Seeker of Shadows (9 page)

“Busy night, Dev?”

“What can I tell you, Lottie? You’re sending too much work my way.” He peeled the glove from his right hand to extend it to Susanna. “I’m Dev Dovion. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Susanna is my OB. She has some experience in the, um, particulars of my situation.”

Dovion’s brows lifted as he studied her. “Interesting. A friend of Max’s?”

“Not exactly. Let’s say the other side of that same coin.”

From the cryptic dialogue, Susanna learned two things. Dev Dovion was to be trusted, and he knew about the Shifter presence in New Orleans along with something of their politics.

“She needs access to a lab and I told her you might be able to help.”

“I see.” His sudden caution said he did, indeed. “And what type of materials would you need processed, doctor?”

“Genetic, mainly.”

His brows hiked even higher at her reply.

“I’m having Mary Kate moved back here from California, Dev, and placed in a private care facility,” Charlotte abruptly told him. “Susanna’s going to begin an experimental line of treatment she believes can reverse some of the physical and mental damage.”

Dovion was quick. “The way Max brought you back.” When he noticed Susanna’s puzzlement, he explained, “Our fearless detective here tangled with some of your kind and ended up in the ICU with her bones and internal organs mashed like Sunday’s sweet potatoes. We were getting ready to administer last rites and pull the plug when she made a miraculous recovery. An inexplicable recovery. Is that what you have in mind with Mary Kate?”

Neither woman answered.

To Susanna, he said, “You know she’s human, don’t you? A nun. That she was burned over eighty percent of her body and still has a bullet lodged in her brain?”

No, not precisely those details, but she did now.

To Charlotte, he added, “And you have her permission to conduct these
treatments
that she might consider out of the moral ballpark?”

“She’s my best friend, Dev,” Charlotte answered mulishly. “She’s there in that damned storage facility because of me. Because of me and Max. What am I supposed to do? Just let her die? You think it’s a better moral choice to let her go to hell? Because that’s what she believes. Dying by your own hand is suicide. I’m willing to risk her annoyance rather than her soul.”

But maybe he wasn’t. That was what Susanna read in the impasse that followed.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
A doctor’s constant dilemma.

“And what does Max think about all this?” Dovion challenged.

Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. “He’ll agree with me . . . when I tell him.”

“Will he?” Dev challenged.

Charlotte’s jaw squared and rose with an arrogant tilt. “Yes.”

She was good, Susanna mused, using fierceness to conceal her uncertainty.

Under other circumstances, that might have been her cue to take a cautious step back. In her tenuous position as an outsider, the last thing she needed was to run afoul of the leader of the New Orleans Shifter clan in a spat with his not-quite-human mate. But Charlotte’s covert agenda, as intriguing as it might be, wasn’t the one compelling her to set aside her reservations.

She needed this opportunity for study. Desperately. And so, she remained silent, suppressing her misgivings regarding what they were about to do.

Dovion finally broke the silence, heaving a big sigh and throwing his hands wide. “All right, Charlotte. You know there’s little I can refuse you. Let’s give your friend a tour and lay down a few ground rules. Rules not even you will be allowed to break.”

“Whatever you say, Dev.”

Susanna keyed in the entry code on the rear door of the club, her mind still racing with probabilities and pathways for her research.

Though far from the sophistication she was used to, Dovion’s lab facilities were adequate, and what he didn’t have on site, he had access to. Reluctantly, he’d helped Charlotte create an identity for her, linking Susanna to an ongoing case so she’d have full run of the technology and testing she required, putting his own career on the line in doing so. If she had someone with his loyalty and dedication at her facility up north, how much smoother her studies would go.

Here, with free rein, she’d have the opportunity, if not the time, to explore her hypotheses, and perhaps discover the breakthrough she knew in her heart was there just beyond the reach of her next idea.

She couldn’t wait to get started.

