Shield of Winter

Chapter 55

“STAY RIGHT HERE,” Ivy said after he ’ported them back to the bedroom. “Don’t move a muscle.” A kiss pressed to his sternum.

When she ducked out from under his arm, he didn’t go after her into the bathroom. Instead, he used the minutes it took for the water to fill the tub to regain a measure of control. And lost it all the instant Ivy returned to her earlier position trapped between his body and the wall.

“Maybe,” she said, lavishing kisses on his chest, “we could have a large water tank next to our home.”

Our home.

Vasic had never had a real home, and now he was going to have one with his empath. “I’ll build it myself,” he said through the flood of happiness in his blood.

Licking at him then blowing on the wet, Ivy leaned back against the wall. “Why didn’t Tks in the past use the same trick?”

“Probably,” he said, as she unzipped her jeans, “because they didn’t have the mental training to direct their abilities so specifically.” His words came out harsh, his breath ragged. “The damage caused was often significant.”

“I guess Silence did have some good points.” Toeing off her shoes, she began to wriggle out of the jeans.

He should’ve pushed back, given her more room, but he liked the fact that she kept rubbing up against him in the confined space. Jeans off, she nudged them aside and tugged off her socks to rise to her full height clad only in lace.

“Now this.” He touched the strap of the camisole.

Slipping it off over her head, Ivy drew her hair away from her face.

He pressed one hand against her abdomen before she could make any other move. “Let me look.”

Hands flat against the wall and breasts feeling swollen and taut in the confines of her bra, Ivy gave Vasic what he wanted. Molten silver, his eyes lingered on her lips, her throat, the tight points of her nipples . . . lower. Biting back a moan, Ivy watched him raise the hand he’d placed on her abdomen, tuck a finger under the strap and stroke downward.

“Vasic.”

“Hmm?” Kissing her as he repeated the maddening caress, he pulled a bra strap off her shoulder. Another ravenous kiss before he turned his attention to her breast, reaching to tug the cup farther down so her nipple was exposed. Then, before she could ready herself for it, he lowered his head and closed his mouth over the sensitized tip, licking and sucking at her as if she was a decadent treat.

Fingers locked in his hair, Ivy could feel her body undulating in naked pleasure, the wall at her back, and the hard muscle of him in front of her. Unable to control the movements, she gave in, her panties so damp with her arousal that when he raised his head from her breast, his nostrils flaring, she knew he’d caught the musk of her scent. The silver of his eyes shifted to pure black. No whites. No irises. Just a wild, endless night that told Ivy her Arrow’s hunger echoed her own.

Steam curled into the air behind him, coming from the bathroom, but it was the steam they’d generated between them that scalded. Acting on instinct and need, she slowly pulled down the other strap of her bra, baring the begging pout of her nipple. “Please.”

Hitching her up onto his waist with muscled ease, her legs wrapped around him, he used one hand to further plump up her breast. Then he gave her what she wanted and took what he needed, his pleasure in her intoxicating. Rubbing the juncture between her thighs against his abdomen, she tried to get lower, craving the friction of his arousal, but the position made that impossible.

Then Vasic took her hand from his shoulder, situated it so her fingertips were just under the elasticated waistband of her panties. “Touch,” he murmured, eyelids lowering as he looked down. “I want to watch.”

Lungs working overtime and skin shimmering with perspiration, she inserted her hand between them, the hard ridges of his abdomen separated from her skin only by a fine layer of lace. Not sure quite what to do, she tentatively stroked, shivered.

“It feels good,” she whispered, having the courage to do this only because it was Vasic. Her Arrow. Her lover. “But I like your touch better.”

His breathing had lost its rhythm, his voice gravel when he said, “I like watching you. Do it for me, Ivy.”

All at once, her body was tighter, wetter, more wound up, each caress creating a heady rain of sensation. Moaning, she closed her eyes . . . and Vasic pressed up tight against her, trapping her hand as he kissed her with such unleashed passion that all she could do was take it. The wall vanished from behind her, but it was back before she could lose her balance, the bedroom a misty landscape painted in steam.

