“I’m going to give you some pain medication that I brought just in case you needed it. I want you to take two as needed for the pain and if you run out, have Valiant give me a call. I want you to visit the medical center in a few days if the pain in your hip or shoulder worsens or doesn’t subside. We’ll get some X-rays.”
Tammy nodded. “Thanks.” She retrieved the towel and wrapped it around her. “I really appreciate it.”
Trisha sat on the bed. “So, have you seen Valiant since the incident at his house?”
Tammy wanted to wince but didn’t. “You heard about that?”
Trisha nodded. “Yeah. Slade, Tiger, Justice, and I know you had sex with him but that’s everyone who knows.”
“No. Tonight was the first time I’ve seen him since that day. I can’t believe he forgave me for knocking him out with the lamp and was great enough to come looking for me tonight.”
Trisha’s voice dropped in volume drastically. “You knocked him out with a lamp? I was under the impression he let you go. Tiger didn’t tell us that.”
“I coldcocked him.”
A grin split the woman’s lips. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I’m going to have a great laugh about that when it’s safe. Their hearing is amazing so always keep that in mind.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Tammy whispered back. Her gaze lowered to Trisha’s stomach. “I bet you and your husband are really happy. Is this your first baby?”
The woman touched her stomach with a grin and her voice rose loudly when she spoke. “I’m not married. The guy knocked me up and just took off on me.”
A growl sounded from the hallway and someone knocked on the door. “Is she decent? I’m coming in.”
Trisha winked at Tammy. “Come on in, Slade.”
Slade looked furious as he shot a glare at Trisha. Valiant followed at his heels. Trisha chuckled.
“I was just telling Tammy about my baby.” She tapped her stomach.
“When are you going to have the baby?” Tammy gripped her towel tightly around her body, trying not to feel too weird that Slade was inside the room.
The woman hesitated. “I’m not really sure. I’ll find out whenever he decides to be born.”
Tammy let that sink in. “I meant when is your due date?”
The woman hesitated again. “I’m five months pregnant.”
Tammy’s gaze dropped to the doctor’s protruding stomach again. “Wow. Are you sure you aren’t carrying twins? One of my friends is eight months pregnant and she…” Tammy closed her mouth and blushed. “I’m sorry. You aren’t big or anything. I just realized how that must sound. It’s just that you are so small and your tummy looks as if you’re more pregnant. I―”
Trisha burst into laughter. “Stop! I’m not insulted or offended. I know I’m huge and look as though I’m ready to pop. The father is a big guy and the baby is too.”
Tammy was happy she hadn’t offended her. “Do you even speak to the father? You really should force him to pay child support. Kids are really expensive these days.”
Slade growled again. Trisha laughed. “We worked things out and he realized he was a bonehead for leaving me. I’m going to make him marry me. I love the jerk a hell of a lot but he’s kind of thick-headed, you know? I brought up marriage just a few weeks ago and he said it wasn’t necessary since we were already a family.”
“Men.” Tammy shook her head. “They just don’t get it.”
Trisha grinned. “All too true. I’m thinking of going on a sex strike.”
Tammy smiled at her. “That might work. You could also tell him that, if he won’t marry you, someone else will. You’re beautiful. I’m sure another man would be happy to if he’s not smart enough to seal the deal.”
Slade growled again. Tammy glanced at him with concern. Her gaze flashed to Trisha. “Is he all right?”
Trisha handed Tammy a bottle of pills. “He gets cranky when he gets woken up but he’ll be fine. I’ll send him to the guestroom when we get back to where I’m staying and he can take a nap. It was nice meeting you, Tammy. Have Valiant call me if you need anything. Maybe one day this week I can bring lunch. It will be nice to talk to another woman.”
Tammy grinned. “I’d enjoy that if I’m still here. Thank you again, Trisha. It was really nice meeting you.”
Trisha turned to study Tammy. “By the way, Tiger interfered with you making a statement tonight. The sheriff is going to come back in the morning. I hope that’s all right but I told him you would need rest. I asked him to tell the sheriff that you’d been given pain medication already and he will be back at nine in the morning to interview you.”
“That’s great. Thank you. I am kind of done in.”
Trisha stopped next to Valiant. “She’s got some bad bruising. Be nice to her and make sure she gets plenty of rest. She needs two pain pills every four to six hours, depending on how much pain she is in. Have her eat before taking them.”
“Thank you.” Valiant hesitated before he opened his arms.
Trisha laughed as she hugged him. “You’re learning.”
He stepped back. “It’s not so bad. You still smell nice.”
These people are just weird. Tammy watched as the woman left the bedroom. Her security officer suddenly slapped the woman on her ass when he stepped into the hallway with her. Trisha jumped, turned her head, and laughed up at the large man following her before they moved out of sight. Tammy gawked after them. Valiant moved suddenly, blocking her line of vision.
“Did her security guy just slap her butt?”
Valiant smiled. “Yes.”
Tammy shook her head. “Her boyfriend might not like him doing that.”
Valiant shrugged, grinning. “I don’t think he’d object. He and Slade are very close.” He laughed.
