Still, she held back—didn’t rush to help, or put a reassuring hand on the gleam of his bare shoulder. Not even though the strength of the urge to do so took her well by surprise. If only she’d listened to her instincts, the first time he turned the full force of those honest dusky-hazel eyes on her—instead of the hard voice that needed so badly to clear her own stains by hunting others. Maybe they wouldn’t be here right now, pulling a vulnerable Sentinel off the roof.
Maybe that made her the dark one after all.
And still, she held herself back—not trusting herself, and knowing that this moment couldn’t be about what they wanted. He seemed to know it, too; he pulled himself together, long legs not quite steady, shoulders flexing as he pushed up, making it just about as far as the railing. His shields flickered into place, stabilizing as he brushed himself off. He looked mildly surprised to encounter the shorts—they must have been for her sake after all. Just in case.
Some bold, wry little part of her wanted to tell him he needn’t have bothered, but she tucked that comment away, along with one betting he’d gone commando under those worn old shorts. “You good?” she asked him, not bothering to hide her scrutiny. “That was a hell of a wallop.”
“I can’t believe—” He looked up on the roof, then away over the dark woods. “Damned embarrassing.”
“We’ve got to track it.” She kept her voice low—let the intensity of it speak for her. “Nick says…brevis thinks it could blow.”
“Blow? What’s that supposed to mean? The volcano’s dormant, has been for—” He stopped, frowning at her as he realized what she really meant. “God, no. The balance is that tipped?”
She liked that he didn’t question it, didn’t protest that he’d have felt it. “Brevis thinks so. You’re probably too close to see it—drowning in it more likely.” Her anger came through, contempt for those who had done this thing. “Gausto just wants to get his greedy hands on whatever power he can have. He doesn’t care about the consequences. We’ve got to stop them.” She threaded her fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her face. “I don’t suppose there’s any way you can follow this back to the source? Then we can track them down from both the corrupted power and their trace.”
“Not when we both need backup,” he pointed out. But he lifted his head to give her a sharp look. “Am I missing something? Because it suddenly sounds to me as though we’re a we. As though maybe we can just get down to business and bust the bad guys.”
She blushed, wishing she was sure the darkness would hide it from his vision. “I wouldn’t say that brevis is convinced.”
As if he’d let her get away with that. “And you?” he asked, taking a step away from the rail, looking suddenly not unsteady at all.
Lyn held her ground. She felt short; she had to look up to meet his gaze, but she held her ground. “I don’t know any longer,” she said, and then admitted, “It’s not feeling right.”
Wasn’t it just like him to break out into a big grin. No hidden dark corners to Joe Ryan.
And that was just the point.
She took a step toward him, caught herself—covered her face. Not to hide a blush, oh no. Not much point in that anymore. But at the confusion within, the startling nature of that single step and what it told her about herself.
“Hey,” he said, surprising her again—with the gentleness behind that one word. The understanding. And his voice was close, and she looked up to find him right there, and not nearly enough distance between them.
Not nearly enough.
He looked down at her with eyes so deeply in shadow she couldn’t quite believe she saw that gleam of intensity. “You know I’m going to kiss you, right?”
She couldn’t help but bristle a little. “You going to ask first?”
A definite smile at the corners of his mouth there. “I’m thinking not. I’m thinking I’ll face the consequences.” But he didn’t, not quite. He bent his head and he watched her, the smile lingering, the intent clear…savoring the moment, she thought. Or giving her that chance to step away.
“Oh, hell,” she said, and drew his head down. She pulled him in for a fierce kiss, one that took him by surprise at first, but soon enough that big hand spanned the small of her back, feeling as though it belonged and arcing her backward while she found that tawny hair, smoothed the black tracings. She breathed in the wild musky scent of him, cougar-on-the-roof; she let her ocelot come out to play with a nip and a butt of her cheek against his, but only long enough to gasp in breath before taking him on again.
