Chapter 3
“Morphates under my control and my brother’s control respect the will of their Alphas for the most part,” Kincaid said with a frown.
Jenesis was realizing that frown was almost ever-present, marring what were otherwise good looks.
“But Alphas don’t necessarily have to mind the rules we’ve drawn up for ourselves, or the rules of human society for that matter.
After all, what can you do to them if they don’t behave? ”
He glanced at her from under his thick, dark lashes, making her realize he was judging her responses, perhaps even baiting her.
“I see the writing on the wall, Doctor. I see there are other Alphas on the Alpha Council who are chafing at the limitations of polite society and the scraps of life you have reluctantly thrown us. I was a cop for a lot of years. I know a bad sort when I see one, and Paulson culled his lab rats from all kinds of society … including some who were criminally insane. Can you imagine it? Criminally insane Morphates?” he offered, the idea making him tense throughout his body.
“A monster with no equal to hold him in check.”
“Except Morphates like you,” Jenesis said carefully.
“You are still the cop you once were. At heart, it seems, if not in practice. And I have no doubt it’s in practice as well.
The role has merely changed you from being a deputy to having become the sheriff,” she pointed out insistently when he gave her a dark look.
“And if you didn’t still have the heart for it, Mr. Gregory, you wouldn’t be here asking me to help you control yourself, as well as others around you.
You aren’t doing it for ultimate power and domination.
I can feel that. You want me to think your desire to control the animalistic side of you is a purely selfish desire, but I am willing to bet you would share it in a heartbeat. ”
Kincaid made a dismissive sound, turning away from the divining strength of her eyes.
How was it that she could figure these things out about him so quickly, and yet she’d never known what Paulson was?
What he was doing? It made him even more suspicious of her than ever.
He couldn’t figure out if she was the consummate actress or the dupe she professed to be.
As a person, he knew he couldn’t trust her at all, but there was no denying the power of her skill as a scientist. If he’d had another choice, he might have taken it, but the truth was she’d already walked in the footprints of the science used to create the Morphates.
She wouldn’t be starting cold the way anyone else would.
Anyone walking around free, that is. The idea of recruiting anyone from the original Phoenix Project had gone against everything inside of him, but he had considered making a deal with the government to bring in one of the scientists they’d imprisoned in the wake of the project’s demise.
Until he’d come across the stories about Dr. DeBruehl.
Until Devona Chandler, an incredible doctoral mind in her own right, had made him understand that Jenesis DeBruehl was probably his best chance to bring about the change and the control he knew the Morphates needed.
Devona had made him understand the science as much as he needed to.
He didn’t have the kind of intelligence it took to fully comprehend the vast details of genetic tags and cellular alteration, all he knew was the results of the practical application of it.
He lived with them every second of every day.
He had just given the doctor a close-up encounter with the hell of being a Morphate.
Well, good. She fucking deserved it, he thought bitterly. She deserved anything she got as far as he was concerned. Fit punishment for an obscene crime. She deserved to meet the vicious monsters she had unleashed in them all.
And the moment he had the thought, Kincaid felt sick to his stomach for it. He’d never been an easy man, but he liked to think he’d always been a decent one. Even she was assuming he had once been a decent human being. But he’d always wanted punishment for a crime committed.
Did her crimes mean she deserved the beast of his Morphate turned loose on her?
Kincaid was still very close to her. Close enough to continue to smell her, a scent that he was finding far too compelling.
He made a sound low in his throat, his head dipping until his nose lightly brushed beneath her ear.
His breath blew out through her hair, coasting over her ear until she felt her heart skipping a beat as it tripped over itself to speed up.
She wanted to tell herself it was fear alone that caused the reaction, but the chills rippling down her chest and breasts forced her to be a bit more honest with herself.
As intimidating as Kincaid Gregory was, there was something dangerously exciting about him.
It was, she realized, that male beast that a female mate responded to on primitive levels.
She did not need to be a Morphate female to recognize there were base things inside of her that would find the baser things he represented exciting, perhaps even appealing.
And it didn’t hurt that he was incredibly easy on the eyes and quite beautifully built.
His body and physicality were the equivalent of bright plumage on a male bird.
They were meant to attract a female. The brighter the plumage and the more attention getting the strut, the more she was instinctively going to find it attractive.
At least that’s how her scientist’s brain tried to quickly explain away the reaction. It was all about nature. All about those latent needs and desires that years of evolution and civilization still had not bred out of them.
“I know I’m no better than a low beast,” he growled against her ear.
“I know it because all I can think about when I smell you is getting myself under your clothes, touching your skin, sucking on anything I can get my mouth on, and then fucking you until I can’t make myself come anymore. This is what I’ve been reduced to.”
His words were like having molten gold poured down the center of her body.
The heat and weight of it scorched her in a wild splatter pattern of internal burns.
The result was a sudden wetness between her legs.
It had been such a long time since she had felt anything like it that the unexpected alienness of the response made her feel awkward and gauche.
She should be put off by him. The way he had spoken said he expected her to be offended by his behavior.
But she wasn’t. And as much as she could analyze the whys and wherefores and the science behind basic things like attraction and sexual need, there was nothing in her coping repertoire that had ever experienced something so enlivening and so obviously forbidden.
“I thought Morphates couldn’t have sex with regular humans,” she said, her voice a raspy, catching whisper. He was still nuzzling her cheek, his thigh now pressed against the side of hers and shifting restlessly.
“Hmm. Not can’t. Shouldn’t. We’re too … savage. We bite our mates. We drink our mates.” Jenesis felt something sharp running down the back of her neck. “We claw our mates in the heat of our coupling. What fragile, normal human would want to experience such a thing?”
Jenesis reached a shaking hand up to the back of her neck, her fingers gripping hold of his and bringing his hand around to where she could see it.
He’d had normal nails moments ago. Now, thick, ivory-colored claws curved out from the nail beds.
They were a good inch extended past the tip of his blunt fingertips.
Kincaid knew immediately that she had shifted back to being the curious scientist as she touched one of his claws, tracing it for its strength and permanency.
He wished he could switch gears that easily.
Perhaps once upon a time he had been able to.
After seven years of wrestling with this dominant demon inside of him, he couldn’t even remember anymore.
“There are quite a few humans who would be attracted to the idea of all those things,” she said, drawing her eyes from his hand and meeting his hard gaze. “We shouldn’t be lumped into absolutes any more than you should be.”
“True. I’ve heard stories of humans knocking at Morphate doors in search of a new kind of kink.
And the government hasn’t made it illegal.
However, since all pedestrian measures of birth control, other than condoms, fail to be effective for us and we have no desire to start creating half-breeds when we barely understand ourselves as a breed … ”
“I remember reading about that. That birth control doesn’t work for you. Perhaps we can work on something.”
“I think that would be most welcome. The heat of a female is very hard to resist. And if she’s in heat, she is ripe for impregnation.
We have nearly doubled our numbers because our instincts overwhelm precaution.
And we barely know how to raise these Morphate children.
I will show you what I mean. A Morphate child is nothing like any child you’ve ever seen. ”
Jenesis had heard very little about Morphate children.
No one had. The Dark City enclaves and the clans within them were very tightly guarded and very well protected.
The only pictures out there of Morphate children had been taken with powerful telescopic lenses, and yet were still blurry and unrevealing.
There had been a few stories about photographers who had potentially caught a good picture of a Morphate child, only to suddenly and inexpicably disappear before it could be published.
Of course, that was just a silly urban legend.
She hoped.