Free Out of Control by Shannon McKenna Page A

month in our lab in Frankfurt. I won’t have time to orient Dr. Haight myself, beyond our dinner date. Please do what you can.”
    Such as that is, being the all-too-clear subtext.
    â€œOf course,” Marcus murmured.
    She swept out the door. Maurice’s hulking form shadowed her.
    So much for Driscoll. Marcus peeled the glove off his hand and tossed the ragged, transparent scrap into the waste bin. He took the corpselike rubbery hand, grabbed a pair of scissors, and began cutting it into pieces, imagining that the hand was Priscilla’s. Heard shrieks in his mind with each snip of the blades. Chunk after chunk after chunk.
    He was back almost to zero. Access to the holy of holies required the tandem cooperation of Priscilla Worthington and the lab director. Priscilla’s mold was still lost, and Seymour Haight was an unknown.
    But Faris was in Seattle. Something had to be improvised, and quickly. There was no time left for the careful planning he’d done to obtain Driscoll’s mold. And Priscilla was leaving. It was now or never.
    The obvious solution was to obtain a new mold, but seducing Priscilla was not an option. She loathed him, for one thing, and for another, even Marcus’s own practical attitude towards sexuality had its limits. Priscilla’s rabid security staff would not let poor Faris anywhere near her. And though she did indulge occasionally, Priscilla was far too intelligent and self-protective to be taken in by a hired gigolo.
    Craig Caruso had managed it, though how he’d found the courage to have sex with that cast iron bitch, Marcus would never know. Perhaps the ten million dollars Marcus had promised had kept his dick hard enough to perform the task. Marcus shuddered at the thought.
    His buyer had lost patience, after eight long months of waiting. The plan was falling apart before his eyes. Years of his life, millions of his own private money, invested in this perfect mating of profit and revenge. All blocked, because of Margaret Callahan.
    He had to light a fire under Faris. He wanted this to end.
    Â 
    Sean’s truck was parked right in the middle of the driveway, leaving no room for Davy’s own vehicle. It wasn’t the first time. His youngest brother was careless and distracted. He also liked to make his presence felt. Usually Davy just blew it off with a philosophical sigh.
    Tonight, his nerves on edge, it bugged the living shit out of him.
    He parked up the street from his house and sat there for a while, staring through the trees at the lights from Mercer Island, rippling on the dark waters of Lake Washington. Struggling to pull himself together. It had been way too long since he’d gotten laid.
    Humiliating, to reduce it to that, but he was a grim realist about the effects of protracted celibacy. Six months, not that he was counting, since Beth laid down the law. He’d liked Beth a lot, and appreciated the hell out of her fine qualities, but he hadn’t been up to buying her a ring.
    He’d tried to make that point clear from the outset, but Beth hadn’t gotten it. Women never did. They insisted on taking it personally and getting their feelings hurt, every fucking time. He wished he could put the whole sex melodrama aside and focus on other things, but his body had other ideas. He hadn’t been able to strike a truce with it yet.
    Then again, this wasn’t the prodding of generalized horniness. Steffi, the previous aerobics instructor at Women’s Wellness had been a honey-blonde with a body worthy of a centerfold spread, but she’d never inspired him to babble or grope. He’d casually considered having sex with Steffi—it had been clear that she was more than willing—but she was so damned bouncy. And her nasal voice had grated his nerves.
    Steffi had left a while back to do a season of dinner theater on the coast. It had been weeks before he’d noticed she was gone.
    But he’d noticed Margot, her