by Nalini Singh
Her answer rocked through him. “You’re the only person I’ve ever told of my parents’ rejection of me.”
“Strange, isn’t it?” His voice came out harsh, raw with emotion.
“What?”
“That the two people Nikita chose to work this case are both people whose mothers threw them away.” It couldn’t be a coincidence, not with the resources Nikita had at her disposal.
Sophia’s organizer flashed at that moment. “Nikita’s lab techs have done a first-look analysis of the forensic data—the blood on the mirror was the victim’s, the DNA and prints in the public areas belong to either Chan or Nikita’s other employees, all of which can be explained by the meetings he held in his home office. No unexplained or suspicious DNA in the bedroom.”
“That was fast.”
Sophia’s answer was practical—and said a thousand things. “She’s a Councilor.”
“Hmm.” Pulling to a stop in front of a small, bustling restaurant, he turned off the engine. “It’s almost half past two. You can tell me about Pure Psy over lunch.” From what he’d heard so far, the group sat in diametric opposition to Nikita’s growing business alliances with the other races—but he needed to know more about their tactics to judge whether murder might be part of their arsenal.
Sophia didn’t move to step out of the car. “We can’t risk being overheard.”
“Takeout it is, then.” He wanted nothing more than to be alone with her, to take the next step in this strange courtship of theirs. “What do you want?”
“It matters little to me.”
Max had already slid back his door, but now he paused and looked at her, realizing how far she’d retreated within herself, her expression so remote he knew it was a front, meant to hide the vulnerable truth. “Damn. I’m sorry.” Every protective instinct he had, awakened to quiet, intense life. “I didn’t think about it.”
“It’s alright.” Those night-violet eyes held a surprise that rubbed those same instincts very much the wrong way. “It’s not something you need to think about.”
That she’d say that after the unspoken depth of this connection between them made him want to reach forward and tug her into a hard, hot kiss—remind her of the truth in a way she couldn’t ignore. But he couldn’t touch her, not yet. “Yeah,” he said, “I do.” Because slowly, inexorably, she was becoming his . . . to watch over, to know.
A wash of shadows in that stunning gaze, a silent indication that she’d heard the message behind the words. “Thank you.”
Such a polite statement hiding so much emotion. “Don’t worry,” he said with a slow smile that made the polite mask slip, her expression flickering with suspicion, “I intend to take my payment in kisses.”
Exiting the car to her sharply indrawn breath, he headed into the restaurant. The buzz of human and changeling energy surrounded him from every side—voices rose and fell in animated conversation, the odd burst of laughter punctuating the hum. A woman brushed by him as she left, throwing him an apologetic glance over her shoulder. Another patron almost ran into him as he got off a stool around the island that surrounded the chefs in their open-air kitchen.
Ignoring what for him were distractions, but would for Sophia be a small slice of hell, Max placed his order using the built-in pad on the counter.
The waitress put the order in front of him less than five minutes later. “You look like a cop.”
He raised an eyebrow as he scanned his debit card over the reader.
Laughing, she leaned forward, her cleavage displayed to cheerful advantage. “We get a lot in here—there’s an Enforcement station two blocks over.”
“You’ve developed excellent radar.”
“You’re not from around here—I can hear the accent.” Taking something from her pocket, she slid it across the counter with a smile. “For you.”
Picking it up when she turned to deliver another order, he saw that it was a small personal card made out of Japanese washi, bearing the name Keiko Nakamura and a cell phone code.
“Lucky man,” a morose male said from his left. “I’ve been trying to get her to go out for a coffee for months.” Envy was a thorny vine around every word.
“I’m off the market.” It had been true since the instant he first laid eyes on Sophia Russo, whether he’d known it at the time or not.
A gleam of interest. “Can I have the card then?”
“Sorry.” Max dropped it into the takeout bag. “Keep trying.”
Keiko’s rejected suitor scowled into his udon soup as Max walked away, his mind already on a woman with eyes full of secrets dark and painful. My Sophia, he thought, and it was a vow.
