Stronger Than Sin (11 page)

“Really? I thought you liked a different kind of woman. Blond, beautiful, and brainless.”

A sad smile slipped to his lips. “Maybe in the past, but who says an old dog can’t learn new tricks?”

“You’re younger than I am,” she said, whirled on one foot, and took the last few steps to the gym.

“I could be your boy toy,” he said, but there was no doubting the teasing tones in his voice, and she was hard-pressed to
battle the smile it yanked to her face.

“For now, you can be my anatomy model,” she said and slapped the leather surface of the massage table.

“Excuse me?” he said and rested his butt on the edge of the table.

“I need to do a physical exam. Strip off your T-shirt and sweats and jump up here for me.” She slapped the surface of the
table again, but instead Jesse moved away from her. He stood a few feet away, arms across his chest in a defensive stance,
clearly upset by the request.

“Jesse?” she questioned, wanting to understand.

Jesse planted one hand on his hip and, in a gesture that was becoming familiar, dragged back the longish strands of his blond
hair with the other.

“I don’t think so, Doc,” he said when he finally answered.

“Why not?” she blurted out.

With a shrug of his massive shoulders, he said, “You must know what’s happening, otherwise why would you ask?”

“To confirm what you think I know. To understand just how bad it is—”

“It’s not that bad,” he immediately countered.

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that, Jesse? I can’t treat you or anyone else if I don’t know what’s actually happening.”

It was the “anyone else” that breached Jesse’s reticence to have her examine him. If having Liliana see the damage to his
body would help her find a way to help others, like his sister, he could endure the exam and her touch.

First the pants,
he thought, stalking to the massage table. He peeled off the sweats and tossed them aside. Then he pulled off his T-shirt,
revealing the worst of the damage to his body, and lay down on the table.

Sucking in a breath through gritted teeth, he said, “Do your worst, Doc.”

S
omehow she managed to control the various elements of shock running rampant through her mind.

First there was the sheer perfection of his body. Long, beautifully muscled legs. Narrow hips and a flat, sculpted midsection.
A broad, well-defined chest that flared into even broader shoulders. Ripped muscles in his arms completed the package.

Well, almost completed the package, since she refused to dwell too much on the very obvious length of him beneath the bikini
briefs he wore.

But marring all that masculine perfection were the signs of both past and present injuries. A thin white scar along his right
thigh gave testament to the fracture that had ended his football career. If memory served her right, they’d had to insert
several pins into his femur to join the pieces together.

Farther up, along his left side, were the Taser marks she had treated. The wounds inflicted by the barbs were sealed up, but
with skin that looked way too white.

Maybe because it wasn’t skin, but developing bone, she thought. Just to confirm, she ran a finger along the paler skin. Encountered
the denser surface that she had first noticed on his knuckles.

But the worst of the injuries to his body appeared to be on the other side, and she stepped around the massage table to better
examine the area.

This time she could not control a shocked gasp from escaping.

He finally glanced at her, his face set in hard lines, almost as hard as the bone that appeared to have developed along a
larger-than-hand-sized section of his right rib cage.

“May I?” she asked even as she was touching that smooth surface. Feeling the almost slick, rigid shell beneath her fingers.

“What happened here?” she asked, still exploring the area with her fingers.

He snagged her hand to stop her.

“Morales used a cattle prod to get me to fight Santiago. After the first blast, my side was red and inflamed. By the next
day, it was numb. Then Morales shocked me again a few days later. It got worse. It took a few more prods before I realized
what was happening.”

“But you couldn’t stop it,” she said, twining her fingers with his rather than releasing his hand.

“I couldn’t stop it, but I could try to let him hit me in the same spot. After a while, the effects of the cattle prod lessened,
probably because my ribs had gotten so hard. It’s bone, isn’t it?” he asked and reached over, ran his free hand across the
area.

“Yes. Some kind of compact bone. Your body seems to be producing it in response to certain kinds of inflammation or injury.”

