Cipher

Chapter Nine

They found the zip drive and appropriate cable in a stack in the corner of Alec’s home office, but one thing was conspicuously absent. “No power cord.” Andrew’s frustration boiled up. “Do you see one anywhere?”

Kat lifted a tangled mess of cords in her fist. “Only about twenty of them. I’m guessing he puts every cord he finds in this box and forgets it.”

“Damn it.” He angled the blue case toward her and tapped the front. “Check for the logo first.”

She glanced at him, both eyebrows raised and her head tilted at an angle that almost screamed, No, really?

It felt good because at least it wasn’t guarded, and he choked back a laugh. “Okay, Ms. Expert. You’ve got this. What do you need me for?”

“Just stand there and look pretty,” she muttered, taking the drive from him. Two minutes and nine cords later, she let out a whoop of victory and shifted to her knee. “Got it, just have to plug this in now…”

He stepped back to give her room. “If it doesn’t work, are we heading back to Birmingham to visit Ben?”

“Mmm. We could, but he’s really better if the data’s encrypted or corrupted. He won’t be able to pull it off a disk that’s not connected to anything.” She plugged in the drive as she talked, every movement quick and efficient. “Honestly, I don’t really know how it works, and God knows I’ve tried to figure it out.

Something with electricity though. Having a signal. He needs a way in, like a network or an access point.”

It made Ben sound like a comic superhero. “He’s wireless?” Andrew asked, amused.

“Uh-huh.” Kat scrunched up her nose, the look she always got when she was trying not to laugh. When she leaned forward to reach one of the cords at the rear of the computer, her ponytail slid away from the back of her neck, revealing the vivid black ink twining up toward her hairline.

He stared at the ink for a moment before dragging his gaze away. “How likely is this information not to be somehow encrypted?”

“No clue.” Powering up the computer resulted in a buzzing whir, clearly loud enough that even Kat heard it. She frowned as she turned on the monitor. “I guess it depends on if my mom put the data on there, or had someone else do it. She was okay with computers, but I was fixing her hosed SMTP settings by the time I was nine. I doubt she was messing with data encryption.”

Apparently, she’d been tangled up in a lot of things Kat hadn’t known about. “Only one way to tell, I guess.” He gestured to the drive. “Look and see.”

Kat made a noncommittal noise as the screen came to life, the boxy operating system at least five years out of date. Instead of navigating the windows, she pulled up a command line and stared at the blinking white cursor, her fingers hovering over the keyboard.

Her heart beat too fast, and the shallow, quick breaths she drew spoke of real fear as well as nervousness. Andrew slid his hands over her shoulders and leaned down to speak. “I’m right here. I’m with you.”

“Thank you.” The words trembled, almost as badly as her hands as she began to type. Slowly at first, then with growing confidence, too fast for him to follow what she was doing as blocks of text scrolled past in response to her short commands.

It took a few minutes, her shoulders growing tenser under his hands. Finally she cursed softly. “There are a ton of files. No extensions, no fucking clue what they are. But I can get at them, at least. Transfer them and send them to Ben. The only one that’s different…” She typed something, and a plain text file popped up.

A letter.

Katherine, If your father gave you this letter, it means I didn’t survive to see you turn twenty-one.

What I’m doing now, I’m doing for you. I need you to understand that I believed in this cause. Our world is broken. Spell casters and shapeshifters scorn us, use us, hurt us and discard us. Psychics have huddled together and bowed their heads for decades, as if our powers mean nothing. They told me they were working to change that, and I believed them. I fought for them. I killed for them.

I know that can’t be easy for you to see. What you are is why I have hope for you. The more powerful you grow, the more you understand the suffering of those around you. Maybe your empathy will keep you from denial. I convinced myself I wasn’t hurting people who didn’t deserve to hurt. I believed I was building a world where you could be powerful without needing to be brutal. Instead I helped create a world where your power can be used against you.

If I die, it’s because I fought to stop that. I can’t look in your eyes and know I helped make a weapon that could turn you into a killer.

I know the lessons I’ve already taught you seem harsh, but your life will be hard. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken the risk of passing this legacy on to a daughter. Your uncle’s too afraid to have another child, afraid that he’ll have a daughter and pass the Gabriel curse on to her.

But I can’t regret you. I love you more than anyone or anything on this earth, and there’s nothing I won’t do to keep you safe from my mistakes.

