Forever, page 21
No, he was giving her a chance to back out.
He disagreed with the Houston people. She could get more chemo if she wanted; they could push it a little farther with the conventional drugs. Sure, sooner or later her body was going to fail by inches and then feet with as much chemo exposure as she’d had—but when you were staring down the barrel of a funeral anyway, what did you care?
And maybe he was getting cold feet.
Glancing at his watch, he noted the time. Maybe she was getting cold feet.
With a grim curse, he thought about the guard who had been killed. How was she feeling about the fact that her lover had lost his life in the line of duty on her front lawn—
As his phone rang, he took it out of his lab coat and answered like he was back in residency—no checking the screen, no preamble.
“St. Claire.”
There was a pause, and then a clicking sound. “Hello?” he demanded.
Just as he took the thing away from his ear to hang up, a tinny voice emanated from the unit. “Augustus Reginald St. Claire Jr., resident of Plattsburgh, New York. Aged thirty-two years, nine months, five days, four hours, and—”
“Who the fuck is this?”
The male voice was ever so slightly distorted, like it was being run through an electronic synthesizer. “—some change. Stanford University undergrad at the age of twenty. Stanford Medical graduate four years later. Residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. Fellowship in oncology completed there five years later. Hired by Merck to focus on research in immunotherapy—”
“Where did you get this number?” He switched ears. “Who the—”
“But dropped off the public radar a mere two months later, never to be heard from on the national stage again. Parents, deceased. No living siblings. Estranged from other family, due to the embezzlement of Augustus Reginald St. Claire Sr.—”
“Fuck you.” Gus sank down into his thighs like he was about to fight the fucker. “You get my father’s name out your mouth—”
“Allergic to sesame seeds. Lactose intolerant. Favorite color… LA Lakers gold.”
As his eyes shot to the framed Kobe shirt over his desk, Gus tightened his hold on the phone. “You finished showing off? Or do you want to tell me my favorite movie.”
“ ‘Today we don’t fight for one life. We fight for all of them.’ ”
As a feeling of foreboding came over him, Gus heard himself say, “You’re going to have to do more than quote T’Challa to me if you want to—”
“You saw the movie when it came out. In the Framingham AMC theaters. Across from Target. You were alone.”
When Gus’s knees gave out and he smacked down into his chair, he half expected the sonofabitch on the phone to ask him if his ass hurt.
“I recite your rather impressive résumé back to you,” the voice said, “as well as give you a sense of the depth of our research, to provide you with context for our sincerity and our thoroughness.”
“Tell me who you are and what you want. So I can tell you to go to hell and we can end this bullshit—”
“I am very familiar with your research under Phalen. I’ll leave you to guess why. I want you to be aware that your drug compound, while innovative and certainly promising, is still speculative. No clinical trials.” There was a pause, like whoever it was expected him to give an update to the contrary if things had changed. “I have five patients prescreened and ready to go. I have monitoring facilities that make Phalen’s lab look like a high school chemistry room.”
“So this is a job offer?”
“Yes, it is. Come work for me, and I’ll give you the time and space you need to create whatever you want. And before you tell me you’re happy where you are, you know things are changing. You know she’s going to sell Vita-12b, and no matter what she told you, the money is the most important thing to her. Not you, not the principles. It’s the money.”
Gus rolled his eyes. “And let me guess. You’re a paragon of morality, who’s just doing background checks as a hobby?”
Besides, this fucker on the phone had no idea that C.P. Phalen had a biological imperative that made profit totally irrelevant. You couldn’t spend money from the grave. For all the facts the caller spouted, he’d missed the big reality—
“Phalen’s going bankrupt.” The chuckle of satisfaction coming over the connection was downright nasty. “I’m assuming she hasn’t told you or anyone else that? I wouldn’t, if I were her. But ask yourself, why, if Vita-12b is such a promising innovation, is she selling it right from under herself. I’ll tell you why. She cashed out of all her positions, sank everything into that lab you’re working in, and has been burning through her equity at twice the rate that is sustainable. You’re not in finance, but you’ve balanced a checkbook. At the end of the day, in spite of all the creative accounting, it’s simple math.”
Gus put his head in his hand, but kept his voice level. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, I do. She’s selling your work, your research, your vision, right out from under you. I have a copy of your employment contract with her.” There was a pause, like the man was waiting for that to sink in. “You think you have equity, but there’s an out clause I’ll bet you didn’t pay any attention to. If she sells the company, there’s no assumption clause. You’re at the mercy of the acquirer. They don’t have to give you anything or honor her terms. They don’t have to even hire you.”
In the back of his mind, he heard C.P. promising she’d take care of him.
“Assuming that is true”—and Gus had no idea; he wasn’t a lawyer and all he’d cared about was the work, not the benefits—“why wouldn’t whoever buys Vita want me.”
“Because they’ll already have what you made. They won’t need you. They’ll have purchased the data, the research, and the formulation. Me? I want you. I’ll give you whatever runway you need to keep innovating, not just on this project, but anything else you want to do.”
