“That means if I die, Sterling dies.”
“Yes, but—”
“No. That can’t happen. It can’t happen, Kelly. What if ICE caused something to happen to Sterling? Like turn him Zodius or kill him. And then there is the Dorian thing. If he attacks me, he attacks Sterling.”
“What does Sterling say?”
“He doesn’t know, and he can’t know.”
“We’re talking your life here.”
“Even if I didn’t have these fears for his safety, I wouldn’t tell him. I won’t be some obligation he’s stuck with.”
Kelly tapped her pencil on the desk she sat behind and then thoughtfully rested her chin on her hand. “You want this to be a choice, not a forced bond that translates to a medical treatment to save your life.” It wasn’t a question. “I get that.”
“I’m not sure you do,” she said. Becca did want Lifebonding to be about choice. But Sterling was right too, when he said she was trying to protect him.
“No,” Kelly insisted. “I do. So you should know that we have every reason to believe the couples who Lifebond would have fallen in love anyway. We think that’s why Adam can’t recreate it by throwing people together to have sex. In fact, he almost ensures he won’t. And I know ‘think’ is a bad word in science, but when you read my reports you’ll see why I say this. I really believe Lifebonding is an evolution of falling in love. Whatever you feel for Sterling isn’t some scientific creation, Becca. It has real emotional substance.”
Becca warmed with those words, with the hope that what they felt was real, but it didn’t change things. “I won’t risk Sterling’s life.”
Kelly studied her a moment. “If what you just said doesn’t prove the love equation of Lifebonding,” she said softly, “I don’t know what does. I have to consult Caleb, but for now you have my silence.”
“Thank you,” Becca said, relief washing over her.
Kelly considered Becca a long moment. “You’re taking his choice from him,” she said. “You know that, right?”
Becca inhaled sharply at that observation. The door to the lab opened, and Sterling walked in. Becca turned and looked at him and saw his eyes reaching for hers, the look on his face warm with worry.
Heart fluttering, Becca recognized that what was between her and Sterling had started before the marks on her neck. It had started in that library years ago, when she’d had a crush that was the beginning of falling in love. She was still falling now. Becca turned back to the computer. “I might be taking his choice,” she said softly, for Kelly’s ears only. “But I’m also protecting him.”
***
Sterling didn’t miss the fact that Becca ended her teleconference with Kelly the minute he entered the lab. She rolled the chair around to face him, the splotch of bright red blood on her bleached white lab coat taunting him with the certainty of her fate. She was dying, and no matter what risk he took, no matter what mountain he climbed, no matter what building he jumped off—he could do nothing to stop it from happening. He couldn’t even Lifebond with her, and he didn’t understand it. If there was any woman in this lifetime he’d been connected to, it was Becca.
“What did Riker and Eddie want?” she asked, walking to a shelf and removing supplies to draw blood.
He closed the distance between them. “They both wanted to remind me I owe them. And considering I pay Eddie—that takes big cojones. I guess that’s why I really like that guy.” He stopped in front of her and reached for the syringe.
“I can do it,” she said, resisting weakly.
“You hate drawing your own blood,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
She hesitated and then nodded, shrugging out of the lab coat and then claiming a seat. “Kelly wants blood before and after I dose.”
“I was there, remember?”
“Oh yeah. Right.”
He kneeled down beside her, resting his hand on her leg. “Becca—”
“I told you. Don’t be the person who coddles me and says it’s going to be okay.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “But only if I can be the person who tells you I’m crazy about you. I am.”
She tried to laugh. “Bad choice. Don’t be that person either, because you were right. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Hmmm,” he said dubiously. “I’ll take my chances.” He wrapped a band around her upper arm.
“This isn’t the time to start gambling.” Her finger settled on his hand where it rested on hers. “I’m serious, Sterling. I’ll stay in another apartment. End whatever this is between us before it gets any more complicated.”
“No,” he said, feeling her arm tremble. She needed to dose. He eased his hand back and prepared the needle.
“You like that word way too much.”
“Because,” he said, using his hand to extend her arm, tap her vein, and insert the needle. “You can’t argue with ‘no,’ but if I gave you my reasons behind that refusal—scientist that you are—you’d have to analyze them, tear them apart, try and disprove them. A lot of time better spent working on the immunization, or even better, naked, in bed with me. By the way, that requires we be in the same bedroom in the same apartment.”
She shook her head and smiled. “You’re impossible.”
He withdrew the needle. Blood seeped from her arm far too quickly, and he applied cotton and pressure. “I think you like impossible.” He winked and walked to the cabinet again, setting aside her blood, grabbing a dose of ICE and supplies to draw yet more blood.
Returning to her side, he handed her the vial of ICE. She downed the contents then grabbed his hand. “I need to talk to Caleb,” she said.
He stilled, certain he wasn’t going to like where this was going. “Why, Becca?”
“I want to learn to protect myself against Dorian.”
His jaw set. “You’re not going after Dorian.”
“That isn’t your decision to make.”
He taped her arm up, the ICE already slowing the bleeding, his answer coming slowly. “And if I refuse to let you do this?”
