Shield of Winter (Nalini Singh) (51 page)

“I lost control.”

“Liar.” She poked a finger at his side, delighted with him.

“No comment.”

He closed his eyes as she ran her fingers through his hair, his pleasure in the simple touch bone deep. “You going to tell me why those men came for you?” she asked, because much as she wanted to ignore the world and spend the next week naked in bed with him, the world kept shoving itself back into their life.

“They were Ming’s men,” he told her without opening his eyes. “No emblems on their uniforms, but I recognized them.” Lifting his hand, he opened it to show her the pressure injector he must’ve ’ported in. “It’ll need to be tested to be certain, but I recognize the cobalt blue shade of the cartridge. It’s Jax; a very high dosage.”

Fury was an inferno in Ivy’s blood. “Bastard,” she said, as Vasic returned the injector to wherever it was stored. “Why is he still alive?” She might hate violence, but she also understood evil on a visceral level, knew that some people found pleasure only in holding cruel power over others.

Vasic’s answer made too much sense. “He might be a monster, but that monster is holding Europe together right now.”

“What if he comes after you again?” she said, laying her head against his shoulder and nuzzling close so she could draw in the scent of him. “He sent three highly skilled Tks after you—that’s serious.”

Vasic squeezed her nape. “And all three Tks are now in Arrow custody. Ming knows how to do a cost-benefit analysis, and I’ve just tipped the scale to the wrong side by depriving him of three senior men.”

Ivy nodded, made herself believe. This was Vasic’s world, and he understood it far better than she did. “I hate that another man’s lust for power forced you into violence tonight.”

Shifting her onto her back, Vasic caressed his hand down her side. “Before you, I would’ve handled the situation by withdrawing further into the numb state where nothing really impacted me.” A lazy, possessive kiss. “I like working out the tension with a naked Ivy much, much better.”

Her lips curved. She believed him; she was the one who was tense with anger right now. Vasic, by contrast, was lazily relaxed. “I so need a manual.” Her lover—her
lover
—was proving to be lethal in a most delicious way. A woman had to have some weapons of her own.

That got her a kiss, his hand petting her breast. She would’ve melted right into him if she hadn’t felt his gauntlet graze her shoulder. “Wait.” Pushing at the muscled width of his own shoulders, she said, “What time is it? We have to go see Samuel Rain.”

Chapter 51

Should we stop him?No. Repair any glitches when he’s out of visual range but don’t interfere.
Message stream between Haven Maintenance Team and Clara Alvarez
SHOWERED AND CHANGED,
they arrived at Haven two hours after the time they’d told Clara to expect them. Accepting their apologies with a quiet nod, the manager said, “Well, it appears you woke Samuel up at last.”

Ivy caught the glint in the woman’s rich brown eyes. “What did he do? Tell you all you were monkeys attempting to run an asylum?”

Ivy could’ve sworn laughter warmed Clara’s gaze, but the manager’s voice was even as she said, “No, but he rewired the entire complex in the space of eight manic hours. We had a backup team checking his work, but they said he’d done things they didn’t even know were possible, and we’re running at fifty percent increased efficiency when it comes to our power usage.”

“Is he still insisting he’s brain damaged?” Ivy asked.

A nod. “He may well be right—we can’t know if all the systems in his brain are functioning at full capacity. It’s only as he attempts to use them that that will become clear.” She looked at Ivy and Vasic both. “Please don’t get your hopes up. If he senses it, then fails in helping, it could undo all the progress he’s made.”

“We’ll be careful,” Ivy promised, her fingers locked with Vasic’s.

The first thing Samuel Rain did when they found him in the rose garden was to scowl and say, “Where’s the dog?”

Ivy felt her heart clench. Placing one arm around her shoulders, Vasic hugged her close as he answered the engineer. “He was injured and is resting in the care of friends.”

With Jaya and Abbot at the hospital, Vasic had left a peacefully sleeping Rabbit under the watchful eye of the Arrows at Central Command. Had Rabbit been healthy and happy, the idea of those deadly men and women taking care of a small, curious dog would’ve made Ivy smile, but right now, all she felt was a deep worry.

