by Nalini Singh
Shifting with care so he could look down at her sleeping face, he ran his finger along the delicate shell of her ear. His mate was so lovely, and so gentle. So very good. That was what made her a healer. She might be a SnowDancer, but should he bring her the broken body of a Psy Councilor, she’d do her best to heal the enemy, regardless of the fact that enemy might one day strike her dead.
That was who she was.
It was also why she needed him. Because Walker wasn’t that good. He’d do whatever it took to protect her from harm, spill blood without blinking. He knew Lara saw that ability to kill in him, understood his moral compass wasn’t like her own, but she loved him just the same.
He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve her, deserve this life where he was so passionately loved that it was an incandescent glow against his heart, but he knew he’d fight to the death to hold on to her. Lara was his.
Chapter 8
QUIETLY MOVING ASIDE a curl that was tickling her in her sleep, he felt his lips curve when she wrinkled up her nose before falling asleep again. It was something she did every time he cleared away a curl—and he loved that he knew that. As he knew that if he ran a finger down her throat, she’d sigh and turn into the touch, her hand flexing on his skin. It made his entire body tighten, his flesh hungry for her though he’d shared skin privileges passionate and exquisite with her a mere two hours ago.
Shifting his focus, he played with the thin strap on her left shoulder, his callused fingertip scraping against her skin. He didn’t pull back—Lara had made it clear she loved his hands. Instead, he smoothed the strap down her arm and leaned over to press his lips to the silky hot skin he’d bared, the taste of her an addiction he intended to indulge in for the rest of his life.
Making a sleepy sound, she tunneled one hand into his hair, holding him to her as he slid his own hand up over her thigh and to her hip, pushing up the satiny fabric of her short nightgown at the same time. He’d experienced sensation, so many layers of it since leaving the Net, but each time he touched Lara, he found there was more to feel, to explore.
Kisses along her throat, her pulse thudding against his tongue, her breast taut and perfect in his palm.
“Oh.” A hitch in her breath, followed by a husky, “Don’t stop.”
He ran his thumb over her nipple. “Before,” he murmured against her mouth, “I comprehended the mechanics of this act, but I never understood.” That it could be lighthearted or intense, smoldering or wild…any of a thousand different moods, playing off his own and hers to create a new alchemy of pleasure every single time.
Today, it was slow, lazy, a touch playful.
Fisting her hand in his hair, she brushed her lips, soft and lush, across his cheekbone. “You know what I find sexy? These pajama bottoms you wear to bed.” She ran her foot over the fine blue cotton striped with black.
He knew when he was being teased, nipped at her lower lip in sensual punishment. “Those,” he said, her unrepentant laugh tangling him up, “are so as not to shock our youngest child if she walks in after a bad dream.” Unlike after they first defected, Marlee rarely had nightmares these days, but she wasn’t totally free of the scars the PsyNet had left on her psyche. When the dreams did hit, she still ran immediately for Walker. Which was why their bedroom door stayed unlocked at night—except if he flipped the remote switch as he’d done a few minutes ago.
Lara suckled kisses along his neck, spreading her thighs to better cradle his body. “She’s growing up in a changeling pack.” A graze of teeth. “I bet you it wouldn’t faze her.”
He had the feeling she was right. Changelings were very respectful of one another’s personal space, never assuming even casual skin privileges with people they didn’t know, but nakedness was accepted as a natural state of being, a logical outcome of the fact that every changeling young and old, came out of the shift naked.
“Well,” he muttered, “it’d faze me.”
Lara laughed, breath hot against his skin. “So shy, my poor darling.”
Tugging her up from his throat to claim her mouth, drink of her laughter, he moved his hand down past her navel to cup her over the lace of her panties, kissing her slow and deep until she grew damp against his palm, the scent of her an invitation. In no hurry, he continued the lazy seduction until she began to move restlessly against him, her delicate flesh plump against the lace.
His mate was more than happy to cooperate when he tugged off the silky shred of cloth, sighed as she realized he’d stripped off his pajama bottoms before returning to her. Rubbing her partially bared breasts against his chest when he bent to her mouth once again, kissing her one of his favorite pleasures, she wrapped her legs around his hips, her nightgown bunched up at her waist.
Silky and feminine and soft, she surrounded him, claimed him.
Moving one hand between their bodies to grip his erection, position himself at the tight heat of her entrance, he said, “Yes?”
“Please.” A sultry invitation, her body rising to welcome his.
He shuddered as he pushed home. Bracing himself on one arm and controlling the urge to thrust, he used the fingers of his free hand to tug the straps of her nightgown all the way off and brush his fingertips over the bare mounds of her breasts. She moaned, drawing her nails up along his back in a light caress as her internal muscles fluttered around him, her flesh molten honey with welcome. “You feel so good inside me.”
Her words were a caress as intoxicating as the possessive clasp of her body.
Lowering his mouth to her throat, he kissed his way down to her breasts, teased her with his teeth, his lips…while rocking into her, slow and easy. They had only been mated a short period, but he knew how to listen to his mate’s body, never forgot a single detail of what pleasured her.
“You’re thinking,” she accused.
