Dangerous

by Jacquelyn Frank

  “Just because I need help protecting myself doesn’t mean I can’t kick ass,” Devon said flatly. “If I can beat down a Morphate while shot through the leg, then you can damn well imagine what I can do while completely healthy. Do not underestimate me, any of you. Now if you would please get out.”

  She gave them a moment while they gaped at her. All except for Inez, who’d already known that detail, and who was grinning from ear to ear. She got off the bed and walked away. Devon watched her move, the woman’s gait awkward and stiff as she began to feel the beating she had taken. She must have seen the concern in Devon’s eyes because the Latina patted her shoulder and shook her head as she passed.

  “Kellen will take care of me. Help Liam as you say you can.”

  Once Inez left, the rest followed her lead, starting with Kellen, who saluted her crisply with a chuckle and a wink. The last to leave was the huffy woman she had all but threatened. Not wishing to alienate any of Liam’s people, she reached out a staying hand and the other woman stopped short.

  “I only have his best interests at heart. I know you do, too. How can there be an argument here?”

  The bodyguard instantly eased, consternation replacing peevishness. “No. No argument. Not if you can really help him.”

  Devon smiled softly when she heard the loyalty underlying the prickly doubt. Liam had earned this, and she had no doubt he deserved it. “It normally takes a week to recover from envenomation, right?” She waited for the reluctant nod. “I can guarantee half that time or better, depending on how quickly I work. Okay?”

  This time the nod was enthusiastic. The soldier nearly ran out of the room to share the startling information with the others. Devon watched as Inez reached to shut the door, listening to the buzz of surprised voices for a moment before tuning them out.

  Humans hadn’t yet been able to unlock the secrets of developing an antivenin for Morphate venom. Most venom paralyzed prey for consumption, and this venom was no different. However, Morphate venom was also a weapon. It was meant to create the most agonizing stimulation of nerve endings possible, fluctuating in intensity and adapting like a virus so that the nerves in question never over-fired to the point of becoming insensate. That would defeat the purpose of debilitating the enemy with pain. The venom dwelled in the quick of their claws, ejecting the moment the nails came into contact with a certain amount of pressure. Devon knew it didn’t take much at all, and that it was almost always guaranteed that if the claw broke skin, envenomation had taken place.

  The severity of the envenomation was the urgent issue. Cutting of the arms or the legs made for an agonizing but, generally, non-fatal experience. The only time Morphate venom was fatal was a direct puncture of a vital organ. The bleeding from such a puncture would be bad enough, but if envenomation began directly in an organ, the rapid necrosis of the tissue would almost certainly mean death.

  The human inability to develop an antivenin didn’t surprise Devon. Their scientists hadn’t yet figured out how many layers of deception there were in Morphate venom. They didn’t know of the shifting chromosomes between male and female venom, or the gene that had adapted to its environment to make the best effective poison. Then again, humans hadn’t entirely grasped that Morphates were dramatically different from one protocol to the next.

  Devon hurried over to Liam, setting her supplies down on the nightstand. She sat gingerly beside him on the bed, on the side closest to the wound, watching him flinch as the bed shifted under her weight. He was feeling pain all over by now, his skin crawling with it and his muscles cramping from poison. The fever would nauseate and dehydrate him before long.

  “Don’t worry,” she soothed in a whisper as he swung pained eyes in her direction, “it will ease soon.”

  She reached for her toolkit, rolling it open over her lap once it was unsnapped. She took out a pair of alcohol swabs, a syringe, and a small sterile bottle of cloudy liquid.

  Morphate antivenin.

  She was perhaps uniquely qualified to have created it. Before all of this had begun, when she had been human, she’d been a doctor of zoological study and husbandry. Animals, their makeup, and the genetics that made them so different from one another had been her specialty. She had been in high demand in the best of zoos and high-end laboratories back in her days as a human. It was what had put her on Dr. Paulson’s radar in the first place. When she had learned of his monstrous plans, she had refused to take part … and had earned herself a place as one of his human lab rats for her trouble. She had often replayed that encounter and her reactions in her head, often wondered about all the ways she could have responded differently, more cleverly, ways that could have saved thousands of humans from becoming what they now were.

