Alpha Geek (5 page)

This new version of Knox in bed with her was so not what she needed to think about. She could already imagine him ripping her clothes off and fucking her into the headboard. It might be the highlight of her entire adult life.

TWELVE

Early the next morning, Knox leaned against Scarlett’s open bedroom door, watching her sleep. He wanted to crawl into bed with her, let her body curl around him and maybe then he’d be able to quiet the animal. His mind was running a million miles an hour. Already the thirst to run outside and let the wind hit his face, let the animal loose and hunt, were driving him insane.

He couldn’t stop the building need to have her. A driving lust that demanded she be his. He burned for her. There was a growing possessiveness that she be his mate and then all would be right in the world. The feelings didn’t worry him. He’d wanted Scarlett since the moment he saw her. Now if only they’d hurry up and let him have her. He knew he wouldn’t be able to last much longer.

There was something else. Something he didn’t know how to explain. A new pull inside him. He went back to his room. Everything looked so differently now. He didn’t even need his glasses anymore. It was like high definition twenty-four seven.

Zeke and Nick were in his guestroom, waiting for him. It was funny that they had not taken him to his own bedroom only a few doors down. In a way, he was glad. He didn’t need Scarlett seeing that side of him. The comic books in pristine plastics. The DC comics movie collection. Hell, his cheeks flamed at the thought of her seeing his action figure collection. He’d have to man up.

“What’s going on?” he asked Nick, noticing his friend’s tense stance.

“My lab partner,” Zeke shouted. “He stole everything. The serums, your blood and my research.”

Nick turned to face Knox. “If this gets out, you will be targeted. The government will want to cut you up in pieces and see how they can put you back together.”

Zeke’s face paled. “He didn’t know what I was working on. Our lab is so big, but I think he overheard my call and must have gotten curious.”

“Don’t you keep that kind of stuff under lock and key?”

Zeke winced. “Yes, but I guess with all the years we’ve worked together, he figured out my passwords.”

Fucking hell. Knox met Nick’s gaze. “There’s only one thing to do. Find him.”

Nick nodded. “I’ve got my men on it.”

“I want to help,” Knox stated. “I know I can be useful.”

“Are you crazy?” Zeke argued. “We can’t let you out in the general population without knowing what else is going on with you.”

Knox growled and took a step towards Zeke. Zeke blanched and moved to use Nick for cover. “Tell him, Nick.”

Nick stared at Knox for a tense second before shaking his head. “We need all hands on this.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Zeke warned.

“Then it’s my mistake to make,” Nick threw back. “Now tell us everything else we need to know about this guy.”

“He lives in a tiny ass apartment down the street from the lab.” Zeke paced the room. “I went there but it was empty. Like he’d hightailed it out of town in a rush.”

Nick snorted. “No kidding.”

“He’s got family,” Zeke glanced at Nick. “I already told you about them.”

“My men are checking them out, Knox,” Nick told him.

“What else? Goals? Dreams? Perfect places to vacation?” Knox frowned. “Banking information?”

“What?” Zeke cried. “I don’t fucking know, dude. I have been up to my eyeballs in serums and haven’t had human interaction with anyone in months until you guys.”

Knox rolled his eyes at Zeke’s rambled excuses. He’d been the same way at one point, though. Not really socializing much. Which was surprising when his biggest client made it a point to tell him his daughter liked Knox. Soon after, he’d started dating Lisa and when they decided to become a couple, Scarlett came into his life. He’d never been able to have sex with Lisa, not once.

His every waking thought had been consumed by Scarlett. He was glad he’d broken things off with Lisa. There was really nothing left for them.

“I’m going to my office. I need to see if I can look into your guy’s banking history,” he told Zeke and Nick. “Send Scarlett my way.”

“Wait,” Nick yelled as he headed out of the room. “Are you sure about this?”

“What else is there?” He met Nick’s gaze with his own frustrated one. “If I can find out his money or other things, I can figure out where he could be. Or what his plans are.”

“You can do that?” he heard Scarlett ask behind him.

“I’ll give you a call the moment I find something. If you need me, you know where my office is,” he said and turned to her. “Let’s go.”

THIRTEEN

Scarlett didn’t get a chance to ask what they were talking about. She was dragged off by Knox down the hall. They ran down two flights of stairs and through another hall before they reached a massive library. He opened doors at the back of the room that led into a large private office.

The place smelled of Knox. Clearly, this was where he spent his time when he was home. He shut the door and pushed her against it, reminding her vividly of their time in the guest room.

