“Stand up. Let me check your progress.”

By now Samantha had been locked up in the holding cell inside the hidden lab for what felt like hours, so she was used to the routine.

Rising wearily from the bare cot, which had a thin mattress and no sheet, she stood, shivering and faced the dull silver bars of her prison. Eddie Lounds was standing on the other side of them with the gun tucked in his belt and a clipboard in one hand.

“Come on—spread your arms and legs,” he commanded, frowning warningly at Samantha.

Samantha, who had her arms wrapped around herself as much for warmth as for modestly, forced herself to spread them open. She parted her thighs as well, knowing Lounds would demand it. But it was hard, so damn hard to make herself this vulnerable. Not to mention the fact that the chilly air of the lab made her want to curl back up and try to conserve body heat.

“Very good,” Lounds muttered, scratching away at the clipboard. “A nice deep rosy shade now. Yes, you’re progressing nicely. I think we’re almost ready for harvesting.”

You sick bastard, Samantha thought as she stood there, exposed and trembling while her captor made notes about the color of her nipples and outer pussy lips. If I get out of here, I’m going to make you pay for this!

But would she get out before it was too late? She could feel her body changing, growing more tender and sensitive—it was almost as if she were ripening somehow. The headache in her temples was getting worse too, throbbing like a sick heartbeat inside her head.

“All right, here.” Lounds was sliding something under the barred door of her cell. At first Samantha thought it was food—so far he’d given her a half-eaten bag of potato chips and a bottle of water, which was hardly substantial.

But to her disappointment, there was nothing to eat in the flat, shallow pan Lounds pushed toward her. It was half filled with water with a thin piece of soap—the kind you get in hotel bathrooms—floating in it.

“What’s this?” Samantha crouched down to get a closer look. “Why did you give me water and soap?” She dipped her fingers in the pan and winced. “Cold water.”

“To shave with.” Lounds held something up beyond the bars and showed it to her. It was a pink Bic Lady razor. “I’m giving you this but only on the condition that you agree to use it and give it back.”

“Use it where?” Samantha demanded, though she was horribly afraid she already knew.

“Your sex, of course.” Lounds sounded almost prim. “My collection cups need smooth, hairless skin to adhere to in order to achieve proper suction.”

“Like hell I will!” Samantha snapped. “I’m not making it any easier for you to torture me.”

“You’ll do it. . . .” Lounds glared at her, his eyes suddenly flashing from black to yellow. “Or I’ll do it. Either way, you’re going to get shaved, Samantha.”

Her heart skipped a beat. The flash of yellow in his eyes brought back the night of the attack, the glaring yellow eyes of the beast he’d turned into, glowing in the dark as he ripped and tore. . . . More even than the gun in his belt, Samantha feared his Shifted form.

“You asshole,” she said in a shaking voice. “I’ll make you pay for this. I don’t know how yet, but I swear you’re going to get what’s coming to you.”

“Right.” Lounds sounded bored by her threats. He tossed the razor through the bars of her cage, and it clattered to the floor at her bare feet. “Just get shaving. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. You’d better be completely smooth, or you’ll be sorry.”

He left, leaving Samantha to stare at the razor and the pan of ice-cold water with its small, pathetic sliver of soap, wondering what in the hell she was going to do.

In the end, she had no choice—she shaved away the little patch of blond curls that decorated the mound of her sex. There wasn’t much to shave, actually, since she’d recently had a wax, but Samantha still felt horribly exposed once her pussy was completely bare.

She stared through the bars of the cage at the other side of the room. In addition to the harness strung over the metal frame, there was a shelf with several pieces of equipment, including an industrial-sized hematocrit centrifuge. It was shaped rather like a large Crock-Pot and plugged into the wall behind it. Normally such a piece of equipment would be used for spinning down blood samples, but given that Lounds had talked about “harvesting” her, Samantha wasn’t sure if that was its purpose at all.

Thinking of that, her eyes slid back to the strange harness with its glass collection cups and tangle of hoses. What exactly did Lounds think he was going to suck out of her? It wasn’t like she was lactating or anything—was she?

Looking down at one of her newly perky breasts, which was firmer than it had been since she was nineteen or twenty, Samantha pinched one nipple experimentally between her finger and thumb. The tight peak, which had darkened from pale pink to a dark rose that was almost maroon, seemed to have grown larger and much more sensitive in response to the chemicals Lounds had injected her with.