  But it was an exercise in futility; she’d come to understand that. She could not change what had already happened by pounding her head into woulda-coulda-shouldas. But she had the brains and the wherewithal to create countermeasures that would protect the more fragile humans the Morphates lived with. The idea had not started with her, neither had the research, but she was the one who had succeeded.

  All because she had courted the military and that military had told her about the claims of a Secret Service agent named Liam Nash. She had gained the military contract to explore the truth of this claim and its effectiveness, and to develop a safe, efficient delivery system for use by soldiers and, perhaps more important, law enforcement nationwide. She had explored and entertained the method that Liam and his people were using now, and had found it subpar and dangerous to the humans wielding the weapons. She had noticed the radiation detectors they wore on their holsters, had no doubt that they had to undergo exposure treatments on occasion. It worried her to think of them taking such risks.

  She took out the needle and tubes necessary to start an IV on him. The antivenin couldn’t be introduced all at once, in an injection; she needed gradual access. Also, by starting a saline drip, she could try to head off the dehydration that often came with envenomation.

  “Liam,” she said quietly, knowing his hearing was also becoming sensitive, “I have to start an IV drip and it might hurt more than normal, okay?”

  “If you’re trying to poison me, you’re too late,” he quipped roughly, surprising her with his lucidity. She shook her head, asking herself what she had expected and why she should be so astonished. She turned the smile he’d earned on him and laughed softly.

  “Actually, you may zink eet eez zee venom zat eez causing zis, Meester Bond,” she affected with exaggeration, “but eet wuz zee poizun leepsteeck from zee keess of my leeps zat haz done you in.”

  “Your leeps?” Liam laughed, instantly scrunching his entire body in pain.

  “Hey, easy does it,” she soothed with a soft laugh. She waited a moment before pulling his arm over into her lap. She gently stroked her fingers over the inside of his elbow and forearm, knowing the motion would calm any cramped muscles. She listened to the change in his breathing, the exhalation that signaled his relaxation. She tore open an alcohol pad and quickly swabbed a vein. “I love buff men,” she remarked in mellow, distracting conversation. “You never have to look for a vein. They are all nicely mapped out. Very juicy and almost impossible to miss.”

  “And here most women just think it’s sexy,” he marveled.

  “Bulging veins?” she quizzed doubtfully.

  “No, buff men,” he chuckled.

  She grinned as she worked with nimble, efficient movements, her warning turning out to be entirely unnecessary because next he knew she was taping the tubing down gingerly, trying to avoid the dark hairs on his arm.

  “I,” she enunciated as she gave his arm a final pat, “am not most women.”

  “Thank God for that,” he muttered, making her chuckle as she connected the long tubing to a large unit of saline. She hoisted it up, taking down a picture in order to hang the plastic bag on the hook. “Did I ever mention I find resourceful women a turn-on?” he asked as he watched her act with such efficiency a
nd decisiveness, as if she did this sort of thing every day.

  “You’ve mentioned nothing of the kind,” she noted.

  “You know, you actually look like you know what you’re doing,” he remarked as his eyes narrowed on her with speculation. “Are you going to tell me you’re a doctor now, too?”

  Devon contemplated her answer, knowing she couldn’t be honest with him. “I’m not going to kill you if that’s what you are worried about,” she teased, giving him a crooked grin.

  “No. I was just curious. Where’d you learn how to do all this?”

  “I was an EMT while I was in college,” she said with a shrug of a shoulder. “It paid the bills.”

  “You mean you weren’t born into this?” He glanced up and around at the richly furnished and professionally decorated room. “How the hell old are you?” he demanded.

