Psy-Changeling [12] Heart of Obsidian (23 page)

Chapter 26

KALEB TUGGED SAHARA
up with a grip in her hair, taking her mouth with a slow, concentrated fury that made it clear she was now the sole focus of all that merciless power and attention and will. Moaning into the kiss, she surrendered, opening herself to anything and everything he wanted.

Buttons tore as he ripped off his shirt, and then the naked heat of his chest was crushing her breasts. A slight shift and he closed one of his hands over her left breast, fondling and squeezing with unhidden possession as his tongue rasped over her own, his mouth slanting to create the perfect fit.

Fingernails digging into the heavy muscle of his back, she met him kiss for kiss.

My Kaleb,
mine.

His thumb rubbed over her nipple, his fingers strong and sure on her flesh, his hold that of a man dead certain of his welcome. When he broke the kiss to plump up her breast in his hand before sucking the top part of it into his mouth, she cried out and attempted to get impossibly closer, the hot suction a dazzling pulse of sensation. Releasing her throbbing flesh after she was halfway to madness, he looked down at the shining wetness of her skin, her nipple furled into a tight, begging point that he plucked with his fingertips.

Her womb clenched.

Running her mouth down his throat, her need for him a feral thing, she made a vocal complaint when he lifted his body off hers. A hot look, a strong male hand in her hair as he branded her with his kiss, then drew back again to rip open the zipper of her jeans, pull them off. His belt buckle bit into her abdomen when he returned to her mouth, his erection an aggressive demand against her that made her want to squirm.

Except he was deliciously heavy, pinning her in place. No one else would she have trusted in such a position of power, no one but the most dangerous man in the world. Unable to get enough of his kiss, of the connection that was a fist punching through her diaphragm to grip her heart, she locked her ankles tight at the base of his spine and spread her fingers on his upper back.

“I want to kiss every inch of your back,” she managed to say between kisses.

“Later.” Thrusting his hand into the rear of her panties, he cupped her lower curves, taking her startled cry into his mouth, his voice a dangerous, seductive blade in her mind.
Soft and smooth and mine. Always mine.

Sucking in desperate breaths when he set her lips free to kiss his way along her throat before coming back up to claim her mouth once more, she ran her nails down his back. It was harder than she’d intended, his mouth and hands doing things to her that left her devastated, the marks ones he’d wear for a day at least.

Breaking the kiss, he threw back his head.

When those obsidian eyes met hers again, they were matched by a smile that held nothing calculated about it—it was lethal . . . in a way that made her body rise toward his. But he was already moving with the powerful grace of a cardinal Tk, kissing his way down her body to tear off her panties, push her thighs apart, and rub his jaw against the ultrasensitive inner surface of her thighs.

“Kaleb!” Her mind exploded outward to slam up against his shields, her body bowing. “Don’t stop,” she begged. “Don’t—” A soundless cry, her synapses fried, his mouth hot and demanding on her damp flesh, his hands a little rough on her thighs as he held them apart.

Sahara knew about the mechanics of sex, though the Silent didn’t indulge in the act either for procreation or for pleasure, but never in her education had she been taught that there were levels of intimacy even in sex. This, what Kaleb was doing to her, it was nothing she’d ever imagined, and oh, but she
liked
it.

Arching into his mouth as he licked at her, his tongue exploring her with a thorough attention to detail that made it clear he’d be as relentless in bed as he was in every other aspect of life, she held him to her with one hand in the heavy silk of his hair. That hand clenched without her conscious volition when he would’ve shifted his attention from the slippery, throbbing nub at the apex of her thighs.

Lifting his head, his eyes a storm of midnight, the shadow of that lethal smile on his lips, he said, “Does that feel good?”

Her toes curled.

Nodding, she held her breath as he dipped his head . . . and gave her what she wanted, fixing his mouth on her clitoris and sucking hard, his hands clamped on her inner thighs to keep her spread for him. Every so often, he’d move his thumbs on the delicate, sensitive flesh, adding to the tumult of sensation that had her gripping at the sheets, then at the muscled warmth of his shoulders.