He tugged a sensitive nipple between his teeth, released it to her gasp. “For the moment.” He knew from experience he’d soon succumb to an overload of pure sensation.
“You know this”—a soft moan as he drew back at leisure, pushed in as deliberately—“drives me crazy.”
“Hmm.” Reaching down, he insinuated his hand between their bodies once more to touch her exactly where and how she loved it the most; knowledge he possessed because she’d whispered it to him when he’d asked her to teach him her pleasure points, his wild sensual mate who denied him nothing. “Is this better?”
Her body tightened then broke in a shocked ripple of ecstasy, her muscles clamping down on him. He gritted his teeth to hold back the urge to rush—he wasn’t in a rushing kind of a mood tonight—and then, when she softened beneath him, he kissed her with languorous sensuality, petting her down from the peak.
Heavy lids lifted to reveal eyes gone nightglow. “I guess,” she murmured, kissing his throat, “this patience is a side effect of the control you had to maintain in the PsyNet.”
He held her to his throat, sucking in a breath as she licked out at a particularly sensitive spot. “Possibly.”
A smile against his skin. “Lucky me.”
Looking down into her pleasure-drenched expression, he whispered, “No. I’m the lucky one.”
He held her gaze for every long, deep stroke, luxuriated in the touch of her hands down his back as she tried to bring him impossibly closer, gloried in the secondary wave of pleasure that turned those wolf-bright eyes hazy…and took him under in a passionate storm that short-circuited his every nerve.
• • •
HE came to, collapsed beside his mate’s body, his thigh pinning both of hers and his arm over her breasts, his face turned toward her own on a single shared pillow. Breathing was an effort, but since Lara seemed to be having the same problem, he was content to lie there, hot and sweaty and happy.
Happy.
It was the wrong word to think tonight, the wrong key to turn after the flash of memory at the dinner table.
Fingers against his nape, rubbing at the sudden rigid tension. “Walker?”
Lara nudged at him until he shifted his body enough to allow her to turn to face him. “We’re stronger than memories, stronger than hurt.” A luminous smile. “We’re a mated pair, a family.”
So simple, so powerful, her words smashed the dam inside him. But it took him time to speak, time to think past the violent crimson haze incited by this particular fragment of the past. Lara didn’t shove, didn’t attempt to force. No, his mate simply nuzzled close and held him, as if she knew he needed her touch at this instant more than ever before.
“The day the rehabilitation order was authorized,” he began at last, his voice a harsh rasp, “when I came home to find Yelene packing because she didn’t intend to let her genes die out with mine”—the reason she’d aborted their unborn child with cold-blooded callousness—“I discovered she’d put in a call to pull Marlee and Toby out of school.” Jagged, brutal, the words cut at his throat, made him bleed.
“It’s okay,” Lara said, her distress open. “You don’t have to tell me if it hurts.”
He fisted his hand in her hair, anchoring himself in the warmth and heart and wildness of her. “No, I need to tell you.” Needed her to accept him in spite of the terrible mistakes he’d made and the pain those mistakes had caused. “Yelene had every intention of telling both children to pack up their belongings for donation to charity, because they’d be vegetables after the brainwipe of rehabilitation, with no use for any of it.”
Horror colored Lara’s eyes. “That’s not Silence, Walker, that’s cruelty.”
Walker stroked his hand down her side, felt the rage that vibrated through her. “It was as if she had never been their guardian,” he said, the insight making no more sense now than it had then, “never vowed to care for the children.”
A growl came out of Lara’s throat. “Healers might have trouble with killing, but if that woman ever ends up in front of me, I will carve out her heart without anesthetic.”
Shifting his position so that he was braced over her, he rubbed his cheek against her own and spoke the worst truth of all. “I was the one who chose Yelene to be my co-parent.” He’d been so careful, had read through multiple PsyMed reports on each candidate, done a deep background and personality check before he settled on Yelene.
And still he’d failed to protect the vulnerable lives under his care.
“I will never forgive myself for that.” Regret spun razor-sharp blades in his gut. “The way Marlee looked when she realized her mother had abandoned her—so small and broken; the way Toby went rigid and silent when he understood he’d lost another maternal figure, it’s on me and it always will be.”
“Don’t you let her evil eat away at you,” his mate said, her hands cupping his cheeks, forcing him to hold eyes of wolf amber grim with purpose. “You aren’t superhuman—and you aren’t a foreseer, that you could predict the future. You made the best choice in the situation you were in.”
Claws pricked his face as her wolf rose closer to the surface. “Yelene’s cowardice belongs to her alone. When she was asked to take a stand, she broke, while you put your life on the line and did everything in your power to protect your family. Remember that, not a woman who saved her skin and lost everything else.”
When he would’ve spoken, Lara shook her head, voice steely as she continued. “You will forgive yourself.” It was a command. “Because if you don’t, your unnecessary guilt will taint your happiness—and Walker? The children take their cues from you. If you don’t step fully into the light, neither will they.”
Trembling because he knew she was right, he pressed his forehead to hers. “I want them to misbehave,” he whispered. “I want them to talk back to us and throw tantrums.” The children were both so good that he worried some part of them feared another terrible rejection. “When they do, I might just start to believe they’ll be okay.”
