by Nalini Singh
He walked over, his body heavy with need. But he wasn’t an idiot. He wasn’t going to assume she’d accept him into her body again. Making such assumptions with predatory changeling females got men nothing but bruised egos and possibly, missing body parts. He climbed onto the rock with steady steps that were more natural to him than her quicksilver grace. “Damn it, Mercy,” he said the instant he saw her back. “You’re fucking black-and-blue again. You should’ve told me I was—”
“It wasn’t playtime with you that caused this, Kincaid.”
Fury rolled through him. “Who?” He’d rip them to shreds.
“Training, so cut it out.” Turning her head, she shoved her hair out of the way and glared. “It doesn’t hurt. It’s just my skin—and it’s not black-and-blue. I saw it in the mirror today; the marks have almost entirely faded.”
He scowled, wanting to do damage to whoever had dared harm her.
“My muscles, on the other hand, do ache. So massage me while I tell you what I picked up about the bears.”
“You sure you don’t hurt?”
“Riley, I’m a natural redhead.” A snicker. “In case you didn’t notice.”
Of course his gaze dipped downward. “Turn over so I can check.”
She laughed. “Massage me already.”
Still not happy with the marks, he straddled her. She moaned at the first firm touch of his hands on shoulders.
He didn’t say anything, choosing to stroke over her back again. “Bears?” he finally asked, though it was the last thing on his mind.
“They’re ooo-kay.” The last word was a moan as he hit a tight muscle. “I like your hands.”
He didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. Touching her was scrambling his brain cells. And that would surprise almost everyone who knew him. Riley Kincaid didn’t get scrambled. He was the one you could count on to be snapping out cool, collected orders while the world turned to custard. Right now, it could’ve been raining icicles and he wouldn’t have cared . . . except to protect Mercy’s body.
“The bears are fine,” she said, her voice pure indolent cat. “I scented a couple dead, but no signs of sickness—might be there was a fight. What did you get?”
“Same.” His voice sounded like sandpaper to him, but Mercy murmured in agreement and stayed quiescent under his hands.
This, he realized, was another kind of trust. Normally, she’d allow only a packmate to do this. Under his hands, her muscles grew loose, limber. Finishing with her shoulders, he slid down to work on her back. Despite the bruises that continued to anger the wolf, her skin felt soft as satin, warm and tempting. His fingers brushed the sides of her breasts as he did her sides.
“Hey, no copping a feel.”
Leaning over, he nipped her ear. “Quiet.”
He saw the edge of her smile. “Do the rest.”
Her languid laziness was so feline he couldn’t do anything else but stroke her. After he finished her back, he swept the heavy weight of her hair to cover her. Pretty, his wolf said as he ran the strands through his fingers.
Mercy didn’t hurry him up, and he realized she liked having her hair played with. It was a surprising discovery, it was such a feminine thing. But it fit her. Releasing the strands after long, long minutes, he ran his fingers down to trace the delicate lines of the tattoo at the base of her spine. It was a fine blade anchoring and twined by beautiful curling lines.
Feminine and martial.
He liked it. Just as he liked the fact that she had another tattoo on her right arm—slashing lines that echoed the markings on her alpha’s face. Loyal. This cat was loyal. And that both drew him and frustrated him. But he wouldn’t think about that today.
These minutes, these hours, were for Riley and Mercy. Not a lieutenant and a sentinel. Here, they were two ordinary people who happened to set one another aflame . . . and, perhaps, touch each other far deeper than either of them was willing to admit.
Drifting lower, he ran his knuckles over her buttocks. No protest. So he kneaded her muscles with careful hands, learning her far slower than he had either of the other times they’d been together.
By the time he reached the tops of her thighs, the scent of her arousal had wrapped around him like a thousand soft whispers. But he didn’t push. He was enjoying having her under his hands—Mercy rarely stopped being in motion. To have her like this was a rare treat, one to be savored.
