by KH LeMoyne
He nodded. “Would you ask for anything you thought would make him unhappy? Really unhappy, something that would ultimately make him miserable? Not just what he thinks would be a bad idea, like having a child. It can be a fine line, Briet.”
She swallowed hard. Jason was compassionate, protective, and patient, even at the worst of times. Despite his fears, he would be an incredible, loving father. She knew it with a deep certainty. She wouldn’t force children on him. But could she ask for them, even knowing his reluctance? Yes, she could ask, knowing that he would be better getting past his fears and experiencing the gift of his own children, even if the request caused an initial ripple in their relationship. Jason had given her his strength over the last several weeks, unselfishly and without hesitation. He deserved nothing less from her.
With an internal muster of strength, she made her resolution. Grimm was right. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It wasn’t as if Jason would shut her down. She had more than enough strength to bolster him through having a child if he agreed to take the chance. She would give everything she had to see him happy and free of his past.
Resolute, she looked up at Grimm, her sly mentor and friend. He was more meddling than Ansgar. He’d seen through the fog she’d built around herself and she loved him for it.
“I’m glad you’re thinking about it, Briet. Sometimes you have to push the people you love toward what they need, not what they think they want. It’s part of doing what’s best for them. If they’re lucky, they end up with both.”
CHAPTER 31
The fold back to the Sanctum’s council room was uneventful. A slight press of fatigue hung on Jason’s shoulders, but a huge sense of weightlessness permeated his body. Frank’s words shadowed him. Something in the lecture had jarred free the rage, hate and violence or maybe it was a culmination of events. Either way, the feeling was a welcome relief. The empty spaces of his emotions filled in immediately with hope and the promise of a future, but mostly the need to see Briet and absorb her warmth.
Tsu had departed with Frank for the Callao port. They’d succeed in their reconnaissance. The only question was how long they would have to wait to take out the manufacturing plant. Everything depended on the final plan.
Jason hadn’t seen Kamau since he’d left with Taylor. Sera, his black leopard, napped, stretched like a huge rug on the other side of the conference table. A more contented purr rumbled in the air than previously at the warehouse.
Turen and Ansgar had waited a fair distance away after Frank’s lecture. They’d both heard his argument. He’d bet money on it. But he didn’t need a bet to know they would never mention the conversation.
“Thank you for the backup and for dealing with Taylor’s hired muscle.” The team had handled the six other men while Jason had pursued Taylor. He was certain the men weren’t dead, though he wasn’t going to ask about their fate. He moved to take the huge cooler Turen held. Ansgar got there first, adding it to his load.
“Don’t thank us. This is what we do. I think.” Turen laughed. “It’s been a while for our people since we’ve worked on issues other people can’t see coming, much less fix. Feels very right.” He clapped a hand on Jason’s shoulder and left.
Ansgar gestured to the door with his head. “I’ll help you take these to the lab.”
Frank’s people had delivered the three large coolers of samples, all fresh from the last forty-eight hours. The collections covered each trial initiated by the umbrella organization. Processing and testing was going to be a bitch.
“You didn’t have the toxin in that last syringe, did you?” asked Ansgar.
Jason glanced over. “Don’t think I could have killed him?”
“That’s not what I meant. I figured he had it coming. Just kind of have you pegged as the super cautious type. Wouldn’t risk the toxin getting out and hurting somebody else. That kind of thing.”
“Good thing Taylor wasn’t as intuitive.” Not that he’d considered Ansgar very intuitive when he’d first met him. He’d been wrong in that judgment.
“What was in the last syringe?”
“Wasp venom.” Jason kept his expression clear. The last thing he needed was Ansgar to know Frank had a medical dossier on Taylor, among other things. Frank tracked down a wealth of information about Briet’s attacker. Taylor would have killed his grandmother for the right price. He probably had, given the mercenary hits credited to his resume. Jason had no moral dilemma with killing Taylor and he’d tailored his syringes for maximum impact.