The club’s interior was pitch-black and quiet as she hurried down the hall toward the open office door. A faint light shown within from the recessed fixtures she’d left dialed low. It was five
A.M
. She’d have only a few hours to set up the appropriate protocols and was anxious to boot up and begin. As she crossed to the big desk, the overhead fluorescents flashed on, momentarily blinding her like a lightning strike, as a startling thunder boomed behind her.

“Where the hell have you been?”

Six

T
he sight of Jacques LaRoche blown up into a temper rooted Susanna to the spot.

He was magnificent in his fury, brows lowered storm clouds over the now iridescent blue of his eyes, nostrils flaring like something wild and dangerous scenting a fight . . . or a female. His posture was all aggressive male, leaning in to intimidate, squared up to accentuate his impressive dimensions. In a moment, he’d be beating his chest and letting out a conquering roar.

And Susanna had had enough.

She’d been bullied and threatened and submissive for the last time. Fisted hands on her hips, she drew herself up with the added inches of her new shoes to a puny five foot four, placing her level with his sternum.

“Who do you think you are, taking that tone with me?” she snapped with the fierceness of a terrier attacking a Rottweiler.

If anything, her retaliation only fueled his anger. “I’ll take any tone I please. This is
my
place and you are a less than invited guest here. Where have you been?”

It registered in the back of her mind that he’d been worried by her absence, but she couldn’t get
past the arrogance of that snarling masculine entitlement.

“I don’t have to check my schedule with you,” she countered. “I’m using your computer. That doesn’t make you my babysitter or master.”

“When you’re supposed to be here and you decide to be elsewhere, you
will
check with me. You’re my responsibility,” he growled, “whether I want it or not.”

And he didn’t want it, or her. That truth was a hurtful jab but still her pride rallied. “You don’t owe me anything. I don’t want your sense of obligation hanging on me like chains. I’ve had all of that I can tolerate. Now let me do the work I came here to do.” In her frustration, she put her hands flat on his chest and shoved. Set like a mountain, he didn’t budge.

Huge hands curled about her wrists, startling a jump in her pulse. Suddenly, his hot gaze dropped, sweeping her from top to toe like the spotlight on a police cruiser. His deep voice became a gruff rumble. “What have you done to yourself?”

Uncertain whether his tone implied approval or disgust, Susanna rebelled against it. “Nothing for the likes of you.”

His features flushed with angry insult and a more uncontrollable emotion she feared and conversely hoped was desire. The sudden darkening of his eyes warned he’d been pushed beyond his limit, too, as he yanked her up against the unyielding wall of his body.

The contact shocked both of them into a moment’s pause. With the breath panting from them, their gazes held and searched in a confusion of helpless attraction and dismay. And then Jacques bent inexorably down to her in a measured move that she could have avoided if she chose to. She didn’t choose to. She waited, her heart sighing urgently,
Oh, yes. At last.

His kiss was a pure glimpse of heaven, forceful at first because she’d stirred his passions into a frenzy, yet quickly softening to a yearning so sweet she ached to the soul in response. The familiar cushion of his full lips intensified by the prickly outline of facial stubble had her lost in a delirious haze. Nothing had ever felt so strong, so right as the emotions crowding up inside her.

Before she could wake herself to take action, to touch him, hold him, to respond to the hunger surging through him into her, Jacques abruptly jumped away to regard her through wide, stricken eyes.

Susanna lifted a shaking hand to her mouth, not to scrub away the taste of him but to marvel at the delicious bruising of her lips. She couldn’t catch her breath. How had she existed for so long without this crazy zing of feelings, her skin tingling, her blood hot and heavy, need pooling damply at the apex of her thighs? Her body cried out for more, but one look at his frozen features told her nothing else would be forthcoming, except what she didn’t want to hear.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, apparently devastated by his lack of control as she stared blankly up at him,
trembling in what he had to assume was a trauma of shock. “I never . . . I would never . . . I don’t know what happened.”

She made her words necessarily cold and concise. “You overstepped yourself, Mr. LaRoche, and it
will
not happen again.” Her conscience writhed as she watched him assemble his scattered thoughts behind a self-preserving wall.

