Blaze of Memory

CHAPTER 29

To Katya’s surprise, DarkRiver agreed to allow her to see Jon. A dark-skinned man with intense green eyes drove the boy over. As Katya spoke to him by a tree in the yard, the tawny haired woman who’d accompanied Jon reached into the backseat and came out with an armful of giggling little girl.

Noor Hassan.

Her heart clenched to see such open joy on the child’s face. Wanting to touch the girl, make sure she really was alright, Katya nonetheless made herself fight her cowardice and look at Jon.

“You’ve grown taller,” she said, wondering why she was surprised. Teenage boys rarely stayed the same from month to month. “Your hair, you cut it.”

He shrugged, sending the short strands of brilliant white-gold shifting in the sunlight.

“Thank you for seeing me.”

“Tally asked.” There was something in his tone that told Katya he’d do anything for the woman who’d asked. “Plus, you never hurt me.”

“Didn’t I?” She sat down beside him when he took a seat on the ground, long legs stretched out in front of him. “I didn’t stop it either, though, did I?”

He gave her a narrow-eyed glance out of those brilliant blue eyes that had made him so easy to identify. Not many people looked like Jonquil Alexi Duchslaya. “What’re you talking about?” he now asked.

“I want to apologize.” It was time to face her crimes. “When Larsen hurt you, I didn’t stop him.” She made no excuses, because there were none.

“I heard your memory was messed up. Is it all back now?”

“Most of it.” There were still pieces missing, things, if she was being honest, her mind probably didn’t want to remember. She was at peace with that. Because Ekaterina, the woman who’d been a Psy scientist and later a victim, was gone. Katya had risen from the ashes, and she would make her own memories, her own future.

Jon gave her a funny look. “And you don’t remember that? He backhanded you fucking hard.” He winced. “Don’t tell Tally I swore, okay?”

Her entire body went taut. “Who backhanded me?”

“Lizard Man, Larsen, whatever.” Despite the careless words, he drew up his legs, putting his arms around his knees. But his eyes held concern, not fear. “He was doing stuff to me, and you said he’d gone far enough, that he was breaking the agreed-upon protocols.”

Her mind remained a blank on the incident. “Are you certain? He had drugs in your system.”

“Yeah, I’m certain. Not something I’ll ever forget, drugs or not.” He shook his head. “You tried to move his hand off my forehead and wham, that was when he backhanded you so hard, you ended up unconscious on the floor.”

Still no memory, but a bubble of hope. “How did he justify the hit?” Violence was supposed to have been wiped out by Silence, and Larsen had been pretending to be the perfect Psy.

“Dunno. You were out, so it wasn’t like you could call him on it.” He stared critically at her face. “I’m pretty sure I heard something crack. I thought he’d broken your nose or your jaw.”

A pulse of pain in her nose, a phantom memory. Hazy. Indistinct. But coming into focus. “Yes,” she whispered, raising her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “He said he’d had to do it to keep me from compromising the experiment. . . he did the medical work on it himself.”

“So don’t beat yourself up about it,” Jon said. “You were stuck, same as me. You did what you could.”

“That’s very wise for someone your age.”

He smiled and it was devastating, all charm and youth and a slight cockiness. “Shh. Everyone else thinks I’m hell on wheels.”

At that instant, Noor got away from the woman who’d been playing with her and ran pell-mell toward them. “Jonny!”

Rising in a fluid movement, Jon grabbed her up and swung her around to the accompaniment of her delighted laughter. Katya looked at the child in wonder. Larsen, she remembered as she got to her feet, had never touched Noor, Jon having taken her place, but the little girl had known terror. Today, she wrapped her arms around Jon’s neck and stared at Katya.

Lines formed on her brow. “Who’re you?”

“Noor,” Jon said, “that’s not nice.”

Noor wrinkled up her nose. “Is she your girlfriend?”

“Why do you care?” Jon teased. “You’re going to marry Keenan.”

Noor leaned close, her next words a loud whisper. “But you like Rina.”

