Connor (16 page)

"I wouldn't
want
you to be like that," he argued, somewhat insulted that she thought he would.

"I know, but I started doing it anyway. I caught myself wondering if your bad mood was due to something I said or did. If you liked or didn't like the way I was dressed, the makeup I was wearing. It was scary. And the only way I could stop that was to keep it light between us. Casual."

"But it couldn't be casual with us. I know casual. This was never that, right from the start. You can't make something into something else. You can't create feelings where there aren't any or deny feelings that are there. That's really how you end up compromising yourself."

"Says he who was going to give me a threesome when he hated the idea," she challenged indignantly.

"Yeah, well, I was feeling that same need to please you. That was new to me. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to please your partner, as long it pleases you too. I was turned on by how aroused you got at the idea of Cameron watching. If it had repulsed or offended me, or some shite like that, I wouldn't have agreed. Not even to get you to commit."

"Good, glad we sorted that out. Now can we sleep because it's been a hell of a day. Actually, these have been the longest two days of my life. Hope you don't have any more surprises waiting for me tomorrow."

His own eyelids had become very heavy and he'd only kept talking because he wanted to make the most of every moment he had with the girl in his arms. They'd come too close to losing each other today. Too close.

"No more surprises tomorrow. But I can't promise anything for the day after."

She groaned and snuggled closer. "Okay, I'll take what I can get. 'Night, my fated mate, sweet dreams."

Connor couldn't stop the chuckle that rose in his chest. She was such a cheeky little piece.

Suddenly the gratitude he felt overtook him.

It was hard to voice but it had to be said. "Thanks."

"I didn't save you for you. I did it for purely selfish reasons." Her voice was drowsy now, and sexy as hell.

"For that too. But I was thinking of the mate thing. Thanks for being my mate. I didn't know how much I needed you until you turned up in my life."

"Yeah, well, the feeling's mutual. Now shut-the-fuck-up and let me sleep."

He laughed again, enjoying the pain this time.

They gathered at Cam's place the following evening after the staff had left. Colt put Chase on speaker so they could all be included. Of course, they could easily have heard the conversation without it, but it was done as a symbolic gesture of inclusion. And Allie appreciated it. Now she was one of them, in every sense of the word, it felt incredible to be part of something as important as the Scorpio Sons.

After Colt had filled Chase in on Hall's activities, leaving Con's shooting until the last, he handed over to Con to discuss the finer details and to reassure the team state-side that he was fully healed.

"I was feeling back to normal twenty-four hours after the shooting, thanks to Allie. Now you'd never know I'd been wounded. Not even a scar. I know we heal faster than normal humans, but this is something else."

"How the bloody hell did you know to try licking the wounds?" Cooper piped in from the other end. Or she assumed it was Cooper from his Australian drawl.

Con had given her a brief rundown on his Unit while they spent the day in bed. Cooper was their medical researcher. He'd been paralysed from the waist down in a car accident when he was ten and spent years in and out of hospitals. Not only was he an anomaly amongst the Sons because of his disability, but because he was the only Son who had not been activated. There had been no time for the cat to get lose at the time of the accident, and Cooper had been cocooned by over-protective parents from then on.

He'd only left his family's sheep station in outback N.S.W. when the Sons had tracked him down through his blood samples, which had come under closer scrutiny years later when lab techniques improved. The Sons had come for him at nineteen and removed all evidence of his unusual DNA from the Australian medical data banks.

Since then he'd been studying alongside some of the world's best, and researching their kind in the labs at Scanlan Industries in San Francisco.

So it made sense that he'd be interested in this new discovery.

Con looked at her to answer the question and her innate shyness surfaced unexpectedly. The heat of a blush rose to her cheeks and she squirmed for a moment, trying to get her thoughts together.

"I…I don't know. I… just knew I had to do something. I wasn't aware of what I was doing at the time. My cat took over completely," she finally managed to get out.

"Lyss had pointed out several times how she could lick a bite wound out of existence where I could only seal hers, leaving a mark. She was the one to convince us to let Allie try. But to be honest, when she turned, I doubt any of us could have stopped her. She was totally feral and dangerous." Colt grinned at Allie cheekily.

"And don't you forget it buster!" Allie joked, feeling herself relax again, now the spotlight was off her.

"And you say Alyssa's saliva couldn't heal Cameron's cut?" Cooper continued, his accent becoming stronger the more fascinated he became.

