“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.
Jenesis wanted to escape him, but he was everywhere at once. He was probably one of the biggest men she’d ever come up against. Certainly one of the most intimidating. He was also Kincaid Gregory, the man in charge of Dark Philadelphia and her entire future. He owned this lab. He owned her.
So when he ran a sudden and fierce hand from her waist to her backside, gripping hold of her ass and hauling her into the bend of his body as tightly as if he’d glued her to himself, she was paralyzed into inaction. He growled fiercely, the sound chilling and savage, like nothing she’d ever heard from anyone before. Her heart seized, every latent instinct in her body coming suddenly to life in a classic flight-or-fight reaction.
“My guilt does not permit you to use me like this!”
She hauled off and belted him hard across the face as her whole body lurched backward from his hold on her. But there was no escape for her. He was far too strong and much more determined than she would ever have thought. And while slapping another man that hard across the face might have sent a significant message to his conscience, this man recoiled from the strike with a savage sound and a flash of ivory fangs that had not been present an instant earlier.
And as terrified as she was to find herself in this situation, a back part of Jenesis’s brain was utterly fascinated by the mechanics of the clearly retractable fangs he was sporting. That was how she found herself torn by the possible option of kneeing him between the legs to reinforce her message that she wasn’t going to let him maul her like some piece of meat . . . or reaching up to touch those magnificent fangs.
For some reason, she gave in to the latter impulse, her fingers shaking as she touched the tip of the lower bicuspid.
“Do they retract fully into the jaw? Does it hurt when they do so?”
Her curiosity had the power to do what her slap had failed to do. It took him aback, made him hesitate, even though his body was hard with need and hungers. He felt his own pulse as it shot through the seat of his testicles and down the length of his rigid cock. The sound of it was raging in his ears, making him realize he was listening far too keenly to voices that were far too formidable within him. Kincaid recognized that he’d allowed the beastly Morphate to command him and the situation.
“Fuck!”
He spat the invective an instant before shoving her away from him. He snarled at her viciously, a gnashing of those fangs that so fascinated her. The curse sounded funny, a little lisped because it was no easy trick to make the “f” sound around a mouthful of fangs.
“Do you see? Are you fascinated?” he demanded of her as he reached for a rack of specimen tubes and threw them violently against the far wall. “Does it pique your scientific curiosity to know that this man who used to live and breathe the law as a Federated officer could lower himself to molestation and possibly even rape thanks to your brilliance?”
“Do you think this pleases me on any level?” she railed back at him. “But I can’t sit here and wallow or beg your forgiveness for things I can’t change, and you are clearly in no frame of mind to forgive! And before you say anything, I have never even asked for your forgiveness or your understanding! I have never even suggested that I deserve it! But you brought me here for a reason, and whatever those motives are, I have to start by fully understanding what it is that Paulson did to you. Blood chemistry is the smallest portion of this, albeit the keycode to what was done. But unlocking that code will be nearly impossible if I don’t have a hypothesis about where to start looking.”
Kincaid was breathing hard, like an enraged bull she had swatted in the face a few times. And to be technical, she had swatted him in the face at least once. But he was clearly and visibly drawing himself back together, gathering his civil self back up again instead of letting the bestial half hold reign over him. From the look of him, from what she had seen and felt so far, it was something of a monumental effort.
“I don’t know anything about you that I haven’t seen in the news or read in someone else’s editorial about you,” she said quietly. “But your record of valor and achievements as a cop say a great deal about the man you once were and, somewhere, still are.”
“Now who thinks they know everything,” he accused bitterly.
“Hardly that,” she assured him. “And I don’t presume fo
r even a second to know how difficult this struggle you are fighting with yourself must be. But I do know it is in my power to help . . . if you’ll only tell me what it is you want from me.”
He took a deep breath, his stone-cold blue eyes pinning her in place once again, no hands necessary.
“I want two things, Dr. DeBruehl. I want to figure out how to control this thing inside of me. In seven years I’ve learned that there are no longer any guarantees that the man of law and morals I once was and, at my core, still am is strong enough to stop me from hurting someone while I am caught up in the urges of the beast I now harbor.”
“I can understand that. You might not like some of the solutions that immediately come to my mind. And what is the second thing?”
“I need to learn how to kill a Morphate.”
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 o
f 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.
Jenesis cleared her throat and tried to take a step back from him. She couldn’t focus clearly when he was leaning up against her, oozing all that masculinity all over her. She needed to gather her professionalism back up. She needed to remember to approach him in a completely clinical manner. “If you want me to do my job effectively, I have to maintain a clinical distance.”