by Nalini Singh
Pressing his lips to the skin of her throat was instinct and need. Such deep need. He wanted to gather in all that she felt for him, wanted to surround himself with it until he wouldn’t ever forget. Until the power stretching his mind couldn’t steal it away.
She arched her neck for him, her claws slicing out to prick him through his T-shirt.
But when he slid his hand under her jacket and tee, fingers splayed against the smooth warmth of the skin of her lower back, she gripped his wrist. “I want Oleg to take a look at you first.” Breath shallow and pulse rapid, her fingers clenching on his wrist. “I need to know for sure that you’re healthy and safe.”
“I am,” Ethan vowed. “Trust me.”
Wolf-gold eyes examined him with a potent intensity. He held his breath, suddenly realizing how much it meant to him that she do that: trust him.
Releasing his wrist in silence, she leaned into him . . . an alpha wolf who trusted him with herself. Chest aching in a way that was a large rock on his rib cage, he said, “Your back?”
“All but healed.” Clawed fingers scraping gently down his jaw. “Do what you will, Ethan. I’m a wolf.” A soft growl. “I won’t break.”
Accepting her at her word because his mate was a wolf, a powerful one, he shifted to take her to the bedding on which he’d been lying, turning them so that the line of his body pressed up against hers as she lay below.
He needed to cover her this way, protect her, even knowing she was lethal and well capable of protecting herself. But the madness inside him was insistent that even alpha wolves needed tenderness when wounded and scared. His Selenka needed the tenderness.
He touched her with reverence, still not quite believing that she was his, that he had this right. But to care for her was his right and his privilege. Ethan would not guarantee the well-being of anyone who got between him and his mate.
When he went to remove her jacket, she lifted up enough that he could tug it off. Her body was sleek and strong under his, her hands possessive as they shaped his shoulders, and her mouth wet and hot. He drank it all in, each kiss, each caress, each instant with her filling a deep, empty well inside him.
He wanted to fall into her, devour her.
When she pushed up his T-shirt, he tore it off over his head and dropped it to the side. She learned him with her hands, her pleasure in his body doing things inside him he couldn’t explain. Ming’s henchmen hadn’t been gentle about the physical punishments they’d meted out.
Selenka brushed her fingers over one of the ridged scars. “I want to kill them.” Soft words, a predator’s growl. “Rip their limbs from their bodies and their heads from their necks.”
“They’re already dead.”
“Good.” She tugged down his head for a kiss tangled and wet and possessive. Her chest rumbled with her wolf’s voice, her fingers clawed against his scalp.
Ethan didn’t fight the primal possession; he fell into it. Into her. Into a woman as wildly alive and vibrant as the summer storm he’d once seen when Ming forced him to commit murder. When he kissed her with voracious hunger, she responded with moans in the back of her throat and the pricking of claws at his nape before she slid her hands over his back.
Claws scraped his skin, but lightly, playfully. His mate was pleased with him, wanted him. “I’m so glad you’re mine, Ethan Night. Strong, stubborn”—a nip of his jaw—“dangerous, beautiful, and tender. I’m keeping you.”
The soul Ethan wasn’t sure he possessed drank in the words, and even recovering from a flameout, the power of her claiming was a punch through his system. Breathless, hungry, needing, he kissed his way over her jaw and to her throat, and when he pushed up her T-shirt, she took it off to drop it beside his.
Loyal got up and wandered off.
A soft laugh from Selenka. “I think we’re shocking your dog.”
“He’ll get used to it.” Because Ethan intended to do this with Selenka as often as possible.
His mate’s bra was black lace with each strap formed of two thin but strong ribbons, with a small bow at the end where it joined the cup. “I—” Pushing up on his arms, he looked down at how her breasts plumped pale against the cup of lace. “This isn’t like your other item of underwear.”
“Like it, do you?” A laugh that held a kind of power he’d never before faced, and he’d been around plenty of powerful Arrow women. “I’m partial to lace and satin at times.” She ran a finger over one breast, drawing his attention to the soft, plump mound.
He pressed down on his hands to put his lips against her delicate skin.
Groaning, she said, “Ethan, you are ridiculously hot when you show off all that muscle.” Her words trembled as she gripped his taut biceps. As if he did to her what she did to him. As if he had sensual power of his own. The warmth inside him grew and took on a tone of . . . satisfaction. Settling more firmly against her, he kissed and licked and stroked her breasts before cupping one and squeezing.
She clamped her thighs around him, her body arching in a sinuous curve as she ran her nails up his back in a caress that had the tiny hairs on his body standing up. Tugging down the lace of her bra cup, he closed his hand over her bare flesh, her nipple a pebbled hardness against his palm. He kept his gaze on her face as he squeezed this time, saw her eyes flutter almost all the way shut—but for the slitted gold gaze that watched him with predatory focus.
Soft lips curved. “Come here, Ethan.”
He could and would deny her nothing.
His reward for surrendering was a kiss slow and languid that melted things in his body that shouldn’t have melted. Even as it did so, he began to feel flickers of awakening power. Soon, he’d be dealing not just with his telekinetic abilities, but with the rogue power that was a thing of chaos and madness.
