Flames, inferno hot and ablaze with life, licked their way up her neck and cheeks and flushed her skin pomegranate red. She would have given her life savings for the ability to disappear from her horrendously embarrassing slip of the tongue. Her only saving grace was the pitch dark of night masking her furious blush.
“I mean…I was trying to say…”
“I know what you meant.” The steady calmness of his voice acted like a balm. “I’m not turning in for a while yet. There’s a lot left for me to do before it’s lights out.” He looked away from Carla and nodded toward the stairs. “But you go on inside. You’ll be busy tomorrow so you’ll want your sleep.”
Just then her mind returned to the one element of her fear assignment living up to its name. “Will I…be seeing the snakes?”
She hadn’t meant it, but her voice crept up on the last word. Damn. She hadn’t wanted Jackson to hear her trepidation.
“Not yet. But you’ll at least see where they are tomorrow.”
“Great!” she replied. Too quickly.
Jackson frowned and took a step toward her, his slim-muscled frame suddenly within a foot of her much shorter, fuller self.
He leaned in, studying her face, a woodsy scent drifting off his skin. “Are you going to be all right?” “Of course.” Please, please, let me stay. I have to succeed here. Paris is riding on it.
“Because if you’re not, you might want to request a different assignment. You will be dealing with snakes in some way. They’re the whole point of why we’re here.”
“Yep, I know. And I’m looking forward to learning about them.”
Jackson stared a moment longer, his gaze hard and intense. He studied her carefully, skepticism etched on his face. Except as he stood there, Carla couldn’t help but notice his breathing become just a bit more shallow. His lips parted, and the tip of his tongue darted out to lick them. The doubt of a minute ago seemed to ease. Jackson relaxed his rigid stance and shifted his weight, tightening the distance between them. He said nothing, but starlight reflected in his eyes revealed irises that were becoming smoky dark. Maybe he wasn’t as immune to the rising heat between them as she’d first thought.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw him lift a hand. He made a move toward her, his face leaning in fractionally closer. She inhaled that woodsy, sexy smell and sucked in a breath, anticipating his approach. Her pulse jumped and her heart banged out a few quick somersaults in her chest.
As if changing his mind from whatever he’d been thinking, he stepped back and straightened, his posture firm with resolve. “All right, then. Good night.”
Disappointment crushed her like a balloon jammed with a pin. She was also infused with a strong sense of rejection, as if Jackson had considered kissing her but changed his mind because he found her lacking. Still, she refused to let him see her stung. Making her way toward the stairs, she mustered up a casual voice. “See you in the morning,” she called out over her shoulder. She entered the house and shut the door behind her.
****
Jackson watched her through the windows until he saw her heading down the hallway toward the back stairway, the one leading to the bedrooms. He let out a breath he’d been unaware of holding and swore softly into the night. Merde. After only a few short hours, he knew this girl was trouble. And he had an entire month left to go.
He turned and began walking the way they’d come, toward the cobra enclosure. He had researchers whose sole jobs were to look after the snakes, but he couldn’t rest before he checked on them himself. The snakes were the reason he got up every morning. They were the fuel keeping him going. He knew, in the depths of his heart, the cobras he raised and studied were going to lead to one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs since the polio vaccine.
He reached the king cobra enclosure and walked inside the nondescript, low white building, similar to others on the property. He spent most of his time here. One of the doors in the building gave direct access to the enclosure where the snakes were kept. The area spanned several acres, though no one dared walk there at night. He absolutely forbid it. His requirement was for the safety of both the staff and the snakes. Although the cobras were primarily diurnal, they would sometimes emerge at night. Jackson would not risk someone accidentally stepping on or kicking a snake while walking around in the dark enclosure. On this he didn’t bend. Breaking the rule meant immediate termination, no questions asked. So far, he’d not had a single violation.
He went now to another room within the building, one that could almost be mistaken for a television newsroom. Over a dozen large flat-paneled monitor screens were mounted on one wall. The screens showed various views from the multiple closed-circuit cameras fixed inside the cobra enclosure. Low-density lighting allowed for the ability to see the enclosure without disturbing the snakes. With the cameras in place the researchers could keep an eye on the property at night without being inside the enclosure. Having someone watch the monitors twenty-four hours a day was one of his requirements. Each of the researchers took various shifts throughout the week. A Taiwanese Ph.D. candidate named Cheng Li currently manned the desk.
“Hey, Cheng.” Jackson sat down at the control desk. “How’s it going?”
“Very well, Mr. Jackson. I recorded something in the log that may interest you.”
He signed on to the computer in front of him and clicked on the shared drive where everyone with access to the database recorded notes from the day’s observations. He read over what Cheng had noted thus far during his shift. In seconds his eyebrows raised with happy surprise. He looked at Cheng.
“How certain are you?”
“Your timing calculations are accurate, Mr. Jackson. Two weeks left before she delivers.” Jackson clapped his hands together and smiled. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”
A gravid, or pregnant, female king cobra lays between twenty and forty eggs in a nest she makes out of sticks, twigs, and leaves. The incubation period is approximately sixty days. Jackson had run calculations to determine the conception date. Although he had a one hundred percent accuracy rate in predicting the birthing time frame, he insisted on having his staff double check the work.
“That means we’ll be seeing the hatchlings toward the end of the month,” he remarked. “Which will make our case for the Atlantis grant money even stronger.”
“I will make certain Mr. Quinn includes the information in our proposal.”
Jackson swung his chair around to face Cheng. “Do you know if he’s finished yet?”
“Yes,” Cheng confirmed with a nod. “He told me so this afternoon.”
“Excellent.” After reading through the rest of the notes in the log, Jackson checked the monitors one last time and then rose.
“Good night, Cheng.”
“Good night, Mr. Jackson.”
He left the monitor building and walked back the way he’d come, toward home. He remembered what Carla had said about it being dark here. For the first time as he looked around he had to admit she had a point. He knew these grounds so well it had never occurred to him to spend money he could use for research on outdoor lighting. As he stepped over rocks and sticks littering the path, he realized not all his researchers knew the area as well as he. For all practical purposes, this area was their home as well as his.
In the darkness, his lips dipped downward. A few hours on his property and Carla Saunders had him seeing his world differently. The next month couldn’t go by fast enough. He didn’t want her here, making changes to his life. He didn’t want her or any woman doing that to him.
But damn. There was no mistaking the heat between them. When she’d nibbled at her lip as she mangled French he practically groaned aloud, thinking of those very lips doing some nibbling on him. Even now he could feel himself go hard.
The intensity of his reaction caught him off guard. Just the thought of her had him panting like a dog. Her neck…mon dieu. He could trace a finger, or the tip of his tongue, along its creamy length, then slide on down to the sweet swell of her breasts.
He stopped walking, his cock too hard. For just a minute he stood there and let his mind drift, fantasizing about taking her nipple between his lips and sucking just so, enough to make her arch her back and demand he take more. He wanted her to moan and let him know she enjoyed it as much as he. He’d caress her breast with one hand while skating the other across her stomach, dipping between her legs…
Blood shot straight to his cock and he stifled a groan. His balls throbbed, ready to explode. Fuck. He did not need this. Not now. Not ever. He’d sworn off women ever since… No. He wasn’t going to start thinking of that shit now, too.
He angrily ordered his lust to take a hike, kicking at a rock as he stomped home. Carla was a distraction he didn’t need. Only thing was, if he was so determined not to think about her, why the hell couldn’t he stop himself from doing it?