Unbound

Dedication

To my real high school creative writing teacher,

Mr. Harris, whose wonderful assignments

first showed my imagination what it could create.

I wish you’d been given the chance to affect more students.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Full credit for Dante Jenga must go to Dawn

and Brian Chatham. I hope I honored the fat cat’s memory.

I must thank the Chicago-North chapter of the Romance Writers of America for giving honest, helpful critiques that helped me shape the opening pages.

I also had seven wonderful beta readers: Erica O’Rourke, Eliza Evans, Clara Kensie, Lynne Hartzer, Sarah Shulman, Sonali Dev, and Ann-Marie Bauer. My love and thanks to you all.

CHAPTER ONE

David had returned to the land of the living. Sort of.

He bled from a throbbing knot on his temple. The laceration across his chest burned and wept red. The paper on the exam table crinkled as he shifted, the pain in his body just slightly eclipsing the nerve-racking anticipation over seeing the woman he’d successfully avoided for two months.

After a week spent tracking the Ofarians’ most-wanted fugitive through the wilds of the Sierras, the activity of the clinic jarred. The lights glared too brightly. The buzz and hum of water elemental magic, emanating from his fellow Ofarians scurrying about their work, played havoc with his already woozy brain.

And then there was Dr. Kelsey Evans, opening the door.

She looked far more relaxed than the last time they’d spoken. Less burdened. He’d done the right thing by ending their engagement, even though seeing her now reminded him of what he’d almost had. That loss thrust hard and jagged into his chest.

Still, he smiled, because when it came to her, even with pain spiking through his body, he couldn’t help it. “Hey, Doc. Mind telling me why I’m here and not at your mom’s ER?”

“You’re not an emergency.” She entered but left the door wide open. “And I want to try a new treatment on you.”

“Always wanted to be a guinea pig. Do I get to run around in one of those huge plastic balls?”

Great stars, he lived to make her smile. So rare. Always beautiful.

In sophomore year health class, he’d dressed up the two room skeletons in awful 1970s clothing and posed them doing it in front of the blackboard. He’d amassed a long detention schedule for that stunt, but when he’d first seen Kelsey’s small smile shining out from the front row—on the face of the bookish girl who’d always been the most reluctant to lighten up—he’d been instantly hooked. Now, more than a decade later, he craved it like water.

Kelsey smoothed her bright hair, the color of a brand-new penny, into her trademark ponytail. Not sparing him a glance, she went right to the sink to wash up.

In his dreams, he got to see her without her ever-present white coat. In his dreams, he slid out the rubber band at her nape and let that hair brush her shoulders. In his dreams, they kissed and touched, and not because a bunch of old people had told them to marry and breed.

He’d never known why the former Ofarian Board had matched them in marriage in the first place. Him from the working class, she from the ruling. Kelsey hadn’t wanted it—she’d never loved anything more than her career—so when the Board had been deposed three months ago and the old systems crumbled, David couldn’t bear to hold her to a promise she hadn’t willfully given.

So he’d ended it. For her sake.

Kelsey opened cabinets and removed rolls of gauze, scissors, and a clear pouch of water that sparkled like the sun setting over a lake.

“Did you get Wes?” she asked, turning to him.

The reminder of his most recent failure hurt almost as bad as his injuries. “No. He got away.” David touched his sticky forehead and groaned. “A steep ravine and a sharp boulder got me instead.”

Wes Pritchart, the last former Ofarian executive remaining to be tried and imprisoned, had been on the lam since the Board fell. He’d been chief operating officer of the Plant, which had secretly manufactured Mendacia, the magic product that had kept the Ofarians steeped in wealth and privilege for generations. Then the shocking secret behind Mendacia had come to light, setting their society on a path to destruction. David was proud to say he’d been among the treasonous few to have taken down the Ofarian Board. Its members and anyone knowingly involved in the Plant had been imprisoned. Everyone except Wes, who’d managed to escape.

Kelsey came to the edge of the exam table and peered at his temple, her expression assessing and professional. “Can you lean back for me? Yeah, thanks. Just relax.”

When her latex-covered fingers touched his face, he inadvertently sighed. Their first touch in nearly six months, since the night of their matching ceremony. They’d held hands then, as a ribbon of glistening, enchanted water had bound them together.

The sting of the antiseptic wash didn’t faze him. Over the sharp tang of the medicine, he could smell her. Feel her.

“This’ll need some stitches,” she said in that low, careful way of doctors, “but I’ve been working on something new. Secondary water magic combined with Primary medicine. If I’m right, it could be . . . monumental. Do I have your permission?”

She was bending over him, her voice a caress to match the lightness of her touch. Her sky blue eyes shone like stars, and he knew it had to come from the excitement of her work, not from his proximity.

“Do it, Doc. Whatever you want.” He wasn’t entirely sure of the innocence of his command.

Kelsey lifted the glimmering pouch over his head wound and slit a corner. Words in the language of their birth poured out in time with the liquid. The sparkling water defied gravity to undulate in a cool bubble the size of a golf ball over his split skin. She whispered more Ofarian words, tapping into the magic swirling inside the bubble, and sent it surging into his body. Her words, her power, drifted inside him. Slipped into his bloodstream, his very being.

There was something else, too—the numbness of Primary medicine doing its thing alongside the Secondary magic. Monumental, she’d said.

“How does it feel?” she asked.

“Good.”

Holy hell, it did. The quiet pulse of magic traveled down his arms and torso. Lower even, stirring him. He shifted on the table, trying to hide the neon sign that would tell her his body was lighting up. He’d successfully hidden his desire for twelve years. He wasn’t about to show her now, here on her table, when he knew he wasn’t wanted.

“That should do it. The combo should accelerate healing.”

In Ofarian, she commanded the bubble to roll off his temple and into her palm. No longer sparkling—the magic and medicine transferred into him—she carried it, whole and wobbly, to the sink, where it splashed into the stainless steel basin. As she came back to him, she murmured clinical approval, numbed his temple, and started to stitch.

He relaxed into her touch, feeling the tug of the needle but not the pain, and let his eyes trail out the door to the flurry of nurses and lab technicians outside. “This is great, Doc, what you’ve built here.”

“Thank you.” Pride swelled her voice.

“So this is what you’ve been doing lately? Experimenting with mixed treatments?”

“Yes.” Her hands left him and he gazed up at her. Damn, she was like the sun, her pale skin and coppery hair dazzling.

“Can I tell you something?” she asked, sitting back.

Anything. Please let it be what he wanted to hear. “Sure,” he said.

“I was thinking that maybe, if my combined treatments work on Ofarians, they might work on Primaries, too.”

Such an amazing thought. Such a dangerous thought. Right now, the Primary and Secondary human worlds—the former ignorant of magic, the latter dependent on it—didn’t overlap. For Ofarians to reveal themselves as magic-users could be devastating. It had been one of the key issues behind the Board’s destruction. But if Kelsey could actually help the Primaries, if her work could heal them . . . that could be quite the game changer. Or the world changer.

“Gwen and Griffin do want to better integrate into the Primary society,” he said carefully. “Who knows? Maybe it’ll happen.”

“Thank you. For saying that. I worry about not being able to keep this place open, now that . . .”

The Ofarians don’t have Mendacia, David mentally finished for her. Millions and millions of dollars had once poured in from that product, now all gone.

“Did you know,” she said, returning to her work, “that the Board used to have access to all medical records? They had no concept of sanctity, of doctor-patient privilege. But here, all my work is confidential. I love that.”

The Board had destroyed so much—and invaded even more—under the banner of “success.” Griffin Aames, the first elected Ofarian leader, and Gwen Carroway, the woman who’d taken down the Board, wanted to build back up in the name of progress. David wanted whatever his new leader wanted because Griffin was fair and strong. Even though David was a soldier by birth, he remained in service by choice, and because Griffin was his best friend.

Kelsey cleared her throat, snipped off the thread. “Okay. On to the next. I want your shirt off.”

If she weren’t so professional, so frustratingly poised, he might have taken that statement another way. He wanted to take it another way. Instead, he reached for the buttons on his Ofarian-issued black shirt but couldn’t disguise his wince. Pain streaked from his chest to his fingertips and his arms flopped back to the table.

“It’s okay, you know.” She held up the scissors. “You can say it hurts.”

David looked into her impossibly clear eyes, surrounded by feathers of copper lashes, and laughed. “Then it hurts. Like a bitch.”

But not as much as having to let her go.

She stretched for where the bloodied and shredded shirt was tucked into his black pants. He tortured himself by dreaming she reached for something else.

Though her hands were smooth with latex gloves, he imagined how she might trail her gentle fingers down his ribs, over his belly, and slide beneath the gap of his pants between his hipbones. Only the pain rippling across his chest kept him from getting hard.

She snipped the shirt up one side of the buttons. Tilting him on his side, she cut up the back of the shirt and pulled the two halves down his arms. Habit and his favorite defense mechanism longed to make a joke about his near nakedness, but she looked so serious, and there was only so much forced levity he could stand before it threatened to crush him.

As she patched his chest with another water-magicked pouch of liquid, he returned his attention to the open door, looking for someone in particular. There she was, right in his line of sight. A woman in her mid-forties, long hair pulled back at the sides, her body softened with age, sat at the central computer terminal. Her head in her hand, she stared unseeing at the monitor.

