by Marie Harte
“And I also remember you not caring what the hell we did.”
Once more, Kade rammed her hands to the table on either side of her head. “I cared.” He rolled his hips, making her gasp as his cock swelled fully again. “And I watched. Every fucking move you made. I watched.”
As her mouth fell open, her eyes opened wide. Hell, he loved it when her gaze got hot and tropical. “And…fantasized?”
“About fucking you like this, even if your damn fish watched us?” He pulled out then pounded home, reveling in the feel of the answering throbs from her pussy. “Oh, yeah. I dreamed of this a thousand times. Taking your pretty cunt like this. Filling you and burning you, just like this…”
And feeling her climax around him, just like this.
Her vagina convulsed in waves of perfect pressure, massaging the lightning up from his balls and into flawless completion in her body. For an incredible moment, he became that electricity. He and Charlotte were nothing but a vortex of blinding energy, bound in a bliss where only her heat, her sighs, and her joy were important.
He begged the universe to let it go on.
The universe, as usual, was being a bastard.
“Shit.” Her rasp pulled him harder back to reality. With her hands still around his neck, she raised her head to mesh their lips. Her taste was new to him. It was…charred. Smoky but in all the best ways, like the mush inside a burnt marshmallow or the sweetest part of a freshly-baked brownie. “You’re going to short-circuit me, Ensign,” she whispered when they finally dragged apart. “And the kicker is, I’m going to love every minute of it.”
He was so glad her lips were still close. That made it possible to return her kiss instead of giving in to the reply he yearned to utter with every fiber of his body.
And I’m going to love more than every minute.
It was really time for a return to safe territory. That meant getting them both the hell out of here and back up to the main house, where he’d have reinforcement in keeping things on a strictly fuck-buddies-for-survival level with her.
“Hang tight for five,” he forced himself to state as he eased out of her. “I’ll be back with something for you to wear—and promise you won’t have to sing for it.”
Charlotte’s giggle was another gut-flipper. “You’ll thank yourself for that, Ensign.”
Kade paused after zipping up. “I thank myself every time I make you smile like that.” He gazed down at her disheveled beauty. “And I’d apologize for the caveman thing on your clothes, but I’d be lying.”
Charlotte spoke the last four words at the same time he did, replacing I’d with you’d. They burst into simultaneous snickers before he gave in to the urge for one more deep kiss.
“Tell me, Doc…did your pheromone fish ever finish each other’s sentences?”
“Hmmm. I think that might be a special feature of the humans’ package.”
He should’ve pushed away from her again. She was lethal to him when she was like this, soft and satiated and messy instead of the impatient little dervish who occupied so many of his memories from three years ago. Over the last three months, she’d all but erased those impressions. More moments like this had replaced them. Addicting moments that tempted him to murmur stupid shit, like—
“I like being your special feature.”
Her eyes widened. The beauty of it was eclipsed by the amazed O of her mouth. Before she could form words in its place, Kade rose and left the garage by way of the side door. He’d already overexposed himself in so many ways. His emotional flanks were too damn vulnerable. No way in hell could he risk her searing him with a hot poker via some brainy science girl quip—or worse yet, by revealing part of her own soul to him.
They were an accident of chemistry. He had to keep remembering that. Fun and fucking? Check and check. But feelings? Delete key, please. Now.
The pledge returned confidence to his steps, at least—enough to get his ass moving along the path back toward the main house, fetching clothes to cover the goddess who’d be his fucking ruin before this was all over—without even trying.
*
AN HOUR LATER, his gut was the home of a very different battle field. Charlotte’s face, turned into a soft peach glow due to the recessed lighting of the new entertainment room, reflected his shitty job at masking his stress. Her lips were tight with tension, her eyes wide with uncertainty. Her body was completely swallowed by his Chargers sweatshirt and a pair of shorts borrowed from Giselle, definitely for the best at this point. He couldn’t afford any more distractions after the whopper of a revelation she’d just dropped.
