Passionate Immunity (11 page)

Kimber didn’t feel any of the usual shyness or embarrassment of having a man look at her naked body. Splayed like some ancient offering—open and totally accessible to him on his bathroom floor—had someone told her two days ago she’d be in this position, ravenous for a man she had known for less than twenty-four hours, she’d have laughed at the joke.

Far from some shy virgin, or self-conscious spinster, Kimber enjoyed her body and her sexual satisfaction, but that didn’t mean she paraded around naked, or prostrated herself in front of random strangers and asked coyly if they liked what they saw.

Tristan, however, was no random stranger. They knew things about each other, integral, elemental parts of each other’s psyche and true selves.

Besides, the heat and sensual awareness in the man’s dark gaze, the way his eyes devoured her like some delicious treat could not go unanswered. She craved this man, loved him deeply. She wanted him more than she could possibly ever put into words or explain to another.

Arching up, she cupped his face, brought him down to cover her body and kissed him like a starving woman. She slid her hands down the curve of his spine, palmed his arse and drew him intimately close, so his cock nudged at her entrance. She wanted to feel him, every hot, decadent inch of his cock, then feel his seed splash inside her body.

“I’m safe,” she whispered in his ear, hoping he knew her meaning.

“Me too, tested regularly,” he replied huskily. He held her hip with one of his large hands, pausing as if waiting for permission to enter her fully.

“Fuck me, Tristan, please, I need to have you, all of you.”

Moaning when their lips met once again, he pierced her core in a single, sensual thrust. Stretched unbearably tight, Kimber arched up, panting. She struggled to encompass his thick length. Their eyes met and in the silence only their ragged breaths could be heard.

Kimber felt as if she were looking into her lover’s very soul. She relaxed her muscles around his cock and her body turned liquid, the heat of her desire easing his passage.

Rocking into her, Tristan thrust with a series of lazy, sensual movements, slowly gathering momentum as he penetrated her deeper each time. Without a word they continued to stare at each other.

Each thrust rippled through her senses, driving her passions higher. Her face flushed with the heat of her sexual excitement, tiny beads of sweat making her skin slick from lust. Regardless, she couldn’t break the perfection of this moment. She lost herself in his eyes. A part of her felt as if they were opening themselves emotionally and spiritually as they watched each other, noting every move, every twitch, every aspect of their lovemaking. It was easily the most intimate, soul-baring moment of her life, and she felt overjoyed to be sharing such a deep, elemental part of herself with this man.

I love you
. The words reverberated silently in her head. Kimber longed to share this part of her feelings with him—but she feared it would be too much, too soon. She didn’t want to freak him out, or chase him away by asking for more than he was willing to give.

Her imagination, always overactive, could easily picture him whispering the same words to her as they came together in this union of souls.

“Fuck but you’re beautiful,” Tristan murmured. He roved his gaze over her face, seeming to take her all in and memorise her.

Kimber grinned and reached her hands around to grab his arse and drag him closer so they were pressed flush against each other.

“You’re a bloody handsome man yourself,” she replied, meaning every word.

They kissed again, the delicate spell between them shattering in the heat of their need for one another.

Kimber lifted to meet Tristan’s thrusts, crying out as he dipped his head and his mouth encompassed one of her nipples. The suckling sent small jolts through her body, her pleasure spiking. Her grip over the building orgasm slipped and she could feel her peak nearing.

“Mmm,” he murmured. He fondled her breast for a moment, then lightly pinched her other nipple. His teeth rasping over the sensitive nub sent her spiralling out of control. Wanting him with her every step of the way, Kimber clenched her inner muscles down tightly on his pulsing shaft, squeezing him in the most intimate of caresses.

“Fuck!” he cried out.

She watched his eyes widen and a tremor shake his body. Piercing her with rapid, hard strokes now, he rode through her climax, his own seeming to take him by surprise.

Heat splashed inside her as his seed shot into her womb. Short, sharp thrusts filled her to breaking point and Kimber screamed. She shook uncontrollably, caught up in the momentum of her orgasm. They scrabbled to pull one another closer, locked together in the most intimate of embraces.

