The Protectors Series Bundle (A superhero romance anthology) (11 page)

“Seth. It’s okay. I’m right here. We’re okay.”

Relief flooded through his body the instant she spoke to him. She hadn’t left him. Not that he would blame her if she had. She needed to put miles between Gentech and herself, and she didn’t need an injured, blind guy slowing her down. 

“Cassie?” His throat was scratchy and hoarse, but at least he could speak.  The more he focused, the more he realized he no longer hurt. The burn was gone. His hands quickly groped around and came into contact with soft cotton material underneath him. A bed, maybe? His hands shifted to the edge of where he
lay
and he tried to push himself up.

“Calm down, Seth.” Cassie's voice was steady and matter-of-fact as she patted his knee
. She
slid a soft hand into his palm and twined her fingers with his. “You still need to rest. After what you've been through, nothing will feel the same. You have to take it easy.”

His reflexes kicking in, he blinked. Hazy gray shadows lurked through the gauze patches over his eyes. With his vision no longer pitched in darkness, he tugged hard at the gauze and tape.  He didn’t remember much of anything after Cassie lifted him out of the car. Just the pain.

“I thought you were going to keep him calm. If you can't, then I'll have to ask you to wait outside.” Lisa's voice was cool.

He smiled.
She had
co
me through for him even though he didn’t deserve her help. He could be grateful for that. “She stays.”

Just like the flashes from before, he received a sudden mental picture of Cassie leaning over him, kissing him while her breasts swung, inviting him to touch her. The surroundings were unfamiliar, but the image was clear. And unlike before, the vision didn't shoot blinding pain through his temples.

Cassie removed her hand from his knee and just like that, the images disappeared.

Lisa shoved at his hands. “If you calm down, I'll remove your bandages properly. I gave you some eye drops and the gauze pads kept the light out.” She paused. “Your friend here says your vision went suddenly. Anything in particular that brought this on?”

He considered lying, but then a thought popped into his head.
I already told her most of everything. You might as well be honest with her. It could be related to what's happening to you.
He immediately turned his head toward where he’d last heard Cassie’s voice. But the gauze was still in place and he couldn’t see her.

As Lisa cut away the thick gauze, the scent of vanilla and citrus made him turn to the right. She was by the window. Had she overcome the barrier to pushing thoughts to him?

“I lost my vision on the way here.” He cleared his throat. “After I had a premonition about the Trackers.”

Lisa spoke in an even tone, but her raised eyebrows told him she didn’t believe him. “Was your premonition like a dream?”

He shook his head. Lisa peeled away the gauze and more light seeped in. He blinked rapidly as Cassie’s image shifted into focus. Relief flooded his tense muscles. He wasn’t blind. The condition was temporary, just like Cassie told him. “No. It was like a movie reel. Like I was experiencing the scene. Not at all like a dream. Besides,” he shrugged. “I was awake.”

Lisa muttered “Mmm-hmm,” and “Uh-huh,” as she squeezed the pulse point on his wrist and stuck a thermometer in his mouth. “And how is the pain now?”

“It's gone. Actually, I feel great.” The concern etched on Cassie's face made something cold settle along his spine. “What are you not telling me?”

Lisa threw the gauze into the trash and put her supplies back in her medical bag. “Okay, I want you to rest for another day or so. Physically, you’re fine, though, I want to run some tests. Right now
,
it looks like you two have a lot to discuss and I have hospital rounds. Will you be okay for a couple of hours?”

Cassie nodded but didn’t take her eyes off Seth. “Seth, I'm sorry, but the burning, the pain. The increased sex drive.” Her voice hitched. “Your condition is my fault.”

Increased sex drive?
“It's not your fault I got shot. Now if I come in contact with one of those Trackers again, I won't be so forgiving.” He cracked a smile.

She sat down next to him on the bed. “It wasn't the
Nisulin
. Dr.
Trene
ry and I talked while you were sleeping. She has a theory that the changes in your body are probably from something in my blood or my pheromones. Something that’s been altered in my genetic makeup. When I healed you. Or maybe when we—” She stopped. “Either way I’m responsible. I should have used better judgment.”

“Stop talking in riddles, Cassie, we don’t really have time for this.  We need to get on the road. I—”

“You need to see yourself.” She cut him off. “
Lisa
brought a full length mirror down from the master bedroom.”

Even though he tried to shrug off her
supporting
hands, she pulled him up from the bed. The contemporary style, clean metal frame and short legs made him feel like he was in the middle of a modern furniture exhibit. As he stood, Seth noticed that Cassie seemed smaller to him, more delicate, certainly more petite. Bare feet sticking to the chilly wood floor, he lumbered to the full length mirror leaning against the wall opposite the door. He frowned at his feet. They moved like cement blocks and didn’t cooperate as
usual.

When he reached the mirror, he stared at his shirtless form. He looked taller. Several inches taller than his usual six-one frame. His face—he leaned in to get a better look. He was still him, just more lean muscle. More angled. His neck was corded with muscle. And, holy shit, were those his abs? He'd been a lifelong endurance runner, but he still never had the kind of chiseled-from-marble abs he was sporting now. Shit, even his arms and legs bulged with muscle and his pecs protruded like he spent serious quality time with the bench press. He looked like—a soldier.
A no-nonsense-commando-type
soldier.

He turned to face Cassie, in his now too tight, too short pants. “Please tell me this is some kind of weird acid trip a person has without actually dropping acid.”

She slowly shook her head, her dark hair framing her face. She spoke and time slowed as each of her words permeated another layer of his awareness. “The first clue was when your temperature spiked, but I didn’t start to suspect until you experienced those flashes of precognition. I didn't fully understand what was happening to you.”

