CHAPTER ONE
Nevada’s Area 51 was not only the subject of government conspiracy theories; it was now, officially, her new home. A good hour before sunrise, Cassandra Powell pulled into the military parking lot outside the launch pad leading to the top-secret underground facilities where the launch of the Project Zodius GTECH Super Soldier Program was a year under way. The ride from her new on-base housing had been a whopping three minutes, which considering the inhuman hours the military favored, she could deal with. The simplicity of a standard green army skirt and jacket—required despite her contract status—seemed to be working for her as well. The cardboard bed, not so much. It had, however, made a great desk for her laptop and all-night reading.
And considering she was only three days on the job—taking over for the former head of clinical psychology who’d transferred to another department—she had plenty of work to do. The prior department head hadn’t done one fourth of the studies that Cassandra deemed critical to properly evaluate these soldiers. And while the counseling aspect fell outside her clinical role, she wasn’t pleased with what was being offered. She’d certainly be nudging her way into that territory.
Files in hand, she exited her red Volkswagen Beetle and pushed the door shut with a flick of her hip. She walked all of two steps when the wind whipped into high gear, fluttering her suit jacket at her hips and tearing to pieces the blonde knot tied at her nape.
She shoved at the loose locks of hair and drew to a shocked halt, blinking in disbelief as four men dressed in black fatigues materialized in a rush of hot August wind at the other side of the long parking lot next to the elevator. She drew a breath and forced it out, trying to calm the thunder of her heart pounding her chest. Apparently, she wasn’t quite as prepared for the phenomenon of GTECH Super Soldiers as she’d thought she was. Or at least not this skill her piles of paperwork referred to as “wind-walking.” It was one thing to be inhumanly strong and fast, even to be immune to human disease, but to be able to travel with the wind was downright spooky—and suddenly, so was the dark parking lot as the four men disappeared into the elevator.
Eager to get inside, Cassandra started walking, but made it all of two steps before another man appeared beside the elevator, this time with no wind as warning. Good grief, she hadn’t read about that stealthy little trick yet. Special Forces soldiers were already called lethal weapons, but these men, this one in particular, were taking it to a whole new level.
Still a good distance away from the building, Cassandra slowed her pace, hoping to go unnoticed, but she wasn’t so lucky. The soldier punched the elevator button and then turned and waved her forward. Oh no. No. No. Not ready to meet anyone yet. Not until she had a few of her ducks in a row. Cassandra quickly juggled her files and snagged her cell from her purse as an excuse to decline joining him, holding it up, and waving him off. He hesitated a few moments as the doors opened before he finally stepped inside and disappeared.
Cassandra started walking instantly, determined to get to the darned elevator before another soldier appeared. By the time she was inside, she had her file on wind-walking open—a good distraction from the entire underground, bomb-shelter-style workplace that made her more than a little uneasy.
Absorbed in her reading, head down, Cassandra darted out of the elevator the instant it opened, only to run smack into a rock-hard chest. She gasped, paperwork flew everywhere, and strong hands slid around her arms, steadying her from a fall. It was then that she looked up to find herself staring into the most gorgeous pair of crystal blue eyes she’d ever seen in her life.
She swallowed hard and noticed his long raven hair tied at the back of his neck, rather than the standard buzz cut—a sure indicator he was Special Ops. He could be one of the two hundred GTECH soldiers stationed at the base. A wind-walker, she thought, still in awe of what she’d seen above ground.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was…” She lost the final word, her mouth dry as she suddenly realized her legs were pressed intimately to his desert fatigues, and her conservative, military-issue skirt had managed to work its way halfway up her thigh. “Oh!”
She quickly took a step backwards, righting her skirt in a flurry of panicked movement. Three days on the job, and already she was putting on a show. She pressed her hand to her forehead. “I know better than to read while walking. I hope I didn’t hurt you.” He arched a dark brow as her gaze swept all six-foot-plus of incredibly hot man, all lethal muscle and mayhem, and knew that was unlikely. She laughed at the ridiculous statement, feeling uncharacteristically nervous. She was five four in her bare feet—well, on her tip toes—and she bet this man towered over her by nearly a foot. “Okay. I didn’t hurt you. But, well, I’m still sorry.”
He stared down at her, his gaze steady, unblinking, the chiseled lines of high cheekbones and a square jaw, expressionless. Except deep in those strikingly blue eyes, she saw a tiny flicker of what she thought was amusement. “I’m not sorry,” he said, squatting down to pick up her files.
