Lily carefully cut off the cast and gently prodded the wrist. "She's probably a remarkable healer anyway and the Zenith just pushed her body relentlessly." She placed Mari's arm back on the mattress and covered it with a sheet. "Has she mentioned my father much?"
Ken didn't reply. He wasn't going to lie to her, but Lily was fragile in her pregnant state and it wasn't her fault that her father was a madman.
She sighed. "I have to know about this breeding program he's got going, Ken." She glanced toward the door to where the others were resting, a small frown on her face. "I think he's inserting animal DNA into the soldiers. I think some of you already carry it, especially the men. Has she mentioned aggression? Anything that might indicate a few of the soldiers in his programs are showing signs of instinct rather than intellectual behavior?"
Mari's fingers touched his. He enfolded her hand in his. "I'll ask about it, Lily."
"He needs help desperately, Ken." Lily shook her head. "I should have known. I should have gotten him help. Look at this." She pushed the thin sheet from Mari's leg, running her hand along the skin there, feeling the bone. "She doesn't really even need this splint anymore either. She was shot. Her leg was broken, and yet in a few short hours her body has healed. Peter Whitney did that. He created the drug and engineered the biotic enhancements to accelerate her body's healing capabilities to phenomenal speeds. Just imagine how much the world could have benefited from his discoveries if he hadn't gone crazy."
Ken tightened his fingers around Mari's as Lily removed the splint. "But he did go crazy, Lily. No matter how brilliant he was--or is--he's become a monster. We can't allow him to continue and you know that. He's holding women captive and forcing them to get pregnant. They're prisoners, held in a remote facility somewhere, with no hope of ever getting out. And he plans to experiment on their babies."
Lily let out her breath in a long sound of distress. "I'm doing everything I can to find the women, Ken."
Ask her if what Whitney is doing to the men can be reversed. If he's inserting animal DNA into theirs or raising their testosterone levels, can she undo what he's done?
Ken cleared his throat and tried to look intellectual. "Lily, if Dr. Whitney is using animal DNA, or if he raised the testosterone levels in any of the soldiers, is there a way to reverse it or get rid of it?"
Lily's gaze jumped from his face to Mari's then skidded back as if she'd seen too much. "The testosterone levels might be managed with drugs. Depending on what he did and how much he raised the levels, I might be able to level the men out. But if he really is inserting animal DNA into theirs, which I'm beginning to suspect, there isn't anything I can do. With the extra pair of chromosomes he inserted, he has a lot of genetic code to work with."
She examined Mari's leg a second time, paying close attention to the wound. "She'll need more rest, Ken. Try to get her to sleep as much as possible, and she'll need to drink a lot of fluids. Really push the water. The bathroom is over there," she indicated a door to their left. "Walk with her so she can test the leg, but only to the bathroom and back until I take X-rays. It 'looks' good when I feel it, but psychic ability doesn't always catch the little nuances."
"Thanks, Lily. I'll watch over her."
Ken waited until Lily had left him alone again with Mari. "What are you thinking?"
Mari opened her eyes, and his heart reacted with a peculiar leap. She had the darkest brown eyes, large and heavily fringed. He hadn't noticed before because he had been too busy fixating on her mouth, but a man could get seriously lost in her eyes. He was in trouble and getting in deeper by the moment.
"Brett acts more like an animal than a man. He doesn't care at all what I want or don't want. It really doesn't matter to him, other than that I cooperate with him. When I don't, he's furious. He wasn't always like that. Not to say he didn't have brutish behavior. I think he liked being strong and he picked fights, and none of us liked him all that much, but his behavior is even worse now."
Ken took a deep breath and let it out. Jack and he had always had better than average eyesight, but now both of them could see not only at night, but at distances more like those an eagle could see than a man. They had assumed it was due to genetic enhancement of vision and hearing, simply increasing their own capabilities, but they could both see heat sources as well. They could change skin color and hold the outside temperature of their skin at a different temperature than their internal body heat, which negated anyone else's ability to see their heat images. Did that mean Whitney had inserted animal DNA into each of them? Was that part of the reason he had been so adamant that Briony have Jack's baby?