Tammy let that one slide, not wanting to ask questions that were too nosey. “Did I get clothes yet?”
“They are in the other room.”
“Could you bring them in to me, please?”
“You don’t need them.” Valiant moved to the bed and threw back the blankets. “Drop the towel and get into bed. It’s late and you need sleep. I will get you a glass of water to take your pills. Have you eaten tonight or should I have some food brought to you?”
“I ate.” She hesitated. “Could you at least turn around?”
He turned. Tammy dropped the towel and climbed into the bed. She pulled up the covers to her shoulders. “All in.”
Valiant walked toward the bathroom. He returned with a glass of water. Tammy still held the pill bottle. She took out two pain pills and swallowed them down with the drink. Valiant set the glass down on the nightstand by the bed.
“Are you tired?”
“Yeah. I’m wiped.”
He blinked. “Does wiped mean tired?”
She nodded. “Slang isn’t your thing, is it?”
“I’m learning. I was raised around doctors, techs, and security guards. I’m afraid my vocabulary is limited to what they taught me. I didn’t get as much exposure to them as some of the other Species did. I was different.”
She frowned. “Do you know how to read?”
“Yes. I learned after I was freed in the months we spent in hiding waiting for our home to be established.” He sat on the edge of the mattress. “Most of my kind were taught before then but I wasn’t slated for any interaction with humans. It was a waste of time according to them. They just wanted to keep me alive because I was so strong and closer to animal than most.”
Tammy stared at him mutely. She was too shocked to even reply. Valiant looked a little sad as he gazed into her eyes.
“How much do you know about New Species?”
“Just what I hear on TV and read sometimes in the newspapers. I know that some pharmaceutical company did illegal research on you guys and they finally got popped. I know they made you part human and part animal. That’s really about it except for how you guys have your own Homeland down south near Los Angeles and how you opened
up this place recently.” She shrugged.
Valiant sighed. “We were altered with different animal DNA. Some more than others, such as myself. They made mistakes and I am one.” Anger tightened his expression as he regarded her, seeming to be waiting for a reaction.
Tammy stared into his exotic eyes. “A mistake? I don’t understand.”
“I’m different—my animal traits are more dominant than my human ones.”
She stared at his face, taking in his eyes, nose, mouth, and cheekbones. “You appear more New Species than most.”
“It’s not just how I appear. My instincts are stronger than most of my kind.”
“What does that mean?” She was glad she was sitting down, almost afraid to hear whatever he wanted to share with her.
“I’m more animal than man. It’s the only way I can explain it. The testing facility ‘mistakes’ such as myself were trained to be aggressive, to fight and to take a lot of pain. We were regarded as expendable and therefore heavily abused by their drug research trials. They tested the most dangerous ones they make on us. We were useless for any other purpose.”
She had one of those rare moments where she couldn’t form words. Valiant had a talent for making her speechless.
“They performed a lot of drug research on most New Species. They expected huge profits from enhancement drugs to that would make soldiers and athletes stronger, faster and better. They trained them to show off what their drugs could do. They were valuable. The failures were not. They tried breeding experiments with me but decided after a few unsuccessful attempts that they didn’t wish to produce more of us.”
“Breeding experiments?” She got the question out but wasn’t sure she really wanted to hear the answer.
“They brought some females to my cell to breed with me to see if I could impregnate them. The other males hadn’t produced results. Their testing failed with me as well.”
Tammy tried hard to hide her horror. She knew she hadn’t done a good job of it when Valiant’s gaze dropped and his shoulders sagged. The sadness on his face tore at her heart. He hadn’t had a choice, had been horribly abused, had been a victim.
Valiant refused to look into Tammy’s pretty eyes any longer. The revulsion he saw hurt him deeply. He’d wanted to be honest with her by telling her everything about his life. His mate would need to know. It wouldn’t be fair to ask her to spend her life with him if he kept secrets. He stared at the blanket covering her lap.
“We have heightened senses of smell, hearing, and our eyesight is better than most Species. We are stronger, faster, and even our intelligence was heightened in some cases. We are experimental prototypes that failed and in order to recoup their losses they even tried to turn us into perfect killing machines. They wanted to stamp out our humanity so we could be trained as pure animals that would follow their commands. It didn’t work out for them so well when we wouldn’t break. We fought them instead, killed them when given the chance and refused to do their bidding. They were still working on us when we were discovered and freed.”
“They tried to turn you into a killer?” She whispered the words.
He glanced up and stared at her. “Please don’t get that look in your eyes. I know how to fight and kill. It doesn’t mean that I’m some mindless slayer. They tried to salvage the failures by making us fighters mostly and since we were so impressive looking they believed we might turn a profit. They wanted me to be their…” He paused. “‘Display’ New Species for the failures they wished to sell. I would not comply.”
“Display?”
“To sell us.” Valiant’s voice tightened. “Third-world countries, private armies for rich fanatics, or whoever was willing to pay a fortune for an animal that could talk and kill efficiently on command. Luckily for us, we never heeded orders well. We had too many flaws for them to actually put us up for sale.” He shrugged. “At least most of us. We now have found out that some of our women were sold.”
