by Nalini Singh
The wolf arched its back, preening for her.
And Hawke stopped playing nice.
SIENNA had seen Hawke unclothed before—it was impossible not to catch such glimpses since changelings came out of a shift naked, but pack protocol meant she’d always forced herself to look away. Even if she hadn’t, those times, she’d been nowhere near this close.
His chest was taut with muscle, his abs washboard flat, his skin a warm, strokable honey lightly furred with silver-gold. She wanted to press him to the carpet and lick him all over.
“You planning to fold?”
She jerked up her head, almost dropping her cards. “What?”
“Time to show your cards.”
Certain she had him beat, she laid out her spread. “Full house.” Her eyes went to his jeans.
She was so busy imagining him naked, she almost missed the smile that flirted over his lips as he said, “Nice, but not good enough,” and fanned out a royal flush.
Stunned, she stared.
“Strip, beautiful.”
She went to pull off her socks, her skin shimmering from the impact of that verbal caress.
“Nu-huh.” A shake of his head. “Shirt.”
That snapped through the sensual fog. “But I let you take off your socks first!”
“Yeah, I didn’t know you had a foot fetish. Shirt.”
She glared.
“You reneging on the bet?”
Fuming, she began to unsnap the buttons of the black shirt.
Hawke watched her with predatory alertness. “You’ll be cute dressed in just your socks.”
The image made her fingers halt on the final buttons, but when he raised his eyebrows, she kicked herself back into gear, shrugging off the shirt before she could lose her nerve.
His groan made her thighs clench. “You’re wearing a fricking tank top underneath!”
“Frustration’s not so funny now, is it?” she said with a smirk.
A slow smile that made her stomach go twisty and tight. “So this is revenge?”
“Maybe.” Her satisfaction lasted until she figured out that Hawke was a cardsharp. Heart in her mouth, she was certain he’d make her strip off the despised tank next, but he rubbed his jaw and said, “Tank with the socks—could be cute.”
Nervous anticipation or not, she couldn’t keep from stroking her gaze over his chest as she waited for the verdict. What would it feel like to touch him, to rub her—
“Socks.”
“What?”
“Want me to change my mind?”
“No!” Getting rid of the socks, she dealt the next game since he appeared to be content with her playing dealer. Except it was impossible to concentrate with him lying on his back only two feet from her, one leg stretched out on the carpet, the other bent at the knee as he held his cards up above him. It was like being shown the most beautiful classic statue in the world and being told not to touch.
Her nails dug into her palms.
“Baby?”
Expecting more of the sensual teasing that had her melting from the inside out, she was surprised at the tenderness she caught in that wolf-pale gaze. “Yes?”
“Do you want to be naked?”
“I agreed to play the game.” Sienna always kept her word. It was a choice she’d made after leaving the Net, a stance that defined her.
“That’s not what I asked.”
She could’ve lied to spare her pride, but that wasn’t what she wanted between them. “I’m not as comfortable being naked as a changeling.” She’d never been nude in front of anyone after the age of five, except in a medical setting. Those weren’t good memories.
Hawke put down his cards. “Want to touch?” The sensual invitation sliced right through the cold echo of the humiliation that had been her yearly physical, when her entire body was inspected from head to toe to ascertain that she had no imperfections that might make her a less viable weapon.
“Yes,” she said, her throat thick with raw want.
“Then I’m all yours.”
Pushing aside the cards, she crawled to kneel beside him. “Anywhere?”
“As long as you don’t indulge your weird foot fetish.” A lazy smile that invited her to play.
It was an irresistible temptation. Leaning down, she kissed that teasing mouth. His hand immediately fisted in her hair, holding her to him as he tasted her with breath-stealing thoroughness. “Will you ever,” she said, chest rising and falling as she attempted to take in air, “give me control in this kind of a situation? In a sexual context?”
“No.” The wolf looking up at her. “Does that bother you?”