“Emily Pritchart,” he muttered. Wes’s sister.

Kelsey finished her quiet chanting. The healing magic coursed through the wound.

“Yes,” she replied. “That’s her.”

“She’s one of your nurses?”

“Not exactly. She’s in charge of maintaining regular contact with our patients taking part in my test treatments. She interviews them, documents progress or problems, that sort of thing.”

Weeks of frustrating chases ate at him. Wes eluded him far too easily, considering Wes had been a suit his whole life. It was like he had help or something.

David shifted his head on the thin, papery pillow and asked Kelsey, “Has her brother tried to contact her here at the clinic?”

Kelsey’s eyebrows drew together. “Not that I know of. Why?”

“Has she mentioned him to you at all? Has she called him from here? E-mailed him? You guys are friends, right?”

Only when Kelsey’s hand slid from his pectoral muscle did he realize she’d been holding it there. She adopted that opinionated, determined look he remembered from her spirited class debates back in high school. “What exactly are you getting at? That Emily is somehow helping Wes evade you? She’s as devastated as the rest of us over what he was involved with.”

David struggled up onto his elbows. “And Wes is also her brother. Blood is a powerful thing, Doc.”

“She’s distraught, David. Look at her.”

As if Emily had heard them, the other woman glanced up and looked right at David—the man hunting down her brother. Emily jumped up from her chair, ducked her head, and hurried out of sight.

“Ouch!” His head whipped back to Kelsey, who’d slapped a huge bandage over his chest with none of her trademark gentleness.

“Can you sit up for me?”

He tried to do it himself, but in the end had to accept her help. Her cheeks flushed slightly as she wrapped gauze around his chest, passing the roll from hand to hand around his back. She had to move closer to do it, her body inserted between his knees, the short, sharp bursts of her breath on his neck. Her warmth coated his bare skin. He swallowed, willing away any pleasure his desperate body wanted to feel.

“I’m not trying to get at anything,” he said. “I’m just asking. It’s my job. Griffin wants Pritchart in custody. A lot—maybe everything—is riding on this capture.”

Bottom line, ousting the old Board hadn’t been a cure to what ailed their race. It had shattered Ofarian society into chunks and now it was Griffin’s job to pick them all up and somehow glue them back together.

“I know.” Kelsey backed toward the door, a steel veneer pulled down over her expression. “You’re done. Come back after the Ice Rites for evaluation.”

She left. And he’d been the one, again, to drive her away.

CHAPTER TWO

Kelsey measured her steps exiting David’s exam room. Running would draw the wrong kind of attention. Not to mention crying.

Research first. Always first.

She sat at the central computer Emily had just left and logged in the specific spell and human medicine she’d used on her former fiancé. She’d told David the truth. Her new research could alter how the Ofarians viewed their position in the world. Now that they knew they were not alone—that other Secondary races existed on Earth—they had to carve out their space within that.

Medicine could help.

She’d always wanted to test Primary and Secondary combinations, but the Board had forbidden it for fear of the knowledge leaking out. She’d become a doctor under orders, groomed to take over her mother’s position as head Ofarian physician when the older Dr. Evans retired, but now Kelsey’s designated career had become her calling.

David had been so amenable to her tests, so genial despite his ordeal. That was David for you.

Finally finished with the report, she headed for the empty break room and closed the door. Doing so, she shut out the doctor and responsibility, and for once, just let herself feel.

Sagging heavily against the door, she let loose a ragged sob of frustration and torment. Here, with no one watching, her lungs caught up with all the breaths she’d skipped ever since the call came through that David Capshaw had been injured in the hunt for the Ofarians’ most-wanted fugitive.

Two months, three days, and nine hours since David had unknowingly broken her heart. Two months, three days, and nine hours since he’d told her, “You know, with the Board gone, there’s no reason for us to get married now.”

She’d just stared at him, determined not to show him how he’d taken a hammer to her glass heart. Determined not to reveal how she’d essentially trapped him into the marriage in the first place.

“Right?” he’d added with a raised eyebrow and that trademark off-center smile.

So she’d given him a casual wave, and replied, “Oh. Right. Absolutely.”

Then he’d done the strangest thing. Instead of exhaling in relief or making a joke as he usually did, he’d simply nodded and said, “Okay, then.”

He’d vanished after that, consumed by the hunt for Wes Pritchart, until reappearing today on her exam table.

Away from her patient, her professional manner dissolved. Its absence left her flayed to the bone. She looked down at her hands, now stripped of latex, and willed herself to forget how his skin had glided beneath them. How cutting away his shirt had revealed him inch by lovely golden inch. How the blood seeping into his thick blond curls had made her chest ache with worry. How she’d wanted to snap off those gloves and slide her hands over the ridges of his lean soldier’s muscles, and under the gap of his waistband. It was too late; the memory had dug in deep and now she’d certainly lie awake that night, burning with regret and the dirty fantasies of him she’d entertained since high school.

The thing was, everyone loved David. Hell, when he’d been rolled into the clinic with blood streaming down his face, she’d watched from behind a curtain as he’d traded good-natured barbs with the EMTs and flirted with the nurses. It was no wonder he’d never wanted her, the girl who’d married her career before she ever even had one. The girl who’d always been way too serious to have any kind of life other than the one picked for her.

The Board had been wrong to match them. But by the time the betrothal had been announced, it was too late to correct what she’d started. At the matching ceremony, David had looked so overwhelmed, so scared. How could she ever admit to being the one to make him feel like that?

In self-disgust, she pushed away from the door and went for the sink. Tap water didn’t call to Ofarians the way a clear mountain stream or a wave in the ocean did, but it was still water. It was still her element. Turning on the faucet, she rolled her hands underneath it, commanding the liquid with a whisper to follow the prescribed pattern she’d adopted in her youth to calm her nerves. The narrow stream wove around each finger. Trickled into her palm in a lovely spiral. Dripped off her fingertips in even measurements.

The ritual over, her mind automatically straightened. She went into the locker room to throw her soiled white coat in the laundry. From her locker she removed a new coat with her name stitched in blue over the left breast.

Her slim green wallet sat on the top shelf. Because she was a glutton for punishment, she removed the wallet and opened it. There, sandwiched between her driver’s license and her sole credit card, she thumbed out the all-too-familiar rectangular piece of plastic. The tiny slip of paper encased inside, no bigger than a cookie fortune, had nibbled edges and numerous creases, all of which she knew by heart.

The faded letters read: There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved: It is God’s finger on man’s shoulder.

With a snarl she threw the wallet back into the locker and slammed it. She’d had the damn thing laminated for stars’ sake. If that wasn’t pathetic, she didn’t know what was.

She heard the scrape of a chair on the floor. Around the lockers, Emily Pritchart sat slumped at the tiny table in the back corner, her eyes rimmed with red, the bags beneath them puffy and purple. Severe silver roots showed at the scalp of her dyed brown hair. She clutched a pen in one hand and absently scribbled on the pink, rumpled take-out bag from El Tamale Loco.

Kelsey turned to go, to give Emily privacy, but her employee said in a flat voice, “They found him. Didn’t they. That’s why David Capshaw was in here, hurt.”

Kelsey leaned against a locker. “David found him, then lost him.”

Emily sagged and threw the pen across the table. “I wish he’d turn himself in. He’s just delaying the inevitable.”

Kelsey looked at the shiny white tile beneath her sneakers. The whole race felt slashed open, their wounds open to infection. Thanks to generations of selfish leaders—who had in turn created a race of entitled, selfish Ofarians—they were all bleeding out, the treachery and despicable acts of a precious few polluting them all.

One of the first things Griffin Aames had done was outlaw the old class system. Every Ofarian child would start on even ground. No more preordained tracks of service or soldiering or ruling.

Not every Ofarian, even if they’d opposed the old Board, was happy about these changes. Least of all Wes Pritchart. He’d grown into somewhat of an idol for the dissidents.

“Sorry, Dr. Evans. I’ll get back to work.”

“At times like this, Emily, you can call me Kelsey.”

Emily threw her an unreadable look and stood. She crumpled up the pink tamale bag, and tossed it in the trash.

“Why don’t you go on home . . .” Kelsey began, but Emily had already shuffled out of hearing range, and Kelsey was again left alone with her screaming thoughts.

CHAPTER THREE

David sprawled on his well-worn blue couch, legs kicked out, shirt unbuttoned so the fabric wouldn’t scrape against the gauze wrapped over his still-tender wound. The plate that had once held a mound of baked manicotti balanced on the edge of the side table. The TV flickered but he wasn’t watching it. Instead, he squiggled in the corner of the last page of his Gigantic Book of Brain Puzzles, the final mind-bender just completed. Flipping the cover closed, he tossed the brick of a book onto the pile of the others that needed to go out to the recycling bin.

Didn’t matter that he’d always placed at the top of every class with Kelsey Evans; he’d been born into the soldier class of Ofarians, and that’s who his parents had raised. It felt strange to be the one in charge of all the soldiers now. Strange . . . but good. It was that goodness that fed his fear of letting down both Griffin and his people.

David absentmindedly rubbed the stitches on his temple beneath the butterfly bandage, still feeling the flutter of Kelsey’s touch. The wound on his chest twinged and burned, remembering how she hadn’t been so nice tending to it. Because he’d brought up Emily Pritchart.