Gus rubbed his face. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“In good time, my friend. That will come in good time. Think it over. You’re in business with someone who’s already cheated you. She knew her financial exposure when she hired you, and you signed a contract that cuts you out of any sale. Your deal with her is null and void if she takes the third-party route and there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it—hell, you can’t even list this research on your résumé because then you’re going to have to explain under what circumstances you conducted your experiments. And even if you tell me you’re a Good Samaritan and are just in it for the science, then I’m going to remind you you’re doing the business of your convictions with a double-crossing swindler who has no principles. Not even when it comes to her key man.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” How many times had he said that? “You have no fucking clue.”
“Well, what a relief for you then, right?” That chuckle came back over the connection. “I’ll be calling you back in a matter of hours, Augustus. You’ve got a lot to think about.”
Before Gus could say another thing, the connection was cut.
As he took the phone from his ear, he went into his call log. “Blocked Caller” was all that appeared on the first line of the list.
“Shit,” he breathed as he stared at his monitor. “Fuck… shit.”
Oddly enough, given the conversation, he didn’t think about his employment contract.
He thought about going into that bathroom in C.P. Phalen’s study and seeing a man who only had twenty-four hours left to live zip up his pants. Which was stupid. Of all the things that could have been on his mind, that woman’s love life should not have been any kind of preoccupation.
Then again, she had always fucked him up.
What the hell did he do now?
TWENTY-SIX
LYDIA WOKE UP with a start and the first thing she did was throw her arm out and pat around the bed next to her. When it became clear that Daniel wasn’t with her, she sat up and pushed her hair away from her face. Just as she was about to jump to her feet and bolt off to find him, she heard the shower running.
“Thank God,” she muttered as she shifted her legs over and stood up.
Putting her hands on the small of her back, she stretched and heard her spine crack. Then she padded into the bathroom.
Daniel was faceup to the spray, his head tilted back as he rinsed the shampoo out of the fuzz that was on his scalp, the suds running down his shoulders, his spine, the backs of his legs.
As if he sensed her, he twisted his torso around. “Oh, hi. I didn’t want to walk you—wake you, I mean.”
“Hi.” She glanced back at the bed. “I don’t know what time it is—”
“We’re creeping up on dinner.”
“What?” She shook her head. “You mean, I slept all day long?”
“Good thing it’s Saturday and you didn’t have to go to work, huh.”
“Ah, yeah. Wow.”
The fact that he didn’t turn all the way toward her made her wonder if he was hiding his body from her. She could understand why. The overhead light in the stall was on, and its harsh illumination was unforgiving.
But as she stared at him, she didn’t care what he looked like.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked softly.
“Oh, God, yes—” He shook himself. “I mean, no. I mean, come in. Please. Fuck.”
Her clothes came off so fast, it was as if they were as sick of her as she was of them—or maybe it was just that her hands, when properly motivated like this, could be really damned efficient with the buttons and the zippers and the over-the-head, down-the-legs stuff. The second she was naked, Daniel opened the glass door, and her eyes clung to his as she stepped into the warmth and humidity.
And then her body was against him.
It all felt so good, so right, this need to be touched by him, to feel his hands on her body, to taste his mouth and—
Their kissing started slowly, the caressing of mouths lazy and slick from the water, but the heat came quick, and that was good. That was so good. Even if he looked different and his shoulders were not the same, the way he handled her was exactly as it had always been, his palms sliding down her ribs, grabbing her ass, pulling her in tight to his hips.
When he started kissing down the side of her throat, she eased back into the corner of the shower, and then she was sitting on the shelf and he was kneeling before her. Between his palms, he worked a bar of soap, the fragrance rising up between them. With hands that barely shook at all, he cupped her breasts, covering them with suds, slipping his fingers over her nipples, cupping water and rinsing her off. To give him every access he could want or need, she stretched her arms over her head and held on to a chrome hook that was mounted on the marble wall.
Arching her back, she offered her aching, taut nipples to him.
And he didn’t disappoint. Planting his palms on the tile, he leaned in and latched on, his mouth suckling at her, the wet, warm draw of his lips, the lick of his tongue, the way he straightened a little, spread her legs, and stroked her inner thighs, every bit as good as it had ever been.
As she looked down at herself, he was utterly focused on the job he was doing, ravishing her, pulling away as he sucked so that her breast snapped back as the seal was broken, the tugging and releasing going right into her core.
Which was where this was all headed.
As the rain from above traveled over her body, sweeping the suds away, everything flowed down her torso—and seemed to give him direction. With his hands on her knees, he kissed his way to the heart of her, taking his time, lingering on her hip, nipping the inside of her legs, licking around her belly button.
When she called out his name in frustration, he still didn’t give her what she wanted. And then she was whimpering, trying to rub her thighs together, but unable to because he was between them. Shifting around on the ledge, she got to the edge of it—
The slip-off was quick.
