Caressed by Ice

CHAPTER 34

Her eyes went huge but it seemed to take her a few seconds to get the words out. “How”—she swallowed—“how do you know you’ll even like the taste?”

His changeling was playing with him. And tonight, he could play back. “Good point. Let me do a taste test.” Holding her gaze, he stroked a finger through her liquid heat, barely entering her body before withdrawing. Then he lifted that finger and sucked it into his mouth, aware of Brenna’s body flushing around him.

When he withdrew the finger, she said, “So?” A very sexual question.

He answered by dipping his head and using his mouth on her. Her cry was husky, arousing. The heel of her foot pressed hard into his back as she twisted. When her other leg came up over his shoulder, he spread her open with the fingers of one hand and continued to taste. Taste as only a man who’d been starved could taste. With everything in him, with absolute concentration and utter focus.

Brenna was trying to breathe, but it wasn’t working very well, her air coming in broken pants. Judd was—oh, Lord, he was destroying her with pleasure. For a man who had never done this before, he was blindingly good. It made her very curious as to just what kind of research he’d been doing.

He nipped at her with his teeth.

She whimpered and ordered herself to find some shred of control at the same time. Otherwise Judd’s arrogance would become impossible. Except that he was doing the most exquisite things to her with that clever mouth and control seemed a foreign concept.

His finger touched her entrance, circled, teased. But he didn’t push in. Then he did it again. And again. And again. By the time he did begin to slide that teasing finger inside of her, she was so crazy with anticipation that the spike of fear her mind associated with an invasion of her body was buried under an avalanche of sensation.

“You’re too tight,” he said, sounding completely and deliciously dominant.

She squeezed her inner muscles around his finger in retaliation. “Tight,” she managed to say, “is considered good.”

He began moving that finger in and out. “Not when you’re so tight, I might cause you pain.”

It was getting impossible to have a coherent thought but she tried. “Judd, baby, do it before I lose what’s left of my mind.” She’d felt the rigid length of him against her, knew how much he wanted her. All that hot, hard flesh…“I want you inside me.”

“You need a little more foreplay.”

“I take it back!” she cried. “Foreplay sucks!” Why had she not realized that Judd’s icy control, when melted, would translate into endless patience in bed?

“I disagree.” Then he was kissing her again, tasting her most intimate flesh as if it were a delicacy he’d waited a lifetime to savor. The dark red of desire washed across her mind and when she surrendered, it was to the depths of her being.

Judd felt Brenna’s surrender within his mind, as if he were reading her innermost thoughts with some heretofore unknown sense. Raising his head, he pushed out of her hold, kissed his way up her body, and braced himself with one arm on the bed, the hand of his other still between her thighs.

When he kissed her, she threw her arms around his neck and gave him everything he asked for. And when he went to push a second finger into her, she didn’t protest, only breaking the kiss on a gasp and moving one hand to clench on his biceps. He spoke with his lips against hers. “Brenna?”

Her eyes fluttered open, bright and extraordinarily beautiful. “Come inside me now. I need you.”

The simple request shot his plan to hell. “I’m afraid of hurting you.” Not physically but mentally, psychically.

She pushed at his shoulders. “I want to switch.”

Understanding, he withdrew his fingers on her moan and moved off her onto his back. Ceding control was difficult for him but he trusted Brenna on a level he’d never before trusted anyone. When she sat up to straddle him, he was stunned speechless at the proud female beauty of her. He luxuriated in the feeling, conscious that he’d have to retreat as soon as his power regenerated.

Reaching down, she closed slender fingers around the painful length of his erection. He gritted his teeth and fisted his hands around the bars in the headboard but didn’t take his eyes off her. The play of emotions over her face was pure seduction. Pleasure, surprise, hunger.

“You’re right,” she whispered, examining his engorged flesh with those bright eyes. “I’m going to feel every inch of you going in.” She shifted to put her body in the right spot, then used her hand to guide the tip of him into her before letting go.

He stopped breathing for a few seconds as the pleasure traveled from the apex of his erection down the length of his body. Until that moment, he’d never realized the mind-blowing sensitivity of that bundle of nerves—how could his people have given up this incredible rush of sensation? When he opened eyes he hadn’t been aware of closing, he found Brenna on her knees above him, her head tipped back.

“Look at me.”

She obeyed with a shudder that vibrated through him, reaching out her hands at the same time. He raised his own and clasped them to hers. Pushing against his hold, she began to lower her body, accepting him centimeter by slow centimeter. Their eyes never broke contact and the intimacy was so intense, Judd knew that had the dissonance been functioning, it would have killed him.

She stopped suddenly, chest heaving. “You’re stretching me so tight, I can’t bear it.” Then she groaned and moved again. “Sweet mercy.”