Sophia lifted the takeout containers from the bag as Max went to grab the plates from his kitchen area. When she saw the small white card, she assumed it held the number of the restaurant. Then her eye fell on the text. “Who’s Keiko Nakamura?”
“What?” Max walked out with the plates. “Oh, don’t worry about that. It’s going in the recycling.” Putting down the plates on the table, he plucked the card out of her hand and placed it in the bin marked for the recycling chute.
But Sophia couldn’t let the point go. “You met her at the restaurant?”
“Yes.” Placing two glasses of water on the table, he pulled out a chair with a spare efficiency that struck her as quintessentially male. “Waitress.”
“When a female gives her contact details to an otherwise unfamiliar man,” she said, trying not to be distracted by the heated strength of him so close . . . so touchable, “it is for private reasons.” As with that woman in the elevator at Vale’s apartment. “Women seem to always be giving you their cards.”
Max opened one of the containers and served some sushi onto her plate using the disposable chopsticks. “That bother you, Sophie?” A low, deep tone, a masculine smile that made her skin go tight with warning.
Remembering too late that Max Shannon was a cop used to digging deep, reading truths and lies, she opened the other container. “What is this?”
“Tempura.” Max put what appeared to be a battered prawn onto her plate, his voice holding a distinct male amusement. “Try it. And you haven’t answered my question.”
Having removed her gloves and washed her hands earlier, she used her fingers to pick up a piece of sushi. “I suppose I should become accustomed to women . . .” She paused, unable to think of the correct term.
“Hitting on me.”
“Yes, I should get accustomed to women hitting on you,” she said. “After all, you are a beautiful man.”
Color flagged Max’s cheeks. “I’ll let you—and only you—get away with that. But never in public. Got it?”
She was so fascinated by the disarming glimpse of embarrassment that she blurted out a need so deep, it would ravage her if he refused. “I would rather you not respond to any such invitations while we are . . .”
His gaze met hers, his attention so total that she felt as if she was in the sights of some great bird of prey. “While we are?” he prompted when she didn’t continue.
She’d come this far, couldn’t go back now. He knew about the otherness, about the cold justice she’d delivered to those who’d hurt society’s most vulnerable, and he hadn’t turned away—she was still too terrified to ask him why, but it gave her the courage to say, “While we are learning each other.”
“Learning each other,” Max repeated, as if measuring the words. “And will you let me in, Sophie?”
“Yes.” Something stirred deep within her, something that was at once dark . . . and lonely. Unutterably, absolutely lonely. “Be with me, Max.” Saying that was the hardest thing she’d ever done—it felt akin to tearing out her heart and placing it at his feet . . . and hoping, just hoping, that he wouldn’t crush it.
Max didn’t say anything for several long moments. When he did speak, his voice seemed to have dropped an octave. “Do you know what you’re asking, what I’ll demand of you?”
The tiny hairs on her arms sto
od up at the leashed intensity of the question. “Yes.”
Max picked up a piece of tempura, but instead of putting it on her plate, lifted it to her lips. His eyes held a silent challenge. And Sophia found her bone-deep vulnerability retreating under a wave of determination—Detective Max Shannon was not going to disconcert her so easily. She parted her lips and took a bite. Eating the other half—a shocking intimacy—he returned his attention to her face. To her mouth. “Won’t whatever you experience spill out into the PsyNet?”
“It’s a risk, yes,” Sophia admitted, feeling her lips turn dry, her throat seeming to swell. “However, like all Js, my PsyNet shields are airtight, so the risk is acceptable. Even if there is a leak, any irregularities will be attributed to my disintegration as a functioning J, rather than to such a blatant breach of Silence.”
His lips thinned. “And once those irregularities become too strong, you’ll be taken away to be retuned.”
