Shield of Winter (Nalini Singh) (33 page)

Sienna didn’t flinch. Closing her eyes instead, she leaned back into his hold. “Remember that night we danced in the forest?”

He growled. “You mean the night you decided to cause a riot in that damn club?” She’d been dancing on top of the bar when he arrived, dressed in fuck-you boots and jeans that might as well have been painted on, her shirt faithfully hugging every sweet feminine curve.

Rising up on tiptoe, her warm but lightweight winter jacket pressing against his chest, she nipped his chin. “I was just trying to get a certain stubborn wolf’s attention.” She played her fingers through his hair, petting him to calmness. “Talk to me.”

And he did. Because she was his mate, who knew him to the core and who took no bullshit. “Krychek asked me to delay the strike against Ming.”

Sienna narrowed her eyes as the wild wolves who’d run with him decided to prowl to the edge of the outlook. “Since we know he’d be more than happy to see Ming dead, I’m guessing it has to do with the infection Uncle Judd briefed us on?”

“Indirectly. Turns out Ming has the biggest personal military force in the Net.”

“Really? I always assumed Kaleb had more offensive forces.”

So had Hawke. “I guess it doesn’t matter in terms of holding power when he’s so damn strong himself, and when he has the cooperation of the Arrows.” From what Hawke knew of them via Judd, the deadly operatives were so highly trained, each one was equal to a hundred ordinary soldiers.

“Judd,” he said now, “was able to confirm what Krychek told me, that Ming’s actually using his army to maintain calm in Europe.” Though total panic hadn’t yet set in, tensions were apparently rising at a stratospheric rate. “If we execute him, we risk throwing a large part of the continent into anarchy.”

Sienna slid her arms around his waist, her fingers clenching in the back of his T-shirt. “That’s the thing with Ming, you know. He’s a predator, but he’s not evil all the time.” A twist of her lips. “I don’t know if it’s political self-expediency or if he actually feels responsibility for the population on some level, but he’s stepped in like this before—when I was twelve, there was massive flooding in Ireland. Ming sent his troops in to distribute supplies, get the trapped out to safety.”

Hawke figured Sienna was right with her first guess as to the telepath’s motivations—political self-expediency. “Ming’s probably doing this to strengthen his power base in Europe.”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Sienna tucked her hands under his T-shirt and against his skin. “We can’t move. No vengeance or preemptive strike is worth sacrificing a single innocent life, much less hundreds of thousands.”

Hawke wanted to bare his teeth, howl his defiance, but he knew his mate was right.

Rising up on her toes after shifting her hands into his hair to tug him down, she said, “It’s all right, Hawke.” A kiss of words, her lips soft against his. “I’m safe and Ming will keep.”

He tugged her flush against his body and tumbled to his back on the snow with her sprawled over him. The wild wolves immediately flowed to sit around them, their fur brushing against his skin.

“And,” Sienna added after shoving her hair out of her face and nuzzling playfully at him, “Ming isn’t going to have time to come after me if he’s busy in Europe.”

“Yeah, but he’s never going to forget the threat you pose.” Sienna had bested the ex-Councilor in their last confrontation, and arrogance such as Ming’s would never forgive that—even if the other man hadn’t already decided that if he couldn’t control Sienna and her breathtaking psychic ability, then she wouldn’t be permitted to live.

Running her fingers through Hawke’s hair when a snarl erupted from his throat, Sienna said, “We wait and we watch. Ming might not always be evil, but his core is rotten. He’ll revert to it soon enough, and when he does, we’ll be prepared to strike.” There was a battle-ready light in her eyes, this woman who’d survived a monster when she’d been only a child.

He growled in pride, and gripping her nape, hauled her down for a kiss that had her moaning. He nipped and licked and played with her until she pushed at his shoulders, her breathing choppy and her lips plump, wet. “I’m on sentry duty,” she admonished with a mock scowl, before escaping his hold to stand up again. “I can’t have people saying I’m getting special favors because I’m the alpha’s mate.”