She put her hand on his chest, the tensile warmth of him a sudden, acute addiction. “I have to be in control of my power every minute of every day.” It was impossible not to stroke him, not to sleek her hand over the light covering on his chest that was even softer than it looked. It made her wonder how it would feel against her nipples.
His hand tightened in her hair. “What just went through your head?”
“Figure it out,” she murmured, because while she discovered she wasn’t averse to handing him the reins in bed, she wasn’t about to roll over either. “I want to touch now.”
His chest vibrated under her palm, and she realized he’d growled. But the sound held no anger. It was more sensual, deeper . . . intimate. Thinking back to what she’d been doing, she realized she’d grazed one flat male nipple with her nail.
So she did it again.
Making that same rumbling sound, he tugged her down with the grip he had in her hair, and took her mouth again, his lips a possessive brand. She found herself on her back, with him heavy between her thighs a second later. When she pushed at his shoulders, he said, “You can still touch.” A light kiss on the corner of her lips, his stubbled jaw scraping across achingly sensitive flesh.
“Not if you keep doing that.” It was beyond impossible to concentrate with him so big and warm and aroused above her. “Hawke.”
Something in Sienna’s voice made Hawke’s wolf go motionless. Bracing himself with his forearms on either side of her head, he looked into eyes of inky black. “You need a break?” He hadn’t forgotten who and what she was, the demands her gift made on her.
Her hands smoothed down his chest.
It took teeth-gritting control not to order her to stroke those hands over the hard ridge of his cock. “Baby, that’s not going to make me behave.”
“You have to,” she said, “because it’s my turn. I need to touch you.”
A cool statement, but he heard the very real frustration behind it. As evidenced by the last time they’d been together, frustration in bed could be fun—but not the kind he heard in her voice. Need stripped bare, the same raw-touch hunger that had had him in its claws before he’d allowed himself to indulge in her. She was right. It was her turn.
So he locked his muscles, dropped his head, hair falling around his face, and let her pet him. Remaining quiescent under her exploration was torture, hungry as he was to claim her. Yet the wolf grit its teeth along with the human, as if aware that this woman, while strong enough to survive a childhood that would’ve broken most, was also deeply vulnerable in certain ways.
“You’re so beautiful.” A husky murmur that was a rough stroke across his taut flesh. “Your chest hair, it’s so smooth, so fine. Like the thinnest of pelts.”
It was also highly sensitive. “Use your mouth,” he found himself demanding as the leash slipped.
But Sienna didn’t shy. “Oh, yes. I want to do that.” While he was still trying to quiet his primal response at the unhidden delight of her response, she wiggled down a fraction and placed a hot, uninhibited kiss right above his left nipple. He bit back a very blue word, a sheen of sweat coating his entire body. As he knew, Sienna learned fast. Her next kiss included the scrape of teeth.
Hawke’s growl raised every hair on Sienna’s body. Shivering, she licked at him, taking the salt and heat of him inside her. Part of her
couldn’t believe she had her hands on him at last, that she was free to stroke and taste as she wanted. The rest of her wanted to gorge, her legs clenching around the sensual intrusion of the big body between her thighs.
It would be easier to reach all of him if she pushed him to his back, but first, she wasn’t entirely sure he’d go, and second, being surrounded by him was . . . beyond pleasure. His thighs pushed against the insides of hers as the thick weight of his erection pressed through his jeans, just brushing against her. His arms were tense with muscle on either side of her, his chest above her, his hair falling sexily around his face as he watched her with a predator’s focus. One who wanted to bite.
She tried to reach his lips, fell short. “Kiss me.”
Leaning down without a word, he ran his lips across hers. It was a tease, made her attempt to rise toward him once more.
“Nu-huh.” He shook his head. “Be good.”
Trembling, she lay back down.
Her reward was a suckling kiss, teeth closing over her lower lip, a languid release that made things low in her stretch tight. “I hope you like teeth,” he said in that rough, deep voice that made her want to do infinitely wicked things.