His hand around her throat in a gentle, protective hold that made the nerve endings in her skin ignite, Vasic kissed her into an oblivion of pleasure. Ivy rubbed and arched against him, her nipples deliciously abraded by the muscled silk of his chest. A groan came from deep in him. The vibration traveled through her near-painfully aroused nipples to the engorged folds between her thighs.

“I want you,” she got out between kisses, and it was half entreaty, half demand. “Inside me, Vasic.”

Shifting back without warning, he allowed her to remove her hand from her panties before dropping her to her feet, his hands on her waist keeping her upright when her knees threatened to crumple. Startled because she’d assumed he wanted to enter her in their previous position, she gasped when he flipped her around so she faced the wall.

“Brace your hands against it.” The words were so rough, she wasn’t surprised when the wall disappeared a second later, the desert in front of her. The wall was back in a single heartbeat. He was getting faster at the switching, she realized before all thought was lost as Vasic pulled down her panties.

Leaving them tangled around her thighs, he squeezed one cheek with a blatantly possessive touch, then dipped his hand between her legs. “You’re liquid.” Crushed rocks and sexual heat, that was his voice.

Ivy’s answer required no thought. “Because it’s you.”

Movement behind her, the back of his hand brushing her buttocks. The sound of a zipper. Fabric being pushed down. And then he was gripping her hips to tilt her farther forward as he pushed into her with relentless focus. Making incoherent sounds of need, she was hardly aware of the world altering between sand and the wall and back over and over. Every cell in her body was focused on Vasic, on feeling the thick intrusion of him stretching her flesh.

This position permitted nothing else.

He slammed home to her body’s convulsive rippling, stroked out, thrust in. Again and again and again. It was harder and faster than he’d ever before ridden her, his fingers bruising in their grip. When he rasped out her name, she knew it came from between gritted teeth.

“Yes,” she said, afraid he was going to stop, to slow down. “Yes, yes, yes, yes—” Her words ended in a hoarse scream as he increased the speed of his possession, his testicles slapping against her with every thrust.

It made her mindless, her fingernails trying to dig into the wall. The orgasm caught her unaware, demolishing her into a million shards of unbridled ecstasy. But it didn’t hurt, felt wonderful, because Vasic never let her go, even when his own orgasm turned his body to living stone, his seed pulsing wet inside her, the intimacy absolute.

THEY came to lying on the floor, Ivy on top of Vasic. Her panties were tangled around one of her ankles, her bra twisted. Vasic wasn’t in much better shape. Running her foot over his leg, she found her way blocked by jeans he’d never actually fully taken off. She glanced down, laughed a silly, delirious laugh. “You’re still wearing your boots.”

Chest heaving as if he’d just run a long-distance race, he didn’t answer except to stroke his hand down to splay over her buttocks. Feeling lethargic and pleasured and adored, she looked up at his face to see his lashes shading his cheeks, his gauntleted arm above his head.

She flicked out her tongue over the flat disk of his nipple, licked up the salt and sex of him. When she bit at his pectoral muscle a little, he squeezed her where he held her but didn’t otherwise protest. Finding a new vein of energy on the realization she finally had him at her mercy, Ivy managed to kick off her panties and unhook her bra.

Then, rubbing her naked body over his, she began to kiss her way down his chest. Only when she reached the bottom of his ridged abdomen did he react—to twine his fingers in her hair. She hesitated, glanced up. His eyes remained closed, the tension in him a quiet hum, nothing urgent.

Returning to her pleasurable task, she licked along his hip bone, pushing up on her forearms to admire the V shape created low on his body by some very nice muscles. She didn’t know what they were called, but she’d already decided it was one of her favorite parts of his body.

To be fair, she licked the other side, too.

His hand tugged at her hair in reaction. The tug came again when she curled her fingers around his penis, which was already semihard again. Fascinated by the differences in their bodies, in the way he responded to her touch, she rested her cheek against the hair-roughened skin of his thigh and stroked him, testing to see what he liked, what made his breathing alter, his hand flex in her hair.