"Not at all. We've known our own saliva could heal minor wounds right from the start. But nothing like this," Cam spoke up.

"Maybe I've got more… whatever it is in my saliva. Yuck I hate this conversation. Maybe that's why I could heal Con." She couldn't stop herself from speaking up, if there was a chance she could be of more use to the Sons.

There was silence while everyone considered this. Cooper was the first to break the pregnant pause.

"Are you willing to repeat the experiment with Cameron? I'd suggest Colton, but he's mated. That might skew the results." Cooper sounded gentle and unassuming, so different from the brothers she'd met thus far. Was that because his cat hadn't been activated or was he just a very different kind of man?

She felt Con stiffen at her side and she placed a consoling hand on his arm. He would let her do this. If he'd been willing to go down the threesome route, he could handle this.

Cam pulled an exaggerated tortured face and held out his arm, just as he had the day before. He was really lightening up these days. There was hardly a stick up his ass at all.

Colt produced his knife and nicked Cam's wrist, not far from the wound he'd inflicted yesterday. Before she could think too much about it, Allie leaned in and licked her tongue across the bleeding cut. Stepping back she pulled a disgusted grimace. Yuk, she hated the taste of blood. The only time she was ever okay with it was when she bit Con, and then it was more about the sexual buzz that came with the biting. They'd done a bit of biting earlier in the day, much against her better judgement, and she'd been just as into it as before.

It seemed she couldn't have sex with Con without going feral and biting. It amazed her how totally different sex with Con was from what she'd known in the past. It was the difference between grape juice and fine wine. No contest in her books.

While she swallowed a few times to get the taste of Cam's blood out of her mouth, everyone looked at Cam's wrist. The blood continued to ooze from the wound.

"Nothing," Cam announced disappointedly, licking his own wrist and then pressing a tissue to the wound to assist the healing process.

"So a mate can only heal her mate. Interesting. Unfortunate, but interesting. I wonder if there's a change in the saliva, in anticipation. It might be worth studying." Cooper sounded almost as up-beat as he'd been before the experiment. Clearly he found the whole subject fascinating.

"Sure, but our mates have more important things to be doing right now than being lab rats for you, Coop," Colt said with a laugh.

"Like holidaying in Barbados?" Coop threw back. "Hard life you fellas have."

"You left out the part about spending time with our enemies, playing nice," Con grumbled.

"It can't be that bad."

"Have you ever been around one of them?"

She could almost hear Cooper shrug. "Can't say I have. I rarely stray far from my lab."

"Lucky you. Imagine a room full of homeless people who haven't bathed in forever and you start to get a sense of how unpleasant it can be. Of course, people sleeping rough aren't as obnoxious as the Guild."

"Back on track, guys. When do you leave?" Chase interrupted.

"We fly out day after tomorrow with British Airways from Gatwick to Grantley Adams, which is eight miles from Bridgetown, so I was informed. Hall's ship is tied up in Bridgetown Harbour. We sail the next day."

"I hear the weather is great down there this time of year," Cooper put in with an exaggerated envious sigh.

"I'm sure the ruglies will be able to spoil even the weather for us," threw in Allie, starting to lose a lot of her shyness.

"Ruglies?" Chase sounded bemused and unsure if he'd missed something important.

"Oh, that's what I call them. The rich uglies. You know like fugly?"

"I'm not familiar with the term." Chase sounded almost as stuck up as Cam in that moment. Maybe she was not winning herself any friends with her weird sense of humour.

"F'n ugly," Con supplied, trying to keep his laughter under control. At least he 'got' her.

"I'll have to try not to think of that when I'm with Meredith. Can't be laughing at her, now can I?" Cam was choking back a laugh too.

"People, this is not a laughing matter. You five are going into enemy territory with no back-up. That boat of Rothmen's will be piled high with armed security. If anything goes wrong, if any of you turn cat, or slip up in any way, all your lives are at risk."

They all took a deep breath and grew serious.

"So, Alice, are you willing to do what has to be done to get close to Rothmen? Caleb has shipped a pretty pendant for you to wear. It should be there first thing in the morning. It has a cloning device imbedded. Once the pendant is close enough to Rothmen's flash-drive we can start downloading the data immediately. We'll have a team in the area on stand-by. Once the data is confirmed to be the evidence we need, Rothmen will be extracted."

"How long before extraction?"

