Mating Rituals [Impulse 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (8 page)

“Which means they can’t breathe and so they probably cut corners.” Her eyes came alight. “What do I have to do to get acclimatized?”

“Have full unprotected sex with us, darlin’. That’ll do it.”

“Don’t put ideas into my head,”
Tyrone pheromoned back.

“Like that idea hasn’t been sitting there since Aisha turned up.”

“Yeah, well—”

“Why not look at some of the research first?” Kane suggested. “See what theories you form from that. I have a feeling it won’t take you long to distinguish between the crackpots and the serious stuff. See what their consensus is and then run your ideas for field tests past us. We might be able to help you out.”

“Why are you being so cooperative?” she asked, frowning. “I
know
you don’t like strangers poking around Impulse. What’s different about me?”

Oh, baby, can’t you feel it?

Kane winked at her as he collected up the empty plates and stacked them in the dishwasher. “You caught us on a good day.”

“Come on, darlin’,” Tyrone said, taking her elbow and guiding her down the corridor. “We’ll show you what you’ve taken on.”

“Oh my goodness!”

Aisha looked rather defeated when she stepped in the temperature-controlled room that Tyrone opened up for her. Its floor-to-ceiling shelves were packed with files.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Kane said. “A lot of it is repetitive.”

“But I won’t know in which areas until I go through it all.”

“It’s filed in date order, more or less,” Tyrone told her. “The oldest stuff is on the high shelves, and the names of the researchers are on the spines of the files.”

“This is the microfiche machine,” Kane added. “Ever used one before?”

Aisha shook her head. “Can’t say that I have. Microfiche went out with the ark.”

Kane laughed. “Some of the records are on ’fiche, and it’s a quicker way to skim than going through the actual files.”

Tyrone held back the chair at the desk. “Got everything you need?” he asked, deadpan.

“Enough to keep me going for months,” she said dubiously.

Kane suspected that she actually relished the challenge—one that so many others had begged to take on but hadn’t been given the time of day. She was in her element, thinking she was onto a winner that she could take back to her television station in a blaze of glory. It would be a pretty defining way to assuage her wounded pride and put the guy who’d manipulated her firmly in his place. It wasn’t going to happen—at least not in the way that she supposed—but now wasn’t the time to tell her so. Kane and Tyrone had to put their own houses in order before they could help Aisha fix hers.

“Okay, we’ll leave you to it,” Kane said. “We’ve got stuff to do, but we’ll pop back later to take you out for an airing and some lunch.”

“You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Yeah, we do,” they said together.

“Help yourself to anything you need from the kitchen,” Tyrone said, blowing her a kiss from the open doorway.

* * * *

The small room seemed very quiet when the guys left Aisha alone. She heard their voices fading as they left the apartment together and was filled with the desire to call them back on some pretense or other. She hated being so pathetically needy and forced herself to concentrate on the opportunity she’d been given instead.

Her fingers itched to delve into the rather daunting piles of research and see what her predecessors had concluded about Impulse’s weird weather patterns. Instead she sat where she was and didn’t move, feeling defeated before she even began. She glanced at the names written in faded ink on the spines of the files and recognized many of them as scientists of renown—people whose opinions she respected. What made her imagine she would succeed when so many incisive brains had failed?

Aisha was procrastinating, and well she knew it. The prospect of going one better than the best would normally have her salivating at the starting gate. Instead her head was full of Kane and Tyrone, whose raw physicality and dominating personalities had overwhelmed her in all senses of the word. She still couldn’t get her head around what they’d done to her the previous evening. The way their hands, and more especially their tongues, had explored every crevice of her body with such creative energy made her shiver with renewed desire.

They obviously weren’t gay. If they were, they would have come right out and said so when she caught them in the act, so to speak. They had enjoyed playing with her and seemed very pleased with themselves when she didn’t try to hide her reactions. Aisha wasn’t complaining precisely but still couldn’t help wondering why neither of them had gone the whole way and actually penetrated her. What they did do was amazing, but their cocks were so impressively large that it would have been beyond erotic to be filled by one of them. They’d wanted that as well. She’d sensed it, recognizing the need in their expressions. So what had held them back? Aisha shook her head. There was something decidedly odd going on here in Impulse that went beyond weird weather patterns.

Her mental perambulations were interrupted by her cell phone ringing, sounding loud and intrusive in the otherwise quiet room. She glanced at the display. It was Rick—again. Still smarting from the recent humiliation, she’d felt no compulsion to speak to him since leaving the station for her vacation. Even so, he kept on calling and leaving messages. She might as well find out what it was that he wanted.

“Yes,” she said briskly. “Something I can do for you?”

“Ah, darling, there you are. I’ve been worried. Where are you and why haven’t you been answering your phone?”

Was he really that insensitive? “I’m on vacation.”

“Well, you might want to cut it short, that’s why I’ve been trying to reach you. Angie’s going on special assignment and there’s a weeklong slot on camera.” He paused, presumably waiting for her to gush. If Aisha had gushed in the past, she’d gotten past that stage and remained stonily silent. “It’s yours if you want it, which I presume you do. When I couldn’t reach you I told John to hold it and that you’d be back on Monday.”

“You had no right to say that.”

“Hey, now’s not the time for self-doubt,” he said, clearly misinterpreting her lukewarm reaction. “I know you can do it, that’s why I fought for you to get the slot.”

Aisha expelled a long breath. A whole week in front of prime-time camera, writing her own scripts, having a say in the presentation, calling the shots. It’s what she’d been working toward ever since joining the station. She ought to pack up and hightail it out of Impulse then and there. Hadn’t she already convinced herself that she was wasting her time here?