Ansgar stopped in the middle of the hallway, arms laden with coolers and stared at him. “You were going to threaten him with a bee sting?”
“Wasp venom.” Jason narrowed his eyes. “His heart would race and his skin puff like a balloon. Tongue, too. Breathing would be damn near impossible. Oh, and his eyes would have swollen shut.”
Ansgar’s eyes widened through the whole accounting. “You’re one scary son of a bitch. I won’t even ask what was in the other syringes. Good thing you’re mated to my sister and are on our side.”
“Very good.” Jason smiled and turned around toward the lab.
“Did you bring an antidote?”
“No.”
“Good man.”
Jason hefted his cooler under one arm and palmed the plasma reader outside the lab. The door slid open. Grimm glanced up from his position squatting on the floor.
“If you would both stay clear of this corner.” He gestured his arm in a wide arc.
Jason exchanged a look with Ansgar, but put the cooler down at the extreme edge of Grimm’s perimeter and waited.
Stepping back from a slide sample he’d placed on the floor, Grimm pressed a panel beside the steel refrigerator doors. A wide screen illuminated on the wall, several sections delineating statistical detail. He pressed one quadrant and a circle of red, three feet in diameter glowed on the floor in the corner, circling the sample.
Grimm made another selection on the panel. The red light rose, separated into beams, and then twisted in candy cane fashion, spiraling to the ceiling. Reponses indicated in numbers, charts and colors on the panel. The red beams turned to pale purple, cut in horizontal and diagonal sections across the tube of red light, descended, and then disappeared.
Theatrics over, the slide still existed on the floor, seemingly intact.
“Okay, I’ll bite. What is that thing?” asked Jason.
Without responding, Grimm’s brows flickered up and looked at Ansgar. “I need a guinea pig.”
“Damn, I thought I was done with this when you and Briet finished medical school.” When the brow remained raised, Ansgar crossed his arms and huffed. “Fine. Probably the only way I’ll get out of here and get some sleep.”
The slide sample removed from the floor and safely disintegrated, Grimm returned to the panel and gestured Jason to move aside.
“It’s not going to turn me into a turtle or something, is it?” Ansgar asked with a sneer.
“I wish.” Grimm tapped the bottom quadrant. The red lights reactivated. “Turtles are very low maintenance.”
Ansgar took a deep breath but remained still, his arms at his sides, hands relaxed, his gaze focused on the table beyond them as if he did this every day. The red bars rose, circled, and descended. No purple, no diagonal slices.
“All done. Thank you.”
“Whatever,” Ansgar replied with a shake of his head.
Jason only saw the tail end of Ansgar’s long blond braid as he whipped out the door.
“And?”
“I’ve been working on this for some time. Until Briet’s samples, I didn’t have anything substantial as a test medium.”
Jason frowned. “Then, what did you build this for?”
Grimm decommissioned the statistical panel. Opening the coolers, he shifted them before the first large steel door. He started transferring the contents, noting on a ledger in the door a subheading for origination and security level for each sample. “As children here at the Sanctum, we were
isolated from the virus that killed our parents. Someday, I would like to believe that one of our own, one who might have survived, or one of our descendents, will make their way back.”
He turned to look Jason straight in the face with a tired, serious expression. “We’ll welcome them home, but we need a way to scan for infection.” He turned back to load more samples and register them. “We need to find a cure.”
Jason shoved the last cooler aside as Grimm closed the door and activated another screen on the door’s face to lock the contents and activate a shield. Computers or not, these people had incredible technology. “Will they know how to get here?”
“This is our origin. For some, there will be a shared memory. Rare, though a possibility. Many, like Kaax, search for descendents of their sibling. Since we’re back in the human population, there’s always the risk the virus is out there, lying dormant.”
