Psy-Changeling [12] Heart of Obsidian

by Nalini Singh

  “It wasn’t enough.” Finally his eyes met hers again. “You were imprisoned and hurt until you had to entomb your mind to survive.” Rage in his every breath, his hands fisting in her hair. “I want to mutilate and torture every person on the planet who in any way supported Santano or Tatiana, break them until they beg and crawl. Then I want to tell them it’ll never end.”

  Sahara dug her fingers into his arms. “You do not do this,” she said, and it was an order. “You do not let that monster destroy the life we are going to have together. You are mine, not his. You have always been mine.”

  The claiming was so absolute, it dared him to fight. Kaleb had no intention of doing so. Shuddering, he crushed her to him. “Yes,” he said, battling the rage because if he gave in to it, he would lose Sahara. “I’m yours. I will always be yours.”

  Her lips on his jaw, on his cheek, her love fierce. “Remember that. Each action, every action you take, it has my name on it.”

  When her mouth touched his, he gripped her jaw to kiss her with a violence he might have worried would terrify her, except that her nails were digging into his nape as she fought to get even closer. Breaking the zip of her sweatshirt, he pushed it off, tearing at the T-shirt to bare her skin. Her bra met the same fate.

  “Kaleb, Kaleb, Kaleb.” It was a husky, addicting litany as she kissed him wherever she could reach, her breasts rubbing against his chest, uncaring of the sweat and the blood that marked his body. “I want you. I want you so much.”

  He tore the rest of her clothing to shreds using his telekinesis. His own didn’t last much longer. Taking her to the polished wood of the terrace, he flipped them so he was the one on the bottom. She rose on him, a goddess anointed by the rain that had begun to fall in a hushed whisper, the hair that had cascaded over his hands when he pulled off the elastic band cool, sensual silk. Hands braced on his chest, the charms on her bracelet brushing his skin, she rose over him, her breasts slick with the rain that beaded on her nipples.

  “I might,” she whispered, “need a little help.” A shy, sultry smile that invited him to play with her. “This may be one of the more advanced techniques.”

  Gripping his stone-hard flesh with one hand, he guided her onto him, the scalding heat of her making his back bow, the rain seeming to turn to steam when it hit his skin. Sahara made an intensely feminine sound of pleasure as she took him to the hilt, the curves of her body soft against him, her breathing choppy. When he stroked his hands up over her thighs to cup her buttocks, his fingers digging into silken wet flesh, she shivered and began to draw herself up.

  Realizing her knees were pushing against the wood of the terrace, he gave her a telekinetic cushion, wanting her here, under the stormy sky. His lover didn’t stop what she was doing, the sweet, tight slide of her body on his an agony to which he willingly surrendered . . . for two strokes. Gripping her waist, he held her down, grinding his body against her delicate flesh until she clenched convulsively around the part of him she held possessively inside, her pleasure molten honey.

  “Kaleb.”

  He flipped her onto her back on that breathless moan, making sure she never touched the wood. Her legs locked around his hips, her arms around his neck, her passion as wild as the rain that had turned hard, pounding against his back. Taking her mouth, tasting her with his tongue, he broke the kiss to thrust in and out of her in a driving rhythm, the water dripping off his lashes to hit her cheeks.

  “Everything, Kaleb,” she gasped, her nails the sweetest pain on his shoulders, “give me everything.”

  “You have it.” All his secrets, anything she wanted. Even his scarred, maimed heart. “I love you.”

  Eyes of deep, deep blue locking with his, a single tear rolling down her face. “I know,” Sahara said, her heart breaking that he’d said the words for her. Hurt and brutalized beyond belief, shown not even an ounce of love until they met, it wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d believed himself incapable of the emotion.

  She knew he was more than capable of it, felt it in his every breath, his every touch, his every promise. That he knew he had the capacity for it . . . it was everything. “Tell me again.”

  Both arms under her body, his hands curved over her shoulders as he held her in place for deep, hard thrusts that made her intimate muscles clench in sheer pleasure, he paused, his hair dark against his forehead, his eyes holding the colors of twilight, and his body a sculpture of male beauty. “I love you. I will always love you.”