Despite Kelsey’s insistence of Emily’s innocence, Griffin’s soldiers had been monitoring Emily Pritchart for months. Her phone, her mail, her house—all were under surveillance. And true, Wes hadn’t attempted any contact through those means, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t. The chase through the Sierras had been brutal, and David had almost caught the bastard, but he could tell Wes was weakening. Getting sloppy. Usually that’s when people gave up . . . or reached out for help.

The only place Emily was open and vulnerable was at the clinic, behind Kelsey’s veil of privacy. David understood the good doctor’s vehemence over protecting the clinic’s confidentiality—he really did—but there were huge issues riding piggyback on Wes’s evasion. He had to get Kelsey to see that. It wasn’t just Griffin’s leadership at stake, it was the structure of the entire race.

His phone rang, and he had to dig it out from under the half-devoured bag of M&Ms on the coffee table.

“I got the report.” Griffin rarely said hello anymore. Moments like this, David didn’t know if he talked to his friend or his leader.

David scratched at his jaw. “He got away. Again.”

Goddamn Ofarian senses that could pick out magic at fifty paces. Wes could always tell when he’d closed in.

“It’s the closest you’ve gotten yet,” Griffin said, his voice gruff. “He’s running out of steam.”

“Was just thinking the same thing.”

Griffin sighed, deep and resigned, and David knew it was his friend now on the other end of the line. “Shit, man. You okay? Heard that fall was pretty spectacular.”

David snorted and shifted higher on the couch, tugging the flaps of his shirt closed. “I will be.”

“You see the doc?”

“Yep. You know she’s experimenting with combinations of magic and Primary medicine?”

“Yeah.” It was the first real spark of hope David had heard from Griffin in weeks. Maybe months. “Pretty amazing stuff. Should’ve been done decades ago.”

That’s as far as they took that discussion. None of Kelsey’s findings would matter if the race splintered apart, if they couldn’t move forward into the future as one.

“How is she otherwise?” Griffin asked.

“Just told you.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

David closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. “The same.”

Griffin exhaled. “Sorry, man.”

David had never voiced his feelings for Kelsey. He hadn’t had to. Griffin was a smart son of a bitch who knew David’s emotions, just as David was well aware of Griffin’s heartache over his broken engagement to Gwen, who’d chosen another man, and a Primary at that. They were two sorry, unwanted assholes. Should have been funny, except that it wasn’t.

“It is what it is. Or was. Or never will be.” David struggled off the couch. “You calling on official business or just to remind me of my failures?”

“Both, apparently. I need your help.”

“Whatever you need. You know that.”

“I’m getting the Fragment out of the vault tomorrow before the Star Gala. I’d like you to come with me.”

The Ofarians’ most sacred artifact, used during their most revered holiday. A big deal, to say the least.

“Our fearless leader needs help turning the key in the lock?”

Griffin chuckled. “Fuck you.”

“I’m not good for much else. My chest is black and blue and hurts like a mother. Not sure I can carry a hunk of rock very well.”

“I’ll carry it. I just . . . need you there.”

The heaviness in Griffin’s tone gave David pause. Many times over the past few months they’d been in the same room when important issues had barreled down on the race, but Griffin excelled in portraying confidence. Diligence. Intelligence. As an Ofarian, David didn’t want to hear such fear and doubt in his leader’s voice. As a friend, it hurt even more.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Anything you need.”

Griffin cleared his throat, the leader back in full force. “I’ll send a car at three sharp.”

And because David was David, he groaned like a raging orgasm was about to plow through him. “Ahh, God. I love it when you order me around.”

Griffin laughed, even though it sounded strained. “See you tomorrow.”

The line went dead and David’s smile quickly died. Because when he thought about orgasms, he sure as hell wasn’t thinking about his best friend. He adjusted his pants as the image of a heart-shaped face with ivory skin assaulted him all over again. As if he hadn’t been tortured enough that day. He willed himself to be monkish; after all, he’d been doing it for years. But as usual, Kelsey’s presence wedged itself nice and tight into his mind, ignoring all reason or truth. She burned brightly behind his eyelids. The image of her face, the memory of her hands slowly pulling out his shirt, didn’t do anything to soften his body.

He buttoned his shirt, then slid on his shoes. Griffin didn’t say it, but he was scared shitless that Wes was planning something that would destroy the Ofarian future. Griffin needed Wes in custody, and that was David’s job. Emily was the strongest lead he had.

Which meant Kelsey was about to get some good, old-fashioned David Capshaw begging.

The San Francisco night was colder than usual, and David hadn’t bothered to wear a coat. The deep breath he drew shot sharp and icy into his lungs. He lifted his hand and knocked.

Kelsey opened the door to her town house with the same expression she’d worn during their matching ceremony. Eyes round as marbles, mouth slightly agape. A deer in headlights.

David clenched a fist. If she was the deer, then he was the car. He fucking hated being the car.

Brush it off. Put her at ease. He dipped his chin and grinned up at her. “Hi?”

She startled out of her shock. “Oh. Hi. What are you doing here?”

It took all his effort to cement his smile in place. “I, um . . .” He rubbed the edge of the gauze through his shirt.

She stretched out a hand. “Are you in pain? Is there something wrong with the spell?”

So easily he could take that freebie and run with it. He could pretend to have complications or discomfort, let her peel off his shirt again.

“I’m not here for me,” he said, while his brain screamed, LIAR! “I just got off the phone with Griffin and I need to talk to you.”

“Oh. You couldn’t have called?”

Ouch.

He deflected, as usual, widening his smile and jutting a thumb over his shoulder. “You want me to go sit in the park across the street and call you instead? It’s colder than ass out here, but I’ll do it.”

Her cheeks pinked and her gaze fell to the floor. Suddenly she looked twelve years younger. He loved how her loose, shiny hair swished across her cheeks. He hadn’t seen her wear it down since, hell, their matching ceremony six months ago.

When she lifted her face to him again, any hint of blush had disappeared. She gave him a companionable, controlled nod and stepped aside. “Sorry. Come in.”

A set of steep, narrow stairs rose to the main floor and he followed her up. She wore jeans, of all things, that hung low on her hips and curved tightly around her ass. A huge hole in the denim gaped over her right knee and a small hole had just begun to fray under her left ass cheek. She wore a bra under her white tank top, the double sets of straps a weird attraction for him. The way her skin pebbled in the cold air, the slight push of her nipples against her clothing, challenged him to think straight.

Even though he’d always known where she lived, he’d never been here. Had never built up the courage to stop by. In truth, it was a miracle she was home now, given that her work was her life. But everything usually slowed down for the gala and rites, and he’d taken a chance that had paid off.

Her townhome’s furnishings reflected the in-and-out nature of her domestic life—sparse but tidy, very little design. A few random prints of flowers and trees were slapped up on the wall. The granite kitchen counters were bare except for an open bottle of wine and a single, half-empty glass. Sort of lonesome, actually.

It reminded him of his place.

She clutched the back of one of only two kitchen table chairs. Her eyes darted around, like he’d burst in just as she was hiding her lover in a closet. Oh, he hated that thought.

“You’re right,” he said. “I should’ve called. Didn’t mean to make you nervous by just showing up.”

She looked coolly offended that he’d called out her agitation, as though she never allowed herself to be nervous. Come to think of it, he’d never seen her this way.

“Not at all,” she said. “It’s just . . .”

He smiled and leaned against the banister that zigzagged upstairs. “That whole ‘We were supposed to get married’ thing?”

What the hell was he saying? The question just spilled out. And it was too late to mop it up.

She choked a little, like she’d swallowed something too hot. Then, in classic Kelsey fashion—the Kelsey he recognized—she rolled back her shoulders and stared him right in the eye. His turn to be unsettled, because all he could think was, God, you’re beautiful.

“Since you mentioned it,” she said. “Yes.”

“Oh.” He ran a hand around the back of his neck, thrown by the fact he had no idea how to decipher her direct statement. “I didn’t mean to bring it up.” Not really.

“Okay.” Her shoulders sagged. Just a tad. “So what’s up?”

He pulled away from the banister, the action nudging him closer to her. Her divine chest lifted beneath the thin cotton of her tank top. Why had he come here again? Oh, yeah. Emily Pritchart . . .

“I was just talking with Griffin, and I, uh, I wanted to ask—holy shit, that’s a fat cat.”

A black basketball of fur waddled down the stairs. At least twenty pounds, probably more. The thing was downright glaring at David.

Kelsey covered her mouth with a hand, but behind her fingers he glimpsed his favorite smile. “He’s not that big,” she said.

“No, seriously. That’s the fattest cat I’ve ever seen. What the hell do you feed that thing?”

She dropped her hand and there it was, the most perfect bow of a mouth, two shallow dimples set into her smooth cheeks. She made a cooing noise and scooped up the cat with a grunt.

He said, “Don’t throw your back out.”

“Aw, leave poor Dante alone.”

“Dante?” David reached out to scratch the feline behind its ears. A paw that looked too small to support all that bulk batted him away. Dante’s ears shot back, his teeth bared in a hiss. “Perfect name,” David mumbled.

“Sorry.” Kelsey dropped the cat and David swore the house shook. “Nobody can touch his head but me.”

Dante tottered into the living room and plopped down in the middle of the braided rug.

She cleared her throat. “I opened a bottle of Zinfandel. Would you like a glass?”

