Blaze of Memory

by Singh, Nalini

  “I keep telling myself that things will change, that I’ll find an escape hatch.”

  He remembered what she’d once said about the tentacles of Ming’s control. “You haven’t been able to work out a way to disengage the programming?”

  “No” she said, wrapping her arms around herself in a hold so tight, he heard something tear in her jacket. “Not without damaging my brain. The talons of this thing he put in my head are sunk too deep.”

  “Maybe the programming is too strong to break,” he said, pain shooting down his jaw, he’d clenched it so hard, “but it shouldn’t have a permanent physical effect. It’s a psychic construct.”

  “Dev . . . it’s not the programming. The prison is anchored in my mind.”

  His gut turned to ice. “How sure are you?” A long pause. “Tell me.”

  “I’ve looked at it from every possible angle. I was hoping I’d made a mistake.” The tone of her voice told him she’d discovered different.

  Dev was only just a telepath, but he knew everything there was to know about the abilities—both old and new—that might manifest among the Forgotten. So he understood damn well that something that was anchored in an individual’s mind, as opposed to the fabric of a neural net, would tear that mind to pieces if it was removed without the proper procedure. And right now, the only person who had a key to Katya’s prison was Councilor Ming LeBon.

  The decision was simple. “We need to find Ming.”

  Katya’s head snapped toward him. “No, Dev. No.”

  Having spent the entire day with Cruz, Sascha expected to fall into an easy sleep that night, tired by the psychic energy she’d expended. But she found herself lying awake long after the forest had gone quiet around her. Cuddling into Lucas’s changeling heat, she spread her fingers over his heart and tried to match the rhythm of her breathing to his.

  Her body began to relax, but her mind continued to spin. Giving up, she decided to read for a while ... but Lucas’s arm tightened the instant she tried to pull away. She should have let him sleep—instead she stroked a hand down his neck. “Wake up.”

  His eyes blinked open with feline laziness. “Hmm?” Nuzzling at her in sleepy interest, he squeezed his hand over her hip.

  “I can’t sleep.”

  He spread his hand over her abdomen. “Feeling okay?” A tender question, a protective touch.

  “Yes.” She moved her hand over his biceps. “Just wide-awake.”

  “Want me to make you tired?” A rumble against her ear, fingers playing over the dip of her navel.

  The butterflies in her stomach were intimately, exquisitely familiar. “That’s a very tempting offer.”

  “But you want to talk.”

  Heart stretching with the force of what she felt for this man who knew her so completely, she kissed the side of his jaw, tangling her hand in the heavy silk of his hair. “Working with Cruz . . . he’s so vulnerable, Lucas, so open to any direction.”

  “Then it’s a good thing you’d never hurt him.”

  That was what worried her. “That book my mother sent me—it said E-Psy can turn bad.”

  “No,” Lucas said, rising to look down at her. “It said E-Psy often care so much they start to think they know what’s best for everyone.”

  “And then they do bad things,” she insisted. “What about that empath the writer profiled—the one who tried to emotionally manipulate everyone to be ‘good.’ He drove people insane by forcing them to go against their own will.”

  “He was a loner—without family, without Pack. Do you really think I’d let you turn into a megalomaniac?” An amused gleam in those leopard eyes.

  She made a face at him. “This is serious.” But he’d succeeded in loosening the knot of fear in her chest. “I never even knew I could feed emotion into someone, literally force them to feel what I wanted.”

  Lucas played with strands of her hair as she lapsed into thought.

  “I wonder why my mother sent the book,” she murmured. “Was it to destabilize me, or did she want to warn me of the danger?” With most mothers, it wouldn’t have been a question, but most mothers weren’t Councilor Nikita Duncan.

  “Or maybe she’s finally realized what a powerful ally you’d make.”

  She lifted her face in a wordless question.

