Carefully, I withdrew my hand. A wet, suctioning sound echoed in the quiet, obscene and intimate. Her fluids coated my fingers, glistening in the dim emergency light.
I sat back on my heels, holding my hand up, staring at it. I felt dirty. I felt exhilarated.
Tessa let out a long, shuddering sigh and turned her head to the side, slipping from consciousness into a deep, chemical sleep. The crisis had broken. The fever had snapped.
"Cover her," I whispered, my voice trembling.
I stood up, my legs shaking, and walked to the sink. I turned on the faucet, but nothing happened. The power was out. No water.
I stared at my hand, at the mix of her biology and my art, stained together on my skin. I grabbed a rag from the counter and scrubbed at it, watching the spectator die and something else, something dangerous and possessive, take his place.
EIGHT
Anders
The numbers were the only thing that made sense.
Green phosphor digits on a scrolling graph. The rhythmic spike and trough of a sine wave representing a heart that was currently beating itself to death.
178.
179.
"Slow down," I commanded. My voice was a stranger’s, flat, metallic, stripped of any inflection that might betray the fact that my own pulse was hammering against my collar shuddering like a dying engine. "She’s peaking too fast. If she crests over 185, we risk cardiac seizure. Bring her back."
Simon didn't look at me. He was huddled between her spread legs, his dark hair falling into his eyes, his back bowed in an arch of absolute concentration. He looked like he was praying at an altar made of flesh and desperation.
"I can't just stop," Simon hissed, the words wet and ragged. "She's right there, Anders. She’s fighting the crash."
"I said slow down," I barked, stepping closer.
I looked at the heavy Rolex on my left wrist. The second hand swept past the twelve. Time was a luxury we had burned throughten minutes ago. We were operating on a deficit now, borrowing seconds from fate.
"Edge her," I ordered, the term medical and obscene all at once. "Keep her on the precipice. Let the dopamine flood the receptors before you let her break. Her system needs to be saturated or the drop will kill her."
It was logistics. It was crisis management. It was the same part of my brain I used to negotiate multi-million dollar contracts or navigate a hostile takeover. You isolate the variables. You control the outcome. You do not let emotion cloud the data.
But the data was a woman.
The data was Tessa Kane, naked and writhing on the cold concrete of her own kitchen, her body a pale, slick map of agony and pleasure. The data smelled like blackberries, salt, and drowning.
The scent hit the back of my throat like a physical blow, a dense, intoxicating fog that bypassed my logic centers and went straight to the primitive, lizard-brain stem of my biology. It demanded I drop the tablet. It demanded I shove Simon out of the way, sink my teeth into the junction of her neck and shoulder, and claim the distress as my own.
Mine. Protect. Keep.
The Alpha roar built in my chest, a vibration so deep it rattled my ribs. I clenched my jaw until my teeth ached, locking the sound behind a wall of silence.
I wasn't an animal. I was Anders Svinton. I was the man who fixed things. And right now, fixing things meant watching my best friend stick his fingers inside the woman I had spent ten years regretting.
"175," Daniel rumbled from where he held her legs. His voice was the anchor in the storm, deep and vibrating through the floorboards. "She’s breathing, Anders. It’s working."
"It's not done," I said, my eyes never leaving her face.
She was unrecognizable from the terrified girl on the graduation stage. Here, in the dim emergency light, she was elemental. Her head was thrown back, exposing the long, white column of her throat. Her lips were parted, swollen and bitten, letting out sounds that were tearing me apart piece by piece.
"Simon," she gasped, her hips snapping up, chasing his hand. "Please. Now."
"Not yet," Simon groaned, his voice wrecked.