Having rolled to his feet when she did, Hawke slid his hand down to the curve of her butt, dipping his head to kiss her throat at the same time. “You can have all sorts of favors.” He coaxed her into another long, deep kiss.

“We wait and we watch,” he said afterward.

Ming LeBon was still marked for execution; only the date had been changed.

Chapter 33

In this chapter, I intend to focus not on the empaths, but on those who are in long-term relationships with them. As noted in the statistical breakdown on page 237, these individuals are from all walks of life. Some are in professional occupations, others in trade or in the arts. Yet my observation of these men and women leads me to state with categorical certainty that they all share a single common trait—that of being highly tactile.Excerpted from
The Mysterious E Designation: Empathic Gifts & Shadows
by Alice Eldridge
THE FRENETIC BUZZ
of Manhattan was strange after the quiet that had been Ivy’s life ever since her family’s move to a rural existence in North Dakota. It took a short twenty-eight hours for her mind to reanchor, likely because she hadn’t been in the compound for that long . . . or because the PsyNet knew she needed to be here. The psychic network, as they were all learning, was a living organism, albeit one none of them would ever truly understand.

Her and Vasic’s apartment was on the top floor of a five-story building, the view from the windows of a busy street. Fully furnished in a clean, modern style, it had a large living area, a neat little kitchen, and two bedrooms separated by the living area. Each bedroom had its own en suite facilities.

Jaya and Abbot were in an identical apartment across the corridor, except their view was of a small park utilized by the residents in this section of the city.

The Arrows, of course, had arranged for the rest of the floor to be devoid of tenants. As for the elevator, Vasic and Abbot had rigged it so no one could accidentally or otherwise come to this floor, while the stairwell doors could only be opened via palm print.

Ivy had left her bedroom door open since they’d arrived, but Vasic hadn’t touched her once after that frustrating, wonderful night in the desert when he’d taught her that her neck was an erogenous zone. At first, she’d put it down to the fact he was preoccupied with making sure the security was airtight here—she was accustomed to his protectiveness by now. It didn’t annoy her; it was simply a part of Vasic.

“He can’t shield me from the infection,” she said to Rabbit as they stood in the living area, looking out through the window at the people passing below, scared but unaware of the insanity and death many already carried in their veins, “but he’ll damn well shield me from everything else.”

That protective urge, however, didn’t explain the stiff distance he’d kept between them since the morning following the desert. Ivy might not know anything about intimacy except what she’d explored with Vasic—didn’t
want
to learn with anyone else—but she trusted her instincts. Something was wrong, and her Arrow was holding it inside. He was so good at walling up his emotions behind icy control, but she was an empath.

It was anger she’d sensed in him the last time he’d come close. A ferocious contained storm so dark and black that it had made her stagger . . . but it didn’t shock. She was angry, too.

The man she adored was dying, and there was nothing she could do.

Shoving away the jagged pain of it because she’d made a promise to herself that she wouldn’t waste the time she had with Vasic on regret, she pulled on her ankle boots in preparation for their upcoming walk. The anguish wasn’t so easy to exile, of course, the tight ball of it pulsing in her chest.

“Woof!”

Swallowing past the pain with a determined smile, she rubbed Rabbit’s head. “Come on, we’re going to explore.” But for a short visit to the park behind the building so Rabbit could stretch his legs, she and Jaya had spent the previous day in psychic exploration. Now she needed to test whether she could sense the infected on the streets.

“And”—she scowled—“I think it’s time I reminded my Arrow how to talk.”

Getting to her feet, she rubbed her hands on the jeans she’d paired with her white sweater and a raspberry colored coat she’d brought from home and never worn because she preferred Vasic’s jacket. Unfortunately, it would make her stick out here when she needed to blend in. That didn’t mean she was giving it back to him.

A footstep at her bedroom door. “Are you ready?”

Ivy looked up . . . and her mouth fell open. She’d become used to seeing Vasic in his black combat uniform, hadn’t really considered what he might look like in civilian clothing. The answer was that he looked luscious. “Hot,” that was the word the other races used; he looked hot.

