She couldn’t get to the phone, and she didn’t want to get anywhere near the bedroom and bed. So she went on instinct.
And nailed him in the balls.
He doubled over with a shocked oof and fell to the side. Her breath panted out, and fear heated the air. She had to avoid his teeth and mouth. She pivoted and kicked him in the hip, throwing him against the coat closet. Then she yanked open the front door, grabbed his hair, and propelled him outside.
Her heart thundered in her chest, and she fumbled locking the door. The second the bolt engaged, she jumped for the phone.
It rang just as she grasped for it. “Hello,” she nearly screamed.
“Nora? What’s wrong?” Deke asked, the sound of movement echoing through the line.
Zach pounded on the front door.
Nora turned her head to yell at Zach. “I’m on the phone with Deke. Just stay there until we can get you some help.” She really didn’t want to go hand-to-hand with a pissed-off Zach now that he was prepared for a physical fight.
“Damn it,” Deke bellowed. “I’m on my way. What’s going on?”
The pounding stopped. Nora eyed the room wildly. “I think Zach is having mental problems. Please send somebody to take him in for tests. Somebody trained and armed. He’s dangerous. But don’t hurt him.”
“Get in the bathroom and lock the door. I’ll be right there.” Deke’s voice lowered to calm and direct.
She breathed out, her head swimming. Pounding footsteps echoed down the hallway. “He’s gone. Damn it. We have to find him.”
“I’ll send out a BOLO and call in my men. Stay there.”
Nora nodded, her gaze taking in the scattered rose petals. What now?
Nora opened the door on Deke’s knock and let him into her apartment, her hands gesturing, even though she was sucking in air to calm down. Thank God Deke was there. “Lynne and I have called everyone Zach knows, and nobody has seen or heard from him. Bobbi is really upset and is trying Twitter and Facebook to find him.”
Deke shrugged out of his jacket. “I have men scouring the city for him. He’s only been gone two hours, so he can’t have gotten far.”
The guy was a genius and would know how to hide. “This is so bad,” she murmured. “I should go and try to find him.”
Deke lifted an eyebrow. “Where exactly would you look?”
She bit her lip. “No clue.”
“Exactly. Stay here, stay safe, and we’ll get him. Where’s Lynne?” Deke tossed his coat toward the sofa.
“She left about five minutes ago, for the second time, after giving everybody orders to get a couple hours’ sleep—especially me. The poor woman could barely stand, yet she’s worried about me.” Too much energy, probably adrenaline, roared through Nora’s veins. “I think I may head into the lab and get to work early.” None of her results would be ready, but she just couldn’t sleep.
“Absolutely not. You’re staying here and getting some rest, and you’re under guard until Zach is caught. I’m protecting you tonight while my men find him. Period.” Deke’s jaw clenched. “There’s nothing either one of us can do right now, so we’re catching rest.”
Nora’s mouth gaped open and then closed on a snap. There was the bossy asshat she’d once married. Yet instead of ticking her off, she was almost giggly. It must be because she was so tired. “Your time of ordering me around has long past, Deacan McDougall.”
He rubbed whiskers that had grown rougher in the few hours they’d been apart. A black gun nestled in the harness strapped around his right leg, and a polished knife handle gleamed at his belt. In a dark shirt with faded jeans, he looked like a mixture of badass soldier and dangerous warrior from years gone by. “I’ve never ordered you around,” he said.
“Sure you did. Remember when there were those robberies in my neighborhood before we even got married?” She flushed hot.
He blinked, his green eyes narrowing. “That was different.”
Her head lifted. “Oh yeah? How?”
“Jesus, Nora. When it comes to safety, to danger, I fuckin’ know a lot more than you do about survival.” At the outburst, his brogue came on strong. “Right now, you have a guy stalking yer every move. He was alone with you in your own apartment.”
She blanched, and bile rose in her throat. The realization of how easily Zach could’ve bitten her rolled her stomach over. “You don’t need to sleep over.”
Deke grinned, and seeing the tension leave his face was like viewing the sun after a monstrous storm. “I’ll just stay until we catch Zach, and that might even be tonight. All right?”