“I like yours.”
He settled himself more heavily on her. She felt at once caged and as if she would fly into a million pieces with the slightest touch. Panic fluttered in her throat, the shock of a woman who’d grown up in a prison of discipline and darkness. “Hawke.”
“Shh.” Kisses on her cheekbone, his forearm bracketing her head as he used his free hand to play with strands of her hair. Another kiss, this one on her nose. “We’ve got all night.” A whisper of a kiss on the corner of her mouth. Another. “No need to rush.”
Gentling her, she thought, he was gentling her.
The unexpected tenderness of him surprised her . . . undid her. Yet, even at this moment, there was no doubting the power of the wolf who prowled behind his eyes. “Did you always know you’d be alpha?” she found herself whispering into the intimate hush.
His expression changed, became touched with darkness. “I knew when I needed to know,” he said at last, and though the words were unspoken, she understood he wanted her to drop the subject.
That was the one thing she couldn’t do, though she knew her persistence might shatter the magic of this sensual moment. Touching him, being with him, it was only part of what she needed from his man. She couldn’t have his soul, couldn’t have the mating bond, but she’d fight for the rest of him even if it left her bruised and bloody. “What did the Psy do?”
“They broke my father.” Clipped-out words. “It took them a week.”
Bile burned the back of her throat. It was near impossible to disrupt changeling shields without killing or injuring the target, but given a week with a wolf who, in all probability, had been dosed with drugs . . . “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing for you to be sorry about.” His fingers tightened on her hip. “You didn’t have anything to do with the experiment.”
A chill over her skin, the first glimmer of horror. “Experiment?” She reached out to stroke his jaw, found it hard as stone.
“Enough. There’s nothing there except blood and death.” He thrust his hand into her hair. “What we are now, that’s what’s important.”
How could he say that? The past had savaged him—he carried the scars on his heart to this day. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t shut me out like that.” Don’t give me even less of you.
Shaking his head, he moved as if to kiss her, to end the conversation . . . froze. “Sienna, your eyes, they’re burning.”
Jerked back to the cold reality of her life, she dropped into her mind, saw the storm of flame. It shouldn’t have built to critical again this fast, shouldn’t have incinerated her shields and poured into her eyes, a violent voracious thing that would consume everything in its path and search for more. Fear squeezed her throat, but she had no time for the ice of it. “I need to get out of the den. Now.”
Chapter 34
THEY TOOK ONE of the all-wheel drives as deep into the isolated interior of den territory as possible before Sienna said, “Stop.” Tumbling out of the vehicle the second Hawke braked, she ran toward a small clearing surrounded by the tall bulk of dark green firs, her feet cushioned by millions of pine needles. “Step back,” she ordered when Hawke caught up to her.
“You don’t scorch the earth when you release your power,” he said, the planes of his face a study in pure, implacable will. “You didn’t burn me when you lost control as you came.” He locked his arms around her.
“Let go!” It terrified her that she’d hurt him. “Please!”
His arms were immovable steel. “I trust you. Trust yourself.”
“Hawke!” Energy poured out of her in a screaming rush. Acting on primal instinct, she threw a shield of cold fire around every part of Hawke that touched her a split second before she punched a massive pulse of the same fire into the earth. It rippled in an eerie wave of crimson and gold on the surface before sinking below the forest floor. Beautiful.
Then there was no more thought. Only the brutal cold of an X.
She didn’t know how long the fire burned through her, but she would’ve crumpled to the ground afterward if Hawke hadn’t been holding her up. Shuddering, she leaned against him only for the seconds it took her to get her legs working again. Then she shoved, surprising him into releasing her.
“You bastard! I could’ve killed you!” Shock continued to shudder in her blood, fighting with terror-fueled rage for dominance.
