Danger Zone: Tales of Military Passion

by Marie Harte

  “No.” It came with his shockingly gentle smile. “Not exactly.”

  “Why not?”

  “Wick didn’t head for that lunch knowing he was going to hit the jackpot with Giselle. He didn’t have something like this,”—he lifted the sweater from where Charlotte had draped it over the chair arm—“leading him to her. He got lucky. Damn lucky. As soon as he emerged from the bathroom with Giselle, I knew the rest of us had gotten lucky, too. It was our first breakthrough. Lots of pieces slid into place.” A wry chuff spilled through his lips. “But a bunch more didn’t.”

  “Such as?”

  “We had to face the fact that this shit was more whacked than any explanation we’d tried to peg on it. When we grilled Wick that night, the only thing he kept talking about was how great Giselle smelled when he was fu—well, when he was with her. He described it as finding the final click to his combo lock.” He stopped for a long moment, averting his eyes from her. “He said he felt…complete.”

  Charlotte released a slow breath. The man’s new nervousness had an explanation. Complete. A word like that, even inspired by a chemical reaction that could happen to any animal in pheromone frenzy, implied things. Lots of things. A gamut of connections that she and Kaden had never shared and never would. Yes, the man was a glorious lion in the sack—or on the floor, or wherever—but that didn’t make him “completion” material. He was regimented, imperious, and judgmental—and so unwilling to bend that he’d likely written her off his “completion” list a long damn time ago.

  Whatever. She didn’t want to be on his list anyhow. It was probably a mile long already, filled with every swoony bimbette between here and Vegas. The man wanted easy. A girl who’d think all his jokes were funny and all his farts were gold. She wasn’t easy. She worked too much and she didn’t laugh easily. And she was so uptight that just a half hour ago, she’d experienced her first orgasm without a vibrator…ever.

  She needed to get back to safe ground. Now. The things she could control. The scientific facts about all this—or at least what they appeared to be. Kaden had called it all “bizarre.” He didn’t know the half of it.

  “Direct, single pheromone matches.” It almost came out of her as a laugh, she was so stunned. “How is that even possible?”

  Kaden’s brows crunched. “What’re you talking about?”

  She smiled as she eased back into the chair. They’d arrived at her wheelhouse. “Pheromones exist, or at least we believe they do, as a hormonal rallying cry. Different pheromones are designed to elicit specific reactions in animals, in as many members of that species as possible. It’s why they’re emitted as a scent, not a taste, a sight, or a touch. It’s like a giant cloud of behavior juice, designed to protect the species by raining on all the heads it can and drenching them in the desire to fight, flee, or—”

  “Fuck.” He supplied it on a soft laugh.

  “Ummm, right.” She cleared her throat. “So you can see why this mutation is baffling.” She fingered her lips again, tapping at them in urgent time with her thoughts. “And frightening.”

  Kade responded with a thick silence. She imagined he was lost in thoughts as deep as hers. She just didn’t anticipate what kinds of thoughts. Or the rough growl they’d manifest into.

  “Frightening because you can’t explain it or frightening because your happy juice match happens to be me?”

  Charlotte fired off an exasperated glare. Did he expect her to answer that? Barely thirty minutes had passed since he pounded her, literally and figuratively, with this damn bombshell. Now he went and taunted her, knowing her thoughts weren’t her own?

  Her anger dissolved once she really looked at him. His tone might have been accusing but his eyes—

  Oh hell, his eyes.

  Their dark gold filaments seared her, probed her, and blared out to her—expressing so many things he wasn’t able to verbalize. Well, hell. The man was still just as eleven-on-a-terror-scale-of-ten as she. Her fear had driven her to the safety of logic. His had propelled him to his own armor, his military efficiency and snap judgments.

  “Look,” she said, “I’m going to fix this, all right?”

  “You mean we’ll fix this. Together.”

  Though she already knew her response to that, she didn’t speak right away. She rose, crossed to the armoire in the corner and pulled out one of her lab coats. “I work better alone.”

  “And I call bullshit.” He jabbed a finger toward the door while shoving to his feet. “You’ve been working team-style with all of them for two and a half years.”