“Reconditioned,” she corrected automatically. Part of her wanted to tell him the final truth—that her chances had run out, that their relationship would accelerate her disintegration . . . and that she’d choose a fugitive’s death before allowing her personality to be erased, her memories of Max scrubbed away to leave her a hollow shell.
But if she shared that, he’d never agree to her request, this man who looked at her as if she mattered, as if she was worth protecting. And she needed him to agree—the hunger inside of her, it was so vast, so endless, so dark and cold, she didn’t know how she’d borne it this long. “I’ve survived reconditioning a number of times.” When he didn’t say anything, she rubbed her damp palms on her thighs. “Max?”
Max heard the well-hidden tremor, the touch of vulnerability, and had to force himself to keep from soothing away her worry. Because that would be a lie. He was well and truly hooked on Sophia—but no matter how easy he was with others, how laid-back, he’d never be that way with this woman he was coming to consider his. No, with her, he might play—would play—but he’d also push and demand and take. And she needed to understand that.
Making a decision, he stood and walked around to brace his hands on the table on either side of her, his breath stirring the tiny curls just above her ear. He saw her hands clench on her thighs, the scent of her a mix of vanilla, lavender, and something a little wilder, uniquely her own, a flower that had never known the hand of man. “Be sure, Sophie.” Today, this minute, he might possibly be capable of walking away. But if he touched her, if he claimed her . . . there’d be no going back.
CHAPTER 17
Sophia’s answer was immediate. “I am sure.”
But he saw the strained angle of her jaw, the taut line of her body. “Are you?” When she remained stiff within the bracket of his arms, he drew in a deep breath . . . and let go of the reins. “If we do this today, if you accept me, then you take me as I am.” He forced himself to give her one final chance, though the need to take her at her word, to finally taste the temptation that was Sophia Russo, was a pounding beat in every cell of his body. “I won’t be controllable, and I sure as hell won’t do only what you ask of me.” He brushed the shell of her ear with his lips.
Sophia sucked in breath.
“Okay?” he murmured—he’d challenge, coax, seduce, but he wouldn’t hurt her. Never would he hurt her.
A jerky nod. “But I need space.” She went as if to stand up.
He kept her in place by the simple expedient of remaining in position. “Like I said, baby—we do this, you’ll have to let go, trust me.” He let his lips stroke over the tip of her ear again, felt her tremble.
So sensitive, so exquisitely sensitive.
But no pushover.
“I may be fractured,” she said in blunt response, “but I am not a submissive personality.”
He felt his lips curve, delighted. “Did I say I wanted a submissive? I just want to make sure you don’t expect one either.”
“Do you know how I see you?” A husky question. “As a tiger who has decided to behave for the time being—I’m not stupid enough to attempt to leash you.”
The maleness in him settled at the verbal stroking. “I’ll teach you how to make me come willingly to your hand,” he murmured, pressing a single, gentle kiss to the sweet slope of her neck. “Anytime you want.”
A long, shuddering exhale, her skin shimmering with heat. “Max.”
“Ride it,” he said. “Don’t fight, just ride the wave.”
Sophia shook her head. The impact of his touch—hard, jagged, almost painful—shoved through her. “I can’t. It’s too much.”
For an instant, she thought he wouldn’t shift and she’d drown in the avalanche of sensation, but then he rose to his full height, releasing her from the sensual prison of his arms. Pushing back her chair, she got up and stumbled to the bathroom. The cold water she splashed onto her face snapped some semblance of control back into her, but it still took several long minutes before she got herself under enough control to dare check her PsyNet shields.
Holding—a hard carapace that left her battered inside. Battered but protected. A strong PsyNet shield was a J’s sole protection against early rehabilitation, and as such, was an unspoken secret in the Corps, the shield techniques passed on from J to J outside of any scheduled lesson. Even her boss, who played politics with cold-blooded ease, would never divulge that one truth. Because no one in the Corps was ever safe.
“Sophie.” Max’s voice, shaping her name like a caress. “Either you come out or I’m coming in.”