Anger simmered just under his skin as he stared at her. “And my loss of sight?”

“It could be a side effect of what was happening.”

Once he shrugged o
f
f Cassie’s steadying hands, she moved to the Barcelona chair in the corner of the room, the scarlet red leather the only stain of color. The rest of the bedroom had no photos and just a few books on the bookshelf. The perfect anonymous room. “I think, like me, when you overuse your power, you experience side effects.”

He
narrowed his eyes as he stalked over to her. He put his hands on her shoulders and lowered his voice to a growl. “Overuse my what? I didn’t overuse anything. I’m a journalist. Seth Adams. No one’s ever called me Peter Parker. I’m human, plain and simple.” A brief glimpse of Cassie lying on a bed covered in blood, skimmed his vision. But the moment he tried to hold onto the vision, the visual dissipated.

Cassie slunk back as if he slapped her. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “The visions. The images. Until you learn to control them, they might have adverse effects on you. For me, if I use my power too much, then I'm incapacitated with the kind of headache Godzilla would have. It um… It might be the same for you.”

Shit, he was an asshole. In the back of his mind, he knew he shouldn’t take the events of the last day out on her. This wasn't his fight.
No, pal, that’s not true. You chose to go with her
. “So what you’re telling me is that I'm some sort of human weapon like you are?”

Cassie shrugged and Seth glared at her, holding onto his anger with a death grip. But a growing, more insistent part of him focused on the lift and fall motion of her breasts. Probably the increased sex drive she mentioned. Was this
h
is life now, the inability to not think about sex?

“More or less. But you’re untrained, so you could do more damage to yourself than you realize. I can try and show you some things to protect yourself, but you'll be more a detriment than a help for a while.”

Seth scrubbed both hands over his stubbly beard. “Is Lisa going to help us?” He asked quietly.

Cassie nodded. “There’s nothing deceptive in her thoughts. I didn’t even have to push her to go to the store for me. She won’t sell us out while we sleep.”

“Our relationship isn’t what you think.”

Cassie moved to the chair by the bed. “None of my business.” She kept her body statue-still, staring at the bookshelf.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lashed out like that. I hit below the belt and that’s not my style. A lot is going on, but taking it out on you is still uncalled for.”

She didn’t feign ignorance about the root of the apology. “You’re angry. And you have a right to feel this way. You didn’t ask for any for any of this. Consider me your radioactive spider.”

“I see your pop culture references are up to date.”

“The only companions I had were television and books. I read a lot, watched a lot of movies.” She shrugged and eyed the door again. “Why didn’t you want to come here?

Seth ran his hand through his hair and tried for the quick and dirty version of the story. “Lisa, her husband, Matt, and I have been friends for years. Matt and I grew up in DC together. Like me he was a journalist. Mostly freelance for international outfits. We were both war correspondents in Afghanistan.”

Seth tried unsuccessfully to separate the burning pain of loss blooming in his chest from the memories. “Afghanistan wasn’t the first time we worked war-torn regions. Rwanda,
Serbia
, you name it, we crossed paths, often working together.  At any rate, three years ago, Lisa decided she was sick of being away from him and joined Doctors Without Borders. “

“We got a tip that a group of village women were being used as suicide bombers. The three of us went with a military escort. The scene was a blood bath. While Lisa attended to some of the young girls who had been injured, Matt and I followed our lead. The building we were searching exploded sending debris and shrapnel everywhere. I walked away. He didn’t.”

Cassie’s eyes shimmered with tears. “Lisa blames you?”

He shrugged. “I was the one who convinced them to come with me. She has a right to blame me.”

She reached out to touch him and heat immediately warmed him from the inside out. “You didn’t set that explosion.”

He studied her with clear eyes. “You didn’t shoot yourself up with body-altering drugs. You didn’t know that sleeping with me would make me into Mr. Hotbody.” Another fleeting image of a naked Cassie bucking on top of him sparked at the edges of his vision. Again he tried to hold onto the visual, but it vanished.

She withdrew her hand. “It’s not quite the same.”

He pulled her hand back to his leg. “Sure it is.” Again an image flickered.  Cassie’s legs wrapped around him as he braced her against the wall, driving into her again and again.

She looked down at her hand, then shifted her gaze ten inches to the apex of his thighs. His cock stirred. He was in real trouble if she did that to him just by looking at him.

Her voice was quiet, as if she knew the direction of his thoughts. “Seth, you only want me because of the amped-up sex drive. It’s a side effect and—”

His blood went from simmer to boil the moment her ice-green eyes met his. He pulled her up. “I have my own theories about this amped-up-sex-drive thing.”

Cassie didn’t like where this was going. Or maybe she liked it too much. He kept hold of her hand, stroking the inside of her wrist. Desire burned like a kindling flame where he touched her. “Let’s hear your theory,” she said
.

He smiled that lopsided grin she liked so much, except now it held an air of danger. “True, there might be something about your pheromones or blood or whatever you did to heal me that makes me want you so bad. But the truth is, if I’d met you in a bar or on Match.com or something, I’d still do everything in my power to take you home.”

Heat flooded her cheeks. When he talked to her like that she felt like the heroine of every romance book she ever snuck off to read. “But something about me is altering your body and behavior on a cellular level. Sure, you’d be attracted under normal circumstances.” She sighed. “When I’m with you, I experience this magnetic pull, like gravity is forcing me to orbit around you. Do you feel that?”

His nod was slow as
his
brows furrowed. “I still don’t see how that’s any different than two people who are totally into each other.”

Cassie puffed a breath. “Most people feel an attraction and a need to be around each other, yes. But what we’re experiencing is unnaturally strong. Think about it. Under normal circumstances, would you ever wake to find yourself having sex with someone you barely knew?”