“Good morning, beautiful,” he murmured and kissed her lips, softly at first and then with more possessiveness. There was no holding back. She kissed him with the same amount of desire and need she sensed from him.

He rained kisses over her lips and jaw, taking her earlobe between his teeth and sucking hard. “I’ve been dreaming of fucking you against a door again.”

Good god. The guy just didn’t stop. She let out a slow breath and cupped his face in her hands. “Soon.”

Lying wasn’t an option. The minute they knew he was going to be fine, she’d get him naked so fast, his head would spin.

“Not soon enough,” he growled and gave her another kiss before tearing himself away.

She watched him hurry around his desk, his fingers tapping on keys and booting the computer system.

“So what don’t I know?”

“Zeke’s lab partner stole his research. I’m hacking his bank account and computer to see where he went.”

She gasped.

He glanced up from his computer and raised his brows. “What?”

It dawned on her there was a lot she didn’t know about him. “You can do that?”

He turned back to his keyboard. “Yeah. When I was in college, I worked at a big banking company that paid me to hack into their competitor’s programs to get the latest information on what they were planning or working on.”

Her jaw dropped. “But that’s illegal.”

He shrugged. “Tell that to a kid who needed tuition money. At the time, my parents said if I wanted to go to college, paying for it was my problem. They were hippies, so it wasn’t something they really cared about.”

She couldn’t see Knox being part of a hippie family. He was too numbers involved, and by the looks of his office, secretly obsessed with comics and comic book movies. Nothing about him screamed flower child.

Then again, the idea of Knox, big, geeky Knox with a tie-dye shirt and daisy crown made her snort a giggle.

“What are you laughing at over there?”

“I thought you could read my mind.”

He gave a raspy laugh. “I can, but I’d rather you tell me instead of stopping this to look inside your head.”

She glanced at the rows of bookshelves with different comic characters, memorabilia, and action figures. The whole office was like a giant toy store exploded. “You have a thing for comic book characters, I see.”

She walked to one shelf with multiple versions of the same guy. “Who is this?”

He raised his head and glanced at her. “Doomsday.”

“I don’t recall hearing his name before.”

He chuckled and continued clicking keys. “He’s not really a good guy.”

Interesting. She continued down to another row. “Now these guys I recognize. Joker and Harley Quinn. The craziest couple ever.” She turned to him and frowned. “Why would you dedicate a full shelf to them?”

He sighed. “Each shelf is divided by my favorite characters. At the top are collectibles. In the middle are comic books. Below are movie memorabilia.”

The whole room looked like a collector’s dream. She rushed to the other side where she saw a figure that looked somewhat familiar. “This guy looks like Iron Man, but I can tell he’s not.”

“No, he’s not,” he said and continued clicking.

She slapped her hands on her hips and growled. “Well, who the hell is he?”

Without looking up, he answered. “Sinestro.”

She frowned. “Another bad guy?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t realize you liked them so much. Whatever happened to Captain America and Thor?”

“They’re pussies,” he growled.

She choked on her laughter and walked back to him. “They are not! I happen to like Iron Man.”

He shrugged, his brows low in a fierce frown as he stared at his screen. “He’s okay, but they’re Marvel. I’m a DC fan.”

“What does that mean?”

He stopped and glanced up at her. His eyes widened. “You’re breaking my heart here, love.”

“Oh, cut it out. You’re lucky I know any of them. I’m not really into comic books, but that Robert Downey Jr. in
Iron Man
is too tempting to ignore.”

He gave a rough growl, his gaze back on the screen. “I’m warning you.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, knowing he wasn’t even looking at her. “I don’t know what the big deal is anyway.”

He inhaled hard. “You’re right. There is no big deal. The bad guys are the best. End of story.”

She rolled her eyes and went to stand by him. “What are you doing now.”

“Zeke gave me the guy’s name and address. I was able to get his personal information from his work file at the university.”

She pulled a chair up by him. “You hacked into the school?”

FOURTEEN

Scarlett couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Yeah. Then I used his direct deposit information to find out his bank. I got into the bank and I’m looking at his latest transactions. I’ll look at his credit cards next. See where they’ve been used.”

Holy shit. If she’d wondered about his intelligence before, she didn’t any longer. Knox was really fucking smart. She glanced down his intense face to his neck, to his T-shirt. That’s when she realized it read E=MC².

“Why are you staring at my T-shirt?” he asked, writing something on a pad before going back to clicking keys furiously.

