Bound by Shadow by Anna Windsor

sharpness in her eyes, the way she seemed to see everything, and notice and understand bits and pieces other people would blow off as insignificant. She could have been a cop, easy. She’d have made a great detective. Even without the training and experience he’d had, Riana stayed about a half step ahead of him and Andy.
    Riana drifted over to a computer that appeared to be wired into a closed hood, probably monitoring some experiment or other. Several handheld devices lay nearby, on some of the half-dozen stainless steel countertops. Next to the PDA-looking machines were an assortment of burners, tiny hand-tools, boxes, beakers, and shelves. The names of about a dozen complicated pieces of equipment eluded Creed, but he thought he recognized a spectrometer, a gas chromatograph, and even a massive top-loading centrifuge. A few of the machines looked so futuristic and alien that he was almost certain most regular scientists—most human scientists—had never seen them, except maybe in whatever passed for genius-geek wet dreams.
    One workstation definitely had genetic testing equipment, and in the opposite corner of the room from Creed, beside an industrial sink, a steel table with a morgue scale, saw, and tray of surgical tools looked frighteningly like a setup to perform autopsies. Creed’s neck prickled as he realized that the big silver “freezer” next to the table was actually a four-drawer morgue refrigerator.
    Does she have bodies on those four-by-eight trays inside? What the hell have I gotten into here?
    His gut told him she wasn’t a criminal. His gut also told him to leave the rest of his sandwich untouched and drink the other half of the pitcher of water before spontaneous combustion became a risk. His mouth burned. He put down the plate, guzzled a little water to calm the flames in his throat, then stood.
    “Do we have company?” he asked as he tried to adjust his green blanket, noting the spice-pained rumble in his own voice. The blanket wouldn’t wrap right, and he was too distracted to keep fooling with it. He just held it like a gun belt, making sure it didn’t fall.
    Riana startled at the sound of his voice, almost dropping a silvery two-sided telescope with something like a tiny spaceship in between the tubes.
    He nodded toward the morgue refrigerator and autopsy setup. “I asked if we had company. Anything—er, anyone—in those morgue drawers?”
    She glanced in the direction he indicated, then turned back. Even though she was at least thirty feet away from him, he felt a wave of heat from her gaze as she ran her eyes from his face to his bare chest, and lower, to where he still gripped the blanket wrapped around his waist.
    “Not yet.”
    The silk of her words slid against his cock like she was standing in front of him, ripping off his blanket, and breathing against the sensitive, pulsing skin. His jaw clenched from the need to kiss her.
    For a moment, he made himself focus on the dozens of drawers and cabinet doors facing him. Dark hardwood, about half of them sporting digital or manual locks. And the walls. Stone. Probably too thick to let out any noise, screams or otherwise. No mirrors on these walls. Instead, he could make out charts, bulletin boards, graphs, and posters, all neatly arranged and neatly labeled. Most of them looked like they’d been drawn by hand instead of by machine—and expertly drawn, at that.
    He risked asking another question. “What are you working on?”
    Riana put down her weird silver pistol-thing and came closer to him. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten. Five. She had changed clothes after locking him up and taking her nap. No more leather bodysuit. Her lab coat protected tailored brown slacks and a tight-fitting ivory blouse that showed every curve and dip, including a mouthwatering bit of cleavage decorated by that odd crescent pendant.
    Worse than the bodysuit. Christ. How can she be even more beautiful in a friggin’ lab coat? If he gave her a pair of glasses,