Cipher

Chapter Five

They hit Montgomery right at rush hour, so Andrew circled the city to avoid traffic. The rest of the drive to Birmingham went smoothly, though it took forever to park.

“That’s it,” he told Kat as he opened her door. “The Watts building.”

The sun was bright overhead, but the air still held a cold bite. Kat shivered and pulled up the hood on her sweatshirt as she stepped onto the curb. “He’s on the fourteenth floor.”

She started to lift her bag onto her uninjured shoulder, but Andrew took it from her. Let her get pissed off about it if she wanted. “Up there, almost at the top. That’s where the condos are.”

She only nodded and studied the building. “Looks posh. Ben’s a hotshot software designer, though, so I guess he can afford it.”

“Maybe not as expensive as you think. Stuff like this in Birmingham is a lot more reasonable than in New Orleans.” Her friend had probably managed to pick up this place for half what Andrew himself had paid for his old condo on South Peters.

“Yeah?” She reached the door and tugged it open. “I forget you’re the real estate smartie. Maybe when this is all over you can help me find a place, one Sera can afford too. I keep telling her she doesn’t have to pay rent since she actually cooks and cleans, and I wasn’t so great at that, but she’s pretty stubborn about it.”

“It can’t make her feel very independent, not paying rent or anything.”

Kat’s eyes shadowed. “I know. I keep telling myself not to say anything, but then I see her mending her work clothes because she can’t afford to replace them. I feel how worried she is, and I have money.”

The fact that Kat had the money to spare wouldn’t be any easier on Sera’s pride than if they’d both been scraping by. In fact, it robbed their situation of the camaraderie it could have had. “She needs to do it on her own as much as she can. I can respect that.”

Kat’s boots scuffed the lobby floor as she crossed to the gilded elevator and jabbed her finger at the button. “Her ex-husband makes me glad all the controlling bastards in my life have always meant well. I used to say it didn’t make much difference, but I was really, really wrong.”

“Yeah.” His own limited experience with alpha bastards—knowing them and being one—had taught him that. “There’s no avoiding instinct.” Then he proved it when the elevator door slid open and he urged her inside with a hand at the small of her back. “Sorry.”

Her gaze caught his for a moment and then skipped away. “Just don’t get protective and weird because of Ben. Or his girlfriend, since she’s probably more dangerous than he is. She’s some sort of priestess.

Pretty sure she can smite people, though she probably wouldn’t do it in downtown Birmingham.”

He forced a smile. “Now why would she smite me?”

Kat’s expression stayed deadly serious. “Because I’m hurt, and Ben’s a stranger to you. And you are an alpha bastard, no matter how hard you’re choking it down. I don’t want anything to explode.”

“Least of all me?”

Her hand snuck into his. “I’d be sad if you got smited. Smote? What’s the past tense?”

Smitten. He squeezed her fingers. “Don’t know. You’d better Google it.”

Because she was Kat, she shook her hand free, pulled out her phone, and did just that. She was still muttering under her breath when the elevator doors slid open, and she stepped forward without looking up. “Fourteen-C.”

“Got it.” The hallway was clear and the door solidly closed, so Andrew knocked.

Kat laughed her triumph just as the door opened. “Smite, smote, smitten!”

The pretty brunette on the other side of the door tilted her head. “You pretty much have to be Kat, which makes you Andrew. Come on in, Ben’s finishing up in his office.”

The front room of the condo was packed with expensive electronics. A longsword that looked like it had seen some use stood propped in the corner, and it drew Andrew’s eye. “Nice sword.”

The woman gathered her hair up into a ponytail and rolled her eyes. “His brother’s,” she said in a voice that made her disapproval clear. She picked up a badge and clipped it onto her scrubs, then braced both hands on her hips. “Now, Kat. Ben told me you’re hurt. Do you mind if I take a look?”

Kat glanced at Andrew, a quiet question in her eyes, and he swallowed the protest that rose automatically. “Bathroom?” At least if there were windows, they’d be covered, with no easy visual access from someone perched on a neighboring roof.

“All right.” Kat slipped her bag from her shoulder and held it out. “Admiring the weapons should keep you entertained until Ben comes out.”

He took the bag, and she disappeared with the brunette, leaving him alone in the room. Aside from the sword, he found two guns, a taser, a collection of knives, and a scuffed set of brass knuckles.

