“I am living. I do not kill; I do not follow their command. They have not caught me, nor captured me again since my teens. I will defeat them until I can no longer, Ms. Tyler. Then, as I said, the rest is history.”
“My father is offering you an alternative,” she told him.
She fought a shiver that washed over her body as he moved, bringing his body closer to her. Heat suffused her, making the flesh between her thighs moisten. If the feeling wasn’t so strange, she would have been amused.
Callan Lyons was watching her with a frown, a question in his eyes as he came closer. She watched him inhale deeply, his eyes narrowing on her. As he brushed against her, the shiver couldn’t be controlled. It tightened her scalp, tingled down her neck, then spread out over her body, drawing goose bumps in its wake.
He stopped behind her, his body so warm the heat seemed to wrap around her. She could feel her body wanting to relax against him, wanting to be surrounded by him. Her thighs weakened, and between them she could feel the slow leak of moisture from her inner flesh, preparing her, readying her. Insanity. She gasped, startled when she felt his chest brush against her back, his head lowering to her ear.
“I am going to unlock that door, Ms. Tyler. When I do, I want you to walk out of here, get in your vehicle and go home. Make no stops between here and there and do not mention my name or what you know to anyone, do you understand me? It just might keep you alive.”
Merinus turned her head, a grin edging her lips.
“Are you trying to intimidate me, Mr. Lyons?” Good gracious, where had that husky edge to her voice come from? Maybe the same place that the sharp contraction to her womb originated from. She felt him tense behind her. His hand moved to her arm, his fingers curling, the backs of them running softly across her flesh.
“Do you know what the Council does to pretty little women like yourself?” he asked her, his voice low, a deep rumble of warning from his chest. “They impregnate you with their latest batch of genetically altered cells. Then they take you out daily, to check the progress. If your body rejects it, then they do it again and again until you either hold the fetus, or you’re too weak to be of use to them any longer. Then they give you to the soldiers to use until you die. It’s not a pretty way to be taken from this earth.”
Merinus bit her lip as she felt pain, overwhelming, intense, striking at her chest. It wasn’t fear, it was horror, revulsion, absolute pain for the women who had endured it, the man who had obviously seen it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, staring back, seeing only the thin line of anger his mouth had settled into.
“You are risking your very sanity being here.” His breath caressed her ear, a shiver working over her skin once again as he spoke to her. “Your sanity and your life. You should leave.”
His voice throbbed with menace. It pulsed with heated arousal. Thick and husky, it rippled over her nerve endings, seared her cunt.
“So you’ve said.” She stared forward as he moved again, coming back to face her. “I told you, I’m not willing to let them continue to kill and maim, and you shouldn’t be either. We can stop them. My uncle, Samuel Tyler, is a Senator and close to the President. He’s waiting to do whatever is necessary. I have seven brothers, each one doing their part, and my father is willing to put every resource he has within his paper to back you. We have to make them stop.”
“And you think this will stop them?” he asked her incredulously. “Your innocence is to be envied, Ms. Tyler. It’s actually quite frightening. You can’t take these people down.”
She had to. She couldn’t stand to live if they managed to kill him. He was proud, determined and too damned remarkable in his very humanity to allow them to murder him. She had to convince him that his only safety lay in revealing the horrors he had escaped.
“You know who they are. You know what they are. You have the rest of the proof that we need to stop them,” she argued determinedly. “Your mother died because of this.”
“My mother was a victim of a random crime,” he growled. “Had the Council struck her, she would have disappeared and her body returned to me in pieces. The Council did not destroy her.”
“There was no sign of theft.” Merinus had read the police report. “It was a personal crime, Mr. Lyons. Whoever killed her wanted her dead.”
Merinus hadn’t come to this place unprepared. Her father had made certain she knew everything involving Maria Morales’ death and the evidence they had against the Council.
“And they succeeded. But it wasn’t the Council.” He stared down at her, his eyes hard, furious. “I know their scent, I know the stench of their evil. As cloying and cold as the scent of your arousal is sweet and hot.”
Merinus opened her mouth to argue until the last words penetrated her brain. She felt her face flush, her heart rate increase. She stared at him in surprise. How had he known?
“Explain to me why a young, innocent woman is standing here before me, her cunt wet and prepared for an animal? And I am an animal, sugar, unlike any you will ever know.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Merinus trembled beneath Callan’s regard. His amber eyes almost glowed, his voice lowered, husky. A quick, very brief glance below his h*ps showed a bulge that made her more than nervous. Evidently, she wasn’t the only one afflicted. And an affliction more than described it. She felt fevered, her skin sensitive, ready for his touch. It was unlike anything she had ever known. It was unlike anything she ever wanted to know.
“I don’t know.” She heard the nervousness in her voice, the confusion. The longer she stayed in his presence, the worse the temptation to touch him was growing. She stared at his chest, no longer able to stare into his eyes. Those amber depths drew her in, made her want, made her need things she wasn’t certain she should want. She flinched when his fingers gripped her chin, uncertain, almost frightened now. Had he not been aware of the desires flaring in her body, she could have handled this. Could have handled the direct look from his eyes, the caress of his fingers against her chin. She ran her tongue nervously over her dry lips, aware of the sudden fullness in them, the ache, the throb just beneath the skin. His eyes narrowed. His thumb reached out, running experimentally over the soft curve, picking up the moisture from her mouth. Her chest tightened as she tried to breathe normally. She couldn’t seem to draw in enough air to fill her lungs sufficiently. She felt the need to fight for breath, to release the moan she held there.
“You’re dangerous.” There was that growl again, rumbling just beneath the surface of his words.
“Whatever this is, Merinus, could mean our lives.”
“Anomaly.” She bit her lip. She had no answers for this.
A mocking curve of his lips showed his disagreement.