The sole of her foot hit his back lightly as she bent it in a lazy movement. He squeezed her thigh. Instead of dropping the foot, she tapped him again. So he stroked his hands back over her body and off her shoulders, bracing them palms-down beside her head as he bent to nip at her ear again. Except this time, it was gentle, a question.
Reaching up to sweep her hair off her back, she bared the line of her neck. He was agonizingly hungry for her, but he didn’t immediately move to take. The other two times, he’d been in a fury. Today, he wanted to savor, to taste her in slow sips and little bites. Another nip, the graze of his teeth along her jaw. She made a complaining noise that wasn’t really a complaint. “Wolf.”
He stroked his hand down her side, over the curve of her breast, her hip, then back up. “Cat.”
She arched into the caress, but the move was languid, relaxed. “Pet me some more.”
“You always this greedy in bed?” But he was doing what she wanted—petting a warm, compliant, and sexually aroused Mercy was no hardship. Hell, if he was honest, it was an erotic fantasy come to life.
“No.” She was purring under his touch. “But I’m not promising anything.”
“Of course not.” He got off her and the rock.
“Hey!”
“The stone’s hard.” And there was no way he was chancing adding to her bruises. “Come down here and I’ll pet you as much as you want.”
“Bribery doesn’t work.” But she got up with a slow, graceful movement and flowed off the rock. It was the only word he could think of to describe it. She was pure liquid silk. And then she was in front of him, her arms around his neck, her body pressed to his.
As he leaned down to kiss her, he was hit by a fantasy of her hair sliding over his skin, wrapping around his cock. Groaning, he deepened the kiss, stroking his tongue against hers. Her hands tunneled into his hair and she made little noises in the back of her throat that let him know she liked what he was doing.
“I’m ready.” It was a whisper against his mouth, her lips sliding along his jaw, soft and lusciously feminine.
“I’m not.” Kissing his way down to her throat, he sucked. Just enough to leave a mark.
“I know what you’re doing.”
He smiled. And bit her. Her body jerked but she kept her claws sheathed. “Behave, Riley.” A lazy warning.
“You, telling me to behave?” he asked, dipping his head to tug a nipple into his mouth.
Her hands clenched in his hair. “Mmm.” That purr was vibrating against him, setting off a thousand small charges in his nervous system. His cock throbbed.
She began to slide one hand down his body. He caught it, brought it back up to his shoulders. Pulling his head up, she pointed to her lips. It wasn’t a hard order to follow. And her kiss . . . oh, but her kiss. All heat and lush, seductive pleasure. It was a promise, that kiss, a promise of a slow ride to oblivion.
“So patient,” she murmured against his mouth. “Will you be patient for me?”
He blinked. “Er . . .” And then told the blunt truth. “I’m not good at giving up control in bed.”
A chuckle, a glimmer of amusement in those golden eyes. They’d turned leopard on him, he realized, but she was a leopard well pleased, willing to let him play. “Where are you good at giving up control?” A flick of her tongue over the pulse in his throat. “Obviously not in the forest. Hmm, how about on the kitchen table—”
As if he needed any more erotic images to torment him at night. “Mercy.”
“—in the shower—”
Mercy’s skin, all wet and slippery. Her
body pinned to the wall by his. His hand clenched in her hair and he took her mouth with raw possession. When they parted, her lids were at half-mast, that teasing smile still curving her lips. “Definitely the shower, then.”
Shuddering, he ran his hands over her back to squeeze her buttocks. “You trying to make me crazy?”
“Everyone needs a hobby.”
His fingers touched her core. Hot. Slick. So ready. She moved against him, her words breathless when she said, “Now, Riley.”
Since he was about to burst out of his skin from the molten buildup of pleasure, he took her down to the grass without argument. Except this time, he made sure he was on the bottom. She braced herself over him, all red hair and sexy, sexy mouth. That mouth curved again as he closed his hands over her hips. “I need a Stetson.”
He waited.
“So I can ride you like a cowgirl.”