Soft footsteps warned him before the loft’s owner appeared. Ben proved to be a lanky redhead with a neatly trimmed beard and sharply intelligent eyes. His gaze fell on the brass knuckles, and he grinned.

“My brother keeps some of his shit here.”

“So your girlfriend said.” He held out his hand. “I’m Andrew.”

“Ben. I take it Lia dragged Kat off to look at her arm?”

“Yeah. She’s wearing scrubs. Is she a doctor?”

“She’s a chief resident at UAB.” Ben jerked his head toward a smooth wooden table. “But she’s also an acolyte of Panacea. They’re a healing order of spell casters, and she’s good.”

“Couldn’t ask for better credentials, I guess.”

“Kat’ll be fine.” Ben dropped a folder to the table. “So, she finally jumped your bones, huh? Took her long enough.”

The last thing he wanted to deal with was five minutes of stammering apology or, worse, Kat killing the guy. “Yeah. Your brother’s really into weaponry, huh? What’s he do?”

“Bounty hunter, kind of. Takes care of dangerous witches and the occasional rabid beast. He’s over in Georgia, tracking down a rogue shifter who’s been causing trouble.”

Andrew was surprised he hadn’t run across him yet, since he sounded like exactly the kind of person Alec and Jackson would know. “What about you? Kat said you design software.”

“Mmm.” Ben slipped into a chair and flipped open the folder. “Not as cool as my monster-chasing big brother, but at least I can talk about my job at parties. Well, my day job.” He pulled out a piece of paper with a driver’s license and a credit card paper-clipped to the top. “This one, not so much.”

It looked like solid work, just from the glimpse he’d gotten. “Will the license records check out, or are they just for show?”

“Oh, they’ll check out. You’re Andy Normanson. Construction foreman from California. Kat picked the job and place, relevant details are attached.” He pulled out a second set of IDs, these with Kat’s photo attached. “Kate Normanson. Congratulations on your recent elopement. Elvis officiated.”

Andrew studied the dossiers. Similar backgrounds to their own, similar first names. “You do good work.”

“Sure, and I do it real quiet, just like Kat with her brain-scooping lie-detector thing.” Ben’s eyes narrowed. “Psychics are the underdogs of the supernatural world. We have a habit of disappearing down rabbit holes if we prove too useful.”

“Is that a warning?”

“It’s a fact, that’s all. Kat’s got a serious blind spot when it comes to her empathy. She’s so busy angsting over the sort of damage she can do accidentally that I’m pretty sure she’s never considered the sort of havoc she could cause if someone made her do it on purpose.”

Painful because it was true and far too close to home. “If you know that much about Kat, you must know how many people would die before they let anything like that happen to her.”

Ben held up both hands, making a vaguely placating gesture. “I don’t know about Kat’s life outside of what she tells me. I know you two have a Lifetime Original Movie going on and that her cousin used to smother her a lot. I’ve always assumed she’s just fine over there, but if people are shooting at her…”

“I don’t think she was the target.” It was the conclusion he’d finally reached during the long hours of waiting for Kat to sleep off her exhaustion. “Whoever was doing the shooting was trying to silence Kat’s contact.”

“Who gave you guys a key. Listen, I started to do the research, but there are a ton of cities called Winchester, and a bunch of them have a Bank & Trust. So I got frustrated and cheated.” He tapped the side of his head.

Technopath. He’d almost forgotten. “What’d you uncover?”

Ben lowered his voice, even though Kat was safely behind the closed bathroom door. “In 2002, an Alyson Gabriel got a safety deposit box at Winchester Bank & Trust in Huntsville, Alabama. Two weeks later, she died in a car crash in Boston.”

It sounded right. Andrew swallowed hard. “That’d be it, I think. Could you do some more checking, see if you can find out what she might have done during those two weeks?”

“Sure thing, man. Kat has my cell number now. Anything you need, call. I’m used to being the geek on tap.”

“Thanks, Ben.”

A shrug. “I owe Kat. She got my brother out of a jam once when I was laid up in the hospital with a very unheroic case of appendicitis.”

He had a surgical scar of his own, though it seemed like a few lifetimes ago. “Happens to the best of us.”

