The Psy-Changeling Series, Books 6-10 (74 page)

“God damn it!” Dev’s body went taut against her and she knew he’d lost every bit of his steely control.

That was all it took.

Electricity rocked through her, as wild and as hot as the man who held her pinned to the wall in helpless surrender.

 

 

Katya lay
boneless as Dev dropped her on the bed. “I still have my top on,” she muttered, not the least bit interested in moving. Her bones were jelly, her inner muscles continuing to spasm in little bursts of pleasure.

Dev, having finally gotten rid of his jeans, sprawled down over her, burying his face in her neck. She managed to find enough energy to thread her fingers through his hair and hold him to her as his chest rose up and down in long, deep breaths. “You’ve killed me,” he muttered.

“I plan to do it again as soon as I recover.” Which would be in about a week.

“Insatiable.”

“Only for you.”

A silence unbroken but for their jagged breaths. “So honest.” He pressed a kiss to her damp skin. “Don’t ever change that about yourself.”

Her free hand curled into the sheet. Was a lie of omission still a lie?
Yes
, she thought, honest with herself, even if she couldn’t be with him. “I’m hungry.”

“Give me a minute to find the strength to hunt and gather.”

Her lips quirked. “Devraj Santos, brought down by a woman half his size.”

“With a mouth like heaven.” Another kiss. “You can do that again anytime you want. I insist.”

A laugh burst out of her. “Ouch, my stomach muscles hurt.” But she’d take this kind of pain any day. “Tell me about the eyes.” Surely that knowledge was nothing that would hurt the Forgotten even if Ming found her before she could end this?

“Hmm.” His lashes moved against her in an incongruously delicate caress. “We had cardinals drop out with us. The eyes disappeared within a generation.”

“Because of the dilution in your abilities,” she murmured. “No cardinals, no night-sky eyes.” Cardinal eyes were eerily beautiful. Even Psy in the Net rarely met those at the extreme end of Psy power—white stars on black, their eyes seemed to reflect the Net itself.

“But some of us are starting to be born with these eyes.”

“Brown and gold?”

“The color doesn’t matter.” He rose up on his elbow, damp strands of hair on his forehead. She liked him this way—sexy and disheveled. “I don’t think you’re listening to me.” He mock-scowled when she reached up to lave kisses over the muscled curve of one shoulder.

She smiled. “Sorry.”

“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted”—she laughed at his severe tone—“there’s some kind of psychic feedback in times of either great emotional stress or arousal.” A gleam in those beautiful eyes. “I think you gave me both today.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” she said, in deliberate echo. “Jonquil,” she whispered. “I thought his eyes were simply an extraordinary blue, but I think he exhibits the phenomenon.”

Dev cupped her face in his hands. “It’s not connected to the level of power,” he told her. “It seems to be a random mutation that’s occurred in a certain percentage of the population.”

“Maybe you’re in the process of developing your own version of cardinal eyes,” she murmured. “Even if it’s not connected to power now, it might one day end up being so.”

“I hope to hell not,” Dev said, jaw firming. “It’d make the strong ones easier to identify and target.”

“I thought this was a safe question.” Chest tight, she closed her hand over his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Dev. I won’t let anyone take the knowledge from my mind.” Not this time. Not ever again.

“Why do you think I told you?” A tone that left no room for doubt. And then he said the words she’d waited what felt like a lifetime to hear. “You won’t betray us, Katya, no matter what the cost.”

“You beat him. You survived,” he said quietly. “Ming has no claim on you anymore.”

He was more right than he knew, Katya thought two hours later, pain beating at her temples. Reaching out, she whispered her fingers over Dev’s cheekbones, conscious he’d wake to anything but the most butterfly of touches. Even then, he shifted.

“It’s just me,” she whispered, as the exquisite ache in her heart threatened to tear her wide open. This, she thought, was love. She’d never felt it before but she
knew
. This feeling, it went soul deep, and it ravaged even as it healed. Devraj Santos had become an integral part of her. She couldn’t let him go after Ming—she had every faith in his abilities, but she refused to lose him to a fool’s errand.