A sharp twinge worked its way into Jason’s chest and he tried to shrug it off. The concept of a race of people who’d only just found their way back to normalcy only to encounter annihilation was devastating. He’d thought Salvatore’s experiments threatening, but this danger had existed before his psychological imbalance. A threat, which still lingered.
“Briet indicated over fifty children were here. How many constituted the entire population?” How many were left behind? The question he couldn’t bring himself to ask.
“We comprise about one tenth of our previous population. We believe all the parents, grandparents, and older siblings perished. Many families weren’t contacted in time to deliver children to Eden.”
“The grounds shielded the ones here?”
“We all reached the age of maturity without incident. I’ve run tests through the years to search for a reoccurrence. So far, we’ve been lucky. There is always the possibility the infection was a one-time event. We can’t know for certain.”
“How long have you been working on this?”
Grimm winced. “It was harder to hide my work after the women had to go into cryo, but about sixty years. At least on this piece of equipment, I keep adding functionality. I’ve finally regulated the scan for safety across body types.” Grimm slapped the lid closed on the last cooler.
“You talking gender, or what?”
Grimm glanced back. “From Ansgar to Mia to Marcus.”
Marcus. Turen and Mia’s son wasn’t even a year old. Jason blinked and turned away. “But the virus didn’t affect the children.”
“It doesn’t mean they don’t carry it anyway. I’m designing for the worst case. My objective is to eradicate this threat at any level.”
“I gather you don’t have samples of the original virus.”
Grimm pursed his lips, shook his head, and then shrugged. “Remember, we were children. Bodies of those who perished would have been destroyed to limit infection. There are plenty of detailed entries in the Archives. Descriptions. Symptoms. Hypotheses.” He seemed to read Jason’s confusion at the Archive reference. “Only the women have access to the Archives. Briet can show you some of the entries. Mia can also mine the information for specific data, if you have an interest.”
Jason glanced back at the unassuming circle on the floor and the darkened panel. The procedure performed some function on the sample. “What does the system do if a person is infected?”
“I have you and Briet to thank for that. Given the results of your exhaustive plan and testing, the process will register the infection level and try eradication by electronic frequency. Failing that, it will initiate sound waves.” He shrugged. “If that fails, we go with a standard protocol of isolation and treatment of symptoms until we develop a cure.”
Jason puzzled over the newest details of the Guardians’ past. A lingering threat for each one of them, not a comforting thought. Yet human beings suffered from a long list of diseases and threats. Perhaps dealing with just one might be easier. “She’s verified the sound waves will work?”
“She’s been busy while you were gone.”
The comment snapped Jason back to the present and he gave the healer’s face a quick assessment. “But she’s all right?”
“Just fine. Fully recovered, with enough energy to charge a small city if we could just harness her.”
He laughed in agreement, giving Grimm a closer look. He hadn’t referenced his own fatigue but Jason could do the math. He’d been by Briet’s side and on-call for her entire illness. Aside from working with her during the day, Grimm also put in time and effort afterward on another project to keep the Guardians safe. “Who tells you to take some time off?” Jason asked.
Grimm’s mouth twitched into almost a smile. “Until Turen found his mate—no, Mia found Turen—I had way too much free time. With the resurgence of our people’s future I’m happy to give up some sleep.”
“Yeah, well you’re done today, Doc, and so am I.” He reached out his hand and met Grimm’s firm grip. “See you tomorrow.”
***
The bedroom was empty. The door to the bathroom stood ajar and the splash of water echoed from the shower. Jason pushed open the door and leaned against the frame.
“You okay?”
Briet looked at him over her creamy, pale shoulder. The steam shrouded her image: petite, curved, and luscious.
She laughed. “You can’t think I need a bodyguard in the shower.”
“I figured you’ve been sick and might be feeling a little weak, peaked.”
“And you’re volunteering to come in here with me to make sure I don’t pass out. How valiant.”