So much for the ‘accomplished actor’ part of his job description. In this case, he didn’t bother with the compunction over it. If what Lottie had presented was true, there were bigger things to worry about. The “exciting news” she’d brought had instead been a bombshell from left-left-left field. His logic scrambled to catch up with the facts she’d presented.
Shit. Shit.
He’d expected her to share about finding some chemical reservoir in a trout’s testicle that was the magic key to creating an antidote for the virus. After a few weeks of brew time for her potion in the lab, they’d all bend over, get stabbed in the ass, and be cured. Better yet, she’d formulate the antidote to taste like sambuca and they could chug their way back to sanity.
“Kade?”
Charlotte’s prompt jerked his head around. He hadn’t forgotten she was there; he just had no idea what to say to her.
“Present and accounted for, beautiful. Just hold on, okay? Processing here.”
Understatement of the century. Christ. There was so little they could hide from each other anymore. If he faced her fully, would she detect he was shielding one of the base’s biggest secrets from her? And if she thought it had even a little to do with what she’d just revealed about her findings, would she push for an answer? He’d seen how obsessed the woman became when scientific momentum was at stake. But now, he also understood the core of her ambition—that it had been her only way of having value to anyone for over ten years—just as clearly as knowing how she’d mellowed a little on that front lately. Maybe all the woman had ever needed was a daily orgasm to balance her out.
Maybe it had been damn great to be the one illuminating that for her.
Maybe this was the crappiest moment ever to be reaching that conclusion.
He needed reinforcement. Now. The fulfillment to that solution popped forcefully off his lips. “Wick.”
Charlotte scowled. “Huh?”
Just saying his buddy’s name lent the fortitude to pivot and take her hand. “I think he can lend some insight here. I’m going to go get him.”
“Okay.” She returned his clasp with a squeeze of sweet trust. Dammit. His purpose in fetching Wick was about getting a second set of balls in here to back up his decision on keeping the clamshell tight over the information—but he wondered if it was too late already, especially when she gazed at him with such unfaltering confidence. A trust she’d slowly but steadily grown to place in him.
After everything he’d learned from her this afternoon, that was Grown, capital G. Fuck. No wonder the woman had refused to officially move in. She’d relied on no one but herself for over ten years. And what had he done? Thrown a key in her face after barely pulling his dick from her on their third screw. He was stunned she hadn’t sprinted for the avocado groves, despite their whacked-out bond.
He owed her so much.
He had to try to process her findings.
Which was going to be damn hard without revealing the base’s most tightly guarded secret.
He found Wick in the kitchen, hanging with Giselle. Make that hanging on Giselle—like the scent of their mutual arousal, mingled with the fresh strawberries she sliced, didn’t give their intentions away for miles already.
“Davis.” He stated it normally but Wick was pretty engrossed with trailing strawberry juice into his woman’s cleavage then following the path with his mouth. Kade
sure as hell related to that brand of fun, which made his repeat button such a bitch to push out. “Davis!”
Wick growled. Loud and long. “This better be good, you ball clot. You know everyone for miles, lucky ones included, has already put up with an hour of the Kade and Char show from the garage, right?”
Lucky ones, the term they’d first coined for any human not stricken by the virus, had stuck in the vernacular around here for obvious reasons. Kade simply shrugged at it now. “Glad we could be of service.”
“Do you have a purpose for barking at me like we’re on duty, or are you just being a dick for fun?”
“Wish I was.” He firmed his jaw. “I…need you for a second.” He tossed an apologetic glance at Giselle. “Maybe more than one.”
His somber tone gained new attention from them both. After Giselle let Wick dip her into a smoldering parting kiss, she smacked him on the ass, urging him to hurry back for more “strawberry sundae.”
Wick glared at Kade as he walked over. “This really better be good.”
“Define ‘good.’”
“Damn.”
“That’s a little warmer.”