“All worked out okay.” The unmistakably goofy smile of a man in the grip of serious love curved Ben’s lips. “That’s when I met Lia.”

By complete and utter chance. Andrew had seen it over and over, events that spun off a single moment where one changed detail would have changed everything. “Fate, right?”

“On the days I remember to put the toilet seat down. The rest of the time I’m a test from her Goddess.”

“That just means you’re a typical guy.”

“Who can ask nicely and have computers do things for him.” Ben flipped the folder shut and shoved it across the table. “Kat can handle reservations for wherever you end up, but I was thinking I could make a few too. In Atlanta, maybe. I can ask the system to let me know if anyone else goes looking for you.”

Andrew nodded. “It’d be helpful. Whoever shot Kat and that woman is scared of what’s in that safety deposit box. If they knew where it was, they would have taken it already.”

“Atlanta, it is. Course, no one may be looking, but if they are, doesn’t hurt to have a false trail.”

Ben seemed like a nice guy, and Andrew was surprised his sword-wielding brother hadn’t already taught him the most important lesson of all. “Someone’s always looking.”

Kat didn’t have to beg. Andrew drove them to Huntsville and straight to the Embassy Suites, where he stretched out on the couch while she dragged a couple hundred bucks of Target loot into the bedroom. The king-sized bed was vast and immaculate, with a plush comforter and a stack of fluffy pillows that took up the top half of the mattress. Pretty enough, but nothing compared to the clean bathroom with its shiny counters and polished metal fixtures.

The tub was big enough for two, and she was pretty sure she could happily die there.

It took an hour of soaking before she felt clean, and another thirty minutes with the scented shampoo and body wash before she was sure she’d got every last bit of dried blood and covered the pungent scent of the dye Lia had used to turn the purple streaks in her hair brown again.

Scrubbed and buffed and smelling of almond and vanilla, Kat twisted her damp hair into a braid before pulling on her new flannel pajama bottoms and the first tank top she’d been able to find in her size—a baby-blue number with an absurdly cheerful butterfly embroidered on it in sparkly silver thread. It left her arm bare, and she ran her fingers over the mostly healed scar where the bullet wound had been that morning.

Magic. The serious business kind that knit human flesh together with a speed normally reserved for shapeshifters. Lia had confessed, almost apologetically, that healing minor wounds was the extent of what a priestess could do on her own. To Kat it had seemed like a miracle, and she’d expressed miracle-level gratitude at the absence of pain.

A peek into the other room proved that Andrew still slept, so Kat killed another two hours trying to catch up on her email and sending both Sera and Miguel reassuring but vague notes insisting everything was fine. Then she made herself filter through the responses from her latest round of queries in her unenthusiastic job search.

Job search. As she clicked listlessly through the emails, she decided she needed a better description.

Obligatory resume exportation. Unwilling employment makeover. “Going through the motions” seemed to fit best.

Whatever she was doing, it wasn’t active enough to be called searching. Her qualifications and her thesis had earned her attention from researchers. Her gender had gotten her courted by every guilty tech company with a quota to fill. One of her professors had even tried to push her toward the NSA, and she’d enjoyed an evening of near-hysterical laughter trying to imagine Alec’s face if she announced she was going to work for the government.

She went to the interviews. She wore combat boots and T-shirts that were trying too hard to be witty and outrageous. Her hair stayed purple, and sometimes she twisted it into styles that should have been impossible outside of a comic book. She played edgy hacker and social misfit with a dedication that deserved an Oscar nod. Sometimes her passive-aggressive self-sabotage worked. The truly desperate offered her jobs anyway, and she’d started “forgetting” to call them back.

Career suicide in slow motion. That was what it had come to, since the restless need to do more had invaded her life. Maybe it had come from watching Julio navigate New Orleans’ supernatural community under Alec’s guidance, or from seeing Carmen and Alec sacrifice everything but each other for the chance to save the world. Things were changing—for the better, finally for the better—and she wanted to be a part of it.

Maybe. Somehow…if only she could figure out where. All she knew for sure was that her college trust fund—left untouched for years by scholarships and then grants—was starting to trickle away. The money would run out eventually, if she didn’t get out of her own way.

