She felt a wave of weakness wash over her, and without thinking she leaned into him, her back to his front. His breath hissed out. She felt the heavy, thick erection pressed against her, but she couldn't have moved if her life depended on it - and maybe it did. There was no sanity, no thinking, only feeling. Her body betrayed her, burning between her legs, her breasts tingling, achy and swollen. It didn't help that her blood ran hot when she needed to slow everything down so the venom didn't have a chance to make things worse.
"Breathe," he ordered softly into her ear.
He knew. She was mortified that he knew. She tried to straighten, to stand on her own two feet, but his fingers turned to steel and he held her close.
"Don'. You know better. Just breathe slow and it will settle a little. Enough that we both can manage."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean for this to happen."
"It's not your fault, sugar," he said, his breath on her neck.
She closed her eyes, and allowed herself to lean against his chest. His rock hard erection. The man that was stamping his fingerprints into her bones. She slowed her breathing, fighting to stay upright when pain was hammering to get in. The pain wasn't just physical either.
"I - he - I angered Braden," she admitted reluctantly. "I wouldn't cooperate with things he wanted me to do. He threatened to terminate the babies if I didn't do what he wanted, and I lost my temper. It wasn't good. Two months later, he sent us all here. He has four trackers - he calls them his elite - although I think someone else provides them, otherwise he would have sent them after me right away. But they'll come. He also has his own special little army that he created."
She had just attained freedom. Only just. She'd lived her life under the control of others. Orders. Discipline. She barely knew there was another world out there. The taste of freedom was in her mouth. In her heart. She responded to the wildness of the bayou, the primitive, primal swamp. She had been so close and yet now...
She looked over her shoulder at Wyatt Fontenot, at the strength in his face, the intensity of his eyes and a mouth a woman might give up a lot for. She was lost. Not because he was sexy and hot. He was a family man and he protected and cared for those he loved. In all of her life she had never thought she might find such a thing. She had secretly longed to find it, especially when she was up all night with the three little ones, wishing she had a partner to help lighten the load for one moment.
Wyatt Fontenot would be a man like that. He could be ruthless and merciless and yet kind and compassionate. He would be a man who would put those he loved first, and he would always stand in front of them. Temptation was a wicked, sinful thing, and yet she knew she wouldn't do what her body and her mind wanted her to do. So easy. It would be so easy. But it wouldn't be real.
"Stop thinkin' so much, honey. It's all goin' to be okay. You'll see."
Wyatt picked her up, cradling her body gently. The pain broke through her mind and bled into his several times, but he was more prepared, now that he knew what was happening to them.
She was killing him with her thoughts. She didn't realize she was so ill she couldn't compartmentalize, and they already had formed a connection. She was spilling over into him and he wanted to shield her from every ugly thing she'd ever experienced.
"Have you heard of a man called Whitney? Dr. Peter Whitney?"
She bit her lip, calling his attention to it. Worse, the tip of her tongue slipped out to ease the bite mark, drawing his attention to that.
Pepper nodded her head slowly. "Yes. He came in and consulted with Braden a couple of times. He watched through the glass as one of the babies, Thym, bit me. He reminded me of a real reptile; his eyes were dead. Braden, who is very arrogant, was somewhat respectful toward him. Although I could see he didn't like Whitney."
"Are you certain it was Braden, not Whitney, who issued the termination order on the babies and you?"
She frowned. Her long lashes fluttered. His groin tightened. Her body seemed as if it was cooling fast when she'd just had a raging temperature. He needed to get her back to bed.
"I honestly don't know if there's a termination order out on me. There wasn't when I escaped, but there certainly could be now." Her head lolled back against his shoulder, as if the energy it took to converse was too much. "Braden called me into his office and asked me for some special favors. Not asked. Ordered. I refused. He told me if I didn't cooperate, he would consider terminating the children. All three of them. That's what he said. Consider. Like they were garbage. Nothing. Not human. Not children." She lifted her hand and wiped her face as if trying to erase the memory.