“I probably shouldn’t. One turns to two, two turns to four, and then I’m streaking and TP’ing Griffin’s house.”

Or kissing you and telling you exactly how I feel, no matter the damage to my heart.

She flashed him her smile. The opposite of nervous, the very definition of joy.

“So . . . was that a yes or no? It’s always so hard to tell with you.”

He held up a hand. “No, that’s okay. I’m on duty early tomorrow and Griffin wants me with him when he gets the Fragment from the vault. I can just see my hungover ass dropping the thing.”

“Wow, he asked you to do that?”

“It’s more personal than anything. I’ll be the guy who stands next to a piece of rock all day, growling at anyone who gets too close.”

“A piece of Ofaria, you mean,” she corrected with all seriousness. “It’s still an honor.”

He slid his hands into his pockets, wishing he could tell when people didn’t want to hear wisecracks. “Absolutely. It is.”

At length, she asked, “Mind if I finish my glass?”

“Not at all.”

She didn’t immediately take up her glass. First, oddly, she went to the sink and turned on the water. She ran her hands under the stream, her wrists graceful, her fingers relaxed. She whispered Ofarian and the water obeyed, trickling in thin rivulets around her knuckles and palms in a discernible pattern. Seemed like he wasn’t the only one with strange habits.

When she was done, she ignored a towel and spoke the words to evaporate the liquid. She reached for the Zinfandel.

“Why don’t you have a seat in the living room?”

David nodded, even though her back was to him. A palpable excitement ballooned inside him, as though all their previous interactions had led up to this moment—to the day they’d be given a chance to start again on their own terms.

A year after the skeleton prank in high school, he still hadn’t gotten up the nerve to talk to her directly. So he’d done what he did best, and devised another stunt specifically to give him an excuse to approach her and be rewarded by her attention.

Junior year Creative Writing, and Mrs. Harris had assigned an awesome first semester final. She’d given the class a single word—love—and told them to present something—anything—creative associated with that word. It didn’t even have to be writing.

David had found a quote by Charles Morgan, a novelist he’d never heard of, that read: “There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved: It is God’s finger on man’s shoulder.”

Perfect, he’d thought.

He had it printed on a thousand tiny slips of paper, crumpled them up, then stuffed them all into a bed sheet. Between second and third periods, he’d hung that sheet above the Creative Writing classroom door. As he worked, he’d turned to the gorgeous, studious, copper-haired girl whose desk was conveniently closest to the door.

“Hold this,” he’d said, and handed her the string attached to the draped sheet. “And don’t let go, or you’ll ruin the surprise.”

When he’d winked, she’d positively bloomed. But as he slid that string from her fingers, deliberately touching her, she’d swallowed that brilliant smile. The birth of the deer-in-headlights look.

When Mrs. Harris had sauntered into the classroom, clipboard at her hip, David had released the string, showering the teacher in tiny slips of paper. He went to one knee and shouted, “There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved, Mrs. Harris! It is God’s finger on man’s shoulder!”

He’d gotten an A.

The sound of wine splashing into a glass brought him back to the present. Twelve years gone, and just now he and Kelsey were moving forward. At least, he hoped they were.

He turned toward her living room and stopped. “I can’t get to the couch,” he called over his shoulder. “There’s a giant, black road block.”

“Just step over him.” She came to David’s side. “He won’t move.”

“I don’t know if my leg goes that high.”

She giggled. Actually giggled. And he was a goner.

David raised a dubious eyebrow. “Will he go after me again?”

“He’s lying down. You could seriously do anything to him right now and he won’t move.”

“Anything, you say?” David lowered himself to the floor, right next to Dante, who blinked slowly at him. David snatched the TV remote from where it balanced on the corner of the coffee table. “What if I put this on him?”

Kelsey edged around them to take a seat on the sofa. “Yep.”

“I don’t believe you.”

She smiled into her wineglass. “Try it.”

So he balanced the long, flat remote on Dante’s wide, round belly. The stupid cat just pressed his head to the carpet as if to say, “More. Bring it.”

“Here.” Kelsey tossed him another remote, this one to the receiver. He laid it next to the other. Dante didn’t even twitch.

She slid off the couch, her eyes mischievous, her hand stretching for a small, circular candle. “Now this.”

David looked at the candle, then back into her glittering eyes, and shook his head. “You do it. But let’s make it interesting.”

“Yeah?” Her fingers tightened on her wineglass, little ovals of heat surrounding the tips.

“Yeah. Winner gets to ask a question. Any question. Loser has to answer. Truthfully.”

She sucked in a breath, held it, and he realized he’d been holding his, too. Somewhere between the front door and her living room rug, this had turned personal. Right at that moment, he had no desire to ask her about the Pritcharts.

She licked her lips, and though it wasn’t the first time the sight of her had gotten his dick hard, it was the most intense, because it was just the two of them, alone for the very first time in a quiet room.

“Okay.” She exhaled, looking alternately excited and scared.

They settled on opposite sides of the black, furry monstrosity, whose side moved up and down under the two remotes. Kelsey set her wineglass aside and placed the little green candle near Dante’s tail. She sat back, satisfied, a dare quirking her lips.

This was how he’d always wanted to be with her. A man and a woman with nothing in between—not books or school or work or duty. Or social classes or edicts from their elders.

Nothing except . . . the World’s Largest Cat.

“So,” he said, looking around and finding a blue crayon wedged next to the TV. He’d forgotten about her small nieces and nephews. He laid the crayon between the remotes. “Are you at the clinic tomorrow night? Or can you go to the Star Gala?”

The crayon wobbled, but eventually steadied.

She pressed her lips together in disappointment. “Thought for sure that would roll off.”

He considered throwing the game, just to find out what she was so desperate to ask.

“The gala,” he prompted. “Are you going?”

She pulled out a little statue of a cat carved from stone, and eyed him sideways. “You haven’t won.”

“That’s not what I want to ask you.”

She matched his stare for a long second, then leaned forward and balanced the statue on a fold of fat near Dante’s back leg. “I’m closing the clinic for the gala. I’ll be there.”

“Good.” He looked down at the game board. “All you left me was the neck and head!”

The sly grin she threw him was wonderfully evil. Deliciously seductive. It made him want to push the cat aside, snag the straps of her tank top and bra, and pull her to him. She’d kiss like she’d grinned just now, full of secrets and heat.

“It’s your turn,” she prodded.

Dante’s tail thwapped against the rug. David looked around for a playing piece. There, on the end table, sat her anemic wallet—because Kelsey Evans would never carry along extraneous items. He’d bet she had her license in there, maybe one credit card, maybe a picture of her brother and his kids. When David stretched for the wallet, she quietly gasped.

“This okay?” he asked.

“Sure.” Her voice had gone thready.

He bent over the cat. “Dante, sorry. She’s making me do it.”

Though the tail slapped harder, Dante didn’t move as David nudged the wallet edgewise into the narrow space left on his neck, not quite on his forbidden head.

Kelsey chewed her lip. David couldn’t tell if she feared losing or winning more. To be fair, neither did he.

She took down a tiny picture frame showing her nieces and nephews and held it over the two remotes. “You love me, Big D. I know you do. Don’t fail me now.”

She set down the frame. With a high chirp that didn’t seem like it could come out of his massive body, Dante struggled to his feet, shaking the objects off his girth. He sauntered away, his belly swinging like a cow’s udder.

Kelsey’s shoulders sank in defeat. In any other situation David would be rubbing his hands together and gloating, making a joke out of it. Except that suddenly all the fun had been sucked from the room. The pile of discarded objects scattered between them, as real and divisive as all the questions he longed to ask.

Have you ever thought of me as anything other than the class clown?

How can I prove myself to you?

Can we start over?

She blinked at him, those plump, berry lips falling open. She looked expectant. Fearful. Hopeful?

Her breathing turned shallow, but in truth, he could have been confusing that with his own. The heat rumbling through the town house vents sounded like a tornado bearing down. She was the eye of the storm—his calm, his center.

They’d kissed once before. Well, not really—just on the cheek during their matching ceremony. He remembered the silk of her skin on his, the rigid inhalation of her breath as he’d pulled away. He didn’t want tension from her. He longed for acceptance. He craved desire.

Turned out, he didn’t need wine courage after all.

Quickly, before he could doubt himself, he leaned over and kissed her. Fingertips bracing his weight on the rug, only his mouth touched her. A swift, gentle brush of lips, worthy of new beginnings. It was impulsive. Sweet. Wonderful.

She just sat there at first, but then, oh fuck, she softened with an angelic sigh. Her lips parted, letting him in. He touched his tongue to hers so slowly it felt like twelve years passed. Because they had.

Her head tilted, and if he’d thought her mouth had perfectly fit his before, this new angle redefined sin. His sigh wasn’t so angelic. He couldn’t believe she was into this. Don’t scare her. Don’t be self-indulgent, he told himself, and skimmed his fingers down her cheek.

His lungs shuddered from the strain of wanting to take more, of wanting to give her more. Yet he pulled away, because suddenly this moment had grown too large, even for him.

Her eyes opened, revealing their brilliant pools of blue. She gazed at him, his beautiful doe, one hand rising to touch her lips. “That wasn’t a question.”

His heart thudded. His throat dried up. He sat back, stunned and expressionless. “I know.”

And then he remembered why he’d come here in the first place.

CHAPTER FOUR

He’d kissed her.