She paused, studying him. Well, at least he’d asked. Truth be told, she wasn’t a dumbass who wouldn’t accept protection when necessary, especially since she didn’t quite know what she was dealing with concerning Zach. Deke was trained, and he was dangerous. He could handle any threat. So she nodded and gave him what he wanted. “I would very much appreciate your protection while Zach is on the loose.”
At her acquiescence, Deke’s eyes darkened. “Ah, I do so like you sweet and agreeable, Nora McDougall.”
Heat flared down her torso, and she didn’t correct his use of the wrong name. “I wouldn’t know the feeling, Deacan. I’ve never seen you agreeable or sweet.”
His chin lowered, and intent mingled with the amusement in his amazing eyes. “Sassy now, are you?”
Her very blood sparked with the need to challenge him. Life had turned dangerous, and she wanted an escape. Just a moment to be a woman and have some fun. With Deacan. She was way too keyed up to sleep and needed to burn off some energy, and there wasn’t much she could do in the lab until the current experiments were concluded in the morning. Hopefully the charged nanoparticle experiment would work. “Sassy, I am. Think you can handle me?”
His eyebrows rose, and the amusement disappeared. “Yeah. I know I can.” That deep voice lowered even more, rumbling with a masculine truth he made no effort to mask.
Anticipation stiffened her limbs. “Prove it.”
His head lifted while his eyelids dropped to half-mast, giving him a primal look only a true predator could wear. “Run,” he said softly.
A nervous chuckle tickled up her windpipe. Trembles vibrated her legs, and her mind kicked into gear with a sense of warning. “I don’t think you can catch me.” Yeah, she was enjoying being a woman all of a sudden, completely ignoring reality.
His head cocked, ever so slightly. “Last chance. Run.”
As if her body were his to command, she turned and leaped into a mad dash. Around the sofa and over a stack of books. He caught her before she’d cleared her doorway, propelling them both hard and fast toward the bed to hit with a thud. She flipped onto her back and kicked, laughing, striking out with her hands to hit solid muscle.
He pressed a knee between her thighs and grabbed her wrists to stretch above her head against the pillows. Hard as she writhed, she couldn’t gain purchase to counter him. Masculine smugness angled his jaw as he stared down at her. “Appears you’ve been caught.”
Her struggles were useless, and she sobered at how quickly, how easily, he’d subdued her. Instead of providing caution, the reality speared fiery awareness through her. The power of the thigh between hers caught her breath in her throat.
He leaned up to gain better hold of her wrists, and that hard leg muscle pressed against her sex.
She gasped, and her body involuntarily shoved up into him.
He glanced down, eyes darkening, just as her nipples hardened to points inside her bra, causing small spikes of pleasure through her breasts. Holding her in place with merely one hand around her wrists and one thigh between hers, he quickly unfastened his harness and dropped the gun by the side of the bed. “Are you going to fight me?” he asked, the tone merely curious.
The game of run and chase had been fun, and playing with Deke was a lot more enjoyable than fighting with him. “And if I do?” she teased.
“You’ll lose.” One swipe down her front scattered but
tons. “I may even tickle.”
She gasped. “Hey.”
He lifted a broad shoulder and tugged her bra up, revealing her needy breasts. “Spoils of war and all that.” His voice thickened.
Cool air caressed her flesh, providing an erotic contrast to the heat boiling inside her. Her skin ached, and a hollowness echoed throughout her. Even though they were playing, enough truth hinted in the air to flutter hunger through her abdomen. “Deacan.”
His head lifted, as did her skirt. He wasted no time removing her panties and instead snapped the sides away. His jeans were shed, the movement so quick she didn’t have time to move. Then he was above her.
Gaze to gaze, groin to groin. “Nora?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “Definitely, yes.”
He didn’t ask twice. A hard lunge of his hips, and he sheathed himself completely.
Pain zipped through her, followed by an unreal pleasure. The combination overwhelmed her, and she closed her eyes.