Even as she sobbed her ecstasy, her nerve endings shredded with the sweet, hot pain of sexual pleasure, his voice was a dark caress in her mind.
Harder? Softer? Like this? Or do you prefer this?
Each question was accompanied by an erotic demonstration, her body her lover’s instrument.
What about this?
Strong white teeth grazing the swollen flesh of her clitoris . . . then pressing down the barest fraction.

Pleasure wracked her, left her a ruin.

Rising to kneel above her quivering body, he curved his hand around her throat in an act of possession that had become darkly familiar, and bent to her mouth. The taste on his lips was her own, and it was an intimacy that should’ve been shocking, but nothing was shocking, nothing was taboo when it came to the man in her bed.

A slave to him, her body soft with pleasure, she said,
Let me do these things to you.

His hand releasing her throat only to close over it again.
We may have to build up to that. Even obsidian won’t hold if you put your mouth on me. Not yet.

The black velvet of his tone made her shiver, her body undulating toward him on a fresh wave of need. She had waited so long for this, for him, and now her flesh was ravenous, her soul greedy.
Please.

Tell me what you need.
He moved his hand from her throat to between her legs.

Sahara flinched as his thumb brushed her clitoris, her fingernails digging into his upper arms.
It’s too sensitive.
The realization frustrated her—it felt so good when he touched her there that she wanted only to experience the sensations again. But there was something she wanted even more.

“You should know this pleasure, too,” she whispered as he put his palm over her damp flesh, the rough warmth of him a subtle caress. “Teach me what feels good on your body.” She ached to kiss and pet him as he was doing her, burned to see those cardinal eyes drenched in the same storm that had sucked her under.

Watching you orgasm gives me extreme pleasure,
was Kaleb’s unvarnished answer as his lips sought hers once more.
Feeling you sticky and damp against my tongue, my fingers, your body soft under mine, your aroused nipples rubbing against my chest, that’s what feels good.

Sahara’s breath turned jagged, her breasts rising and falling as she fought not to drown under the erotic onslaught. Until this instant, she hadn’t known words could be as sensual, as arousing, as touch. Even more so when she knew Kaleb wasn’t saying the words with that intent—he was simply stating facts, her pleasure his own.

He tapped her clitoris again.
Still sensitive?

Yes,
she managed to answer through the acute bite of sensation.

Let’s try this instead.
Breaking the kiss to focus his attention lower on her body, his expression steely in its intensity, he pushed at the tightness of her entrance with his finger, and when she shivered, hands falling to fist in the sheets, worked that finger slowly inside.
Yes?
Hair tumbled over his forehead, he looked up, their eyes locking.

So much power,
she thought,
such unyielding control.
It should’ve made her feel at a vast disadvantage. It didn’t. Because this was Kaleb. “Yes.” A moan of discovery as he slid his finger out, then pushed it back in just as slow. “Yes, please.”

A second finger, and all at once she’d had enough, her womb contracting with an emptiness that hurt. She might not ever have done this act before, but instinct told her what experience didn’t. “You,” she said, and it was an order. “I need you.” Only Kaleb.

His responding kiss was a naked demand, his tongue licking deep. “Spread your legs wider,” he commanded when he released her mouth, withdrawing his hand and rising to rid himself of the rest of his clothing at last—to reveal a body that made her feminine core clench.

Gloriously naked, his erection heavy, he settled between the legs she’d spread for him, one of his hands on her thigh, the other palm-down beside her head. Their gazes locked again as he began to push inside her with the blunt tip of his penis, her hand on his nape, her body slick and ready but still so tight against the thick intrusion of him. A painful kind of burning had her hissing out a breath, but below that was a need that wanted, hungered.

Are you hurting?

I want this hurt.

Sweat dripped down Kaleb’s temple, his jaw a brutal line, but he maintained the slow, inexorable push of his body until his erection was buried to the hilt inside her.
Sahara.
Passion-flushed cheekbones and eyes stormy with so much power it was akin to looking into the heart of a thunderstorm.

I feel . . . perfect.
Tight and full to the point that it was almost pain and exactly where she was meant to be.

