Free Tempting the Fire by Sydney Croft Page B

Itor and see what they want to do.”
    “I don’t really care what they want,” Logan said evenly. “I want to kill it.
    And we need to find a cure for the man who’s been infected. We fucking owe him that.”
    “Don’t be hasty. Let me make some calls. In the meantime, find that creature before it does any more harm.”
    Logan didn’t agree to anything, hung the phone up and took a breath. He didn’t like thinking about the experiments that had already been performed on the chupacabra, and why. Didn’t like thinking about himself as an experiment either, but that’s what he was. One giant mishmash of scientific parts that needed a daily injection simply to keep it alive.
    None of his men knew what he was and why he was really here—neither would Sela, if he could help it.
    It would help if you could keep out of her pants, dumbshit.
    He’d have to do some fast talking about what she’d seen. He’d tell her it was a special kind of insulin, GWC’s pet project since he was diagnosed as a child. He’d tell her he was their living, breathing, willing experiment.
    He almost choked at the “willing” part, remembered waking up and trying to rip the bioware out of his body, forcing the scientists and surgeons to sedate him until he’d healed more fully.
    He told himself to cut the shit and continue with his plan—there was too much at stake, too many lives potentially lost to this Unclass 8 for him to sit around feeling sorry for himself.
    50

    As he paced the tent, he formulated his next moves. Marlena would stay here, under guard. He’d invite Sela along on the trek to hunt the Unclass 8, where he could keep an eye on her and capture the chupacabra, perhaps with her help and knowledge of the creature. Two birds with one stone.
    Now he only had to wait until dawn to burn off the nervous energy that coursed through his body. He could think of a few ways to do so, but all of them involved Sela, and for now he’d stay out of her pants and let her sleep.
    Thanks to the bioware, he didn’t need much sleep at all, was more machine than man, but still the desire he’d felt coming in Sela’s hand earlier was so fucking real he’d almost cried.
    There had been nothing mechanical about it.
    51

Chapter Six
    Chance was awake, but no one knew that. The drugs they’d given him had lasted for maybe half an hour before he’d begun to come to, and he’d remained silent. Thinking. Listening to their plans. Feeling their fear.
    Trying to figure out what the hell had happened to him.
    He wanted to ask the doctor questions, but he didn’t want to risk being tranqed again. And so, when one of the docs leaned over him, closing his eyes while he listened to the steady beat of Chance’s chest with his stethoscope, Chance stealthily stole a set of keys out of the man’s pocket.
    It was habit born from a need for survival, and it made him feel better that his mind was still functioning in that mode. He could—and would—escape from this place, get out of the jungle and figure shit out.
    And when the doctor left, he planned on doing exactly that. But just then, his senses stirred—his body tensed as he smelled her … Marlena. When he turned, there was no one in the tent with him, but he was sure she was close. And even though he was more than slightly freaked by his newfound ability to track with his nose, he breathed in deeply and wondered if she was coming here, to him.
    She shouldn’t, but he wanted her to.
    He wanted to get up. To go find her. He needed to find her—he knew that for sure, although he wasn’t clear on the whys of it.
    But he was … achy. Tired. For the first time in his recovery, he felt like he was falling backward, health-wise.
    His body felt like it did when he’d been a teenager with growing pains—
    and images of Marlena in his arms interspersed with others of the monster flashed in front of his eyes as if he was watching a slide show gone out of control.
    He was vaguely aware that he