He was close to begging for mercy himself, burned by the scalding heat of her, thrown into a sensory inferno more acute than anything he had ever before felt. His hands tightened on hers, but she didn’t complain. Instead, taking a deep breath, she squeezed her fingers around his and bore down on his erection, taking him inside to the hilt.

Pure sexual pleasure/pain.

His back bowed as he fought to remain conscious under the overload. For an Arrow trained to resist sensation at all costs, feeling this much was akin to being thrown into the most dangerous of flames.

It was Brenna’s touch that brought him back from the edge—she surrounded him, a seductive mix of grace, female demand, and hunger. Opening his eyes, he found her sitting stock still. “What’s wrong?” His voice was scraped raw, as if he’d been screaming.

“I’m getting used to you.” Her eyes came closer as she leaned in, stretching out his arms until his hands lay beside his head. “You”—she brushed her lips over his—“fill me up.”

He groaned, straining not to rise up and take command. That she’d accepted the intrusion of his body was more than enough. This time. Because he was very definitely repeating this, no matter what he had to do to cause another flameout.

Brenna kissed him again and this time it was wild and furious and wet. “Move in me,” she whispered. Releasing his hands, she placed her own, palms down, on his chest.

He was incapable of speech so he just put his hands on her hips and began lifting and lowering her in rhythm with the movements of his own body. All his research had disappeared from his brain—what guided him was age-old instinct and an unrelenting tenderness toward his lover.

At first he kept it slow, letting her become accustomed to him as he drowned in the maddening ecstasy of her touch. Then she began to urge a faster rhythm and he responded by slamming into her, raising his body as she lowered hers. Crying out, she dug her fingers into his chest and rode him, wild and uninhibited.

When she made a frustrated sound, he caught her and flipped her to her back. She didn’t protest, twining her legs around his waist. Reaching down, he rubbed at the hard bud of her clitoris as he took over the driving rhythm, pounding them both into a pleasure that seemed impossible. Somewhere along the way, he lost the ability to think.

Brenna’s legs were jelly. “I don’t think I can move,” she mumbled into Judd’s neck, where her face was currently buried.

His response was a grunt. His hand stroked her bottom once before falling away—as if he didn’t have the energy to do more.

She ran her fingers over his chest, nuzzled at his pulse, and took the scent of him into her lungs. She already smelled of him, but from today, the scent would be inside her very pores. It made her feel possessed, protected, adored. It was good to belong to him, even if he did have a tendency toward dominance.

“Once more.”

She was sure she was having an aural hallucination. “You did not just say ‘once more.’”

“Before the Tk comes back.”

She shook her head. “You’re crazy.” After that loving, he’d be lucky if she moved anytime this century. “Good thing I like crazy.”

“One hour. Nap. Then again.”

Despite her exhaustion, she found the femaleness in her reacting to the determination in his tone. “You are so sexy.”

“I know.”

It made her smile. “Yeah?”

“This beautiful changeling keeps telling me.” His hand closed over the back of her nape. “Now sleep.”

She did. Exactly one hour later, she woke to the touch of male fingers and lips, her body relaxing in the most sensual way. They danced more languidly this time, and Judd let her cuddle and pet him as much as she wanted.

His muscles were hard and warm under her fingertips, his skin holding the flavor of salt and man. It made her deeply happy to be so intimately connected to him. “I want to do this every day for the rest of my life.”

His eyes were sparks of gold in the darkness. “Yes.”

But he had to leave her when the Tk regenerated. “Brenna—”

“Shh.” She shook her head, aching to cross the divide between them. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” It was obvious he didn’t want to go. Equally obvious to her heightened knowledge of him was the pain—the dissonance—he refused to betray. “Tomorrow morning, baby.”

He finally left after several more minutes of persuasion on her part. Only then did she lie back against the pillow and let the tears come. Was this all they’d ever have—stolen moments when Judd was stripped of a crucial part of his psyche? It seemed so hopeless. She might’ve cried into the night, but exhaustion took her under after a few minutes, and when she woke, hope reawakened with her.

“I made love to Judd Lauren,” she whispered, amazed. Even a month ago, that would have seemed a fool’s dream. “Then I guess I’m a fool.” Smiling, she pushed off the bed, showered, and grabbed a bite to eat. Afterward, knowing it wouldn’t do any good for Judd to be trapped in the confines of an apartment stamped with the psychic echoes of their loving, she headed toward one of the specialized tech chambers to do some work.

Judd found her halfway to her destination. “Don’t you need to be at DarkRiver?”

No words of romance, but his eyes held such dark fire that even as her body thrilled to life, she worried. “Judd, you have to pull back or the dissonance will punish you.”

“Never thought I’d hear you say that.” The intensity of his gaze didn’t change.

Shaking her head at his stubbornness, she answered his question. “I’ve done most of my bit in terms of programming—Dorian will give me a call if he needs anything.”

Her words cut through the sensual resonance still vibrating through Judd’s whole body, reminding him of something very important. “Why did you leave DarkRiver yesterday? Who called?”

