“I will.” The softness of his tone was all the more deadly than if he’d yelled, proving his control and absolute conviction. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”
Would he? No wavering, no conflict showed on his hard face. But everything she’d studied, and everything she’d found, indicated he wouldn’t torture a woman. Of course, desperate times and all of that. “This will go easier if we work together,” she said levelly.
His gaze delved deep. “You’re right.” He clasped her hand in his warm one and shook. “You give me what I want, and I’ll protect and even kill for you.” Releasing her, he stood, reached into the dented dresser, and tossed a faded Los Angeles Dodgers T-shirt her way. “Besides the car ride here, when was the last time you slept?”
She caught the worn cotton as well as the scent of soap. Something clean? It was almost too much to hope for. “I, ah, don’t know.”
He lifted his head. “Right. Bathrooms are outside, and they’re not bad. We confiscated new honey buckets from a warehouse, and if you need to go, there’s a guard waiting to escort you. No hot water anywhere here. Do what you need to do, change into the shirt, and the bed is yours for a few hours.”
Her eyes ached they were so tired. “I don’t need to sleep.”
“You’re no use to me if you pass out from exhaustion.” He lifted her to her feet as if she weighed absolutely nothing. “Take a nap—just change your clothing first.”
Her instincts hummed, and she eyed his amazing physique. He obviously trained often. “What kind of fighting forces do you have here, anyway?”
He brushed a strand of hair from her face and then grasped her chin, tilting it up. The switch from gentle to firm was undoubtedly on purpose, and the tactic stopped her short. “Let me be clear on how this will work after your nap. I ask questions. You answer questions. That’s it. No more. Do you understand?”
Heaviness weighed down her limbs, and grit scratched her eyes. Every ounce of spirit she still owned wanted to defy him. To take him on, just for pride. But her intellect and her body won. This time. “I understand.”
“Good.” He released her and stepped back. “Do I have to stay and put you in that bed?”
An image of his hard body in bed shot through her head, weakening her knees. What in the hell was wrong with her? She’d seen good-looking men before. This one took handsomeness to deadly in a way that stirred her blood too much. Although it was nice to feel something other than fear and desperation. Plus, she could certainly rationalize her physical reaction to him.
When death loomed near and survival became everything, biology made a fighter, a soldier, like him desirable. Need easily created lust.
He grasped her arm, yanking her from her thoughts. “Lynne?”
“You can leave.” She sidled out from his hold, and he allowed it. “I could use a couple hours of sleep.”
“Good.” He pivoted and headed toward the door, his broad back remaining to her. “I’ll have guards right outside, just so you know.”
She clutched the shirt to her chest. Her freedom had been bartered the second she’d made the deal. “I know.”
He left, and she quickly changed, her mind too tired to process much beyond the softness of clean clothes. Drawing out her father’s journal, she ran a finger over the imprint of his name. DR. FRANKLIN XAVIER HARMONY, PHILOSOPHIES. God, she missed him. Gently, she tucked the precious journal into the pack and moved toward the mattress.
Pressing one knee on the bed, she peered between rough boards on the window to the dark world outside. Dawn had been covered by a thick mass of black clouds. Just her luck to arrive in Los Angeles during the short but brutal rainy season. She couldn’t see a thing.
Sleep. As a scientist, she understood the value of regenerating during a sleep cycle. Sliding beneath the covers, she inhaled the masculine scent of Jax Mercury.
As she lay in his bed, having met him in person, there was no doubt in her mind that she’d underestimated him. He was much more intelligent, much sharper, than she’d thought. While she’d known of his absolute dedication to Vanguard, she’d figured she’d be able to maneuver around him.
Something told her she’d been wrong.
Chapter Four
It is a miracle the earth survived the violence of space, and it’s a bigger miracle that humans have survived the earth.
At the end, we will pass the way of the dinosaur.
—Dr. Franklin Xavier Harmony
Jax rubbed his gritty eyes and left Lynne in his room, already planning how to best use her. He strode down the worn concrete stairs to what had always been a crappy alcove that served as the entrance to the upper two floors of the rent-controlled brick building. The first floor had consisted of a free medical clinic, soup kitchen, and offices for attorneys down on their luck. When he’d created the Vanguard headquarters, he’d changed the clinic into a triage infirmary, the soup kitchen into a soldier cafeteria, and the offices into his war rooms. He’d tossed legal books out in favor of weapons.
Well, he’d actually burned them for fuel. The old laws no longer mattered.
Then he’d promptly punched doorways between the three areas for better access.
He hit the alcove, turned to go through the new doorway to the soup kitchen, which was dead empty at the hour of dawn. The smell of burned tomatoes followed him as he skirted tables and rickety lawn chairs for another new doorway, this one to the former waiting room of the clinic.
Banging echoed from the back of the suite, so he crossed behind the dented reception desk. He found his man in a room that used to be the lunch room of the clinic. A blue halogen lantern gave off an otherworldly glow in the small space. “How much B do we have now?” he asked.
Tace Justice, dressed in full combat gear, glanced up from a microscope they’d found at a junior high several months ago. It rested on a surprisingly smooth wooden table in the center of the room, across from a counter lined with other medical supplies. “Finished the inoculations for this month, except for yours, and this is it. We’re out, kaput, done.” He stood and grabbed a syringe. “Since you’re here, let’s wrap this up.”
Jax grimaced and tilted his head to the side.
The needle slid in, and fire flamed through his neck. “You have the finesse of a fucking elephant,” he muttered.
Tace shrugged. “I was a field medic, not a doctor or a nurse. Take it and shut up, or go to the main infirmary for civilians in the center of Vanguard territory.”
Jax scrubbed both hands down his face and glanced at a child’s drawing of a distorted blond guy with his head open taped to the wall. “Is that supposed to be you?”
“Yep.” The Texas twang deepened. “Not sure what it means, and the open head is a little creepy, but it’s nice the kids found some crayons.”
“Lena?” Jax asked with a sigh.
“Of course.”
The little girl often found a way to wander into military headquarters to give presents, and Jax had a drawer in his quarters of oddly shaped and painted rocks she’d showered on him. “They need to do a better job of keeping the kids inner territory.”
“Then you should go inner territory more so folks can see you,” Tace said.