Branded by Fire p-6

by Nalini Singh

  “The timing is certainly fortuitous.” Nikita.

  Kaleb waited for Henry to speak. He did. And confirmed all of Kaleb’s suspicions about the identity of the shadowy puppet master.

  “It may be,” the other Councilor said, “that the aim of the events has been realized. We are now, after all, offering voluntary reconditioning. It’s a step in the right direction—toward perfect Silence.”

  The dinner passed without bloodshed. Mercy wasn’t quite sure how, but she had a feeling her mother had a great deal to do with it. Which was why she left Lia to ride herd on Riley, Bas, Grey, and Sage while she went into the kitchen to help her father put on the tea and coffee.

  “Sit,” she was told the instant she entered.

  Having guessed this was coming, she pulled herself up onto the counter and watched him move about. Michael Smith was a big, strong man. A man a woman could rely on.

  “So,” he said, “that’s the best you could do for a mate?”

  Mercy snarled before she could stop herself. And an instant later, knew she’d been had. “Dad!”

  “Aw, don’t be like that, baby girl.” Ruffling her hair, he tapped her cheek, a smile curving over his lips. “I suppose I should’ve known you’d never do anything the easy way.”

  She made a face at him and opened the cookie jar to take out one of the biscotti her mom always kept in there. Bas loved the things. The rest of them had picked up his addiction. Nibbling on the treat, she said, “So?”

  “So what?” He raised one dark red eyebrow.

  “Do you like him?” It mattered, his opinion, her mother’s. Not that it would make her give up Riley, but she was a pack animal, and inside the walls of this house, within this family, Michael and Lia were the alpha couple. They always would be, even if Lucas and Sascha came over for dinner.

  Michael glanced at her with quiet eyes. “He looks at you right.”

  “Right?”

  “Hmm.” A teasing smile. It was obvious where Grey had inherited his wicked sense of humor. “Eat your biscotti.”

  Knowing she’d get nothing more out of him, but her heart lighter at the confirmation that Riley would be welcomed into the family, she did as ordered.

  * * *

  Riley stared across at Mercy’s brothers, very aware that only the small-boned woman on his left was keeping them from trying to play tic-tac-toe with his bloody bones.

  “Grey,” Lia said, putting more dessert onto Riley’s plate, “why don’t you play the sax for us?”

  Grey looked like he’d been asked to strip naked and do a lap dance. “Only if you make Riley sing.”

  A snicker went around the table. Lia scowled and it immediately quieted. All at once, Riley could see Mercy doing the same at their own dinner table. Their children would likely be hellions, but his mate would keep them in line, no question about it. His mate. His heart clenched.

  I won’t be the same. I’ll be less.

  How could he do that to her? And yet, how could he possibly let her go?

  “Riley.” Fingertips on his arm. “I suppose you can’t sing a note?”

  He smiled. “Actually, I can.”

  Grey looked crushed. But it was Bastien who spoke next. “But can you take care of my sister?”

  “Your sister can take care of herself.” No matter how much he wanted to do the job for her. The wolf was alternately proud of her strength and frustrated by it. Perhaps it would be that way their entire life. Or, perhaps, they’d find a middle ground. “But I’d walk through fire for her.”

  Lia squeezed his forearm, and when he looked down, he saw a blazing inner strength that told him where Mercy had gotten her grit. Reaching up, she pecked him on the cheek. “You’ll do, Riley.”

  CHAPTER 47

  Things were in an uproar in Venice. The chairman made sure to tell the other members of the board to get the hell out of Dodge and keep their heads down. He liked control, but he was no traitor. As he made his own escape, ready to go under the knife and assume an identity he’d set up years ago, he considered the events of the past twenty-four hours.

  Some would consider the entire thing a failure. He considered it a first strike. The Psy would never again underestimate the Human Alliance. As a bonus, if the Council stuck to its normal mode of operations, Alliance people would soon begin to die. And the chairman’s point would be made without him having to say a word—in the end, the Psy were killers, monsters, and they would crush anyone who dared rise against them.