Lara’s lips curved, the emotion in her smile a punch to the gut. “It’ll happen. Have faith in their strength and our love.” Claws retreating, she patted his cheek. “They do have Sienna as an example, after all.”
And his niece had been a “devil child,” according to Aisha (who had a soft spot for said devil child after all the dishwashing Sienna had done in the kitchens in recompense for her misdeeds). “They’ll have to work hard to beat her record of punishments.” He’d never admit it to Sienna, but some of her now infamous stunts had made him want to grin with pride.
“I put my money on Marlee,” Lara said. “There’s a bit of ‘devil child’ in her, too, according to my mother, bubbling under the surface.”
Walker rubbed his jaw. “I’ve heard it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for.” Lara had murmured that to him in a voice hoarse from screaming her pleasure not long ago. “I’m backing Toby.”
“You’re on, Mr. Lauren.” Claws running lightly over his back, her smile softening and gentling. “It’s all right, Walker. Let go of the past. It has no claim on you anymore.”
He knew he was too heavy for her, but he shuddered and covered her body with his own, her arms and legs coming around him, one of her hands stroking through his hair. “It’s all right, darling,” she said again. “It’s all right.”
Embraced by her on every level, the warmth of her within his very heart, Walker did what his mate had ordered and broke the final rusty chain that tied him to the life he’d lived before defection…taking the first steps on the road to forgiveness.
Chapter 9
BUOYED BY A bone-deep feeling of rightness, Walker finished a phone conversation with the mate of the leopard healer the following day, then went to supervise an outdoor exercise. It was a half hour into it that Hawke appeared beside him. The alpha’s eyebrow rose when he spotted the three pups, two male and one female, sitting cross-legged on the grass, faces set and arms folded. “Why aren’t those three participating?”
“It’s a punishment.” Walker had learned very quickly that changeling kids hated missing out on a physical activity. “I’ve had some problems since the evacuees returned to the den.” It had disturbed the children to be shuttled off, to worry in safety while their families and packmates fought, were hurt. “A few of the pups think they should’ve stayed behind and helped.”
Shoving a hand through hair the same unique silver-gold as his fur in wolf form, Hawke blew out a breath. “Future dominants, I’m guessing. Hard for them to accept being protected in a situation where they know their packmates are standing in the line of fire.”
Walker understood in a way the pups couldn’t comprehend. It had been brutal for him to leave the den when Lara, Sienna, and Judd remained behind. But it had been necessary, his strength needed to provide a shield for their most vulnerable. “Do you want to speak to them?”
“You’re their handler; your call.”
“Leave it to me.” He planned to have a quiet talk with each child.
Hawke nodded, the pale strands of his hair vivid in the sunlight. “You’re not the only one who’s had issues. The worst have been with the older teens, the ones on the cusp of adulthood.”
“Did you knock sense into their heads?”
“No.” A slashing smile. “Left that to Sienna and the other novices. Nothing bites worse than being chewed out by those immediately above you in the hierarchy, the people you want to emulate.”
Walker called over and gave some instructions to two of the boys, before returning to his conversation with Hawke. “I don’t think this”—a subtle nod to the three pups—“is serious. They just need the stability and discipline of pack to settle.”
“What about Marlee and Toby? Any problems?”
Walker couldn’t have pinpointed why, but right then, he had the distinct sense of talking to an alpha inquiring about his pack rather than Hawke the man. That alpha had looked out for the Lauren children from the instant he’d accepted them into SnowDancer, re
gardless of his suspicions of the adults, and Walker respected him for it.
“Marlee’s young enough to have taken it in her stride”—though his daughter felt far deeper and with more subtlety than most people understood—“but Toby’s having difficulty.” It was Lara who’d noticed his nephew seemed oddly subdued at times. “I’ve spoken to him about it, and I think he’ll be fine.”
“There’s so much heightened emotion everywhere,” the boy had said, “happiness and relief and worry for what’s coming. It’s hard for me to block it all out, but I’m getting better at shielding.”
“Sienna,” Walker said, shifting focus. “She’s happy.” A statement, not a question, because he’d seen her this morning, felt her increasing steadiness.
And that quickly, he was talking to Hawke the man again, rather than the alpha. “I’m her mate, Walker.” It was a growl. “I’d never consciously do anything to make her unhappy, you know that.”
Yes, he knew. But— “You realize I’m not going to be rational about this.” She was under his protection, and that protection didn’t end simply because she’d mated. It was forever.
“Yeah, yeah,” the other man muttered. “I won’t take it as an insult since I know logic has nothing to do with the instinct to protect.”
No, it didn’t. It never had.
“There are more like me.” A truth he’d understood the first time he’d seen a parent brush the tears off a child’s face. “In the PsyNet. People whose Silence is outwardly perfect, but who’ll fight to the death to protect their young.” Not because those children were a genetic legacy but because of instinct ruled by a far more visceral need.
“I know.” Hawke, this alpha who’d seen the worst of the Psy race as a child, folded his arms, wolf-blue eyes looking into a future that was spiraling closer with each moment that passed. “Their dawn is coming. Can’t you feel it?”