Even so, she hesitated. When Rick told her to jump, it seemed she no longer asked how high. It was a liberating feeling. Besides, she understood him better now, and he wouldn’t have put her forward for this if there wasn’t a payback for him somewhere along the line. Perhaps he just missed having sex on demand? No, it had to be more than that. He was good looking and wouldn’t find it hard to attract female company.

“Aisha, are you still there? Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes, I heard you.”

“Well, aren’t you pleased? Say something.”

It hit her then, the answer that ought to have been blindingly obvious.

“What special assignment is Angie undertaking?” she asked, trying to keep a tremor of rage out of her voice.

“Well, I can’t precisely say right now. It’s all under wraps. You know how things are.”

Oh, she knew all right. Rick had asked Angie, the beautiful, statuesque mainstay of the station whom the camera loved, to copresent the special slot with him.

The slot he’d stolen from her.

She suspected that Rick had put the move with Angie in the past but she’d been sensible enough to turn him down. Presumably this increased his chances. Perhaps he’d made it a condition of having her as copresenter. Aisha wouldn’t put anything past him.

Blinded by the red mist of her anger, Aisha struggled to maintain her poise. Rick had offered her the copresenter’s chair after stealing her idea. Not that she would have accepted, but that wasn’t the point. The rat had lost no time in using his thieving ways to his advantage and seemed to think she’d be grateful for the consolation crumbs he was throwing her way.

Unbelievable!

“Aisha, should I tell John you’ll be there Monday?”

“No,” she said curtly.

“What…you can’t be serious. This could be the making of your career.”

“So could what I’m doing now,” she said and hung up on him.

Aisha rested her chin in her cupped hand as she attempted to calm down and think matters through. Rick had taken the hostilities between them to a new level, and this was now all-out war. She glanced at the crowded shelves that surrounded her, no longer daunted by the task she’d set herself but full of fresh resolve and determination. The answer to Impulse’s oddities
had
to be in here somewhere. No one had done a proper study of these records, set up spreadsheets to compare conclusions, or any obvious stuff like that because no one had been given free access to them before.

She felt a moment’s guilt when she thought of Kane and Tyrone, but no more than that. They knew who she was and what she intended to do but had still let her loose with the records. Presumably they thought she’d fail, which just went to show how little they understood her tenacious character.

Strangely, the guys didn’t seem to want the publicity that any positive conclusions would generate, but perhaps they’d change their minds when their tourist trade received a shot in the arm. She wouldn’t be betraying their trust, she told herself repeatedly. She’d be building her own career, making a name for herself as a serious scientist,
and
showing Rick what she was made of. She’d also be helping Impulse by solving the mystery that had shrouded this tiny spit of land for far too long.

They ought to thank her.

Kane and Tyrone made their way to the medical Institute on foot, still thinking about Aisha’s sudden appearance in their lives and the difference she’d made to their attitudes.

“You reckon she’ll be okay all alone in there?” Tyrone asked. “She won’t feel lonely?”

“She’ll be fine.” Kane shrugged. “Those records have to be a meteorologist’s version of a wet dream.”

“Yeah, but it’s mean to give our mate hope when we both know she can’t be allowed to get at the truth. At least, not until she knows who we really are, and then she won’t be able to tell anyone. I feel like a jerk for misleading her.”

Kane shot his buddy a look. “Can you think of a better way to keep her here and occupied while we sort out our personal shit?”

“I guess not.” Tyrone expelled a frustrated breath. “But still, I feel for the poor baby. We’re not playing nice.”

Kane flashed a wicked grin. “Then we’ll just have to think of ways to make it up to her.”

“Amen to that, brother.”

They stepped into the Institute, where Mikael was waiting for them.

“Valium,” he said without preamble. “Your system was full of the stuff.”

Kane elevated both brows. “You’re kidding me?”

“Afraid not.”

“How could it have happened? I might have had a few, but I’m sure I’d have noticed if someone tried to slip me an enormous pill.”

“Valium comes in liquid form, too. It’s colorless and tasteless. If you were busy staring down Miss Congeniality’s cleavage, you’d never have noticed.”

“Obviously not.” Kane thought about it for a moment. “But it wouldn’t have knocked me out, surely? I’d have been conscious and so I’d know whether or not I dipped my wick in a female’s pussy for the first time. That ain’t the sort of milestone a guy forgets.”

“Under normal circumstances, you’d think not,” Tyrone said mildly.

“But there’s nothing normal about being a shifter,” Kane agreed, nodding.

“Side effects of Valium include drowsiness, fatigue, confusion, and cognitive impairment, to name just a few,” Mikael told them. “Remind me how you felt when you woke up, Kane.”

“Yeah.” Kane inclined his head. “I didn’t know where I was, had a raging headache, and felt dizzy when I stood up.”

“You were actually quite lucky.”

Kane rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I feel real fortunate.”

“Sarcasm notwithstanding, what I meant was that the drug acts on the central nervous system. If you’d been given too much and mixed it with alcohol, it could have led to respiratory arrest.”

“Right, so it was my lucky day.” Kane paced the room, rubbing his chin between his thumb and forefinger as he digested what Mikael had just told him. “But, wait a minute. If I was out of it, surely I wouldn’t have been able to get it up?”

Mikael flexed his jaw. “For ordinary men that’s true, but—”

“But not for shifters,” Tyrone said, his voice grim.

“Which means,” Mikael added, “that whoever gave you the drug knew you’re a shifter. She, or whoever sent her, also knew that shifters’ abilities to rise to the occasion transcend mere pharmaceutical barriers.”