Tammy stared at him in horror. “So some of your women are out there being forced to kill people?”
He shook his head. “I do not know exactly what DNA I was changed with. It might have been multiple large feline species from my looks and abilities but we guess the lion is most obvious. Their records having to do with how we were created were destroyed. Mostly our experimental prototypes were changed with species known for tracking, hunting, strength and fighting. Canine. Feline. Primate. We discovered that some of our females were mixed with weaker animal DNA strains to make them smaller and less aggressive. They were sold to provide funding to continue the research.”
“Sold to whom and for what?”
Valiant looked furious. “Sold to whoever wanted to make large donations to Mercile Industries. They called them Gift females and in exchange for large sums of money and for helping them cover up what they were doing and to avoid being caught, they handed them over to humans. They were giving our women to those bastards as sexual slaves. We have recovered some bodies and some living females.”
Tammy swallowed and tears filled her eyes. “I never heard any of that on the news. My God. That’s terrible. Those poor women.”
“You won’t hear it on the news. Justice thinks, if the press takes it public, that the men holding our women will kill them immediately to destroy any evidence that they ever had them. Justice and your government are tracing financial records and serving warrants to search for our missing ones. We don’t know the numbers with the records being destroyed but we find another one every few weeks lately.”
She reached out and her fingers traced the back of his hand. “That’s horrible. It just is sickening, isn’t it? Those poor women.” She paused. “I hope that all of them are found.”
He nodded grimly. “We do as well. We’re free and it bothers us that some of our people are still being tormented and imprisoned.”
“There’s no way to recover all the information to find them?”
“When the testing facilities were breached by your government law enforcement it triggered alarms where we were hidden. The staff started fires in the record rooms and destroyed the computers holding the information. They started killing our people too. Some died but most of us lived. Very few records were salvaged.”
“I hate to say this but it’s probably a good thing. You know how information goes. Someone could get hold of it and use it start all over again. You guys are pretty impressive. I’m betting that company would be tempted to start new testing facilities with new people to experiment on.”
He shivered. “We were told by a doctor who was arrested that the leading researcher who created us destroyed that information. She didn’t agree with what Mercile planned to do with us after she succeeded in creating us and she disappeared, taking that knowledge with her. That’s why they began to try to breed some Species to create more. I hope no one could ever replicate what was done to us. It’s enough to give us nightmares. We’re trying to financially destroy Mercile Industries. We’ve won in your courts often on financial matters and your government has put a lot of them in your prisons.”
“It is your government too. You’re Americans, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “We have always been separate. It’s hard to try to think any other way. It’s why Justice and our council fought so hard for our independence by acquiring Homeland and used some of the money from the lawsuits to buy Reservation.”
“I heard you guys kind of have something close to diplomatic immunity on your own Homeland and here too. A news guy said it was similar to a consulate and you have your own laws and justice system.”
“I assume so. Your government can’t breach us or force us to comply with your laws. Not on our lands.”
“So I’m kind of in another country right now, huh?” She suddenly grinned. “And I don’t even have a passport. How cool is that?”
He fought a smile. She was adorable when she smiled and he resisted the urge to reach up and cup her face. He studied the bruise on her cheek and fought back anger a
t what had been done to her by humans. “Is it cool?”
“Kind of.”
His gaze held hers. “I want to kiss and touch you. Let me, Tammy.”
Her grin faded as she stared at him, chewing on her bottom lip. “I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know? Did I hurt you last time? Did you not enjoy my touch? I know you did.” Hope flared inside him that she’d be tempted. He longed to touch her again.
Tammy couldn’t deny it. The time she’d spent in Valiant’s bedroom had haunted her for five weeks. He had turned her inside out. When he touched her, she lost the ability to think. He seemed to take her silence for agreement when he slowly leaned closer. His hand reached out and caressed the uninjured side of her face.
“I would never hurt you.”
She believed him. He’d terrified her when they had first met but after what he’d just told her about New Species, she understood he hadn’t meant to. He had instincts and urges that most people didn’t. He’d wanted her and he’d taken her. It was kind of sexy.
Valiant’s hand eased away and he stood to kick off his shoes. He reached for the front of his jeans next. Tammy didn’t protest as she watched him strip out of them. No underwear again. She stared at a naked Valiant with a little fear. The guy was so big. Her eyes lowered. All over. She forced her gaze to his face.
Valiant bent, gripped the blanket covering her, and yanked it to the foot of the bed. Tammy tensed but didn’t try to use the pillow to hide her body. Valiant’s gaze raked down every inch of her exposed skin, which was all of it that she wasn’t lying on. He suddenly growled viciously. It made her eyes widen and her heart race.
“I want to kill all of your attackers. Look at what they did to your beautiful body. It infuriates me. I want to take them apart with my bare hands and watch them die a painful death.”
“I’m fine.”
“I still want to kill them. I would have bathed in their blood if they had raped you.”
She stared at him. Gross. But the meaning is sweet. She believed him. Well, the part about wanting to kill them. Valiant put his knees on the bed and slowly crouched over Tammy. She stared up at him. He held her gaze but didn’t touch her.