Jesse nodded and looked back up at the ceiling, avoiding her gaze. “So I guess that’s it. Don’t get hurt and I don’t get any
bone, right?”

“Possibly. Except that your body is making too many bone-producing proteins. If we can’t get that under control—”

“But if you could, it would help someone with the problem I had—fragile bones.”

She didn’t miss the hopefulness in his voice, but she couldn’t give him false expectations. “There are so many diseases that
eat away bone. We don’t know what caused your bone loss—”

“But you know I’m building bone. Just look at me,” he said, pulling his hand out of hers and sitting up.

She did look at him. At the dichotomy of his male beauty and the ugliness of the damage.

Somewhere within him lay the key to both his curse and a possible cure. The problem would be finding out which before the
mechanisms in his body got totally out of control and turned him into cold, hard bone.

Inside, her stomach twisted at the thought of that. At the possibility that if she and her team couldn’t find out what was
going on, he might die.

She felt compelled to touch him again, as if her touch could somehow soothe the hurt and damage he had suffered. And so she
cupped his jaw. Strong and straight and masculinely perfect.

With him sitting on the table, their faces were closer to level, providing her an amazing view of the blue of his eyes, like
the ocean he craved outside his window. And like the ocean when a storm came, his gaze grew a dark gray as it met hers and
he mimicked her action, cradling her cheek with his large hand.

“I know you can help me, Liliana,” he said and traced the line of her cheekbone with his thumb.

“I will try, Jesse, only—”

He silenced her by moving his thumb down across her lips. Her heartbeat kicked up a notch as he ran his finger along the edges
of her lips, a prelude to a kiss. When he slowly bent toward her, she skipped back and away from his touch, sure of only one
thing.

She was attracted to him.

What right-minded woman wouldn’t be,
she thought, reconsidering her whole “not into the surfer dude” thing.

But he was her patient, and he was capable of violence. Extreme violence. He had confessed as much himself when he had explained
about his need to vent his anger on the body bag. And to him, she was probably just another conquest.

All of those factors outweighed any kind of physical attraction from which she was suffering.

“I need to run another test,” she said to put things back on track.

Jesse smiled, both amused and saddened by her reaction to him. She found him desirable, but then again, he was used to that
reaction from women. After a while it got stale without anything more behind it. He had found that out the hard way after
a parade of unsatisfying relationships.

And she was also still wary of him. Not that he blamed her. She was aware of his capacity for violence and unaware of the
secrets he was keeping. Plus there was his past. He had done little to reassure her that he was a changed man from the one
with whom she was familiar: the Jesse Bradford of the tabloids, with his brawling and womanizing ways.

“What kind of test, Doc?” he asked, acknowledging
that she was back to hiding behind professionalism. He preferred Liliana the woman but would settle for Liliana the doctor
for now.

“Just like that, Jesse? What kind of test?” she asked, narrowing her deep brown gaze to consider him.

“What choice do I have, Doc? Let you use me for a pincushion or turn to bone?” he said, mindful also of the bargain with Whittaker
that he had to keep. One that he knew the beautiful doctor would not like. At that thought, guilt set in that he was deceiving
her by allowing her to believe that Whittaker and his friends were actually good guys, when all they wanted was a way to improve
the humans they planned to sell as weapons.

She must have sensed his guilt, since her expression remained thoughtful, as if she didn’t quite believe he could be that
cooperative. But he had little choice. If he didn’t help Whittaker, his sister would pay the price. So he pressed Liliana
again, “What kind of test?”

“The blood we drew from you isn’t exhibiting the same behavior as the other samples we have.”

“The other samples being from Caterina Shaw?”

Liliana nodded. “Wardwell was a leader in creating fluorescent proteins for tracking genes. They used them in the genes transplanted
into Caterina and Santiago, producing fairly obvious ways to see the gene expression.”

“Translation, please, for us non-science types,” he teased, although he found her kind of sexy in scientist mode. Brains and
beauty were a potent mix.

“Caterina’s blood glows. The glow was starting to become visible on her skin and in her eyes because of how the genes were
multiplying.”