Wanting as much skin contact as possible before that happened, he stripped off his remaining clothes at furious speed. Selenka smiled, powerful and sensual, when he returned to her and put his hands on the waistband of her pants. She cooperated by lifting her hips off the ground, and he soon had his mate naked but for the lace of her bra.
Lifting her arms, she invited him close.
He went, sinking into her kiss, letting go in a way he wouldn’t be able to do when the power surged. As if sensing his utter capitulation, Selenka flipped them so he lay on his back with her astride him, a powerful alpha wolf who liked the taste of Ethan Night, broken Arrow and devoted mate.
Her hair was a tumble of black, purple, and pink, and where many of his race would’ve seen that as a symbol of a lack of discipline, he saw a woman so confident that she didn’t need the trappings of what passed as control.
“You are so beautiful.” It was wrenched out of him, all his shields down and his heart laid bare. “You own me.”
Smile slow, Selenka reached back and unhooked her bra, sliding it down her arms to drop it on their other discarded clothes. His heart kicked, the reaction visceral and uncontrollable. His hands were on her hips before he was aware of it, and when she leaned forward into him, he felt caged by her powerful femininity—and it was the only cage he’d never wanted to escape.
“Those eyes, the way they look at me . . .” Selenka nipped him on the jaw. “Have a care, zaichik, or I’ll eat you up.”
“Anything you want. Anything you wish.”
Wolf-gold eyes glowed in the semidarkness beneath the forest canopy before her kiss consumed him. He stroked the sweet slope of her back, filled his hands with her breasts, tried to kiss every inch of her. When he got her on her back again and went down her body kiss by kiss, she gripped his hair with one hand but didn’t stop him.
Ethan licked her between the thighs.
Her moan created a haze in his brain, the taste of her a drug. Sinking into position, he kissed her as he would her mouth, the slick heat of her driving him on until his penis felt like stone and his skin was afire. Thighs
quivering, she pulled at his hair until he looked up and began to crawl his way back up her body.
He wasn’t truly thinking at this point, every cell in his body focused on her and her pleasure. The kiss they shared was erotic with the taste of her, and he wanted more. Dropping his head to her throat, he sucked. She growled and changed their positions again, so he was the one on the bottom—with a magnificent woman astride him.
The wet heat of her brushed his erection.
Neck rigid, he gripped her hips and aligned their bodies. “Selenka.”
Wolf-gold eyes watching him, she sank down on his rigid length, enclosing him in scalding softness. His power stirred further to the surface. Gritting his teeth, he thrust up into her, wanting to reach the crescendo before he once more had to spend a massive part of his energy on controlling the rogue power.
Selenka’s claws dug into his skin, her hair falling silkily on his chest as she moved with him. Ethan needed . . . something but didn’t know what, or how to ask for it. Then Selenka kissed him with ferocious affection and that was it, the caress throwing him over the edge of the abyss.
His body blazed with pleasure as his mind blazed to full power, and for a stunning instant that hung in time, he was all he would ever be, without walls or chains or shields.
Chapter 35
Operative Cray has been compromised. If you have ever had any contact with him, erase all data threads that could lead back to you.
—The Architect to the Consortium’s upper-echelon membership
EZRA REACHED OUT gratefully to his new friend, the one who’d knocked on his door while he was at his lowest, then shown him that he wasn’t broken at all. She’d been so kind, had taken his psychic hand and shown him how his mind was growing and becoming more.
Just like her own.
He wasn’t a freak, wasn’t going insane. He was one of a gifted new variant, part of a new people.
His friend had spoken of lightning bolts, but he couldn’t see them. Yet he believed her. Far more powerful and connected than Ezra, she had no reason to lie to him. No, she was a good person, one who’d shown him the truth—including the horrible fact that ordinary Psy were attempting to wipe out their kind.
He’d read the alerts she’d forwarded, seen how “Scarabs” were being pinpointed. Given the fugues he’d experienced, he’d hesitantly suggested that perhaps this Dr. Ndiaye might be able to help. But, shaking her head, she’d told him how those ID’d as Scarabs disappeared after turning themselves in. Their kind was too strong and a threat to those in power—so they were being exterminated.
He didn’t want to believe that of Kaleb Krychek, whose actions had released him from the shackles of Silence, but the truth was unavoidable. He saw it in all its ugliness, especially after his new friend worked on his mind to stabilize it. It was all so clear. As was the fact that she was the only one who cared for their kind, who wanted them to thrive.
So when she called on him to help her fight back against the annihilation of their species, he didn’t even think about resisting.
Chapter 36
I’m so sorry, my heart.
—Varra Durev to Selenka Durev (2059)
SELENKA LAY CURLED up on Ethan, lazy and languid and not in the mood to move. Especially since her mate had his hand on her back and was petting her with small strokes. The tenderness made woman and wolf both smile and wallow in the delight of having a mate who saw her strength but didn’t forget her heart.
“I’m going to have to add a chapter on outdoor recreation to the Arrow skin privileges manual that Abbot passed on to me.”
Selenka laughed and drew circles on his chest. “Can I see it? The manual?”
