Heart of Danger Read online

  She grinned. “Eat.”

  He did. The first time she’d seen him eat with appetite since she woke up. It felt good. He felt good, she knew. She could feel him feeling good.

  “How’s the Captain? How are the men?”

  “They’re . . . stable. Pat and Salvatore say they should recover eventually, but it will take a long while and a lot of rehab. Stella’s taking extra care of the Captain. At some point we’ll be able to debrief them and we’ll decide what to do about it.”

  That sobered her up. “You’re going to want to clear up your names. You were framed. You could come out in the open once the Captain testifies.”

  His grin stopped. “Yeah. We’ll clear up our names eventually. With the Captain and the rest of the men here, somehow it seems less of a priority. We got five new people in Haven last week. We need to upgrade the water system and Jon has plans for a community center. We think—” He drew in a deep breath, looked her in the eyes. “We think our place is here. But I can’t make decisions for you. You’re a scientist, with a billion degrees. I don’t think I can ask you to give up your research career to stay with some outlaws in a high-tech outlaw camp. So you say the word and we’ll start petitioning the U.S. government for a reversal of our conviction in absentia.”

  Catherine was appalled. “Oh no!” Her hand reached out to his and his curled up around hers immediately. That instant connection, warmth and love, their two hands melding together. Her talent—her gift—was growing stronger as if her time here in Haven had shifted her into a new gear. But there was nothing like what she shared with Mac with anyone else. Their bond was strong and deep and . . . three-way? “I don’t want you doing anything of the sort. We’re building something here. Something important. I can’t tell you why, but I believe that down to my bones. That something is happening here that mustn’t be disturbed or broken. Can’t you feel it, too?”

  The corner of Mac’s mouth lifted. “I don’t feel much beyond tiredness these days, but yeah.” He blew out a breath. “I want us to stay here and continue building—whatever it is we’re building. And I want us to do that together.”

  “I know something else I want us to be doing.” Catherine slid out of her seat, rounded the table and sat on Mac’s lap. His eyes widened in surprise but his arms closed around her carefully.

  He’d been very very careful around her since she’d awakened. Treating her like a porcelain doll, something that would shatter if he held it too hard. He’d barely kissed her since she’d come back from the dead. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he’d lost interest in her. But he hadn’t. He hovered over her constantly, fed her, walked with her wherever she went and would have washed her if she hadn’t put her foot down.

  One thing he hadn’t done was make love to her and she felt that absence like a shard of glass cutting through an artery.

  He was holding her loosely. Not like a lover, but like someone waiting to catch a fall.

  She put her nose against the skin of his neck and inhaled. Her Mac. She missed him so. “Make love to me,” she whispered, and bit his ear lightly.

  He jumped. She pulled back to look at his face. He looked alarmed.

  “Do you think—what did Pat say?”

  “I don’t need Pat’s permission to make love to you.” She inhaled again, rubbed her breasts against his chest. “And to answer your question, yes I think I can and yes I think we should.”

  “Oh God.” Mac shuddered, closed his eyes, leaned his forehead against hers. “I think I’m still in a state of shock. When I thought you’d died . . .” He gave another shudder.

  “Well, I didn’t die.” Catherine nipped the skin of his jaw, kissing her way to his chin. She knew he felt the wash of her breath over his mouth. So close . . .

  “Man. Sex.” Mac shook his head. “I don’t even know if I can. I think I’m impotent. I think all my hormones were knocked out of my body. I didn’t think of it at the time, but I’d have taken a vow of chastity just to make your heart start again.”

  “But you didn’t.” A light taste of his mouth. “Nick and Jon would have told me. And anyway, vows like that under duress don’t count. And for the record?” She slid her hand down over his chest, over his hard belly, into his sweatpants, and ah yes. He was already hard. “For the record, I don’t think you became impotent at all.”

  At her words, his penis swelled and moved in her hand and Mac laughed.