Your heart is so big, I still have hope you’ll forgive me for them.

Mom An emotional bomb, with so much that could either hurt Kat or set her free, and Andrew’s eyes zeroed in on one word: weapon. No time to feel guilty about that, not when Kat drew in a shaky breath and came to her feet in a jerky, uncoordinated movement.

She ducked under his hands and took a few steps away, leaving him staring at her back as the sound of her heart pounding thundered in his ears. “Whatever I am is so terrifying that Derek’s father wouldn’t have more kids. And Nick’s pregnant.”

If he let her continue down that path, give in to those thoughts, he’d lose her. “Kat, stop. You don’t know that’s true. Even if it is, your mom…” He struggled to find the right words without hurting her even more. “Your mom had shit going on. Do you blame him for being scared? It had nothing to do with you.”

“I don’t blame anyone for anything. I can’t.” She pivoted so sharply her hair whipped around, and the gaze she fixed on him was just short of wild. “Don’t you get it, Andrew? I get all the noble suffering of a martyr and all the guilt of knowing I wouldn’t be so damn selfless if I could keep everyone from shoving their pain down my throat until I give them whatever they need. I’m a fake. I want to be selfish.”

“You want a choice in the matter. It doesn’t make you a bad person.”

Color filled her cheeks, and the room pressed in on him. Anger—helpless, bitter anger, and not his own. “Why not? Why doesn’t anything make me a bad person? Not being selfish, or petty and jealous? I killed people, and all anyone can do is rush to tell me I’m not a bad person. Am I a bad person if I’d do it again?”

He didn’t stop to think, to analyze. “Maybe so. Maybe that means you’re just as low as the rest of us, and that’s the part we can’t stand.”

Silence. Her fists clenched, and she shook her head. “I can’t live up to that. You want me to be happy and loving all the time, and no one can be that.”

“It’s not about not wanting you to bum me out, Kat.” Everything between them had always been so fucking hard to explain. “If you think people aren’t worth saving, I believe you. You see inside them, know what they’re hiding way down at the core. You of all people have to think there’s something good here, or what the hell are we all scrambling so hard for?”

“Oh, Andrew…” For a moment she seemed at a loss. She crossed her arms over her chest—not an aggressive stance, but a defensive one. “It’s not… People are worth saving. They’re petty and confused and so many of the horrible ones are only afraid. Like me. I’m petty and confused and afraid.”

“I don’t need you to be perfect,” he said again, the words a harsh grind in his throat. “I need you not to think it’s all a total loss, including—no, especially you.”

Her gaze slid past him. Fixed on the computer. “I need to know what I am. What’s in my genes that turned my mother and all the other women in our family crazy, and whether it’s going to do that to me. Or Derek’s kid.”

“You need to know,” he agreed, “but don’t give it too much power. Everyone’s different.”

“I’m not so different.” She eased around him to settle in front of the computer again. Flexing her fingers, she took a deep breath and began to type. “I’m powerful. Callum taught me how powerful. I’m not a floppy little puppy who knows a neat trick. Empathy makes me vulnerable to the people I love, but it makes me dangerous to everyone else.”

“Believe it or not, there’s a middle ground between floppy puppy and psychic warrior.”

“There’s a middle ground between laid-back wolf and stone-cold alpha badass too.”

A middle ground he couldn’t, for the life of him, seem to find. “Point taken.”

“Really?” She bent over, slipped a flash drive from the side pocket of her bag and plugged it in without looking at him. “I don’t even know what my point was. Maybe my point is that we would have already gotten to the middle ground if we could. Maybe we should get used to being a psychic killer and a warrior alpha.”

They used to be just Kat and Andrew, and now he wondered if he’d fucked everything up a long, long time ago. If sitting on his ass and waiting her out had cost him everything. “I guess.”

Her fingers danced over the keys, the clacks coming so close together they sounded like one continuous noise. “I can send these to Ben once we get close enough to the city to get a decent signal with my aircard.

Then, I guess we wait? See if anyone tries to kidnap or kill us?”

It wasn’t funny. “We try to get back to some semblance of normal.”

“Do I—” Her voice cracked. She swallowed and stared straight ahead. “Do you want me to go back to my place tonight?”

She sounded so scared. “We shouldn’t split up.” He didn’t know how recently Jackson had buffed up the wards around her apartment, though part of him almost relished the thought of someone coming in to start a fight. “We can stay at my place again.”

