Page 26 of Black Bay Protector
He could smell that?
Lark chose that moment to intercede, pushing roughly against the big man to shove him out of the way. “God, Kong. Manners. Women don’t want you telling them what they smell like.”
A low rough grumble followed that statement. “You smell like coffee and frustration.”
Kong. The one with gorilla DNA that Jace had told her about. And also the one who’d worn high heels. Paige couldn’t help but look down at his feet with a chuckle, picturing a set of pink heels in place of the big black combat boots he was currently wearing. Like the rest of him, those feet were huge and she wondered how he’d even squeezed his toes into a pair of Lark’s heels.
When she looked up, she saw the man’s brown eyes were studying her thoughtfully. As if he’d come to a decision, he suddenly nodded. “Come, little human. As Jace’s woman, you should meet the others. I’ll introduce you.”
Paige was fine with being introduced – though she did hope he used her name instead of sticking with the ‘little human’ moniker – she was looking forward to meeting everyone. But she squealed in surprise when Kong picked her up and carried her under his arm like a football while Lark yelled at him for being a ‘classless oaf’.
When Kong broke into a jog, she clung tightly to the beefy, muscular arm that was wrapped around her middle as the world blurred by, feeling like she’d been put in a blender. The trip lasted only a few minutes, but when she was finally placed back on her feet, her head spun and she stumbled. She probably would have hit the grass if several sets of hands hadn’t reached out to steady her. It was Lark who helped her onto a bench with a muttered, “God save me from clueless idiots,” before asking more loudly, “Are you all right?”
Paige nodded and swallowed hard, waiting for the dizziness to pass.
When Paige finally felt like the world wasn’t tipping, she looked up to find herself surrounded by a large group of extremely fit, shirtless men that were staring at her with open curiosity.
Grinning, Kong happily announced, “Meet Jace’s little human. They’ve had sex.”
Chapter Thirteen
Withthebriefingfinished,the General watched Jace leave the office. The boy didn’t walk like a soldier but prowled with the feline grace of the animal primarily used to alter his DNA. With a shake of his head, Marshall picked up his phone. “Find me everything you can get on Paige Carter. Full background.” When the order was met with an affirmative, he gently placed the phone back in its cradle. What a mess. But that shouldn’t surprise him. Not after all these years.
While there was a small military presence at Black Bay, this wasn’t technically a military base, not in the strictest sense of the word. Special Operations. Well, they certainly were special. Jace and the others like him weren’t traditional soldiers and he’d learned long ago that trying to mold them into any preset ideal was an exercise in frustration. The animal DNA used to enhance them was too much a part of their behavior. They were predators. They lived for the hunt and the government wasn’t always quick to provide a target package. That meant a lot of downtime and they used that downtime to hunt down those doctors that, for one reason or another, had escaped incarceration. Doctor Dietrich was their white whale.
Marshall couldn’t blame them, not after all they’d suffered under that woman’s control, so he allowed them more leeway than he probably should.
His mind spun back seventeen years and what he’d discovered in those cells. They’d been kids, teenagers… but they’d never been allowed to play. They’d been trained for war practically from the moment of birth. Christ. They’d never even seen the sun.
That day he’d escorted them up from the sublevels of Legratia he’d watched them look up at the sky with awe, saw the look of rapture and amazement on their faces as they felt the warm rays on their faces for the first time. His ex-wife was fond of telling anyone that would listen that he had no heart, but that day, his heart had broken a little for those kids, and at that moment, he’d sworn to do everything he could to give them a better life. To protect them. He hoped he’d succeeded. He also hoped that this Paige Carter was worthy of Jace because he’d seen Jace’s face when he’d spoken of the woman. He recognized that look. The boy was in deep, and heartbreak was something the General could not protect him from.
Quickly getting over her embarrassment after Kong’s rather indiscreet pronouncement, Paige looked at the group of men, trying to figure out what secrets lived in their DNA without staring. All of them seemed to have teeth similar to Jace, and some of them had unusual eyes or telling bone structure but for the most part, they looked human. Very fit humans. Seriously, these guys should be photographed for a calendar. They’d make a fortune.
They all also had that scan code tattooed on their bodies. Some of them, it looked like, had tried to cover it with more ink, but the mark had bled through. Special ink? Or maybe it wasn’t a tattoo at all. Maybe it was a birthmark engineered by the scientists who had altered their DNA. A very specific gene mutation.
“So Jace’s teeth didn’t scare you?”
Paige looked for the person who’d asked that question, but it was hard to tell. All of the men had stepped forward, gathering around her, their faces eager for an answer.
“Er, they did at first. I thought he was a vampire.”
Laughter met that statement, and one of them – one with hair that resembled a lion’s mane and had her wondering if there was lion DNA in there – raised his forearm to his nose and declared, “I vant to suck your blood.”
Some good-natured ribbing followed. One of the men nudged the lion in the shoulder. “Suuuure,that’s what you want to suck. Okay.”
A rather suggestive eyebrow waggle as the lion retorted, “I’d tell you what I’d like a woman to suck on but there are ladies present.”
More hoots of laughter, and Paige found herself chuckling as well, their good humor contagious.
“Were you in heat? Was that why you let Jace lie with you?”
Paige’s eyes widened.Heat?
“Humans don’t go into heat, moron,” someone – Paige wasn’t sure who – replied.
“Ignore them,” Lark said. “They’re just curious because there’s not a lot of women around here, and the few that are, tend to keep their distance.”
“We scare them,” Kong told her.