There was no way to save her.

She’d realized that the instant after Dev had said she could live out her whole life without anyone being the wiser. True. Except that her whole life might only equal another month . . . if she was lucky. The thing with being in a prison was that after a while, your skin got pasty, your body got weak, and your mind began to beat itself against the walls in a vain effort to escape.

She was Psy.

She couldn’t survive being permanently cut off from the Net.

The biofeedback alone wasn’t enough. She had to be
some
part of the fabric of a neural network. Psychic isolation . . . It would drive her mad, increment by slow increment.

Her fingers lifted to her nose. Dev hadn’t seen it. She’d hidden it. But there, in Sunshine, her nose had bled again. Just a little. But more than on the plane. It had been easy to shrug off the incident as being a consequence of the bitter cold—yet even then, part of her had begun to wonder. And now, tonight, as her skull threatened to implode from the agony of a sudden spiking headache, she accepted the truth—her brain was already starting to lose the battle. Her mind had begun its slow, steady beat against the walls of its prison.

Even if she somehow managed to hang on to her sanity, Ming had assured her end. She’d told Dev she was remembering more and more. She hadn’t told him she’d remembered the final session.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Katya spread
her fingers over the steady pulse of Dev’s heartbeat as the pain of the headache dissipated, leaving only a dull bruise. More pain would come soon, but it didn’t matter. She’d never complete the primary task. Not consciously. But she knew damn well that Ming wouldn’t have left that to chance. How could she guard against a threat she couldn’t see, couldn’t even guess at?

Dev’s eyes snapped open, startling her into a little gasp. “Dev?”

“What were you thinking?” Gold glittered in the depths of the rich brown that had come to mean everything to her.

“A nightmare,” she said, and it wasn’t a lie. “That’s all.”

He tugged her until she was almost under him. “I’ve got you. Sleep.”

Heart thudding in reaction, she put her hand on his shoulder, let him tuck her close, and tried to find sleep. The thoughts that had somehow awakened him, she shoved to the back of her mind. Suicide, she realized belatedly, would destroy Dev. He’d blame himself. That was simply the man he was—protective to the core. She’d have to find some other way to save him from the loaded gun that was her mind.

Because killing Devraj Santos was simply not on the agenda.

Judd Lauren walked
into the church that Father Xavier Perez called home and took a seat in the last pew, beside the guerrilla fighter turned man of God. After a moment of silence, the other man sent him a slow glance. “No questions today, my friend?”

“I thought I might give you a break.”

“And yet I see a question in your eyes.”

“The Psy won,” Judd said quietly. “In your corner of the world, the Psy won.”

They’d first met in a bar in a no-name town in Paraguay. Judd had been there to liaise with a contact who never showed. Xavier had been sitting on the bar stool next to his and, tongue loosened by tequila, had begun to talk. Back before he became a no-good drunk, the priest had said, he’d been a man with simple needs—but one who believed in fairness. And there had been nothing fair in the way the Psy had effectively shut out the humans in his region from any kind of trade with the neighboring sectors.

First, it had been a political protest. But things had quickly escalated . . . until the Psy had crushed the human rebellion so thoroughly that not even an echo remained.

Xavier gave a slow nod, his skin gleaming ebony beneath the soft church lights. “Yes.”

“And yet you believe in God.”

Xavier took several minutes to answer. “There was a girl in my village,” he said, his tone a caress. “Her name was Nina. She was . . . a bright light.”

Before, Judd wouldn’t have understood. Now he’d held Brenna, now he knew what it would do to him to lose her. “Did she die in the fight against the Psy?” The assassins had whispered into the village in the depths of the night, death their only agenda.

“We thought they might come,” Xavier told him. “We never imagined they’d be as brutal as they were, but we got our vulnerable out.”

Judd waited, knowing the story wasn’t over.

“Nina wouldn’t go. She was a nurse—she knew she’d be needed. She, like all of us, thought they’d rough us up some, leave us to lick our wounds.”

“That must’ve put you in one hell of a mood.”

Xavier’s lips curved. “I threatened to tie her up and throw her on the back of a donkey if that was what it took.”