“Don’t worry, Dr. Duchamps. I’m not the kind of guy who has to force himself on females.”

“I’m sure you’re not. You have them trailing behind you throwing beer and gumbo in your path.” He almost started to smile but she couldn’t allow him even that little bit of relief. “I am not one of those females. I have a mate and a child waiting for me at my home in Chicago. I have no interest in the kind of dalliance you might offer.”

Finally, umbrage overtook all other emotions as he told her with a prideful stiffening, “You have no idea what I might have to offer and I’m not about to enlighten you.” Then he surprised her again with his sudden gruff admission. “I would never do anything to disrespect you or your family. Again, I apologize.”

Her mood and tone thawed despite her intention of keeping him at arm’s length. “Accepted. I’m here to work and I appreciate the offer of your facilities. In return, I’ll do you the courtesy of letting you know when I’ll be here and when I won’t be so you won’t feel obligated to worry.”

He gave a brief nod and after a few awkward steps
back, turned to escape his office without further comment, shutting the door behind him.

Jacques threw open the hinged pass-through at the end of the bar, gratified by the sudden startling noise it made as it slammed against the counter. The jarring sound echoed through the empty cathedral of his new life and through his equally shadowy soul.

What the hell is wrong with me?

He stopped before the small sink and twisted the cold tap, filling unsteady hands and splashing his face with the bracing chill. It failed to cool an overheated body or his wildly inappropriate thoughts.

He refused to glance up toward the dark blank of his office window where she was probably still shivering in dread and disgust. Because he was exactly what she feared.

A rude brute. An unmannered beast. An untamed animal
. Growling, grabbing at what wasn’t his to take or desire. A primal, inferior species unable to harness his carnal needs.

Jacques started to reach for one of the jewel-like bottles stacked in tempting rows, but let his hand drop away. He stared at the face in the mirror behind them that had been that of a stranger when he’d first seen it seven years ago. He’d had no idea who those features belonged to before that moment. He could have been anything, anyone. What he’d become had been born in that instant of nonrecognition.

What he did know was that he’d belonged to them,
to those pitiless users in the North, who’d obviously trained him to serve their capricious whims. The scar between his shoulder blades told him that much. Had he pleasured their females? Had he hunted and killed his own kind the way the Tracker who’d died in the hallway had? Had he been a mindless drone who went about their business with a blind obedience? Was he so conditioned to their commands that he had no self-control even now?

Had the riotous emotions spiraling through him been programmed to be there to protect their kind from his natural impulses?

Resentment simmered as he paced, movements dangerously predatory even as his thoughts panted in raw confusion.

Why can’t I get a grip? This isn’t me. This isn’t what I’ve made of myself. Why am I letting her get to me? She’s one of theirs, not one of mine. She belongs to one of them, not to me. Not to me.

So why was every primal pulse of his blood denying that fact?

There was no explanation for the way his heart had stumbled when he’d looked into his office and discovered her gone. Instantly his mind had blanked with alarm and self-blame, thinking some harm had come to her. That crippling wave of fear had almost taken him to his knees. The response came from no place he recognized, but he’d been there before. When he’d seen that Tracker place a gun to her head.

He would never stand for injury to come to any
female, to anyone weaker or defenseless. Not in his place, not on his job site, not in his presence. He just wouldn’t tolerate it. But these instincts, so overprotective and nearly pathological where Susanna Duchamps was concerned, defied logic or understanding.

So he stalked behind the bar, circling from one end to the other and back again, like a wild thing in a cage, trying to outdistance the emotions churning through him. He was still shaking inside, all his senses in a heightened state pumping raw adrenaline like a crude oil leak. The need for violent action spiked, fever hot, because sex was out of the question.

Sex was what he wanted. Sex with that maddeningly irresistible female cowering in his office. The taste of her burned through his blood like grain alcohol, frying his thought process, enflaming his lust. He’d felt her heartbeat leap beneath the press of his fingertips, and for a moment had believed it was spurred by an answering passion.