Heart of Obsidian

Chapter 29

THIRTY MINUTES AFTER the head of the rescue team at the university announced no hope of further survivors, Sahara felt the prickle at the back of her neck that was Kaleb’s presence. He’d showered and changed from the clothing she’d seen on the comm and wore camouflage black pants, his T-shirt an olive green.

Nothing on his face betrayed the exhaustion he had to be feeling, but Sahara had stayed up with him through the brutal hours, wasn’t fooled. “You need to be asleep,” she said, grabbing his hand and tugging him to her bed. “I can’t believe you were stupid enough to waste energy ’porting to me.”

When she reached for the bottom of his T-shirt, intending to pull it off so he could sleep more comfortably, strong hands closed over her wrists. “Would you like to sleep with me?”

Sahara went motionless at the cool question. Kaleb Krychek, she knew without asking, trusted no one beside him while he was as vulnerable as he ever became. “Yes,” she whispered. “I’m tired, too.”

To her frustration, he again used energy he should’ve been conserving to ’port them to the night-swathed Moscow house, but she didn’t argue. He wouldn’t be able to lower his guard enough to get real rest anywhere else. Grabbing the T-shirt he stripped off, she removed her own clothing and pulled the soft fabric over her head.

It was still warm from his body, the scent of pine and Kaleb in the weave. Shivering in tactile pleasure, Sahara decided she would always steal his T-shirts. She’d undone her braid and crawled into bed when she spied him leaving the room. “Kaleb?”

“I’ll be back after I check the security system.”

Unsurprised, she drew the sheet over her. Kaleb’s body burned so hot, she’d need nothing else. She was half-asleep when he returned. Coming to the bed, he touched the arch of her cheekbone. “You’re on my side of the bed.” It was a quiet reprimand.

Sahara smiled, sleepy and content, rolling over to surrender the spot that put him between her and the terrace sliders. “All secure?” she asked, dead certain nothing and no one would ever hurt her with Kaleb in the vicinity.

“Yes.” His weight in the bed, but no touch.

The ache for skin-to-skin contact was a dull throb in every cell of her body, but she bit down on her lower lip to stifle the request on the tip of her tongue. Kaleb’s power reserves had to be at minimal by now, which meant his shielding capacity—

He curved his body behind her own, one arm sliding under her head, the other around her waist, as his thigh pushed between her own.

“Your shields—”

“Intact. I’m only physically tired. My psychic reserves are full.”

Impossible, Sahara thought, but sensing his body begin to shut down with the same icy discipline he used in every other aspect of his life bar one, she kept her silence and fell into the soft hush of sleep seconds behind Kaleb.

KALEB woke first, to discover his hand under Sahara’s T-shirt, his fingers curved over the warm heaviness of one of her breasts. Leaving it exactly where it was, the erotic weight a deep pleasure, he quickly scanned the information that had filtered into his mind while he slept; he forwarded two items of business for his aide to handle, while taking note of the increasing disquiet in the Net.

Nothing required his urgent attention.

Slamming down the obsidian shields, he got rid of the sheet, then kicked off his sweatpants to press his nakedness against the lace-covered curves of Sahara’s lower body, the T-shirt bunched up at her waist. It made her sigh in her sleep and wiggle closer. Nudging aside the silken black strands at her neck, he pressed his lips to her sensitive throat, abdomen tightening when her thighs squeezed down his.

He had watched videos of people copulating in this position, analyzed the mechanics of it, while seeing no reason to pick it over any other. Now he realized there were two very good reasons—it gave the male free access to the female and near total control of the sexual act.

Kaleb liked control in all things.

“Sahara.” A graze of teeth on her neck that made her shiver. “Wake up.”

She stretched sinuously against him, body pliant, no fear or surprise in her at their intimate entanglement . . . only an increasing dampness in the lace that pressed against his thigh. “How does this work?” It was a sleepy question, her foot lifting to rub over the back of his calf.

Kaleb rifled through his image files to find one that showed her exactly what he wanted. “Like this.”

Sahara whimpered but pulled off the T-shirt in silent acquiescence. Throwing it aside, she brushed her hair off her face, then curled her arm over her shoulder until her fingers brushed his nape, the charms on her bracelet cool against his skin. It left her entire body exposed for him to touch, for him to possess, her breasts lifted lush and high on her chest for his private viewing. His body rock-hard, he stroked one hand over the sweetly sensitive skin of her thigh before pulling it up and back to hook over his own, his fingers pressing into the delicate flesh.