Though she pinched very gently, a bolt of pain still went through her. Samantha gasped and let go at once.

God, that hurt!

Looking down, she saw that in response to the light pressure, a drop of clear golden fluid had formed on the tip of her nipple. As she watched, it slid sluggishly down the underside of her full breast, leaving a sticky trail, almost like honey, in its wake.

“What the hell?” Samantha muttered. This couldn’t be normal, could it? After all, Sadie had just gone through the Rejuvenation process, and she had never said anything about her breasts leaking honey-type stuff. Were the chemicals that had forced her into this accelerated Rejuvenation to blame? Samantha didn’t know—she only knew it was frightening to see something coming out of her body and have no idea what it was.

Looking at her other breast, she saw that it had begun leaking too. Before she knew it, droplets of pale gold liquid were forming on both her nipples and dripping to the tile floor of her cell.

Then she felt something between her legs. Something warm and wet, almost like she was starting her period.

She groaned inwardly. Oh no! Not there too!

But when she spread her thighs and looked down, she saw that sure enough, her inner thighs were coated with the same sticky, pale-gold liquid that was leaking from her breasts. God, what was happening to her?

“Ah—I see you’re ready for harvesting now.”

The voice behind her made Samantha whip her head around and close her thighs tightly. Lounds was standing by the bars of the cage, smirking in that hateful, smug way of his. Samantha thought she had never hated anyone more in her life.

“I . . . don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, giving him her coldest look. “What exactly do you think you’re going to be harvesting?”

“Don’t play stupid, Samantha—it doesn’t become you. You’re actually quite intelligent for one of your sex.”

“Yes, I somehow managed to get through med school and a trauma fellowship despite the whole ‘being a woman’ thing,” Samantha said dryly. “What a shock. Until you realized that the brain and vagina aren’t mutually exclusive organs, that is.”

“Very funny,” Lounds growled. “I’m talking about harvesting your nectar.” He nodded at the droplets that had fallen at her feet. They were so viscous that they didn’t spread out like blobs of water but held together, looking like small golden beads on the white tile floor.

“Nectar?” Samantha stared at the stuff which was now flowing freely from her nipples and pussy. “What the hell is ‘nectar,’ and what did you give me to make me produce it?”

“It’s actually a normal byproduct of Rejuvenation, but most Juvies produce it only in tiny amounts—they don’t even notice it.”

“Well, I’m sure as hell noticing it right now,” Samantha snapped. She still had her back to him, crouching over the pan of soap and water. She wondered if she could somehow use the pink razor to slash his throat, but no—it would snap in a second. There was no way she could kill a man with a flimsy plastic razor, let alone the huge ravening wolf-type thing she knew he could become.

“You’re noticing it because your Rejuvenation process has been greatly accelerated.” Lounds’s voice had taken on a lecturing tone again. “You’re producing as much in a couple of hours as most Juvies produce over the entire weeks-or months-long course of their Rejuvenation.”

“And I’m guessing you wanted it that way,” Samantha said flatly. She was playing for time, keeping him talking. Trying desperately to think of a way to escape once he opened her cell door to “harvest” her.

“Of course I wanted it that way. Nectar is loaded with hormones—it’s an antiaging chemical cocktail—the essence that rolls back the hands of time and reverses the aging process, taking a woman who is already entering middle age back to her early twenties to start again. It increases fertility exponentially.” Lounds sounded really excited now. “Just think—with the chemical compounds your body is secreting right now, I can produce medications for both the antiaging and the infertility markets. My name will go down in history as one of the greatest scientists of all time. I’ll be famous . . . not to mention rich beyond my wildest dreams.”

Samantha stared fixedly at the small pan of water with the thin white sliver of hotel soap floating in it. What was she going to do? How could she escape?

“All right. Get up now—it’s time to get you hooked up to the harvester. You’re wasting nectar—every drop you make is worth its weight in gold,” Lounds said. It sounded like the lecture was over, and Samantha still wasn’t sure what she was going to do.

What do I have to work with? she asked herself. Not a hell of a lot. Not even a sheet to wrap herself in to stop her shivering. Just the pan if ice cold water, the razor, and the soap.

Soap!

She turned her head again and looked past Lounds who was standing there impatiently. She stared at the metal frame and its handcuff-type restraints at all four corners.