And Daniel caught her. Proving that he still had good reflexes, he made sure she didn’t wreck her back on the marble seat, cupping her butt and easing her to the tile floor of the shower.
Stretching out, she kept her arms overhead still, and she was shameless. She brought up her heels and let her knees fall all the way to the sides until the hot water from the fixture rained down on her hot, slick sex.
“Oh, Lydia…”
For the first time since she’d moved in, she thanked C.P. Phalen’s love for enormous scale—because the shower had room enough for Daniel to stretch out, too, if he folded his legs up at the knees—and he did.
His eyes glowed as he settled in between her thighs, and keeping his stare locked on her, he extended his tongue and licked her once, nice and slow.
When she moaned, he did it again. And then he was kissing her sex, all the while playing with her breasts, his face moving against her as he tweaked her nipples and cupped her weight and caressed her. The sensations were so intense, she lost any sense of how hard the marble floor was under her or the fact that there were security cameras everywhere.
What the hell did she care if someone wanted to watch?
She was about to come, and that was the only thing that—
* * *
As Lydia orgasmed, Daniel rolled her hips to the side and used the inside of her thigh as a cushion for his head. With her leg cocked over his shoulder, he nuzzled her sex and took long licks as the warm, gentle rain fell upon them both.
When she came again, he couldn’t resist.
He reached down between his own legs to see if—no, he wasn’t hard. There was still little to no sensation in his cock, and he had a thought… there had to be clinical options for this. Weren’t there shots?
Maybe he needed a bicycle pump.
Whatever, he’d worry about that later. Flicking with his tongue, he slipped his fingers inside her and started working her with penetration while he took care of the top of her cleft.
“Daniel…”
It was amazing how empowering this was, proof that sex could be transformative in so many ways—and in his case? The pleasure he was giving her was making him feel like a total man, even though he was flaccid.
So, yeah, he continued to drive her harder and harder, until she was writhing and jerking in the midst of the falling rain, a gleaming, glistening display of a woman in ecstasy—and he had fucking put her in that state. Why did he keep going? Because he could. Because he wanted her to feel him in any way he was able. Because he was breathing her in and swallowing her and making a mark on her that she would not forget after he was gone.
Every time she came into this bathroom? For however long she stayed here?
She would think of what he had done to her right here, and hopefully, after the sting of losing him faded, she’d remember the way he’d been able to do her. And when she took another lover? He could guarantee that the man wouldn’t treat her like this.
Whoever the fuck he was.
Lucky fucking bastard.
As a wave of sadness busted through Daniel’s focus, he pushed it away, but he did slow down. And then he was crawling up her body. With heavy-lidded eyes, she looked at him and smiled in a dreamy way.
The grief lingered as he kissed her mouth and felt her hands run down his ribs. As he lay down next to her, one of her legs kneed between his own, and when she moved her hips into his, he had a feeling she was trying to see if he was hard without being obvious about it.
“Hey,” he said against her mouth.
Her eyes ducked his, and her face grew tighter—and not in a good way.
“Hey,” he repeated as he stroked her wet hair back. “You turn me on, you know that?”
Lydia’s honey-colored stare came back to his own.
“It’s true.” He eased back a little and trolled his fingertips up the curve of her breast. “You make me hot. You make me glad to be a man. When I tell you I could do that to you forever, I mean it. Don’t let my body cause you to question a goddamn thing.”
She ran her hands up his shoulders. “I just wish we could… I mean, not for me. For you—”
He cut her off. “I know you do—”
“I wish I could do something. For you.”
After a moment, he said softly, “Actually, you can.”
Don’t say it, he warned himself. Don’t you fucking ruin this.
But if not now, when was he going to say this, he wondered. What if something went wrong with him?
Pillowing his head with his arm, he touched her face, and for some reason, the sound of the water hitting the marble shower grew loud, very loud.
As his chest got tight, she clearly became concerned.
“It’s nothing bad,” he whispered as he ran his thumb over her lower lip. “I just want you to remember me, after I’m gone.”
Her recoil was instantaneous and the sputtering immediate.
“No, wait, let me just say this. And then I won’t bring it up again.” He waited until she’d calmed a little. “I’m a selfish bastard, and I want you to remember me when the spring comes because we met in the spring. And when you go up on the mountain for work and you look at that bridge I built, think of me then, too, ’kay? The wolves you track? When you cross paths with the one whose life you saved with my help, who we released back into the wild together? Remember me when you look into his face.” Daniel exhaled slowly. “I don’t need to be all around you or in your mind all the time. I don’t want that—I want you to move on and find your way and live a new life that is different, but eventually happy. Just… don’t forget me, okay? That’s death to me. You not remembering me is death. You thinking of me from time to time? That’s… my forever.”
Ah, shit, he was making her cry. But he had to speak this, he needed to get this out.
“I want forever with you.” He touched her temple. “And it’s right up here. This is not meant to be a burden, I swear, and I don’t want to upset you. I just… oh, fucking hell, come here.”