After Wick had entered the entertainment room and given Charlotte a warm welcome back hug, Kaden gathered her back to his side then sat her back down on the couch. “Think you can regurgitate all that shit again for Wick?” he gently asked.
“Of course.”
She gave him another shaky smile. Damn. Clearly, she’d already started snapping the Tinkertoys together. The tense silence he’d just given her, topped by his summons for Wick, provided enough justification for her tension. Wick was no dumb shit, either. He clearly linked the caginess in the kitchen to Charlotte’s tentative manner, and opened up a curious stare as he lowered to the couch.
“What shit?”
Charlotte pulled in a deep breath. “As you know, I’ve been trying to find some kind of commonality among those of us hit by the virus, as opposed to the people who were on board the Sparta during the study but are showing up unaffected. Socially, I couldn’t determine any major differences. We ate in the same areas, used similar facilities, even parked our cars in the same lot. Nobody had any major illnesses beyond head colds but even then the virus didn’t attach to one group or the other. In the meantime, I’ve been looking at things on the cellular level, as well.”
Wick cocked his head when she dipped into a significant pause. “And that’s where things got interesting.”
“Not at first. But within the last few days…” Charlotte’s tone rose as she did, showing off her growing confidence. As she channeled her inner dervish into excited steps across the room, Kade stared with pride. How the hell had he ever convinced himself that her pacing was bothersome? Coupled with the blue fire in her eyes, it was one hell of a huge turn-on. “‘Wow’ is a pretty good way of phrasing it,” she went on. “I…think.”
Wick slid out his signature Southern boy grin. “No ground gained in hesitation, Doc. Spare the thinking and give me the ‘wow,’ sugar.”
Charlotte laced her fingers and dropped a determined nod. “I finally found something unique to all the infected cells. They were…radiated.”
It was weirdly satisfying to watch Wick jerk forward in attention. “Radiated?” he repeated. “What do you mean? As in…nuclear radiation? ‘Exposed to the core’ time? Fukushima? Chernobyl?”
“Not exactly.” She articulated each syllable with care. “If that were the case, our symptoms would be a hell of a lot different than what they are. We’d have little to no hair. Be vomiting even ice chips. Sound sensitivity would be replaced by chills and dizziness. And forget about the sex drive.”
“Okay.” Wick’s response was as unnerved as the look he traded with Kaden. “Got it, loud and clear. I think I like our version better.”
Charlotte began to pace, her way of working off excess energy. “Besides, if a disaster like that had happened, half of San Diego and most of Tijuana would know about it by now. This was a much tighter scope. There was something on board the ship itself that was, for lack of a better word, unintentionally unleashed.” She stopped, brow furrowing. “Maybe a power source for something on the vessel…I don’t know.” She waved a hand around. “This is all pasta on the wall, you know?”
Wick frowned. “Huh?”
Kaden shook his head. “Thank fuck you have Giselle around to cook for you, dork. Pasta on the wall. When it sticks, you know it’s good.”
Charlotte barely heard. Concentration defined her face as she made pretzel twists of her fingers. “There’s no way I’ll be able to test the fish we used. We freed them back into the bay as soon as we concluded the study. But somehow they were irradiated. Something happened to their water and to them, something strong enough to affect those of us who were in the lab every day, exposed to their pheromone output. Took the cells three years to mutate into the biological sucker punch we’re all experiencing now.”
Kaden traded another taut glance with Wick before jumping on the damn elephant in the room. “So is it reversible? Treatable? Or are you saying it’s not a virus at all, that we’ve all got some mutant version of radiation poisoning?”
He held back from voicing the crap-ass conclusion to all that.
And if so, is this shit going to eventually kill us?
Charlotte untangled her hands and spread her arms. “You don’t think I’ve asked the same questions a hundred times?” Her face contorted, a painful picture of frustration. “Dammit, I just don’t have any answers without knowing exactly what the radiation source was, or how it was focused into the lab.”
