Perfect Mate (2 page)

“Captain Harper?”
 

Her whisper seemed so loud, more like a shout, as she edged into the room. The thrill of the forbidden shot through her. She couldn’t be caught down here, not in a patient’s room. Hospital staff weren’t allowed in this area, on pain of dismissal. But it would be kind of hard to sack the owner’s granddaughter, a fact she reassured herself with as she padded forward.
 

“Captain Harper? I came to see how you’re doing. Do you feel any better?”
 

She crept nearer to the bed, her eyes wide in the semi darkness. The room had been scrubbed down recently. She could smell the medical grade antibacterial cleanser she’d ordered a couple of weeks ago. Pine fresh. Yummy.

They’d changed his clothes, at least. Instead of the torn and bloodstained uniform he’d arrived in, he now wore one of the ubiquitous, backless hospital gowns. The ones where the patient’s ass hung out for all to see. Normally that bugged the shit out of her. People came into hospital to get better, not to be further stripped of dignity. Creases formed between her brows as her gaze skimmed over his flat stomach. The fabric lay against his skin, and she could see the vague outline of his hip. It didn’t look like they’d even bothered to put any dressings over his abdominal wounds.
 

Concern shot through her. He’d been gut-shot and bleeding heavily when they’d brought him. The sorts of wounds that earned a man a couple of weeks on his back with his guts taped back in as his skin healed. That is, if he survived. Most didn’t.

They should have cleaned him up, redressed his wounds and settled him with his legs elevated to keep the pressure off his abdomen. Without dressings, the slightest movement would tear the wounds open again, and he’d bleed out…

Her face paled in a heartbeat, leaving her feeling shaky. Had he passed away already? That would explain the lack of dressings. Oh God, she was looking at a corpse… No, he couldn’t be dead. At least, his chest rose and fell, and the breath she’d been holding punched out of her lungs.

“What the…?”
 

Her words stilled on her lips as she reached the bed and looked down at the man lying motionless on it. There were no wounds, leaking or otherwise. In fact, he looked perfectly healthy, as though he’d walked in off the street and decided to have a quick nap rather than be at death’s door. His eyes snapped open at the sound of her voice. She was locked in place by a pair of piercing blue eyes. Her breath stuttered.
 

His eyes had been amber before.
 

Contacts, the rational part of her brain supplied. The medical staff must have removed them when they’d cleaned him up.
 

A broad smile curved his lips at the sight of her, and her breathing caught for entirely different reasons. He was gorgeous. Absolutely sex-on-a-stick gorgeous. The kind of looks that should be gracing the center spread in the glossy magazines Beth favored, his high cheekbones and pouting lips somehow managed to be wholly masculine.
 

“Lilly, Lilly, give me your answer do…”

Whatever Lillian had expected, it wasn’t for him to break into song. Panic flared through her.

“Shsssh, shhhh. Be quiet.”
 

She flapped her hands to try and enforce the need for silence as she cast an anxious glance at the door. The noise he was making, someone had to have heard him.
 

“
Please,
be quiet,” she begged as he launched into the next line with gusto.

“…I’m half crazy, all for the love of you.”

She slapped her hand over his mouth. To her relief he stopped singing. Instead, he licked her palm. The warm, wet brush of his tongue startled her and made her snatch her hand back.
 

“Ewww. What is
wrong
with you?” Her skin tingled where he’d licked her, and she felt the warm brush all the way down to her toes. But he…he’d
licked
her. That was
not
normal behavior.
 

“He’s a total fucking fruit loop. That’s what’s wrong with him.”

Chapter Two

Jack almost blew his cover at the sound of the new voice in the room. Not that it could be described as a cover. It really was him, Jack Harper, signed into the mental hospital, rather than some fancy cover identity. Really was him they were pumping full of the drugs his extensive medical records told them were necessary to keep him pliable.
 

Rather than the ravening monster he knew he was.
 

Unfortunately for them, Jack had been canny. For the last year, he and the majority of his squad had toed the line. They ate what they were told to, slept when they were told and pissed on command like good little lab rats. Not a single one of them had displayed any of the abilities the project scientists didn’t know they had.
 

All that careful planning and subterfuge added up to one thing. They needed a shit-load more drugs than they were currently using to keep him immobile. He’d already burned through half of what they’d pumped into him just after he’d arrived. Scared that he’d almost managed physical contact with a female, they’d shot him up with enough silver to plate a tank.
 

It made absolutely no difference. His beast had her scent, and it wanted her. All it would take is for the moon to break through the clouds it played peek-a-boo behind. Then the blessed kiss of lunar rays would burn the rest of the crap out of his system in a heartbeat.
 

“Fruit loop! Fruit loop!” he agreed cheerily, playing up the madness angle as he tried to work loose the wrist hidden from view. The manacle was steel, not laced with silver, but in his weakened state and with his wolf out of reach, he couldn’t break through it as easily as he normally would.
 

Come on.
Just one blast of moonlight and he’d be good to go. Already he could feel the silver nitrate under his skin. It was so close to the surface that a light sweat would push it through his pores. Some religious cults talked about sweating blood—Jack would sweat silver. Perhaps he’d start a new trend.

“What we have here is a one hundred-percent, bonafide nut case.”
 

The doctor’s voice accompanied his footsteps as he came farther into the room. The woman by Jack’s side shrank away. It was a small gesture, one he figured she wasn’t aware of. Within a second, she straightened up as if she realized that she shouldn’t project fear.
Interesting
. She seemed more afraid of the doctor than a possible homicidal maniac.
 

“He’s a total loss. Post-traumatic stress disorder, completely unhinged. There’s nothing we can do for him here. We’ll ship him out in the morning to someplace with padded walls and hose-down surfaces, so he can talk nonsense and piss himself in peace.”