"What is it?" Mari turned her head to look him directly in the eye. Her fingertip traced the frown on his lips.
"Jack and I have always had dominant personalities," Ken said. Whitney couldn't have added animal DNA to our genetic code, could he, Jack? Is it possible he made us even more aggressive, knowing our history? "We're both aggressive and neither has much backup in him. We had certain traits, both physical and mental, far before we volunteered for Whitney's psychic program."
Ken, there is every possibility. I didn't want to consider it, but our vision is unlike human vision. And we've both become a little too much like shaggy bears growling in the woods. There was a hint of humor in Jack's voice, and the hard knots in Ken's belly relaxed a little. Even if the bastard did insert animal DNA, we've been living with it for a few years now and we haven't eaten anybody.
He would have given us something difficult to control--something that would mix with jealousy and aggression and heighten those traits.
Probably.
Jack sounded complacent. He could be complacent. He had Briony tied to him, and she was pregnant with twins. She was totally committed to him. Jack was a handsome man with a physique any woman would be attracted to.
Mari, on the other hand, was sexually attracted because Whitney had paired them. He had the face of a monster, and his body was a patchwork quilt sewn rather haphazardly together. Mari wouldn't want to be seen walking down the street with him, let alone dancing with him, if Whitney hadn't intervened.
Jack had managed to escape the legacy of violence and jealousy and disgusting behavior their father had bequeathed to them, but Ken hadn't. He knew he hadn't, and Mari would sooner or later suffer for his baser traits if they were together.
Self-pity was a miserable and useless pastime. He refused to indulge himself.
Mari's fingertips were feather-light on his face as she traced the pattern of his scars. "You're so silly sometimes, Ken. You don't see yourself as you really are at all."
"How do you see me?" He wanted to sink his teeth into her finger, to draw it into the warmth of his mouth, but he kept himself absolutely still, not daring to really breathe, in case she stopped touching him.
"You're extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary."
His mouth curved into a semblance of a smile, the scar stretching tightly. It amazed him how that shiny skin could be so tight and not feel at all until it stretched, and then it could be painful. There didn't seem to be a middle ground. "You're doped up."
"I know. I'm floating. But that doesn't make it untrue. If you do have animal DNA, you seem to be able to handle it a lot better than any of the others."
"You won't be saying that when you're asleep and I wake you up croaking like a frog and my tongue darts out and finds that perfect little tempting ear of yours."
"Does my ear tempt you?" She tucked strands of hair behind her ear.
"Hell yes. Everything about you tempts me."
Mari felt herself blushing. No man paid attention to her in quite the way he did. He made her feel almost shy, when she wasn't a shy woman. Heat curled through her body, and when he was close to her, she could barely breathe. Her womb clenched, and in between her legs she grew hot and moist and throbbed eagerly, as if her body had a mind of its own. She was in over her head. She knew what to do in a combat situation, and she knew how to fight off a man's unwanted attentions,
but she had no clue how to entice Ken Norton into wanting her with the same feverish intensity with which she wanted him.
Swallowing hard, she changed the subject, deciding that safety was preferable when she didn't have her wits about her. "Is Jack really with my sister?"
"Coward." He trapped her hand against his lips and, this time, drew her finger seductively into the velvet heat of his mouth.
Her heart jumped and began to pound fast. He made the smallest of gestures seem so erotic. She'd had sex, hated it, and had made up her mind she would never willingly participate, yet with a simple pull of his mouth, her breasts tingled and her muscles tightened in urgent need. "Yes, I am," she agreed. "I don't have a lot of experience."
"I do."
This time her stomach somersaulted. His voice was low, a whisper of sound that slid over her skin in a devil's temptation. For a moment she couldn't look away from his mouth and the way he tugged at her finger. Her breasts reacted as if they could feel his lips and tongue and teeth sliding over creamy flesh, tugging at her nipples until she ached and ached for him.
