Page 11 of Hot Zone

Three

They stood in the wreckage of the lab, soot-blackened and dripping wet. Alex looked around in disgust. Project Anasazi had just taken a kick in the butt. Let alone the fact that the doom of mankind might very well hang in the balance.

Nobody actually knew what would happen if the time travelers of Project Anasazi didn’t find the twelve pieces of the Karanovo Stamp and put it back together. And nobody wanted to find out. Would invaders from the Centaurian Federation come here and destroy every woman on the planet? That was Athena’s theory, at any rate. It was probably true, even if it sounded like sci-fi bullshit.

Alex snorted. If someone had told her a year ago that such a thought would enter her mind and not cause her to think she’d gone crazy, she would have never believed them. But then, she heard dead people talk and wasn’t crazy, either.

And Athena wanted her to jump next? Alex had two words for the professor: hell no.

She picked her way over to where Professor Carswell was staring down at a ruined computer console.

“Project Anasazi is over, isn’t it?” Alex asked quietly.

Athena looked up, startled. “Of course not. I’ve still got the headband, and the programming to amplify its sine waves is a fairly straightforward algorithm. I even have backup copies of the software. I can be up and running again in a matter of hours. It may take a few days to repair the booth, but it’s not a difficult job. And of course, the Ad Astra notebook is safely tucked away.”

“Well, that’s good. And I hope Tessa is okay, but you don’t look so great, Professor. What’s really going on?”

Athena’s penetrating gaze pinned her in place. “There’s not a scorch mark anywhere in the room. Not one.”

Alex looked around with fresh eyes. The professor was right.

Athena continued, “Explain to me why, then, if the blaze never reached this lab, the firemen ransacked every desk and filing cabinet, and smashed every computer in this room to smithereens?”

Alex didn’t say anything. She decided at that moment that she would wish Project Anasazi all the best, but there was no damned way she was going to follow Tessa in this suicide mission.

The instant their lips touched, their auras blended into an indigo vortex of such intensity Rustam could hardly look at it. The power writhed around them, sinuous and seeking, forcing them inevitably together.

Her mouth opened beneath his in a gasp of surprise, and desire such as he’d never felt raged up in him. She tasted of mint. And her pheromones shouted of sex. His arms swept around her and he all but inhaled her.

It was too much. His mind lost control of it all, and the power around them leaped and spun wildly. A frisson of alarm skittered down his spine. Uncontrolled power of this magnitude was incredibly dangerous. It could destroy them both.

Tessa’s arms crept around his neck and the colored strands flew even faster, whirling crazily about them. Their energy fields merged into a burning sphere so bright he was forced to close his eyes against its blinding glare.

It built and built until it went supernova, exploding around them in a display of fireworks that buffeted his mind so violently he barely managed to remain conscious.

Tessa collapsed against him with a cry, her body limp in his arms. Had she fainted? Dizzy himself, he held her close while she slowly roused.

A familiar, but stronger than normal, thumping sound startled him. And then he recognized it. Their hearts. Beating as one in perfect simpatico.

And he was lost.

Out of the sudden blackness around them, completely devoid of blue or violet, came a new sensation: her lips moving against his neck, soft and warm. He tucked his chin down to gaze at her, and she lifted her face. Kissed him again, pulling him into her effortlessly.

He had no will left to resist. Down, down he fell, into an endless, dark tunnel of need so overpowering he could barely form thoughts, let alone resist it. He was helpless in the face of her feminine allure.

If she was the weapon of a new breed of magicians, then his people were well and truly lost. Not only was he incapable of fighting her, he had no desire to fight this. None. Even if it led him to his doom. He was mesmerized. Entranced. The great sorcerer ensorcelled.

“Tessa,” he groaned, “what have you done to me?”

They fell onto the bed together. Her body moved sensuously across his and he could only fling his arms wide and surrender, to let her have her way with him.

Her thigh rubbed across his arousal, her lush breasts pressing through thin fabric against his bare chest. Her nails lightly raked his neck and shoulders, sending frissons of pleasure shuddering across his skin. Her hair fell in a white-gold curtain about them, glistening in the moonlight.

“What have you done to me?” she muttered.

He mustered the strength to spear his hands into her hair. To force her to look into his eyes. “Nay, ’tis most assuredly you who have beguiled me. What magic did you use?”

She stared down at him in the moonlight, her eyes wide, so mesmerizing he could lose himself in their silver depths forever.

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