  She laughed, flushing as she injected air into the antivenin equal to the amount she was going to withdraw. She’d never administered it to someone of such a significant stature and weight before and she was going to have to make a calculated guess on the dosage. Luckily, the calculations would also help her dodge the question he’d asked. “How much do you weigh?”

  “About 236, I think. Are you going to answer me?”

  “I don’t think I ought to. It’s rude to ask a woman that.”

  Liam was on to her. Devon was incredibly good at lying, but he’d picked up her tell. She didn’t like to lie, so she dodged or tried to be evasive first, trying to put off what she felt was a need to fib to him. It was noticeable only because she was so quick to be blunt and truthful the rest of the time. He tried not to frown when he realized she’d lied to him about being a medic. Why would she do that? Where had these skills really come from? What was she so reluctant to reveal? Or was that even it at all?

  Frankly, Liam was in too much pain to fully trust his observations at the moment, so he relaxed and let her attend him. He wasn’t worried she’d hurt him. She could just let the venom do that on its own if she wanted to. Considering the present threat she was living under, he didn’t blame her for being naturally cautious.

  All he cared about was that she was safe. That she was within his reach and right where he could see her. He was hurting like he’d been hit by a locomotive, but he could and would move if he had to for any reason.

  He was just damn glad he didn’t have a reason.

  “Shit,” he groaned irritably.

  Devon injected the filled syringe into a short port leading to the I. V. tubing near his wrist and looked up at him from beneath her lashes. He could see the worry and concern in her eyes.

  “Liam, this is going to burn. Considering how you feel, it’s likely to hurt like hell. It’s going to take an hour for me to inject the first dose, and I will try to help in any way I can. You may even need a second injection if one doesn’t take effect properly. You’re a big man and I’m …” She hesitated, shaking her dark head.

  “Just do what you have to do, Devon,” he said gently. “I can handle it.”

  That wasn’t at all what she was worried about. She didn’t even know what she was worried about. She knew he’d been through far worse than this event. That he hadn’t had her expertise that time to help him.

  She cleared her throat and lowered her head again as she paid overly close attention to her control of the injection. “You’re bleeding again.” She reached to touch gentle fingers to his inside arm, just above the IV port. With extreme care, she began to stroke him rhythmically in a single direction along with the flow of the entering liquids. Cramping muscles and arteries twitched in irritation, and then seemed to relax into the comforting stroke. “I’m going to have to stitch that shoulder. You might consider being extra charming to me.”

  He snorted. “I’m not the charming sort.” He reached across with his good arm, mostly because he couldn’t seem to resist the impulse, and brushed his fingertips against the side of her neck, pushing back her espresso colored hair. “But I will make an effort since you are the one with all the sharp implements in her lap.”

  She gave him a laugh, glancing up from under sly, sexy lashes. “Men are impressed by the strangest things,” she teased.

  “This is true,” he admitted. He shifted slightly, grunting in discomfort. He watched as she instantly hastened to straighten pillows, draw up covers, and drop that disturbing stroke of her fingers over the highly sensitive skin of his face, chest, and belly. She’d struck him instantly as the passionate sort, but this tantalizing, tender touching didn’t fit his image of her, and it was driving him absolutely mad.

  When the team had touched him, it had been pure agony. Hell at the hands of his friends, literally. When Devon stroked him with that slow, thorough shaping of each muscle contour, following each dip and crest the smooth plane of his skin led her to, it was the wildest combination of ultimate solace and blatant eroticism he’d ever known. How he could be feeling any such thing in this situation baffled him. He remembered his last experience with Morphate venom, still had the occasional nightmare in recollection of it. The hallucinations, the pain … it was an experience that had taught him to grimly appreciate the vast reaches the human imagination could achieve.

  None of it had been pleasant and at no single moment during those dark, horrifying days that followed had he found any measure of peace. Yet, she was drawing him away from that pit of black experience with just a touch. The injection she was feeding him was barely begun, so he knew it wasn’t that. It was her.