And found her own legs getting restless, the place between her thighs slick with renewed wetness. When he hauled her up and flipped their positions, she didn’t argue. Taking a second to get rid of his boots and remaining clothing, he sank into her pleasure-swollen flesh, his forearms braced on either side of her head and her arms around his neck.

They kissed; said soft, intimate words; rocked together. The orgasm was quieter but the intimacy no less potent. Mine, she said, mind to mind. You are mine. Every breath, every scar, every perfection, every flaw, every light, every darkness. It’s part of you, and it’s mine.

Vasic shuddered and collapsed onto her. The man I was, the man I am, the man I will be, the man I want to be, they all belong to you. Always.

Despite the visceral power of their vow, Vasic’s mind remained separate from hers on the psychic plane. Ivy’s chest ached, but it wasn’t from hurt. She knew what he was doing, her Arrow. He tried so hard, but he couldn’t stop protecting her . . . especially against the consequences of his possible death.

No, she said silently, no. But it was getting harder and harder to forget the lethal countdown to a highly risky surgery. Then, in a vicious reminder, Vasic’s gauntlet malfunctioned again a half hour later. A cool blue laser shot out, scored the same wall Vasic had repaired after the attack by Ming’s men.

The feedback from the laser caused a minor overload, but he was worried only about her, wanted her away from him. “The weapons capability might spontaneously reinitialize again. I could hurt you.”

Ivy wasn’t about to budge. Swallowing her tears, she sat him down on the bed and, using the advanced first aid kit Aden had quietly dropped off three days ago, took care of the burns on his arm and rib cage. “Mine,” she whispered again, pressing her lips to the thin-skin bandage that protected the healing skin.

His hand stroked through her hair. “Ivy.”

Refusing to look up, her hold on her emotions fragile, she said, “It’s time we hunted down Samuel Rain.”

VASIC took her to Haven, but the engineer refused to see them. According to Clara, he’d been shut up inside his room for days. “He accepts food through the slot he sawed into the bottom of his door”—the manager pointed out the mangled hole—“but will reply to no one.”

Wanting to scream, Ivy disobeyed Clara’s orders and banged on the door. “Samuel!” she yelled, slamming her fists against the barrier. “Open this right now! Samuel!”

“Stop, Ivy.” Vasic enclosed her in his embrace.

Angry and infuriated, she kicked at the door, her words directed at Samuel Rain. “I will make your life unbearable if—” She couldn’t complete the threat, couldn’t acknowledge the fear. Trembling, she held on to Vasic’s strength, unable to imagine a world where he didn’t exist.

A kiss to her temple. “Shh.” His heart pumped steady and powerful in his chest; the idea it might stop was one her brain just couldn’t process.

After leaving Haven, they went to see the surgeon—who told them that the chance of Vasic surviving the surgery was eight to ten percent.

“One in ten,” Ivy said afterward. “It’s not so bad if we put it like that. One in ten.” She repeated that over and over to herself, cupping the meager shield it provided around the flickering candle of hope in her heart. Never would she let that candle go out. Never.

THE infection continued to hurtle across the Net in the ensuing days, decimating a huge swathe of the psychic plane and leaving thousands of people in comas. Jaya and the other medical empaths figured out a treatment of sorts five days after that beautiful, horrible afternoon of love and despair when Vasic and Ivy had crossed Samuel Rain off as an option. The treatment succeeded in bringing a small number of the infected back to consciousness and to reason.

“The disease is simply dormant in the patients we’ve been able to wake,” Jaya told her one night as they sat on Ivy’s bed, dark circles under her friend’s eyes. “It’s not a cure, and we can’t know how long the Band-Aid will hold.” A defeated slump of her shoulders. “I’m so tired, Ivy,” she said, a sob in her voice. “You are, too, even if you smile through it. Your clothes are starting to hang off you.”

Ivy couldn’t dispute Jaya’s assessment, not with her body feeling as if it had been beaten. Hugging her teary friend close, she stroked her hand down Jaya’s hair. “We’re all on the edge of exhaustion, even the Arrows.”

That wasn’t the only problem.

“How many?” Ivy asked, her fingers trembling against her mouth as Aden gave them the news the next morning.

