Hidden Embers (18 page)

After all, hadn’t she looked and sounded completely normal when she’d cuddled against him after that last bout of lovemaking? Hadn’t she fallen asleep in his arms and wrapped herself around him while they’d slept? And then hadn’t she gotten up and walked out on him without leaving so much as her cell phone number—or last name—behind?

He didn’t think he was being paranoid to worry that she might take off again. After all, the woman had just found out that she’d made love—several times—to a living, breathing dragon. It would shake anybody up. And he hadn’t even brought up the fact that she was his mate…

As it turned out, his worries were for naught. When he got back to the lab, Jasmine was sitting at one of the lab stations, speaking into a small microphone she wore attached to a headset while her fingers flew over her laptop keyboard.

Next to her was a pile of discarded slides and a microscope, which if the desktop monitor was any indication, still had a slide under its lens. His beast wanted to bound across the lab and take her in his arms, but the scientist preferred to hang back and watch her work when she thought she was all alone.

She was fascinating to observe, especially since she appeared completely absorbed by the quest that had ruled his life for so long. When she wasn’t typing what looked to be two hundred words a minute, she was tapping her thumbs against the desk in rhythm to music only she could hear. Her right leg was bouncing, and so was her head—yet she rarely stopped talking, recording any and all thoughts she was having regarding the virus.

Which, he admitted, were quite impressive and indicated she’d been working nonstop while he was gone.

He glanced around the lab, noting that Phoebe’s computer was turned off and her lab station straightened up—a surefire sign that she had left for the day. Which meant that he and Jasmine were completely alone, except for the security guards stationed at either end of the building.

The thought had him skating close to the razor’s edge of his control, a condition that was worsened because he hadn’t given himself a chance to recharge his batteries. In the past two days he’d tried to heal Michael, given what he could to Jazz, had healed Ty, and then done his best to keep emotions and tempers under control in the War Room. He was one short slip away from grabbing Jasmine and fucking her wildly, but he wasn’t certain that was the best way to convince her to stay.

What he should do, what he needed to do, was to go home. He could get something to eat, could rest, could let the weakness take him for a while in a way he hadn’t allowed yet. But even as the thought formed, he knew he wasn’t leaving the lab—at least not without his mate.

Which at this rate might be never, Quinn was forced to acknowledge, as Jasmine reshelved the slides she was working on and grabbed a whole new pile. He sat there, semi-patiently, while she went over each one, taking notes on her laptop and speaking key observations into her recorder. If this was any indication, she planned on catching up on four years’ worth of work in one night. It was admirable—and crazy as hell.

Still, he didn’t interrupt her. Instead, he continued to sit and watch her. He wished he could see more than her profile, but he didn’t want to startle her, so he contented himself with watching her lips move as she spoke. He tried to guess which slide she was on, as his view of the computer monitor was impeded by her full breasts.

Time passed slowly as he watched her, and eventually his brain started replaying highlights from the night before. Even though he told himself that she’d left, that it obviously hadn’t been as important to her as it had been to him, it didn’t matter. The dragon remembered the pleasure—the incredible, mind-boggling pleasure—of being with her, and he wanted it again. Desperately.

He remembered what she looked like, drunk on tequila and pleasure, her cheeks flushed a rosy pink and her lips swollen with his kisses.

Thought about her breasts, with their tight, raspberry nipples and the silky softness of her skin when he’d run his lips over her stomach.

Pictured the small smattering of freckles that ran across her shoulders and the look in her eyes when he’d thrust inside her for the first time.

His dragon stretched at the memories and lazily raked its sharp talons across the inside of his skin. It was a warning—loud and clear—that his human side wasn’t going to be in control much longer. Hours of fighting the pain and exhaustion were wearing on him. When he added in the fact that he was nearly desperate to figure out what had sent Jasmine running away at the first sign of dawn, he figured he was doing pretty well, especially now that he was back in the lab where he could smell her. The ripe blackberry scent of her drove him insane, as did the insatiable desire he had to touch her.