  “And this isn’t exactly a case I can rope them in on.”

  Before she knew he’d moved, the man was behind her, hands curled around the armoire doors, massive body engulfing her exit route. Aimee’s words echoed in her mind. I couldn’t see the hallway from around him. I mean, wow.

  Right on the money. On both accounts. Crap.

  “The squad has moved into a villa not far from here,” he growled. “We haven’t gone so far as to call it a safe house but we figured the precaution was wise in case the medical bozos really do decide quarantine would be fun. We got to base for duty rotations but nothing else.” He shifted a little. Not much. Not nearly enough for Charlotte to make her escape from his huge shadow, especially when he pushed in a little closer toward her. “We have a command center, residential rooms, and as much of a medical facility as we can. We just don’t know where to start as far as a lab.”

  “And you want me to help?” It emerged as nearly an accusation. Maybe that was for the best.

  “I want to help you.” His brows lowered over a gaze that had turned nearly mahogany. “We have no idea what we’re up against, Doc. It’s not like we can ask around at the base.”

  She expelled a breath. Well, tried to. Dammit. He was using his proximity, hard and wonderful-smelling as it was, to weaken her resolve. “You won’t be able to emulate what I’ve got here. The equipment and databases in this lab…Sam Khan and Trystan Brown have invested millions of dollars for the best of the best. Besides, I’m familiar with everything and can work faster.” She took the risk of raising a hand to his shoulder. “You just need to let me do my job, okay?”

  “And you think you can do that without me, huh?”

  She huffed before firming her hand and shoving at him, but the man had the reflexes of a spider. A six-foot-six, sexier-than-should-be-legal spider. The fingers he spread against her jaw felt like magical web makers too, spinning tendrils of heat through her head, down her spine and lower as he spoke just inches from her face.

  “Kaden—”

  “You need me, Charlotte.” His breath and his scent possessed her once more, their embrace so thorough, she didn’t feel his other hand slide up inside her shirt. Her breath seized as he pushed aside her bra to roll his fingers around her puckered nipple. “You need me in some ways we already know about…and in others you haven’t even fathomed.”

  “Stop.” Like her plea gave that any meaning. “Stop it. I mean now, Ens—”

  “Kaden. Say ‘stop it now, Kaden,’ and I’ll consider it.”

  “Dammit.” Her head fell back. She wrestled it back up. She wouldn’t give in to him, not this time—not even if her womb screamed for his cock and her tongue was parched for his skin. She needed to be bigger than this. She needed to be strong. She needed to get a grip in order to find the cure for them all as fast as humanly possible.

  But that was the spilled acid here, wasn’t it? Was she even human anymore?

  “I said stop!” She seethed it while wrenching away from him. Though her strength wasn’t enough to make a dent in his, Kaden retreated. He stumbled into a wide and powerful stance, though his face contorted as if she’d kneed him in the balls. She ignored the twist in her stomach while stomping around him. “Just leave me alone. Please. Kaden.”

  When only unnatural stillness answered, she turned around. Her jaw dropped again. Kaden was holding her phone, tapping at the screen with frightening speed.


  “What the hell are you doing?”

  His demeanor had flowed—perhaps had sunk—back into an eerie calm. It enraged Charlotte more than his pissy side. The scent he emitted with it was ten times harder to ignore. His personal musk now carried layers of pine cones and eucalyptus, practically daring her to go wrap herself against him. Her fists clenched as he stepped back over with irritating grace, returning the device with a single, smooth sweep.

  “The address for the safe house is stored in there now. It’s listed in your contacts under The Chocolate Lab.”

  She shrugged. “Sounds nice, at least.”

  His lips went as taut as they were when she’d first burst in here. But again his eyes conveyed his true intent, glimmering with need, unapologetic with lust. “You’ll be using that address, Lottie, likely sooner than later. And when you do, I’ll be waiting.”

  Chapter Four

  ‡

  FOUR DAYS LATER, those words came back to bite Kade soundly in both his ass cheeks. Not that he had half a brain cell left to even contemplate his backside anymore.

  Screwed. Royally. By his own arrogance.