His chest rumbled; his hand tightened against her back while the other cupped her nape, so very careful, so very possessive. He nipped and nibbled and played with her mouth, making her ache to feel his lips everywhere, anywhere—and she gasped a faint sound of dismay when he broke away, setting his chin at her forehead and gulping for air while she listened to the wild pounding in rhythm with the visible galloping beat at his throat. Her hands had drifted down his back to rest on the curve of his butt, giving her reason to know exactly how tensely he held himself.
Yeah, she was pretty sure he’d gone commando under those shorts.
“Consequences,” he said, his breath still coming fast to stir her hair. “Oh, yeah, consequences are hell.”
Consequences. “I can’t be kissing you. I can’t be—what was I even thinking—”
She stepped away. She felt cold and bereft, but she stepped away. Even if she’d crossed a line where she felt the circumstantial evidence against him didn’t stand up against reality, she had to maintain that distance. For both their sakes. What kind of idiot didn’t know better than to muddy that situation with—
With what she really wanted from him.
She took a deep breath. “I need to think.”
“Always a mistake,” he said, even as he let her go. If the expression rueful had been looking for a poster child, it had found it in Joe Ryan.
Lyn winced. “I’m sorry—”
“Oh, hell no,” he interrupted, raising his head to a tilt of challenge. “Sorry is ‘oops, I spilled your drink.’ Or ‘oh wow, I just dinged your bumper.’ Sorry is not what just happened here.”
She smiled. “You have a way with words now and then.”
“I choose my moments,” he said, attempting great dignity, there in the dark and clothed only in those shorts—and obvious regret. “But I mean it. You may not want to do that again—I do, by the way—but don’t you dare go all sorry on me. The things it would do to my ego alone.”
But he faltered, and he frowned, and he stared off into the vague night. Lyn scrambled to sort out her inner senses, hunting the trace that came with the corrupted power waves, the trace that reflected so much of the man standing right before her. “Shields?” she asked him, reaching to check for that, too, and relieved to find that he’d kept himself protected in spite of…
Well. Distraction.
Relief was short-lived. He looked at her, and something changed in his expression. Something hardened. “You want to know the root of it all? You want to end this—to end any question of my allegiance?”
“Ryan…” she said, and instilled a warning into her voice as the power trickled in, ramping up to a level even she could discern. “You can’t mean to—not tonight. You’re tired. We’re both tired. And after what just happened—”
“I am tired,” he agreed. “I’m tired of being under the microscope. I’m tired of being judged guilty by Sentinels when human law didn’t have nearly enough to hold me, and now of having that false stain follow me to my new home. If I’ve made mistakes, I’ve paid hell for them. And I’m done with that.”
Chapter 13
A larm stiffened her spine; Lyn’s hand’s clenched into helpless fists at her sides. “No,” she said—she pleaded, astonished to hear that note in her own voice. “No! I’ve got Nick questioning the communications you didn’t receive, I’ve got investigators all coming up clean with your finances and your activities—I’ve seen nothing here
myself—”
“Ah,” he said, his voice gone deadly soft. “Except for my trace, tied directly to the corrupted power flows.”
“But not to your advantage!” she blurted.
“Haven’t you said that I simply got in over my head? Do you think others won’t conclude the same?” He closed the distance between them again, with the sliding-glass doors of his bedroom at her back and the house curving around on either side. She had to close her eyes, to give in to a sudden deep snatch of breath, a subtle tremor…knowing he was right. His touch brushed over her disarrayed hair, lightly smoothing it. Once, twice. His voice low, he said, “I’ve had enough.”
Gripped by sudden fear, she snatched his wrist before he could retreat. “No!”
And knew it was too late. Knew by the brush of his falling shields—knew by the slight lift and tilt of his head, the sudden vague focus of his eyes. For a moment, she couldn’t help but ride the wonder of it—knowing that even now the power flowed through him and that he found and followed it upstream, and that if it had been any normal power surge, he would have done so with the fierce wild freedom of inner flight.
