Cougar Bait Read online

  She’d thought several times of trying to run from him or flag down a passing car and beg for help. Unfortunately, Lounds must have thought of the same things. He strapped her bound hands down firmly with the seatbelt and kept a gun trained on her the entire trip. When they stopped for gas, it was at nearly abandoned stations where they were the only car, and he always paid at the pump—there was no way to get away.

  Now, looking around the stainless-steel lab filled with high-tech equipment, some of which even she didn’t recognize, Samantha wished she had tried harder. How much of this stuff was going to be used on her? What exactly did Lounds intend to do with her?

  “So—the lab?” she asked again, since he hadn’t answered.

  “Let’s just say there is someone high up in the Pfizer organization that saw vast possibilities in my research and was willing to fund me. He had all this built just so I could continue, waiting for the day when I would have a breakthrough.” His small black eyes, which reminded Samantha of a rat’s eyes, sparkled with pride. “And now that day has come.”

  “Your research? I thought you were a drug rep.” She frowned at him.

  “That was what I wanted you to think, Samantha. I used my little fiction to gain access to you and hundreds of hospital files. You don’t know how many blood samples I’ve tested for DNA, looking for the elusive Shifter Gene. Of course, there are pockets of us around the country, and the world for that matter, but I wasn’t looking for those with a working Gene—I was searching for the latent Gene. And I found it in you and many others.”

  “Wait—you said pockets of ‘us’?” Samantha frowned. “So . . . you’re a Shifter too?”

  Lounds gave her an extremely unpleasant grin.

  “Don’t you recognize me from our little meeting in your hotel room the other night?”

  “So that was you. You were the Hyena who attacked and mauled me—you asshole.” Samantha glared at him. She’d had her suspicions, but she hadn’t been completely sure until now.

  “Of course it was me. I had to inject you with the Gene activator I developed.”

  Samantha remembered the “bug bite” Keller had seen on her shoulder earlier. That must have been the injection site. But of course she hadn’t noticed Lounds had given her a shot—she’d been much too focused on his savage attack to bother with a little needle stick.

  “So you shot me up with your own personal chemical cocktail, and you decided to maul me just for the hell of it? I nearly lost the use of my hand—I never would have been able to operate again, you son of a bitch!” Samantha wanted to strangle him. Unfortunately, he still had the snub-nosed pistol aimed squarely at her chest.

  “The mauling was necessary.” Lounds said loftily. “I don’t enjoy violence against women, of course—even when they’re asking for it. But I do what I have to in order to fulfill the demands of my research.”

  “You seemed to be enjoying it plenty the night you attacked me!” Samantha accused him. “And why was it necessary? To let in the, uh . . .” She tried to remember the Hyena myth Keller had told her. “To let in the Ya-la—the animal spirit?”

  “You know about that?” Lounds looked surprised.

  “Keller told me while he was healing me,” Samantha said shortly. “We were trying to figure out why anyone would break in my room and . . . do what you did.” She shivered, bile rising in her throat as she remembered the vicious attack.

  “Well, as I said, it was necessary—though not for the reasons my ancestors believed.” His voice took on a lecturing tone. “You see, my formula was able to activate your latent Shifter Gene and begin the antiaging part of Rejuvenation, but it was necessary to first wound then heal you, to trigger the sexual aspect of the process.” He frowned. “Of course that bastard Keller healed you before I could get around to it—more’s the pity. But it doesn’t matter in the long run since I will be the one to breed you.”

  “What?” Samantha felt a shock of fear and horror that quickly turned to anger. “You just try it, asshole. See how far you get toward ‘breeding me’ with my foot up your ass!”

  He gave her a malicious grin.

  “Brave words, Samantha, but your feisty attitude won’t do you a damn bit of good once your first Shift starts and you feel the breeding fever.”

  “That’s impossible,” she said, wishing her voice sounded stronger and more certain. “I may not know much about Shifters but I do know that they don’t go through their first change until the full moon, which isn’t for at least three weeks from now.”

  “That’s only for Shifter females with a naturally active Gene. Yours has been artificially stimulated and activated—which means you might enter your first Shift at any time of the day or night, regardless of the phases of ‘Lady Moon.’” Lounds spoke the name of the Shifter goddess with causal distain, as though his people’s religion meant less than nothing to him.

  “I . . . I can’t. I won’t,” Samantha denied desperately.

  “Yes, you will—it’s inevitable.” He laughed, an ugly sound that made her wince. “You seem to think I want to rape you, Samantha—I’ll do nothing of the sort. I won’t have to because you’ll be begging me to take you. To fuck you and breed a baby in your fertile womb.”

  “You make me sick. I’d never let you near me—not even if you were the last man on the entire fucking planet,” she spat.

  Lounds’s narrow face darkened.

  “You know, I had many choices when I was deciding which latent female would be the first to receive the full benefits of my formula. I settled on you because I felt you needed to be brought down a peg.” He waved his gun casually at her. “I watched you every time I came to Tampa General—ordering men around, acting as though you were better than the superior sex. You need to learn your place, Samantha.”

  “The ‘superior sex’ being men, I suppose?” She glared at him. “And where is my ‘place’ as a woman? Barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen?”

  “No, barefoot and pregnant in my lab. Which you soon will be.” He gave her an ugly smile. “Remember how you said you wouldn’t let me touch you if I were the last man on earth? Well for all intents and purposes, I am. Or at least, I’m the last man in your immediate vicinity who can help you when you start to Shift. In fact . . . here.”

  Reaching out with one hand, he quickly untied the cord binding her wrists.

  “You’re letting me go free?” Samantha stared at him.

  “I’m untying your hands to prove a point—there’s no use in keeping you bound because there’s no place for you to go. This lab is located deep in the middle of the Everglades. There’s nothing for miles around us but swamp and snakes and alligators.”

  Samantha had been afraid of something like that—after all, there really wasn’t much past Miami but swampland. But hearing him say it out loud made her stomach clench like a slick fist.

  “Stay away from me,” she warned him.

  “Oh, I will . . . for now.” He grinned. “I have work to do, after all. I’ll come check on you periodically and tend to you when you start to feel the breeding fever.”

  “Don’t hold your breath. I won’t feel it,” Samantha denied hotly.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Lounds said flatly. “You’ll feel it in the next twenty-four hours, if not sooner. I bet you’ve already got some of the symptoms—say, a headache that won’t go away?”

  Samantha opened her mouth to deny it . . . but found she couldn’t. She did have a headache—a dull thudding in her temples that had been with her for the last part of their drive through Miami and beyond. It wasn’t as bad as the migraine she’d had when she got off the plane, but it still wasn’t pleasant, and it seemed like it was getting worse.

  “I thought so.” He eyed her speculatively. “You know, the touch of an Alpha can help alleviate that pain.” His eyes grew greedy with lust. “Do you want me to touch you, Samantha?”

  “No!” An involuntary shiver of disgust ran down her spine, and she couldn’t help remembering the way