His other hand he curled gently around her throat.

“Are you ready?” he asked, though he could feel her molten stickiness against his thigh.

“Yes.”

“Show me.”

“I—how?”

“Use your own fingers.”

Color pulsed under her skin.

“No taboos, no rules here,” he said, wanting her with him through every step of this erotic exploration. “This is our place, our time.” Finally it was their time.

Sahara wet her lips, eyes of midnight blue drenched in passion. “Our bed.”

Squeezing the base of his penis with a telekinetic ring, he reined in the driving urge to thrust inside her. “And my Sahara.” Always his.

Sahara shivered and moved her hand down the concave slope of her stomach to splay her fingers over her navel. When she hesitated, he kissed her throat again. “No taboos.”

Her hand ventured lower, the tips of her fingers disappearing under the creamy lace of her panties. Breath turning shallow at the visual stimuli that hit every single one of his pleasure centers, he watched her hand move under the lace as she stroked herself. His abdomen was rigid, his chest tight, the pleasure almost pain by the time she withdrew her fingers, the digits slick and shiny.

“Make me yours, Kaleb.”

The throaty request, falling from lips plump and wet, snapped the ring of black ice. Slipping his hand under her thigh after repositioning his own, he spread her further and, tearing away her panties with a negligible use of his Tk, pushed inside her. She was tight. He was slow, deliberate. Moaning, Sahara dug her nails into his nape, her breasts flushed, her nipples lush beads he wanted to roll against his tongue.

Since he couldn’t indulge in the latter, he covered one of her breasts with a telekinetic hand, stroking down to squeeze her nipple. She clenched around him, her wetness molten. It took Kaleb’s brain a microsecond to make the connection. Giving her neglected breast the same treatment, he rubbed at her clitoris with a phantom finger, while never faltering in the slow, steady rhythm of sexual intercourse that had his testicles drawn up tight against his body, the pain exquisite.

Sensing her body begin to tighten, he parted her labia using telekinesis and squeezed her clitoris.

“Kaleb!” Sahara convulsed around his erection, her entire body shaking with the strength of her orgasm.

Kaleb had intended to continue the slow pace that was an exercise in erotic control, but his brain short-circuited at the possessive clenching of Sahara’s intimate muscles. Pushing her onto her front, her face turned sideways on the pillow, he fisted one hand tightly in her hair and slammed into her in a brutally deep and fast rhythm, her body tight and slick and of the woman who was and had always been his. It felt like madness, creeping red on the horizon.

Hurting her, the part of him that lived in the void screamed, I’m hurting her!

His muscles locked, his mind trying to force his body to pull out of her and failing. He didn’t want to break the rawness of the connection, her skin as sweat-slick as his own, her body a hot, silken fist. “I’m hurting you,” he managed to ground out.

“No, you’re not!” Punching her fist on the pillow, Sahara undulated her lower body toward him. Move!

The feminine demand was the only thing he needed to hear. Pounding into her, he saw her fingers clench tight on the sheets, her lips part on a breathless cry, and then she was coming around him once more, the pulses harder, more viciously possessive. Caught in the vise of her pleasure, his back arched as white lightning tore through his spine.

The bed slammed back to the ground.

Hard.

So did every other item in the room.

SAHARA was attempting to gasp in air when a fragment of memory untangled itself from the vault.

“Did you steal this?”

“No. I earned it.”

Her bracelet, she’d been talking of her bracelet with the man whose muscled body covered her back, both of them breathing as if they’d run a marathon. Never, she thought, had she asked him what he’d done to earn it; that wasn’t a choice she had any intention of altering. Whatever price Kaleb had paid for the platinum that encircled her wrist, he had done so for her, and she would honor it.

His chest sliding against her back, Kaleb pushed up a fraction. Can you breathe?

No, but it has nothing to do with your weight. Come back. Fingers flexing as he obeyed, she released a shuddering exhale and tried to shape words with her mouth. It took her at least two minutes. “I want to do that again.”

“I’m not sure our bodies can take it.”

The icy tone made her toes curl—she knew full well he only went that cold with her when he was fighting to leash himself. Then he kissed her neck and she knew he’d lost the fight. To her shock, they did manage to have sex again, her on her front, Kaleb’s chest rubbing over her back, though he used his Tk to lessen the pressure of his weight. This time, it was slow and deep from start to finish.

“It feels like a full-body kiss,” she whispered as her inner muscles began to clench in a quieter but no less potent pleasure.