When he shuddered and pulled out an inch, she cried out, the friction of his rock-hard penis against her sensitized flesh an erotic shock. Kaleb thrust back in, only to repeat the withdrawal and reentry, the hand on her thigh shifting to her hip to pin her in place as he dipped his head to kiss her breasts, sucking on one of her nipples before releasing it through his teeth.

The caress made her internal muscles flutter around him. His body turned rigid, the tendons of his neck standing out starkly against his skin, the veins on his arms pulsing as his muscles went taut. But Kaleb had learned control in a vicious crucible—he didn’t break even under the intensity of the sensations. Kissing her again as she hooked one of her legs over his hip, he pulled out all the way, then pushed back in with ruthless patience.

Writhing beneath him, the abrasion of her breasts against his chest a sensual counterpoint to the harsh possession of him inside her, she moaned into the kiss. He swallowed the sound and once more repeated the slow, complete withdrawal and return, stretching her swollen tissues until her clitoris throbbed. Slick as she was, her body lubricating itself in rippling waves of passion, his size made taking him an effort—a hotly erotic effort that had her breaking off the kiss to issue a breathless feminine demand. “Faster.”

Are you sure?
His fingers dug into her hip.

“Yes!” Gripping at his back, she attempted to arch her body toward him . . . but he was already pulling out.

Only to slam back in. Hard.

Sahara screamed, her body clenching around Kaleb’s in an orgasm that felt as if it would tear her to pieces . . . and that was when Kaleb’s control snapped. There was nothing practiced about the way he pounded deep into her over and over again, nothing restrained about the way he wrenched her head to the side to kiss and suck at her throat, nothing calculated about the way he bent her thigh upward then pushed it wide to facilitate a deeper taking.

It was primitive; it was rough; it was spectacular.

Coming so hard around him that her thoughts were nothing more than splinters, she held on tight to the sweat-slick muscle of his body, his heart beating a drum that matched her own and his fingers almost bruisingly tight on the bottom of the thigh he’d pushed up.
Kaleb, my Kaleb.
It was a claim passionate and possessive as pleasure tore her apart.

Kaleb came in violent silence, his breath harsh against her ear and his body rigid. The hot wet of his possession as his semen pulsed inside her made her erotically abused muscles spasm again, clenching tight around him. Jerking, he raised his head, eyes of obsidian holding her own as he drew back one final time, then thrust deep past her clenching muscles.

“Mine. You are mine.”

They were the last words Sahara heard before Kaleb’s kiss tore her apart, his body locked with her own as they fell.

Chapter 27

“WE’VE SHARED DNA,”
Kaleb murmured to the woman who lay in his arms afterward, knowing he should’ve told her the ugly truth before this, his only excuse being that he hadn’t believed she was anywhere close to accepting him inside her body. “There may be consequences.”

“No.” Sahara raised her head from his chest, eyes smudged with lingering echoes of pleasure. “I made a discreet visit to another one of the M-Psy in the clinic when my father”—a hitched breath—“went in to check on a patient yesterday afternoon. I’ve known the medic since childhood, and she made the necessary changes in my body chemistry without any intrusive questions.” Her fingers rising to trace his lips. “I knew this was inevitable.”

“Good. It’s better if my DNA isn’t passed on.”

“Why? You’re smart, beautiful, powerful.”

“I’m also mentally unstable and may have tendencies toward criminal insanity.”

The softness faded from her expression. “Kaleb, I refuse to call anything you did under Enrique’s coercion a choice. That was
his
insanity.” Flat, absolute, daring him to argue with her. “I’m not without intelligence. I know you’ve hurt people as an adult, but I also know you would have done so with a rational motive,” she said, seeing him with a clarity that was a razor.

“Power, control, money, you’d always have had a reason for your actions, whether or not those actions were justifiable.” Hard words, and yet her hand remained spread over his heart. “The criminally insane don’t have any rational reasons for their actions—what Enrique did? He found a sick pleasure in it. Did you?”

“No, but the seed lives in me.” Nothing could alter the pitiless biological fact of it. “That night after I killed the swan,” he said, speaking the truth for the first time in his life, “Santano told me that the paternal name on my birth certificate is a lie.”