  “You’re outvoted, Tom McEnroe. Me and him against you. Two to one.” She kissed the edge of his mouth and he kissed her back, lightly. “And since you make such a big deal about Haven being a democracy and all, I think you should just go with the majority vote.”

  “Mm.”

  She smiled against his mouth. When he lost words, he was all hers.

  “Up.”

  She stood and he pulled down her pajama bottoms and panties. He lifted slightly and pulled down his sweatpants. He went mainly commando as most Special Forces soldiers did. She remembered her surprise when he told her that. Saves us from crotch rot, he’d said, whatever that meant.

  But now she was just grateful because he sprang free, fully erect, lying against her belly.

  Ah, this. She’d craved it so. This heat, this closeness, the sheer soaring pleasure of it. He was kissing her deeply now, one hand holding her head to his, the other against her bottom, holding her tightly against him.

  Then he was touching her between her thighs. He was trying to see if she was ready for him because he had gone from zero to a thousand in a few seconds. He felt as hot and heavy as a club against her stomach. His fingers were telling him she was ready. She’d gone from zero to a thousand, too, all of her focused tightly on where he was touching her, oh so carefully.

  She didn’t want careful.

  She hadn’t died. Against all the odds, she hadn’t died. Nick told her a few days after she woke up that Mac had simply refused to let her die and here she was. Young and healthy and in love.

  Alive.

  A big finger entered her and she gasped with delight. Her vaginal muscles contracted around it, as if wanting to keep him inside her. His hand was shaking slightly, all of him was fairly thrumming with control because he didn’t want to hurt her.

  She could feel so clearly how he didn’t want to hurt her, how much he cared. It was in every touch, every kiss. And more, it was there, beneath his skin where only she could touch him, reach him.

  She lifted her head from his kiss and looked down at him, at that beloved face. At some level she knew he wasn’t handsome. He was scarred, his skin was pockmarked with old acne scars. His nose had been broken several times and was flat against his face.

  But she didn’t see that, she saw him, what he was, beneath the skin. In that place only she could see.

  And he was so beautiful.

  “Now, Mac,” she whispered.

  “Now,” he repeated, watching her eyes as he held her up, positioned her and let her slide slowly down on him. Deep. Deeper. Until he reached so deeply inside her she couldn’t fathom how they could ever be separated.

  Ah, he felt so good. Her eyes fluttered closed, then opened suddenly when he shook her a little.

  “No,” he commanded. “Keep your eyes open.”

  So she did. He held her slightly above him and he moved his hips up and into her, so she was over him, her hair creating a little dark waterfall around them, sealing them off from the world in their own little private paradise.

  His hips moved up strongly, pulled down, then up. She gasped, but he knew it wasn’t pain because he was touching her and he knew her. This was what she wanted. This closeness, this feeling of being one in two bodies.

  Her hair swayed as she swayed with his thrusts. He was holding her so tightly she couldn’t move, but she didn’t need to, Mac was doing everything and he was doing it perfectly. He went slowly at first, getting her used to him again, but he felt, he knew, when he could speed up.

  The thrusts became harder, faster, and heat w
as spreading from her groin up through her whole body. She wanted to close her eyes but she couldn’t. She couldn’t look away from him as his features tightened, became strained.

  He was pumping heavily now, the chair rocking, joints squealing, and the heat rose and rose and rose . . .

  Catherine’s whole body tightened and released as she rose slightly on her knees, head thrown back, convulsing in hot waves that rode the edge of pain.

  It pushed Mac over the edge, too, as he gave one last hard thrust that shook her body and came in endless hot liquid spurts, pouring into her body with a harsh cry.

  She slumped against him, damp and flushed and happy. Together.

  They sat in silence, her head nestled against his shoulder, in his arms, him still half-hard inside her.

  It was the happiest moment of Catherine’s life. She felt as if they had climbed a mountain together and stood looking at the promised land.