She loved to look at his face, the shape of it, the scars only calling attention to the perfection of his bone structure and the way his lips were sensually chiseled. She couldn't help the fact that she was drawn to his wide shoulders and thickly muscled chest. She liked big-muscled arms and narrow hips. The man was built exactly the way she thought a man should be built.
Mari swallowed hard and tried not to feel the dance of his tongue or imagine the stroke of it along her skin. He was the most erotic man she'd ever encountered. Everything about him, including that edge of danger, appealed to her. "Tell me about Briony. I know Jack is being careful in case I'm a threat to her, but I need to hear about her. I've thought about her every day of my life and sort of built up a fantasy life for her. I need to know if she's happy. Does she look like me? What's she like as a person?"
His teeth scraped back and forth over the pad of her finger, his brows coming together as he thought. "Briony is like the sunshine. She's bright and cheerful and lights up a room, and when she laughs, she makes you want to laugh with her. She looks just like you, beautiful dark eyes and the same beautiful hair." He rubbed strands between his fingers. "When the sunlight shines on her, with all that gold and silver and platinum, she looks like a million bucks."
There was genuine affection for her sister in his voice, and Mari hugged that knowledge to herself. She needed to know that with everything she'd lost, her sister had been allowed to live a real life. "What about her family? Were they good to her?"
"She grew up in a circus family with four big brothers. I think performing was difficult on her because none of them were an anchor and she had to learn to cope on her own, even as a child, but she's strong, Mari, and has courage."
"What about her parents? Were they good to her?"
"She loved them very much, and yes, they were good to her. They had always wanted a daughter. One of her brothers served with us for a while. He's a good man."
"Does Jack love her?"
"What do you think?"
"I think he put a gun to my head and would have pulled the trigger if he believed for even one moment that I was a threat to her--or to you."
"She didn't know about you. Whitney erased her memory. Whenever she tried to remember, she'd feel pain. When she finally was able to push past whatever he did to block her memory, she made us promise to find you."
"And you shot me."
A faint grin touched his mouth. "Well, I might not tell her that part."
An answering ghost of a smile curved her lips. "I guess not." She swallowed and looked away from him. "I need to go to the bathroom."
Ken shifted, sliding off the bed to give her room, trying to be casual and not embarrass her. "Let me help you sit up. You're going to be a little shaky for a day or two. That cocktail Lily gave you can make you pretty sick."
Mari frowned at him, looking alarmed. "We can't stay longer than a day or two, especially not with Lily here. They'll keep coming until they find me." And why did that make her so sad? While she'd yearned for freedom, a part of her had been terrified of going out into the world without a clue what she'd face.
Ken wrapped his arm around her back and lifted her into a sitting position, steadying her when she swayed with weakness. "Why haven't you escaped? You can't tell me that you and the other women, all trained soldiers, all psychically and physically enhanced, couldn't get out in all this time."
Mari pressed a hand to her rapidly beating heart. Did one admit cowardice to a man who had been tortured so hideously? She couldn't meet his eyes.
Ken caught her chin and forced her head up. "Mari, stop that. You were raised by a madman in an environment of discipline and duty."
"At first, I didn't mind it at all. I liked the training and the discipline. There was a lot of physical activity, and I excelled at weapons training and hand-to-hand, so it was simply a way of life to me. I didn't know any other way really existed. And there was Briony. I was so afraid for her. He promised she'd have a good life if I cooperated with him. When I read about families, I just pictured Briony in the role and it was all good."
Mari swung her legs over the side of the bed, testing the strength in her injured one. Zenith healed fast, but one still had to work the muscles to get them in shape, and Ken was right--she was trembling with weakness.
"When did you begin to realize all people didn't live the way you did?"
"Whitney gave us an excellent education. He wanted intelligent soldiers capable of making quick decisions when we were cut off from our unit, but in doing that, he encouraged us to think for ourselves. It didn't take long to realize our compound was a prison, not a home."
