Chapter 5
Kincaid was at a loss. He didn’t know how to react to all of the things he should be acknowledging and reacting to.
He was acting on autopilot, his Morphate self seeming, to have a better idea of what was to be done in the situation at hand.
He laid her down on the bed and immediately took his place beside her.
His hands shaped their way over every inch of her, inspecting her for further damage.
He tried to recall reactions to his bestial handling of her that he’d had no interest in earlier.
Suddenly what had started out as a passing mating impulse had taken on a far deeper aspect to that stubborn creature living inside of his skin.
Over the past seven years Kincaid had struggled with his animalistic self, trying to come to grips with it, trying to come to some sort of understanding.
Just when he thought they had come to an agreement, that he would relish the beast’s power, strength, and immortality, and the beast would have to be content to work within his moral compass and self-control, the Morphate inside of him would go and do something like this.
“See what your curiosity has gotten you?” he said starkly, even as he let careful hands run down the length of her milky white legs.
Here was a woman who so rarely saw the light of day, who had no interest in tanning beds and other such vanities.
She didn’t care if she was perfectly kempt or coifed.
She was tasteful, wore pretty, delicate clothes, keeping in touch with the need to present herself professionally and elegantly.
Just enough, but not beyond. Her legs were shaved, her pussy was not.
She was not a woman behaving in expectation of a lover.
Not that he had any right to call himself a lover.
“This was hardly a lark to satisfy doctoral inquisitiveness,” she said with a sigh.
“No scientist with proper ethics would use herself as part of an experiment. Nor would she make a sentient being like yourself feel like he was little more than a lab rat.” She reached out to touch her fingers against his hair. “I am not Eric Paulson.”
Well, shit. That made Kin feel even worse.
“How do you feel? Light-headed?” He wanted to bark at her, growl at her for her utter foolishness in giving him permission to treat her in such a disconnected and selfish manner.
But it wasn’t Jena he was truly angry with.
His reaction left him feeling quite confused, really.
How had everything devolved into this situation so quickly?
How had he woken from his bed and ended up in hers in what had to have been under an hour?
That fucking animal inside him had wanted its way, no matter what, and he hadn’t been able to gainsay it.
Now he was left to pick up the pieces and figure out what the hell to do with her.
And on top of it, he was overwhelmed with a compulsive urge to treat her caringly, gently, and protectively.
The beast whispered things in the back of his mind that made no sense to him, that he did not want to listen to.
Goddamn it, he was in control here! He was the one who was going to manage his life. He had a specific goal as far as Dr. Jenesis DeBruehl was concerned, and nothing was going to change that!
“Are you hurt … anywhere else?” he asked her in a rough bark of demand.
“There’s no need to be polite, you know,” she said wearily. “I’m a big girl. I can make big girl choices. I can take their consequences.” She moved out of the shadow of his protective body and went to sit up, but he grabbed her by the arms and forced her back against the pillows.
“And you are going to faint like a big girl, too, if you get up right now, Jena. You’ve lost a lot of blood. I can see it all over you. And I know you can feel it. Christ, you’re stubborn!”
“Back at you,” she muttered. “I’m almost positive the gene strands you have are shared with wild primates and canids, which accounts for the tendency to express an Alpha hierarchy in your groups. But the way you act sometimes, I’d swear they shoved you full of bull and mule.”
“What’s your excuse?” he shot back at her.
“You are like a dog with a bone in that lab, day after day immersing yourself in every test and discovery you can wrangle. You’re trying to make up for what you let get by you in the past. You can’t do it, Jen.
You can’t fix it. No matter how many Band-Aids you come up with. ”
“Screw you,” she spat irritably, her head spinning and her stomach lurching with queasiness. “I’m a fucking brilliant geneticist, Kincaid Gregory. If I spend enough time, I’ll figure out exactly what that prick did to you, and I’ll figure out how to fix the damage too!”
Kin raised a brow at that.
“So that’s what you’re aiming for? You want to change us back?
