Danger That Is Damion (17 page)

“I’ll use the trigger with Powell present or not at all.”

Her gaze narrowed. “You failed with Lara once. Why would any of us trust you to brainwash her again?”

“Just because Lucian lured Lara to the dark side with the Renegades does not mean I failed,” he said. “It simply means Lucian succeeded and should never have been trusted in the first place.” Nor should Sabrina, he suspected, despite her desperateness to maintain the protection from Adam that Serenity offered her.

“If you’re suggesting Lara turned on us, but didn’t regain her memories, that we simply lost control over her, then that means we could lose control of every last member of Serenity. If you actually expect Powell to feel good about that—” She patted his cheek. “You need therapy. Sorry, sugar. You might as well face the facts. You’re a walking dead man and not for long, because I can’t allow you to live through this. Powell isn’t going to trust you again.”

“Oh, but he will,” Logan said, his heart thundering in his ears at her threat. “He’ll trust me again because he wants Serenity to be more powerful, and he wants the destruction of the GTECHs who are outside his control. I can give him those things.”

“How?” she demanded.

“We send a newly brainwashed Lara back to the Renegades. Once she’s inside Sunrise City, she places a few strategically located bombs inside, and it will be dust.”

She studied him, her fingers doing a slow, calculating roll, back and forth on his shoulder, as if that were a part of her thinking process. “If I let you speak to Powell, there’s a good chance he’ll still have you killed.”

Better odds than he had with Sabrina right here and now. “I’ll convince him he needs me.”

“And if you do convince him, and then you fail, I can promise you… you’ll wish you were dead by the time he finishes making you pay.”

“I won’t fail,” he assured her.

He’d barely finished the last word of the vow when a knife appeared in Sabrina’s hand, drawn from somewhere on her person, and she pressed the blade to his face. “Sorry again, sugar, but I have to make sure Powell knows I made you suffer for your mistake. It’ll ease his anger and make him focus on your plan.”

The blade bit into his flesh, a small trickle of blood oozing down his cheek. In a quick shift of her wrist, she sliced it down his shirt, the steel grazing his skin, before her hand flattened on his chest, and she walked him to the wall. Her palm slid down his chest and settled on his crotch, a smile touching her lips when she felt the bulge there.

“Apparently,” she said, “you know this is for your own good.”

No. He was pretty sure, in fact, that this woman was as bad for him as a shot of arsenic straight into his veins, but he couldn’t seem to care right now. Not when he was rock hard with anticipation and pure white-hot lust for her. A momentary mental image of Jenna’s lovely face brought with it a sense of regret. Sabrina’s teeth roughly bit at his nipple, pain and pleasure ripping through him, and he lost the image. There was nothing but the ache of wanting more—more pleasure, and yes, more pain.

Who was he fooling with Jenna? He loved the idea of her, but he could never be the man she needed—and deserved. No. He lived for the kind of high Sabrina gave him, the edgy, dark, perverse high of pain mixed with pleasure and the danger of going too far or not far enough—made easier by a shared desire to save the world before an uncontrollable GTECH population took it over.

Sabrina lifted him and then slammed him down onto a lab table before straddling him. Pain crashed through his skull as it hit steel, quickly forgotten by the demanding pressure of her tongue sliding into his mouth, the feel of her hips arched against his.
Oh
yeah, baby
, he whispered in his mind. This woman, this GTECH, took him to the edge and kept him there—and the edge was exactly where he wanted, and needed, to be.

***

From inside her private quarters, Jenna barely contained a scream as she watched the lab’s video footage play on her computer—feeding to her from the camera meant to allow the monitoring of procedures when she wasn’t present. Logan knew the camera was there, knew she had access to it as well.

It was almost as if he wanted her to see this, as if he were telling her what he hungered for. It wasn’t little, sweet Jenna. She glared at the image of Sabrina roughly dominating Logan, of his grunts of pain and moans of pleasure, and then hit the end button. She couldn’t watch another second.