  As for the changelings, the chairman truly had no disagreement with them, but they couldn’t be allowed to keep getting in the Alliance’s way. Tonight they’d pay the price for their interference—let’s see how they liked being helpless for a change.

  Raising his hand almost compulsively, he touched the chip at the top of his spine, currently covered by the stiff collar of his suit jacket. It was a modified version of the chips worn by the soldiers. Too bad Bowen and his team had had the beta versions—unlike the men who’d gone after Councilor Krychek. The chairman felt sadness, but he was resolved. This was a war. And those men had died in battle. They were heroes.

  CHAPTER 48

  Riley knew Mercy was up to something, but couldn’t figure out what. As he drove her home, he tried to think like a cat. His cat. It was close to impossible. She never did anything predictable.

  “Do you have to return to the den tonight?”

  He shook his head, his blood heating. “No. I planned to talk my way into your bed.”

  “Talk?”

  “Maybe push.”

  Laughing, she fell silent again. He decided to let her be, and by the time he brought the car to a stop near her place, he thought she might be close to asleep. “Kitty cat?” He brushed his fingers down her cheek, needing to touch her, to reassure the wolf she was still there, that she hadn’t chosen the ties of Pack over those of mating.

  “Come on, wolf,” she said, sounding not the least bit drowsy, “I’ve got something to show you.”

  Curious, he got out of the car and walked alongside her as she took him deep into the night-dark of the forest she called home. It was peaceful, and perhaps, if his senses had been human, quiet. But he could hear the scurrying of forest creatures as they went about their business, the whistle of the wind through the treetops, the sound of his mate’s unbound hair sliding against her back.

  Reaching out, he ran a hand over that shimmering fire, enthralled all over again. “Where are you taking me?” Not that it mattered. His need to simply be with her was so strong, he’d walk through the forest forever if that was what she wanted.

  “You’ll see.” Smiling, she picked up the pace.

  Fifteen minutes later, they emerged into a glade screened by the mist of a waterfall he knew would shimmer with rainbows in sunlight. But the moon ruled the night, and its rays reflected off the water to cast a silvery glow over the lush vegetation. Things glittered to his night vision, fascinating and wild, even as ultrafine droplets whispered over his skin.

  Mercy walked behind him as he stood soaking in the beauty. Not saying a word, she wrapped her arms around his waist, her cheek pressed to him. He realized then that she’d shown him a secret place, given him a present wrapped in the intrinsically generous nature of her spirit. His heart tightened to the point of pain, and then the pain spread out in a wave of indescribable warmth.

  Closing his hand over hers, he said, “Thank you.”

  She nipped at him, but it was playful. Her purr was something else altogether. Fingers dancing up his shirt, she tugged at the buttons. “Off.”

  He was more than happy to oblige. She peeled it off from behind and dropped it to the ground, then said, “Everything else.”

  Smiling at the command, he decided he had nothing to lose by obeying. And everything to gain. She didn’t change position even when he was naked, his skin gleaming in the moonlight.

  Fingers running down his spine, skating lower, then back up. This time, she spread her hands and stroked, petted, ca
ressed until he felt a light sweat break out over his body. As he waited, held in place by her pleasure, she pressed a kiss to the part of his back closest to her. “I like the way you’re built, Riley. All hard and solid and bitable.”

  Every dominant instinct he had urged him to take control. But something else, another set of instincts, pulled him back. If his mate wanted to tease him to insanity, that was her right. And, difficult as it was to restrain his wolf, he liked this, liked knowing his mate found him attractive.

  Teeth grazing over his back. “Beautiful.”

  “Come here.” A husky request.

  “Not yet.” But she stroked her hands up his body and pressed herself to him. She was still completely dressed.

  “I want skin.”

  Hands gliding over his arms, testing his muscles. “And I want to pet you.”

  The wolf was a master negotiator. “You can do it as much as you want if you take off your clothes.”

  Soft feminine laughter. “It’ll torture you.”