Wyatt realized he was just standing there, holding her in his arms, looking down into her face. Her eyes. He felt a bit like a man who'd just been hit over the head and was seeing stars. Very gently he deposited her back on Nonny's sofa and drew the covers over her. She had begun to shiver again.
"This is the worst. I know I'm not going to die, but it feels like every muscle in my body contracts and turns into hard knots that just won't let up. I don't know what DNA cocktail they used for little Ginger, but the pain is incredible."
"I can put you in a much more private room, give you fluids and painkillers through an IV and keep you away from everyone," he offered.
Her gaze jumped to his face. Her eyes looked like a doorway to another galaxy, one he wanted to go through. A paradise of sheer feeling. It was impossible to look directly into her eyes and not feel sexual awareness.
Pepper bit her lip. "Don't tempt me, Wyatt. Not now when I know what's coming. I've done this before and I know I can get through it."
"You didn't make that connection between us, Pepper." Wyatt felt compelled to admit the truth to her. "I did. When I tried to heal you. I merged our minds and somehow we stayed attached. What you feel, I can feel. Maybe the other way around as well. You didn' let your guard down, and you certainly weren' the one to compromise us. I did that all by myself."
Pepper's lashes fluttered. Her long, black lashes, thick and curved, two crescents as sexy as the rest of her. "Thank you for that, Wyatt. I don't know how true it is, maybe we're both a little responsible."
"The point is, I can take away the pain and you don' have to worry that somethin' will happen. You're strong. You'll manage."
A shudder ran through her body, a ripple of pain that had him nearly doubling over. He couldn't fight what he couldn't see. That pain wasn't his. The venom Ginger had injected into her wasn't solely that of a cobra. Pepper's immunity to the cobra bite was fairly strong. This was another strain that compromised her muscles and produced such pain.
"Damn them. Ginger is both, Elapidae and Viperidae, isn't she? The idiots wanted to make certain she could kill no matter what. I looked at her mouth when Grand-mere picked her up and there was no evidence of fangs. She's more viper, isn't she? But her bite is the deadliest because they mixed in cobra."
Pepper turned her face away from him. "You're the genius." Her voice had dropped nearly to a husky whisper. If he hadn't had such acute hearing he wouldn't have heard her.
"Baby, I'm not sayin' anythin' against her. I'm tryin' to help you through this, and I have to know what kind of venom is inside you." He pushed back her hair. He couldn't help himself, he had to touch her. He knew his tone was all wrong, but what he wanted to do was let out a string of curse words his grandmother would frown on and then go kill a few scientists - slowly.
"She's a seventeen-month-old baby who didn't ask for what they did to her. They gave her a high IQ and that scared them to death. She already knows what they did to her and why they want to use her. They think she's a monster, and she knows that too. They forced her to bite me over and over, and when she wouldn't, they hurt her. She killed three of the workers. She didn't mean to, but she strikes out when she's threatened. She's programmed to."
"Did you think you could give her a normal life?" Wyatt asked, sinking down onto the floor beside the sofa. He dropped his face into his hands. Trading his easy life in the bayou for enha
ncements seemed rather ridiculous to him now. Especially over a woman who had run out on him - a woman he realized if he'd just stepped back and taken a good look at he would have known she wasn't at all right for him. His problems were minuscule in comparison to that of a seventeen-month-old baby with termination orders out on her.
"No. Of course not. But I could give her a loving home. She's like any other human being. She needs love. She needs to know she's all right just the way she is. I can teach her the control she needs."
Her long braid had fallen over the edge of the sofa and he wrapped it around his fist, wishing he could push back all the strands that had escaped and curled around her face, but he didn't dare touch her so intimately again. Not when his body just wouldn't settle and his mind seemed consumed with her.
"I can see that. What are the other two like?"
"Beautiful and smart, just like Ginger. They used the same cocktail for all of them. Three little identical girls."