A pause. “No, it’s a secret. To give us some small advantage against experts.”
Smile even deeper, Selenka said, “Fair enough.” Her mind drifted, her guard low enough that she drifted all the way to the beginning. “I was conceived after a frolic in the forest.”
“Your parents told you this?”
His startled reaction was so Psy that it eased the stab of pain that accompanied the memories. “My mother used to laugh about it with my father, about how he’d lured her out for a picnic and now she had a naughty pup. I guess I had big ears, and filed it away, understood it later.” She drew another shape on the tensile warmth of his skin.
“Will your mother like me?” Ethan asked, an unexpected hesitancy to him.
Selenka considered his question. “Varra likely won’t know what to make of you.” She rubbed her head against him, and he immediately moved his touch to her nape, massaging gently.
Her heart hurt at the care he took with her, and she knew she could trust him with this, too, her greatest hurt. “My mother chose to leave my father and the pack when I was eight.”
Ethan wrapped his other arm around her, her strangely intuitive Arrow mate holding her safe against the fractures of the past.
“My parents had been in a stable relationship for five years before I was born, long enough that she was able to conceive, but with my father getting increasingly bitter over the years . . . well, it poisoned what they once had.”
“Why didn’t she take you?”
The question was a blade thrust between her ribs.
Ethan’s arms tightened. “I hurt you. I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer.”
“No.” She pressed a kiss to his chest. “It only hurts because I asked the same question as a little girl.” Abandonment like that didn’t happen in a pack, even when a relationship ended.
“My mother is human.” Her face lingered in front of Selenka’s mind. “I was already showing indications of powerful dominance and she didn’t think I’d do well outside of a pack. She took care to remain in contact with me—but it was nearly all over the comm. After she left BlackEdge, she chose to return to her home in Tajikistan.”
“Is that where you get the shape of your eyes?”
“Yes. Most people never guess that I’m part Tajik, but the paleness of my skin, the shape of my eyes, it comes from her. Varra was born in the Pamir Mountains, and she carried those mountains in her bones and in her heart. As an adult, I don’t begrudge her leaving Moscow for the place and the people she always thought of as home, but as a child . . . I needed her.”
Ethan’s heart beat strong and steady under her cheek. “Your father would not have been a good guardian.”
“No.” She thought of his bitter rages, his increasing dislike of a child who was outpacing him in power, and still couldn’t understand how a father could be that way toward his own pup. “He didn’t fight to hold on to me when my grandparents stepped in.”
“That was a great hurt.” Such simple words for such a profound understanding.
“Yes,” she said to this man who saw so deep. “I think if one of my parents had fought for me . . .” She exhaled, pressed another kiss to Ethan’s chest.
“I will fight always for you. Until my breath stops, I’ll fight.”
She accepted that to the core, and so she could tell him the rest. “I spent two summers in Tajikistan after I was older and no longer so angry at the world, got to know my mother and meet my half sisters Nodira and Maviya.”
Her lips curved at the thought of the two delightful girls. “Both have visited the Warren and are pestering me for another visit soon.” Selenka loved her sisters, but she couldn’t bring them to Moscow until the threat against the pack was neutralized.
“You feel no resentment toward them?”
“No, my anger was never directed at them.” To her wolf, they were pups to protect. “I also saw what nursing bitterness did to my father and I chose another path.” It hadn’t eased the hurt, but it had shoved it from the forefront to the past where it belonged. “My mother and I, we have a loving but not close relationship.”
Ethan brushed his lips over her hair. “She was missi
ng for too many critical milestones of your life.”
“Yes, and I think even though the human part of me forgives her, the wolf doesn’t understand how she could move so far away from me, to a place I couldn’t go to see her when I needed my mother.
“I accept that she couldn’t raise such a dominant wolf pup outside of a pack, but she could’ve stayed in the pack. She didn’t have to leave the pack just because she left my father.” Selenka had thrown the cold question at her mother when she was twelve, maybe thirteen, and at the height of her anger.
Varra’s lovely face with its soft lines and lush lips had crumpled, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’m not like you, Selenushka. I was never so strong. I needed the comfort of my mountains. I needed the embrace of my own parents, needed to hear my own language.”
“Looking back,” Selenka said, “I can see that she never quite embraced pack life, was always a little distant.” The memory had her sitting up with a frown. “What do you think of pack life?” Such a life would be even more alien to Ethan than it had been to her mother.
“I’m your mate, Selenka. My home is at your side.”
The answer didn’t satisfy her. An alpha’s mate played a strong role in the pack, dependent on his or her personality and skills. Lada Durev was the kind of mate to whom packmates had often gone when they weren’t confident enough to directly approach their alpha. She was also the kind of mate who had comforted packmates in distress.
Ethan was too strong, too deadly, to be in the background. The pack would expect him to step up and be a senior packmate with all the attendant responsibilities.
Would he be able to fulfill that role?
Her mind filled with the image of Ethan handling the intruders, Gregori in full agreement with him, followed it up with one of him with Zhanna in his arms. What the hell was she worrying about? Her mate was doing just fine—and he was doing it his way.