All her life, the Sabrinas of the world—conniving sex vixens who took and bled you dry of happiness—had taken from her. Juliette Rogers had been the one before Sabrina, the one who’d stolen her husband and scientific mentor back at Yale. With him had gone her role in a cutting-edge research program. She’d lost her life, her happy, wonderful life. She didn’t please him in bed, her husband had said, and then he’d gone on to call her boring and predictable, too naive and guarded to ever take the scientific world by storm.

Juliette had used her husband, screwed him senseless, and he’d not seen what she was up to until it was too late. Juliette had left him, and not only taken the funding for his research with her, but made it look like he’d stolen the cash. He’d lost everything, including his reputation. Just like Sabrina was going to destroy Logan, and Serenity, if something wasn’t done to stop her.

Jenna flipped open one of the rectangular black boxes, one of seven she secretly possessed, which were now sitting on her glass desk. She stared at the row of filled syringes.

Each time she’d dosed Lara, she’d diluted her serum and taken some for herself. Jenna had calculated through her private research, with findings she had yet to reveal to Logan or Powell, that Lara would convert to GTECH just fine, and she had. Foolishly, Powell’s previous scientific teams had been using more of the precious serum than needed. After skimming serum from Lara and the newest recruit presently undergoing conversion, Jenna had enough to fully change herself into a GTECH. Finally, she was ready to begin dosing herself.

With a shaky hand, she lifted one of the syringes and stared at the golden liquid inside—the unique DNA of an alien. The DNA that would soon pour through her body. The DNA that would give her the power Sabrina now possessed. She wanted that, yet the idea of injecting herself with it set her heart to racing, thundering loudly in her ears.

Desperate to regain her resolve, she reached forward and punched a computer key, bringing the lab back into view, letting the sounds and sights of Logan’s desire for Sabrina fill the room, fill her mind, and expand in her chest. Logan’s face contorted with so much lust and desire for Sabrina that it twisted Jenna in knots. She wanted a man to feel that kind of ultimate desire for her, but instead, the men in her life had wanted the Juliettes and Sabrinas of the world.

Why didn’t Logan, and even Powell, see what kind of poison Sabrina was? She was no different than the GTECHs they were trying to stop—uncontrollable and power hungry. It was clear to Jenna, just as it had been with Juliette.

That needed resolve solidified, destroying what she recognized had been hesitation and fear, what had made her hands shake. They steadied, she prepared the syringe, and then, without another moment of doubt, she injected herself. This wasn’t about Logan, or her ex, or even about the moans of pleasure filling the room that she wanted to be for her. This was about something bigger, about Sabrina destroying Serenity before Powell and Logan saw through her.

She dropped the syringe onto the desk and savored the feeling of the serum spreading warmth through her veins. Goodbye good, sweet, little Jenna. Her gaze latched onto Sabrina’s naked image on the computer screen. “Soon, Sabrina,” she whispered. “Soon, I’m coming for you.”

Awakening abruptly, Lara jerked to a sitting position, finding herself on top of a bed with Damion looming over her. A bed she unnervingly realized he’d put her in while she’d been passed out.

“Easy, sweetheart,” he said in a gentle tone, settling a hip on the mattress next to her. “You’re okay. You’re in the ER.”

Her gaze swept the sterile hospital room, that could, she thought grimly, just as easily be a torture and interrogation room. She still couldn’t believe she’d trusted him, only to have him bring her here to Sunrise City. “How long was I out?” she asked, afraid to think what might have happened that she didn’t know about. “And has a doctor examined me?”

“Not yet,” he said. “And you were only out long enough for me to carry you down the hall from the elevator.”

Any relief she felt from that little piece of good news faded into another concern. “What about Caleb and the Renegade that was with him? Where are they?”

“They went to check on Chale,” he said.

“So they’re coming back?”