Not even now, with the heat and tingle of David’s mouth lingering on her lips, and a glass of wine erasing the edges of her nerves, could she bring herself to tell him she wanted him.

He always did this to her, managed to freeze her in place. All he had to do was look at her, and her doubts and desire clashed and turned her rigid. Moronic. She could run a medical research clinic with five employees. She could treat hysterical, dying patients. She could admit when she made mistakes and had never balked at asking for help . . . and yet David Capshaw’s kiss had blanked out her speech and halted all muscle movement.

Even if she found the strength to speak now, it was already too late. She watched the conclusion cross his face. He’d tried her out and found her lacking.

He sat back—no smile, no jokes—looking terribly pale. And here she was, so full of heat and longing that she feared setting the rug on fire.

He gave a little shake of his head as if to clear it. Had she imagined the romantic way he’d kissed her? The gentle way he’d touched her face? He grazed the butterfly bandage on his temple, his arm muscles flexing under his shirt. Her body started to shake from the restraint of keeping herself in place, when all she wanted to do was crawl to him, straddle his lap, and wrap herself around him. Show him that she wasn’t frigid or boring. That she loved him.

She swallowed. “Were you going to ask to kiss me?”

A troubled cloud settled over his eyes. “No.” The hand feathering over the bandage now dropped to his stomach, as though he might be sick.

“Kelse,” he began. He’d never sounded weak or unsure in his whole life.

Great stars, what was it? “Just ask me.”

When his eyes found hers, there was far more than trouble behind them. There was mystifying pain. And regret. Over kissing her?

“I don’t know if I can ask now, after . . .” he said. “But I have to.”

“Ask me.”

She prayed the question was about her feelings or their betrothal. Something personal. Because she was so shredded she knew she would tell him anything now, and it wouldn’t hurt coming out.

“Okay.” He drew a deep, shaking breath. Briefly closed his eyes. “Will you . . . spy on Emily Pritchart?”

Though she was sitting, she felt like she’d been pushed backward off a steep cliff. “What?”

He scrubbed his face with his hands, his “Aw, fuck,” muffled behind his palms. His arms dropped and he looked her hard in the eye. “We’re running out of time. I believe Emily is the key to finding Wes, and I came here tonight to ask for your help.”

“That’s why?” She scrambled to her feet, towering over him. The ghost of their kiss cackled and turned the air between them noxious. “Who told you?” she demanded.

There were no tears, just humiliation.

He pushed to his feet, and suddenly she wanted to hate his grace. “Huh?”

“Between this morning and now, how did you find out how I feel about you? And when did you decide to use it against me?”

He just stared. “How you . . . feel about me? Oh, shit,” he whispered. He jammed fingers into his hair, the thick blond curls barely moving. “Look. Kelse. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kissed you—”

“Damn straight you shouldn’t have.”

“I meant I . . . oh, man, I fucked this up.”

Long ago, her heart had written a script detailing how it would go down should they ever kiss. Should he ever want her. Even though it was her own stupid fault for creating one in the first place, he hadn’t just not followed it, he’d ripped it to pieces and lit the scraps on fire. All she could see in him now was a manipulator.

“You know, I always wondered if the charm was just an act, if all the flirting and witty banter was just to get you what you want. Now I know.”

He thrust out his hands, his eyebrows drawing indignantly together. “Whoa. Just hold on a sec. That’s not true.”

“It’s not?” she scoffed.

“You want to help your people, don’t you? That’s why you became a doctor, right? Because if we don’t get Wes, if we don’t bring the Ofarians back together soon, I don’t think you’ll have a clinic at all. It will be civil war, and if Wes’s side wins, you won’t be given access to anything Primary, let alone the medicine you want.”

That was nonsense. “You want to know about Emily Pritchart? Fine. Her husband was an accountant who reconciled Secondary income with Primary taxes before he died two years ago. She took back her maiden name. She has two kids in high school. She gets takeout from El Tamale Loco every week. She chain-reads biographies. Oh, and she told me just this morning that she wants Wes caught as badly as you do. There. I spied. Now get out.”

David consumed her living room. He’d invaded this space that had always been so carefully, purposely blank.

He backed away slowly, nodding as he slipped his hands into his pockets. “Right,” he murmured distantly. “Sorry to have bothered you. Enjoy your wine.”

He turned, but not before she saw something terrifying on his face: heartbreak.

He bounded down the stairs faster than an injured man should have been capable of. She, however, couldn’t move. He’d frozen her. Again.

He opened the front door but said over his shoulder, “What I was trying to say earlier was, I shouldn’t have kissed you here. Tonight. I should have done it years ago.”

And with that, she melted. Ice to water.

Kelsey opened her mouth to respond, to call him back, but he spoke again, this time the language of their ancestors.

Ofarian magic rippled over him, transforming his body into a glittering, undulating liquid statue, defying the rules of the Primary human world. Then, peeling off from the top of his head, his water body started to swirl into vapor—a thin coil of elegant, blue-white steam twining upward.

“David. Wait.”

The wind caught his mist form and whisked him away.

CHAPTER FIVE

The two men’s footsteps echoed loudly in the hallway leading to the vault. David felt the sounds bounce around in his hollow heart.

The Fragment of Ofaria—the chunk of their homeworld brought to Earth during the First Immigration over a hundred and fifty years ago—sat locked in the white Pacific Heights manor that had once housed Ofarian Chairmen. Griffin refused to live there, but had yet to find an equally suitable storage place for the Ofarians’ most sacred relic.

The whole place was empty and hushed, like it hung its head in shame over the leaders who’d once lived here. The lone guard outside the vault jumped from his chair and interlaced his fingers in the position of deference, bowing low to Griffin.

Griffin bristled, though David might have been the only person to recognize it. “I’m not a Chairman,” Griffin told the guard. “The gesture is no longer required.”

Straightening, the guard nodded awkwardly, and Griffin gave the red-haired man a tight-lipped smile and a clap to the shoulder.

Once inside the vault and away from the guard’s ears, David said to Griffin, “We need a leader. Don’t diminish that role.”

Griffin was already a dark man, with Greek-like skin, black hair, and thick, straight eyebrows, but the weight of his new leadership made him seem like he’d been cast in shadow. He didn’t respond, but instead went to the pedestal in the center of the vault that cradled the shimmering Fragment. The rock—a delicate silver color streaked with sparkling blue—was about the size of a bag of sugar.

“Such a small thing,” Griffin murmured, “to hold such power.”

The Fragment had no magic in and of itself, but David understood.

“The Ofarians are broken.” Griffin’s obsidian eyes fixed on the rock’s gleam. “The only things holding us together are our traditions. If the Rites don’t go off without a hitch, my new order will die. It’s already crumbling. Do you know how hard it is to keep something together when the pieces keep flying apart?”

Of course he did. Hadn’t he managed to pull Kelsey close, then shatter their connection into tiny bits, all in one night? But Griffin wasn’t talking about David’s pathetic love life.

A new wave of guilt over having let Wes slip away again rolled through him. “Gwen destroyed the old ways and the people still chose her to lead the Ice Rites. That should tell you Ofarians want change. They support what she did and they support you.”

“Not everyone.”

David swallowed, remembering with a pang how Kelsey had refused to help him. “I’ll get Pritchart. I promise you.”

Griffin lifted the Fragment off its cushion and pillowed it in the crook of his arm. He gazed down at it like it was a newborn with all the reverence it was afforded as evidence of another world. Then he pinned David with an austere look. “Good.”

David thrust back his shoulders, a soldier facing his commander in chief. “Just wait until tonight when the people see Gwen walk in with that thing. And tomorrow during the rite when she calls down the starlight? It’ll be impossible not to be moved. The two of you will rally everyone behind you.”

Griffin’s lips flattened. “I hope you’re right.”

After they exited the vault and came out of the manor’s maze of inner hallways, David’s cell phone signal kicked back on. The voice mail alarm chimed. It was from Kelsey. The beat of his heart tripped out of rhythm.

Truthfully, he hadn’t expected to hear from her again. With shaking fingers, he pressed PLAY.

“David, it’s me.” She sounded out of breath, the border of her voice tinged with panic. “Wes just sent Emily a letter. You need to see it.”

It wasn’t a letter. It was a fucking manifesto.

David hunched over the lone table in the clinic’s break room, reading aloud to Griffin, who leaned against the counter near the soda vending machine. The Ofarian leader rubbed fingers over his bottom lip, his eyes gone black and focused far away.

Twenty pages long, the letter was the repetitious, circuitous ramblings of a madman, written longhand in one never-ending paragraph.

Water is ever powerful. It is the singular element, raised above all. We once commanded the universe, ruled from an invisible peak among the stars . . . yada yada yada.

David rolled his head on his neck. He’d been reading for ten minutes. “When is this going to get good?”

“Keep going.”

We are privileged. Special. The Ofarians of the First Immigration fought for their lives, and everyone who seeks to erase the power and legacy they built is an enemy of the race. We do not belong among Primaries. We are superior. Anyone who wants to partner with them is my enemy.

“This isn’t anything we haven’t heard before,” David commented. “He isn’t even original in his hate speech.”

Griffin motioned him to go on. “There has to be a purpose to this. Three months on the run and he picks now to contact his sister?”

David skimmed ahead. “Speaking of his sister . . .”