“At the council headquarters?” She jerked the flash drive free and twisted to look up at him. “I guess there’s plenty of room there. And good protections.”

And an extra well-trained fighter. “Julio will be glad to have company for a few days. He can cook for more than just us.”

“Julio likes to cook?” The thought seemed to amuse her, at least enough to tease her lips up into a half-smile.

“Firehouse food. Gigantic pots of chili and spaghetti, stuff like that.”

“Of course.” Sighing, Kat rose and began packing up her things. “After this, I think I should swing by the dojo. I’ve missed four lessons in a row. If I don’t drag my ass in there, Zola’s going to kill me before any assassins get a chance.”

“You’ve been shot,” Andrew said firmly. “If she doesn’t understand why you might need to miss a few more sessions, I’ll set her straight.”

But Kat shook her head. “No, the healing spells worked. My arm’s fine. And if things are going crazy, training’s more important than ever.”

She was determined, he had to give her that. “Okay. After we talk to Julio and get him up to speed, we’ll head to the dojo together.”

“Good.” The letter from her mother was still up on the screen. She spared it one last look, then cut the power to the computer. “Let’s go.”

Time. She needed it for everything right now—decrypting the information on the disk, dealing with her mother’s letter. Dealing with him.

He took her bag and slung it over his own shoulder. “It’ll work out, Kat.”

She smiled, and he couldn’t tell if she was lying when she said, “I know.”

Andrew was building things.

Fresh from the shower, Kat followed the faint noises down the stark, undecorated corridors of the Southeast council headquarters’ third floor. Cleaning up and converting Alec’s newly purchased warehouse had taken second priority after reestablishing the supernatural clinic last year, but signs of renovations were everywhere. She hadn’t wandered during her last stay, but now she passed several clean rooms with fresh coats of paint before finding Andrew and Julio.

Julio was nodding along with the music undoubtedly playing on his earphones while he sanded a spot on the wall, and Andrew wiped his arm across his forehead as he picked up a damp rag. “Want to help?”

“Sure.” The view might help her stop brooding, in any case. Explosive orgasms aside, she hadn’t managed to spend much time getting to look at Andrew without lust and empathy fogging them. As long as she didn’t touch him… “Toss me the rag?”

He did, and the muscles in his arm flexed as he waved to the far wall. “That one. We’re not quite done sanding this side of the room yet.”

Bare arms. He should always have bare arms. She caught the cloth and moved where he’d directed, but couldn’t resist the urge to peek at him again.

He was beautiful.

If life was fair, she’d be able to savor touching him. Instead of awkward, jumbled encounters, there could be slow seduction. Kissing. God, she wanted to kiss him, just feel his mouth on hers and enjoy a growing urgency that didn’t swallow them both whole. To have an orgasm that was more than misfiring synapses and emotional overload. She wouldn’t have the knot of worry in her gut, the fear that needing him had so badly damaged the foundations of her control that she’d never master her gifts when he was there to make the world fuzzy.

The damp rag left wet streaks on the wall as she swiped it in slow, aimless circles. If life was fair, it would just be the two of them in the room. So easy to picture Andrew as he was now, sweaty and covered in plaster dust, muscles flexing, eyes dark… The way he looked at her before empathy exploded, like he wanted to touch every inch of her.

They’d never been naked. He’d never even gotten a hand into her pants, or under her shirt. She’d never felt that beard against her breasts, or her stomach, or—God help her—her thighs, and the mental image of Andrew coaxing her knees apart threatened to blow her brain into little pieces.

She wanted life to be fair.

His hand closed over hers as he corrected her technique. “Straight lines down the wall.”

He was breathing too hard. So was she, but oxygen couldn’t be making it to her head, because the world was fuzzy around the edges. All she could see was her hand, trapped under his. If she eased her other hand up the wall, would he catch that one too? Pin her to the wall and skate along the darker edge of the fantasies she tried to pretend she’d never had?

His fingers slid down to her wrist, closed around it firmly for a moment—and let go.

In a second, she’d be panting. This arousal might be in her head, but it still twisted up her body.

Tightened her nipples, made her ache. Made her wet. She rocked back and found Andrew still behind her, and arousal had curled around him too.

His erection pressed against her, and she could see the dizzy, frantic series of events unfolding before her as if she had Julio’s precognition. His hips rocking against her ass, maybe one hand drifting around her body, into her pants, pressing between her legs until the rough touch of his fingers sent her-Julio. Oh Christ, if Andrew’s touch shattered her control, her projection wouldn’t just affect him.