If he cuffs my feet first, I won’t have a chance. But if he starts with my hands . . .

Surreptitiously, she reached for the thin bar of soap.

“What are you doing? I said come on!” Lounds demanded.

“Hang on a minute,” Samantha snapped, looking over her shoulder. “This nectar stuff is sticky and I got it all over my hands.”

“Get out here now if you don’t want me to either shoot or Shift,” he growled. “My Hyena would love the taste of your nectar—it’s one of the things that draws a male Shifter to a Juvie, along with her scent.”

Just the thought of him licking her in his beast form made Samantha feel sick and shaky. It didn’t help that her head was pounding and her temples were throbbing.

“All right, all right.” Quickly she finished with the soap and dropped it back in the water. Standing, she turned to face him, her fists clenched and her chin held defiantly high.

“I see you finished shaving.” Lounds’s small, weasely eyes roamed over her naked body hungrily. Having him look at her that way made Samantha’s skin crawl and yet, horrifyingly, she also felt a pull toward him.

He’s an Alpha, she thought, sick with disgust as she watched him unlock the door to her cell. And my body is going to need an Alpha very soon.

Well, to hell with what her body needed—she’d rather be dead than let Lounds touch her. She had to get out of there while she still could. No matter what the risk, she had to take it.

“Come on.” He had the gun in his hand again and was waving her out of the cell with it.

Samantha stepped outside the cell, edging around him, keeping the gun in her sights at all times. There was no point in trying anything while he still had it pointed directly at her. But he would have to put it down to hook her up to that damn collection system with its glass suction cups and tubing. That would be her chance—the only one she would get.

“Get over there.” Lounds motioned at the metal frame, which was shaped like a capital X. “Stand against the frame with your back to it and put your hands over your head.”

“Fine.” Samantha walked over and did as he ordered, standing with her back pressed against the metal X. She hissed as her bare skin connected with the dull silver metal—it was so cold it burned.

“Hold still!” Lounds demanded. “Slip your right hand into the cuff so I can tighten it. Do it!” He waved the gun right in her face, and Samantha hastened to comply.

At least, she thought as she slid her right hand into the cold metal ring, the restraint didn’t appear to have a lock and key, like traditional handcuffs. Instead, there was a release mechanism located on the underside of the cuff, in an area impossible to reach by the hand being restrained.

Samantha was a big fan of crime thrillers and she was thinking of one she’d read where the heroine was getting handcuffed by the bad guys. In the book, the girl allowed herself to be cuffed, but kept her hands fisted as she did, causing her thumb joint to poke out and make her hand and wrist area larger than it would normally be. Later in the book, this gave her more leeway to pull out of the cuffs.

Let’s hope this works, Samantha thought as Lounds reached up with one hand and snapped the cuff shut around her right wrist and then did the same to the left. Hopefully the author did some actual research on this and wasn’t just pulling it out of her ass!

The touch of Lounds’s hand on her skin made her shiver. The slugs-crawling-all-over sensation she’d had when she first shook hands with him washed over her in a rush. At the same time, though, the pounding headache in her temples eased completely, and the golden nectar flowing from her nipples and between her thighs increased dramatically.

He’s an Alpha, whispered a little voice in her head. An Alpha is what you need . . . or what you’re going to need very soon.

No! Samantha pushed the little voice away fiercely. No matter what changes her body went through, she wasn’t prepared to give in to that. She wanted nothing to do with Eddie Lounds—he made her sick.

Carefully, she began working on her wrists, extending her fingers to make her hands long and thin and drawing her thumbs in as much as possible. The soap she’d smeared on her skin helped some, but it was still a really tight fit.

“My, my—look at that!” Lounds seemed to have noticed her increased nectar production. “You’re leaking all over the place!” He sounded pleased about it. “Such a productive little Juvie.”

He leered at Samantha, who simply glared at him but said nothing. Let him think she was resigned to this—hopefully he would grow complacent.

“Need to cuff your feet too, but we don’t want all this rich nectar going to waste.”

Lounds seemed to be talking as much to himself as to her. Shoving the gun in the front waistband of his black slacks, he reached for one of the smaller glass suction cups.

Samantha’s entire body tensed. The gun was down. Well, at least it wasn’t in his hand anymore. Should she go for it? But Lounds still wasn’t quite where she wanted him, and her hands weren’t free.

