“Do they know about Myriad?” he asked, his instincts flaring.
“I think so,” she whispered, pressing her lips together. “But as far as I know, nobody has the location. It has to be in the documents you took.”
He shook his head. “With our luck, probably not.”
She licked her lips and dropped her gaze to his mouth. Tension hummed around them.
Good to know they were on the same page, no matter how briefly. Grabbing another condom from his discarded jeans, he quickly sheathed himself.
She watched him, eyes alert, lips curved, no protest.
He rolled her over and flattened himself against her front, pinning her in place. Her lithe body, a bit too thin from traveling, nevertheless softened beneath him. Lust roared into his cock. “Why aren’t you ready to share any of the facts you have, and especially the person you’d like killed?”
She snuggled her butt into the bed, cascading wetness across his balls. “I’m still weighing my options and haven’t decided on the right course of action.”
Now that sounded like the scientist he figured her to be. “Interesting. You think you actually have options?”
She met his gaze levelly, easily, so many secrets in her deep eyes, his instincts sprang alert.
His head lifted. “Lynne.”
He’d spanked her, he’d seen her cry, and he’d fucked her into oblivion. Yet the woman eyed him with no hesitation, no caution. Admiration and warning ticked through him. He took a deep breath. “Have I given you any indication I’m somebody you want to take on?”
She stretched her back, elongating smooth muscles. “Have I given you any indication I’m afraid of you?” A quick blink of devastatingly intelligent eyes caught him up short. “I know you’re in charge here in your little fiefdom, but I’ve survived more than your very worst, Jax Mercury.”
Brilliance sizzled from her. In his time of war, in the fighting, he’d seen might win every battle. Yet looking in her eyes, in the absolute confidence she exuded, he suddenly remembered a time, not so long ago, when intelligence ruled. For now, he couldn’t help but be intrigued—and challenged.
So he slowly, smoothly, slid inside her. Conquering in the most primitive way. Yet as he reached home, as her internal walls gripped him with enough heat to make him grit his teeth, he wondered who’d been captured.
He’d dated tough women, really tough. On the streets and then in the service. And he’d dated a couple of really intelligent women. But the combination of so much brain and courage, he hadn’t seen before.
Her hand flattened over the tattoo on his chest and down his left arm. “I see 20 in here, but there are so many lines crossing over the mark. Why didn’t you just get rid of it?”
He glanced down at the dark lines. “Twenty is my past and has marked me, so I kept it but showed how I’d changed. The 44 is from my unit . . . something just we knew, and it changed me more than I would’ve thought possible.” At least before Scorpius. “We can’t erase where we’ve been.”
“Ah. And the Vanguard tattoo?” She traced the lines across his other arm with her fingers. “The sword behind the shield has a scorpion for a handle.” She tapped the heart in the center of the shield that held the word VANGUARD. “A scorpion?”
“I figured it fit, considering Scorpius has altered us all.”
Her thighs gripped him, and she slid her feet around him to press her heels into his back. “I’m smart and I’m tough, Jax.”
He paused, deep inside her, to focus on the hint of vulnerability in her voice as her words mirrored his thoughts. “I’m aware of that.”
A pretty pink dashed across her high cheekbones. “Don’t hurt me.”
The plea, made as a statement, tunneled deep into him and planted hard. He closed his eyes. Of its own volition, his body began to move. He dropped his forehead to hers, skin to skin, heart-to-heart, and started to thrust. Slow and powerful, he shoved inside her, a sense of urgency and coming home surrounding him.
He altered his angle, and she gasped. His lips formed a smile against her damp skin, and he did it again. Caught up in the moment, caught up in the woman, he pounded harder, allowing them both to just feel. Enough thinking.
She broke first, his name a cry on her lips. The vibrations clawed into him, and he pushed deep, coming hard.
They panted against each other for the briefest of moments, their heartbeats slamming to the same rhythm.
He fell to the side, his gaze captured by the blue glow. Holding his hand over her heart, he counted the beats. “Amazing.”
She shut her eyes and struggled for air. “That’s one description.”
“I’ve heard rumors of how the blue happened, but what’s the truth?”
She rolled over onto her stomach and stretched her arms above her head, revealing her long, smooth back. “I don’t want to talk about it.” The pillow muffled her voice.
He had to get to work, but instead flattened his hand between her shoulder blades. Blue glimmered between his fingers. They should start at the beginning. “Did the Scorpius bacteria really come from a meteorite, or did the government create a biological weapon?”
She sighed and turned her head to face him. “Meteorite. A group of Stanford students went meteorite hunting in the Nevada desert, which was quite common. They found a meteorite that had probably fallen after the Scorpius comet passed by, and they cut it open, letting loose the bacteria.”
So the CDC had been telling the truth. “The story seems impossible.”
She shrugged against his hand. “Not really. NASA had been worried we’re sending bacteria into space with every shuttle mission, and we’ve successfully experimented on bacteria living in space.”
“Yeah, but really? Bacteria from outer space.”
She snorted. “Everything on our planet came from outer space, Jax. All the bacteria here. It’s totally plausible.”
When she put it like that, he guessed it made sense. “The strain was instantly deadly? Without any mutations caused by the government?”
“Yes. Scorpius killed 99 percent of the people infected.”
“Did you create the Scorpius strain that turned your heart blue?”
She shut her eyes. “Yes. My team at the CDC took the original strain and mutated it in an effort to find a cure—colored it blue. The mutated strain was special and one of a kind, and no matter how hard we tried to copy it, we couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
She sighed. “We used DNA from a rare squid, and it appears the little monster had a mutation of its own, and we were never able to find another one. Well, we didn’t have a chance to find one before all hell broke loose, you know? I’m sure there are more out there somewhere, but now, how will we ever find them? And do we care? I mean, I’m not immune, and I don’t seem to have any gifts except for a blue heart.”
He nodded. “I guess. It seems like you have to be different, even if we haven’t figured out why yet. So, what happened after you created the mutation?”
“A lab aide, not even my aide, purposely infected me before going on a rampage to spread the contagion.”
“Was he crazy?”
“Yes. He’d been infected, was one of the people who’d become a sociopath. I mean, if he wasn’t one already.” She sighed. “Scorpius is capable of stripping the frontal cortex of a victim and turning him or her into a serial killer. We tried to figure out who and why, but as with any illness, it affects different people differently.”
“Where is the guy who infected you now?” Jax asked softly.
“I have no clue. Zach was captured and secured somewhere to be studied by the government, and I don’t know what happened to him when everything went south.”
Jax caressed down to the small of her waist. Small. Definitely delicate. “Is Zach the person you want me to kill?”
She opened her eyes and seemed to stare through him. “If you ever run across Zach Barter, microbiologist, feel free to cut off his head. But no, he’s not the one you bargained to end for me.”
End? “Kill.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”