“May I join you?”
Hearing Jaxon’s deep voice caused her heart to stop beating and breath to once again catch in her throat. Slowly she turned her head. And then, suddenly, she was looking straight into his eyes.
Goose bumps broke out over her skin; her mouth dried.
His lids were narrowed to thin slits. “Thanks for the drink.” Voice: now stiff, formal. “I hope it won’t offend you that I’m refusing it.” He clanked the drink onto the table, red liquid sloshing over the rim, and brushed it forward with his fingers.
“Not at all,” she managed. “Will you join us?”
Silent, he plopped into the only other chair at the table. She glanced over her shoulder. Mia Snow was watching her openly now, loathing all over her pinched expression.
“Nolan knows who you are,” she said, turning back and trying to mask the tension crackling between her and Jaxon.
He nodded. Shadows and light from the table’s centerpiece candle flickered over his face, twining and dancing, making him appear harsh and uncompromising. Not like the gentle lover she knew him to be. “I figured that.”
“I liked the other look better,” the otherworlder said, peering at Jaxon’s new nose with disgust. “Why would you do that to yourself?”
“What are your intentions toward him?” Le’Ace asked, ignoring the alien. She knew Nolan expected her to show concern.
“What do you think?” Jaxon growled.
He refused to glance at her, and the answer to his question refused to form inside her mind. All she could think about, all she truly wanted to know, was whether or not he’d missed her, if he still wanted her with him, and if Mia had poisoned him against her.
“Both of you are here for a reason,” Jaxon said. “Someone want to clue me in or should I start guessing?”
The most feminine part of her hated the distance now between them, even while she knew it was for the best. Even though she wanted to destroy it, throw herself at him, and beg for his affection.
What did you expect from him? You’re toxic to him, his career, his life, and he has to know it.
“I still want to help you,” Nolan said.
“Then why did you disappear last time?” Jaxon’s mouth pulled in a tight frown. “Why did it take you so long to resurface?”
Losing his jovial air, Nolan leaned forward and slapped his palms on the table. Fury radiated from him and swirled like crystals in the glowing depths of his eyes. The candle teetered back and forth; the silverware banged together. “You have no idea how difficult this is for me. The men you want to kill are my friends, my brothers, the only link I have to my own race, and I’m about to betray them.”
Jaxon did not soften. “How difficult it is for you? Humans are dying and you are the one killing them.”
“I don’t want to, damn you!” Anguish colored his face.
People were staring, but Le’Ace allowed the exchange without interruption. She needed the two men working together somewhat civilly, which meant they needed to hash some things out. If that had to happen in a public place, so be it. No one knew what they were talking about, anyway. She just wanted Jaxon off this case and safe, as soon as possible.
“I’d be an idiot to trust you,” Jaxon said. “For all I know, this is just a scheme to mislead A.I.R.”
“Uh, here are your drinks,” the waiter said, placing the glasses on the table.
When the young human wandered off, Jaxon said, “We need to move this conversation to someplace less public.”
“No,” Nolan said. He rubbed his chin with two fingers, his only ring glinting in the light. He guarded that ring as if it were a national treasure, she’d noticed, though it was a copper color and appeared worthless. “Listen, I’m tired of the destruction. I’m tired of the death. I do want to help you. I’ve sat back for too long and done nothing, hoping there was, well, hope for our kind.”
Jaxon rolled his eyes. “And now, what? You know better?”
A grim nod. “Oh, yes. I know better.”
Le’Ace wondered what had happened to destroy his hope. He’d never said.
A moment later, she couldn’t think at all. Jaxon finally looked at her. Sweet lightning, the things that silver gaze did to her. Her body lit up in flames, fire licking at her skin.
“Well?” he said. Clearly he wanted her opinion on everything that had been said.
Somehow she managed a casual shrug. She had no real answers for him. Already he’d gotten more out of Nolan than she had the last three days. With her, Nolan had spoken of his desire to make things right, nothing more.
When Jaxon returned his attention to Nolan, her chest lurched sharply, leaving an ache as insistent as the pulses in her brain could be. For one brief moment, there’d been heat in his eyes. Heat and need and all-consuming desire.
Wishful thinking on her part?
“Tell me where your brethren are.” Jaxon crossed his arms over his middle. To reach for his weapons? “If you’re so determined to help, that is.”
Nolan’s eyes were bleak. “Having their locations won’t help you. Yet. You have no idea how to keep them once you find them.” He tugged at his shirt collar, revealing a dull necklace.
Cheeks heating, Le’Ace sank a little lower in her seat. Bastard. He just had to brag.
“See my gift from the She-Devil?” he asked proudly.
“Yes.” Jaxon gave the necklace a cursory glance, and Le’Ace noticed he didn’t have to ask who the She-Devil was. “So.”
“So. It was supposed to lock me in place. It didn’t and won’t. I doubt your people have anything that will work.”
Jaxon’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You possess a lot of knowledge about Earth, its people, and its technology. In fact, your English is perfect. Especially considering the fact you’ve only been here a few weeks.”
Nolan shrugged. “We study planets before we enter them.”
Planets, plural. More proof the Schön had visited other planets. “How?”
“There are ways,” was all the alien said. “Television, computers, people.”
Ways that would help A.I.R. study other planets and their people, too, she was sure. If they weren’t already.
“I’m not sure I want to help you with anything. So far, I feel nothing but contempt for you,” Jaxon remarked.
“As I feel the same for myself.” Nolan gave another shrug.
Good actor or truly sincere? He’d stayed away from the other Schön he supposedly planned to betray because of their actions, yet he himself had taken a lover and passed the virus to a human.