  “You know what the alpha in me found most interesting in that book?” he asked, bracing his elbows on either side of her head. “The fact that a cardinal empath who has total control of her gift can effectively stop a riot of thousands in its tracks. Imagine how useful that gift would be to a Councilor facing rebellion from within the ranks.”

  Sascha wrapped her arms around Lucas’s neck. “According to Eldridge’s book, that empathic skill has saved countless lives over the generations.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t think that’s why Nikita wants it?”

  Lucas kissed her with utmost tenderness. “I’m not going to guess at your mother’s motives, Sascha. But I can’t bear to see you being hurt—be careful, kitten.”

  His love swept around her, tight and protective and wonderful. “Don’t worry,” she said, nuzzling into him. “I’m not that vulnerable to her anymore. I just wish I understood why she did this now of all times.”

  “Ask her,” Lucas said, to her surprise. “She might not tell you the truth—probably won’t—but you’re good at reading between the lines, at reading body language.”

  “Yes, I think I will.” Pressing a kiss to his shoulder, she let her mind meander back to a subject she’d been mulling over earlier that day. “I think something is happening among the Forgotten.”

  “I get that feeling, too.” He shifted so that more of his body tangled with hers. “Those guards on Cruz—I’m not sure Dev is only worried about the Psy. Word is, some of his own people are moving against him.”

  “Do you think the Forgotten are starting to have the same problems that drove the Psy to Silence?”

  “If they are . . . Dev has a hell of a problem on his hands.”

  Katya felt as if she’d been arguing until she was blue in the face. Dev didn’t argue back—he simply refused to change his mind. “Are you insane?” she was finally driven to yell, as they prepared to catch a few hours’ sleep at the same little bed-and-breakfast they’d stopped at before. They’d driven half the night, compelled to get away from the malignant violence that marked Sunshine. But from the instant Dev had mentioned going after Ming, she’d had only one thought in mind—stopping him. “That’s what he wants! It’ll make it so much easier for him to kill you.”

  Dev pulled down the blankets, having stripped off to his jeans while she changed into sweats. “Get in before you freeze your pretty ass off.”

  “Dev, you can’t just ignore me.”

  “I said, get in. Or I’m dumping you in there.”

  Anger rose in a wild flood. “Don’t treat me like a child!” Picking up the thing closest to her—a shoe—she threw it at him.

  He moved out of the way with fluid grace. “That wasn’t a smart move, baby.” Calm words, but the heat in his eyes was a slow-burning fuse.

  Too furious to be able to read whether that heat denoted anger or desire, she said, “Oh, yeah? How about this one?” She threw the other shoe.

  He shifted his head aside without really seeming to move. Then he reached for her. She went to spin away ... only to realize he’d backed her into a corner. “I swear to God, Dev, I’m so mad at you—”

  A finger against her lips.

  Startled, she stopped talking.

  “You’re mine,” he said in a quiet, implacable voice. “Now and forever.”

  Her entire body trembled with the force of that vow.

  “I will let nothing, and no one, take you from me.” Gold-flecked eyes that pierced her very heart. “Do you understand?”

  “I’m not going to let you kill yourself,” she whispered against his finger. Pushing it away, she put her hand over his heart. “If you walk into a trap beca
use of me, if you die . . .”

  “I won’t. I’m not stupid and I don’t intend to go into this blind. We gather intel and we move when he’s vulnerable.” He reached out to brush her hair off her face. “He’s powerful, but he can’t defend against every eventuality.”

  “He’s evil,” Katya whispered, her eyes black with memory. “I’ve never felt anyone so devoid of humanity.”

  “If good runs when evil rises,” he said, his palms braced on the walls on either side of her head, “then the world has no chance at all.”

  “He won’t give you the key.”

  “Then he’ll die.”

  “Killing Ming”—her lips moving against his—“won’t save me. Even if we somehow find a way to undo or block the programming, the mental prison is autonomous, linked to and fed by my own mind.”

  “But it’ll give you freedom. Only Ming knows you’re alive—you could live out your whole life with no one knowing about you on the Net.”