  “I like being tortured by you.” Damn if it wasn’t the truth. “Mercy, kitty cat.”

  Claws digging into his skin. “I’m still not sure I like that nickname.”

  “Tough.” When dancing with a leopard female, the trick, he’d realized, was to give a little, but never too much. “You’ll get used to it.”

  Those claws didn’t release. “Or maybe I’ll peel the skin from your bones.”

  Playing, he thought in wonder, his mate was playing with him. “I didn’t realize you liked to talk dirty in bed.”

  She laughed then and the claws were retracted, his unbroken flesh kissed over by soft feminine lips, flicked by a tongue he wanted to feel on every part of his body. God, when she’d gone down on him . . . his head had about exploded. Now his cock twitched, eager. Shuddering, he felt her draw back, heard the soft susurration of her shedding her clothes . . . but not her boots.

  His entire body turned into one big flame.

  He expected her to press herself up against him again, but she came around to face him instead. Groaning, he raised a hand to cup the lush heaviness of her breast. “You’re the one who’s beauti—” The word ended in a growl as she closed her fingers around his erection and pumped once. “Mercy!” His hands were in her hair, and his mouth on hers before the shout ended.

  She tasted like fire and earth, true and real, strong and unique. On his cock, her hand was a brand, and he realized in the dim depths of his mind that he was being taken in a very feminine way. So when she tore away her lips to run them down his neck—oh, God, the pleasure of it—he didn’t force her back. Instead, he angled his neck so she could close her lips more easily over him . . . so she could close her teeth more easily over him.

  The bite shook him to his toes. Not with pain—he had so many endorphins in his system by now, he doubted he’d feel anything less than a deathblow—but with the heartbreaking pleasure of it. She’d marked him, in a place no one could miss. It was a claiming and it soothed his predator’s soul as nothing else could’ve done.

  Perhaps there would be no easy answer to their mating, no solution that wouldn’t tear their hearts to shreds, but they belonged to each other. Nothing could change that.

  “You taste good, Riley.” A soft purr of sound against his pulse as she laved her tongue over the mark she’d made.

  Shuddering, he decided he’d been good quite long enough. “Mercy.” He tried to pull her hand off his cock.

  She tightened it. “You said I could pet you as long as I liked.”

  “Didn’t say I wouldn’t try to fuck you in the middle of the petting.”

  Her eyes snapped up to meet his. “That’s feline logic. You’re a wolf.”

  “I’m learning from the best.” He couldn’t get her to let go of him, and to be honest, he wasn’t trying very hard. She was a hot glove over his aroused flesh. “I want wetness,” he whispered in her ear, nibbling on the lobe.

  She squeezed his cock in reaction and he almost came. Barely able to stand upright, he swore. “Are you trying to make me a eunuch?”

  A laugh, a flush of air against his skin. Strokes along his cock, slow, sure, possessive. “That’s one thing I’d never do—it’d be a crime against Mercy.” Finally, after one more tortuous caress, she released him, only to start sliding down his body.

  “No.” He halted her, using his superior strength. “It’s my turn.” His turn to lick and suck and taste and adore. Nipping at her mouth when she growled softly, he cajoled her into a prone position on the ground—though of course, he made sure he was on the bottom, with her lying on top of him.

  She kept kissing the mark she’d made, and every time she did, he felt a wave of raw emotion pass through him, a violent mix of tenderness, possession, hunger, and devotion. Desperate to shower that devotion on his mate, he urged her up his body. “Higher,” he said when she straddled his chest.

  Her eyes, night-glow in the darkness, shimmered bright gold. “Are you sure?” And then she stroked her fingers down, through her own curls, and let out a gasp.

  Having lost the power of speech, he just watched as his cat rose up on her knees and showed him slick, feminine fingers sliding through folds his mouth watered to taste. But he couldn’t stop this. It was the most erotic sight he’d ever seen. It was also, he realized in a primitive corner of his brain, an act of trust. Mercy was making no effort to keep an eye out for danger, leaving the task up to him.