You, too, Emily, are my enemy. I should’ve known you’d turn your back. You always did like to squeal. Like the time you told Mom and Dad I scratched the car fender. Or when I hid in the hollow of the great redwood tree during the Ice Rites of 1977. I’m sure you will tell our false leader about this letter as well.

“Is he twelve or fifty-seven?” David grumbled.

Then:

Gwen Carroway started the problem. But Griffin Aames is the wind on the brushfire. He wants to extend a hand to other Secondary races. This is wrong. We are singular and we are meant to rule. When Griffin tries to meet with these “others,” he will die.

Griffin pushed away from the counter.

“Is he fucking stupid?” David slapped the pages to the plastic table.

“He’s outrun us for three months. He has strong, vocal supporters. No, I don’t think he’s stupid.”

“He’s talking assassination.”

Griffin ground his teeth. “And now we have his target. Me.”

David thought fast. “He won’t go for it here. Too many people. Too many Primaries.”

Griffin snapped his fingers. “In two weeks I head to Canada to try to find the air elementals. I bet that’s when he’ll attempt it.”

David jumped from his chair. “So we cancel the trip.”

“No.” Griffin shook his head. “That’ll tip him off. We want him. So we set a trap.”

“And risk your life? No. Absolutely not. You’re the glue, Griffin. All those pieces you were talking about a little while ago? You’re what’s holding everybody together. If anything happens to you, you can kiss it all good-bye. Everything Gwen sacrificed, everything you’ve built so far, everything you want to create in the future—it will all disappear.”

Griffin stared at him for a long time, then his head dropped on his neck. “I don’t want you to be right.”

“And yet I am. So we’ll set the trap. Only I’ll be your decoy.”

“You look nothing like me.”

David snorted. “You’re not that much bigger. I can stuff some styrofoam pads in my shoulders, pull on a black wig and gel it all up like a pretty boy. Maybe slap some fuzzy black caterpillars over my eyebrows—”

“Fuck you.” But Griffin was grinning. He reached out to clamp a hand on David’s shoulder and gave it a good squeeze. The grin faded. “Thank you.”

“I’m not doing it because you’re my friend. I’m doing it because I believe in you and what you stand for. You’ve done away with the classes, but I’ll always be a soldier. I’ll always protect you.”

A muscle in Griffin’s jaw jumped. “I know.”

David pulled Griffin in for a shoulder bump and a hearty clap on the back. “Shit, I’ll have to increase your guards tonight at the gala. My people’ll be pissed they won’t be able to drink.”

“Tell you what,” Griffin said, pulling away, “you keep me alive and bring in Wes Pritchart, and I’ll buy them their own fucking vineyard.”

“Will do.”

David left Griffin with the manifesto.

Out in the hall, Emily broke away from the two soldiers flanking her and came up to him, her eyes red but expectant. “I have to keep the letter,” he told her, and she nodded with a grimace. “Thank you for telling us about it.”

“It was Kelsey. She said you deserved to know.”

That was surprising.

“Just get him.” Emily looked beyond fatigued, beyond heartbroken.

On the other side of the clinic, opposite the computers, Kelsey emerged from one of the exam rooms, her brow furrowed in concentration, a tablet computer tucked under her arm. Though she was busy and distracted, she stopped as though his stare owned a physical force. Maybe it did, because he felt something reciprocal and awful stab into his heart.

How did you find out how I feel about you? And when did you decide to use it against me?

He kept waiting for her scorn, for a piercing glare that told him what a shit he’d been. Instead she gave him a slight nod, which lessened the pressure some but didn’t cure it, and then disappeared into the lab.

CHAPTER SIX

Kelsey watched the Star Gala’s procession—the official opening of the two-day holiday—from a place tucked far back in the crowd.

The doors to the hotel ballroom flew open, framing the queenly vision of the costumed woman absorbing the spotlight. Over a thousand pairs of Ofarian eyes swept to Gwen Carroway. Gorgeous and composed as ever, her pale blond hair piled high atop her head, wearing a glittering gown that turned her body into starlight, Gwen cradled the Fragment of Ofaria in her elegant hands. As she began the slow march down the center of the ballroom, parting the sea of Ofarians dressed in black tie, two small children fell in behind her, taking up the ends of the impossibly long train of the sparkling, high-necked costume.

She looked like a bride dressed in the night sky, about to marry the universe.

The whole ballroom had been decorated in billowing midnight blue fabric, and a lone beam of light illuminated the circular dais in the center. Gwen walked toward it with her chin high, her face solemn but commanding. Kelsey thought she looked like hope.

Not everyone agreed.

A woman to her left whispered bitterly to another, “She’ll ruin us all, bringing a Primary in. Who does she think she is?”

Another woman made an ugly scoffing sound. “Selfish whore.”

Kelsey edged away, knowing the gossip and conjecture they spouted weren’t true. Gwen had destroyed the old corrupt Board because she was selfless. Her reward had been finding love. Kelsey would never begrudge her that.

As she slid through the crowd and took a place along the wall with more air and fewer dissidents, Gwen reached the dais and placed the Fragment on a decorative pedestal. She intoned a short blessing on all Ofarians and declared the Ice Rites open.

In the past, these words had been met with cheers and the clinking of glasses. Now, only subdued applause followed.

“Feels different this year, doesn’t it?”

Though the ballroom was warm, Kelsey’s skin turned to goose bumps at the sound of David’s voice. So close. When she turned, she was almost blinded by the sight of him in his tux. It fit him to perfection, and the clean wave of his dark blond hair, coaxed into a rare style, made him look like a god. She’d seen him dressed like this before, but never after she’d known what his lips felt like. That kiss had changed everything. Started something else. Ended more.

She drew a breath. “It does. Hardly anyone is drinking.”

He grinned and it was almost her undoing. She had to look away.

“I know,” he said. “Usually right about now I’m either walking in on couples making out in the bathroom or stuffing wasted Ofarians into taxis.”

Across the room, Gwen descended from the dais. This was her first appearance back in San Francisco after the Board had fallen, and she was mobbed. Griffin stood close by, his eyes always on her. A ring of watchful Ofarian soldiers kept them both protected.

“It was smart of Gwen not to bring her Primary,” Kelsey said.

“From what I understand, it’s to prove that we can live amongst Primaries—even with them—and not compromise ourselves.”

She thought of her clinic and where she wanted to take its purpose. It depended on Primary interaction.

“It must have been hard for Griffin,” she said, “to lose his betrothed.”

David shifted beside her. “Must have been,” he murmured. Then, “Thank you. For telling us about the letter.”

He always said “us” and “we,” never “me” or “I,” as though he never thought he’d make an individual difference.

She faced him. “I did it because it was out in the open, not sneaking around behind Emily’s back. Betraying her trust.”

He didn’t flinch, his stance resolute. “You helped us. Can you keep a secret?” She nodded. “In the letter, Wes made a direct threat against Griffin. When he makes good on that threat, I’ll be waiting for him.”

“You?” she gasped.

He nodded once. “Me.”

Foreboding knotted in her gut at the thought of David putting himself in that kind of danger, even though it was his job and he’d done it countless times before.

“Will you be careful?”

One side of his mouth quirked. “Worried about me?”

“Yes.” Always.

“Never fear. You can’t get rid of me that easily.” That little smile died. His gaze caressed her face, lingered on her hair. When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple made a slow undulation just above his bow tie.

I should have kissed you years ago.

He was beyond beautiful, beyond anything she could ever wish for, and suddenly she wanted to tell him. She wanted to start from the beginning and tell him . . . everything.

“David, I—”

His eyes suddenly shuttered, his focus dropping to the patterned carpet. He pressed a finger to his ear, where the curled cord of his radio device ended. Across the ballroom, tense, raised voices broke above the otherwise gentle susurrus of conversation. The sea of bodies shifted violently. A fight had broken out. Ofarian soldiers jogged from their positions around the ballroom and headed for the disturbance.

David threw Kelsey an apologetic glance and joined his uniformed men and women.

Over a hundred years of joyful, peaceful Star Galas, gone.

Nearly half an hour later, the mood in the ballroom had shifted so much that Kelsey’s skin itched with discomfort. She paid her respects to Gwen, who was shielded behind a wall of soldiers, and decided to go home.

Out in the hallway, soldiers detained the young Ofarians who had started the fight. Established ways against the impending new, an ages-old argument. She’d lost sight of David in the melee, but that was just as well. The way he’d looked at her just before taking off had tantalized and disturbed and confused her. She was no longer angry with him for asking her to spy on Emily or for doing so after he’d kissed her. Sexual attraction did funny things to you, messed around with your priorities. Plus, he’d gotten pertinent information about Wes through the letter and no harm had been done to Emily.

A long, quiet hall led from the ballroom to the bank of elevators, dotted with doors branching off into deserted conference rooms. She made it halfway to the elevators.

“Kelsey.”

Not “Doc.” Not “Kelse.”

Amazing how her name on David’s lips could stop everything, not just her legs, from walking. Her lungs ceased to pump; her heart skidded to a stop. She turned to watch him approach. He moved with such elegant purpose after training his whole life to be that strong and agile.

He stopped three paces away. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

“Yes.” She glanced at the trouble in the ballroom lobby. “Is everything okay?”

He nodded, staring down at her with frightening, exhilarating intent. “It’s under control.”