He gave her his best wolfish smile. “Always willing to provide you support.” He tossed his shirt to the floor and toed off his boots. The pants followed, his clothes a line of offerings to his goddess before the stone cubicle of her alter, the shower. In reverence, he pulled Briet to him, aligning every damp inch of her body against his skin. He bent his head and inhaled the light scent of her hair as his hands traced a path down her spine. His fingers paused to play with the small dimples on either side of her tailbone.
“You have no idea how much I’ve missed being so close to you,” he whispered. He traced the curved shell of her ear with his tongue before a nibble on the lobe and a tiny suckle to tease. The little whimper from her throat streaked straight to his groin, his cock already hard and ready against the softness of her belly.
Licking a path over her rapid pulse, he suckled until he couldn’t wait any longer. With hands too impatient, he slid his fingers along her scalp, tipped her head, and devoured her lips. His groan reverberated off the stone walls as she opened to him and he tasted the sweetness of her mouth. Tongues dancing, they played, both seeking a closeness sheer physical touch couldn’t deliver.
He pulled away, allowing them both to breathe. Not that he needed anything as trivial as air. Wrestling the soap still cupped in her hands, he turned her around. Her back pressed against his chest offered him an ample view of her breasts and dusky pink nipples, the mounds just hiding the curls between her legs and the sleek curves of her thighs. He was going to taste her from top to bottom before he was done. Hands lathered in soap, he cupped those breasts and rolled the nipples, watching them harden. The pink flesh taunted him.
She gave another delicious whimper and he tweaked one, pinched for a second, reveling in her body’s rub against him in pleasure. Her ass cheeks cradled his cock in wonderful torture.
“I was pretty much clean,” she said, a twinkle in her eyes as her head turned up for another kiss.
“Just being thorough.” His lips captured hers as his hand slid lower, his fingers spearing through her curls and into the slick heat of her folds, already so hot and ready for him. A wave of satisfaction swept through him. He stroked with one finger, waiting until she pressed into his hand and whimpered for more. With two and then three fingers, he circled and teased until her pants were heavy against his cheek. Her body’s responses as much as her exclamations of pleasure and the tight grip of her hands on his forearms, escalated his own pleasure.
He licked and nipped at her lips, turning the peach to a rosy pink.
His pace quickened and then slowed. Faster, then a light touch. He splayed her labia between his fingers and tormented her clit with another until her fingernails dug into his arm. “Come for me, Briet. You don’t know how long I’ve waited to feel you this way.”
Her body tightened beneath his hands and her cries echoed off the walls. His arm anchored beneath her breasts as he held her to him and cupped her mound, still hot and trembling from his attention. Her body felt so perfect against him he didn’t want to move, but the water and the soap weren’t ideal for what he had in mind.
Lifting her in his arms, he dripped water across the bathroom and bedroom floors until he reached the bed. He lowered her onto the soft spread and covered her with his body. Halfway to capturing a delicious nipple in his mouth, her hands stopped him. He winced as her thumb brushed at the residual cut and bruise from his fight with Taylor.
“Jason?”
“It’s nothing,” he murmured, gazing into her light brown eyes, streaked with golden highlights and worry. Putting up no resistance, he allowed her to pull him closer to kiss away the hurts. Soft butterfly kisses, her lips tender with a gentle sweep of her cheek against his jaw, her expression delicate in tandem with her touch. He could come home every day from fights and battles and find ease in this gentle nurture. He dipped closer to her lips. No pain, only heat, blossomed as he captured her mouth beneath his.
Now he had to taste. To feel her come alive for him one more time before he took her with a greedy surge of need.
He pulled away from her mouth to finally close his lips over the hard morsel of her nipple. Suckling her flesh with his tongue, he reveled in the delicate pulse of her heart, a rhythm against his skin. The curve of her breast cupped in his palm, he moved back to blow over her damp flesh and watch it pucker. She arched into him, his cock answering her move with a jerk against the softness of her inner thigh.