She blinked at the odd response, tilting her head and then squatting down to face him. “What do you mean?” she asked, a lock of her blonde hair falling haphazardly across her brow, free from the clip that was supposed to be holding it in place. “You’re not sorry?”
He gathered the last of her files, then said, “I’m not sorry you ran into me. Have coffee with me.”
It wasn’t a question. In fact, it almost bordered on an order. And damn, if she didn’t like the way he gave that near order. Her heart fluttered at the unexpected invitation. “I don’t know if that is appropriate,” she said, thinking of her new position. She stalled. “I don’t even know your name.”
The elevator behind them dinged open, and Kelly Peterson, assistant director of science and medicine for Project Zodius, appeared. “You’re early, Cassandra,” she said, amusement lifting her tone. “Morning, Michael.” She continued on her way, as if she found nothing significant, or abnormal, about Cassandra being sprawled across the hallway floor with a hot soldier by her side.
Cassandra popped to her feet, appalled she’d made such a spectacle of herself. Her sexy Special Ops soldier followed. “Now you know my name,” he said, and this time, his firm, way-too-tempting mouth hinted at a lift. Not a smile, a lift. God…it was sexy. “Michael Taylor.”
“Cassandra,” she said, unable to say the last name, dreading it more with this man than with the many others she’d been introduced to in the past few days. What was she supposed to say? Hi. I’m the daughter of the man who changed your life forever by injecting you with alien DNA without telling you first, and then claimed it was to save you from an enemy biological threat? Now you’re a GTECH Super Soldier for what we think is the rest of your life, but who knows what that really means long-term for you. But hey, I promise I’m one of the good guys, here to ensure you aren’t used and abused just because you’re a macho, kick-ass, secret government weapon? And did I mention I’m nothing like my father?
“Cassandra Powell,” he said, handing her the files, leaning close, the warmth of his body blanketing her in sizzling awareness. “I know who you are. And no, that doesn’t scare me away. I never run away from anything I want.” He leaned back, fixing her in another one of those dreamy blue stares. “So how about that coffee?”
She nearly swallowed her tongue at his directness, but, a true general’s daughter, she managed to recover quickly, remembering her duty in a painfully responsible fashion. “I…don’t think that’s a good idea.”
He studied her a moment before stepping into the now open elevator doors. “I’ll ask again,” he said as he turned to face her. She found herself lost in those addictive crystal blue eyes—eyes that had promised nothing, but somehow, promised everything—until the steel doors shut between them.
Cassandra inhaled, the scent of him still lingering in the air, and she bit her bottom lip. Too bad she’d sworn off soldiers years ago, because he was one heck of a man. Oh yeah, he was. But she’d seen her mother fret and worry over a man who was gone too often and might never return, right up to the day she’d died two years before, and Cassandra already had her father to worry about. So why was she wondering when he would “ask again”?
Forcing herself to shake off the encounter, Cassandra headed to the lab attached to the tiny corner office she’d claimed as her own on her one previous visit. The area should have been vacant this early in the morning, but Kelly was waiting eagerly for her entrance. They’d had a casual friendship for years, having met at a military seminar. Which made it easy for Cassandra to recognize that though Kelly looked every bit the scholar with her light brown hair neatly piled on top of her head, her lab coat already in place, and a pencil tucked behind her ear, the mischief in her expression meant she didn’t have work on her mind.
“It’s a shame those blue eyes of his are really black now, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Hello and good morning to you too,” Cassandra said, piling her things on top of one of the ten empty lab tables and turning to her. “And what do you mean his eyes are really black?”
“I see someone is behind on their homework,” Kelly said, claiming one of the stools beside Cassandra to sit down. “All of the GTECHs have black eyes, but they can camouflage them to their natural color. Well, except with their bonded females. It’s kind of freaky and amazing at the same time, like about everything else around this place.”
“Clearly I’m way behind on my homework,” Cassandra said, perching on a stool herself, “because I don’t know anything about camouflage and changing eye colors. And what do you mean by bonded females?”
“To date, three random women have experienced pain on the back of their necks shortly after their first sexual encounter with a GTECH. Immediately afterward, a mark appears on their neck resembling a tattoo—a double circle with intricate design work around the outer line. For now, and for lack of a better term, we’re referring to those couples as ‘bonded’ since the mark is clearly some sort of link between the two, though frankly, our understanding of what that means is weak, at best. But the very fact that the GTECHs can’t camouflage their eyes from the female they gave this marking to supports some sort of unique bond.”