She wasn’t sure if he was talking about the fight or the powerful energy that sparked and sizzled between them. Hands in his pockets, he looked carefully rigid. Like he was holding himself back. She knew how that felt.

She thought about their kiss, the mismatched way his mouth had been so sweet and gentle, and how hot and desperate it had made her feel. What she needed to do was suck up her doubt and her pride, and just go for it.

She licked her lips, trying to find the moisture and courage to say what she wanted. Was he staring at her mouth? Her tongue darted out again, and his lips parted in response.

It was easy to get caught up in the magic of the Star Gala, she told herself. It was made for daring, drunken liaisons.

Except that neither of them had been drinking, and this had been the most solemn Star Gala in memory.

They both drew short, sharp breaths at the same moment, preparing to speak. Their eyes widened in a mirror image.

“What were you going to say?” His whisper echoed up and down the quiet hall.

“You first.”

“No. You.” He smiled in his charmer’s way, and she hated that she continued to fall for it.

“I . . .” she began, but so many years of stashing her desire behind impenetrable walls didn’t loosen so easily.

He inched closer, enough that the bottom of his tux coat touched the skirt of her black gown. “How about on the count of three? Just blurt it out. So will I.”

Though his heat rippled over her like a warm breeze, she shivered. And nodded.

“One.”

The sound of his voice drove her eyes shut.

“Two.”

He touched her, his fingers sliding against her palms.

“Three.”

They both inhaled.

He said, “I want to kiss you.”

She said, “I want to sleep with you.”

“What?” He released her hands.

Crap. She’d crossed a line. She’d embarrassed them both. But . . . wait. Slowly she opened her eyes. “What did you say?”

He barked out a laugh, his blue eyes holding a glitter that rivaled Gwen’s costume. “What did you say?”

She just stood there, driven to speechlessness by his potent expression and the way he prowled so close his thighs brushed hers. Without warning or even tenderness, he grabbed her hand and yanked her toward the closest meeting room. Pulling open the door, he pressed her into the dark. She got a vague sense of an oblong conference table surrounded by chairs before he pushed her against the wall.

Sensation rocketed through her body. David, everywhere. His arms slid around her back. His mouth dropped to her neck, the hot cloud of his breath puffing over the collarbone and shoulder bared by her gown. He shoved one thigh between hers, sinking against her body. His scent—the tint of shaving cream mixed with the fabric of his fine tux—overpowered her. If he weren’t holding her upright, she wouldn’t have been able to tell up from down.

His signature—that invisible aura proclaiming his magic—enveloped her.

“Say that again, Kelse.”

With trembling hands, she touched his face and chest in a most unclinical way. “I don’t think I can.”

“Yes, you can. To me and only me. I want to hear it again. I’ve been dying to hear you say it.” Nudging aside her hair with his nose, he lightly ran his tongue along her neck. “Use the dark.” His voice shook. “Say into it what you can’t in the light.”

He spoke the truth. There was anonymity in the darkness. Courage, too. Here, in a blackened room with the man she’d always wanted holding her, she could be the person she’d never been before. Not the careful doctor, but the uninhibited woman.

She slid her fingers into his hair and turned his head, whispering into his ear, “I want to sleep with you.”

His whole body shuddered. A sound somewhere between a sob and a shout of triumph erupted from his throat. He released her, only to cradle her face in his warm palms. Even in the dark, she felt the magnitude of his stare.

“My God,” he whispered. “Is this real?”

“Please tell me it is.”

He answered with a kiss. One fierce and powerful, his breath sucking in through his nose. He abandoned chastity, and she opened her lips to him, letting his tongue dive in. Giving him hers. Her deep moan of pleasure, the instant, borderless reaction to his taste and his touch and his presence, vibrated through her. He sank hard against her, his weight crushing. In her mind, she begged for more. Begged for his erection that she felt thickening and growing against the top of her thigh.

This was David Capshaw, and he was more than she’d ever imagined, in all her nights of lying awake, wondering what his passion might feel like.

“You really want me, Kelse?” His words came out staccato, hard bursts of breath rubbing across her lips.

His hands left her face, lowering to cover her breasts, to graze her nipples through the thin jersey of her gown. They both made some sort of inarticulate sound of pleasure. The back of her head ground into the wall. He yanked down her strapless dress, shoving the folds beneath her breasts. With a low groan, he lowered his mouth to her skin.

Worship. That’s all she could call how he licked her nipples, and sucked them, and dragged the scratch of his chin and cheek around her curves. She flattened her palms against the wall and just let him take, because his pleasure had become hers.

“You really want me?” he repeated. The infuriating charmer; he already knew her answer.

She reached down and parted the long slit of her gown’s skirt, separating the fabric all the way above her hips. He looked down at her unspoken invitation. One of his hands made a slow path down her belly and dove under the black jersey. Past the lacy string of her thong. Gliding easily into where she’d gone wet for him.

David collapsed, the wall now supporting them both. A cadence of Ofarian praises and oaths leaked from his lips, only half of which she understood. The other half were full of fiery promise.

He kissed her again, owning her mouth as well as the slick place where his fingers moved in achingly slow circles. He touched her, sliding in and out and over her with practiced care. Suddenly all her restraint dissipated like smoke.

“Yes,” she said against his mouth. “I want you.”

He smiled; she could feel the curve of his mouth as hotly and severely as the rising pressure on her clit. She sensed him reach for his magic. A little droplet of water formed around his finger, vibrating, intensifying his strokes as though they were electricity.

“Prove it.” A little laugh colored his voice. “Come for me.”

The wicked order streaked through her, shooting from her ears, to her brain, to the combination of his hand and his water magic. The words triggered her, shutting off every thought but those of him and what he was doing to her. All those years of fantasizing and masturbation, and her imagination had failed spectacularly. It had never even drifted close to this.

And then she came, bursting into orgasm like she dove into a pool from a hundred feet up.

“Yes. That’s it,” he said in her ear. “Oh, God, that’s good. Keep coming, beautiful.”

He’d always been so good at getting people to do what he wanted, so she was bound to comply. She shook around him. His hand became the center of her universe, and moved easily over her increasingly slippery flesh. She let him extract every last quiver of pleasure she knew was inside her, and several more she didn’t.

She couldn’t speak, so she jabbed her fingers into his thick hair and gave it a pull, telling him to stop. His hand left her, the dress swishing back over her sensitized skin. Strength started to seep from her legs, making her wobbly. With a gentle laugh, he wrapped an arm around her waist and pivoted them both. Kicking aside a leather conference chair, he planted her ass on the edge of the table. They watched each other, breathing heavily, the red light from the exit sign over the door casting a sexy aura over the room.

He’d called her beautiful.

Because she’d already been brave, she stretched for his bow tie. Pulled it loose, loving how it dangled, ribbonlike, down his chest. Beneath the collar of his shirt, his neck had gone damp with sweat. His earpiece was still coiled around his head, and she looked at it questioningly.

“I can hear them,” he said, unwinding it from around his ear. “They can’t hear me unless I want them to. And believe me, after all this time, I want it to be just you and me.”

Her breath hitched. Could he be saying what she thought he’d said? What she wanted him to say? She started to undo his shirt buttons, one by one. Taking the fabric in her fists, she slowly pulled the shirt out of his pants, a deliberate, sexual echo of how she’d undressed him in her clinic not two days ago. He met her eyes with a heated look.

Parting the halves of his shirt revealed the long white bandage across his chest. She laid her palm over it.

“It’s practically healed,” he said. “What you did, the mix of water magic and medicine . . . Stars, Kelsey, you’re brilliant.”

He leaned down, kissing her, and she pushed the tux coat and shirt from his shoulders in one move. She flashed back to high school, to that day when he’d first entered the halls after growing up and out practically overnight. She remembered not believing that the skinny, funny kid in baggy clothes had transformed into this leanly muscled young man. She recalled wondering what his new body might feel like, whether he would have been firm or if he’d have deflated like a cartoon.

Now she knew. And he was hot and hard and oh so real.

Her fingers started on his pants zipper.

“Here?” he growled, even as he pressed in closer. “Are you sure?”

“After all this time,” she said, stealing his words, “yes.”

His pants fell to the floor.

“We have so much to talk about”—he touched her wrist and pulled her to stand—“after.”

“We do.”

He slowly pulled down her stretchy, clingy dress and caught it near her knees, letting her step out of it.

He ran his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip as he took her in, whispering more praise in Ofarian. “I should have told you how gorgeous you looked before I took it off.” He straightened. “I should have told you that the night of our betrothal, and pretty much every day before or since. You always wear scrubs and that white coat, and I really don’t care, but I love the way you look dressed up. Your hair down—”

“David.” His words were too much. Her body thrummed in anticipation.

He blinked up from where he’d been staring at her chest. “Yeah?”

“Shut up,” she said. “Unless you want to tell me to come again.”

Even in the darkness she could see his Cheshire grin. He scooped her closer, pressing her aching nipples into the gauze over his chest. She tried to pry herself away, afraid of further injury, but he wouldn’t let her, and she gave up her half-assed fight rather quickly. Gave up thinking like a doctor.

Their kiss turned frantic and fast, teetering on the edge of pain. Little lights zoomed at her periphery and she had no idea if it was from oxygen deprivation or just . . . him. There were too many things she wanted to do to him. Too many things she wanted him to do to her.

She slid her fingers beneath the elastic of his underwear, taking them down. He kicked them aside. And then David Capshaw, the thick, hard length of him, was in her hands.

