Dark Embers (21 page)

“I want to thank you—” His voice broke and he felt like a total pansy, but there was no help for it. He cleared his throat, tried again. “I want to thank you for your help with Lana yesterday.”

Her face softened, the grim line of her mouth easing up as she murmured, “I wish there was something more I could have done. This disease is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.”

“I know.” Though he’d done everything he could to banish the images from his mind, he couldn’t help seeing Lana lying in a pool of her own blood. Marta, seizing up, her body slamming into the bed again and again before she was paralyzed. Jake and Cyndee, Gavin and Kara, Sandra and Michael. Victor, Luis, Angela, Tom, Daniel. And those were just the clan members who had died in the last few months. There were more, so many more that he couldn’t see all their faces clearly, could no longer remember all their names.

While they’d been alive, he hadn’t known every victim of the disease personally, but he knew them now. Saw them in his sleep, and understood that he had failed them.

But what else was new? These days,
failure
was his middle name.

He pulled out of his reverie just in time to hear Phoebe say, “It’s strange, Dylan.”

“What’s strange?”

“Lupus isn’t the only disease I’ve studied. While I was in grad school, I worked on a couple of nervous-system diseases, as well as other autoimmune disorders.”

He nodded, because he already knew that. It had been one of factors that encouraged him to go after her for this job.

“Every disease has a fingerprint, something that makes it identifiable to a certain class or type. But from what I’ve seen and read, this one can’t be classified. It fits a bunch of really broad categories.”

“And that’s strange?”

“It is. Diseases of the immune system tend to have a broader spectrum—a longer reach, if you will—because when your immune system stops working, it leaves you open to a bunch of other diseases.”

She stopped long enough to dish some fruit onto her empty plate. “But this goes beyond that. From the research your own doctors have done, that’s not what’s happening here.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that this disease itself—whatever it is—has managed to mutate enough that is has taken on properties of several different classes of disease.”

“So where does that leave us?” he demanded. “Besides totally screwed.”

She popped a piece of pineapple into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully, her gaze focused on something only she could see. “I wish I knew, Dylan. I wish I knew.”

The rest of breakfast passed in a melancholy quiet, with Phoebe lost in her own thoughts while Dylan quietly fumed. How strange was it that they had spent the night locked in each other’s arms—doing things that were illegal in at least twenty-six states—yet now he could barely get her to look at him?

It pissed him off—not to mention what it did to his dragon, who was currently about as stable as a keg of dynamite with a lit fuse. The fact that he couldn’t stop looking at her when she was so obviously bent on ignoring him made the fuse burn faster.

He wasn’t sure what it was about Phoebe that fascinated him. Sure, she was beautiful, but he’d slept with many more beautiful women. Shifters were known for their beauty, after all, and most humans couldn’t compete. And, yes, her brain was a total turn-on, too—something about a woman that smart got him incredibly hard.

But it was more than that, more than any one thing he could put his finger on, though he studied her in an effort to do just that.

As she ate, studiously avoiding his gaze, he was fascinated by her lips. Once again, she wasn’t wearing lipstick, so there was no reason for them to look so inviting. But they were inviting, so much so that he had trouble keeping his burgeoning arousal under wraps.

She bit into a strawberry and a trickle of juice ran over her bottom lip and down her chin. He nearly groaned out loud, his gaze following her tongue as it darted over her lips and swept up the juice.

God, her mouth was sexy. So much about Phoebe was no-nonsense, crisp, almost stern, that the contradiction of that mouth—with its full, sensuous lips the same exact shade as her nipples—was obsession inducing. Not to mention the fact that it seriously undermined everything she was trying to do.

The press of her lips, meant to express displeasure, came across as sexy. The stern frown only emphasized her sex-kitten mouth, made him want to nip at it with sharp teeth. And when she spoke of medical matters, her lips moved so perfectly that he couldn’t help remembering what it was like to have them wrapped around his cock.

Phoebe shoved back from the table abruptly, almost as if she could read his thoughts. But that wasn’t possible—she wasn’t dragon, didn’t have the same gifts he did.

But still, something was wrong. She’d been stiff since he woke up that morning, and with each bite of food she’d grown more and more withdrawn.

“Are you okay?” he asked as she scraped food from her plate into the sink. He hadn’t stuck around for many morning-afters—certainly not in the last couple centuries or so—but he knew enough to realize that there was something very wrong with this one, something that had nothing to do with the death hanging over them like a particularly miserable specter.

“I’m fine.” She didn’t give him a chance to say more, just moved around him with a flippant tweak of those lips and a pat on his shoulder that should have reassured him, but only made him more suspicious. “I’m going to get my bag. Will you be ready to go in a couple of minutes?”

“Yeah, of course.” He carried his own plate to the sink. “Phoebe—”

“What?” She was already down the hall, her voice fading fast as she negotiated the twists and turns of his house.

He stormed after her. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” She gave him an impersonal, slightly vacuous smile, one that looked so out of place with her fierce, intelligent eyes that he almost snorted in disgust.

“You’re being strange.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Dylan I have work to do, and so do you. Neither of us really has time for this.”

“We’ll make time.” She pulled her lower lip between her teeth, started to nibble, and he thought he might lose it completely, might come in his fucking jeans like a kid with his first
Playboy
. He didn’t like the feeling.

“Excuse me?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“I can see that. Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything I would like less at the moment. So either take me to the lab or point me in the right direction. I want to get to work.”

“You’ll get to work when I say you can.”

Her eyes narrowed dangerously, but he was too far gone to care. “Dylan, I think you’re suffering from a misapprehension here.”