Cassandra blinked in amazement. “You’re sure these marks aren’t tattoos and the three women—maybe even the GTECHs—are in on his together—trying to get attention?”
“That was my first thought too, but there’s no ink, and we’ve attempted surgical removal unsuccessfully. The mark regenerates immediately.”
“Wow,” she said, blown away. “Just wow.”
“You can say that again,” Kelly agreed. “One thing about this job—it’s never boring.”
That was an understatement. “Aside from the immunity to the camouflage—what kinds of effects are these marks having on these women?”
“In the women, some specific blood work changes that appear to be nonmalignant. None in the GTECHs involved. Interestingly enough though, the couples are quite attached to one another, and the men quite protective of the women. Now—is that because of the marks? I don’t know. Obviously, these couples were having sex, so they were already attracted to one another. Did the marks occur because of a deeper emotional bond, or did the deeper emotional bond occur because of the marks? I have yet to answer those questions. But, needless to say, we’d prefer to avoid further incidents until we know more. The men weren’t happy when I handed out condoms en masse to the troops. Not needing a condom was a bit of cold comfort for being made sterile by the GTECH injections.”
“You can’t be sure they’ll take precautions though,” Cassandra objected. “What about the dangers to the general population? What if this tattoo marking comes with dangers we don’t know about yet?”
“Two hundred GTECH soldiers and who knows how many sexual partners, yet only three women have been marked. Laboratory studies are inconclusive, but we’ve run test after test, and we’ve found nothing environmental, no set of stimuli, that re-creates that mark. And believe me, we’ve tried thousands of combinations. The odds of this mark spreading across the general population, even with unprotected sex, are next to zero. Even lower if at least a portion of the men actually use the condoms.” She eyed her watch. “The weekly department-heads meeting starts in an hour. It’s always…interesting. Why don’t we grab some coffee, and I’ll brief you before heading in that direction. Bring your files, and I can answer any questions.” The suggestion of coffee sent her thoughts darting to Michael and his words. I’ll ask again. Disconcertedly, Cassandra shook off the memory and cleared her throat, not used to being this distracted unless it was with her work. “Yes. Okay.” She pushed off the lab stool and reached for her files as they headed toward the door.
“You know,” Kelly said, mischief creeping back into her voice as they headed toward the door. “I’ve seen many a woman drool over Michael, but I’ve never seen Michael look at anyone the way he looked at you by that elevator.”
The out-of-the-blue comment took Cassandra off guard, and she cut Kelly a sideways glance. “What look?” she asked, with a delicate snort. “The man was all emotionless steel.”
“Oh, he had a look,” she said. “How does it feel to be wanted by ‘The Dark One’?”
“The Dark One?” Cassandra asked, shaking her head at the strange name.
“That’s what everyone here calls him. You know—because he’s all dark and intimidating.” She laughed. “They’re afraid he’ll kill them if they look at him the wrong way.”
Cassandra gaped. “Kill them?”
Kelly chuckled. “I’m kidding, or mostly kidding. The stories of Michael are darn near legend, though half of them are probably not even true. The whole lethal-in-battle and lethal-in-bed kind of typical soldier talk. They say he’s different than the other GTECHs.” Before Cassandra could ask how, Kelly wiggled an eyebrow and added, “He’s certainly got that tall, dark, and sexy thing going on, doesn’t he?”
Cassandra shook her head. “Oh no. You aren’t luring me into saying he’s sexy. I’m here to do a job, not drool over the soldiers.” Though silently, Cassandra wasn’t sure “sexy” even began to describe Michael’s appeal.
“You don’t have to admit it,” Kelly said. “I saw the look on your face, too, at that elevator.” She grinned. “Just use a condom.”
Heat rushed to Cassandra’s cheeks. She didn’t need a condom! Or a soldier to fret over, especially a man who apparently had plenty of other women to do it for her. No way. She was not having sex with Michael.
Late that evening, Cassandra sat at her simple steel desk in her still barren office—now her home away from her not-so-comfortable home—trying to focus on the GTECH file and failing. She grimaced, giving in to the temptation driving her to distraction, and punched in Michael’s name. He was thirty-four, five years older than she was. Of course, who knew how the GTECH serum would affect his aging process. She could turn into an old lady, and he’d never age a day. She didn’t like that thought much and moved on. He was from California and…holy moly. His family owned Taylor Industries, one of the largest weapons manufacturers in the world.