"An hour for the encryption to be broken, Caleb says, then another thirty minutes to verify the data. We can have stealth choppers in the air and be at the extraction point in less than another thirty. So, let's call it two hours, max."

"How do I keep Rothmen from getting… frisky?" Allie asked nervously. It was one thing to agree to this dangerous plan; it was another to envisage carrying it out. So many things could go wrong. Going through with having sex with the rugly was the least of her worries.

"I get to play James Bond's Q this time," Cooper answered like a little kid excited to be showing off his new toy. "I've come up with a lipstick that has a fast acting vomitory in it. Alice, you use one end as the undercoat, to protect yourself from the effects of the drug and then coat the vomitory lipstick over the top. Just don't lick your lips or you'll be sick too. Of course, if you do accidently make yourself sick you'll have an excuse to leave. But I've had some of the women experimenting with it, and there has been an 80% success rate. Rothmen will not feel in the least bit frisky after he's had his head in a toilet bowl for half an hour or more."

"Oh, great. As if I haven't been spewing up enough already." She groaned. "You couldn't have sedated him?"

"Too suspicious," Cooper said, all business now. "If he hasn't been drinking enough, he'll work it out when he wakes up. And if that happens, and we haven't extracted him by then, you're in a lot of trouble. But vomiting? Especially when you haven't given him a drink or food? It can be blamed on food poisoning. You might like to say you feel a little sick, once you're close enough to clone, of course. We don't want him being put off before we get what we need."

Allie nodded silently and then realised he couldn't hear her nod. "Okay. I might practise a bit with something that tastes awful. That will get me into the habit of not sucking my lip. I do that when I'm nervous."

"What exactly have you in mind, and are you planning on warning me when you have it on?" Con asked with mock suspicion.

"I was thinking chilli. I loathe really spicy food."

"Okay, that's not so bad. I like chilli. The hotter the better. So maybe we can experiment with kissing so I get the taste of chilli and you don't. Anything for the cause." His boyish grin made her heart leap in her chest. What had she been thinking, wanting to keep it casual with this man? He was her every fantasy come true. Well, maybe not
every
fantasy; the threesome was a no-go, after all. But still, he made up for that in a hundred different ways.

"Will you let us know when extraction is to occur?" Colt asked.

"No. Your cell phone reception will be crap out at sea, and there's a chance any transmission would be monitored. Anyway, you're guests on this cruise. You need to stay out of the action. Plausible deniability and all that."

"I don't feel comfortable about that. What if we're needed?"

"We have deck-plans of the craft and know where Rothmen's cabin is. Well away from his wife's, by the way. Our men will have the ship under constant surveillance and will know exactly how many men they'll have to deal with. I'm sending in enough men to take down every guard on the ship.

"Won't they see or hear the choppers?" Alyssa asked nervously.

"They can't see them but they might hear them, so we'll drop motorised dinghies into the sea ahead of the ship and approach from the water. Extraction will occur the same way. With any luck, no one will know we were there until the next morning when the guards are discovered, dead or disabled."

For a moment everyone was silent as they chewed over the plan. When no one came up with any more questions they terminated the call.

"Well, this is getting exciting," Allie said, flopping onto the leather chaise lounge she'd used the day before. Though she looked hard, she could see no sign of blood anywhere in the room. And except for a slight smell of bleach, it was as if Con's near death experience had never happened.

"With any luck, Rothmen will make his move on you the first night and we can all fly home the next day. After the police are called in, of course. I imagine there will be some red tape to be dealt with, depending whose waters we're officially in at the time." Colt drew Alyssa down onto his lap and kissed her cheek.

Cam stood in front of the blazing fire in the hearth and stared at the flames. "I hope this goes as smoothly as Chase expects it to."

Colt lifted his chin, as if the words were a challenge. "You're new to the Sons, so you don't know how effective we are. Every operation is well planned and every brother knows his stuff. Chase isn't being overconfident. He knows exactly what we're capable of. This isn't our first rodeo."

"I didn't mean to imply such a thing. But there are so many variables, so many ways this can go wrong. What if the cloning device can't relay its information over the kind of distances involved? We won't know exactly where we are when Alice goes in."

"Caleb will have factored all that in. The ship will have its route on record with the relevant authorities. He'll know where we are every minute of the day, even if we don't. The guy is a genius." Colt grinned at the humour in such a statement. If Caleb was a genius, what did that make all his DNA replicas?

"Bragging much?" Allie said with a laugh.

Alyssa frowned and shook her head, missing the significance.