His hold tightened on her wrists. “Open yer eyes.”
She blinked several times, a strangled plea buried in her breath. He possessed her, so strong, so male. No way could she have moved, even if she’d wanted to. Not for the first time, she wondered if she’d even come close to plumbing the depths of Deacan McDougall during their marriage.
Keeping her gaze, his expression inscrutable and his eyes filled with a light she couldn’t quite decipher, he pulled out and then shoved back in, setting up a pounding that rocked the headboard against the wall.
She gasped, her eyes widening at the powerful treatment. Even so, her hips lifted to take more, whether her mind could or not. The second she rubbed against him, he thrust harder, controlling her body, not allowing her to move. More of his weight descended on her, preventing even the small lifting of her hips.
All she could do was take it.
An orgasm rushed through her so quickly she could only gasp. He kept pounding, sweat drifting off his chin and onto her chest. It was raw and way too real. At the thought, electricity uncoiled inside her. Deep inside, way deeper than she’d known existed, the unfurling swept her up. She stiffened, trying to fight, needing to clutch at any semblance of control.
The hard pounding was slipping from the warmth of pleasure into the heat of pain, and she couldn’t stop the fire. She detonated, her body arching, his name spilling from her lips. With a smile akin to a snarl, he shoved hard inside her, his body jerking with his release.
Moments later, her heart thundering and her breath panting out, she tried to back away from the intimacy and return to playfulness, even as her eyelids began to droop. “I guess you won, right?” she murmured sleepily.
The glimmer in his eyes somehow darkened even further. “Not yet, no. But I fully intend to.”
Chapter Nine
Early morning, after dropping Nora off at her temporary CDC office, Deke finished searching Zach Barter’s makeshift hospital room. The plastic gloves covering Deke’s hands pulled at his skin, and he fought the urge to rip them off.
Instead, he gingerly grabbed a leather-bound book from the night table to open it. Genius boy kept a diary, and he’d obviously left the journal to be found.
Deke sighed. He had an ex-wife who hadn’t quite realized her importance in his life, a possible bacteria from outer space that was killing people, a dead president, a weak vice president, and a stalker he needed to stop but not kill. To think that just the week before he’d been trying to mellow out his life.
Taking a deep breath, he flipped through the beginning pages of Zach’s writing, noting equations, theories, and quotations about Einstein. Every once in a while, personal notes about Zach having a crush or wanting to ask a girl out but lacking the courage filled the pages.
Deke turned to the last couple of days. Pencil drawing after pencil drawing of Nora. At her desk, staring dreamily into space, nude on a bed.
Zach had gotten her tits wrong. They were rounder at the base.
The fire of his ancestors blazed through Deke’s chest. He continued to read as Zach detailed how much he hated his former self for being such a wimp. The last entry stole Deke’s breath.
I’m finally free. No worries, no concerns. How could I have been so fucking weak? So unwilling to take what I want? This fever created a god. I’ll take what I crave, and tonight I start with Nora. That bitch has ignored me long enough.
HEY SCOTTISH DICKHEAD: I put this in big letters so you’d see it, you fucking idiot. You might be a soldier, and you might have fucked her, but I’m smarter than you. I’ll get her, and she’ll be mine. You lost her.
Deke shut the journal. Fury made his hands shake. Scorpius had taken a nice guy and turned him sociopathic. Did the bacteria work harder, stronger, on already nice people? Impossible.
Zach had even left him a note, so focused was he on Nora.
Slowly, deliberately, Deke withdrew his phone and called his men. “I want Barter found and right now.” The fact that Zach had tried to kidnap Nora was just the beginning.
Obviously Zach’s brain scans hadn’t told the whole truth. Or any truth, really. Deke left the room and endured the many decontamination steps before emerging into clean air. He jogged for the stairwell, his mind focused, his hands calm. Training dictated he drop into a mode of thought ready for action, and he allowed himself to do just that. The last thing he wanted to do was scare Nora off now, but every instinct he possessed bellowed she was in danger.
The real kind.