She sat back in her chair. There was no way his being here was a coincidence. Her father, of course, had to know. She’d bet her weight in chocolate that Michael was here because her father believed he could be useful in the future, if not already. Cassandra sat up, keyed again. Sure enough, Michael had been the only soldier pulled from his Special Ops unit and brought to Groom Lake. Her father was nothing, if not strategic. He’d wanted something from Michael beyond his battlefield skills. He wanted that connection to Taylor Industries.
“What are you up to, Father?” she whispered. “And why do I know it’s not a good idea?” Frowning, she stared at the computer screen. And what made someone like Michael, who had to be filthy rich, join the military? Family trouble was the usual answer. She’d seen it plenty of times. Cassandra tabbed down the computer screen, reading the details of how Michael’s father had died in a small plane crash in Saudi Arabia when Michael was twenty-one. She checked the record. That happened a year after he’d entered the Special Forces. Michael had been on a mission and didn’t hear about the death until after the funeral. His mother now ran Taylor Industries. So even after his father died, Michael had stayed in the army, which meant he wanted nothing to do with the family business. Or his mother didn’t want him involved.
“How’s my favorite daughter doing?”
Cassandra all but jumped out of her skin at the sound of her father’s voice, finding him standing in the doorway, a smile on his face, looking sharp as always in his well-decorated uniform, his gray hair trimmed neatly.
“I’m your only daughter,” she reminded him, wishing he’d share that smile with the staff at Groom Lake who feared him far more than they should. “And that joke is older than you, Father.” She had no idea why she felt like a kid who’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
“The old ones are the good ones,” he said. “Remember that.” In tip-top shape and looking far younger than his fifty-five years, he lent truth to that statement.
“I don’t have to,” she said. “You remind me often.”
He studied her with a critical eye. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”
“I’m a workaholic, like my father,” she said.
“And if your mother were alive,” he said, “she’d hang us both up by our toes.”
Even two years after her mother’s car accident, the reference to her passing made Cassandra’s chest tighten uncomfortably. “As my psychology mentor, she’d be as nuts as I am over the incomplete evaluations done on the GTECHs.”
“I have no doubt,” he said. “But before you dive in and try to conquer a year of what you see as our deficiencies, I want you to focus on a specific list of ten soldiers of special interest to me.”
“What kind of special interest?”
He shut the door. “They’ve all tested positive to a certain gene we’re calling X2. We have animals in the lab also testing positive that are showing aggressive tendencies we need to be certain don’t translate into our GTECH population. We need to rerun all baseline evaluations and whatever extra testing you deem necessary, then ongoing evaluation.” He fixed her in a silvery stare. “The animals and the soldiers seem to be showing the gene growth somewhere in the twelve to fifteen months post-injection range.”
Cassandra ground her teeth. The fact that he, and the government, had withheld the experimental compound of the immunizations from the soldiers was completely despicable. But she’d stated all her objections to how the GTECHs had been created before taking this job. Heard all the vows that the GTECHs were created by accident, when they—meaning the army, though she translated that to her father—were simply protecting them from a biological threat. Considering her father was all about protecting his country at all cost, and though he meant well, often went too far by her standard, she wasn’t completely sure she believed that claim. She suspected she’d hear the soldiers voice the same concerns once she earned their trust, which she fully intended to do. In fact, it was her objections to how the GTECHs were created, and then how little emotional support they’d received regarding that creation—rather than her father’s urging—that had finalized her acceptance. Her father wanted her for the job for her skill and the family loyalty her mother had often given him. But like her mother, who had often worked by her father’s side, Cassandra wanted to help the soldiers he employed. So, like her mother, and out of character to her true self, she did what most people did around her father and bit her tongue.
“Let’s have a father-daughter breakfast in the morning,” he ordered rather than asked. Her father didn’t know how to operate outside of giving orders, even when he simply wanted father-daughter time.
Knowing this, and seeing it as his form of affection, Cassandra smiled. She didn’t always approve of her father’s ways, but she loved him deeply. “I’d like that.”
“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he said, giving her a nod before disappearing out the door, and leaving her with a sense of unidentifiable dread that lingered for the next hour.
Finally, tired and ready for food, she exited the building and headed to her car, only to be greeted by a perfectly flat, perfectly defeating, tire. “Great,” she mumbled, setting her files inside on the backseat and then pulling the tight knot at the back of her hair free to release the ever-growing tension there. She glanced around, looking for the resource never in short supply on a military base—a soldier or two or three, who could be easily convinced to lend a helping hand.