Brenna paled. “It was an ambush. That bastard could’ve killed Drew! It was only because Riley gave chase and scared him off that he didn’t keep shooting.”

He wanted to hold her, but couldn’t chance bodily contact, not with the memory of their intimacy so fresh. His hand fisted. “Do you know the identity of the caller?”

“The message was passed on by DarkRiver’s main receptionist.” She thrust a hand through her hair. “It came in through their general line. We should have known something was wrong, but we weren’t thinking because the message said that there had been a Psy attack on the pups and several were dead.”

“Riley didn’t call back to confirm?” It was standard operating procedure in most tactical and military units.

She winced. “I think he was too angry…and the shooter counted on that.”

Emotion as a weakness—it was what he’d always been taught. “Considering the import of the message, why didn’t the cats know?” Clay, as a sentinel, would certainly have been informed by the receptionist.

“The message was in the code Pack soldiers use,” she revealed. “It said that this time there was incontrovertible proof of DarkRiver being involved. God, we were stupid!”

“Not necessarily. If it was in code, then Riley was correct to assume it came from a legitimate source. Even if he had called back, the shooter may have been prepared to intercept.” Smart. But in his cleverness, Timothy’s killer might have made a fatal mistake. “How many people know that code?”

“I have no idea.”

“I’ll ask Riley. Can you trace the call itself?”

“I’ll see if Dorian can hook into DarkRiver’s comm system, but if the shooter used one of the public phones in the den…” She shrugged. “How can we have bred such evil? I can’t imagine it, and yet it’s true.” She sounded angry and sad at the same time. “Here’s my stop—I’ll probably be inside the chamber for hours. See you for dinner?”

He knew she was deliberately putting distance between them, too perceptive not to understand the devastating impact it had had on him to experience the fury of their intimacy after feeling nothing for most of his life. “Yes. How secure is this room?”

She showed him the security system. “All sorts of tech work goes on in these rooms so they’re close to impregnable, more to protect the public than us, but once I go in and lock the door, no one can override the lock. Don’t worry—I have no intention of making this easy for that piece of scum.”

Satisfied, he left to find Riley. “How many men and women know that code?” he asked the lieutenant.

“About a hundred.” Riley’s voice was a growl. “Forty of them were on scheduled watches in other areas at the time of the shooting. That gives me sixty to work through.”

It was still a large number. “We need to detail their movements over the period of the attack.”

“Yeah, except most of the soldiers are single and wolf-independent. It’s going to take time and this psycho’s starting to lose it—using that code was stupidity on his part.” Riley didn’t have to add that stupid or not, the killer was hunting Brenna in earnest now.

Judd continued to have the feeling he was missing something, but no matter how long he thought about it, he couldn’t fathom an answer. “Do you want my assistance?”

Riley paused. “No. I can’t justify you trying to break open loyal men’s and women’s minds over one bastard.” But he looked as though he wanted to consent. “You keep Bren safe and I’ll track him down.”

Judd had no intention of following that order—not when their quarry was a threat to Brenna—but he simply nodded. Leaving Riley, he made another call. “I can’t come down today,” he told Sascha. “I apologize.”

“Don’t worry—I was thinking of suggesting that anyway,” she said, to his surprise. “We did so much yesterday—the deer need time to recover. This kind of healing is slow going.”

Hanging up after discussing when she might need him again, Judd returned to his room. Though the hunt for the killer occupied a considerable portion of his brain—as he purposefully approached the problem from a different angle from Riley so as not to duplicate their efforts—there was something else he had to think about.

Reaching up, he began using the exercise bar to do chin-ups. The repetitive act helped focus his mind as it multitasked. One thing was certain—he refused to never again experience the intimacy of being with Brenna. It wasn’t the sex, though that had been the most amazing experience of his life. It was the way he’d made her laugh, made her smile, made her complain and then cuddle. All because she’d felt safe, reassured by the strength of their emotional connection.

He would not steal that feeling from her. And he most definitely was not going to surrender her to another male who could give her what she needed. The idea made him want to break something. However, regardless of what he’d considered in the heat of passion, he couldn’t keep forcing flameouts in order to protect her from his Tk-Cell. Which left him with a choice and a question he’d rejected earlier—how to disable the Silence Protocol, in particular the dissonance, without unleashing the killing rage of his gift.

His phone beeped. Dropping down from the bar, he picked it up. “Judd.”

“It’s Hawke. Can you meet me by the waterfall?”

He realized the alpha probably wanted to ask him about the deprogramming he’d done with the PineWood hyenas. “I’m on my way.” The walk to the exit brought him into contact with several changelings. That wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was the response his presence elicited. Smiles, waves, shouted hellos and even slaps on the back when he didn’t move away fast enough.

He’d almost reached his goal when Indigo stopped him. “I’ve got something you’ll want to hear.”