Caressed by Ice

CHAPTER 19

Brenna went very, very quiet against him. “Pull back,” she whispered. “Pull back.”

“Does he matter so much to you?” He could taste the structural strength of Greg’s skull, knew precisely how much pressure it would take to collapse it.

She snapped up her head, eyes frightened. “No. You’re the only one who matters. You kill Greg and Hawke might have to execute you!”

He considered it. “He kissed you.”

“He tried. Damn it, Judd. Pull back!” Giving a frustrated cry when he didn’t reply, she stood on tiptoe and pressed a row of kisses along his jaw.

Soft. So unbearably soft. He’d never felt anything like it. “Now you’ve had ten times what he didn’t come close to getting.” Another kiss on his throat. “He matters nothing. So pull back or you’re going back in my bad book.”

“Was I out?” He broke the psychic thread that had kept him aware of Greg’s physical status and position.

“Maybe.” She nuzzled at his throat. “Did you let Greg go?”

“Yes.” He slid his hand down to her nape. “He was in your family’s living area when I came in, but I’m guessing your brothers have gotten rid of him by now.”

She dropped her forehead to his chest, letting him grip her nape in a hold most Psy would’ve read as threatening. “How do I face them?” There was deep humiliation in her voice. “Greg won’t keep his mouth shut—everyone will know.”

“He won’t say a word. Trust me.”

“But my brothers and Hawke. They know. I remember their faces when they came in before. They think I’m crazy.”

“Then prove them wrong.”

“What if they’re not?” She sounded shaken, shocked. “I lost it, Judd. I really lost it.”

“We’ll talk about that later.” They did have a problem to deal with and it had to be dealt with, not swept under the rug. “But first you’re going to shower and get dressed so you can reassure your family.” He spoke to her as he might to a new recruit, giving firm, short instructions. “Go on. I’ll hold the fort.” Releasing his grasp on her neck, he slid his hand down the curve of her back before lifting it away. A small indulgence. Worth the red-hot skewer of dissonance shoving through his spinal column.

She took a deep breath, then broke away. “You’ll be here when I come out?”

He knew how much that question had to have cost this proud changeling. “Even Andrew couldn’t move me.”

Her lips quirked a little. “He’s okay, you know. Just over-protective.”

“I know.” More than that, he understood.

Nodding, she turned and disappeared behind a door he assumed led to the bathroom. He leaned his back on the bedroom door—no one was getting through. He had made a promise and he would carry it through. Even as he thought that, vibrations traveled down his spine as someone banged on the door. “Brenna?”

“She’ll be out soon.” Judd shored up the barrier with Tk.

The bathroom door opened approximately ten minutes later. Brenna stood there wrapped in a fluffy blue towel that only just reached her upper thighs and seemed in precarious danger of falling off the rise of her breasts. “I forgot to take in a change of clothes.” She blushed. “Didn’t want to put that robe back on.”

Since he found he had trouble enunciating words, Judd simply nodded. She walked shyly into the room and began to gather her clothing from the bureau. He caught a glimpse of pale yellow lace as she took things from a top drawer and ordered himself to look away. There was no reason for him to invade her privacy. “Would you like me to step outside?”

Brenna glanced over her shoulder, eyes huge. “Stay. You make me feel safe.”

“Not what people usually feel around me.”

She shrugged and he had to fight the urge to throw out some Tk and catch the towel he was sure was on the verge of being dislodged. “You don’t usually cuddle people who are hysterical after a major freak-out.”

Cuddle? It took considerable effort to force his mind back on track. “I said we’ll talk about that later. Get dressed before your brothers decide to break down the door.”

She turned back to her dresser and grabbed a pair of jeans and a blue sweater. Her legs were bare nearly all the way up and no matter how hard he tried not to look, he couldn’t drag his attention from her. Her skin appeared as soft as her lips had felt, smooth and flushed pink from the heat of the shower.

A lightning bolt of dissonance shot through his spine, strong enough to cause spots in front of his eyes. Ironically, he managed it using the same tools he’d been given to handle interrogation under torture. He knew he was treading on thin ice—he’d come close to killing mindlessly today. That lack of discipline indicated severe degradation in critical components of his conditioning. Even knowing that, he couldn’t stop his eyes from drinking in the sight of her, his body tightening in unfamiliar need.

