Out Of Control. Shannon McKenna

week to spend a month in our lab in Frankfurt. I won’t have time to orient Dr. Haight myself, beyond our dinner date. Please do what you can.”

      Such as that is, being the all-too-clear subtext.

      “Of course,” Marcus murmured.

      She swept out the door. Maurice’s hulking form shadowed her.

      So much for Driscoll. Marcus peeled the glove off his hand and tossed the ragged, transparent scrap into the waste bin. He took the corpselike rubbery hand, grabbed a pair of scissors, and began cutting it into pieces, imagining that the hand was Priscilla’s. Heard shrieks in his mind with each snip of the blades. Chunk after chunk after chunk.

      He was back almost to zero. Access to the holy of holies required the tandem cooperation of Priscilla Worthington and the lab director. Priscilla’s mold was still lost, and Seymour Haight was an unknown.

      But Faris was in Seattle. Something had to be improvised, and quickly. There was no time left for the careful planning he’d done to obtain Driscoll’s mold. And Priscilla was leaving. It was now or never.

      The obvious solution was to obtain a new mold, but seducing Priscilla was not an option. She loathed him, for one thing, and for another, even Marcus’s own practical attitude towards sexuality had its limits. Priscilla’s rabid security staff would not let poor Faris anywhere near her. And though she did indulge occasionally, Priscilla was far too intelligent and self-protective to be taken in by a hired gigolo.

      Craig Caruso had managed it, though how he’d found the courage to have sex with that cast iron bitch, Marcus would never know. Perhaps the ten million dollars Marcus had promised had kept his dick hard enough to perform the task. Marcus shuddered at the thought.

      His buyer had lost patience, after eight long months of waiting. The plan was falling apart before his eyes. Years of his life, millions of his own private money, invested in this perfect mating of profit and revenge. All blocked, because of Margaret Callahan.

      He had to light a fire under Faris. He wanted this to end.

      Sean’s truck was parked right in the middle of the driveway, leaving no room for Davy’s own vehicle. It wasn’t the first time. His youngest brother was careless and distracted. He also liked to make his presence felt. Usually Davy just blew it off with a philosophical sigh.

      Tonight, his nerves on edge, it bugged the living shit out of him.

      He parked up the street from his house and sat there for a while, staring through the trees at the lights from Mercer Island, rippling on the dark waters of Lake Washington. Struggling to pull himself together. It had been way too long since he’d gotten laid.

      Humiliating, to reduce it to that, but he was a grim realist about the effects of protracted celibacy. Six months, not that he was counting, since Beth laid down the law. He’d liked Beth a lot, and appreciated the hell out of her fine qualities, but he hadn’t been up to buying her a ring.

      He’d tried to make that point clear from the outset, but Beth hadn’t gotten it. Women never did. They insisted on taking it personally and getting their feelings hurt, every fucking time. He wished he could put the whole sex melodrama aside and focus on other things, but his body had other ideas. He hadn’t been able to strike a truce with it yet.

      Then again, this wasn’t the prodding of generalized horniness. Steffi, the previous aerobics instructor at Women’s Wellness had been a honey-blonde with a body worthy of a centerfold spread, but she’d never inspired him to babble or grope. He’d casually considered having sex with Steffi—it had been clear that she was more than willing—but she was so damned bouncy. And her nasal voice had grated his nerves.

      Steffi had left a while back to do a season of dinner theater on the coast. It had been weeks before he’d noticed she was gone.

      But he’d noticed Margot, her replacement, instantly. Margot’s voice did not grate. It was low, rich and smoky, like fine Scotch. Margot glided, swayed, sauntered like a female panther. No bouncing.

      He slammed out of his truck and stalked into the house. The open door swung in the breeze. Every light in Sean’s path towards the fridge had been flipped on and left burning. A murmur of voices from the back porch indicated that Miles, their protégé, student and future employee, was out there too, helping suck down Davy’s beer.

      He slapped the porch door open. “The next time you pull a shit parking job like that in my driveway, I’m slashing all your tires.”

      Sean froze in the act of lifting the bottle to his lips. “Shoot, Davy, that would be really counterproductive of you, being as how it would take that much longer for me to move my truck and park it according to your rigid specifications.”

      “The delay would be worth it if I actually managed to make an impression in your thick skull, smart-ass.”

      Miles put his beer down and got awkwardly to his feet. “Uh…should I, like, go? I’ll go take the bus, if this is a bad time—”

      “Sit down, Miles,” Sean said. “This is business as usual.”

      Miles dropped back into his chair and hunched down into his habitual vulture shape of which they were both trying to break him.

      Sean studied his brother, a frown between his eyes. “You’ve got that puckered-butt, hollow-eyed look of a guy who hasn’t gotten laid in months. For God’s sake, grab a beer, and chill. We brought Chinese.”

      “I already ate.”

      “Where?” Sean demanded. “You haven’t gone out in ages.”

      Davy let the screen door slam loudly as he grabbed a beer out of the fridge. As a rule, he didn’t rely on chemicals to change his state of consciousness. Fuck it. He put the beer back, grabbed a glass, and pulled out his emergency bottle of single malt.

      Sean was still waiting for an answer to his question when Davy stretched out in one of his deck chairs. His eyebrows quirked when he saw the whiskey in Davy’s hand. “Mr. Pure, imbibing strong spirits? How depraved. So? Where did you eat? With who? Let’s have it.”

      He inhaled, and braced himself. “Margot Vetter.”

      Sean’s dimples came and went as he struggled not to grin. “Oh! Awesome. Guess we’re going to have to start calling before we drop by. It’s about time, man. I was starting to worry about—”

      “Why didn’t you tell me about the stalker?”

      Sean blinked. “From the tone of your voice, I take it you haven’t gotten lucky yet. Guess we can’t all be as slick as I am at seduction.”

      “Focus,” Davy snarled. “Just answer the goddamn question.”

      “I didn’t want to give you a chance to think it to death,” Sean said bluntly. “And I thought it would be a hell of a lot more effective if she asked you in person. Dewy eyes, long lashes going blinkety-blink? Full, trembling lips? Heaving bosom? And it was, wasn’t it?” He studied his brother, and repeated in a sharper tone. “Wasn’t it?”

      Davy studied his brother over the rim of his glass. “Just how well do you know her, anyway?”

      Sean’s tilted green eyes were unusually cool. He waited a very long time to reply. “You mean, have I put the moves on her?”

      Davy waited to inhale. Seconds ticked by. Miles looked worried.

      Sean stretched out his long legs and propped his boots up on the porch railing. “I tried, sure. Any straight guy with a pulse would try. Except for you, of course, but we all know that you’re, ah, special. She just wasn’t into me. It’s like when I got that crush on my high school French teacher. She just sort of pats me on the head while I pant and drool.” His shrug was elaborately casual. “I think it’s you she likes.”

      Davy’s chest jerked in a convulsion that vaguely resembled laughter. “Hah. Not.”

      “Really. I’ve