  Liam watched as she continued to fuss over him, alternating between the injection, packing his wounded shoulder, and softly stroking him to relieve the slightest sign of cramps. She had just settled back beside him when he reached up to suddenly seize her by the back of her neck. She gasped softly in surprise at the clamp of his fingers, quickly seeking an explanation in his eyes.

  He didn’t speak. Instead, he let her see whatever it was she wanted to see in his gaze and in his aggressive hold. He knew nothing about her, yet he’d sworn to trade his life away for hers. And he was fine with that. Prepared for that. But she destroyed his calm, his equilibrium, and his code of ethics, in ways he could never have been prepared for. The least she could do was provide him with a little insight into that carefully controlled mind of hers.

  She began her confession with a telltale trembling he could feel vibrating through the entirety of her long, lithe body. Her breathing picked up in tempo and she tried twice to look away from the directness of his gaze, and twice came back to it. As if she couldn’t stop herself, those fingers still found absent contact stroking his skin, along the forearm that held her imprisoned. Her nails trailed lightly and torturously over him, sending stimulating shocks zipping all over his hyperactive nerves. Her eyes deepened in shade, becoming that bottle green that was so clear and so strange all at once.

  “Liam,” she said softly, his name a kick in his gut as it flowed like a purr over her tense vocal chords. “What is it about you that … ?” She took a deep breath and tried to shake the thought out of her head, but he held firm and forced her to look into him. He saw her rising panic easily because he could taste it on his own tongue. Morals and ethics and good intentions be damned, there was something between them and it was screaming mightily for attention.

  “Tell me something,” he demanded in a low whisper. “Why are you doing this? Why are you stretching your neck out so far?”

  “Somebody has to,” she said on a rushed breath.

  “Yes, but why you? Why is that somebody you? And don’t bullshit me about your company and contracts, because your people barely touched this project of yours.”

  “I don’t owe you any explanations,” she said touchily as she tried to shake off his locked hand. He forced her to face him. He wouldn’t let her dodge; he wouldn’t accept her vague lies.

  “I think that when a man willingly allows himself to get poisoned in order to protect your life, you do owe him an explanation.”

  Her eyes widened in
credulously. “Are you blackmailing me because you did your job? What I pay you to do?” she bit out. “Let go of me, Liam. You’re going to hurt yourself!”

  She was right. The cramps she had soothed away were already returning in force, and if he pissed her off enough, it wasn’t likely she would repeat the holistic touch. But as was usual, Liam was willing to take his chances.

  “The last time I went through this, I suffered eight days of tremendous agony, horrifying nightmares, and the breakdown of just about everything in my life that held value for me. Now you sit here with a professed cure in your hands and I know with every instinct I own that you’re telling the truth. That you have the power to cut this hell I’m facing in half, which in and of itself deserves about a thousand questions. So think about what I’m willing to risk in order to get some kind of truthful answer out of you.”

  The statement made a tremendous impact on her. Liam could see it exploding in her eyes and over her horrified expression. To his surprise, the sudden liquid of withheld tears glittered on the edges of her lids.

  “I would never withhold treatment from you just because …” She paused, swallowing hard. “But of course, we’re strangers, and you wouldn’t know that.” But Devon could see how he would make that mistake. He came from that sort of world. For the first time, Devon felt intimidated by a human. His fearlessness and his determination were a daunting package. Add to it his skills and training, and she was extremely glad that he was on her side.

  She only needed to keep him there.

  “My reasons are actually personal,” she said quietly as she pushed down the plunger to the syringe a bit more. “And extremely private,” she added.

  Liam relaxed his hand when she acquiesced at last, letting it drop onto his belly, glad she’d given in before the cramping had become any worse. Frankly, he was about as daunting as a baby harp seal at the moment. “I’m not known for my willingness to give out information willy-nilly, personal or otherwise.”