“And you’re not seeing that in my blood?” he said and
rested his forearms on his thighs as he sat on the edge of the massage table, swinging his legs back and forth.

Liliana moved away from him to root in her medical bag. She withdrew a test tube with some clear liquid, a long, thick needle,
and a syringe. She faced him once again and said, “There is some glow in your blood, but not what we expected to see.”

He gestured to the needle. “I suppose you think that might help?”

She nodded. “There are bone-producing proteins in your marrow. We think the genes that are expressing—”

“As in glowing?” he interjected and leaned back on his elbows.

Her gaze flitted across his body for a moment, bringing a flush of pink to her olive skin and a stammer when she spoke. “The
test… a bone marrow procedure, will help us get a sample to see if that’s where Wardwell’s genes are working.”

He sat up and held his hands out wide in a gesture of surrender. “What do you need me to do?”

Liliana considered him. So damn handsome. Too damn agreeable, but then again, his life depended on his helping her. Maybe
whatever vibes she was picking up about his willingness to be poked and prodded were wrong.

“Lie down on your stomach. I’m going to make a little incision below the small of your back near your ilium. It’s the best
place to get a sample,” she explained.

“Will it hurt?” he asked as he turned onto his stomach and brought all of his body to rest on the table.

Finally some hesitation on his part.
Good,
she thought as she went on with the explanation. “The cut will be minor and the needle shouldn’t hurt all that much. You
may have some pain when I connect the syringe and extract the marrow.”

“You may want to get Bruno in here, then,” he said, resting his face on its side so he could see her.

“Why?” she asked as she plucked a scalpel from her medical kit along with some alcohol pads, butterfly bandages and gauze.

“Pain brings anger. The greater the pain, the worse the reaction, so just in case…”

She recalled the notations in the Wardwell file and his words about fighting Santiago. She had personal experience with that
psycho and his rage. If Jesse could fight someone that powerful…

Fear settled in her gut.

She took him up on his suggestion, walking back to the kitchen to get Bruno and have him escort her to the gym.

Jesse was still lying there, facing her as she approached the massage table. She grabbed the scalpel she had left by his side,
raised it, and said, “Are you ready?”

A footfall came behind her, and Jesse’s gaze shifted to Bruno as he entered. “Don’t be afraid to use that cap gun if you need
to,” Jesse said.

Bruno laid his hand on his gun, but his next words diminished the menace in that gesture. “And kill Whittaker’s golden goose?
No way.”

Whittaker’s golden goose?
Liliana thought, the words distracting her until Jesse urged her on.

“I’m ready for you, Doc.”

M
orales, Edwards, and Whittaker stared at the patient’s body as it rested on the stainless steel table in their laboratory
warehouse. A “Y” incision marred the patient’s colorful skin and was pulled back to reveal the tangle of organs beneath the
vibrant flesh.

“You’re sure about what’s happening?” Whittaker questioned, jangling the change in his pocket as he glanced at Morales in
his blood-stained white lab coat.

“Massive organ failure. Genes were replicating too quickly and the plasmapheresis couldn’t clean the blood.”

Edwards tsked and leaned toward the body. Peered within. “How many others are exhibiting these symptoms?”

Morales walked to a worktable a short distance away and snared a clipboard from its surface. He flipped through the papers
on it, then peered at his partners. “One other patient is close to organ failure. Then there are another four with similar
problems. We may lose the one, but it will likely take at least another week or so before the others become critical,” he
said.

Whittaker stalked away to the cages holding the assorted patients, who began to whimper, whine, or
scream depending on their physical and mental conditions. He paused before one cage where a man lay quietly on a narrow cot.
He reached in through the bars and nudged the patient with his foot.

The patient didn’t respond.

He hurried back toward his partners, hands jammed into his pockets. The change silent as he held himself still against the
frustration building in his body. “We can’t afford to lose any more of them. It’ll make the buyers antsy if they think they’re
too fragile.”