He’d stand between her and any threat, whether she liked it or not. This danger to Nora had forced the soldier, the warrior, deep down inside him to the surface again. To face the light of day.
He couldn’t help but wonder if the return had always been inevitable.
Hours after Deke had rocked her world in a way that left her both satisfied and incredibly uneasy, and hours after not enough sleep, Nora worked with her best friend handling test tubes, meteorites, and a piece of brain matter from a dead student. Finally all of the supplies had arrived. For now, as she worked, special lights illuminated the space, and Lynne looked more like a Martian in the white protective suit than an expert in biological contaminants.
“Any news on Zach?” Lynne asked, dropping blue liquid on a slide.
“No.” Nora stretched her back and slipped a slide under her microscope. “Everyone is looking, but so far, nothing.”
Lynne nodded. “We’ll find him, and we’ll cure him.”
Hopefully. “I know.” Nora wrinkled her nose in the helmet. “How’s Bobbi doing?”
Lynne snorted. “Not great. I hadn’t realized the depth of her quick crush. She’s a maniac on social media right now trying to find Zach. It’ll probably work, too.”
Good. “Whatever works. So long as we get him back.” Nora adjusted the device. “We’ve had twenty more cases reported throughout the country since last night.”
“I know.” Lynne shook her head. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Yes,” Nora said.
“Speaking of crushes, with all the danger, we haven’t had a time to talk, just the two of us. The Scot is every bit as sexy as I expected,” Lynne said through the headset in her suit.
Nora rolled her eyes and leaned closer to peer through the microscope lens. “You’re looking for a biological killer. Worry about my love life later.”
“Aha,” Lynne said, peering to look into a different microscope. “You said love. You luuuuv him.”
“Shut up,” Nora said without heat. “You’re one of the most respected scientists in your field, and you sound like you’re in junior high.”
Lynne snorted, the sound emerging tinny from the helmet. “Talk about protesting too much.” She paused and reached for another slide. “I have to tell you, when he dipped into that brogue of his, I almost orgasmed.”
Nora chuckled. “Knock it off, Lynnie. Last I checked, you were dating one of the most powerful men on the planet.” The guy now second in line to the presidency. How weird was that?
br /> Lynne shook her head. “Ehh. He’s kind of intense, and right now I have my hands full.”
Nora blew out air. “I know.”
“Hmm.” One of the many whirling machines beeped, and Lynne moved to read the computer printout. Turning, she read a large computer monitor. “Interesting. My mutation, the green vial, is resistant to everything and kills instantly.” She turned and frowned, the expression oddly garish through her faceplate. “This may be the most dangerous biological weapon I’ve ever touched.”
Holy shit. Nora shook her head, her heart kicking into gear. “We have to destroy it.”
“I know.” Lynne turned back toward the computer. “Not until we cure Scorpius, just in case there’s something in the concoction, in how quickly it divides, that might help. If we could duplicate the speed of division with a containing agent, we might be able to isolate the bacteria and starve it to death.”
A bacteria from outer space. “This whole thing is crazy,” Nora said.
“I know, and it’s the find of a century. We need to get a handle on it before we announce to the world, however.”
“I really don’t like the public being told the president died from a stroke.”
“Me either,” Lynne murmured.
Nora swallowed, her mind spinning. They’d found bacteria in the middle of a meteorite from somewhere else, and now she was part of a governmental cover-up. It was too fantastic to think about.
Nora’s gaze caught on a series of vials with different colored liquids. “That’s quite an array.”
Lynne glanced over her shoulder. “Yes. So far the green shade is the most dangerous, and the blue the most interesting. We have hope.”
Nora nodded. She stretched her back and winced when something popped. “It’ll be an hour before my newest test results are ready. How about I head down to the cafeteria and grab us sodas and something healthy? Maybe pizza?”
Lynne chuckled. “Make mine macaroni and cheese.”
“Fair enough.” Nora waddled into the first decontamination area and followed all protocols. Nearly twenty minutes later, she finally emerged into cool, air-conditioned air. Fighting a shiver, she strode to her locker and drew out a sweatshirt and her key card.