“Injured?” Samuel narrowed his eyes at Vasic. “Is he healing?”

“Yes. He’ll make a full recovery.”

Ivy knew the statement was as much for her as for Samuel. Holding the truth of it to her heart, she said, “Clara told us you’ve made some improvements to the complex.”

“Yes. Come on.” The engineer rubbed his hands.

They spent the next hour on a tour of the facility’s power system. Samuel Rain didn’t even glance at the gauntlet. Frustration gnawed at Ivy, but she held her silence. She could sense Samuel now, and below the excitement at his accomplishment was a bone-deep fear—as if the hard crust of a lake in winter had been sheared off to reveal the liquid beneath. It made her heart hurt.

The engineer, she realized, was aware enough to understand that he might not like what he found if he pushed himself. But he was far stronger than she’d guessed, because right at the end, while he was closing a maintenance panel, he said, “I need the prototype gauntlet the imbeciles who worked on you used to test the connections.”

Vasic lifted his arm as the other man turned to face them. “This is the prototype.”

Ivy thought Samuel Rain’s head was going to explode. Literally tearing at his hair, he said, “Why didn’t you just walk into a butcher’s shop and have them hack you up?”

“Stop it,” Ivy said, having had enough. “You don’t get to talk to him like that.”

Staring at her through his spectacles, the engineer said, “Are you doing something to me?”

“No.”

Suspicion writ large on his features. “I wasn’t like this before.”

Ivy had the feeling Samuel Rain had always been high-strung and outside Silence, his genius intellect such that he’d been given a pass from the authorities—until one of the Councilors had apparently decided to make an example of him. Right after Rain turned down a job offer from the Councilor in question.

Aden had unearthed that fact yesterday. It was simply more evidence of the ugly hypocrisy and self-interest hidden in Silence, Ivy thought as she folded her arms and said, “I don’t care if you dance naked at midnight, as long as you help Vasic.”

A roll of his eyes. “It’s cold at midnight,” Rain said with exaggerated patience. “If I planned to dance naked in winter, I’d do it at noon.”

Then he left, telling them not to follow.

Growling low in her throat, Ivy lifted her hands and made a squeezing motion. “I want to strangle him.”

Vasic pressed a kiss to the top of her head, the affectionate act making her toes curl. “He’s right, you know,” he said, while she fought not to make a big deal of something that
was
a big deal. “The implant team should’ve never grafted the only prototype. I’ll have to find the most detailed simulation files we have and send them to him.”

“I don’t care if he’s right.” She scowled. “No one is allowed to treat you that way.” Hauling him down with her hands fisted in his jacket, she kissed him with all the passion in her heart. His hand rose to cup her face, his body hardening against hers.

When their lips parted, she looked around to find he’d teleported them back to the apartment. “We should’ve told Clara we were leaving,” she whispered, far more interested in shaping Vasic’s chest with her hands.

He raised the gauntlet, tapped in a short message. “I’ve sent her a notification.”

Arousal fading, she touched her hand to the carapace, slick and hard. “You’ll miss it, won’t you?” It was a fact she hadn’t considered until now. “It’s truly become a part of you.”

He lifted both hands to her face, stroking her hair behind her ears. “I’ll adapt. No piece of technology is worth losing time with you.” Continuing to hold her face, he said, “You’re sad, Ivy.”

She went to protest, but he shook his head, said, “I’m not an empath, but I know you. You enjoyed the sex—”

“The other races call it making love.” Ivy had heard that on comm shows. “It felt like that, didn’t it?” She curled her fingers against the firm breadth of his chest.

Vasic tasted the words, nodded. “Yes.”

Her smile was luminous. “I loved making love with you. Can we do it again?”

“Ivy.”
Brushing his thumbs over her cheeks, he held her gaze. “Don’t try to distract me. You were happy for a while, but there’s sadness inside you.” Tiny flickers in her eyes, her smile fading when she thought he wasn’t watching, he’d noticed it all. “Tell me why.”