“Really? And what is that?” He crooked an eyebrow, watched as her eyes went from cold to red-hot in the space of one breath.

“Just because we fucked last night doesn’t mean you have the right to tell me anything. I work when I want to work. I eat when I want to eat. You need to back off.”

“Or else?” When she didn’t answer, he grinned, tasting victory. “Don’t issue ultimatums if you don’t have something to back them up with, Phoebe. It’s the first rule of the jungle.”

“I thought we were in the desert.”

He shrugged carelessly. “It’s all the same.”

“This isn’t going to work.” She brushed past him, headed for her room. “I’ll return the money.”

The dragon broke free. With a roar, he grabbed Phoebe, whirled her around. Pressed her against the wall and towered over her, every muscle on red alert.

The small part of his brain that was still human warned him he was being an ass, but at the moment he couldn’t work up the control to care. She wasn’t walking away from him, not now. Maybe not ever. She might not be his mate, but she was his until he said otherwise.

“And where is it you think you’re going?”

“I think that’s obvious. Now get off me, Dylan. Your bullying doesn’t scare me.”

“Liar.” He lowered his head, nipped at her jaw. “You’re trembling.”

“I think you’re confusing anger with fear.”

“You think so?” He brought a hand up to cup her throat, felt her pulse hammering like a carpenter who was three days late. “I don’t.”

“Big surprise.” She bucked against him. “You can’t use brute force to get your way every time.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Dylan!”

“Phoebe!” he mimicked.

“Let me go.” She shoved against him hard.

It didn’t move him—he was too strong for that—but the dragon saw red, anyway. It wanted to grab her, to fuck her, to—what? The man reached for reason. Shoved the beast down and prayed for control. The crimson haze slowly faded from in front of his eyes and he stepped away from Phoebe.

“I’m—sorry.” It was an awkward apology at best, and he was man enough to know it. But he was bewildered by the possessive rage that had overtaken him so completely, was trying desperately to figure out why she brought it on when no other woman—or dragon—ever had.

She didn’t accept his apology, didn’t move, didn’t so much as breathe as her eyes bore into his. He wanted to squirm under the scrutiny, to throw himself at her mercy, but the woman staring him down didn’t look like
mercy
was part of her vocabulary.

Shit, could he fuck this up any worse? He was a total and complete idiot.

“I’m sorry, Phoebe.” His voice was stronger now, the apology more sincere. “I don’t know why I did that.”

“Don’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

He looked away, unable to look her in the eye for one more second. He didn’t force women, for Christ’s sake. And neither did his dragon. So what the hell had come over him when he’d pushed at her like that? He’d wanted to dominate her, hadn’t been able to stand the idea that she could say no to him.

A shiver of unease worked its way down his spine.

Phoebe must have seen his discomfiture, or maybe she was more merciful than he’d originally thought, because she shoved away from the wall and started walking toward the door like nothing had happened. “Just point me to the lab and I’ll be on my way.”

“I’ll take you.” He would only back down so far.

“Okay.” Her easy acceptance blew his mind, considering the fact that he’d had her pinned against the wall a couple of minutes before. “But I should probably rent a car while I’m here, so I’m not constantly dependent on you to take me places.”

He grabbed his wallet, slid it into his back pocket, then reached for his keys. “I like taking you places.”

“Still—”

“I’ve got a garage full of cars. I’ll have Liam drop one off at the lab for you later today, along with directions back here. That way you can come and go as you please.”

“Thank you.”

His stomach unclenched. “No problem.”

As they headed out the door, he was still wondering what the hell had gotten into him.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

D
ylan hadn’t even stopped his Range Rover in front of the building he had outfitted as a lab before Phoebe opened her door and put one foot on the pavement. She was halfway to the front door before he took the keys out of the ignition.

Putting on a preternatural burst of speed, he caught up to her just as she stepped inside the building. If she noticed anything odd about how quickly he’d gotten up the walkway, she didn’t say anything. Of course, that could be because she hadn’t said one word to him since she’d left him standing in the hallway, foot so far down his throat, it was amazing he hadn’t suffocated.

Shit, he was acting like a total asshole around her, taking the alpha-male thing to a whole new level. And he didn’t know why. All he knew was that he had a burning urge to dominate her, to control her, to own every part of her. And though he knew, intellectually, that pushing her wasn’t the best way to hold on to her, his dragon didn’t care. It wanted to lay claim to her in the most primal way possible, and really didn’t care whether she was Dylan’s mate.

“The labs are this way.” He gestured down a long hallway.

She didn’t so much as nod, just turned to her left and started down the hallway.

“Are we going to do this all day?” he demanded, shoving a hand through his hair in frustration.

“Do what all day?” Her tone was so cold, he couldn’t help being concerned about whether the fire inside him had frozen.

“Have you give me the silent treatment while I try to coax you out of your bad mood?”

“First of all, I’m not giving you any kind of treatment. That’s pretty much over. Second, I don’t need you to coax me out of anything. And, finally, if I’m staying—and that is a mighty big
if
at this point—I would like to do some work. So if you don’t mind, show me which one is the lab and then back the hell off.”

He was about to reply when he heard a muffled snort behind him. Dylan whirled around, tensed for a fight, only to find Quinn and Logan behind him. He wasn’t sure what he was more pissed about: that they had heard Phoebe give him what he could admit was a much-deserved dressing-down or that he’d been so wrapped up in her that he hadn’t heard his men behind him. Usually, no one could get within fifty feet of him without him picking up on it.