Unwilling to believe anything the other Tk said, Kaleb had waited until he was wealthy enough to make arrangements for anonymous DNA tests, his intent to disprove Santano’s words. “I confirmed the fraud as an adult.” It had taken him ten cycles of testing to accept the truth of his tainted blood.

Struggling up onto her elbow beside him, Sahara pushed back her hair, a frown marring her brow. “How can that be? DNA is cross-checked at birth to make sure of genetic lines.”

“Money and power can alter anything.”

He watched Sahara digest what he’d said, saw the instant of realization. “Santano Enrique,” she exhaled. “That bastard was your
father
?”

“In genetics.” Kaleb would claim nothing more of Enrique than he had to. “He had a theory about how to create high-Gradient offspring. He didn’t, however, want that child connected to him in case the experiment failed.” Santano Enrique could not have a
weak
child, could not be anything less than perfect in every way.

“Sometime after my birth, he made the decision to continue the subterfuge—mostly because it gave him a different kind of access to me.” A parent who treated his child with cruel brutality would be looked at askance in the Net, but a trainer was actively encouraged to do so in the case of an offensive ability. Discipline was everything when it came to a cardinal Tk child—without it, even an infant could kill.

“The man on your birth certificate?” Sahara brushed his hair off his forehead. “Your mother?”

“Bought off, then quietly murdered while I was still a minor.” He felt nothing at the thought of the people who had raised him till he was three, then abandoned him to Santano Enrique. “Low-Gradient as they were, no one noticed.”

“Surely,” Sahara said, “there were suspicions of a cardinal born of two low-Gradient Psy.”

“Santano chose two people with the necessary recessive genes to make such a birth a rare but true possibility.” He spread his fingers on her lower back, her skin delicate and warm, but with a promise of sleek muscle beneath, as if her body were remembering the dancer she’d once been . . . the dancer whose flesh had torn under a knife with a chipped blade. “I carry him in my very cells.”

Sahara’s jaw set in a stubborn line familiar to him from her childhood. “You may carry his genes,” she said, “but you are not and never will be Enrique’s son.” A passionate negation that vibrated with cold fury. “If you were, you wouldn’t find pleasure in touching me with care, only in causing me pain.” Pressing her fingers to his lips, she shook her head. “You’re Kaleb. That is your identity.”

* * *

A
half hour later, Sahara was intensely aware of Kaleb watching with silent eyes as she moved around his kitchen, putting together a meal for them both, the ends of the white shirt she’d borrowed from him brushing her thighs. Certain parts of her body twinged with every movement, a silent reminder of the uninhibited intimacy they’d shared in the privacy of his bed.

Kaleb, dressed only in a pair of black sweatpants, the ridged muscle of his chest shadowed in the early evening light in this part of the world, was a young god, a Greek statue come to life. Strong and gorgeous and remote.

Except he wasn’t remote, wasn’t cold. Not for her. Never for her.

He’d obtained the most recent update on her father minutes before and had offered to take her to the hospital. The only reason Sahara had forced herself to wait was that Leon Kyriakus remained in isolation, his immune system weakened as a result of a hostile infection caused by the dirty knife the bounty hunter had used. She didn’t want to risk introducing a fatal contaminant into his system in her need to see him alive and well.

“His prognosis is good,” Kaleb had said, scanning the medical report when her eyes watered too much to do so. “The injury was severe, and his recovery will be slow, but with the infection caught in time, there is no cause for concern.”

To anyone else, the words might have sounded callous, unfeeling of the fear that twisted her gut, but to her, they sounded like honesty. Kaleb had never once lied to her, and if he said her father was going to make it, he was. And when Leon woke, he would be disappointed in her if, in her worry, she’d failed to do the one thing he’d asked of her the night they’d talked till dawn.

“Live your life, Sahara. Live it as big and with as much color as you can stand to bear. Don’t let anyone or anything—the family, Silence, the weight of your ability, even my need to keep you close—confine you again.”

So she blinked away the incipient tears, looked into the ruthless face of the man who made everything in her ignite—joy, pleasure, fear, anger, terror, hope—and took the next step on her road to an extraordinary life.

