Cipher

Chapter Ten

“Are you sure Alec can’t hear this?”

“No, honey.” Carmen finished winding her hair up on the top of her head and secured it with a clip.

“He’s on the phone in his study.”

“Good.” Fidgeting with the laptop, Kat adjusted it until the camera was just right, then sighed. “I’ve got empathy sex problems. Really, really fucked-up ones.”

The other woman’s expression didn’t change. “Okay. Is it a control issue?”

That was Carmen—calm and practical, no matter how potentially embarrassing the subject matter. Kat didn’t know if the talent was an empath thing or a doctor thing, but it was damn soothing. “It’s not control, I don’t think. I mean, not uncontrolled projection or anything. I’ve had slip-ups in the past. My range is wide enough that people would be affected. And they’re not.”

“So it’s more…focused on one person?”

Too late, Kat realized Carmen might have no idea who they were talking about. “It’s not Miguel,” she said quickly. “Andrew. It’s—I promise, I would not call and ask you for advice about sex with your brother.”

The other woman laughed. “I know. Alec told me he talked to Andrew, I just didn’t want to assume anything.”

“It’s Andrew,” Kat repeated. “And it’s…I don’t know. I worried about imprinting, at first…but it’s not just me. And it’s not projecting, but he feels everything I do. And it gets out of control. Fast.”

Carmen barely hesitated before asking, “Did you build your shields around him?”

“Of course not.” The answer came automatically, with so little thought that Kat forced herself to pause.

She’d tried to hold shields around other people, to block them from her gift, but to bring someone inside her personal shields would be too intimate, like letting them inside her skin.

Déjà vu. A knot formed in her gut until she remembered why. It’s like you’re inside my skin. Wasn’t that what she’d told Andrew, that night in his bed? Nerves twisted as she tried to deny it, to find a reason she hadn’t been so stupid and reckless. “How would you even do that? Callum taught me entirely new shielding techniques, and I’ve barely seen Andrew since then.”

“Obviously, you didn’t do it during your work with Callum. But, since then, have you been in any situations where you might have unwittingly rebuilt your shields around Andrew?”

The past week played itself out in her memory, a jumble of emotional highs and devastating lows.

She’d lowered her shields a dozen times—she did that constantly. But to rebuild them completely, so fundamentally that even the foundations could have shifted to bring Andrew inside-Oh, shit. “The burnout.”

Carmen leaned forward and propped her elbows on the polished wood of the desk. “That sounds like the sort of terrifying scenario where you might have done it instinctively.”

Terrifying instinct. Perfect. Almost as undesirable as having to tell Carmen the whole truth. “I might have gotten shot a little bit. Things were…complicated in the aftermath.”

“You might have…” The woman trailed off, stared for a moment and then returned in full doctor mode.

“Have you been checked out? Where were you hit?”

“Hold on.” Kat eased her chair back from the desk she’d claimed in one of the unused offices. Her T-shirt sleeve pulled up easily, and she twisted to show Carmen the mostly faded scar. “A healer took care of it. Well, one who’s a doctor and a healing priestess. She said it wasn’t bad.”

Carmen peered at the screen and nodded, mollified. “Looks like a graze. Whoever treated it did good work.”

Settling into her seat again, Kat straightened the laptop and met Carmen’s gaze. “Alec doesn’t necessarily need to know. Andrew said there’s a lot of shit going down up there, and I’m plenty safe with him and Julio lurking around, waiting to eat assassins.”

“Are you talking to me as a medical professional or as a friend?”

A loophole, one that would keep Alec and his overprotective instincts in the dark. Kat stomped on temptation. “As a friend. If you think he needs to know, tell him. But we’re handling this. I’m handling this. It’s my mess, and I don’t want to get shuffled aside while everyone else cleans it up.”

“I get that.” Carmen tilted her head. “Call me back if the shield thing doesn’t work. I think that’s the answer, but there are a few other possibilities.”

“Is it…” Kat picked her words carefully. “Is that something people do? Bring other people inside their shields? Isn’t it dangerous?”

“It takes trust,” Carmen answered slowly. “Absolute, unending trust. It’s not inherently dangerous, not usually, but you’re not a typical empath, Kat. You might be a special case.”

So Callum had told her. He’d beaten it into her with every lesson, stressing the responsibility that came with their power with a straight-faced seriousness that dared her to turn it into a joke.

She’d never dared. “I haven’t hurt him yet. But things escalate so quickly, and not just when we want them to. And the more intense we get—”

“I know.” Carmen spoke with the voice of experience, something confirmed by the hint of color that rose in her cheeks.

Oh God. The last thing Kat wanted to visualize was Alec’s sex life, but it was impossible to stop. At a lower level, the feedback she shared with Andrew would be useful for all sorts of boundary-pushing sexual adventures. Hadn’t she used the same trick to find out what Andrew needed? How easy would it be to test the lines between dominance and submission, or pleasure and pain, with feedback as a perfect, unfailing guide?

Her cheeks must be redder than Carmen’s—the downside to having awkward conversations by videoconference instead of telephone. “Okay. Well…it’s not working for me. Just in case, could you explain how to make sure I keep him outside my shields when I rebuild them?”

“Yeah, I can do that.” The older woman cleared her throat and began to explain.

The tips of Kat’s ears were red when she came out of the office, and Andrew wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “Have a nice chat with Carmen?”

“Educational.” She flopped onto the couch, legs sprawled haphazardly, and covered her face with her hands. “I’m an idiot. I spent all this time worrying about imprinting and weird psychic phenomenon. I missed the stupid truth because I didn’t want to admit it.”