Whatever happened with the safety deposit box, it had to be her last self-indulgence. After this, she’d force herself back into the real world. Put the past behind her. Get a haircut, maybe a suit and a couple of nice blouses. She’d stop going to interviews in sweatshirts and steel-toed boots.

She’d get a job.

She’d grow the fuck up.

By nine, her stomach was starting to rumble. For about two seconds, she considered leaving the hotel room in search of a vending machine. For another five, she considered calling room service without waking Andrew.

Ten seconds after that she told herself to stop being a baby and made her way into their suite’s sitting room.

Andrew lay sprawled out in nothing but his jeans. Comfortable as the couch looked, he was too damn tall for it, and a dangerous tenderness stirred inside her. He was exhausted because he probably hadn’t slept a damn second of the fifteen hours she’d spent unconscious. Two straight days of driving, fighting and worrying, and the stubborn bastard wouldn’t even claim the bed when she was short enough to fit on the couch just fine.

Kat smoothed blond strands of hair from his forehead and smiled. “Hey, sleepy. Why don’t you get up and pass out someplace where your feet don’t dangle off the edge, huh?”

He mumbled something unintelligible and rolled over, almost pitching himself off the couch in the process. Kat planted both hands on his shoulders and pushed him back to the cushions. “Wake up, Andrew.”

His hands latched around her arms, and he lifted her clear off her feet and dropped her to the couch.

The breath whooshed out of her, stealing her squeaked protest. When he loomed over her, his eyes were blank, dark. Unseeing.

Three heartbeats stretched out to a lifetime. Her stun gun was in the other room, but even if she had it in her damn hand she wasn’t sure she could have forced herself to use it on Andrew. Knowing it was futile, she couldn’t stop her hands from flying up, bracing against the dangerously hot skin of his chest. Pushing him was like trying to push a brick wall, and the first hint of real fear uncurled inside her. “Andrew—” His eyes cleared, and a roar of fear eclipsed that tiny thread inside. His fear, not her own, though it vanished in the space of a heartbeat as Andrew released her. “Sorry, that was—sorry.”

She hadn’t expected her powers to recharge so quickly. After a burnout it could take days for them to come back online at full strength. Kat reinforced her shields to be safe, but didn’t move. She barely breathed. “I know better than to poke a shapeshifter when he’s asleep. It’s my fault.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Something inside her broke at the utter lack of self-forgiveness in his eyes. He looked exhausted. Worn out. “I was just going to let you know that I’m ordering some room service…and that you can take the bed.

I’ll fit on the couch better than you do.”

He rubbed both hands through his hair and stood. “It’s a king. Plenty big enough for both of us.”

Share a bed with him? If she’d had a masochistic streak, maybe. Or if he was going to sleep in a parka.

Fear had a funny way of waking up all of her nerves, and a lot of them seemed to be tracing the memory of his chest under her palms.

Which made her feel warm—and she could only hope it wasn’t an obvious kind of warm. “We’ll figure it out. You need to eat something before you go back to sleep. Wanna look at the room-service menu?”

Andrew shook his head. “Whatever you get is fine. I’m not picky.”

Kat swallowed and eased herself upright, then rose to her feet. “Okay, but if you leave me to my own devices, I’m ordering like, every expensive dessert on the menu.”

His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Two for me.”

Maybe that was how she looked when she was shaking and scared that her empathy was a weapon that would destroy the people she loved. Not the mirror she’d expected to look into, but a powerful one.

So she did what he’d done. Reached up and framed his face with her hands, and shivered at the texture of his beard against her palms. “I will never be afraid of you, Andrew Callaghan.”

His chest heaved with shaking breaths, and he groaned as he grabbed her wrists. “It’s dangerous, Kat.

I’m dangerous.”

“So am I.” She swiped her thumbs over his cheeks and willed him to believe the same words he’d told her the day before. “Andrew, I’m still mostly burned out, and you’ve got strong shields for someone who’s not a psychic. But I couldn’t just hurt you—I could destroy you. I could drive you to your knees and make you crawl for me. I could take away everything you are.”

He closed his eyes, but he didn’t release her. “Then that makes this a doubly bad idea.”

Andrew was going to walk away from her again, and the tense parts of her that had started to unwind over the last few days would shatter. The only way to save anything was to let him go before he came up with a polite, stilted reason. “I understand.”

