“I’ll take good care of her,” Nonny assured. “We’re goin’ to sit right here on the couch, wrapped in blankets, and Wyatt will take care of your mommy. He’s a traiteur, baby. A very good one and he won’t let your mama die.”
Wyatt had no choice. He went to the woman and helped her over to a chair. Retaining possession of her arm, he held it below her heart. “What’s your name?” Raising his voice, he called out to his friend. “Ezekiel, I need clean soapy water. Warm, not hot.”
“Pepper. Just Pepper.”
Wyatt was astonished at how calm she was. The toxin was fast acting. Already her eyelids were drooping. She was showing signs of eye weakness, of facial paralysis. The venom was acting on her nervous system fast.
“I’m a doctor. I can help you. Just stay calm. I want you to sit down slowly. We have to keep the wound below your heart. What venom? Which snake?” He already feared he knew.
“Cobra.” Pepper looked past him to Nonny. “Please, I don’t have much time, although I won’t die. I won’t. Ginger, I’m going to be fine. It will hurt for a little while, I’ll be sick, you know that, but I’ll be fine tomorrow or the next day.”
“Don’ tell her that if it’s a cobra,” Wyatt said.
Pepper ignored his warning, her gaze clinging to his. “She’s a good girl. You can’t let them take her back to the laboratory. They were going to kill her. I had to get her out. You have to promise me you’ll hide her. You’ll take care of her…”
“Stop talkin’,” Wyatt ordered. “Are you able to slow your heart down? Has she bitten you before?” There were older bite marks on her arm in three places.
She ignored him. “Please. Promise me if something goes wrong this time, you’ll look after her.”
“Damn it, woman. Shut the hell up. Your heart is racin’. You need to slow it down. You know I’m like you. You have to know that.”
She shook her head. “We’re not like you. You’re the perfect ones. The ones they want to keep. We’re their mistakes, the ones they have to get rid of. She can’t see this. The baby. I’m going to get very sick fast and she can’t see.”
There was something almost mesmerizing about her voice. A kind of velvet seduction even in the dire circumstances and that shook him almost as much as the fact that his grandmother was cooing to a baby who had a venomous bite.
“Are all these bite marks from her?”
“They forced her to bite me – and others. She didn’t want to. She isn’t dangerous, not like you’re thinking. They were going to terminate her.” The calm fa?ade was fading, to be replaced by desperation.
“You said that. Stay calm. Were they using you to develop an antidote, or trying to make you immune to the bite?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes. There were doctors there and they took care of it.”
He knew it wasn’t that simple. A bite from a cobra or other venomous snakes was serious. Life threatening. In any case, she wasn’t exactly answering his questions.
“Malichai.” He raised his voice again. “I need my medical field kit. The new snakebite spray is inside the snakebite kit. Hurry.”
He tried a slow, charming smile to ease her mind. He didn’t want her to think he was a mad scientist – because he was certain she’d been exposed to more than one. “I’m going to try a relatively new product on you. There isn’t time to get you to a hospital and they wouldn’t have the antivenom for this snakebite here. You know that.”
She had known and she’d known the bite could be fatal – even to her – yet she’d still stepped in front of him, protecting him at a very real risk to her own life.
Pepper raised her eyes to Wyatt’s face. She wasn’t going to die, she already knew that, not unless something went very wrong. It wasn’t the cobra venom she feared. That wasn’t going to kill her or make her all that sick. If it was just that…
She didn’t want him to drag the baby from his grandmother, and if he knew exactly how venomous she really was, he would be like all the others – the ones who had created her – he would kill her.
She didn’t understand the pull of his man, or why his face was so familiar. Why her heart sang when he was close. The scent of him enveloped her and she actually felt safe instead of threatened. She’d never been safe, and she certainly wasn’t now.
“Here’s the water, Wyatt,” Ezekiel said.
Ezekiel’s gaze was on the child, not the woman or Wyatt. He watched her in the way a hunter watched his prey, eyes fixed and wholly focused. The baby buried her face against Nonny’s bony shoulder with a small little shudder of fear.
“Set the water down and quit tryin’ to intimidate a baby,” Wyatt said.
Ezekiel did as Wyatt asked slowly, for the first time turning his head to look at the woman. He put out his hand, toward her arm, her bare skin, as if he had to feel that it was as soft as it appeared. Wyatt actually felt the impact of her go right through Ezekiel’s gut. His breathing hitched. Instantly flames burned in Wyatt’s belly, igniting like a firestorm, hot and all encompassing.