  Lightning, jagged and dangerous and beautiful, flashed overhead as he began to move again, his mouth seeking hers to lock them together. Around them, the rain was a thundering cocoon, theirs a private world. Kiss after kiss, stroke after stroke, they couldn’t get enough, would never get enough.

  He was so strong and hot and out of control, one of his hands now at her throat in a caress that her body instantly associated with erotic possession. She felt the orgasm approaching, tried to fight it off because she wanted more of this, didn’t want it to end, but it was too late, the pleasure tearing through them both in a wave of sensation as wild as the lightning that split the skies.

  Only this time, it wasn’t limited to their bodies. Their minds collided on the psychic plane, their thoughts crashing together in a splintering of astonishing color that made her cry tears that became rain as she saw all the pieces of him. “I love you, Kaleb.”

  * * *

  KALEB’S hand was tangled up in the wet heaviness of Sahara’s hair as she lay half on, half off his chest, their legs intertwined and every inch of skin slick with rain. Neither one of them wanted to go inside, in spite of the continuing downpour, but he’d put a heavy telekinetic shield over them to protect Sahara from what was in fact icy cold water.

  Inside the shield, the temperature was considerably higher, Kaleb’s ability to create and manipulate kinetic energy being used in a way most trainers would consider wasteful. It wasn’t. Not if it kept Sahara warm.

  “What was that?” she asked, chest rising and falling as her lungs struggled to drag in air. “At the end?”

  “Our minds connected.” It was an experience he’d never forget, Sahara’s love and spirit an intensity of light deep inside him, a candle flame that lit up the void. Damaged and twisted and scarred beyond all hope of repair, the part of him that was the void touched the candle flame in wonder, astonished that it was for him.

  For him. For Kaleb.

  This was purity, this painfully beautiful thing Sahara felt for him, and it was a truth Pure Psy would never comprehend. But—“I’m sorry for what you must’ve seen.”

  “I saw wild, dangerous beauty. I saw devotion. I saw you.” Lifting her head off his chest, she fisted one hand against her heart. “I can feel you deep inside, a midnight star so impossibly strong and loving and mine.” Her voice trembled. “I’m so glad you’re mine. I won’t ever let you go.”

  This time, it was Kaleb who said, “I know,” devastated at being so wanted. “You are just a little possessive.”

  Sahara laughed, her eyes wet as, inside him, the candle flame continued to burn, the light a warm, enduring gold. But there was more. On the psychic plane outside their minds, a fine thread of midnight, distinguishable from the black of the Net only by the glittering obsidian facets of it, had woven intimately with one of golden light, the tie going from his mind to Sahara’s. “We’ve bonded.” Look.

  Sahara’s eyes turned inward, her smile luminous. “Kaleb.” Laughing in open delight, she pressed kisses along his jaw, halting only when the fingers of one of her hands brushed the scar on his forearm. “Are you determined to erase this?”

  “I won’t risk you.” He telepathed her the reasons why as the rain turned slowly to a misty haze, the connection between their minds so clear it was beyond even his telepathic strength. “And whatever you see in it, I’ll never see the same.” For him, it would always be a reminder of the day he’d lost her.

  “All right.” Shimmering droplets on her eyelashes, stars caught in trans
ition. “But will you replace it with something for me?”

  “Anything.” His body was hers.

  Brushing her fingers over his lips, she said, “You gave me an eagle. I want to give you one, too.” A tender kiss pressed to the scar. “I want us to fly together.”

  “You saw me, all of me,” he said, dragging her up to his mouth. “You know I’m never going to be good.” After seizing control of the Net, he’d do whatever it took to maintain it. No one and nothing was ever again going to imprison either one of them.

  “A good man,” she said, her lips against his, “wouldn’t have survived what you did, wouldn’t have been able to find me. To fight evil, you have to understand the dark. We both do.”

  “You’ll have to be my conscience.” He knew his flaws, and he knew the parts of him that were irrevocably broken. “Mine isn’t going to grow back.”