“No. No, you really don’t.”

He bent his head and kissed her.

The world stopped.

His lips were warm. Firm. As firm as the fingers locked around her wrists, holding her hands to his face. She’d played out this moment in a thousand girlish daydreams and more than one guilty adult fantasy, and imagination hadn’t provided the little details. The heat of his body, the strength of his grip, the way she melted, like chocolate left in the July sun, and from nothing but that innocent contact.

His lips, on hers. Parting, and oh God, he knew how to kiss, like he was hungry, like he loved the taste of her, and Kat became mortally certain that her knees were going to give out if he got his tongue in on the action. Her body throbbed with the rhythm of his mouth moving on hers, until she was one exposed nerve, and she would have begged him to touch her anywhere—everywhere—if she wouldn’t have had to stop kissing him.

When he released her wrists, it was only to grip her hips and lift her, mold her to his body, and she moaned her gratitude. He was harder than he looked, an unforgiving wall of muscle and smooth skin, so distracting and arousing that she didn’t realize they were moving until he stepped over the threshold.

Into the bedroom.

“Open,” he rasped, and lowered her to the bed.

Her back touched the mattress—gentle, so damn gentle—and Andrew stretched out over her, shirtless and beautiful, and her brain fritzed out like a fried circuit board as she obeyed and parted her lips.

He touched them with his tongue, a soft sweep of one lip and then the other, and kissed her again, deeper, one hand winding in her hair. That stirred old memories, brought to life every unacceptable fantasy she’d had of their anger and hurt and longing all coalescing into a dark passion that would satisfy her body even as it cut her heart to pieces.

But there was no darkness in the grip of his hand, just a gentle control, a sweet hint of dominance that barely deserved the description, but thrilled her anyway. The throbbing was back, magnified into an ache that pulsed in time with the stroke of his tongue. Every time she tried to catch a breath it escaped in tiny, helpless noises that would have embarrassed her if she hadn’t been burning alive.

He dragged his mouth to her chin and then her throat, nipping lightly when she tilted back her head. The scrape of his teeth curled her toes, and the sheer insanity of the way her body reacted splintered fear through her.

She fisted both hands in his hair and dragged his head back, panting for breath. “What are we doing?

Are we—” He panted too, his eyes glazed with pleasure and need. “Are we what?”

If she let him keep touching her, she’d fly apart before she got her pants off. “We can’t do this without talking about it. Sex with an empath as strong as I am—it’s not that simple. I could hurt you. Hurt both of us.”

Andrew’s chest rumbled, as if a growl formed that he didn’t quite voice. Then he rolled away. “I didn’t think.”

Disappointment made her voice shake. “You shouldn’t have to. It wouldn’t be that bad if you were anyone else…but with you I’m—I’ve got—” She covered her face with her hands, and now she was disappointed and embarrassed. “My empathy might as well be hardwired into my sexual responses. Is there a girl version of premature ejaculation?”

He choked on a snort. “I don’t think anyone minds it, usually.”

Maybe her violent reactions had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with chemistry. Maybe wanting Andrew so long had built a tension that would make even innocent touches feel fantastic. Maybe she was in denial.

Maybe she didn’t care.

The room seemed too warm as she rolled to her knees. Andrew had his hand over his face, which made asking the question a lot easier. “If it gets too overwhelming…can we stop?”

He rolled to his side, propped on one elbow, and studied her, his expression intense. “We can stop whenever you want. Whenever you need to.”

Christ, she was a teenager, making rules about where her prom date could touch her while they groped in the back of his car. Except she’d never gone to prom. She’d been sixteen her senior year, struggling with the violent surges in power that made puberty a worse nightmare for a psychic than for the average hormone-riddled teen.

And Andrew—Andrew was not a teenage boy. He was six-foot-something of shapeshifter alpha bastard who had to have his share of instinctive needs. “That’s not going to drive you crazy?”

“I have two hands, Kat,” he reminded her. “I can take care of things myself.”

It was not remotely okay to pause and savor that image, but she couldn’t stop herself. Andrew, stretched out, his face slack with pleasure, the muscles in his arm flexing as he curled his fingers around

-She slapped her hands over her face and actually whimpered. “That was mean.”

“Was it?”