The visual almost made him come. “I’ll buy you one for Christmas.” He didn’t know where he found the willpower to say that, because she’d raised herself up on her knees and was brushing the damp heat of her core over and across him. “Mercy.” He pulled her down to sheathe him. She could’ve resisted. She didn’t.
Instead, she moved above him in a sinuous curve of fire and gold, her beauty bathed in sunshine. The fire fractured minutes later. And Riley’s wolf could do nothing but watch her as pleasure gripped him tight, then broke him wide open.
CHAPTER 26
In an ordinary—if coolly upmarket—section of the city, not far from the Palace of Fine Arts, a brown-eyed, brown-haired man walked into a corner store and paid the extravagant markup on a number of cleaning supplies. “Emergency,” he told the old lady who whispered to him that he could get a better deal at the supermarket a few blocks away. “New apartment has slime mold.” He made a face. “My girlfriend’s threatening to go back to her parents if I don’t clean it up right now.”
The old lady smiled and patted his arm, wishing him the best of luck with his girl. He grinned and tipped his baseball cap at her. There was nothing at all remarkable about him. The corner store manager forgot him as soon as he walked out, and had he, for some reason, needed to check the security footage, he’d have found that the stranger had somehow managed to either have his back to the cameras or his head bent, shadowed by the bill of his cap.
The same scene, or a variation of it, was repeated throughout the city. The customers all bought different things. Innocuous things. So long as you didn’t put them together.
CHAPTER 27
Mercy nuzzled her face into Riley’s neck and breathed deep. He smelled of earth and forest, heat and man. Beneath her, his body was warm, muscled, the silky-rough hair on his chest teasing the sensitive skin of her breasts.
He lay there and let her kiss his neck, the line of his shoulder, the dip below his throat, his hand lying loosely on her lower back. She wasn’t fooled. It was a possessive touch. But she figured she’d let him get away with it this once—he’d earned it. And he’d earned more than a little petting.
When she raised her head and nipped at his jaw, he lifted his lashes a fraction, but didn’t say anything, his hand stroking over her bottom.
“So,” she said with a slow smile.
He raised an eyebrow, his gaze now holding a distinctly wary look.
“How do I compare with wolf females?”
“You’re hoping I’ll tie my tongue into knots trying to answer that, aren’t you?”
“Damn.” She propped her chin on folded hands. “Busted.”
He pinched her butt.
“Hey!”
“You deserved that.”
Maybe she did. But—“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I don’t kiss and tell.”
“Or maybe there’s nothing to tell, huh?” She sat up to straddle him, her fingers playing over his chest. “Been a dry spell, Riley?”
His eyes watched her with intense concentration. That was the thing with Riley—he always made her feel as if he was focusing utterly on her. Before, she’d thought it was so he could find ways to tell her she was doing something wrong. But now . . .
“Look who’s talking, kitty.”
She dug her nails into his chest, but not hard enough to hurt. “Watch it. The endorphins are only going to last so long.”
His hands closed over her thighs. “I’ll remember that for next time.”
“Don’t get too cocky, wolfboy. Maybe three times is enough for me.”
“Maybe you’re a liar.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Did you and Indigo ever hit the sheets?” Jealousy was a spike inside her, a dangerous spike born of an even more dangerous emotion.
“Why is that any of your business?”
“Just curious.”
“No,” he said. “We’re colleagues.”
Surprised he’d answered, she took a few moments to think about it. “You don’t like strong women, do you?”
He stared at her, clearly annoyed. “Indigo’s one of my top lieutenants.”
“I’m not talking work.” She waved it away. “Personally—you really do want a domestic-type woman as a mate, don’t you? You weren’t jerking my chain.”
“There’s something wrong with that?”
She told herself the twinge in her chest wasn’t from the sting of rejection. “No. My mom’s a maternal female and I respect her absolutely.” For a leopard, the term “maternal” encompassed so much more than motherhood. The soldiers might ensure trouble stayed far from their innocents, but it was the maternal females who were the true glue of the pack, forging the threads that tied them all to each other. “Was your mom like that, too?”