Kat tore away from his body with a whimper, stumbling so hard she slammed into the opposite wall.

Julio jumped back and plucked one of the buds from his ear. “Kat, what the hell?”

Air whistled through her teeth as she stared at him, taking in confusion in upraised brows and a hint of concern in his widened eyes-And nothing else. No arousal. No desire—thank God, no lust—and relief weakened Kat’s knees until she slid to the floor with a soft thump. “You can’t feel it.”

“Uh, feel what?”

Adrenaline was making it worse. Her heart pounded until the world throbbed with it, and she couldn’t make herself look at Julio. Not with Andrew a few feet away, intense and barely contained. She had to wet her lips twice to speak. “Andrew?”

His answer shouldn’t have been an answer at all. “Julio, get out.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Kat caught a glimpse of Julio scrambling toward the door. A moment later it slammed shut, and she sucked in a breath. No, panted. She was panting, tiny hitching breaths as the intensity of the need between them twisted again. “He couldn’t feel it.” It was important. She knew it was important.

Andrew closed the distance between them, towering over her in a way that sent her base instincts wild.

“I feel it,” he said, and Kat forgot why anything else could possibly be important as he lifted her, pinned her to the sheetrock with his hips and groaned.

For a terrifying second, Kat thought she might come from the sound alone.

The sheer insanity of her response woke reason. They couldn’t do this. His skin was hot under her hands, arms bare, muscles flexing as he held her up, but they couldn’t do this, couldn’t fall into each other like helpless, rutting fools every time a stray fantasy caught either of them. It was absurd. Untenable. Like living the porno version of their lives, where every situation dissolved into impractical sex.

It was getting worse. She hadn’t even touched him this time, not until he was already hard, caught in the grip of whatever made her dig her fingernails into his shoulders and whimper every time he ground against her. Lust. Blind lust, and not romantic at all when they didn’t have a choice.

Desperation seized her, and she squeezed her eyes shut and ignored her body, shut it out with discipline borne of training under Callum’s strict tutelage. He’d put her through hell, but nothing so hard as this.

Nothing like trying to ignore the sweet, dark thrill of her back against the wall and Andrew’s hips redefining the meaning of bliss with every perfectly timed rock.

Finding a half-trance was damn near impossible. Stretchy yoga pants were faint protection from the jean-covered erection grinding between her thighs, and Andrew liked grinding into her too much.

Throbbing heat gave way to little bursts of sensation, pleasure thick with the anticipation of release, and Kat fought for the will to continue. She wanted this, wanted every second he touched her, every scrap of emotion that bled from him, even the feral possession, especially the ravenous, animal need-—but she wanted more. More than lust. She wanted him to choose her.

Whispering his name, she twisted the power flooding her and let it go, invoking the filter that bled feeling into color.

With her eyes closed, she couldn’t see the effects, but she could feel them. The emotional silence echoed, like the quiet after a violent explosion. It took a moment for her to connect to her own body again, to find the physical sensations that had seemed pale compared to the psychic maelstrom.

Or maybe not so pale. Warm tension pooled between her legs, and she moaned when the tiniest shift of her hips rubbed her against Andrew. “Oh…”

Instead of backing away or putting her down, he groaned again and caught her mouth in a blistering, hungry kiss. Teeth scraped her lower lip, and the growling noise he made in his throat drove her mouth open on an answering gasp. Then it was his tongue, hot and dangerously intent, and by the time she found the willpower to tear away, she couldn’t think.

Hell, she couldn’t breathe.

It made her words come out husky and halting. “Did it—I tried to stop it—”

“Open your eyes, Kat,” he rasped. “Look at me.”

So much color.

She had to squint until the first flare faded into a brilliant aura of greens and blues and silvers and golds. He glowed when he looked at her, and it wasn’t the usual reds of lust and love, because what he felt for her wasn’t a clean human emotion.

Andrew was the colors of the wild edged in passion and jagged pieces of pain and need sharp enough to cut, and it stole her breath when she realized it was all real. Not a product of her empathy, not a passing affection magnified a thousandfold by an endless loop.

He loved her, even with the rough edges scratching away at his soul.

His brows drew together in a frown. “You look like you can’t believe I haven’t stomped off yet.”