  She was, he understood with a twisting in his heart, letting him take care of her in her own way.

  They were learning each other. Finding a middle ground. God, he adored her.

  And then he stopped thinking. A subconscious part of his mind, a part that never really turned off in dominant changeling males, stayed watchful, alert for anything that might harm his mate, while the rest of him simply gloried in the beauty and sensual delight of her. The glide of her fingers through flesh damp with heat, with need, it pushed him one step closer to insanity.

  “Mercy,” he said when he couldn’t take it any longer, not knowing if he was saying her name or asking for leniency. Gripping her waist tight, he pulled her up and took over the task of pleasuring her with his mouth. There was little patience in him tonight, but she seemed perfectly happy with his rough strokes, the grazes of his teeth, the relentless demand of his kiss.

  She came on his tongue the first time, hot and wild. And when he shifted her limp form back down his body, coaxing her into sitting up enough to take him inside, she was a scalding silken glove, one made for him alone. He didn’t last long.

  The last thing he remembered was his cat licking over the mark she’d made.

  CHAPTER 49

  The Ghost preferred to meet his fellow rebels in person so he could gauge their voices, their body language. He trusted no one. But Judd Lauren and Xavier Perez had been with him long enough that he didn’t expect them to betray him. That in itself was a concession he’d never thought he’d make.

  Looking down at the untraceable cell phone in his hand, he considered which one of them to call. Xavier was human, Judd a Psy defector. Xavier had lived with emotion his whole life. Judd had only just begun.

  Perhaps this time, the man who’d known Silence, and now knew something else, would be the better choice. Coding in the number as he stood in a desolate location no one would ever trace to his real identity, he called Judd.

  The other man picked up after five rings. He had to have been asleep but his voice was clear when he said, “Didn’t expect to hear from you today. Guessing the Net’s in an uproar.”

  The Ghost thought about his next words. “To what are you referring?”

  “Still don’t trust me?” There was no rancor in the comment. “Councilors are being targeted for assassination.”

  “It wasn’t limited to Councilors,” he told the other man. “Several high-ranking people in the substructure are dead.”

  “But,” Judd said in a way that reminded the Ghost he’d once been an Arrow, an assassin
, “it’s not the catastrophe it could’ve been. So, what do you need?”

  “The answer to a question.” He laid out the facts dealing with the offer of voluntary rehabilitation. “Do I have any right to stand in the way of those who want to strengthen their conditioning? I’ve never been concerned with destroying Silence itself.” His goals were deeper, older. He wanted to cut out the rot, excise the sickness that threatened to destroy his people all over again . . . while their Council watched, complicit in their deaths. “But the Protocol is a weapon the Council uses to keep the populace in line.”

  Judd took a long time to answer. “There’s a difference between making a free choice, and making a choice because you’re afraid of change. No one knows what the Net will be like with emotion—”

  “We know,” the Ghost said. “Before Silence, our race was on the verge of extinction.” Violence and insanity had run rampant, savaging the PsyNet from within.

  “Yes, exactly—before Silence. The Protocol’s changed us, changed the Net. I’m alive today because of what I learned from the conditioning process. We won’t go back to what we were.”

  The Ghost considered this new avenue of thought, realized Judd was right. There could be no comparison between past and present—the future was a true unknown. “The weak ones won’t survive without Silence.” They’d break under the weight of their gifts.

  “No,” Judd agreed. “Let them go. We can’t make the choice for them—we can only show them that maybe, they can find another way. Emotion is a powerful tool.”

  Long after the conversation was over, the Ghost stood in the desolation of his lonely location and considered Judd’s words. Emotion . . . No, he thought. That was a path he couldn’t take. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

  Because if the Ghost lost control, the Net would truly shatter.

  CHAPTER 50

  Mercy had intended to spend the morning discussing their untenable situation with Riley in the hopes of finding some kind of an “out,” but he got roused from bed three hours before dawn. “What?” she said, barely lifting her lids as he answered his cell phone.