Riley’s face closed over. It was like seeing shutters coming down. He’d been tight-lipped with her more than once, but never had he been this remote. “No.” The word was flat, eerily toneless. “I’d better be getting back.”
Her natural instinct was to probe. It wasn’t only the cat’s inquisitiveness—the human part of Mercy was also desperate for a glimpse inside this quiet, contained wolf. Because Riley mattered. There, after avoiding it for so long, she’d said it. He mattered. She was incredibly curious about him. But though she’d been intimate with him several times now, had known him for much longer, he’d never really let her in. Not even three nights ago.
Don’t ask me any questions tonight, Mercy.
And for all her brashness, that was one line she would not cross—if he wanted to invite her in, he’d have to do so of his own free will. She wasn’t so arrogant as to rip the scab off hidden emotional wounds without thought to how it might hurt him.
Riley, she thought with a fierce burst of protectiveness, had been hurt quite enough—first with the loss of his parents, and later, with the horror of Brenna’s abduction. She had no intention of adding to his scars. If the memories were shared in trust . . . that would be a different matter.
Trying to make up for raising an obviously painful topic, she dipped her head and kissed him with delicate promise. “I’ll run down with you.”
The Psy Council met in the closed vault of the Council chambers, deep in the heart of the PsyNet. They were scattered around the world—Tatiana in Australia, Kaleb in Moscow, Shoshanna in London, with Henry on route to that city, Anthony and Nikita in California, and Ming in France—but that mattered little. The PsyNet allowed them to navigate vast distances in split seconds, their minds going where their bodies couldn’t.
Now Kaleb watched the vault close and the seven minds within it spark bright. The Psy Council was in session. Nobody was in any doubt as to why they were there.
“The spurts of public violence,” Nikita began, “do we have further confirmation that someone is driving it?”
“No, only the shooter from the fast-food restaurant,” Anthony said. “The others either died during the acts, or committed suicide afterward.”
“But,” Ming said, “given the similarity in incidents, especially the compulsion to commit suicide, I’d say we’re loo
king at a planned series of events.”
“Agreed.” Anthony’s distinctive mental voice. “Henry, what’s the possibility it could be Pure Psy?”
“I’ve heard nothing from them on any such plan,” the other Councilor replied. “And what would be the point? Their aim is to ensure Silence doesn’t fall. These incidents are throwing the Protocol into question.”
“On the contrary.” Shoshanna entered the conversation. “I’m beginning to hear whispers in the Net that say the incidents are a result of the breakdown of Silence.”
“Surely that’s to our advantage?” Tatiana, the second-youngest member of the Council and the most unknown.
Kaleb had spent considerable time and effort trying to track down Tatiana’s history, but the other Councilor was smart. She’d covered her tracks from the beginning. Everyone knew she’d killed the Councilor whose place she’d taken, but she’d done it with such calculated coldness that no one would ever be able to prove anything. Kaleb didn’t care about proving the charge. What mattered was knowing her weaknesses. Currently, she had none.
“No,” he said now. “It may seem that way, but this individual is acting outside Council authority. He’s challenging our control of the Net.”
“Kaleb is right,” Nikita said, backing him as per their agreement. That agreement was fluid, but for the time being, their aims coincided.
“We can, however,” Tatiana pointed out, “take the idea and utilize it on a much larger scale.”
“That’s an option,” Ming said, “but I’d vote against it.”
“Your reasoning?” Shoshanna.
“Such open degradation may cause the populace to cling to Silence, but it will also have a flow-on effect. The more violence, the more ripples in the Net.”
“A continuous feedback loop,” Kaleb said, seeing the truth of it. The PsyNet was a closed system—what went in didn’t dissipate except into the Net itself. The more violence done by Psy, the more the Net would echo with violence. “Using such methods to maintain Silence will, in the end, fragment the pillars of it even further. It’s already happening—we’ve had a fifteen percent rise in acts of interpersonal violence in the last week alone.”