But this was no normal surge, and she saw it in his face first—a tension, a tightening of his jaw. The play of muscle there, and along his neck and shoulder. The twitch at the corner of his mouth, the sudden stiffening of his entire body. His breathing turned abruptly harsh, his nostrils flaring with inner effort. Sweat gathered at his temple in spite of the chill air, darkening tawny hair where it blended into black. “Ryan,” she said, her low voice loud in the quiet night. “Ryan, that’s enough now.”
He jerked as though someone had punched him; his torso rippled with it. There went his eyes, rolling back in his head—there went his knees, slowly giving way so Lyn ended up down there beside him, still holding his wrist. “Ryan,” she said, and fear infused the urgency in her voice, “I mean it. Come back, Ryan. Come back…” and she finished the thought with something of wonder in her voice “…to me.”
But he didn’t. He spasmed, and suddenly she couldn’t keep him upright any longer; he fell back against the deck railing, his body arcing, every muscle clenched as he tore free of her grip. A gritty noise forced its way between his teeth—nothing human about it, that noise.
“God, Joe,” she murmured, frustration burning in her eyes, “what have you done?”
He twisted, muscles rippling—electric-blue light glinting where it shouldn’t, ragged flickers of impending change, energy building without discharging. He cried out, arching to avoid the agony of it and by then Lyn had had enough.
Because she could stop this.
She could have stopped it before it started, had she had the courage. Because she knew, now, if she opened her shields to him again, if she drank of his trace and immersed herself in that deep beguiling texture, conflict of interest wouldn’t matter and common sense wouldn’t matter and this isn’t a good idea wouldn’t even register. So she’d selfishly waited, and now here he was contorted, battling waves of power that scoured through his body and still, when she knelt astride him, clamping her hands on his shoulders, he tried to push her away. He muttered something that through the gasps sounded very much like, “Almost—”
It must have left him vulnerable, for he instantly cried out, his body tightening so acutely as to lift her off the ground, the back of his head thumping against wood…Blood trickled from his nose, from his mouth, even from his ears.
Lyn closed her eyes against tears. She centered. She found that small, quiet space within, and she breathed it large. She expanded it, silently humming the note, the feeling that created her place of safety and calm. And then she finalized it—one last minuscule hesitation and then the last plunge as she breathed in his trace, taking that, too, into herself, and gasping at the incongruous pleasure of it.
Beneath her, he stilled. A residual tremor worked its way through his body.
Nothing else.
“Ryan?” she whispered. She bent over him, her body a wash of foreboding; her hand shook as she wiped the blood from beneath his nose, the corner of his mouth. There, her fingers hesitated; what started as a simple gesture of caring turned into a caress, tracing the lines of his face, brushing across the night’s stubble of beard. Her lips joined her fingertips, barely touching his skin…honoring it. She hadn’t intended it…she hadn’t thought about it. But then, she realized distantly that she was no longer truly thinking at all, merely reacting to what was between them.
If she hadn’t been too late. Because though his breathing eased from panting to merely harsh, though his tremors subsided, she saw no sign of awareness, no reaction to the shielding, which had previously brought him to instant attention.
“Ryan,” she breathed. “Come back now.” She took his head between her hands, let her lips graze his. Kissed him lightly, tasting his blood; she kissed that strong stubbled jaw, breathed on the tender spot just below his ear…nuzzled his neck.
His breath caught.
She smiled against his neck, gave it a leisurely lick, and pulled back just enough to see he’d opened his eyes. But not with true understanding behind them—dazed, he was, and uncertain, with some part of him still lost. His groan was heartfelt and spoke of both his pain and his response to her.
“Ryan,” she said. “Come back. Come back to your deck, outside your house. It’s just the two of us here. We’re shielded…we’re safe. Can you feel it?” She lowered her mouth over his, barely touching, and whispered to his lips. “Can you feel us?”
Just like that, he came alive. He clamped his hands on her arms, too tightly for comfort; she allowed it. He met her whispered words, turned the contact into a hungry kiss—a wild kiss, hard and demanding and mindless. His hands left her arms, found her hips—effortlessly lifted her into position over his own, as if clothing was no barrier at all.