Brenna spun around without warning, clothes clutched to her chest. Her breasts plumped over the top, drawing his eye. “I can feel you watching me.”

“Impossible.” That towel was going to unravel. If she moved her hands, it would fall. He decided he wouldn’t use Tk to stop its descent after all.

She scowled. “Are you saying I’m not worth looking at?”

“I didn’t mean to imply that.” Was her skin that soft all over? That…biteable.

A second bolt shot through his spine, originating from his brain stem and traveling down. Designed to cripple an ordinary Psy. But he was an Arrow.

“You have that male look in your eyes.”

In spite of the battle he was fighting to segregate the pain, it suddenly struck him that this might be distressing to her after her recent relapse. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

Brenna wanted to laugh. “Why not?” She walked back to the bathroom, an extra sway to her hips. Damn but the man had some timing. There she’d been feeling about as attractive as a psychotic rat and then he’d looked at her like that.

As if he wanted to lick her straight up.

She shivered. Pure male heat, that’s what she’d seen in those Psy eyes, raw and hungry and dominant. She pressed her thighs together at the images that assaulted her brain. He’d try to take over in bed, of that she had no doubt. He wouldn’t let her pet him till…after. The man liked to be in control. Good thing she was no wilting violet.

“You’re all talk, Brenna Shane,” she muttered, dropping the towel and pulling on her panties over flesh sensitized from her thoughts alone. What would happen if he actually touched her there? She sucked in a breath, breasts rising. “A mess, that’s what I am.”

As today had made clear, she could flirt with the best of them, but getting down to business made her shatter into a thousand pieces. What she couldn’t understand was why she’d gone after Greg in the first place—it was more bizarre behavior on her part. Sure, she’d been mad at Judd, but it wasn’t like her to try to inspire jealousy by using another man. And Greg was in no way her type. Still, he hadn’t deserved what she’d done.

Wincing, she wondered how bad a mess she’d made of his face. He’d hardly even touched his lips to hers when she’d felt the dark wave of violent insanity pour over her, thick and choking. The first few minutes after that were blacked out. All she could remember was seeing Greg backing off, hands pressed to a bleeding face. Just like her attempt at wreaking revenge, the disproportionate response made no sense.

Enrique had never kissed her. She’d been an animal to him, to be tortured and experimented on. A lab rat. It revolted her that the last time she’d been in wolf form, it had been in front of him. He’d somehow learned to force the change on her, humiliating her by taking what she most treasured and turning it into pain and a kind of psychic rape she had never imagined might exist. In the end, he’d torn her changeling heart right out of her.

“Brenna.”

She started. “I’m coming.” Shaking off the memories, she finished getting ready, then checked that her hair was okay. The short strands were another mark he’d left, one she hated seeing in the mirror.

Judd was standing almost on the doorstep and she nearly walked into him. It was all she could do not to hide in his arms. “I’m ready.” She directed a bright smile his way.

He looked at her with the pure focus of a hunter. “You don’t have to pretend for me.”

She swallowed and let the smile fade. “For my brothers then. For Hawke. I broke their hearts once. I won’t do it again.” Seeing that angry pain in their eyes—the pain of men who hadn’t been able to protect what they loved—devastated her. “Lie if you have to,” she told Judd, “but don’t let on how serious this was.” She knew it had been very serious, a nightmare that had crushed her hope of normality.

“Alright. But you can’t try to pretend that nothing happened.” A command. “That’ll only make them more concerned.”

She decided to listen to him. “Okay.” When he moved to open the bedroom door, she saw the jagged tears in the black wool of his sweater. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ve told you, they’re surface cuts. It’ll likely calm your brothers to see that you drew Psy blood.”

She laughed and that was when he opened the door. Andrew was arguing with Riley but froze the instant she exited the room, Judd’s silent darkness at her back. Hawke was the first to move forward. “You look good, Bren.”

“I feel good.” She pressed her skin against his hand when he cupped her cheek.

Hawke’s ice blue eyes looked over her head. “You brought her back.”

“She had nothing to come back from.” Absolute Psy calm as he lied for her. “You mistook a small setback for a complete degeneration.”

Hawke scowled. “That was a hell of a lot more than a small setback.”

“Bren,” Drew interrupted, breaking Hawke’s touch to pull her into his arms. His hug was crushing. “Greg swore he didn’t touch you. Did he?”