Jack suppressed a snort. That was Project speak for driving him out someplace private to put a bullet in the back of his head while the silver had him locked down. He and others like him could heal most things, but even they would struggle with a wound inflicted at point-blank range.
 

“What are you doing in here, Lillian? You know this area is out of bounds to all non-military personnel.”

The doc’s voice changed tone, and even in this form Jack could smell fear rolling off the woman. He had a first name to go with the “L. Rosewood” on her nametag. Yes, that was right, but she’d called herself Lilly in the lobby. Damn them and their injections. He’d lost part of his first memory of her. Instead, the beast snarled, its anger with the Project and the men who ran it increasing another notch.

Lillian.
 

He rolled the name around in his head as the doc approached. She edged around the bed a little more. Jack’s protective instincts flared. He didn’t care that he was pumped full of silver nitrate and strapped to the bed. If this asshole put a hand on her, Jack would take it off at the wrist. Perhaps even the shoulder. Yeah, the shoulder sounded like a good place to start…

“I needed something from one of the stores cupboards at the end of the corridor. Didn’t see the point in filling out seventeen forms, in triplicate, for a couple of dressings, so I used the back corridor.”

The doc made a small sound of surprise. Obviously he hadn’t known of another way onto the ward. Interesting. His little rose knew the layout of the place better than the military personnel.
 

“Then you were a bad girl, Lillian. Do you know what happens to bad girls?”

Jack didn’t need an expanded sense of smell to pick up the lust rolling off the guy. It oozed from his pores thickly, filling the room as much as it filled his voice. Feeling sick, Jack stopped breathing through his nose, but he could do nothing to block his ears.
Come on…can’t the guy pick a better line to use for intimidation?
 

“They get told about their behavior, a note entered on their permanent record and let off with a warning?”
 

He wanted to applaud. Lillian’s voice was firm and no nonsense, without a hint of the fear he could smell on her skin as she edged around the bed away from the doctor stalking her.
 

He barked a laugh. “Very funny Lillian. I always did like that about you, you have a great sense of humor. Right now, though, I have other plans for that pretty little mouth of yours.”

“Okay, enough’s enough, Dr. Walker. I apologize for the transgression but—let me out.” Her voice grew sharper, and a fresh wave of fear rolled from her as the doctor blocked her escape. “My grandfather will hear of this.”

Walker snorted. “Yeah, right. Like you think I’m bothered about your grandfather? Sweetpea, you tell anyone and there won’t be a place you can run that I won’t find you. Understand?”
 

A growl started at the back of Jack’s throat. Low and full of menace, it hovered just on the edge of human hearing. He knew they wouldn’t hear it, not consciously. The tension in the room rose sharply. The human was dead. Deader than dead. He wasn’t even going to be a corpse when Jack was done with him…just a red smear on the floor.
 

He watched as Lillian tried to slip around the edge of the bed.
 

“Oh, no you don’t.”
 

Grabbing the edge of the gurney, the doctor rammed it up against the wall, and cut off her escape. Jack closed his eyes as the growl got louder. A woman was about to be raped in front of him.
 

Not on his watch.

Reaching deep inside, he called to the part of himself that wasn’t human. The part the military scientists had awoken after they’d persuaded him to “volunteer” for their enhancement tests.
 

“Nowhere left to run, Lillian. Now be a good girl. This won’t hurt.”

There was a scuffle. She screamed. A sound quickly cut off. Fury flared through him at the terrified whimpering that followed. He couldn’t see what was going on, but he could imagine it. Imagine how the human had her pinned in the corner, his hand over her mouth. Rage flowed through his body like a surfer at the crest of a wave. It galvanized his limbs, eating away at the silver that kept him more a prisoner than the restraints on his wrists and ankles.
 

“That’s it, baby. Just relax. You’ll enjoy it.”

The sound of sloppy kisses and whimpering filled his ears. Opening his eyes, he looked up through the window above the bed.
Clear, you bastards, clear,
he screamed silently at the clouds over the moon. He hadn’t asked for what they’d done to him, and he’d never complained. The least the bitch-fates could do was allow the disaster of his life to benefit at least one person.
 

He held his breath as, above him, the clouds parted. Moonlight streamed through the gap, cascading through the window and spilling over his prone body. Relief and strength flooded his system in equal amounts, slamming into his starved muscles. Hot on its heels flowed in the pain. White-hot pain that stole his breath as his energized body rejected the nitrate in his blood. He gritted his teeth as silver sweat beaded on his skin.

With a roar, he ripped the manacles from his wrists and ankles. The bed slammed into the opposite wall with a metallic squeal of protest as he launched himself from it.
 

Oh God
. Lillian couldn’t believe what was happening. All she’d wanted was to check on a patient. Alleviate her concern. Not get pinned to a wall, being groped and pawed at as Dr. Walker tried to shove his tongue down her throat.
 

She knew Walker fancied her. He’d asked her out shortly after being transferred to the hospital with the military unit. Just the thought of him touching her with his cold, clammy hands had made her skin crawl so, politely, she’d let him down. Obviously he hadn’t taken that rejection quite as well as she’d thought.

Bile rose in her throat, her stomach rolled. She couldn’t believe he was doing this. Everyone, even the military staff, knew she was the old man’s granddaughter.

Whimpering in not-so-mock fear, she allowed him to pull her closer. He shoved his groin—and the thick erection—forward and ground it roughly against her. At the feeling of the hard ridge pressing into her soft belly, she almost lost it and kneed him in the balls. She held off. He was at the wrong angle for her knee to connect properly. She’d only get one shot, so it had to be right.