  Had he read the memo about Dr. Charlotte Sinclare? Comprehended it? Apparently not. The woman didn’t like to be told what to do, not even when she was aroused as hell by the order and filled the room with her sweet scent because of it. He knew that even before their encounter at her lab. He’d been stockpiling three years’ worth of memories to fill in the gaps.

  Yes, dammit, he had memories. More than he wanted to admit.

  He still remembered the week after Charlotte and her geek squad had debarked the Sparta. Yeah, yeah, he’d joined the others in the celebration that they wouldn’t have to babysit fornicating fish and clumsy scientists anymore—but when the ship went quiet that night, he’d wondered why it felt so empty.

  The only thing big enough to fill the void was reminding himself of all the ways Charlotte Sinclare had become the biggest irritant in his oyster. No more bracing for her sprints up the passageways, searching for him on one of her I-need-this-right-away quests. No more fighting to tune out her voice in the chow hall, pitched to excitement as she swapped theories with her fellow science dorks. No more thinking himself close to a coronary once she hit the lab, racing through it like a pixie on crack, nearly toppling tables of glass and liquids in her zealous wake.

  The memories had always made him smile. It was easy to write off that reasoning as relief. As for the heaviness that hit his chest, too? Easily banished after a good night’s sleep to clear him up.

  He was anything but clear now.

  He writhed on the travertine tiles of the villa’s living room. It was the only surface in the house his heated flesh could tolerate anymore. The torment worsened as more memories broke in. The way her laugh took over her face. Her habit of sticking a pencil into her pony tail. And oh hell, the day her team had hit a breakthrough on the research and done their happy dance to some classic Prince tune. Fuck, could the woman get her bump ‘n’ grind on. He’d watched from the corner with his eyes hooded and his jaw steeled as the woman shook her moneymaker with moves that made him think of little red Corvettes in new, dirty ways.

  “Fuck.” It gurgled off his lips, especially as he struggled not to peel off his BVDs, now the only thing he wore. There was a good chance his cock would just punch through the cotton on its own strength, but for now there were women present. He felt their gazes, anxious yet tenacious, fixed on him from just beyond the open kitchen shutters.

  “He’s worse today.”

  “Yeah, hon. He is.”

  “I really didn’t want you to say that.”

  “Sorry. We can’t afford lies right now.”

  “What the hell do we do, Giselle?”

  “There’s nothing we can do. It has to be either his choice or hers.”

  “And geek bitch hasn’t shown her face since last week? At all?”

  “Kade’s not behaving any better, dammit. Sorry, I know you’re academy buddies and he’s like your brother, Dreah. But—”

  “No. Don’t be. When the inflexible bastard boot fits, then it fits. He’s going to land in a bed next to Trig, slurping his own drool, because he won’t pry his head out of his ass. If he really was my brother, I’d be imprinting my foot on those BVDs as I knocked his behind out to—”

  “I can hear you.” He rolled over so they couldn’t see the toll the quip took on him. On the heels of his tight grimace, a half-insane laugh broke free. Hear them? That was only the first slice of this insanity pie. He heard hummingbirds sucking on flowers outside. A squirrel scuttling up one of the pepper trees at the end of the fifty-yard driveway. And earlier today, he’d heard every moan, sigh and orgasmic cry during the three times Wick had taken Giselle to heaven and back. Fucker.

  He flipped to his back, watching the ceiling spin like he’d had five bottles of Stoli too many, begging the world to cease its sharp, stinging, pungent assault. It hurt. Goddammit, it all hurt. Closing his eyes didn’t help. All he saw was Charlotte once more.

  Surprise, surprise.

  She’d been so gorgeous when he’d cornered her in her office. He remembered the burn on her cheeks from his stubble. Her eyes were afire like the ocean beneath a sunset. And her scent begged him to pin her down and fuck her twice as long and hard as before.

  His underwear got tighter. His balls were twins of agony. He threw an arm over his forehead, not even trying to hide the bulge from Giselle and Dreah. “Dammit.”

  When would it end? He fought to access logic, reasoning that the growing pressure in his crotch would start to eclipse the overload from his other senses, but this thing was the Liberace of viruses. It didn’t know the meaning of the word stop.