“Could you get Rabbit first?” she asked, her expression holding a raw vulnerability that kicked him in the heart. “I don’t want him to wake and find himself in an unfamiliar place.”

Vasic left at once, to return less than half a minute later. Rabbit was still curled up in his basket, fast asleep. Going down into a cross-legged position on the floor, Ivy petted the dog with a gentle touch. “My brave Rabbit,” she murmured, as Vasic came down to sit with his back against the wall, one arm braced on a raised knee.

Ivy took time to speak, and when she did, it was with helpless pain in her voice. “I can’t stop thinking about the gauntlet. I try so hard not to, but it’s always there at the back of my mind.” She dashed her hand across her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Vasic didn’t know how to comfort her. All he could do was draw her close, wrap her in his arms. “Surely,” he said, “you don’t doubt Samuel Rain’s genius. Are you a monkey?”

When she spluttered wetly and slapped at his chest, he felt a staggering sense of achievement. He’d given his mate what she needed, brought her through the sadness. Nuzzling his chin into her hair, he continued to hold her as they sat on the floor beside Rabbit.

“That wasn’t funny,” she said at last.

“You laughed.”

He saw her lips tug up at the corners, only to curve downward not long afterward. “There’ll be another outbreak soon, won’t there?”

Vasic didn’t want to talk about that, wanted to indulge in Ivy, but the world continued to turn beyond the walls of this apartment. “Chances are high.”

“I don’t know what to do, Vasic.” It was a trembling confession. “I was so foolish at the start, so sure instinct would guide me, but . . .” She moved her head in a negative motion against his chest.

“You weren’t foolish.” He couldn’t stand to see his tough, determined Ivy so beaten. “You were ready to try, to take a chance. Without you pushing for placements in infected zones, Jaya and Brigitte wouldn’t know who and what they are, and Sascha wouldn’t have made her breakthrough.”

Ivy’s hand curved over his upper arm. “That doesn’t change the fact that
I
can’t do anything to help!” Angry frustration. “The medic told me I’d cause an aneurysm if I continued on my current path.”

Vasic thought of the secret he’d kept from her about Isaiah, knew she’d be angry with him for it, but told her anyway. Her eyes darkened as she sat up to face him, one hand lifting to her mouth. “Will he . . .”

“The doctors are hopeful, but there is no definite prognosis as yet.”

“Concetta must be devastated.” Hand dropping to her side and voice raspy with withheld emotion, she said, “Why did you hide it from me?”

He curved his hand around the side of her neck. “I knew it would hurt you.”

Gaze meeting his, she shook her head. “I don’t want that kind of a life. Padded against danger and insulated from reality.”

“I know.” He leaned forward, pressed his forehead against hers. “Just . . . give me a little time. I’ve never had someone who was mine before.”

She softened, hand spreading on his thigh. Enclosing her in his arms once more, he held her close, the scent of her in his nose, his heart beating in time with hers. And he knew he’d fight a thousand outbreaks, vanquish untold nightmares, to have another moment such as this. “Have you attempted to attack the infection on the PsyNet itself?” he asked, the idea a sudden, acute one. “The infected are only a symptom. The cause
is the poison in the PsyNet.”

Ivy sat up and shifted sideways so that her back was braced against his raised knee. “We tried that back at the compound on the day of the farewell dinner. We thought we should attempt it while we were all together.” Her skin crawled at the memory. “It threatened to suck us into itself, as if we were insects and it was a huge spider.”

“You were inexperienced then, unsure.”

Ivy tapped a finger on her knee, gave his statement serious thought. “Yes.” Not only had the group been uncertain and untested, they’d been feeling the staggering responsibility of coming up with a solution before more people lost their lives. Not ideal conditions. “I think there’s something I can try during the next outbreak as a test.”

Vasic took her chin in a gentle but firm hold. “I won’t get in your way, but promise me you’ll stop the instant you feel any pressure on your brain.”

Ivy felt her heart break at what she saw in his expression, what he let her see, her lethal Arrow trained to hide all vulnerability. “I promise.”