Lips at her throat, Kaleb rocked her through the orgasm, then filled her in a burst of liquid heat.

They were both drenched in sweat and sticky with sex, but Sahara had no intention of moving. In fact, she wasn’t certain her bones hadn’t melted. So it was as well her lover was a cardinal Tk who could ’port them into the shower.

SHOWERED and dressed in fresh jeans and a soft pink cardigan from the closet she had in her original room, Sahara went hunting in the kitchen while Kaleb dressed in preparation for a comm meeting. The charcoal gray suit teamed with a steel blue shirt and charcoal tie was one of her favorites. There was something incredibly sexy about a man so lethal that civilized dress only served to highlight the danger, not lessen it.

Discovering a stash of frozen meals he must’ve stocked for use after a high-calorie burn, she put several in the thermal device in the corner. The flavors would be bland by the standards outside the PsyNet, but right now, she could eat a small mammal. Stomach fluttering at the reminder of exactly how she’d used up the kilojoules, she was pouring piping hot pasta into a dish when Kaleb walked in, the fingers of his right hand slotting in his left cuff link.

Hair combed and tie knotted, no trace of passion in his expression, he was Kaleb Krychek, cardinal Tk and former Councilor, once more. The transformation was so complete that it shook her, making her conscious of the level at which he could compartmentalize—and leaving her with the troubling question of exactly how much of himself he ever showed her.

Then he touched his finger to the arch of her cheekbone, and the fear splintered, because only her Kaleb touched her in that way.

Sitting down to eat, neither one of them spoke until they’d almost completed the meal.

“My father just came out of isolation,” she said, having received the update while she was heating up the meals, relief a shuddering emotion inside her. “Anthony called.”

“I can take you to him.”

“Your meeting?”

A slight pause. “My aide is rescheduling it now.”

Sahara wasn’t the least surprised that Kaleb had put her first. He always did. “Thank you,” she said through the painful burn of a tenderness she wasn’t certain he’d ever accept. “But”—she met those incredible night-sky eyes—“I need to ask you a question first.”

Kaleb dosed her water with a vitamin and mineral tablet. “Ask.”

“How could you possibly not have been wiped out by what you did at the university?” Cardinals might be gifted, but their abilities were still finite. “You had enough energy left over to ’port us both to the other side of the world.”

Waiting until she’d drunk half her fortified water, he said, “Do you know about the Amplification Effect?”

She shook her head and, because she didn’t like the distance in his expression, reached out to tangle her fingers with his.

“Per the effect,” he said, not repudiating the touch, “an individual with two midlevel abilities, for example 4.7 in telepathy and 3.9 in psychometry, can sometimes use one to amplify the strength of the other, pushing themselves into the 8 or higher range.” He paused to finish a high-energy nutrient bar. “No one has ever considered if the effect would hold true if an individual had two cardinal-level abilities.”

Sahara couldn’t imagine the storm of his power. To be a cardinal was to be off the scale. To be a dual cardinal was incomprehensible. “What happens if you amplify?”

“My dual-cardinal status already makes me stronger than other cardinals, by an unknown factor.” No arrogance, only cold fact. “I believe there must be a low level of unconscious amplification taking place at all times. That’s why my abilities didn’t flatline at the university, and have, in fact, never flatlined.”

Teleporting away the wrapper of the nutrient bar, he said, “As a very young child, I once lifted the wreckage of a bullet train off a trapped survivor—even a cardinal child shouldn’t have been capable of that.”

Sahara struggled to understand what he was saying. “Have you ever consciously amplified your abilities?”

“As a test, yes. Amplification impacts my telekinesis, not my telepathy. I could conceivably reach the earth’s core with the resulting power, destroy the planet from the inside out.”

She had no words, not for a long time, her fingers twined with those of a man who held the fate of the world in his grasp. “Kaleb?”

He didn’t answer, but she knew she held his attention.

“Promise me something.”

“Yes?”

“That you won’t destroy the Net.” If he struck out, she knew it wouldn’t be against the humans or the changelings, but against his own kind; against the ones who had taken her—and almost broken him.

“I told you,” he responded in the same coolly pragmatic tone he’d used for the entirety of their conversation. “I’ve decided against it.”

“That’s not what I asked.” She held the obsidian of his gaze. “I want you to promise to never destroy the Net.” No matter what happened or didn’t happen to her.

A pause filled with a thousand unspoken words . . . and the words he did speak, they made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck rise. “Some things need to be broken to become stronger.”