” He sighed. “Jen, the Morphates of Dark Philly are only one of six different protocols Paulson created. Each building in the Phoenix Project had a different experiment going on, a different twist on the theme. He dumped his poison into us, no doubt looking for the best result out of the six. My brother is very different than I am. He is much more clearheaded, has far more control over his beast. Some of the others on the council … in Phoenix it’s more like a pride than a pack.
They are more cat than dog. In L.A. they’re more like …
I don’t know … insects. It’s more like they have a queen, rather than an Alpha.
With all that variety, do you think you’re smart enough to figure it all out? To fix it all?”
Jenesis turned her head to the side, tears threatening in her eyes as frustration burned through her soul. She had not realized the Morphates were so different from one another. How could she have? There was just so little known about them.
“Then … even if I do figure out how to kill a Morphate, Kin, there’s no guarantee the process will work on all of them.
That changes everything.” She ran her hands back through her hair in frustration.
“It means I have to find the thing that made you all immortal and find a way to interrupt the process. Without Paulson’s science and notes, that will be almost impossible. ”
“Then maybe we ought to be looking for Paulson,” he said darkly, giving her a deep, inspecting look. “But all of the cities and the Federated government have been doggedly trying to do that for seven years. We haven’t found so much as a single reliable clue to his whereabouts.”
Jenesis looked at him suddenly, a bright light abruptly entering her eyes. It was very contradictory, to see her so pale and weak and yet suddenly so full of inner strength and determination.
“That’s not true,” she said in firm words.
It took a moment for Kincaid to catch up with her thoughts. But barely a moment. He’d been a cop for too long, had come up with the solutions to too many problems not to suddenly see what she was thinking.
Yes, of course! Paulson had just about walked into this very building and handed him the key to finding him. He could use Jena as bait somehow.
“He wants to know what you know just about as badly as we want to know what he knows. Paulson believes that you are going to be the key to figuring out how to kill Morphates.”
“Why wouldn’t he? You certainly did.”
“Yes,” Kin said with a frown. “I did. But it took me a long time to get you here. I needed money. To build a proper facility. If he wanted you, why not take you before this?”
“He doesn’t want me. He wants the solution. And he’s clever enough to let you spend the money and manage the financial headache of supporting me while I am trying to discover it.”
Kin’s laugh was short and wry, and obviously bitter.
“I swear, I’m never going to get away from that motherfucker. He’s going to haunt my every step from now until the day I figure out how to die.”
“Only if you let him,” Jen said softly, placing a hand of comfort on his biceps. “And you don’t strike me as a man in a hurry to die.”
“No, not particularly. But I’m not so certain I want to live forever either.”
Jena sighed. “He may be insane, but I have to admit, Paulson is a goddamn genius. In the lab all I was ever able to do was suspend cellular life for three weeks maximum. How he managed to do it infinitely I’m not sure I’ll ever know.
I’m not certain even he knows. And I doubt I’ll be able to figure that out in the course of my regular lifetime.
But what I can do is help you figure out a way to get Paulson.
I think we both know how to coax him out of hiding. We use me as bait.”
Kin was nodding, ready to agree, but something inside of him began to balk at the idea with about as much power as he felt when he went into a rage or flung himself into his beastly passions.
No! We will not put our mate in danger!
We. Our. Christ, he had truly gone crazy if he was referring to himself in plurals.
It seemed the further into this he went, the more distinctive the two halves of himself became.
And from one minute to the next his other half was constantly shifting focus and desire.
Not fifteen minutes ago he’d been using her without regard for her fragility or her humanity.
Now, suddenly, he was protective of her?
It didn’t make sense. It never seemed to make any sense.
“That’s not the smartest idea you’ve ever had, Doctor,” he said grimly. “You forget what you are dealing with here. Creatures that are more animal than human. And they aren’t afraid of dying, because, unlike you, they can’t die.”
“You’re assuming Paulson has changed himself into a Morphate.”
“His goal might have just been an extension of natural life, but once he saw he’d made us indestructible … hell yeah. Paulson already thought he was a god. He would only assume immortality was his due.”