Her expression softened, her fingers grazing his cheek. “Then I give you one of those simple answers you like, and say, yes, I am. Then you agree, so let’s skip the arguing, and go straight to that bed you mentioned.”
“That’s blackmail,” he accused, snagging her hand.
A shy smile touched her lips. “Is it working?”
“Sweetheart,” he said. “I’m taking you to bed no matter what. A good argument makes for great makeup sex.”
A solemn look settled across her delicate features. “I have to do this, Sterling.”
Sterling stared at her pale ivory face, wishing he could wipe away the dark stains beneath her eyes and the pain in their depths. Tormented not by what she had said, but what went unspoken.
She had to face Dorian while she still could, while she was capable. Everything inside him screamed to reject that reality, screamed that she was wrong. She didn’t have to do this.
He wanted to take her to bed and keep her there, while all this hell went away, but it wouldn’t. And he couldn’t.
He had no idea what happened to him at that moment with those realizations, but he snapped. He could think of only one thing. How much he wanted inside this woman, her body, her soul. How much he absolutely had to be a part of her. How much it felt as if that were the answer to saving her.
Consciousness faded into pure need. He was kissing her then, wild and hot, barely a memory of when he’d pulled her into his arms. Suddenly, she was just there. And all he knew was the fire and ICE, of wanting what would surely be taken away, of the certainty burying himself inside her would somehow make this all go away.
He set her on the lab table as he had once before, spread her legs wide, and stepped between. Only this time they weren’t making it to a bed.
Chapter 27
Becca in her lab coat was more erotic than anything he’d ever seen. It was crazy, nuts, but Sterling had never wanted a woman the way he wan
ted her, never burned inside out. Never felt as if he might stop breathing if he didn’t kiss her. But right there, then, with her on a damn lab table of all places, he was ready to ravish Becca.
“I want you,” Sterling growled. “Here. Now.”
Her fingers curled in his shirt, the heavy-lidded, desire-laden look she leveled on him telling him she was feeling pretty damn hot and needy herself even before she panted, “Yes. Please. Now.”
He kissed her before the final word was completed, touched her tongue with his, and then caressed it nice and deep. Her hands, soft and delicate but not gentle, threaded through his hair and caressed his shoulders, his neck. Her touch drove him crazy. His cock stretched against his zipper.
Sterling pressed his hands beneath her jacket and filled his hands with her perfect high breasts, her nipples pebbling, hard little rosebuds teasing his palms. It was all he could do to keep from ripping off her shirt.
Forcing himself in check, he kissed a path down her neck, pressing her backward so that her hands rested on the table. Silky, raven hair cascaded behind her. Damn, he loved her hair—couldn’t wait to have it draped over his chest. His mind raced with that imagery, but he was living in this moment. He kissed one of Becca’s nipples through the thick pink T-shirt, nipped it with his teeth. He shoved off her lab coat and let his hand settle on the soft curves of her stomach. Why was she still wearing her shirt? He shoved it upward.
“Take it off,” he ordered, reaching around her, already working on the hook for her bra. Both were gone in an instant. He tugged his shirt over his head as well and tossed it aside, burning for her skin against his.
He paused in admiration of her damn fine breasts with nice, plump nipples. He touched them and let their weight fill his palms. Becca covered his hands with her own as she fixed him in a heavy-lidded stare brimming with a raw, earthy quality that he could drown in—a happy man.
He kissed her, drank her in like the fine nectar she was, even as he pinched her nipples and stroked her breasts, rewarded with her soft, hungry moans, with the arch of her back, the touch of her hands. And he kept kissing her—her mouth, her neck. Lingering by her delicate little lobe he whispered in her ear, “You aren’t going after Dorian.”
Steel behind those words. She pressed her hands to his face and forced him to look at her. “Yes. I am. And you know it.”
He inhaled, slid up her body, and pulled her hard against him, his hand raking her spine, molding her nipples to his chest. Lips lingered above hers. “No. You aren’t.”
“Another bet you shouldn’t make,” she told him.
Damn it to hell. Damn it to fucking hell. “No.”
Her hand went to his face. “Yes.”
He’d show her yes. He pressed her backward. “Lie down.” He unzipped her pants and stripped them away, along with her shoes. “No panties,” he said, upon that hot little discovery.
He spread her legs and stepped between them at the same moment that she sat up. “Panty lines,” she explained, her hands going to his shoulders.
“I’m not complaining, sweetheart,” he said, stepping back and easing her legs wider. “Open for me. Let me see my prize.”
“Sterling,” she whispered shyly.
“Your prize is coming too,” he promised, mercilessly inching her knees wide. He was angry. At her insistence she put herself in harm’s way. At Caleb’s insistence there was no other answer. At the existence of a fucking disease called cancer. His gaze raked the pretty pink folds of her body. “Beautiful.” His hands inched up her thighs. “How wet are you, Becca?”
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said, her voice quavering. “We’re in a lab on a table.”
“And I’m about to do all kinds of naughty things to you on that table.” His fingers stroked along her core. She gasped with the contact. “Oh yeah. Wet.” He took her hand and guided it with his. She tried to pull away. He leaned forward and kissed her, a short, hungry tasting before he said, “Give yourself to the moment, Becca. Give yourself to me.”