  “Yes,” she said, but he saw a flicker of unease in her eyes.

  About to ask her what she was thinking, he found his lips taken in a very feminine way—soft, lush, and absolute.

  Katya drew the taste of Dev—heat and demand, passion with an edge of steel—deep within, shoving aside a truth that had been bleeding into her mind day by slow day. Today, here, with the thick blanket of snow insulating them against the outside world, she wanted simply to be a woman who’d found herself lucky enough to be in the arms of this incredible, complex man.

  When he crushed her into the corner, taking over her world, she shuddered and thrust her hands into his hair. The dark fire of him seeped into her bones, warming her from the inside out. Sliding her fingers through the rough silk, she stroked down over his shoulders and to the temptation of his chest. “I love touching you,” she said into his mouth, shaping the muscled planes of him with palms that couldn’t get enough. The sprinkling of dark hair was deliciously abrasive—she ached to be naked, feel the sensation on her breasts. “I want to take off my clothes.”

  He closed his teeth over her lower lip. “That’s what I like to hear.” Light words, but his face was stark intensity. She knew he could be tender, had felt his care, but beneath the surface, Devraj Santos was a warrior—with a will that was unbreakable.

  Shaking with the power of her own emotions, she pressed a line of kisses down his jaw, along his neck. “I’d like to please you this time.”

  His hand fisted in her hair. “You please me by simply being.”

  She licked the taste of him into her mouth, felt her body clench. Though his muscles tensed, he stood in place and let her explore the hard male beauty of him. “I don’t understand,” she whispered, “how my race could’ve ever given this up.” When Silence first began, there would have been lovers, couples who burned for each other.

  “Some didn’t.” Hot breath against her ear as he leaned in to let her better reach his neck. “For some, the price was too high.”

  His pulse fascinated her, so strong, so vivid, and now, jagged with desire. For her. A little curl of feminine power snaked up her body, heady and hungry. He was such a strong man that knowing she had the ability to affect him like this was a drug of its own. Grazing her teeth along the column of his neck, she ran the nails of one hand gently down his chest, making sure to scrape past one flat male nipple.

  He hissed out a breath. “Do that again.”

  CHAPTER 42

  “Like this?” A light caress.

  “Tease.”

  Smiling, she gave him what he wanted—to his husky groan—before pushing at him to shift back. He resisted. She insisted.

  A single inch.

  Just enough for her to move her head down so she could close her teeth delicately around the nipple she’d tormented. He swore as her teeth slipped, grazing his chest. When she shifted her attention to the side she’d neglected, he accommodated her by giving her another inch.

  Warm, golden brown skin under her hands, her lips, the wild, edgy scent of him in her head, a little bit of heaven. Having him all to herself, to enjoy without guilt or worry, if only for this broken instant in time, it was nothing she’d ever regret. No matter what. Shoving the latter thought to the darkest recesses of her brain, she tried to kiss her way down his chest. “Give me room.”

  “No.” He tugged up her head with the hand fisted in her hair.

  She licked at his skin, blew out a breath to cool the wet. He shuddered. Nuzzling at him, she pushed. “It’s my turn.”

  “I’m going to embarrass myself if you put that pretty mouth of yours anywhere near my cock.” Blunt words, as blunt as the erection pushing against her lower abdomen.

  Skin tight with the impact of that erotic image, she pushed again. “I want to taste you. You had your turn already.”

  The air turned not only blue, but went well over into indigo. “Are you trying to torture me?” A biting, nibbling kiss that sizzled straight down to the dampness between her legs. “What if I don’t want to play fair?” he murmured, shimmying one hand inside her sweatpants to cup her bottom with bold familiarity. “What if I want another turn?”

  Having his hands on her was scrambling her brain cells, but she wasn’t about to give in. Not when this particular fantasy had been driving her insane since the instant she’d first considered it. “Then you better let me do what I want,” she ordered, nipping at his jaw. “Or you’re not getting it.”