Wait, she told herself. Wait just a minute more . . . throw him off guard.

So she kept quiet, surreptitiously pulling at her hands as Lounds flipped a switch on the small control panel mounted on the wall behind the centrifuge. A low humming filled the air, and he brought the first suction cup to her right breast. The rim of it was lined with a thin layer of rubber, and a whistling, sucking sound was coming from it, like a small vacuum. She watched with horrified fascination as Lounds covered her nipple and areola with it.

Immediately a painfully intense suction grabbed onto her breast and began tugging at her nipple. A bolt of agony shot through her sensitive peak, and Samantha had to bite her tongue to keep from howling in pain. The pressure was so strong it pulled the nectar straight from the tip of her nipple in a pale golden stream like honey spilling from the end of a spoon. The tubing attached to the suction cup gurgled as it swallowed her flow.

“You sadistic bastard,” she snarled as Lounds nodded in approval. “It feels like you just hooked me up to an industrial-strength vacuum. That fucking hurts!”

“Stop complaining—I’m doing you a favor, really.” He was covering her left nipple with another suction cup as he spoke. The same incredibly strong suction captured her ripe peak, followed by intense pain.

“Oh really? How’s that?” Samantha demanded. The metal cuff on her right side was sliding over the heel of her hand—the widest part. The left was still stubbornly stuck.

“It doesn’t happen often, but too much nectar can cause swelling and pain in a Juvie’s breasts and pussy. The only cure is allowing a male Shifter to suck it out.” He gave her a greedy grin. “And while I’d be more than happy to taste your golden flow, that would be drinking away the profits.”

Samantha thought of him sucking her nipples and nearly gagged. Despite the intense pain they caused, she would much rather have the cold glass suction cups pulling the nectar from her breasts than let Lounds anywhere near her.

“What about . . . down below?” She tried to make her voice casual. If he would just lean down . . . make himself vulnerable . . .

“You mean your pussy?” Lounds leered at her, his eyes flashing yellow again for an instant. Apparently the beast side of him wasn’t nearly as prim as the human side.

“Does too much . . . too much nectar cause a problem there too?” Samantha asked. “Because I think . . . think that’s what’s happening to me.”

“You need to be sucked, Samantha? Need to have your pussy pumped?” He gave her a lecherous grin as he reached for a third, larger suction cup, which was oval rather than round.

“It hurts,” Samantha said simply, which was no lie. Her pussy felt incredibly swollen and hot and achy—it was almost like she had a fever between her legs.

“Well let’s just take care of that then. Open up your legs and let me get you hooked up,” Lounds said.

Gritting her teeth, Samantha did as he said. Her skin felt like it was going to crawl right off her body when she felt his cold fingers on her heated flesh, but she held her breath and bore it, tugging down hard on her hands. She felt the right one slip free first, aided by the slippery soap she’d rubbed on her skin. The left one was stuck, though. Tug as she might, it wasn’t coming free.

Lounds was still busy between her legs. As unobtrusively as she could, Samantha reached with her right hand and began fiddling with the catch that locked her left hand in place. It was a simple release mechanism, not that different from what you found on a set of toy handcuffs.

Don’t look . . . don’t look! she thought at Lounds as she fumbled with the catch. At last she felt it give way. Finally, she was able to slip her left hand free just as Lounds was placing the oval suction cup over her freshly shaved pussy.

He was bending over to get the fit of the cup just right, with his head down, and he seemed to have forgotten all about cuffing her feet. As he fit the cup over her sex and Samantha felt the painful suction begin, she went into action. Grabbing hold of the metal rings which had bound her wrists for support, she raised both feet and kicked out as hard as she could.

One foot hit Lounds in the shoulder, but the other—her right foot—hit him squarely in the face. Samantha felt her heel connect with the bridge of his nose and there was a dull crunching sound she could hear even over the incessant humming and sucking of the harvesting device.

Her pussy had joined the chorus of pain along with her nipples now, but Samantha barely noticed it. She had a limited amount of time and she intended to use it. As Lounds staggered back, she jumped forward and flipped the switch on the wall behind the hematocrit.

Immediately the suction stopped and she was able to grab the tubing and yank the painful cups off her breasts and sex. They came away with a popping sound, and she had a split second to notice how red and swollen all her most sensitive areas looked. But she could worry about that later—Lounds was already getting up.

