All it would take would be one simple step: to thrust her skirts up, part her thighs around her hips, and drive his throbbing erection inside her.
But Ava deserved more.
Her body might be ready, but she herself wasn't.
And it was that thought that stopped him. Swallowing hard, he wrapped both arms around her, dragging her against his chest as she shuddered from the aftermath. The scent of her arousal filled the air as he withdrew his fingers. He couldn't resist licking her wetness from them, the taste of her testing his self-imposed limits once more.
"Oh, God," she rasped.
"Easy, luv," he whispered, feeling tremors work all the way through her.
Somehow he set her on her feet again. She leaned against the wall, still completely shocked. Or perhaps overwhelmed was a better word. Kincaid knelt at Ava's feet, his cock throbbing painfully as he set about straightening her skirts.
"That's it." He curved his hands around the backs of her calves, and looked up.
There was a blush on her pale cheeks as she looked him in the eye, and thank God, but she finally knew what she was asking of him.
"Not yet," he assured her, "but one day soon, I'm going to fuck you, Ava. Just don't give me your heart, for this ends when the case does."
It had to.
Twelve
THIS ENDS WHEN the case does.
The words echoed in her head as she spent the next twenty-four hours working with Dr. Gibson in the Nighthawks' laboratory, studying vial after vial of vaccine to discover if someone at Kestrel Laboratories was behind the tampering, or whether it occurred purely at the clinics themselves.
Ava felt raw and on edge, barely able to concentrate. It wasn't like her at all, and she kept watching the clock, counting down the hours until this thankless job was done.
Kincaid had opened her eyes to passion, and she felt like her body was in control now, demanding more of the enticing drug. The need for his body warred with her desire to complete the job. Rational impulses versus primal. It was probably a good thing he wasn't here, or she'd be virtually useless.
"Well, that's the last batch," Dr. Gibson said, dusting off his hands and looking tired. "Not a single tampered sample."
Kestrel Laboratories used glycerin to both conserve the vaccine and make the virus inert, which took time and a low temperature. The vaccine vials were kept in the icebox at the clinics, so it wasn't as though someone could have injected a live specimen of the craving virus into the vaccine. The glycerin would have acted to damage the new viral cells. So the saboteur had to have replaced the vial, leaving out the glycerin or any antiviral agent. Ava capped the last vial she'd been checking, and placed it in the tray to be destroyed with the rest of them in the Nighthawks' incinerator. "Kestrel's innocent. All of their samples are perfect, and they claim the vaccine is transported under security from its facility to the clinics, following the picketing against the clinics that happened when they initially opened. So they don't think it happened on their end."
"So it's the clinics, lass," Gibson said, casting his apron aside. "Hell of a case."
Considering the bomb planted in the drones, she'd already concluded a break-in had occurred, but they had to be certain. "Thank you for your help. Let's hope it was only the one batch of vaccines that were sabotaged."
Gibson flicked through the roster of patient names one of the Nighthawks had collected from Dr. Harricks. "There were one hundred vials of vaccine ordered in the batch that contained Mr. Thomas's afflicted sample. Marcus Long was also one of the patients seen that week at the clinic, so that makes at least two out of a hundred who were stricken with the craving."
"Dr. Harrick's statement claimed the batch arrived on the nineteenth and he didn't unpack it until the clinic was closed, so it could only have been touched that night-or one of the following nights. He ordered a new batch on the twenty-third, as he was running low. If we presume that batch was the only one tampered with, then we have a four-day window during which someone broke in and sabotaged the vaccine."
"Both David Thomas and Marcus Long were seen on the twenty-first," Gibson pointed out.
"So a two-day window, and potentially a hundred patients who might have been stricken, if it happened the first night."
"I'll mention it to Garrett and he can see all of the patients are questioned."
Thank God. It was a monumental task, let alone the fact Francis Jenkins, the other vaccinated victim, had been a patient of the clinic on Church Street, in Marylebone, which significantly widened the victim pool. Ava rubbed her temples. "I have a headache just thinking about it."