Slowly she fell back to earth, panting, and slid against the tiled floor as sweat coated her skin. Gasping, it took them both a moment to gather their breath. Kimber threaded her hands tenderly through Tristan’s hair, enjoying the soft feel against her hot skin.

“See?” she teased, “I told you—you know how to show a girl a good time.”

“Any time,” he replied, his words joking but the look in his eyes serious. “For you, love, I’m willing any time.”

Satisfied beyond her wildest dreams, Kimber grinned as he wrapped her up in his warm embrace.

* * * *

“I need to get into the laboratory at work,” Kimber said while she finger-combed her damp hair into what she hoped would be a semblance of order. Steam filled Tristan’s small bathroom so the mirror was practically useless to tell just how much of a mess she looked.

Tristan had suggested they’d shower. When she’d admitted she hadn’t wanted to move, he’d confessed to similar thoughts. Logic had had her facing reality though. Together they’d shared a hot, indulgent shower full of laughter and playfulness. Despite the lateness of the hour—or earliness, depending on how you looked at it—she was now bursting with energy. Kimber could only surmise it had come from the danger of their situation. Normally at three in the morning she was sound asleep.

“I need to let Lucas know we’re all right first,” Tristan groaned. Her words seemed to penetrate his mind then. “That sample you took, you can run tests on it?”

“I can run a few preliminary tests,” she warned him, “but with the right equipment I can run many of the more detailed ones. I don’t work in immunology at the moment, so work doesn’t have all the instruments I’d need.”

“What if I could get you access to a lab that did? Could you do it?”

“DNA profiling and some of those tests take hours to condition,” she answered cautiously. “But effectively, yes, I could get us a lot of data before breakfast.”

“You’re perfect,” Tristan said as he planted a quick kiss on her lips.

Kimber chuckled when he moved away. She reached out, took his shoulder and pulled him back for a slower, far more thorough kiss. This time they both pulled away noticeably more sated.

“That’s better,” she murmured. “Go on, make your calls. Are you sure Lucas will still be up? It’s an unearthly hour of the morning.”

“He will,” Tristan replied, then he paused. “Well, I would still be. We’ve only been partners a matter of months so we’re still getting used to each other. I’ll be surprised if he isn’t pacing somewhere, waiting for my call to know we’re safe.”

Kimber grinned at him and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. He took his mobile phone out of his pocket and walked into the hallway. Recalling the files in his duffel, she retraced their steps back to where he had placed the bag. She opened the bag and rummaged around in it, pulling the four files out. She carried them over to the large table and spread them out.

“Hey mate, did you miss me?” Tristan spoke into his phone, his voice getting louder as he followed her into the room.

Kimber glanced up, exchanged a smile with him, then returned to her work as he sat on one edge of the couch.

Lining the folders up, she compared them against each other. She listened with half an ear to Tristan’s side of their conversation and tried to piece together what seemed to be going on. The matching names made her almost positive these were a selection of the patients Henley had listed as involved in Project Immunity. The fact they were being injected with a vaccine also supported this notion.

What she couldn’t understand as yet was whether Ennis, Delores and Mather’s deaths were due to coincidence—surely a stretch?—or related somehow to the vaccine.

Checking the dates against the notations, she knew they were all being inoculated roughly every three months, which she knew was about how regularly the body replenished its white blood cells. Flipping to the last page, she noticed none of them had had their first visit in the same time period, they all had come from different areas of Greater London, nothing immediately jumped out at Kimber to explain why these people had been chosen.

“…and then this weird science freak came from nowhere—there must have been an office or something out back we missed—and lost his mind. Started shooting at us…yeah I know, we weren’t being angels there, but that’s no reason to open fire on us…”

Starting at the beginning, she discovered that of the four patients, Ennis was injected first almost twelve months ago. Interestingly, she noted he’d been injected with I78, not I79. She looked about her for pen and paper. Kimber grabbed an empty envelope, then crossed back to the duffel. Rummaging through it she found a pen in a small zippered compartment.

Sitting back down, she made the notation to check I78 vs I79 and follow up whether it was actually a newer version of the vaccine.