She’d nearly killed him when she’d seen the woman stride from his bedroom. Instead, Le’Ace had held a knife at his throat, he’d cried and babbled, and she’d listened. Those tears had not affected her, and she had moved her wrist to slice. Then, he’d uttered the only words capable of staying her hand: I’ll help you and your love.
You and your love.
Jaxon.
Just like that, she’d befriended the alien, just as Estap had wanted. Her reasons had been her own, however. Jaxon. Always Jaxon.
“You got something else to say to us?” she asked Nolan.
The waiter appeared again, ready to take their order. Le’Ace waved him away.
“First, I want a guarantee of lifetime protection from A.I.R.,” Nolan said.
“Not going to happen,” Jaxon responded promptly.
Le’Ace shook her head. Had he forgotten how to lie?
“Why would I offer you protection,” he continued, “when I’m not sure you can deliver the kind of information I want?”
Ah, the bluff. She should have known he’d have an angle to work.
Nolan shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “They’ll soon scatter. You have a week, perhaps two, before it will be too late to stop them.”
Two bluffs at war. Whose would win?
“Why will they scatter?” she asked, determined to trip him up if he was indeed exaggerating.
“Many reasons,” Nolan said. “One you can probably guess. They know you’re on their trail and want to evade you. They’re still studying, searching for answers to a question we all share. They’ll take all they can from New Chicago, then move on to learn more.”
Jaxon’s shoulders squared. “And what’s the question they want answered?”
Silent, Nolan sipped his water.
A minute ticked by, then another. He never replied, just continued to drink his beverage as if he were alone.
“Can the victims talk to each other through their minds?” Jaxon asked, moving on.
Nolan’s eyes widened, shock in their lighted depths. “They can’t, no.”
She blinked. What does he mean?
Unknown. There might be a hidden meaning to his words.
“They can’t,” she said, “but someone else can?”
Grim, Nolan nodded.
“I don’t understand,” Jaxon said.
“Think about it.” Nolan leveled a hot look at him. “Once they are infected, what else is inside their minds?”
“Only the…no way.” Jaxon shook his head.
“Oh, yes.”
As if he couldn’t yet process that information, Jaxon quickly moved to his next question. “Why do they only choose fertile women?”
A sad, wistful aura overcame the alien. “I thought you would have figured that out by now. And women are not the only victims.”
“Nolan, you know I hate it when you evade and you know I’ll pick him over you in a fight, just like he’ll pick me.” She told herself she made the claim because Nolan believed she and Jaxon were in love. Both of them, not just Le’Ace. She withdrew a blade from her boot and pressed the tip between the alien’s legs. “Answer him.”
Nolan laughed, his eyes twinkling. “I wish you were not taken. Woman, you do amuse me.”
What the hell? Jaxon was the only other man who had laughed while she held a weapon on him. When Jaxon did it, she wanted to join in his amusement. When Nolan did it, she wanted to cut deeper.
He was just so smug.
“Answer him.” Damn it. “Please.”
“You are a lucky man,” Nolan told Jaxon.
Jaxon remained silent, features growing cold.
What did that coldness mean? No reaction. Don’t think about it.
“They do not need fertile women to pass the virus. Sex does that, no matter the gender or the circumstances. Fertility is merely a bonus, an aphrodisiac.”
Jaxon nodded encouragingly. “Go on. I’m listening.”
God, she admired him. Poised, strong, unbreakable, unflappable. He was utterly magnificent. I’ve touched him, kissed him. For one night, he was mine. Why did he look at me with such coldness?
Not going there, remember?
“Each of us, my brothers and I, have the virus within ourselves.” Nolan sounded ashamed. “The only way to control it is to”—he gulped—“give it to others, releasing bits of it from within ourselves and keeping its levels at a minimum.”
There was crackling silence as she and Jaxon absorbed that.
Nolan continued, “Those who are infected can maintain their own life if and only if they pass it on. And on. And on. Our women were already sparse, so they were used by many of us. They didn’t last long. It’s why we’ve had to move from planet to planet. We refused to teach them, so they don’t know what to do, how to save themselves.”
Le’Ace removed the knife from his thigh, too close to stabbing him already. His announcement inflamed her. “Ever heard of masturbation, you sick bastard?”
“Believe me, that does not work.”
“Why not? If all you need to do is ejaculate to control the virus, making yourself come should do the trick.”
Nolan tapped a finger to his chin. “How can I explain this properly?” The question was for himself, his gaze ceilingward.
“While you think about it,” Jaxon said, “why don’t you explain how studying the disease helps spread it? We have labs, ways of containing—”
Nolan was shaking his head again, more insistently this time. “The only word that comes close to describing the virus is to say that it is alive. There, that should answer both of your questions. It is alive, able to communicate with itself even while living inside different hosts, and it will not leave a host for masturbation. Ever. There is no other host to be found that way. Having blood drawn, however, does provide another host. Ultimately.”
“How?” she and Jaxon asked in unison. She glanced at him, but he was watching Nolan.
“The virus may not be able to stay inside a body when forced out through a syringe, but it can sense another living being. The person drawing the blood, the lab technician…the virus will find a way inside the person. If your doctors have drawn samples, they are now infected, for the only way to destroy the virus is to kill the host without bloodshed.”
Le’Ace tilted her head to the side, studied him. “That means you must be killed.”
“Yes,” he said on a sad sigh.
“And yet you are fighting to live.” The moment she spoke, the words and their meaning hammered inside her brain. She gave a little laugh. What a hypocrite I am. She’d always done the same for herself: live, even though others were hurt because of it. “There are things you wish to experience before you die. That is why you seek protection.”
Surprise brightened the pinpricks of light in his eyes; he nodded. “Yes.”
“Your life will destroy others,” she said, knowing she was speaking about herself, as well. No more, she thought. Earlier, she’d considered allowing herself to be killed; now she knew she must.