Tucking her hair behind her ears, she opened the door and walked toward the table. “I’m fine.” A lie. She was terrified he’d decided against her, a woman who couldn’t handle a simple kiss. “It was just a shock to my senses.”
Max pulled out her chair. “Tell me.”
She didn’t sit, didn’t dare go so close to the temptation and danger of him. “I miscalculated how big the impact would be.” How visceral. Her hands trembled as she went to pick up her discarded gloves. “We should work on the case.” It was a jerky, unsophisticated attempt to change the subject.
Max smiled, and it felt as if he’d stroked a fingertip across the most sensitive parts of her. “We’ll watch the data files from the security cameras in the corridor outside Chan’s apartment—you can finish your lunch at the same time.”
Her stomach felt tight, twisted into knots. “I don’t really need any more—”
“You’ll eat.” Cool words. “You’ll need your energy.”
Her negative response whispered away as she read the intent in those dark, dark eyes. “You still want to be with me? Even though I couldn’t even handle . . .”
“I figure it just means you need more practice.”
The provocative words turned the knots in her stomach into butterflies. “You mustn’t say things like that.”
“Why?” A slow, deep smile that revealed a lean dimple in his cheek. “Practice will be fun—I intend to be a very demanding coach.”
She stared, wishing she could kiss her way down that dimple.
“Come on.” Smile widening and filling with a wickedly sensual heat, he turned to head to the comm screen in the living area. “Bring your plate.” A coaxing glance over his shoulder as he inserted the crystal into the built-in player on the side of the screen. “I promise to behave.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him, but she couldn’t resist. He stretched out an arm on the sofa behind her head as soon as she sat down. “Max, you need to sit a little farther away.”
“No.” The dimple disappeared, but his expression remained warm . . . intimate. “No backward steps.” He turned on the comm screen using the remote, even as his fingers began to play with strands of her hair.
For the first time, she found herself wondering what she’d taken on.
A tug on her hair. “Focus, J.”
J. It had always been, if not a curse, then a symbol of the inevitable. But when Max said it . . . Her eyes lifted to the screen as it filled wit
h a shot of the corridor leading to Edward Chan’s room. As she watched, Max programmed the screen to skip to anything that disrupted the image of the empty corridor. The first time, it was a cleaning bot, buzzing its way industriously along the carpet.
“I don’t think he did it,” Max murmured, his focus very much on the screen.
Sophia took the chance to watch him. His profile was all clean lines, his skin that strokable dark honey, his bone structure flawless. But Sophia had seen beautiful men before. Objectively speaking, Councilor Kaleb Krychek was one of the most devastatingly attractive men on the planet—but the one time she’d been in his vicinity, he’d made her blood run cold. Max, on the other hand . . .
Her eyes went to the triangle of flesh bared at the open collar of his shirt. Other men sometimes had hair there, but she could see only smooth, unblemished skin. It made her want to ask him to unbutton the shirt farther so she could kiss her way across his chest, learn him with her mouth.
“Now who’s this?”
Sophia jerked her head to the woman onscreen. Dressed in a deep green pantsuit, she stepped out of the elevator and headed toward Chan’s room, but entered the suite opposite his. Putting down her plate, Sophia reached for her organizer. “That has to be Marsha Langholm, Nikita’s most senior advisor. She uses that apartment while in the country.”
“We’ll need to talk to her.” Reaching over, Max took her organizer so he could read the notes she had on Langholm. “If you didn’t like sushi, you should’ve spoken up.”
She ate another piece. “I’ve never tasted it before. It’s fine.”
“What about the tempura?” He kept his eyes on the screen as it skipped to show a young male who slid an envelope beneath Chan’s door before returning to the elevator.
“I recognize him—Ryan Asquith,” she said. “He’s the same intern who later found the body. And tempura is quite . . . enjoyable.” Never before had she considered food anything more than nourishment that kept her alive—like most Psy, she’d been conditioned against falling victim to the inherent sensuality of taste and pleasure.