“It’s…” Words failed her, as she watched the colors tremble in the air between them. “You’re like the aurora borealis. On acid. I could get drunk on you.”

His frown faded into confusion. “The synesthesia again?”

When she touched his cheek, this time, she felt it all. Warm skin. The scratch of his beard. Giddy pleasure at such a simple feeling sent laughter bubbling up. “It’s not a perfect solution, but I thought…I thought without the backlash, and the feedback loop, that you wouldn’t be so out of control. That you could choose.”

“Choose what, you?” He rubbed his face against her hand. “I did. I would. It’s not about me being out of control, not like that.”

“I don’t think you’d usually choose against the wall, in front of Julio.”

“No,” he admitted, “but it’s not the end of the world, either. Julio understands.”

She stroked his cheek again, thrilling at the quiet intimacy in the gesture that stood in such stark contrast to the sheer sexuality of their position. “I’m only good at understanding feelings in a vacuum. When they’re clear and external and not terribly personal. It’s messy, when they’re mine. Or about me. And after everything…it’s so easy to worry that maybe you didn’t want me like that. That I’d…I’d forced you to want me.”

Andrew laughed and shook his head. “That’s what you worry about? That I wouldn’t want you if you weren’t getting your horny feelings all over me?”

Her cheeks warmed, accompanied by the bite of embarrassment. “If you’ve been having horny feelings about me all this time, you’ve been keeping them nice and bottled up. For all I knew, I was just turning you into a deviant with me.”

“That’s bullshit. And completely hilarious.” He glided his thumbs over her heated cheeks and smiled.

“You’re not a deviant. And me wanting you isn’t dependent on the empathic feedback you’re throwing at me. It’s there all the time.”

“Oh, I might be a little deviant.” Turning her head, she caught his thumb between her teeth for a heartbeat before releasing him. “You just don’t know because you haven’t managed to get naked with me yet.”

His voice dropped to a murmur. “It means a lot to you, doesn’t it? Both of us being in control?”

“Maybe not both of us. But one of us. One of us has to be in control.” She nipped at his thumb again.

“Maybe not always the same person…but we’re too dangerous to both just let everything go.”

“Are we?” His lips skimmed her collarbone, and oh God, she felt it this time, felt it like a full-body shock, like touching a doorknob after dragging her feet across her living room carpet. Her head thumped against the wall as she tried to push closer to his mouth, wanting more. Everything.

He danced kisses up her throat and jaw, and his mouth met hers again, this time in a slow exploration that was everything she’d ever imagined in her hazy, girlish daydreams. Intense and careful, and going on and on until her lips felt too sensitive and growing urgency forced tiny whimpers from her as she squirmed closer.

He lifted his head finally, his jaw clenched, his throat working. “Control.” He touched her mouth again and squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re right. One of us has to have it.”

Color flared with the wild intensity of a star going nova, and Kat framed his face and kissed his chin as his love for her danced through the air. “Me. I can have it right now. Put me down, Andrew, and trust me.”

He groaned, but did as she asked. “I trust you.”

Oh, the power. Her hands shook with it as she spread both hands against his chest and urged him backwards. Not so far, just until his shoulders hit the wall he’d been sanding.

Then she smoothed her hands down and hooked them in his belt as she dropped to her knees.

Strong hands gathered her hair, tangled in the locks. “This is what you want to do?”

“Yes.” She eased his belt open, then tugged at the zipper, shivering as the teeth parted. “Next time, you can be in control.”

“Never,” he rasped. “I’ll never be in control with you looking at me like that.”

Her own control was under full-scale assault, but she clung to it by a thread as she eased down his boxers and freed his erection.

With the synesthesia, teasing him was as easy as painting by the numbers. Touch here for need, stroke there for blind lust, mix them together and hear him groan as the air danced in brilliantly colored fractals.

Surely stuffy, proper Callum had never imagined such a use for it. But it was effortless and perfect, and when she smiled up at him and applied her tongue to all of those newly discovered sensitive spots, the way he groaned and tensed made her reevaluate her list of favorite hobbies. Surely this should find a place near the top—watching the colors flare as Andrew came to pieces under her mouth and hands.

She loved it when his fingers tightened, pulling at her hair as he guided her movements, showing her what he liked. Still a dominant wolf, under the skin, and it drove her determination to higher levels. Even on her knees, she could bring him to his.