She knew that if she said yes, Greg’s life was forfeit. As it would have already been had she not stayed Judd’s hand. Her Psy’s reaction, on the other hand, was a different story altogether. That had been no act of emotionless Silence.

“Greg did nothing,” she said. “He merely had the bad luck to be the first male I tried anything sexual with since the abduction.”

Her brother released her. “I’ve never seen you like that.”

“And you won’t again.” She didn’t have any other explanation to give him and was hoping he wouldn’t push. Then he opened his mouth.

But Judd beat him to it. “Sascha and I have been preparing for such a lapse, though we didn’t believe it would occur so abruptly.”

“What?” Walking closer, Riley tugged Brenna into the curve of his arm, turning her so she was no longer standing with her back to Judd.

“Your sister has a backbone of steel.” Dark chocolate eyes met hers. “She refused to cry or release her emotions in any but the most restrained fashion during the healing.”

“Building up the pressure,” Brenna completed, moving from Riley’s hold to stand beside Judd again. “I should’ve listened to Sascha.” The healer had urged her to embrace and accept that she’d been hurt, raped in the most sadistic of fashions, her mind stripped and then filled with things that were not her own, her body tortured. But Brenna had simply wanted to move past it, to pick up the threads of her life as if they had never been snapped.

“You can listen to Sascha when she arrives,” Hawke ordered. “She’ll be here soon.”

“No.” It came out without thought. At the wary looks on their faces, she tempered her tone. “I need time to sort this out in my own head. Judd can help me if necessary.”

“He’s an assassin, not a healer.” Riley’s voice dropped close to a growl.

It wounded her that because of her, her generous, forgiving brothers had become so inflexible in their hatred of the Psy as a race. “Riley—”

“You’ll see Sascha,” he ordered.

“Enough.” Judd’s voice held an unmistakable tone of command. “Bullying her into seeing anyone won’t help the situation.”

Riley took an aggressive step forward. “We call this taking care of our own. You’ve done your bit, so get lost. No one wants you here.”

Brenna felt her stomach drop. If Judd had been a changeling, those words would’ve been reason enough for a fight. A big one. And after having seen the look in his eyes when he’d spoken of executing Greg, she wasn’t so sure about his control. Stepping back in what she hoped was an unobtrusive manner, she let the fingers of one hand brush over his thigh. The muscles were bunched, ready to attack.

“Brenna is perfectly capable of taking care of herself,” he said. “If you want to help her, stop making her feel incapable at every turn.”

She winced inwardly at that freezing tone. Oh, he was pissed, but covering it with a layer of Psy arrogance. “He’s right.” She looked at Riley, her hand flattening on Judd’s thigh. Strong warm muscle. It hadn’t relaxed even a fraction. “You two need to back off before you suffocate me. You, too,” she said to Hawke.

White lines bracketed his mouth. “Until we figure out what the hyenas were up to, the rules still apply. You’ve become a symbol of changeling strength—if anyone succeeds in taking you out, it’ll lead to blood. So stay in the den or within the inner perimeter.”

It chafed but she nodded, deciding to fight one battle at a time. Right now, that involved keeping her brothers and Judd from tearing into each other. “But you have to send Drew back to San Diego and reassign Riley so he’s not in the den so much.”

Her brothers growled. Hawke raised a hand to cut them off. “That’s family business. I need them here.”

“Then I want a room at the other end of the den,” she insisted, deriving strength from the dark angel at her back. “Or I swear I’m moving back to the city.”

Andrew swore a blue streak. “Now you’re being—”

“Don’t.” Judd’s quiet menace.

Her middle sibling went motionless. “How do I know you’re not…” His voice trailed off as she let out a choked cry, able to feel her face twisting into a mask of shock.

“That he’s not what? Controlling me?” she asked, throat thick with hurt. “Is that what you think of me—that I have no spine unless a Psy is forcing it on me?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Then you shouldn’t have said it!” She chose to turn the heartbreaking pain into anger. “I need you to stand by me, not chip away at my confidence. Do you know the only person in this room who’s never made me feel inadequate? Judd.”

Andrew sucked in a breath, as if he’d been punched. Riley was the one who answered. “You take these rooms. They’re the most secure in terms of their location. We’ll find bunks in the soldiers’ section.” He left without giving her a chance to respond, forcing Drew to go with him.

