Chapter 2 #2
“Perhaps.” He tilted her face left and then right, examining the shape of her brows, the way the widow’s peak of her hairline made a classic sweetheart shape of her face.
She was an understated sort of pretty, but he found the more he looked at her, the more appealing she became.
And this time Kincaid couldn’t blame it on the attractive beat of her pulse under her skin, although he could clearly see that at the line of her neck where the thick carotid artery was working overtime to compensate for her stress and fear.
“But the best-selling books and news exposés about us are not all that in-depth, Dr. DeBruehl. There are things we don’t care for the public to know about us.
And you are going to help us with one or two of those things. ”
“I’ll help you. There’s no need for you to bully me or try to intimidate me. I’ll help the Morphates in any way I can.”
It was the least she could do.
She didn’t say it out loud or even think it to herself in that moment, but it was the unspoken understanding between them—she thought it out of guilt, he as accusation—and each of them understood the other’s position quite clearly.
What Kincaid didn’t understand was why she would ever agree to set foot behind Dark City walls.
Was it really all about some skewed need for redemption?
Or was it more that she wished to be punished for her crimes?
The courts had not found her guilty, and with quite a bit of ease considering other members of Paulson’s teams had been legally eviscerated.
The Federated government didn’t want to admit that it had fallen down on the job, that it had allowed such atrocities to go on for so long and with such a horrific end result, and that in the end they had let Paulson get away from them.
Someone had to pay, and Paulson’s staff members, those who had survived at any rate, had taken the brunt of it.
And for the most part, “I was just following orders” had been found to be an incredibly lame defense.
But Dr. DeBruehl had never claimed that kind of defense. She and her staff had been guilty of nothing more than total ignorance, and their handwritten data had proved that.
Lucky for them. Paulson had destroyed all remnants of electronic data.
If not for their fastidious note taking, they would have been lumped in with the rest of those to blame.
Kincaid wasn’t certain they still shouldn’t be.
And he could tell after just a few moments of talking to her that she felt exactly the same way.
“Fine. Let’s start with me.”
Kincaid grabbed her by the hand and, turning on his heel, yanked her along in his wake.
He pulled her into one of the phlebotomy sections of the lab, threw himself into the chair, and presented her with his arm as he rolled up his sleeve in quick, distinct jerks.
Everything about him screamed that his anger was barely repressed, and she very nervously approached him.
She looked around at all the sample tubes, the typical chairs for drawing blood, the boxes of gloves and packages of sterile needles and catheters.
She plucked out a pair of medium-sized gloves and put them on, frowning as she habitually looked at the integrity of his arm for the proper vein she required.
“It’s not so easy,” she muttered as she popped open packages and chose the tube types she wanted.
Even as she was resisting him verbally, her curious scientist’s brain was getting excited by the idea of looking at his blood composition on all levels.
From the basics to the nuclear, she had been wanting to see a Morphate blood panel for quite some time now.
Sure, the overall animalism in their natures fascinated her, particularly their need for blood both nutritionally and sexually, but what it really came down to was the indestructibility of their cells.
That had been the ultimate side effect of her work.
Her tag had sought out the healthiest cells, the goal had been to keep those cells healthy for longer than their natural life span, but who would have ever thought they would so thoroughly overshoot the mark?
And where, in any of it, had they stimulated the cells to regenerate in such a rapid fashion?
They had planned to get to that eventually, but as far as her lab had been concerned, they had not yet reached that stage of the experiment.
But then again, as far as her lab had been concerned, they had not yet reached the stage for human testing.
As far as her lab had been concerned, the rats they had been testing on were only at a seventy-three percent success rate.
Not enough of a success, in her mind, to warrant moving up to primate testing.
And nowhere in her testing had they noted the primal behaviors the Morphates ended up exhibiting.
“What’s not so easy?” he asked her. “You have a guinea pig. Start testing it. I know you’re dying of curiosity. It’s your nature, I think, to be curious to the point of recklessness.”
“Shows what you know about me,” she bit out as she ran her finger over one of the many ropey veins wending its way down the length of his arm.
The plastic of the glove snagged infinitesimally on the dark gold hairs that peppered his skin.
“I am curious, I won’t deny that, but never to the point of recklessness.
I never knowingly hurt anyone. Or anything, for that matter.
Except for maybe a few hundred innocent rats.
Perhaps I’ll have to answer for that when I meet my maker. ”
“I’d say you have a lot more to answer for than the deaths of a few hundred rats.”
Jenesis pressed her lips together and sent the needle into his arm. She popped the first tube into the hub and it immediately began to fill.
“I need a name for these samples,” she said.
“Kincaid Gregory.”
That made her stop in the midst of switching to a fresh tube.
She looked up into those marbleized blue eyes and her breath caught.
This was the man who had hired her. He was the reason she was here.
He was the leader of the Dark Philadelphia clan.
The clan’s Alpha. He had proved to all of the other badass Morphates that he was the baddest ass of them all.
“I thought I recognized you, but I couldn’t recall a name to fit the face,” she said simply. What else was there to say?
“Well, when you’ve seen one Morphate …” he said with a leading shrug.
Jenesis smacked the tube down on the steel table a little recklessly in her temper.
“You know, not everyone thinks like that. Not everyone hates you. It’s even quite possible that there are a lot of people out there who don’t even think about you at all.
After all, you look just like any other human being. ”
“Most of us. Until we get pissed off at any rate. Or turned on.” Kincaid reached out to brush a finger down her chest, ending just shy of her cleavage.
It was an overt act of sexual harassment, he knew, but he did it anyway.
He liked the startled way she caught her breath and the way she suddenly turned pink around her ears and neck.
He liked the way he could smell her warmth increasing, and the way her scent reminded him of clean linen.
She had a tight, intriguing figure, he found himself realizing. She wore very professional designer clothes along with that lab coat she had donned like a suit of protective armor. Even though she had thought no one else was around, she had still girded herself with her crisp, clean lab coat.
“Don’t touch me like that,” she said, her words rushed and breathy because she was breathing so hard. “You have no right.”
“How does that feel, Doctor?” he asked as he took hold of her by her hip and pulled her closer. “Being touched by the freak you created?”
“I didn’t create you!” she burst out, yanking the needle out of his arm prematurely so she wouldn’t have to stand so close to him any longer.
Blood quickly welled up out of the puncture site and she fumbled to reach for some gauze while he drew her so close her breasts were practically in his face.
“Paulson bastardized my work and he created the mutations you suffer from!”
“If that’s true, Doctor, then why do you think you deserve penance? Why are you here so wracked with guilt?”
Kincaid found himself trapped in a web of his own making.
By drawing her close, he was stimulating himself on a very base level.
There was something about her, the smell of her.
Intellectually, she hit just about every negative note he could think of, but physically, the Morphate animal inside of him was responding to the attractive curves of her body and the deliciousness of her smell.
Her warmth radiated against him to such an incredible degree that he couldn’t help but think of the blood in her body that made her that warm.
It was disturbing to him because he never craved blood on that kind of conscious level.
It was somehow always just a sudden need easily fulfilled by the nearest Morphate female.
But this was twice now the idea of her blood had compelled such a powerful response in his body. Twice. And as wild as his first hours as a Morphate male had been, as savage and uncontrolled as all those initial learning sensations had been, he couldn’t remember it being like this.
He surged up out of the phlebotomy chair, crowding his body into hers even though his logical mind was demanding he shove her away, demanding he put a good distance between them.
He tried to tell himself he was not the beast they had made him become.
That he was above knee-jerk cravings and uncontrolled desires.
He was a civilized being as controlled and thoughtful as any other human being on the planet.