She stepped onto the floor, acutely aware of Ken's body heat seeping into her pores as his arm circled her waist to steady her. His scent enveloped her, clouding her mind for a moment, until all she could think about was the feel of his skin against hers. She wanted to push his shirt aside so she could examine the scars on his chest and down his belly . . .
"Stop. I'm not a saint, Mari."
She kept her smile to herself. She liked the rough edge in his voice and the way his eyes, such a startling silver, darkened with such intense hunger whenever she thought about touching his body. "It doesn't take much to get you going, does it?"
Ken swallowed his answer. It hadn't taken much prior to his capture in the Congo, but he'd thought that part of his life was long gone. Mari had changed everything. His body was hard and full and one painful ache with just the slight brush of her soft skin against him. Nothing had gotten him revved up since his return from Africa, nothing and no one until Mari. Could pheromones possibly be that powerful? So powerful that he was not only sexually attracted, but emotionally drawn to her as well?
He walked her across the room without answering her. Just thinking about sex was enough to make him feel wild.
After a few minutes, Mari emerged from the bathroom pale, her body swaying. Ken didn't wait for her to try to walk back to the bed. He swept her up, cradling her against his chest. For a moment she was stiff, holding her body away from his, resistance running through her.
"Don't fight me. You're as weak as a kitten right now. You can do push-ups tomorrow, but for right now, I'm putting you back in bed."
She stared up at him with her big, dark eyes and her sinfully full lips and a look somewhere between an innocent and a temptress, and he knew he was lost. "Damn it all to hell," he muttered, stalking across the room and placing her on the bed. "You can't look at me like that, Mari."
He bent down, framing her face, thumbs sliding over her soft skin once before he took possession of her mouth. He had thought--hoped--that that first kiss had been a fluke, but the moment he touched her lips, teasing and tugging with his teeth until she opened for him, he was in instant meltdown. He kissed her over and over, stealing her breath, giving her his own, drowning in need.
She was frying his brain. He couldn't even think cl
early, his head roaring, thunder in his ears, his heart pounding, and his body so hard and rigid, he rubbed his palm over the thick bulge desperate for relief. She had done that--made him come alive, feel like a man again. She'd given him back his life, and if he took what her dark gaze was offering, he might completely destroy hers.
Ken forced himself away from the edge of madness, jerking his hand away from her and stepping back to shove his fingers through his hair in agitation. His breath came in ragged gasps. He wanted her so much that for one moment he couldn't think coherently, couldn't think about anything but her soft skin and lush body. He took another step back. "This is crazy. Go back to sleep."
"I'm thirsty."
His gaze jumped to her face. "I'm doing my best to look out for you, Mari, and you're not making it easy."
"I'll be good, but I really am thirsty."
She sat up a little tentatively, and he leaned in to arrange her pillows. His arm brushed her breast, and he bit out a curse between clenched teeth. Ken poured water into a glass and shoved it at her, careful not to let their fingers touch.
She brought the glass to her lips, dragging his attention back to her mouth. He nearly groaned watching her throat work as she swallowed the water. He dragged a chair to the side of the bed and straddled it, leaning his arms on the top of the back and resting his chin on his hands. "You never wince or avert your eyes when you look at me."
Mari pressed the glass against her temple. "Do people really do that?"
"Of course they do, look at me."
"I have been looking at you." Her gaze drifted over his face and dipped lower to follow the scars disappearing into his shirt. There was blatant interest in her eyes. "People are idiots."
"God, woman, you're not safe." He took a breath, let it out, and forced his mind away from her sinful mouth. "Tell me about the compound. How could military personnel and, I'm guessing, lab techs be there and not realize what was going on?" She was too much of a temptation to him sitting there looking vulnerable and drowsy and eyeing him like he might be candy.
She shrugged, hiding her smile at his reaction to her. "The compound is multilayered and they rotate the soldiers coming in fairly often. From the outside, the place looks fairly innocuous. The ground layer has a few buildings, sheds, the airstrip, helicopter landing, that sort of thing, with high fences and a security system. The regular military guards stay aboveground and are housed in aboveground barracks. Most of the regular lab techs have their barracks above ground as well."