Ennis had been inoculated twice, then two months later both Mather and Dolores had started within a week of each other. Six weeks after that Abigail had also been vaccinated for the first time.

Hoping that to see the timeline laid out sequentially would help, Kimber printed it all out in small letters, noting the dates of each vaccination. With luck, there’d be a pattern. Aside from the regularity of the shots, nothing struck her as interesting.

“…yeah, I know, Morrison cracks the shits when he gets woken up in the middle of the night…hell yeah, I’ve heard that story. I was there when Campos found the bones in his top desk drawer. Never heard an agent scream so shrilly.”

Distracted, Kimber lifted her head and caught Tristan’s gaze. He snickered and moved his phone away for a second.

“Morrison is our main medical,” he explained hastily. “Excellent man, but can be a cranky sonofabitch sometimes. Practical joker too. Glued a hand into the base of a mate’s desk drawer—every single bone in exact place—and scared the shit out of him. Morrison doesn’t like to be called out in the middle of the night unless it’s real important. Guy has a wife and five daughters, figures he deserves to have a semblance of a life and I can’t blame him.”

“Ah, thanks,” Kimber laughed.

“So who else can we call at this hour?” Tristan spoke back into his phone. “I can probably call in a few favours to get use of a lab, but I’d like to hold onto the only markers I have in that area. Surely you’ve got some chick you can call to sweet-talk, maybe take out for a nice dinner when this is done…”

Tuning out the ribald teasing between the two men, Kimber set back to work. She made a note of Abigail’s phone number and address, wondering if they should be a lot more worried that this young woman appeared to be the only patient still alive. Was it significant? Kimber wished she had more answers.

Studying Abigail’s file thoroughly, she tried to will her tired brain to make some giant leap forward and discover something brilliant.

Twenty-nine years old, five-foot-six and seeming in good health, the woman did not spark any miraculous understanding in Kimber. She’d been in for her check-up the previous day—which likely explained the blood vial Kimber had found stashed away awaiting testing—but the brief, clinical notes were not revealing.

Wishing she had this Dr Harper’s private notes, which almost certainly would be far more forthcoming, Kimber reviewed the files one last time.

“Lucas is going to call us back in a minute,” Tristan’s voice came from right beside her.

Kimber jumped slightly—still edgy from the mental weight of the files and what they symbolised. She sighed and leaned her head against the flat planes of Tristan’s stomach. She tried to soak in his calmness, needing his strength as she tried to not overanalyse the consequences of what they had discovered so far.

“Dr Harper appears to be modifying the vaccine,” she hypothesised. “I found a reference from months ago to I78. The recent entries all indicate they’re using I79. This isn’t some small-time back-yard deal. This is a grassroots, serious experiment. Abigail was in only yesterday for her standard check-up. That must be why I found her blood sample, Harper mustn’t have got around to it yet.”

Tristan rubbed her shoulders but remained silent.

Kimber closed her eyes for a moment, relishing not just at her lover’s touch, but at the slow release of the tension in her muscles. He knew exactly what she needed, and she loved him all the more for that.

“Oh,” she murmured, her voice thick as she tried to relax and let her worry seep out of her. “I’ve jotted down her number and address. I’m not sure we should call her at this horrid hour, but I’m hoping if we can talk to her without scaring her witless she might be able to fit in some of the pieces. I can’t see the big picture here, and there’s so many gaps and uncertainties I might go mad trying to second guess this all.”

“Tomorrow morning Preston will probably insist on calling the good doctor onto the carpet and close this whole mess down,” Tristan informed her.

Kimber felt a lot of the burden she’d been carrying lift. Of course, how stupid of her to not realise that.

“Preston will need to use caution,” she said thoughtfully. “Abigail still has whatever this vaccine is inside her system. We’ll need Harper to explain exactly what it is, or at least hand over his notes. I can tell you no scientist willingly opens their private notebooks unless they have great incentive. I can learn a lot from the tests we can run, but it will be far simpler to have Harper on our side and explain it all to us. It will go much easier for Abigail too.”