“I hadn’t really seen you in anything other than a dress shirt before,” she gulped.

His bright blue eyes rooted her to the spot. Blue eyes, no longer brown. “I normally wear comic stuff. You may as well know now. As for this shirt, it was the first I grabbed. Do you know what it stands for?”

“Energy something or other.”

He grinned and shook his head. “E represents energy. M represents mass and C represents light.”

“Right. Like that tells me the secrets of the universe,” she replied sarcastically. “I’m not the genius between us.”

“All it is saying is for a specific amount of mass, if you multiply it by the speed of light squared, you get its energy equivalence.”

She yawned. “Bored. Now tell me what you’re doing with…” she glanced at the paper next to him, “Francis Souza.” She snorted. “Seriously? His name is Francis?”

“Yeah, goes by Frank. And I am now looking at his credit cards. He rented a car; a charge came through ten minutes ago from a gas station on I-95 down near Richmond.”

She jumped to her feet the same time he did. “That’s hours from here.”

He nodded, grabbed an empty duffel bag, threw the laptop on his desk into it and turned to her. “Let’s go. We don’t have time to waste.”

She ran beside him, down the hall to one of the back entrances to the mansion. “Where are we going?”

“I sent Nick the latest information. He should be coming down the other side of the house and meeting us outside. We have to hurry if we want to get to Francis before he reaches whoever he is planning to sell that to.”

“We don’t know that he’s doing that, though,” she said once they reached the backyard. “And how the hell are we leaving?”

“Yes, we do know. His phone records indicate he’s been talking to a number registered to a military general and a second number to a known black market bio weapons seller.”

She stopped in her tracks. “You got all that while I was looking at your toys?”

“Yes.” He stripped off his shirt, jeans, and shoes, handing them to her. “Shove this in my duffel.”

She cleared her throat and started tossing his clothes into the bag. “As much as I love seeing you naked, I don’t think now’s the time―”

“I got your message,” Nick interrupted. “You sure about this?”

“He always told me he knew people in the Department of Defense, but I thought he was just talking out of his ass,” Zeke said.

“What the hell is going on?” Scarlett snapped. She turned to Nick. “Start talking, now.”

“When I injected Knox, I knew the possibility that he’d have more than one animal to shift into existed. He says another has spoken to him and he’s ready to let him out.”

“I thought you said it was bad to let him out into society. All that crap about not knowing if he would go postal and shit,” she snapped.

Zeke cowered away from her. “Yes, but we need to get Frank before he tells anyone about my research.”

Knox backed up until he was a good distance from them. Nick grabbed her hand. Then she watched Knox shift into a massive eagle many times the size of any she’d ever seen in the wild. His talons were the size of her face.

“Oh, my god,” she whispered.

“Jesus,” Nick mumbled.

Knox’s eagle spread its wings to the tune of at least twenty feet. The damn thing was the size of a small plane.

“
Come with me
,” Knox spoke into her mind. She threw the duffel over her shoulder and ran.

“What are you doing?” Nick ran after her.

“He needs back up. While I agree we should use his bird, someone has to go with him to neutralize the threat. I’ve done this kind of stuff with you many times, Nick.” She climbed on the eagle’s back, holding on to his neck.

“I’m calling some guys I know in the DC area. We’ll get you back up right away. Knox got us a license plate so we’ll send someone to get him, too. In case you don’t get there fast enough.” Nick had his phone in his hand as he spoke.

They took off, flying high and fast into the clouds. She was glad for her lioness. She dug her claws into the eagle’s feathers and it allowed her a safer hold.

“
Why didn’t you say something about the eagle before?”
she asked.

“I didn’t realize what he was. He just showed up this morning, wanting to communicate.”

“Are there others?”
she asked, her gaze on the buildings and houses that looked toy-sized.

“Other what?”

“You know what I mean, Knox. Don’t play dumb. Other animals that you haven’t mentioned.”

“It’s possible. I’ve had some strange sensations, but I guess I’ll know when they decide to connect.”

There was a long pause before she spoke. “
I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, Knox.”

“Don’t―”
he interrupted her.

She closed her eyes for a second, pressing her cheek on his soft feathers.
“If I hadn’t been such a coward about my feelings and stayed with you, you’d never gotten hurt.”

“Look where we are,”
he said as he soared higher into the clouds.
“If I were still human, we wouldn’t be able to do this. You’d be scared to hurt me.”

He was right, but that didn’t make her feel any better.