Anything else she said would reveal her newly formed and overwhelming need to watch him and his two hands take care of things. So she leaned down and kissed him again.

He held the back of her head and fit his mouth to hers, slow this time. Easy. A gentle kiss from a controlled man trying to make her feel safe, with no clue that his tender protectiveness turned her inside out.

If her empathy had been at full power, she would have come when he stroked his hand from her hair to her collarbone, and then down to her breast. She moaned, imagining how much hotter his callused fingertips would be against her suddenly tight nipples.

Not that the silly butterfly tank top offered much protection. Kat shuddered and tore her mouth free of his, then shoved at his shoulders until he rolled onto his back. Sliding one leg over his body was reckless, and straddling his stomach was insane. “You’re too hot. My brain is going to overheat.”

Muscle flexed under her as he shifted slightly and gripped her hips. “Isn’t that the point?”

The fine hair on his arms tickled her palms as she touched him, sliding both hands up until they passed his shoulders and she was stretched over him, clutching the blankets on either side of his head. A position of power—if you were fool enough to think an alpha shapeshifter couldn’t dominate a lover from flat on his back.

She might be on top, but the need pulsing through her answered to him. Her body answered to him, held captive by empathy and her growing suspicion that some of the arousal turning her inside-out was coming from him, in spite of her shields.

He held her gaze and thrust up, and suspicions and shields were the last thing on her mind as the hard ridge of his erection rubbed against her. Instinct had her moving before she could stop, grinding down to chase the too-perfect pleasure that couldn’t possibly be twisting inside her already.

But it was. Her elbows gave out, and she sprawled across his bare chest, open mouth pressed to his shoulder. Moaning, she clenched her eyes shut, afraid to move. “I can’t come before you’ve barely touched me.”

He flipped her onto her back and stretched out over her, one knee between her legs. “You can come whenever you damn well please.”

It was permission, though she doubted he realized how imminent it might be. She drove her fingers into his hair and dragged his mouth to hers, kissing him with open-mouthed desperation, as if she could drown her terrifying lack of control in physical sensation.

Even as he kissed her in return, his knee pressed closer, rocking hard between her legs, and he murmured something into her mouth.

She couldn’t understand. She didn’t care. Her mouth fell away from his as she arched her head back, digging it into the mattress. She was practically riding his damn thigh, and opening her eyes was the final mistake. Andrew stared down at her, intense and hungry, eyes heavy-lidded and face flooded with passion.

For her. He wanted to see her pleasure. He wanted her to come.

Critical mental processes shut down as she dug her heels into the bed and lifted her hips. She arched one last time and gasped when his muscular leg rubbed against her clitoris in the perfect, perfect rhythm, right in time with the blood pounding in her ears.

Her empathy twisted sharply inside her, taking in his satisfaction in her responses and drowning her in it. She came with a scream, an honest-to-God cry that mixed surprise and pleasure, and she couldn’t find the wit to be embarrassed about it. Not when empathy had triggered a physical response so intense she wanted to scream again. All that was missing was touch, skin on skin, or— fuck, the actual act of fucking, him driving into her, taking her, claiming her.

Andrew groaned and buried his face against her shoulder, his body shaking. “Fuck—God—” White-hot ecstasy slammed into her, surreal because no physical reaction accompanied it. His orgasm, a desperate, intense fulfillment that fed her empathy, and realizing that he’d come roused her body until she trembled on the knife’s edge. One strong thrust of his hips set her off again.

She twisted. She writhed. She came hard, so damn hard her whole being shook with it, even as she ached, empty, craving him inside her to make this complete and beautiful and real.

“Fuck! ” He rolled off her and hit the bed, still shuddering, one arm thrown across his eyes. Relief and loss tumbled end over end as Kat gasped in a helpless breath that made the stars in her peripheral vision dance.

Slowly—too slowly—the chaos faded, leaving her limp and wrung out, sprawled across the bed fully clothed and more naked than she’d ever been in her life.

Suddenly, Andrew shot upright, leaving her staring at his rigid back as he spoke. “You okay?”

“I’m—” Humiliated. “I’m sor—” He cut her off. “Stop. You can’t apologize to me for this. It’s not right.”

Kat covered her face with hands that trembled. Too much, too fast, and now she had to confront the reasons why such an insane feedback loop could have happened with her shields locked firmly in place.

