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"All set," he announced a moment later.
Chase stalked over as the blond warrior took away the containers of blood and DNA swabs to prepare them for testing. "You okay?" he asked Tavia, thoughts for his own well-being eclipsed by concern for her.
"Piece of cake," she said, rolling her long sleeve down over her glyph-covered forearm. "I spent the first twenty-seven years of my life in and out of private clinics and medical trials. I'm used to being poked."
Chase's grin was filled with another sort of hunger now. "I don't want you getting used to anyone poking you, unless that someone is me."
It was a possessive thing to say, and even though he had no right to think it let alone let the words roll off his tongue, he couldn't apologize for it. The past hours he'd spent with Tavia - baring his soul to her, laughing with her, making love to her, then making love some more - had set a hook in him so deep, he wondered if he'd ever be able to shake it loose.
Not that he wanted to.
And that was the hell of it, right there.
He craved this woman, cared for her more than he had anyone or anything in all his life before her. Some desperate, hopeful part of him wondered if the hole she filled in his heart might someday grow to fill the other, more ravenous one that threatened to consume him.
"Okay, kids," Gideon announced as he came back into the room. "I'll run the blood work and tissue analysis later today. We should have full results in a few days, but based on what I've already seen here, coupled with the data you found in good old Dr. Minion's clinic records, I think it's pretty obvious what they're going to return." He raked his fingers through the blond spikes of his cropped hair and exhaled a marveled chuckle. "Never dreamed there'd come a day when I'd be up close and personal with a female Breed - never mind a female Gen One with Breedmate DNA. You can blend in with humans if you have to, you can subsist on blood or food, and you can walk in the daylight without getting cooked after a few minutes. My God, Tavia. You're absolutely remarkable."
She smiled. "Hey, I've seen you working magic on these computers, Gideon. You're not so bad yourself."
Chase grunted, slanting an arch look at the warrior. "Yeah, and come to think of it, you've been up close and personal enough for one day."
Gideon smirked in Tavia's direction. "What can I say? He gets wicked jealous when I flirt. It's a problem for us."
She laughed along with him, as aware as anyone by now that the Order's resident genius only had eyes for his Breedmate, Savannah.
Gideon studied Tavia in open wonder, his head cocked to the side now, arms crossed over his gray Boondock Saints T-shirt. "Have you considered offspring?"
"Offspring?" Tavia shot an uncomfortable look at Chase. "Uh ..."
"Oh, not that I'm suggesting," he quickly interjected. "I just mean, from a purely genetic standpoint, the possibilities are ... well, exciting. Intriguing, to say the least. Don't you think so, Harvard?"
Chase couldn't have replied if he wanted to. The thought of Tavia pregnant had struck him both mute and stupid. He could imagine nothing more powerful than the idea of her giving birth. The fact that her children would mark the beginning of an entirely new generation of the Breed paled in comparison to the feeling that swamped Chase when he pictured himself as the father of her sons.
Or, Christ ... her daughters.
Tavia's eyes were steady on his, and he wondered if her bond to him would betray the depth of his reaction. He couldn't hide what he felt, not with her. And even without the blood bond to tell her how powerfully she affected him, his unflinching, heat-filled gaze would have given him away.
Gideon cleared his throat in the weighted silence of the room. "You say there were clinic records documenting other cases like yours, Tavia?"
She nodded. "Dr. Lewis was treating others like me, but according to the files we found, the patients had all died over the years. If there were files on others who are living, I didn't see them when we searched the clinic."
"But there could be others like you out there," Gideon said. "Knowing Dragos, I'd lay odds there definitely are others. Women who are embedded in normal human lives as you were.
Women who will soon run out of their meds and begin transforming into their true Breed natures, the same way you did."
"Oh, my God," she replied. "If that's true ... if something like that were to happen ..." Gideon nodded. "Disaster time."
"And assuming there are others," Chase put in, "there's no telling what Dragos might be using them for. In Tavia's case, it was her photographic memory. Dragos was using her to collect various human government intel through her work for the senator."
Tavia inclined her head in agreement. "When I'd go in for treatments at the clinic, they also used that time to harvest details about places I'd been with the senator, security-sensitive things I'd been privy to as his assistant. It wasn't enough to exploit me as some kind of secret science experiment, they had to mind-rape me too."
Chase heard the anger in her otherwise calm voice. He reached over and slipped his fingers through hers. "Wish like hell I'll get the chance to deliver a little payback on that sick bastard. The more painful, the better."
"You, me, and the rest of the Order," Gideon said. He glanced to Tavia once more. "I don't suppose you have any knowledge - even the slightest bit of intel - about Dragos's operation?" "No. I didn't even know he existed until Chase tried to warn me about him." She shook her head, brow furrowed. "If I could get anywhere near Dragos, I'd love to use my new skills against him. Especially the lethal ones."
Although Chase understood her need, he bristled at the notion of her even considering getting close to evil like Dragos. "Not gonna happen so long as I have anything to say about that. Dragos is deadly, Tavia. You can never underestimate what he's willing to do."
"Harvard's right," Gideon said. "As much as I agree with him, though, I have to admit having a mole in his operation would be damned useful right about now." He gestured to a computer monitor with a program running some kind of split-screen script. "The data Hunter and Corinne brought back from New Orleans is password-protected and encrypted. I created a routine to break it down, but the damn thing has been cranking on that character sequence for a couple of days and we're barely halfway there."