  “I’m bigger than you are.”

  She slid her hand underneath the waistband of his jeans to close firmly around him. His body bucked. “You were saying?”

  “Witch.” He moved back just barely enough, widening his stance to give her room.

  It was all she wanted. Being hemmed in by Dev added an exquisite layer of sensation to her sensual exploration. Not only did she love being surrounded by the burning sexual heat of him, she felt protected—more than safe enough to give in to her wildest fantasies. Removing her hand, she dropped a kiss to the center of his chest and ran her fingers down his sides, stroking over his skin with a playfulness she’d never thought to find in herself.

  “I’m keeping score,” he warned. “Payback’s going to involve screaming on your part.”

  She’d come to associate screaming with pain ... but, well, with Dev, she had a feeling it’d take on a whole new meaning. “I can’t wait.” Kiss by kiss, she progressed down his body, until she was kneeling, her fingers on the top button of his jeans.

  Looking up through her lashes, she met his gaze as he looked down, his hands braced on the wall above her. The gold in his eyes seemed to have spread, creating something akin to a glow. “Am I imagining it?” she whispered, flicking open the button.

  “No.”

  Fascinated by that electric gaze, she wanted to ask more questions, but then he shuddered, shattering her thoughts. She’d been playing her fingers over his erection—now she realized she’d driven him to the edge. Wetting her lips, she took hold of the zipper tab.

  “Fuck,” he muttered through gritted teeth as she tugged it over the push of his erection and down. The next few instants passed in a kind of sexual haze. All she knew was that she’d somehow managed to release him from his clothing, and now the aroused length of him lay in her palm. It was a compulsion to lean forward, to flick her tongue across the head.

  He jerked, but didn’t pull away. “So?” It was a hoarse question.

  She looked up, closing her fingers around the silken heat with a possessiveness that surprised even her. “So?”

  “You”—he cleared his throat, took a couple of deep breaths—“you asked what the pleasure was in doing this.”

  Dipping her head back down, she leaned forward and took him into her mouth. This time, his shout wasn’t contained. One hand tangled in her hair, his thighs iron hard, erotic tension in every single muscle.

  Drawing the taste of him deeper, she moved her hands to his thighs, giving herself more room to play. She heard him swear and felt him tug gently at her hai
r, but no way was she ending this when she’d barely begun. Instead of withdrawing, she dug her fingers into those rock-hard muscles in silent reproach.

  When he jerked and released her hair, she knew she’d won. At least for the next little while. So she took full advantage, sucking and licking and learning. There was pleasure in this, such extreme pleasure that it felt as if her bones were melting from the inside out. The taste of him intoxicated her, but more, feeling his response, knowing it was because of her... it pushed her arousal to a fever pitch.

  “Enough.” He stepped back before she could hold him to her.

  Frustrated, she glared. “I wasn’t finished.”

  “I’m about to,” he muttered, and pulled her to her feet, shoving at her sweatpants.

  She stepped out of them and her panties at the same time, exhilarated at the raw edge of him, the glittering gold in his eyes. “Dev, wha—”

  He lifted her with a display of strength that stole her breath. “Legs around my waist.” It was a clipped order.

  She obeyed immediately. He rewarded her by sliding into her in a single hard thrust. Her scream echoed off the walls as pleasure short-circuited her body. His hands gripped her bottom, holding her tightly in place as he moved in and out. She clawed at his shoulders, feeling herself hanging on the precipice.

  “God damn it!” Dev’s body went taut against her and she knew he’d lost every bit of his steely control.

  That was all it took.

  Electricity rocked through her, as wild and as hot as the man who held her pinned to the wall in helpless surrender.

  Katya lay boneless as Dev dropped her on the bed. “I still have my top on,” she muttered, not the least bit interested in moving. Her bones were jelly, her inner muscles continuing to spasm in little bursts of pleasure.