Mercury Striking (The Scorpius Syndrome #1)(84)

They passed between a series of old markets, where a group of cats scoured the area, searching for food.

Stress crackled across the truck, coming from his woman. She’d been tense all morning. “Do you understand what to do if we get separated?” he asked.

She huffed out air, nerves all but shooting from her. “For the love of all that’s holy, yes, I understand. I have an IQ well above normal, and I get it. Stop giving me orders.”

Okay, definitely tense and nervous about the mission.

While he could sympathize, he needed her to focus. He drove around a downed red Ferrari, heading into the heart of what used to be L.A. “I give orders, and you take them. Period.” On missions, he couldn’t allow for any back talk.

She rolled her eyes. “You are so cranky.”

“I am not,” he returned, wincing when he ran over a monstrous pothole. “I just don’t like leaving the compound or using fuel, so we need this raid to go right.”

“Whatever.” She turned to watch out the window. “Most guys are at least halfway in a good mood after a blow job, you know.”

He blinked. It had been a hell of a blow job, and then he’d returned the favor before they grabbed a few hours of sleep. “Focus, Harmony.”

“Yep,” she muttered to herself. “Great mood.”

He skirted piles of debris. “The blow job was excellent, but if you did it for me, you missed the mark.”

Her head swung full force toward him. “Excuse me? If I did it for you? No, Jax. Believe me, we women wake up wanting more than anything to suck cock. In fact, I woke up that morning thinking, man, I’d love to suck on Jax’s dick until he comes down my throat. Yep. Big dreams there.”

He gave her a look, his mouth twitching. “I meant that if you wanted to decrease my tension, it’s impossible right now. But I did like your mouth around my cock.”

“Nice, Jax. Geez.” Her shoulders moved down from around her ears. “Last night wasn’t planned, and I didn’t have any ulterior motive like to ease tension. It’s just, well, I wanted to.”

“Thank you.” He kept his gaze on the road. Should he have thanked her the night before? Hell, he’d gone down on her, truly enjoying himself, and made her orgasm twice. “In fact, you owe me one.”

She chuckled, and sounded surprised. “Shut up. We are done talking about blow jobs.”

Good thing, too. His pants were becoming too tight in the groin, and he needed to focus.

“Besides, we don’t have a relationship,” she muttered.

He glanced along the broken store windows. “What else would you call it?”

She kept silent.

Yep. He wasn’t sure, either, but it was more than sex, and more than convenience. In fact, not much about Lynne Harmony was convenient. “Now you tell me about Bret, your uncle, and the last time you met up.”

She stiffened. “No. Need to concentrate on the mission.”

“With the safest route, we have a couple of hours in the car. Time to multitask.” He kept his voice low, but she would talk, and she would tell him everything. “Don’t mess with me, Lynne.”

“You have got to stop threatening me.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to be gentle, and he was losing the patience needed to use reason. “How long after Bret killed the president did you escape?”

She held the gun in her lap, one hand over it, as if she didn’t want to pick it up. “About a month. Communications went down, and the Internet failed because of all the hacking.” When she thought, her lips pouted just a little. “Although the Internet would’ve failed at some point anyway. Not enough people to man the servers.”

“I know.”

“After I figured out Bret was a Ripper and that the CDC would soon shut down because we were losing people right and left, I stayed for about a month to gather as much information as I could find. We’d printed out all reports coming in throughout the world on Scorpius, figuring we might lose power at some point, so I just read and made notes.”

“Where are your notes?”

“Bret had his contacts in the CDC confiscate my records. But I have a pretty good memory, so I’ve been doing my best to reconstruct them.”

Jax swallowed, not wanting to ask the next question. “During that month, what about you and Bret?”

Her hand tightened over the gun. “We were both very busy. He had to get sworn in and up to date on everything presidential, and I had intel to gather and more blood to give. Even though I was a test subject, I was also a key researcher.”

“You were the head of infectious diseases for the CDC before Scorpius unleashed itself, right?” Jax asked, turning down a side alley that looked fairly clear.

“Yes.” She ran her fingernail along the gun’s safety. “Bret couldn’t be seen with me, even though news coverage was spotty. But ultimately the CDC reached its end, and the buildings in D.C. and Atlanta were blown up—but I’m not sure about other locations.”

That’s right. He’d heard about the explosions. “The two facilities were blown up on purpose?”

“Of course. Once the power grid failed, we had to incinerate all the infectious diseases still present. We couldn’t have them getting loose without safeguards.” She swallowed, and her hand trembled. “I was to move to the White House that night.”