Maybe she lacked the technical proficiency to go down on him in deep-throating style, but she followed the eddies of his emotions until she found the perfect balance of stroking hands and tongue, unable to tear her gaze from his face as he dropped his head back and whispered her name.

Then his hips began to move, tiny thrusts that took him a bit deeper into her mouth.

He couldn’t stop himself. He was helpless. Putty in her hands.

She loved it.

Andrew started to talk—soft, sweet words interspersed with expletives, dirty pleas that fell just short of being commands. He tensed, moaned, and finally pulled her hair painfully. “Kat, holy fuck.”

For the first time she wished for telepathy. She couldn’t reply, couldn’t whisper that she was dying to see him come. To see ecstasy steal over his face as he came undone under her touch. To speak she’d have to stop, and nothing was worth that.

Instead she applied her mouth with increased fervor, moaning her encouragement as she tried to put all the things she couldn’t say into her eyes. Come and now and maybe even I love you.

He came with a shout and a thud as his head banged back against the wall, not once but twice. A shudder ran through him, and he clutched her hair even tighter.

Every sense was alive. Filled with him—the taste of his release on her tongue, the smell of his aftershave, his panting moans and the grip of his fingers tugging helplessly at loose strands of her hair.

And the sight of him…open and overwhelmed, sated by her touch and alive with light and colors only she could see.

The perfect moment, crystal clear and all hers. Whatever came next, she’d have this—the moment she knew he belonged to her.

Andrew laid a trembling hand on her cheek. “Kat.”

Her smile was probably more than a little goofy, and she didn’t care. “Hi.”

His answer was breathless, dazed—and equally goofy. “Yeah, that.”

Later she’d acknowledge that this was a temporary respite at best. That she needed help to unravel whatever tangle of empathy had twisted her up with Andrew. Later she’d worry about the data Ben was decrypting, and her mother’s past, and Derek’s child and the possibility of terrifying futures.

Now she eased his clothing back into place with gentle hands and rose. His chest was solid and warm beneath her cheek, his skin hot to the touch as she curled her fingers around his arm. “I can’t hold this forever. And not if I’m not in control.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He lifted her again, coaxed her legs around his hips. “We’ll take turns.”

“I don’t…” She hesitated. Swallowed. “I’m not ready to let it go yet. I like feeling you. I mean…just physically. Without all the empathy.”

“Then we’ll keep going slow.”

Kat nodded without lifting her head, unwilling to relinquish the odd peace that came with listening to his heart beating under her ear. “Slow is good. Fast makes it too easy to not deal with problems, and that never ends well for anyone.”

He sighed softly. “You’ve been hit with a lot over the last few days.”

She had, more than she could begin to process. Every time she tried to start, her brain skittered into a thousand worst-case scenarios. “I can’t handle thinking about that damn letter, because this isn’t even all of it. In a few days, Ben’s going to have those files rebuilt and decrypted. I don’t want to deal with any of it until I can deal with all of it.”

Andrew tightened his arms around her. “I get it. Triage. Look at the big picture, not bits and pieces of information.”

If the big picture didn’t break her. “I can’t get to a place where I think I’m okay and have the floor fall out again. It’ll hurt more.”

“I understand.”

He did. She could tell from the warm golden glow that encompassed her. It made it easy to ask for what she really needed. “Can we just…not talk about it, then? There’s other stuff to deal with, anyway. Like finding out if we’re still being followed, and figuring out why I’m getting my empathy all over you when Julio couldn’t feel it.”

“Plenty of things.” He kissed her again, a simple graze of his lips. “Can you get in touch with Callum and ask him about the empathy thing?”

She thought about her tutor. Straight-laced, coldly handsome Callum, who was rigid, severe and utterly impersonal. She thought about his designer suits, and how she’d never seen his hair mussed or out of place, like he’d stepped out of the pages of a men’s style magazine—or an ad for overpriced cologne. She thought about how she’d never discussed anything remotely personal with him.

She thought about having to explain her sudden inability to avoid dry-humping her way to orgasm against a shapeshifter’s thigh.

Not in this lifetime.

“I’ll talk to someone,” she promised, mostly because she wasn’t ready to tell him who she had in mind.

Callum might be the expert when it came to twisting empathy into a weapon, but when it came to sex with dominant shapeshifters…

Well. Any empath who climbed into bed with Alec Jacobson every night knew all there was to know about navigating the rocky path between psychic power and alpha instinct.