Suddenly, her hair lifted around her neck, a soft breeze picking up momentary speed with a raw masculine scent touching its depths. A second later, Michael appeared before her, as big and broad and devastatingly “sexy” as he had been this morning.
“You really should come with a warning alarm of some sort,” she said, fist balled at her chest to calm her pounding heart.
“So I hear,” he said, his too-blue eyes flickering with a hint of unreadable emotion before he glanced at her tire. “Looks like you need help.”
There was something overwhelming—perhaps decadent even—about this man that had her struggling to remember how to form a proper sentence. “I…yes, please.” Cassandra brushed a lock of blonde hair from her eyes and glanced at the elevator, then him. “Was that you this morning holding the elevator for me?”
He kneeled down to inspect her tire. “Yeah,” he said, tossing her an amused look over his truly spectacular shoulder hugged by a nice, tight black tee. “But apparently, strange men and elevators don’t work for you.”
Cassandra felt her cheeks flush. “I had a call,” she said. The look he gave her said he wasn’t buying it, so she added, “Okay fine. I’m not beyond admitting I was a little intimidated. You wind-walked without any visible wind. I didn’t know that was possible.”
He pushed to his feet and ignored her comment. “You’ve got a screw the size of a rocket launcher in that tire. It’ll have to be replaced.”
Cassandra wasn’t letting him off that easy. “Can everyone wind-walk without any visible wind?”
“I can,” he said, his lids half-veiled now, his jaw a bit more tense. “I don’t pretend to speak for anyone else.”
Kelly’s words played in Cassandra’s head. The stories of Michael are darn near legend. “You’re the only one who can do it, aren’t you? That’s why people talk about you. Because you’re different and it scares them.”
He stepped closer to her, so close she could feel the heat of his body, so close she had to tilt her chin to look him in the eyes. They flickered and then turned solid black. “Do I scare you, Cassandra?”
Oh yeah. He scared her all right, but not for the reasons he assumed. This man reached inside her and demanded a feminine response she wasn’t prepared to give him. In fact, standing there, looking into his eyes—she didn’t care if they were black or blue—they spoke to her in a soul-deep way that told her far more than she thought he knew. He was showing her the GTECH, and instinctively, she knew he needed her to see the man. “I’ll make you a deal, Michael Taylor,” she said. “I’ll be scared of you when you give me a reason to be. But just so you know, being all broody and showing me how well you can shift your eye color isn’t doing the job.”
Surprise flickered across his handsome features, and for a moment she almost thought he might smile. She wanted to see that smile, for reasons she couldn’t explain, and hung on to a thin string waiting for it, until the moment was gone. Until he said, “Let me take you to dinner. I promise to work on being scarier while we eat. And for added effect, I’ll replace your tire when we get back.”
Warnings played in her head at the invitation. He had a slew of females. She didn’t date soldiers. Her father wouldn’t approve. But still, she found herself looking forward to the challenge of enticing that elusive smile. She playfully replied, “I’m up for the challenge if you are.”
Those black eyes shifted back to blue fire, filled with enough heat to make her knees weak. “I guess we’ll see about that.” He fished his keys from his black fatigue pants. “I’m parked over in the corner.”
“What?” she teased. “We have to drive? We don’t get to wind-walk to dinner? Superman used to fly Lois all over the place.”
“While I’m never against a little comic book fantasy,” he assured, “I’m no Superman, believe me, and you’re not Lois—not unless you’re looking for a near-death experience. It’s dangerous for humans. Sometimes even fatal.”
“Oh,” she said, surprised, walking with him toward a row of cars. “That’s limiting. I thought you could just pop in and rescue someone and be done with it.”
“Gives me an excuse to keep Carrie,” he said, stopping next to a classic black Mustang.
“You named your car Carrie?” she asked, surprised yet again by this man. He was far more human than people made him out to be.
“She’s the friend who has never failed me,” he said, pulling the passenger door open and waving her forward.
“She’s also a psycho demon character from a Stephen King novel,” she reminded him. “Not sure that’s a friend I want to have.”
“You won’t say that after you ride in her,” he promised.
All too aware of his warm stare, Cassandra slid into the car, sinking into the soft leather surrounding her, a moment before he shut her inside. The friend who has never failed me. Someone had not only failed Michael in the past, they’d hurt him doing it. And that hurt was a part of how he defined who, and what, he was. Maybe it even made him as lethal as everyone seemed to believe him to be. Maybe she should be afraid of him. So why wasn’t she opening the car door and getting out?
Besides, how could one little dinner date be dangerous?