“Yes,” she said, her mouth reaching for his. He gave it to her, that momentary escape she wanted. Then, lips lingering above hers, he guided her hand again, sliding their joined fingers along her slick, wet heat. She was breathing hard. Hell, so was he. He moved their hands together. Caressed, explored, and delved until she arched her hips against the touch. She was wet, so wet, but not wet enough. Sterling pressed her backward onto the table.
He reached for her legs and lifted them over his shoulders. “Sterling, what—”
His mouth closed down on her nub, ending any questions, any objections. He licked and tasted, caressing her with tongue and fingers, her soft little moans driving him crazy until she stiffened, and then shattered into orgasm. He took her all the way to the top and pulled her back down, unzipping his pants as he did, anticipating the moment he would finally be inside her.
He kissed a hungry path up her body and pulled her to a sitting position. “I have never needed to be inside a woman as much as I need in you right now.”
“Yes,” she whispered, sliding to the edge of the table and welcoming him.
He guided his cock inside her, intending to go slowly, but the wet heat of her was too much. She practically climbed on top of him, wrapping her legs and arms around him as he drove inside her, lifting her slightly off the table, pumping into her even as she rose to meet him, deeper and harder. Their bodies pressed tightly together. Their lips, hungry, molded in intimate, hot kisses.
She crashed into a sudden orgasm, her muscles grabbing his cock and pulling his release from him. Ripped it right from the core of his cock, and shot pleasure through his entire body. He buried his head in her neck, moaning with the intensity, spilling his seed inside her.
For eternal moments, they clung to one another. Emotion replaced the pleasure, expanding in his chest as he rested his forehead against hers.
Her fingers curled on his cheek. “I have to try and capture Dorian.”
“Not exactly the after-sex praise a guy likes to get from a woman,” he teased lightly, leaning back to look at her only to find stark determination in her face. And he saw more, something he didn’t want to see, but couldn’t ignore. She needed a purpose, a reason to keep fighting, and she needed him to understand. “Then we’ll do it together,” he said. “But don’t expect me to let you do the kind of crazy stuff I do out there.”
She smiled. “I promise to only do crazy stuff while I’m with you.”
“Add ‘in bed’ to that promise, and we have a deal.”
“And here I thought that rule only applied to fortune cookies.”
“Now you know better,” he said and kissed her.
***
Early evening ten days later, Becca sat in the Cityscape conference room surrounded by Caleb, Michael, Damion, and Sterling. It was a miracle to her that, thanks to Sterling and Caleb’s training, she was able to be here with them, able to control her abilities. And fortunately, increased doses of ICE had her feeling herself again, aside from a little nausea, which Kelly said was from her partial bonding with Sterling. And it was a good thing she was, because the four of them together was a lot of testosterone to swallow in a small room. Especially considering every last one of them was on edge and opinionated after three more Clanners had died. All of whom were packed up and toted away by the army before the Renegades could get to them.
And Sterling, well, he had done his best to keep her focused on science in the lab, or focused on him in his bed, and he wasn’t pleased that it wasn’t working—trying to convince her to stay out of the physical battle with the Zodius. But she’d continued training and felt more capable of using her skills in a confrontation each day. She knew her purpose in all of this, and it was about stopping Dorian, which was exactly why she’d been invited to this meeting.
“We have to shut down distribution,” Michael said, a steely, determined set to his jaw. “Screw finding Iceman. Screw discretion. We’ll send out a couple dozen Renegades toda
y. Infiltrate the clubs and resorts. Let Adam know we mean business.”
Caleb waved off that idea. “You’ll force him out of the city and right into another one. Or two. Or three. Where we won’t have the resources or manpower. It’s too big a risk.”
“I’ll work Marcus harder,” Sterling offered. “He’s a greedy bastard. I’ll up the pot of gold. Tell him my client is desperate for a large stock of ICE and willing to fork over the cash.”
“He’s probably having the same problem as us,” Caleb said grimly. “Iceman is screening his users so well we can’t find his dealers.”
“We still have Madame,” Sterling reminded him.
Damion tapped the table irritably. “She’ll call back after a few more people die? Well, a few more have died. Where the flip is she?”
“She was taunting us,” Michael said. “I doubt she ever intended to help us. Iceman was playing with us, or setting us up, trying to get close to our operation, and Caleb shut him down before he got out of the gate.”
Becca cleared her throat, shoving a wayward strand of dark hair from her eyes. “There’s really only one answer,” she said. “The one you’re talking about because I’m here, even though we all know it’s the reason I’m here in the first place. We have to deal with Dorian.”
“Becca—” Sterling said.
Discreetly she removed her hand from the table and rested it on his leg. “I’m ready, Sterling,” she said, finding his eyes with hers, willing him to accept what he couldn’t change. She was touched by his concern, but mad at herself for being too selfish to leave his bedroom, too selfish to put distance between them when she knew it would be better for him in the end. “I’ve been working with Caleb. He’s taught me a lot about control.”
“That fluctuates in between the three ICE doses a day you’re taking to fight off the cancer.”