  Dreah’s scent announced her shift into the doorway before she got there. “You’re a fucking moron,” she muttered. “You know that, right?”

  He managed a glower at her wholesome face. Looks really were deceiving. “Did you know you smell like sugar cookies and aloe? Shit. Comfort food and healing lotion. How the hell did Mother Nature get that so wrong?”

  “Sticks and stones, my friend.” She snickered. “And apparently, boners too.”

  “Don’t you have someplace to be?”

  “Yes. Right here.” She dropped to her knees beside him. Her hand skimmed his shoulder but he flinched. Even the brush of her fingers was agony. “I want to enjoy my last few minutes with a brother, while he’s still rational.”

  Kade didn’t have the strength to argue. He couldn’t tell her that rationality had fled the second he sped away from Spectrum. The separation was purgatory before he’d slept with Charlotte. It was sheer hell now. If he’d known, he would’ve battled harder to make her understand back in her office. Maybe just tossed her over his shoulder and shown her the light from that angle. Better yet, kissed her senseless, stripped her bare, and fucked the sense into her.

  Who the hell was he kidding? He wouldn’t have done any of that, not after she’d strutted out the “I am scientist, hear me roar” bit. If the little bio-genius didn’t need him, then he sure as hell didn’t need her.

  “Kade—”

  “Don’t start.”

  “This so lame! And pointless! I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

  “You really want to help?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go get your pistol, plant it in my mouth, and pull the trigger.”

  “Fuck you.” When he didn’t bother with a comeback, she huffed. “Geek bitch’s lab is only half an hour away.” She unleashed an unexpected wave of emotion on him, dipping low to whisper, “I can drive.”

  “No.”

  “Kaden Aaron Tiernan.”

  “And she’s not a bitch. She’s headstrong. And confused.”

  “Then prove it and introduce me to her. You jackass, let me take you—”

  “No.”

  “Dammit!” She gave his shoulder a punch this time. Might as well have slammed his crotch with an anvil. He groaned and snarled. Af
ter a triumphant laugh, she challenged, “What if I don’t give you a choice?”

  Kade grunted. The room spun harder. I’d like to see you try.

  It was what he opened his mouth to tell her as well—but something different spilled off his lips, instead. Between one second and the next, the engine of his brain uncoupled from the passenger car of his speech.

  “Unnhhh.”

  He shook his head, fighting to find the link. Hell. This was the beginning of the end, wasn’t it? For some ridiculous reason, he thought it would be more peaceful than this. Instead, his blood screamed, his mind burned, and everything beneath his waistline bucked in urgent need of satisfaction. “Maahhh. Shiiittt…”

  “Kade? Oh God! Kade? Giselle! What’s wrong with him?”

  Dreah’s shouts were tuba blasts on the echo chamber of his brain. He closed his hands over his ears and focused on his breath, instead. Even that was torture. He switched tactics, thinking about the people who’d always brought him clarity. Dad and Uncle Bo, always there with good advice and a cold beer. Trina and Bets, the sisters who fussed more than they should. He wondered if he’d see them again. He wondered if he’d know them again. He wondered what they’d think of Charlotte…

  Charlotte. It was always her now, wasn’t it? Manic, passionate geek. Ocean-eyed goddess. Giving, gorgeous lover. God, when she’d finally given in to their connection…opened her body to him…

  “Kade? Hey pal, you still in there?”

  It was Wick this time. The soft Atlanta accent gave him away, along with the guitar pick that fell on his face when the guy grabbed his shoulders. Kade snarled and tried to wrestle free. Why the hell didn’t they leave him be? He wanted to be alone now. Charlotte was waiting. There in his mind, in his dreams, she lay with arms open and legs wide, welcoming him into her warmth and wetness…

  He groaned. Flailed. Leave me alone. She needs me. I don’t care if she hates me, too. But goddammit, she needs me.

  Where was she now? Was she about to fall over the cliff of sanity, like him? Was somebody holding her hand at least, comforting her? Agony sliced as he considered her lying somewhere all alone, afraid and lost inside her own mind.