Jon went bright red under his golden skin. “This is Katya. She’s our friend.” His eyes met Katya’s as he said that last word, and there was only acceptance in them. “She helped us once.”

After another moment, Noor gave a small nod and stuck out a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Katya took it with gentle care, very aware of the delicacy of the little girl’s skin, her bones. “Nice to meet you, too. So, tell me about Rina.”

Noor’s smile was as bright as her name.

Five hours later, as the house quieted down after dinner, Katya crushed the part of her that remembered only Dev’s tenderness as he took her into his arms, and instead picked up the gauntlet he’d thrown down that first night. She should have done it yesterday, but Dev had been so busy, the lines of strain around his mouth so deep, she’d hesitated to interrupt him. It would be so easy to keep doing that—find excuses to put it off—but she would never be allowed any freedom until Dev saw the truth of who she was. And she needed that freedom to escape.

The drive to go north was a clawing need in her throat by now, a hunger she had to physically fight to keep herself from taking irrational risks.

Narrowing her telepathic senses to a fine, fine point, she sent a thought to Dev. He couldn’t hear the words, but he’d feel the attempt.

We need to talk.

She snapped back into her mind before Tag could pick up on it.

A curt knock sounded on her door an instant later. “Come in.”

“What was that?” Walking in, Dev closed the door behind himself and leaned back on it, arms folded. Instead of the suit she’d become used to seeing in New York, he was dressed once more in those jeans that made him even more dangerously attractive and a plain white T-shirt.

Itching to touch him, she nonetheless remained on the other side of the room. “A way to get your attention.”

“You got it.”

“It’s time.” She walked to stand at the foot of the bed. “You need to go into my mind.”

A single brutal word. “I told you, that’s not happening.”

“Why?” She stepped closer. “Because it’ll make you feel like a monster?”

He jerked as if he’d been shot. “Yes.”

“Tough,” she said, refusing to buckle under the urge to just give in, to let him have his way. If she did, they’d never move beyond this point. And every time she looked into his eyes, no matter how much he wanted her, she would see distrust. It hurt. So much more than she could have ever imagined. “If I can bear it, you can do it.”

He closed the space between them to glare down at her. “But here’s the thing, Katya. You can’t force me to invade your mind.”

She fisted her hands, squeezing so tight her bones ground together in pain. “If I drop my shields and you don’t come in, allowing me to close them around your entry point, my mind will be wide open to anyone with psychic ability.”

“You think that matters to me?” So hard, so angry.

“Yes, it matters,” she forced out through a throat raw with emotion. “Because you’ve taken responsibility for me. You might have to kill me, but until then, you’ll protect me.”

“Nice and manipulative of you.”

It took everything she had to keep her tone level. “A woman’s got to do what a woman’s got to do.”

“Even if it destroys the other party?” A soft question that cut through her defenses with razor sharpness.

Bleeding, she looked up. “Will it truly be that bad for you?”

A harsh bark of laughter. “Haven’t you been able to access the files you have on me?”

“I don’t have those memories.” She held his gaze, suddenly dead certain that if she forced him to do this, it would kill the last fragments of that indefinable “something” between them. There would be no coming back from it. It wouldn’t have mattered to a true Psy, to a person who saw everything as part of a cost-benefit ratio.

But it mattered to her, mattered beyond bearing.

“Okay,” she said, dropping her head even as the pragmatic side of her screamed in rebellion. “Okay.”

Dev felt Katya’s acquiescence like a blow. “Why?”

“Because sometimes the price is too high.”

He caught her hand when she would have turned away, tugging her to his chest and taking her mouth in a furious kind of possession before she could do more than gasp. She’d backed away because it would hurt him.

It shattered him—he had always been the protector, the one who looked after others. Never had he expected that the enemy would try to protect his heart.

Echoes of sensation, too-soft whispers in his head.

He bit at her lower lip. “Shh. Tag will hear.”

Her lips curved into a startled “Oh.”