“You’re allowing fear to drive you,” he responded, eyes grim with determination. “Ming’s still in your head, keeping you in a cage. Break out and own your ability.”
“That’s a load of bullshit!” Never before had she screamed at anyone. Never before had she felt such bone-chilling fear. “You don’t know anything about being an X! Have you forgotten I almost killed my own mother?”
“You were a child.”
Her laugh was flavored with bitterness. “You have no idea what I can do.” All this time, she’d been fooling herself that he wanted her despite knowing she was a monster. If he’d understood in truth . . . “You felt the intensity of what I earthed. Yet I can do this.” A single flick of her hand and X-fire encased a forest giant that had stood for centuries.
Ash, fine as dust, rose into the air between one blink and the next.
“Now you know.”
HAWKE gritted his jaw as Sienna swayed on her feet. “That was a singularly stupid thing to do.” Grabbing her in a fireman’s carry, he threw her over his shoulder.
“Put me down.” A weak protest before her body went limp.
Worry tore through his veins, but he could feel her heartbeat, sense her breath. Focusing on that, he strapped her into the passenger seat before digging out his phone. “Sienna’s unconscious,” he said when Judd answered.
The other man took a second to reply. “She’s fine. Her mind is intact.”
Relief was a punch to Hawke’s gut. “I’m going to strip her hide when she wakes up.” Shutting the passenger door, he jogged around to the driver’s side and switched the phone to the hands-free comm mode before beginning the drive back.
“It sounds,” Judd said when Hawke finished relaying what had led to Sienna’s collapse, “like she overloaded her psychic pathways.”
Hawke frowned. “So she does have a safety switch.” He’d gotten the impression that conscious control was so necessary to Sienna because she had no built-in off switch.
Judd didn’t reply long enough that Hawke’s blood went cold. “What aren’t you saying?”
“I think we need to have this discussion after you return.”
Hawke’s patience was nonexistent when it came to Sienna’s well-being, but he saw the lieutenant’s point. “We’ll be there soon.”
Judd met them at the infirmary, where Lara ran a high-tech medical scanner over Sienna and pronounced her in perfect health. Only the
n did Hawke nod at Judd to follow him out into the corridor. “Tell me.”
“She’s accelerating at an exponential rate,” Judd said, pulling up a chart on the tiny datapad he carried in his pocket. “After she confirmed she’d been purging her power more often of late, I spoke to Walker to see if we could pinpoint any specific times or dates. It took me until just before the South American operation to realize it was Toby we needed to speak to—she allows him closer than anyone else.”
White lines bracketed the former Arrow’s mouth. “He knew before all of us. He’s been making a note in his diary each time he feels she’s about to go critical. Since she hasn’t had any incidents, the logical conclusion is that she instituted a purge in each case.” Judd turned the datapad so Hawke could see the screen.
The pattern was impossible to miss. It had been almost a year between Sienna’s arrival and the first time she earthed herself. The next came after eight months. Then six. The last few had been mere weeks apart. Hawke’s wolf rose to the fore, helping the man think with clear-eyed purpose. “Can it be stopped?”
“No.” An absolute statement. “That’s what makes her an X.”
“Silence”—he forced himself to say that word, to consider that option—“kept her under some kind of containment.”
“Only to an extent. She’s the sole cardinal X ever born, according to our records. Even Ming was playing a game of Russian roulette with her. No one had any idea what would happen as her power matured.”
“Does she know?”
“I think she doesn’t want to know.” Black erased the gold-flecked brown of Judd’s eyes, a rare indication of strong emotion. “The only way she can survive is to believe that she can change the inevitable.”
“Then we leave it at that.” He could see Sienna growing deeper into her skin day by day. No way in hell was he going to cut her off at the knees. “You sound certain that it can’t be stopped, but is there any way to slow the progression?”
Judd shoved a hand through his hair. “I’ve been searching for the manuscript I mentioned to you once.”
“The dissertation on X-Psy?”