As hot as her skin at the sight of him.

Blue jeans over his combat boots, black T-shirt, a black leather-synth jacket with a high neck that he’d left open, he was . . . Ivy didn’t have the words. She just knew she wanted to pounce on him.

No armor, she realized with a clenching of muscles low in her body. If she stroked her hands over his chest now, she’d be able to feel all that gorgeous, tensile muscle, the soft cotton of the T-shirt little barrier to her exploration. Especially since she could push it up, graze his abdomen with her fingertips.

“Is something wrong?” He stepped closer as Rabbit ran back from where he’d been nosing around in Vasic’s room.

“No.” Smiling, she stroked one hand down his jacket and thought only of hope, of an unknown future full of possible answers to the lethal question of the gauntlet. His death wasn’t set in stone. So she would live with him, play with him, adore him. “You look gorgeous.”

Vasic closed his hand over hers, and it was rain on her parched soul. “Civilian clothing seemed appropriate.”

“Yes, very.” Mouth curving at the fact he was utterly clueless of the impact of his masculine beauty, she dared brush her fingers over his shoulder just to touch him a little more. Her toes curled when he didn’t protest her right to pet him . . . and the same audacious wickedness that had given her the courage to send him an erotic image, whispered another suggestion in her ear.

Heart pounding hard and urgent against her ribs, she rose on tiptoe. “Will you bend a little?”

“Why?”

She bit down on her lower lip, saw his eyes follow the action, the winter frost of his irises shaded by his lashes. It twisted her stomach into knots, the confetti and the butterflies trapped inside. “Because I asked.”

A slight hesitation that almost made her want to smile, except that her blood was a surging roar in her ears, her skin prickling with a sensation she couldn’t name. Then he dipped his head just enough that she could reach his mouth. Not giving herself time to lose her nerve, she curved her free hand over the warm strength of his nape and brushed her lips once, twice over his.

She didn’t know how to kiss, had never before done it, but she’d seen humans and changelings kissing, had convinced herself it couldn’t be too hard. It was . . . because this was Vasic, who made her neurons stop working and her body hunger. Going down flat on her feet after that slight contact that shot lightning through her body, her chest heaving, she waited, unable to meet his gaze.

When he didn’t move, didn’t speak, she lost her nerve at last, went to turn away.

Unyielding male fingers manacled her wrist. “Ivy, look at me.”

His voice curled around her like a stroke. Taking a quick breath, she obeyed the order and felt her spirits dive. His face was drawn, his expression stark. “I did it wrong, didn’t I?”

“I need to tell you something.” He held her in place when she would’ve pulled away. “I was planning to lie to you, but I can’t. Not when—”

Ivy felt her blood run cold as he cut himself off, suddenly realizing this had nothing to do with her bad kissing technique. “The gauntlet. It’s worse.”

Vasic didn’t draw out the agonizing suspense. “Yes. Eight weeks, maybe less.”

A keening cry broke from her lips. Shaking and still making that horrible sound she couldn’t stop, she collapsed against his chest. His arms locked around her, one big hand cupping the back of her head. “Every Arrow in the squad is searching the Net for answers alongside me.” His breath hot against her ear as she sobbed so hard, it felt as if her body were shattering like glass hit from within. “I am not giving up, not this time.”

Somehow, she heard him through her anguish, heard what he was trying to tell her. Her Arrow who’d once placed no value on his life now understood that it had worth. It only made her sob harder. Vasic held her throughout, strong and warm and so breathtakingly alive that she couldn’t imagine him any other way.

“Please, Ivy.” He rubbed his cheek against her temple. “You are causing Rabbit distress.”

Her breath hiccupped.

“And me.” It was a rough murmur. “Don’t cry.”

His words splintered her already broken heart. She sucked in air, tried to temper her breathing. It took time, but eventually she could speak without her words fracturing, though her voice was hoarse. “Tell me the details.”