He set his book aside and pulled her hands away from her face. “What truth is that?”

Instead of looking at him, she stared up at the ceiling. “It’s what I always do. I cling to you. I’ve been doing it since I met you, and now it’s just…habit.”

“If you’ve been doing it for that long, how is it just now throwing us off?”

“Carmen thinks I rebuilt my shields around you. And it didn’t make sense, until I thought…” The words trailed off. Tension tightened her eyes and kicked up her heart rate. “I know when the first time was. I should have realized, because it’s the one thing in my life I can’t forget.”

The night of his attack. It had occurred to him before, to wonder what protected him from Kat’s lethal projection when the strike team members had fallen victim to it. He’d thought at first that it had been his own injuries, the fact that he’d been mostly unconscious anyway. Only after spending time with Carmen and Julio had another possibility emerged. “That’s how you kept me safe.”

“I don’t think I was thinking about it that clearly. I wanted you shielded. And after—” A hitched breath.

“My shields were wiped out by the burnout in Mobile. And when we were being chased? I—I thought about that night. I used the pain, and protected you from it. That’s probably why it got worse after that. I rebuilt my shields on the drive back, and I was clinging to you pretty hard.”

“So it wasn’t imprinting after all.” Andrew pulled her into his arms. “And now you need to put me outside of your shields.”

“Yes.” She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder, and an echo of her pleasure hit him, sweet and soft but still hungry enough to stir his body.

He shifted her until she was stretched out beside him on the sofa. “How do you do that?”

“Drop my shields and then rebuild them. Carefully.” She tilted her head to peer up at him. “And make sure I keep you on the other side.”

She’d been so worried about the effect her empathy had on him and their time together that Andrew felt only sheer relief. “It’ll be better for you, and I’m all for that.”

“I know.” Her sudden smile was shy. “I think I can do it now. It might take a few minutes…”

“Take all the time you need.” He wasn’t going anywhere, not until she told him she needed him to go.

With a nod, she closed her eyes. Her breathing evened, then slowed. A tiny furrow appeared between her eyebrows, the only external sign of effort until she caught her lower lip between her teeth.

The world went silent.

He hadn’t noticed it until it ceased, the soft murmur of something that must have been Kat’s aura, comforting and ever-present. He missed it immediately, though he would have died before letting her know that.

“Did it work?” Kat asked a moment later. “I’m thinking a really dirty thought. The kind of dirty that’d make yesterday look tame.”

It still turned him on like burning—that she was fantasizing about him—but the echo had vanished.

“Pretty sure it worked, yeah.”

She reached for him, twining their fingers together. “So. No emotional craziness. No assassins shooting at me. Just…you and me. On a couch.”

“The true test,” he murmured. Mundane didn’t scare him, especially not when there was nothing normal or usual about it.

Kat took a breath. Took another. Her fingers tightened around his hand. “This is like starting over.

Except not, because there’s so many things we haven’t talked about.”

He’d put himself and their relationship in the same category as the rest of the problems plaguing Kat.

She’d get around to him when she dealt with other stuff—and he’d be ready. “No rush. Get through the rest of this shit first. For now, we can just…be.”

She shifted her weight, curling into his side with her feet tucked under her. “What are you reading?”

He showed her the cover. “The last thing my mom published before she died. I’ve never read it.” But helping Kat search for information about her mother had prompted him to pick it up.

“I’ve read it.” Her fingertip traced the edge of the book. “I’ve read a lot of her stuff. Not just because she’s your mother, either. I went through a phase when I was nineteen…read nothing but feminist theory for about six months. Alec hated life.”

“I bet he did.” It was easy to imagine the sorts of heated debates his mother might have gotten in to with Alec. “I used to think the whole shapeshifter thing was a chauvinistic mess. You know, before. Now I know it’s not about gender at all. Derek sure the hell isn’t the boss of Nick.”

“I always thought Nick was an exception. That Alec treated her like an equal because she was the werewolf princess. Because her dad’s the Alpha.” Kat’s slid her fingers off the edge of the book to twine with his. “But now I’ve seen him around Zola, and you’re right. It’s not gender. It’s power. He treats Miguel and Sera the same, because they’re both weaker than he is.”

His mother, who had dedicated her life to studying power differentials in all their forms, would have been fascinated—once she understood. “It seems complicated until you’re in it, I think.”

“Because there’s shapeshifter power and family power and emotional power…” Amusement laced her voice. “Sexual power. It’s like the most complicated dance in the world, and no one teaches you the steps until you’re getting your toes stomped on.”

“Or you’re the one doing the stomping.”

Kat settled her cheek against his shoulder. “I think we step on each other’s feet a lot.”

“Doesn’t matter, though.” He stroked her hair and smiled. Her proximity had always excited him, but now it soothed him, as well. “We’re figuring it out as we go.”

“We are.” The tension seemed to be leaving her, drifting away as her body relaxed more fully against his. Attraction was there, and the barest hint of arousal, but she seemed content cuddled against his side, almost as if she was savoring the physical contact. Even her fingers made slow circles over his, tracing his knuckles and up to his wrist before meandering down again.

A quiet moment, the sort of thing most people would take for granted. But not Kat, who was obviously starved for the simplest of contact.

He could give her that. It couldn’t last forever, not with the shadow of whatever they’d uncovered on that zip drive looming over them, but for now…

Yes, he could give her that.