“Nineteen,” he said. “Not many in the scheme of things, but enough.”

Legs shaky, Ivy sat down on the edge of the sofa. “Why did . . .” She couldn’t say it, couldn’t even think it. It seemed impossible that a mob had formed to kill a group of innocent Psy going about their business.

“Fear,” Vasic answered shortly, his hand on her shoulder. “They believed the victims infected. The only surprise is that it took this long to spill over into violence.”

“The worldwide cooperation agreements,” Aden said, while Ivy tried to process the horror of it, “gave people pause. But now with empaths burning out under the nonstop outbreaks and the infected turning violent again, even formerly rational individuals are seeing vigilante justice as an answer.”

Vasic glanced at the gauntlet that continued to function as far as communications were concerned. “Krychek is on his way.”

“Good. We need to discuss a way to throttle the mob violence before it escalates.”

A flicker at the corner of Ivy’s eye half a minute later announced the deadly cardinal’s arrival. Beside him stood a woman dressed in a forest green sweater-coat belted over black jeans, her dark hair pulled into a rough tail and her eyes a deep midnight blue. “Hello.” She smiled at Ivy, though the strain in her face couldn’t be masked. “I’m Sahara.”

Whatever Ivy had expected of Kaleb Krychek’s mate, it wasn’t this woman with an open expression that said she’d welcome a friendship. “Ivy.”

Any other conversation had to wait, the mob attack a priority.

“We’ll need the cooperation of the others.”

Everyone agreed with Kaleb’s assessment, and they were soon in a comm conference with representatives of the worldwide rapid-response network set up by Silver Mercant. No one had any arguments about working together to stop the chaos from spreading.

“A mob might think it has a purpose,” said the security chief of the Human Alliance, “but sooner rather than later, it all devolves to mindless violence. We need to nip it in the bud.”

Decisions were made, plans to head off another incident set in place.

“Sahara’s discovered something intriguing,” Krychek said after the comm conference ended, taking a seat on the arm of the sofa that held his mate.

Sahara put one of her hands on his thigh as she leaned forward. “Do you remember Miguel Ferrera? The commercial telepath apparently immune to the infection?”

“Of course.” Ivy could still feel Miguel’s panic, his horror as he hunched in that closet.

Vasic, standing behind the sofa on which she sat, stroked his thumb over the side of her neck in tactile comfort. Her Arrow knew how touch anchored her, never withheld it. The tension in her muscles easing, she looked across at Sahara. “Miguel still isn’t showing any signs of infection as far as I know.”

“Kaleb”—the other woman turned her face up to the cardinal—“was able to confirm his immunity for me. The reason why he’s immune may explain all the outliers.”

“The ones who have no connection to an E?”

“No obvious connection,” Sahara replied, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear with impatient fingers. “Miguel Ferrera has an empathic neighbor who was away at the time of the outbreak.”

Aden, having taken a seat next to Ivy, shook his head. “Many of the infected lived in close proximity to an empath—even closer than Ferrera.”

“That’s just it,” Sahara responded as Rabbit jumped down from his favorite window ledge and came to sit at Ivy’s feet. “Miguel doesn’t just live down the corridor from an E. He’s listed as her emergency contact.”

A hush fell over the room.

“Three months ago,” Sahara continued into the quiet, “Miguel was the one who called an ambulance when the E had a fall. Three weeks after that, she named him as her emergency contact.

“Soon after that, their purchasing patterns changed. The E started ordering certain food items that previously never appeared on her online grocery order but that regularly appear on Miguel’s, and vice versa. In the same period, he also twice purchased two tickets to a lecture series at a nearby gallery.”

The evidence was circumstantial, Ivy thought, but compelling. “They have an emotional bond.”

Sahara nodded. “That’s my conclusion.”

Ivy rubbed her hands over her face; something was niggling at her. “But, if an emotional bond with an E is the deciding factor, why was Eben’s father infected? With such a young empath, I’d expect a connection—even if it was one-sided.”

Sahara’s hand tightened on Kaleb’s thigh. “That case frustrated me, too,” she said. “I tore the data apart looking for an answer, and I finally found it.”