“You don’t understand.”

“Which part?” He laughed, a little desperately. “The empathy overload, or the part where I just came in my jeans?”

“Both. More. It’s…” Her body hummed as she sat up, her hands falling to her lap. “We need to talk.

About a lot of things. Things I should have told you before we—before this.”

He shook his head and eased off the bed. “I’m going to change. I’ll be back in a minute.”

As soon as the bathroom door closed behind him, Kat rolled from the bed and fought to smooth her clothing back into place. Her loose braid was disheveled, half-undone from his fingers. Tiny tingles danced up her spine at the memory of callused fingertips sliding against her neck as he tilted her head back and kissed her-Pleasure stirred, sluggish but terrifying in its quiet insistence. Andrew called to her body. He’d flipped her on. Short-circuited the gate governing her libido. Every input came back TRUE, and he didn’t even have to be in the damn room.

She couldn’t begin to fathom the reasons, but her terrified brain whispered one word, over and over in an endless loop. Imprinting. The only thing that made sense, and she didn’t know what was worse-imagining that it could be true, or having to tell Andrew.

Her gaze fell to the rumpled bedspread. If she did have to tell him, she couldn’t do it here. So she gathered the shreds of her courage, dragged herself to the marginally more innocuous territory of the couch, and waited.

He needed time more than anything else, so he jumped in the shower.

A cold one, since his body didn’t seem to have gotten the memo about recovery time and how he shouldn’t have a throbbing erection right after an orgasm, even if he was relatively young and virile.

That’s what you get for dry humping an empath, dumbass, he told himself viciously as he chattered under the frigid spray. A change of clothes and a cold shower. It sounded like the punch line to a bad joke, the kind that didn’t make anyone laugh.

His arousal had subsided by the time he climbed out, toweled off and dressed in clean clothes, but he took a moment anyway, because what came next was more unappealing than leaving the bathroom to talk to Kat.

He stared into the mirror and forced himself to go over the possibilities. She could tell him that it was a mistake, that a moment of horny weakness had made her stumble into his arms. Or— oh God—even worse, that it wasn’t right because she was still tangled up with Miguel Mendoza, though she’d talked like that shit was over.

Do it or quit, but you gotta pick one. Alec’s words, echoing in his head. Sound advice, except that he was pretty sure Alec would kick his ass for about a dozen different things he’d done in the last two days.

“Fuck it,” he whispered, and shoved open the bathroom door.

Kat was huddled on the couch in the other room, one leg tucked under her and the other foot bouncing nervously on the floor.

Her gaze landed on him for a split second before skittering away. “There’s so much stuff, I don’t know where to start. I don’t know how much you know about the creepy dark side of the psychic community.”

“What you’ve told me, or Derek.”

“Derek doesn’t know much of it. He couldn’t, or he really would have locked me in a closet until I was twenty. Empaths…” She dragged in a deep breath and let it out in a shaky sigh. “Lots of psychics are in danger during their formative years. Lots of us have powers that people would love to exploit. But empaths who don’t have fully developed protections are…vulnerable.”

It sounded like Ben’s warning. “Are you talking about the fact that there are people who would use them?”

“I’m talking about how people use us. If you get ahold of a strong receptive empath when they’re young, or you can manage to break an adult, we’re trainable. A patient person can make us love anyone, or anything. And I don’t mean make us think we love it. It’s real.”

“I don’t understand.”

Kat met his gaze. Held it. “They call it imprinting. Not like baby ducklings or anything, though. They’re not going for filial loyalty. Not usually. Because people are perverts and most empaths aren’t really useful as weapons. But if you strip an empath’s shields and flood them with pleasure, after enough time they’ll associate whatever the hell you’re doing to them with pleasure. Custom-built sex slaves.”

Andrew dropped to a chair. “People don’t really do that shit, do they?” Even as he asked, he knew it was a stupid question. If there was a way to do what she described, of course people would exploit it.

A weak smile curled her lips, and it looked forced. “Supernatural world kinda blows, doesn’t it? So much power, and people misuse it to find creative and more disgusting ways to get laid.”

“Yeah.” And that didn’t explain why she was telling him any of it. “You’re not trying to say this has something to do with me, are you?”