Blood was streaming from his obviously broken nose, and there was a look of rage on his narrow face. His eyes were flashing a baleful yellow. One hand was already on the gun, still tucked into the waistband of his slacks. Apparently he would rather shoot than Shift—a good thing as far as Samantha was concerned. But still a problem.

Have to put him down! Put him all the way out! she thought grimly.

If she failed, she would die—she had no illusions about that. She might be a valuable resource, but Lounds knew his Rejuvenation formula worked now. He could simply find another woman with a latent Shifter Gene and kidnap her the way he’d done with Samantha. Take her to the lab and harvest her and breed her. Samantha’s death would only be a minor inconvenience—a bump in the road of his highly profitable research.

“You bitch,” Lounds growled, his voice dipping into a monstrous, inhuman register that sent a chill down her spine. “You broke my nose—I’ll fucking kill you!”

He was tugging on the gun, his finger already on the trigger even though it wasn’t all the way out of his slacks yet.

Acting on impulse, Samantha grabbed the hematocrit centrifuge. It might have been the size of a Crock-Pot but it was considerably heavier and more solid than one. Her soapy hands slipped and slid on its silver metal sides, but she managed to find the handles on either side of it and hang on to those.

Lifting the heavy piece of equipment as high as she could, Samantha took two big steps and brought the centrifuge down on the top of Lounds’s head as hard as she could.

If she’d been taller and just a little bit stronger, she might have brained him with her makeshift weapon. Unfortunately, her diminutive size worked against her. She only caught Lounds a glancing blow with the centrifuge.

The blow wasn’t enough to knock him out but it had an effect Samantha hadn’t intended. The impact caused his body to tense, including the muscles in his hands.

There was a deafening sound like a car backfiring and Samantha looked down at herself, expecting to see that Lounds had blown a hole right through her abdomen and she just hadn’t felt the pain yet.

Probably missing half my liver, she thought in a strange, absent kind of way. But her belly was whole and smooth (and more toned than it had been in years, thanks to the Rejuvenation).

Despite her ringing ears—the shot had been really loud—Samantha suddenly heard a low groaning sound. Looking down to the source of the noise she saw Lounds lying in a rapidly spreading pool of dark red. Both hands were clutching his crotch. He was bleeding from his temple where she’d hit him with the centrifuge, and from the ragged hole that had been torn in his black slacks by the bullet he’d fired.

“Bitch,” he moaned when he saw Samantha watching him. “You . . . killed me! Blew my . . . dick off!”

“No, you did that to yourself,” Samantha snapped. She realized she was still clutching the hematocrit centrifuge and let it drop from nerveless fingers. It clanged on the floor and came to rest on its side in the pool of Lounds’s blood.

So much blood, she thought distractedly. The bullet must have nicked the femoral artery and he’s bleeding out. He’ll be dead soon—nobody can survive that kind of blood loss.

Normally when she saw someone in pain or a life-threatening situation, she felt drawn to them, and her mind immediately went into trauma-surgeon mode. But looking at Lounds, bleeding his life away on the cold tile floor, she had absolutely no urge to save him.

He was an evil man—he’d forced her body into a process it never would have gone through otherwise. Moreover, he had planned to harvest the byproducts of that process before raping and probably killing her once he had gotten as much as he could from her artificially stimulated body. Then he would no doubt have gone out to find another woman with a latent Shifter Gene and repeated the process.

Let him die, whispered a cold little voice in her brain, and Samantha was inclined to agree with it.

“You . . . bitch,” Lounds rasped out again. To Samantha’s alarm, she saw he was again fumbling with the gun. He might be on the way out but apparently he was determined to take her with him.

Samantha turned and fled, leaving bloody footprints on the sterile white floor tiles of the lab. She looked frantically for the way out. She didn’t think about bringing food or water or trying to find clothes. She didn’t even think of trying to get to a phone to call for help—the fight or flight impulse controlling her was too strong to leave room for rational thought.

All she could think was, Out! I have to get out of here now!

Later she would realize that there was no way Lounds could have gotten to her. Even if he’d managed to get the gun, he wouldn’t have been able to come after her and shoot. But at that moment, when she saw an exit door with a silver push bar attached to it, she simply ran for it and jammed both hands against the bar as hard as she could.

The door flew open and she was suddenly outside, suddenly free.