Taking advantage, he swept into her mouth, stroking his tongue against hers, drawing the intoxicating taste of her into his lungs. The whispers ceased, and he was unaccountably annoyed. “I’ll have to learn,” he said, kissing his way across her jaw, “how to shield your projecting from other telepaths.” Because that was an intimacy he’d allow no one to invade.

Katya’s hand clenched in his hair as he nipped at the slender line of her throat, only just restraining the savage need to bite hard enough to mark. “That assumes,” she said, her voice breathy, “you’ll have a lot of chances to practice.”

“And your point is?”

Her gaze was dark with arousal when she blinked them open. “Dev.”

He waited for her to tell him they shouldn’t keep doing this, damn sure he wasn’t capable of letting her go. Instead, she stood on tiptoe, put her hands on his shoulders, and stole a kiss that was as delicate as it was passionate, as feminine as it was powerful. It just about broke him, driving him to the edge of surrender. All he wanted to do was tumble her into bed and strip her inch by slow inch.

But she had the reins . . . and she took her own sweet time. When she finally stepped back, his entire body was vibrating with pure, undiluted hunger.

“I don’t understand,” she murmured, lifting her fingertips to touch kiss-swollen lips, “how my race could’ve ever given up such exquisite sensation.”

His cock pushed against the zipper of his pants, the metal threatening to turn him into a eunuch. “Katya.”

As a warning, it had no effect. Dropping her hand from her lips, she clenched it over her navel, as if soothing some inward ache. “I feel so . . . hungry, so hot, as if my skin is about to burst.”

He shuddered, voice lost.

“Is it always like this?” she asked, stroking her hand over her abdomen and back down. Over and over. Until he strode across and replaced her hand with his. She sucked in a breath. “Dev—you’re making it worse.” But she pressed closer to him, sliding her own hand into the collar of his shirt, seeking skin.

“The things I want to do to you,” he said, barely resisting the urge to pull up her top and slip his hand underneath . . . dip below. He already knew she’d be soft and wet for him, a silken fist he could almost feel.

Her lips trailed up his neck. “You didn’t answer my question.”

It took him several seconds to remember what she was talking about. “No, it’s not always like this.”

“So if I kiss another man—”

“I’ll kill him.” It came out with ice-cold precision, though his body was burning from the inside out. Tangling his hand in her hair once more, he pulled back her head. “We clear on that?”

A slow blink. “If my anthropological knowledge is correct, it’s only changelings who’re meant to be so possessive.” Scientific words, husky voice, a sweet feminine body cradling the painful jut of his arousal.

“Come on then,” he said, shifting his hand to cup her bottom. “Push me and see what happens.” Changing position slightly, he tilted her up . . . and settled the heat between her thighs right where he wanted it. She gasped and gripped his shoulders. He smiled.

“D-Dev.”

Her stutter was adorable, he decided. Sexy as hell, too. That mouth, those lips, he could look at them for hours, imagine exactly what he wanted to do. “Give me a second,” he said, and broke the delicious contact long enough to walk her backward—distracting her with nibbling little kisses that had her nails digging into his shoulders.

She made a startled sound when her back met the wall.

Stroking his hands down to her hips, he ran his fingers to the button at the top of her jeans. Her eyes went huge, but she didn’t stop him. Thanking the gods, he undid the closure and tugged down her zipper.

Katya knew she should pull away but she had no willpower where Devraj Santos and his wicked hands were concerned. When he tugged at the sides of her jeans, she shifted back, let him push the garment down. He made her lift her legs one at a time as he pulled it completely off her body.

Then, still crouching in front of her, he ran his hands up the backs of her legs.

The sensation sent waves of blackness rolling through her mind, but this black fire was as hot, as wild, and as masculine as the man who looked up at her with such sensual possession in his eyes. “Give in,” he whispered. “Let me make you feel good.”

It was an incredible leap for her to make, for a woman who’d never known intimacy, but she had to do this . . . because there would be no second chance.