Hawke shot Judd a measuring glance. “I’m sending someone else to cover the cabin region for now.”

“Understood.”

Hawke left the next second.

Finally, she was alone. Except for the assassin at her back. “I need you to go, too.”

The muscled thigh under her palm bunched. “I know what they don’t.”

She broke the intimate contact—though her body wanted to explore it, to roll the feel of his hard body around her—and turned. “I’ll talk to Sascha soon. Promise.”

Cool Psy eyes met hers. “I’ll be in the den if you need me.”

“Where did you go yesterday?” A tendril of remembered anger wormed its way to the surface.

“Somewhere safe.”

She frowned. “The den is safe.”

“Not for me.” Not when he was unconscious and unable to defend himself. “At least a percentage of the population believes I killed Timothy.”

“They’ll get over it.” She shifted her balance from one foot to the other, then back again before continuing. “I spoke to Marlee.”

He waited.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was being such a bitch about Tk-Psy. I swear I didn’t.” She swallowed but didn’t attempt to break eye contact. “There’s so much in my head that doesn’t make sense, like the way I went after Greg. I don’t even like the guy.”

Something dark in Judd reared its head at the mention of the other man. “See if Sascha and Faith have any new ideas about what might be happening. I’ll do some digging on my own.”

She thrust a hand through her hair. “I will. But the thing with Greg—”

“Don’t say his name in my hearing ever again.”

Brenna’s mouth dropped open. “You’re still furious.” Her voice was a whisper.

She was wrong. If he’d been furious, blood would be soaking these walls, the smell of human tissue thick in the air. “Make those calls.” He left before she could ask him any more questions. The answers might send her screaming.

Sascha turned to Lucas as they lay in bed, thinking over the call she’d received a few hours ago. “I’m worried about Brenna.”

“I thought you said she was recovering.” His arm came around her, urging her to sprawl over his chest.

“Pay attention.” But she was where he’d wanted her.

A satisfied cat smile. “I am. Tell me about the wolf.”

“I can’t. Confidentiality.”

His hand slipped over her naked bottom. “Bet I can make you talk.”

“It’s not playtime.” She nipped at his chin though the urge to purr was strong.

He moved his hand to her lower back, his version of behaving. “Tell me.”

“I don’t know what to do.” What Brenna had told her this evening—in particular the sudden changes in personality and behavior—was deeply troubling. “I’m worried I missed some of the damage in her psyche.” Her mind-healing abilities were still new to her, having been suppressed by Silence for most of her life. A lot of it was instinctive, but Brenna’s mind had been so badly torn apart. “Half the time, I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Lucas’s arms tightened. “You brought her back. Don’t second-guess yourself now.”

“No,” she disagreed. “She brought herself back. Her will, Lucas, it’s like a steel flame, one that refuses to go out. Brenna should be dead right now.”

“If she survived Enrique, then she can survive her own mind.”

Sascha buried her face in the curve of Lucas’s neck, breathing in his scent. “I’m not sure. Faith told me that most F-Psy in the PsyNet eventually go mad, and they’re trained to deal with mental pressure. Brenna isn’t.”

Lucas’s hand passed over her back, long soothing strokes from her neck down to the curve of her bottom and back. A panther’s way of petting. “She might surprise you. She sure as hell surprised Hawke with her latest stunt—I had a chat with him about the hyena situation.” His anger that someone had dared touch their cubs put a hard edge in his voice, but right then, there was also a touch of predatory amusement.

She knew it had to be caused by Hawke’s apparent problems with Brenna—the two alphas hadn’t really learned to play nice with each other yet. “What did she do?”

“She’s hooked up with the damn Psy.”

Sascha snapped up her head. “Judd? Brenna’s with Judd Lauren?”

Her cat licked at her exposed neck. “You smell good.”

Sascha tried to keep thinking. “But he’s so cold.”

“We changelings have ways of thawing out you Psy.”

Sascha could hardly argue with her own body melting. But even as she gave in to her cat, a part of her worried. Something was very wrong with Brenna, and Judd Lauren’s icy reserve might only exacerbate the problem—he couldn’t give the changeling woman what she needed to heal herself. Touch. Warmth. Unwavering affection.