She tumbled away from him then, at the wildness in his eyes and the missing spark of that final connection—at the sudden realization that he wasn’t quite back yet, that she’d created something so strong between them that it had brought him back without truly restoring him.
Maybe I was too late after all. Maybe there’s nothing left but this—
“No, dammit,” she breathed, eyes narrowing as he rose to one knee, a hand to his head. She reached for his trace again; she surrounded it. His groan echoed the ripple of sensation that fluttered through her body, so intense that she almost lost herself to it. “Whoa,” she said, startling herself with the husky nature of her own voice. And Ryan tipped his head back, flipping the hair from his eyes to pin her with a gaze instantly mesmerizing and terrifying, and she knew then…
That was the line she would have to walk. The power she would have to ride. Bring him along without letting him tip over into mindless, brutal reaction. Bring him along until the Joe Ryan she knew could find the safety she’d made for him here.
She stood on shaky legs. She searched his expression for the honesty that had won her over, for the un-abashed passion he had for his life here, his love of the mountain…even his reaction to her. It had been right there in his eyes from the start.
But not now.
Not yet.
She drew him up, directly into her embrace. But this time she controlled the intensity of it—she kissed him and backed off; she stood on her toes to nibble his skin and when his hands grew too tight at her back, on her waist, she drew back—manipulating the shields as well as their bodies, riding that power until she tingled and gasped and nearly forgot what she was about.
She managed to lead him through the sliding door and into his bedroom, and to push him down on the floor-bound mattress, and never was she so glad for her Sentinel strength, that which allowed her to do all those things with just the right amount of must and beguile, a balance all the way. Once she had him there she came down atop him and deftly pinned his arms at his sides—but she still had her mouth, and her hips, and the subtle manipulation of the shields, expanding and contracting, filling and receding, and
if it left her gasping and trembling, it did the same to him; he surged up against her, a demanding presence.
“Ryan,” she said again, flipping tendrils of hair away from her damp skin, watching his eyes. Kissing him, taking that mobile and well-formed mouth and watching his eyes. Moving against him, watching the unfettered desire in his face, the reactions that told her what took him and when to give him space and—
There. Was that a flicker of something, behind his eyes, as things grew hot and desperate and Lyn’s control flickered, her body tightened? Oh, it had to be—had to be, because she suddenly didn’t know if she could do this, if she had the strength to hold them both, two bodies straining for completion, for each other, growing fevered and driven and wrapped in Sentinel magics.
“Ryan.” And she rammed the shields at him in a way she’d never used them before, hadn’t even thought to use them before. Not so much an enfolding caress, not so much a fulfilling completion…more a hard push. “I know you’re there! You’ve got to be th—”
And there it was in his eyes.
Joe Ryan, honest and passionate and right there—flooding back to mix and mingle with the sweat and the musk of their lovemaking, the tight cords of his neck, the straining lift to his hips. The completion of Joe Ryan, right here beneath her, so she instantly released his hands and laughed out loud with relief, happy even to see his flabbergasted expression. Before he could even ask, she said, “Do you want all your answers now? Or do you want to finish this thing we’re doing?”
“We’re—” he said, and took that instant to assess them. And then he, too, laughed. And a beautiful thing it was to see on his face, with blood still smeared at the corner of his mouth, still drying at his ears and a touch beneath his nose, with his hair still damp from sweat that had come of pain and not their pleasure. “Answers later,” he said. “Much later.”
He hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on.
Okay. A lie, boy-o. Joe knew exactly what was going on. He knew he’d gone after the root of the power; he knew he now lay on his back, recently released from the deceptively strong grip of one Lyn Maines, she who now rode his hips with far too many clothes on. He knew his body ached and his head felt strangely wrung out, that dried blood crusted at his mouth and ears and nose and, man, he didn’t even want to think about the damage he’d caused himself.
Sentinels: Lion Heart Page 12