  She turned her head lazily and kissed his ear. “You know what?”

  She felt rather than saw him smile. “What?”

  “I think we made a baby.”

  His entire body jolted and she felt a rush of joy flood through her and she couldn’t tell whether it was his or hers. Or both.

  San Francisco

  Arka Laboratories

  The local police force has carried out extensive forensics on the scene of the break-in at the Millon facility. The weapons are military-issue but are not found in any military database. No fingerprints or DNA were found. The video cameras were disengaged and steps to ensure that never occurs again have been taken. The security company has been fired and a new one, a very reputable company run by a former general, Clancy Flynn, has been hired.

  An exhaustive inventory has been taken but it appears nothing has been stolen from the laboratory. The computer system is intact. It is my considered opinion that the break-in was unsuccessful and has proven to be nothing more than a spur to increase security.

  Lee finished the report and sent it off to the Arka board where the old men who sat on it would have their office managers read it to them and would sign it unread.

  Lee had a new, interesting avenue of research. Arka had developed a miniature, handheld fMRI that could scan brains without the patient knowing. It could be used in the field and already his assistants were taking surreptitious scans of people in movie theaters, in libraries, on athletic fields.

  Interesting things were showing up.

  But what was most interesting was a paper no one had read because Lee had read it before it could be published and the researcher had had an accident.

  Lee had given the researcher, who worked at a psychiatric institute, a prototype of the fMRI to use on the clinically insane. But there were several patients the researcher considered sane, but with unusual talents. He’d written extensive dossiers on the patients, so extensive Lee was convinced they could do what the researcher said they could do.

  One could foretell the future.

  The other could astrally project.

  The third had telekinesis.

  Lee had their scans up on his screen, side by side by side. Each had a tiny point of light in the parahippocampal gyrus, a part of the brain normally considered inert. With a slide of his fingers the three scans superimposed and the same point of light existed in the exact same spot.

  He had a fourth scan. Of Catherine Young, taken without her knowledge a few weeks before she disappeared. He slid that in on top of the other three, and though the morphology of the skulls was different, that point of light was there, in exactly the same place.

  There was something in Catherine Young’s brain Lee wanted, very badly.

  And he was going to get it.

  Acknowledgments

  Another big thanks to my agent, Ethan Ellenberg, and my editor, May Chen, and the great team at Avon.

  And thanks, too, to Adam Firestone, weapons consultant and combat consultant extraordinaire. All cool stuff is his. All mistakes are mine.

  About the Author

  LISA MARIE RICE is eternally thirty years old and will never age. She is tall and willowy and beautiful. Men drop at her feet like ripe pears. She has won every major book prize in the world. She is a black belt with advanced degrees in archaeology, nuclear physics, and Tibetan literature. She is a concert pianist. Did I mention her Nobel Prize? Of course, Lisa Marie Rice is a virtual woman and exists only at the keyboard when writing erotic romance. She disappears when the monitor winks off.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Books by Lisa Marie Rice

  Fiction

  HEART OF DANGER

  NIGHTFIRE

  HOTTER THAN WILDFIRE

  INTO THE CROSSFIRE

  DANGEROUS PASSION

  DANGEROUS SECRETS

  DANGEROUS LOVER

  E-Novellas

  HOT SECRETS

  FATAL HEAT

  RECKLESS NIGHT

  Credits

  Designed by Diahann Sturge

  Cover design by Mary McAdam Keane

  Cover photograph © by Damir Spanic / Getty Images

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  HEART OF DANGER. Copyright © 2012 by Lisa Marie Rice. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN 978-0-06-212179-0

  EPub Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780062121813

  12 13 14 15 16 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

  Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

  http://www.harpercollins.com.au/

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

  Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

  http://www.harpercollins.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1

  Auckland, New Zealand

  http://www.harpercollins.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road

  London, W6 8JB, UK

  http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  10 East 53rd Street

  New York, NY 10022

  http://www.harpercollins.com