever given surnames. He was wanted for questioning in the murder of a security guard that supposedly took place the night that he and Joey made their escape. He was also wanted for corporate espionage?
They’d never seen anyone when they got out of there. They weren’t murderers or thieves.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” Casey’s soft voice broke into the crazy spin of his thoughts.
Alex met her worried stare head on. “This is my image and Alex is my name, but those are the only two facts on this page.” Angrily he crumpled it in his hand and threw it down. It was all an attempt by the lab to recruit help in capturing him and Joey.
Alex would be damned if he’d go back there again. He’d rather die.
None of it had anything to do with the fact that he was trying to help Nicole, his sister. As he stared at the lovely reporter who came in her place, Alex had to realize that his sister didn’t want his help. He’d already jeopardized his safety and that of his companion just to reach her. The news that he was wanted as a murderer and corporate thief meant that he and Joey needed to get out of the city, fast. The danger haunting their steps could close in on them at any time.
“Are you friends with my sister, or did you arrange this to get a story?”
“Both,” Casey said after a moment’s pause. “We live in the same apartment building. When she confided in me about the phone calls, I convinced her to let me come and meet you in her place.”
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