“Relax, Lara,” he said. “If they do come by, it will be to check on your health and no other reason.” His hand settled on her arm, oddly comforting considering he was the one responsible for her presence in a hornet’s nest of Renegades, and a Renegade himself. “No one is going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

“Until I refuse to tell you what you want to know,” she said brusquely. “Who’s going to torture me when that happens, Damion? You? Or maybe that big menacing one—Michael?”

He grimaced. “The Renegades don’t torture people. I won’t lie to you and tell you we don’t want to talk to you. This is a war we’re living, and you may well have information that could save lives. But we aren’t doing anything until you get well. Besides, I’ve made it clear that the only person persuading you to talk—is me.” There was a sensual heat to those words, an underlying meaning followed with a hint of a smile. “And so far, you’ve done a damn good job of letting me know when my methods of persuasion don’t please you. I’ve got the bite marks to prove it.” He patted her leg. “Why don’t you try and rest until the doctor gets here?” He pushed to his feet, intending to let her do so, and she burned to do just that.

Every muscle in her body screamed for rest, but she moved as he did, twisted around to let her legs dangle off the side of the mattress, ready to launch herself into action if need be. Not that she had a chance in hell of escaping Sunrise City, but it made her feel better—more in control.

“Okay then,” he said disapprovingly, noting her sitting position. “I guess you didn’t like the idea of rest.”

He’d placed himself between her and the door, and somehow it felt intentional, as if he didn’t quite believe his claims about the other Renegades leaving her alone. She didn’t miss the subtle tension etched in his handsome, chiseled face. He was the lean, mean soldier she’d seen by the pool, assuming a façade of casual that didn’t fool her.

“Would you rest if you were in my shoes?” she asked.

“You’re safe, Lara,” he said, stepping toward her and settling his hands on her shoulders. “No one is going to hurt you here. I won’t let them.”

She felt herself melt into the touch, her body reacting to the intimacy without her consent. The smart move would be pushing him away, but like so many other times, she just didn’t have it in her. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said instead. “If you were in my shoes, would you be able to rest?”

“I’d make myself rest,” he said. “I’d want to be my best and my strongest as quickly as possible.”

She made a sound of disapproval. “You wouldn’t dare shut your eyes for fear you’d never open them again, and you know it.”

He didn’t bother denying she spoke the truth. “What can I do to prove to you that you’re safe enough to rest?”

“I’ll rest when you take me out of this place.”

“That’s not going to happen, not until I know you’re well. So you might as well lie down and rest.”

“You mean not until you have the information you want.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest, silently declining. “Tell me about the doctor I’m going to see. What’s her interrogation experience?”

He grimaced and ran a rough hand over the light brown stubble framing his jaw. “You have to be the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met.”

She grimaced right back at him, comfortable with the combative exchanges they continued to share, even welcoming the familiarity. “I bet you say that to all the women you kidnap and tote around like luggage.”

“I did not—” he started, but someone cleared her throat from the doorway, a delicate, feminine sound that had Damion turning and Lara assessing the petite, thirtyish brunette in hot pink scrubs who’d appeared there.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” the woman said. “But I wanted you both to know Dr. Moore is on his way.”

“Not Dr. Moore,” Damion corrected. “I told you Dr. Petersen.”

“Yes, but Dr. Moore is on duty, and he—”

“Treats humans. Lara is not,” Damion said.

Surprise flushed the woman’s heart-shaped face to a rosy red. Her attention jerked to Lara and honed in on her eyes. She knew what she saw—knew she was too drained to camouflage the black coal of her GTECH eyes.

The nurse’s throat worked in a hard swallow. “Oh my,” she said, the surprise she’d shown seconds before shifted to obvious discomfort—and fear?

“She’s not a Lifebond,” Damion said, as if answering some unspoken question. “And she’s not bound to a Zodius. She was injected with the serum.”

Again, Lara found the nurse’s attention on her, this time with a mixture of stunned disbelief and horror in her face. “They injected you?”