“I need to ask you something,” she said, picking up a spoon to mix the nutrient drink he insisted on having in place of anything with more taste. She’d tried to swallow the question, but it was souring her stomach, making her jittery, and he’d noticed.

A silent look that told her to ask.

“Where exactly did you learn what we just did?” It came out edgier than she’d intended.

“With the way our bodies respond to one another, preparation seemed prudent.”

“I see.” The spoon hit the insides of the glass, her motions jagged.

Shifting to lean on the counter next to her, Kaleb cupped her jaw. When she refused to look at him, he rubbed his thumb over her lower lip. “I researched sexual intimacy the same way I research everything else. Methodically and in intricate detail.”

Sahara grabbed at the edge of the counter as her mind was deluged by a telepathic cascade of erotic images, limbs entangled and fingers digging into flesh. Eyes wide, she met his. “How did you . . . ?”

“Sex,” he said, rubbing his thumb over her lower lip again, “is something the other races find endlessly fascinating. Sourcing the images, literature, and recordings was child’s play. A simple Internet search brought up millions of hits.”

Cheeks burning from some of what had tumbled into her mind, Sahara said, “What about putting theory into practice?” If he’d shared his body with anyone else in
any
way, her anger would be as violent as her pain. Her fragmented memories, his lust for power and lack of a moral compass, none of it mattered on this most elemental level.

Here, he belonged to her.

“Practical application,” he said in that cool, calm Kaleb voice, “would’ve been a pointless exercise, given the high likelihood I would kill anyone who dared touch me in such a way.” Another brush, his eyes focused on her lips. “With you, however, I fully understand the human and changeling preoccupation with sex.” This time the image he sent her would’ve buckled her knees if she hadn’t had the support of a telekinetic.

The snapshot was of her, as she’d been in his bed not long ago, her thighs spread and her back arched, the point of view that of the man who’d had both his hands on the inner surfaces of her thighs at the time. Accurate in every detail, down to the perspiration that glimmered on her skin and the slickness between her thighs, it showcased the steel-trap memory of the cardinal Tk who was now her lover.

“That,” she rasped, “is unfair. I don’t have the same ammunition.”

Kaleb’s expression didn’t alter, his tone didn’t warm, but the words he spoke were very much not of Silence. “I’ll send you some video files.” Then he bent his head and told her they should practice kissing, voice as chill as frost . . . and eyes licked with black fire.

It was a long time later, the two of them back in her aerie, that he reached into the pocket of his black suit—his shirt a dark forest green she’d chosen out of his closet—and pulled out a small jewelry box. “This is for you.”

It wasn’t her birthday, but Sahara knew the box held a charm. “To mark my return?” she asked softly.

“Yes.” Opening it, he retrieved the charm. “In case your father didn’t get a chance to tell you, there was a transfer into your account yesterday—tagged as the income from an investment he made for you when you were a child, to mature on your twenty-third birthday.” A pause. “It was meant to mature at eighteen, giving you independent funds for education, but Leon kept extending the date.”

Sahara swallowed the knot in her throat. Once again, her outwardly distant lover had demonstrated his consciousness of her emotional needs by telling her a fact others might have omitted. Holding out her wrist, she said, “Did you get me a sheath for the blade?” The charm bracelet glowed luminous in the sunlight coming through the window.

“It’s too soon for the work to have been completed.” His fingers closed around her wrist, his thumb over the flutter of her pulse. “You’ll have to wait for next year.”

Next year.

If she’d been standing, she might have staggered under the force of her relief. “And the single star?”

Eyes of inky black holding her own, the words he spoke only a fraction of their conversation. “It appears it did not suffer fatal damage.”

Such a precarious equilibrium. So many lives balanced on her sanity when her mind remained in chaos. “Let me see,” she whispered to this man who would’ve laid waste to the world in vengeance for her.

As before, she tried to crane her neck, tried to peek, but he blocked her view, his wide shoulders angled to show the nape of his neck beneath the neat black of his hair.

Lifting her free hand, she just barely touched skin. A moment of motionlessness, then nothing but masculine warmth, his fingers holding her wrist as he resettled the bracelet and let her see the newest charm.

An eagle in flight, wings spread to their greatest length.

Freedom.