Eventually, he couldn’t wait any longer without losing what small grip he had on his self-control. “How many more samples do you have to go through?” he asked in a voice husky with disuse and desire. He’d been sitting there for more than an hour.

Jasmine started a little at his voice, and for the first time he felt bad about watching her work without her knowledge. The dazed eyes she turned on him made him feel a little like a voyeur.

“I’m sorry, what?” she asked, as if trying to comprehend where he’d come from.

He repeated the question as he crossed the lab, adding, “It’s getting late.”

Her eyes flew to the clock on the wall and widened, as if she’d just realized that it was almost midnight. Sighing, she stretched a little before rubbing her hands over her face.

For the first time, he realized he wasn’t the only tired one. Her eyes were shadowed with dark circles, the skin of her face pulled taut over her cheekbones. And her hands were shaking almost as badly as his own were.

He thought of the scars he’d seen on her body the night before, the way she’d refused to talk about them. Remembering what Phoebe had told him about her friend, he figured the scars were a lot more serious than Jasmine had let on.

She was on leave from the CDC in order to recover from her injuries, and he’d put her through a demanding night of sex on top of a long drive, then followed that with an emergency trauma, eight hours of work and the realization that humans weren’t the baddest thing on the planet.

What a great job he and Phoebe were doing helping her get acclimated to the lab and the Dragonstars. He would have kicked his own ass if he could have reached it.

“I just need a little longer,” she said. “I want to look at a few more cases and—”

“It looks like you’ve already examined close to a hundred. I figure the rest can wait until tomorrow morning.”

“But there are so many. I can’t believe how many of your clan have died from this in the last year. It’s scary.”

He already knew that. It
was
frightening and infuriating, and sometimes fighting it was the only thing that got him up in the mornings. But he’d been struggling with this thing long enough to know that wearing himself out over it—each day, every day—wasn’t going to help. It looked like she needed to learn the same thing. “You need to rest. You’re still recovering from your injuries.”

Her eyes turned hot. “I told you they weren’t—”

“Yes, but Phoebe told me something completely different when she first mentioned you coming to help out. In this case, I’m more inclined to believe her than you.”

“It’s my body.”

“It is,” he agreed. “But you don’t seem to be taking very good care of it.”

“Like you take such good care of yourself? You healed that guy today when you were already run down. It took so much out of you that I swear I really thought you were going to have a heart attack. And yet, here you are, nearly twelve hours later—still working.”

“I’m waiting on you. I would have gone straight home from Dylan’s, but I wanted to check and make sure you were all right.”

A flicker of distress flitted across her face, but was quickly banished by indignation. “I’m not an imbecile, you know. I am perfectly capable of shutting down a lab by myself.”

“Yes, but seeing as how my clan members are being attacked on a regular basis, it didn’t seem smart to let you wander around on your own, unprotected. Besides, Phoebe would kill me if something happened to you.”

“I’m not one of your clan. No one would bother me.”

“Don’t underestimate our enemies. The Wyvernmoons in particular are total bastards, and they would do whatever it takes to strike us—even if that means taking out a human doctor. Especially if it means that. They’re not overly fond of humans.”

“But how would they even know I’m working with you? I just got here.”

“Well, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? They’re getting information from someone. How do you think they knew to take Ty when they did? Besides, in your case, they don’t even need someone to tip them off. You smell like us.”

“What?” She jerked in her seat, discreetly sniffed at herself. “I don’t smell like anything—and neither do you.”

“You smell like a lot of things. Night-blooming jasmine mixed with summer blackberries and wild, desert rainstorms.”

Her eyes widened and one hand went to her throat. “I don’t—”

“Oh, you do.” He leaned down, putting an arm on either side of her even as he told himself he was being incredibly stupid. “Oh, you definitely do.” Closing his eyes, he breathed in her scent and for a moment remembered what it was like to be between her legs with his mouth on her hot, wet pussy. She’d tasted even better than she smelled.