  Pushing off wet strands of hair from his forehead, Sahara held his gaze. “Have I ever let anything slide? That won’t change.” A slow smile. “I intend to have a thousand fights with you.”

  He thought of a lifetime of having Sahara’s stubborn will in his life and knew that she was his reward for surviving.

  “Kaleb?” When he met her gaze, she touched one of the fine silvery scars on her own body, and his anger ignited anew, rage swirling in his veins. “No,” she whispered with a shake of her head. “You don’t think of him when you see these. You think of me. A fighter, a survivor, your lover.” It was an order . . . and one he realized he would have no hesitation in following, the marks her badges of honor.

  Leaning up, he kissed one on her shoulder as she’d kissed the scar on his arm. “Only you,” he said, the vow a final one. “My fierce, intelligent, lovely Sahara who spit in a monster’s eye.”

  “Kaleb.”

  They were lost in one another in the minutes that followed, touching and caressing and simply being together.

  “Our bond,” he said afterward, “it’ll be visible in the Net if I drop the shield I placed over it.” It had been an instinctive act from his mind, the feral response to protect something indescribably precious. “Twenty-four hours—that’s how long I plan to keep the shield in place.”

  Worry shadowed Sahara’s smile and he knew she understood what he intended to do. “Are the people ready?”

  “Some will never be ready, but it’s time.” The disease rotting the fabric of the Net was growing stronger, more virulent with every passing hour. “The only other option is a slow death.”

  Sahara thought of the dark places Kaleb had shown her, the dead places, and knew he was right. “You need the time to speak to the Arrows, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I have to find out if they’ll fight me or support me when I announce the fall of Silence. I don’t want to execute men and women who are more like me than any others in the Net, but I will if necessary.”

  If the squad fought him, Sahara thought, the resulting conflict would be far more devastating than anything Pure Psy had done. “The Arrows are intelligent; they must see Silence is rotten at the core.”

  “It’s difficult to fight over a century of unyielding tradition.”

  Kaleb’s words had Sahara thinking of the teleporter with the cold gray eyes. Could a man like Vasic exist in a world without Silence? It might be an impossible demand. Her heart hurt for him, for the choices he had never had, and she wished there was an easy answer, some way to give him a path out of the darkness.

  Then the midnight star pulsed inside her, and it was a silent reminder that life wasn’t easy. Sometimes, it demanded heart’s blood and gave back only unbearable pain. Sometimes, it broke you. “When you’re broken,” she whispered to the man who would save the world for her, “you can’t see hope. We must be their hope.”

  Kaleb held her close as she tucked her head under his chin. “You want me to drop the shielding around our bond when I talk to them.”

  “It’ll be a risk, I know. They could immediately turn on us, but, Kaleb, that could’ve been us in another life.” The idea of never meeting Kaleb, never loving him, made her heart thud in a panicked rhythm. “You’re as lethal as any Arrow, but you made it out. Let them see that life isn’t only pain and survival.”

  “Even if they join us, we won’t save all of them.” It was a grim truth.

  “Then,” Sahara said, the fingers of one hand locking tightly with Kaleb’s, “we save the ones we can. Together.”

  “Always.”

  Chapter 46

  ADEN WAS STANDING under a heavy desert moon, the dunes desolate waves of silver and shadow, when Kaleb appeared beside him. He’d realized long ago that, like Vasic, the cardinal could go to people as well as places, but the other man had never before been so confrontational about his ability. He had, Aden thought, been courting the Arrows.

  Clearly, the courtship was over.

  “Vasic is practicing the weapons capability of his gauntlet?” Krychek asked, his eyes on the churned-up sand around Aden’s partner, Vasic having chosen a position midway down the dune that was Aden’s watchtower.

  “Yes,” he said, and refused Vasic’s telepathic offer of assistance at the same time. If Krychek had come with hostile intent, he’d have struck already. “It’s meant to integrate with his base telekinetic strength, but there are glitches.”

  Vasic teleported in and shot a small, personal laser missile at a target they’d set up on another dune a hundred meters away. It not only went haywire, it doubled back toward the teleporter. Not showing any indication of being concerned, Vasic pressed something on the gauntlet and the missile exploded in midair.