Wick lunged back to his feet. Kade hoped the brutal purpose in his friend’s move meant he shared Kade’s conclusion about the next step in this mess. “Kade. Dammit. She’s already figured out half of it, anyway.”
Yeah. He had. Thank fuck.
Charlotte fired her gaze between them. “Half of what?” she demanded.
Kaden curled his hand around one of hers. “Before I say anything more, you need to know that if you breathe any of this outside this room, the president himself is likely to show up and personally cut off my dick.”
“And mine,” Wick added. “And there’s a damn good chance neither of them will stick to the wall, either.”
Kaden grimaced. “Dude, this isn’t HBO.”
Charlotte’s squeeze on his fingers belonged to a woman twice her size. “Half. Of. What?”
Wick clapped his shoulder while returning to the couch. “I’ll get the first half, man.” After Kade muttered his thanks, the guy braced his elbows on his knees then dug right in on his next statement. “As the guys who police our base, Charlotte, we have to know everything about it. Some of the fun trivia is public knowledge, as you know. Other shit, like the kind that could get the country involved in messy international incidents, isn’t.”
Charlotte turned a questioning stare to Kade. He confirmed Wick’s assertion with a small nod. “Incidents such as what?” she queried.
Wick brought his hands together, palm against palm. “Such as having to confess to a stash of nuclear fuel bundles that aren’t necessarily ours, now being stored in secret holds throughout the base.”
“Wh-what?” she rasped. “What do you mean, ‘aren’t necessarily ours? And why would the government do such a thing?”
Wick straightened his posture. “You familiar with a little place called North Korea—and the fact that its old crazy dictator died a few years back, leaving all his power to his son, the young crazy dictator?”
Charlotte pursed her lips. “The vacuum of my life hasn’t been that enormous, Wick. I know what’s going on over there.”
“Good. So you know that after Kim Jong-Il passed, a lot of folks wondered if Junior was going to keep to his corner of the playground or not. In the middle of all the speculation, one of our submarines in the Pacific bumped into a North Korean ‘friend,’ on maneuvers much too far from home for anyone’s comfort. As a matter of fact, the North Korean sub was carrying a few
hundred nuclear bundles—and the vessel was on a direct path toward San Diego.”
“Conveniently, the home of the Pacific Fleet,” Kade supplied. “Isn’t that special?”
“Holy shit.” Charlotte gasped.
“No kidding.”
“So what happened?”
“Some sticky doo-doo,” Wick supplied. “We couldn’t just ask them to just turn around and go home but destroying them would’ve given the dickwads a perfect excuse for really attacking. Luckily, our boat had just pulled ex-fil on a team of SEALs. They were able to sneak board the sub, extract the bundles without having to blow anyone’s balls off, and bring the shit back here.”
Charlotte bumped back against the wall, her face etched in shock. “And North Korea never said anything? Did anything?”
“They tried,” Kade said. “Sort of.” He rubbed her shoulders. The poor woman looked like she’d just been told the earth was really a triangle. “But it was all through back channels. No way in hell would they come out publically about the incident, which would’ve made them look like idiots on several levels.”
Charlotte absorbed that with a dazed shake of her head. “I take it that we fully denied anything happened, as well.”
Wick gave that a contemplative see-saw of a nod before answering. “Seemed prudent at the time.” His brows hunkered. “Actually, seems prudent now.”
“So the rods…”
“Are stored in several spots around the base,” Kaden replied.
“Including the Sparta.”
He let the silence shared by him and Wick serve as their mutual yes. During the pause, he kept a careful watch over Charlotte. He wondered how their revelations would affect her course, and if they’d given her enough to go on toward moving forward with her research. Over the last hour, he’d also accepted that it might be too late for those already infected, a repercussion they’d all have deal with in their own ways, he and Lottie included.
But there’d been hundreds of people in the vicinity of her research lab on the Sparta during the study, and barely twenty cases that had shown up so far. Could Charlotte find a stopgap to save the others? What would happen if she couldn’t? And how the hell were they supposed to continue keeping all this a secret?