He grew hard at the thought, his blood running hot. A quick look at Jazz showed that she seemed as affected by him as he was by her. Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated and her chest was moving in a rapid rise and fall that had him aching.

He was close to her, so close that their lips were only inches away, and for a moment he thought about closing the distance. Thought about what it would feel like to put his mouth on hers. Thought about what it would feel like to sink his tongue deep inside her and absorb every drop of her honeyed warmth. Only the thought of what it had felt like to wake up in that hotel room without her kept him from acting on the impulse.

He wanted her with an intensity that bordered on madness, but he wouldn’t go there again, wouldn’t push her if it wasn’t what she wanted. He’d lost too many people to deliberately open himself up to someone he knew would walk away.

Forcing his brain away from sex with Jasmine and back to the point he’d meant to make, he said, “Besides, when I said you smelled of us, I wasn’t talking of your normal scent. When he was here, Dylan extended his protection to you—the protection of the Dragonstars. With our enemies running around unchecked, he wanted to make sure you weren’t completely vulnerable whenever you stepped out of the lab. But in doing that, he coated you with evidence of that protection. You can’t smell it or see it, but any dragon within a hundred yards of you will sense the magic and know that you are under the protection of the king.”

“King? You guys have a king?”

He almost laughed. Of course, that’s what Jazz would choose to focus on. Not the fact that she needed protection from things much larger and scarier than she was, but rather the clan hierarchy. It was a much more tangible thing, and even after only knowing her a day, he’d figured out that Dr. Jasmine Kane was much more comfortable dealing with what she could see and feel.

“Of course we do,” he answered. “We’re a fully operating society, you know. We have a king, and he has an advisory council that helps him govern and that protects the clan.”

“And Dylan—he’s your king?” she asked.

“He is.”

“Wow,” she said softly, looking him over. “And you work for him?”

“In essence I’m a sentry, which means I’m part of his advisory council, as are the others you met today—Gabe and Logan and Ty. Even Phoebe has an advisory role now.”

“Because she’s engaged to Dylan?”

He nodded. “And because she’s brilliant. In the many, many years Dylan’s ruled the Dragonstars, he’s always respected intelligence—even if it means people disagree with him. That’s the reason he made the decision to bring in Phoebe—and now you—to fight this disease. He takes his responsibilities very seriously, and the fact that his people are suffering is killing him.”

Jasmine nodded as if his words made perfect sense, and the look she gave him was thoughtful. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“This lab is your baby. Your name is on a hell of a lot more of the research about this disease than Phoebe’s is. How do you feel about this disease—and your inability to find a cure?”

Her matter-of-fact question hit him hard, and the dragon, already awake and interested in the conversation, took it the wrong way. Before he could stop it, before he could put a chokehold on the anger that was always too close to the surface, his talons punched right through his fingertips and the flames he kept carefully banked inside of him roared to life.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

J
asmine watched in fascination as Quinn’s eyes caught fire, the green irises blazing so brightly that she swore just looking into them could make her burn. A quick glance down at his hands—and the claws that had punched right through the pads of his fingers—confirmed that the fire she was seeing belonged to the dragon, not the man.

Her heart rate tripled even as her breathing stopped. She told herself to hold very still, despite the fact that every instinct clamored for her to run. But she’d learned enough about wild animals to know that running only triggered their hunting instincts. The last thing she wanted was to be pursued by Quinn’s dragon.

She’d tried to take the notion of shape-shifters in stride—after all, the dragons weren’t the first shifters she’d ever heard about. In the course of her work, she’d heard various tribal legends of different races of shifters—particularly in Africa and South America. She’d never experienced any up close, however, and these dragons were still almost too much to wrap her mind around. Leopards and lions were real creatures, so she’d been able to believe in the existence of cat shifters in an abstract way, but dragons were mythological—weren’t they?