  “I’d say the glitches are significant,” was Kaleb’s cool appraisal. “He shouldn’t have been implanted with the device if it’s at this level of development. Its usefulness doesn’t balance the risk.”

  Aden found himself in the unusual position of being caught unprepared. Because Kaleb had just repeated Aden’s own argument when he’d tried to talk Vasic out of volunteering for the risky procedure. “There was no way,” he said after a slight pause, “for the scientists to progress further without implanting it onto a live subject.”

  “Can it be removed?”

  “No, it’s fused too deeply to his body.” Aden watched as Vasic launched another missile. “You didn’t track us down to watch Vasic target practice,” he said as this missile did exactly what it was meant to do, sand exploding in a silver geyser.

  “Why are you here?” Kaleb asked instead of answering the implied question. “There’s nothing you can do to stop an accident.”

  Aden had no intention of answering with the truth. “I’m here to monitor the tests, provide a backup account of the results.”

  Kaleb was quiet for a long time, the two of them watching the arcing blue flare of weapons fire as Vasic tested another setting on the gauntlet. When he spoke, Kaleb again said the unexpected. “You’re here so that if something goes wrong, Vasic doesn’t die alone. He’s so close to the edge, you aren’t certain he won’t engineer a fatal accident.”

  There were very few people in the world who knew Vasic that well. Kaleb Krychek was not one of them, and yet he’d come to the right conclusion. Turning toward the man who was dressed in black combat pants and a black T-shirt, a large thin-skin bandage on the inside of his left forearm and scuffed boots on his feet, Aden said, “What do you want?”

  Kaleb shifted to face him. “To know if I’m going to have to leave you dead on the desert sands.”

  “What makes you so certain you could?”

  The white stars in the cardinal Tk’s eyes gleamed as hard as diamonds. “You could incapacitate or kill me if you had the element of surprise, but in brute strength, I have no equal.”

  “Vasic has a lock on your position.” His partner had taken that action the instant Kaleb first appeared. “He can have a gun to your head in the space between one breath and the next. And I am no medic.” The only reason he told Kaleb that was because he was certain the other man already knew the true nature of h
is abilities.

  Unlike Ming, Kaleb took nothing at face value, especially not a field medic who held the loyalty of the entire squad. “To be complacent in the presence of a cardinal Tk of opaque objectives and fluid allegiance,” Aden added, “would be stupid in the extreme.”

  “That’s why I’d rather not kill you,” was Kaleb’s response. “It’s easy enough to find a trained assassin—an intelligent fighter capable of foresight, and flexible enough to alter his plans given the circumstances, is a far more rare thing.” Shifting on his heel, the cardinal began to walk down the dune. “There’s something your partner needs to see.”

  Aden followed in silence, unable to predict what Kaleb would do next. When the cardinal asked both Aden and Vasic to meet him on the PsyNet, they did so without argument. Once there, the other man said, “I need you to step inside the first layer of my shields.”

  Again, neither one of them hesitated; Krychek’s shields were byzantine, but Aden and Vasic were more than capable of breaking out of this layer without problems. Aden had actually broken into it when the squad had first begun to consider shifting their loyalty to Kaleb—in a strictly limited sense that made it clear the Arrows were no one’s lapdogs.

  Then, he’d seen nothing, the outermost layer of Kaleb’s shielding nothing but a redundancy that acted as an alarm bell in case of incursion. Today, he saw a psychic bond that went from Kaleb’s mind to another one he didn’t recognize, the colors of the bond faceted obsidian and a radiant light gold.

  Force, coercion, manipulation, indications of psychic fraud, he searched for any hint of that in the connection that broke every rule of Silence, and found nothing. It was an organic construct, growing from two minds that had reached out for one another across the void, the light embracing the dark, the dark protective around the light.

  Almost before Aden understood what it was he was seeing, he and Vasic were shoved out by a wave of naked power, shields of impenetrable obsidian slamming down over Kaleb’s mind and that of the unidentified other.