The smile faded. “That’s the scary, bad side of imprinting. The malicious side. But it can happen naturally too. We can grow around someone who’s important to us. Become what they need…and need what they want.”

“Oh.” He leaned back instinctively. “You think that might happen with me.”

Pain tightened her eyes, and she looked away. “No, I’ve got solid training now. Good shields.

Someone would have to break me first. But I didn’t have those shields when I met you, and I was young.

Infatuated. In love.”

How could hearing that still hurt so much? He was so busy quelling that pain he almost missed the import of her words. “When you met me.”

“I don’t usually have crazy porn-worthy orgasms from making out.” Her voice twisted, turned dry.

Morbidly amused. “And trust me, it wasn’t because Miguel sucked in bed. But it didn’t matter how well he brought it, he was never…”

You. Andrew rose and took a step back. “When? When did this happen?”

Kat slashed a look at him, eyes narrowed and mouth tight. “I don’t know if it happened at all. There’s no test. It’s not a switch or a spell. We all change because of the people in our lives. I just…change on a more fundamental level.”

“It’s got to be reversible.”

“Yeah, maybe with a time machine,” she snapped.

He’d hurt her feelings, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Don’t get snotty, Kat. I’m not worried about myself here. This isn’t fair to you.”

She crossed her arms over her chest in a blatantly defensive gesture. “Yeah, I was scared before you started backing away like you’re afraid I’m about to rape you. How much scarier do you think this is for me when you act that disgusted?”

The fear he’d been holding inside exploded in an unstoppable rush. “I’m not disgusted, I’m fucking freaked out. Can you give me a goddamn minute to process this?”

Kat rose stiffly. “You had a right to know, so I told you. But I don’t know if that’s what this is, or if I’m bent in some other way. Maybe I have a kink for shapeshifters who blew me off.”

She couldn’t have meant to marginalize what they’d shared, but he closed his eyes and turned away anyway. “Thanks a lot.”

Her breath hissed out. “I’m sorry. My shields aren’t—I didn’t mean—” Moments passed in silence.

Then, “Sometimes pride is all I have left.”

“After what?” he asked. “Did I take that much from you? Did I hurt you that much?”

“I loved you. I killed for you. And I was never what you needed.”

It stopped him cold, and he turned to face her again. “If that’s what you think happened between us, then you don’t get it at all, Kat.”

“Maybe not.” She looked tired. Older than her years, her blue eyes numb. “But you needed time. Space.

Alec to help you adjust, and Derek to be your friend. Anna, even if it was only for a while. You never needed me. Not once.”

He’d needed so many things from her, but one most of all—her safety. It had just turned out to be the one thing he couldn’t personally ensure, the one reason he’d had to push her away. “You’re so sure of that, and there’s nothing I can say, is there? Not a single damn thing.”

“You don’t say you need someone. You just do, or you don’t.” She rubbed at her face and dropped back to the couch so fast the springs creaked. “We can drown in words, and it’s never going to help.

We’re both wrong, and we’re both right. That’s life. A big fucking mess.”

“You’re right about one thing.” The admission came grudgingly, but he forced it out. “Talking isn’t going to get us anywhere, not now. Not like this. So we may as well order room service and rest up for tomorrow.”

“Okay.” She looked down. Her fingers closed on the hem of her baby-blue tank top, folding and unfolding it over and over. “I should have told you before. I would have, if I’d thought it was a possibility. And it might not be it, but if it is…” She swallowed. Cleared her throat. “I’m not your responsibility.”

He tried to stay silent, but it didn’t work. “Bullshit.”

Kat didn’t look up. “I don’t want to be your responsibility.”

It didn’t change the facts, not for either of them. “I get it.”

“Do you?” Her hands stilled. “I don’t want to be your responsibility.”

“Yeah.” He understood better than she knew. “You don’t want that to be why. I get it.”

“Okay.” She rose without looking at him. “Would you order me a cheeseburger? I need to check my mail and see if Ben’s found anything else.”

A big fucking mess. “Yeah, okay. Cheeseburger.”

Her eyes met his for just a moment. There was longing there, and pain, a weary resignation he could almost feel as she turned toward the bedroom.

Andrew snatched up the room-service menu and cursed viciously. A big fucking mess, just like she’d said, and nothing but time would help.

If anything does.