Twelve years of dreaming could never conjure the real thing. Twelve years of self-torture and pining, and he was finally hers. Maybe just for tonight, but that was okay. Two months ago he’d made it clear he hadn’t wanted her forever. Maybe forever was overrated. Maybe tonight was the peak. If that was the case, she wasn’t going to waste time thinking about the descent. She’d stand on the very top of the world and enjoy the ever-loving hell out of it.

“Kelse?” David slid his hand under her hair. She still had him in her grip, and his breath labored. “Where’d you go?”

She blinked, disconcerted to find her vision a little blurry with wetness. She kissed him to disguise it. “Nowhere. I’m right here.”

And then she gave him a nice, slow, smooth pull that made him groan. He stroked her face with his thumbs as she stroked his erection. Finally, with a grimace, he peeled her fingers off him and gave her shoulders a gentle push back onto the table. She lay down, the faux wood cool against her hot skin. He crawled over her, the feeble exit sign light casting his muscles in crimson.

As he lowered himself to his elbows, she hooked a knee around his hip, loving the feel of his skin against hers. When he took his cock in his hand and rubbed it over her wetness, she whispered, “Is this really happening?”

And then he pushed inside her with a sigh as deep as the ocean.

“It is.” He stared into her eyes. “Oh, my beautiful Kelsey, it is.”

Of all the stars in the sky, in this universe and the next, nothing burned as brightly or as fevered as the feel of David moving inside her. His hips carried the movement of the waves, pushing her higher and higher away from herself. Great stars, she was full of him—where he stretched her and stroked her down below, and where his wordless whispers filled her mind.

She clung to him, digging in, scoring him. Loving him.

“I want you to come again.” The demand timed with his thrusts. “I want to feel you. Around me. Come on, beautiful.”

Because she’d always been powerless against him, she obeyed again.

“Oh, yes.” He pumped faster now, driving into her with such determination and power that her body skidded backward on the table. She felt him pulse inside her—long, rippling waves of pleasure that he vocalized with deep, plaintive sounds.

He came down on top of her, pressing a kiss to the swell over her breast.

“It really happened,” she said, when her mind and body realigned.

He raised his head and looked at her with such grave intensity that, if she wasn’t more careful or smart, she might mistake for love. “It did.”

From the pile of clothes on the floor, his earpiece crackled, and she knew he’d been called away.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The next day, Kelsey was still riding high on last night’s adrenaline and rapture. She’d barely slept, the bedsheets too tantalizing on her skin. Her body craved more, her mind bursting with the memory of David over her. Inside her.

She always did her best work with this much positive energy pumping through her system. Over the years, she’d trained herself to harness it, aim it at her patients and research, and just work. Right then, she felt like she could cure cancer.

Even though she’d closed the clinic in observance of the Ice Rites that night, she needed to be there. In the cab on the way to the clinic, she ran her fingers over her lips that still tingled with David’s taste. After all this time, he’d told her, I want it to be just you and me. She caught the reflection of her secret smile in the window glass. The cabbie saw it, too, and told her to have a great day as she exited on the curb.

“I already have,” she replied, and tipped him way too much.

At street level, the clinic was labeled Ball Food Labs to protect its true nature from the Primaries. As she typed in her access code for the third-floor entrance, she was still smiling.

In the elevator, she mentally triaged what she had to do. She wanted to take a look at the reports from an animal bite treatment and then input what she’d glimpsed on David’s chest last night. She needed to examine him again. Thoroughly. Preferably with him inside her.

Great stars, where had her professionalism gone?

She shivered and had to force down a deep breath to control the wave of desire derailing her with thoughts of shoving her hand down her jeans. She should change. Putting on her scrubs and coat was like flipping on a switch—personal to professional. Entering the clinic, she headed straight for the locker room.

Someone was in there. Moving around. Yet she’d given everyone, even the janitors, the day off. A surge of protective anger burst inside her. No one was messing with her clinic. She grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall—the only available weapon she could think of—and flung open the door.

A female Ofarian soldier, dressed in black, rose calmly from where she knelt by the garbage can. Each piece of trash had been removed and now lay neatly organized on a sheet of plastic on the floor.

“Who the hell are you?” Kelsey demanded.

The woman shifted uncomfortably, then glanced to her right, to the line of lockers.

David stood at Emily Pritchart’s locker, the door open, its contents lined up on the bench.

Kelsey dropped the fire extinguisher, the giant clank giving her an instant headache. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

David actually had the gall to not look guilty or regretful. Instead, he closed the green metal door with a muted click and came toward her with the same graceful poise he had in the hotel hall last night. Minus the lust.

“Gathering evidence,” he said.

She started to quiver with fury. “This is my clinic—”

“This is an Ofarian clinic.” His voice was infuriatingly soft.

“I told you about Wes’s letter. You already talked to Emily. What more do you want?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, a defensive gesture if she’d ever seen one. “I suspected that wasn’t the only contact between Wes and Emily, but I needed further proof.”

“Holy shit, David. You broke into my clinic and are destroying Emily’s privacy because of a hunch? Since when did you turn into the Board? Did you go through my patient files, too?”

Deep red seeped up his neck.

“Oh, God. No. You didn’t.”

She spun and raced into the main room, going for the central computer. She heard David following.

“Kelse. Wait.”

The main computer was on, the screen bright. It showed a table of patient names.

She whirled on him, rage coloring her vision. “How could you?”

He showed her his palms. “It’s not what you think. Let me explain.”

“What’s there to explain? You are the Board.”

He jabbed a finger at the floor. “This situation means Griffin’s life. It means the safety and future of our people. Do you understand that? A little sacrifice—a little understanding—please.”

She recoiled. “Was last night your way of trying to butter me up so I’d let you in here? Let you snoop around?” She’d dismissed him as a manipulator too soon.

“If you really think that”—his voice quieted so much it fought with the whir from the air ducts—“there’s nothing I can do or say to change your mind.”

She glanced into the locker room, taking in the neat lines of trash on the floor, and Emily’s dog-eared biographies and candy stash on the bench. The list of patient names on the computer screen glared at her.

“Confidentiality was a joke to the Board. And now you’re making my clinic into a joke, too,” she said. “But then again, that’s what you’re good at.”

He went so still she thought he’d somehow stopped time. That had been wrong to say—far-fetched and cutting and spoken out of heat. But an apology might have been misconstrued as permission to go ahead with what he was doing, and she couldn’t do that.

“You’re right,” he said, and she heard his pain. “That’s exactly what I’m good at.”

No man was worth this, this desecration of her dreams. She was too angry to argue anymore, and too furious to stand there and watch people who weren’t her employees rifle through what she’d created. She turned and fled, reaching the street in record time.

In the not-so-distant past, she could have contacted her mom, and the head Ofarian doctor with deep, powerful contacts within the Board would have made a single phone call and all would have been well. The thought actually made Kelsey sick. Which situation was better? Which was worse?

Only when she raised her arm to hail a cab did she notice how it shook from fingertip to shoulder.

“Doc.”

So they were back to that name, were they? Wasn’t that indicative?

She didn’t want to turn, but it was like her body had been trained, tuned to his presence and the sound of his voice. David stalked across the sidewalk toward her.

He’s going to apologize, she thought, heart in her throat.

“The day I came here injured, you told me Emily was in charge of routinely following up with patients. I was checking the lists of names to make sure all the Ofarians on record actually existed, that she wasn’t passing information under the pretense of false names. I never opened a single patient file, just verified the names were real people.”

Kelsey gaped. “Why on earth would you think she’d do that?”

“Because of what she’s already done.” He reached into his soldier’s vest and pulled out something pink. She blinked at it, hardly believing what he held contained any matter of consequence. Slowly, never removing his eyes from her, he unfolded the greasy, crumpled El Tamale Loco bag.

The pink paper was covered in doodles—figures and silly characters Kelsey had seen Emily draw countless times over the years. In between them, just barely distinguishable, ran a line of random letters. Unreadable, a mess.

David dragged a finger across the gobbledygook. “See this?” His voice was painfully lifeless. “It’s a rail fence cipher. Know what it says?”

She couldn’t swallow. “No.”

“It says, ‘Delivery successful.’ A direct threat has been made against Griffin, Kelsey. We’ve been monitoring Emily, and when she came to the clinic today when we knew it was closed, we followed her. Caught her going through the trash looking for this, to change it or remove it or something. You said she gets tamales from this place every week. Chances are she’s been communicating this way with Wes for a while.”

Kelsey’s mouth dropped open, but she found no words.

“We have her in custody. She said she doesn’t agree with the lack of social structure. And that she objects to your experiments with Primary medicine and Secondary magic. She’s not your friend.”

By the time Kelsey’s brain fumbled back into motion, David had gone back inside.

David didn’t answer his phone all afternoon, but then, Kelsey hadn’t expected him to. He’d made his point.

She sat with her parents, as was tradition, at the top of the rapidly filling amphitheater concealed in the cold forest two hours north of San Francisco. Winter wind blew off the Pacific and swirled through the tall trees. The Ofarian population, wrapped in bulky coats and scarves and mittens, took their seats facing the stage. The drone of formal greetings and water blessings passed from person to person, but there was very little enthusiasm behind the words or actions.

A heavy, somber cloak of uncertainty hovered above the crowd. The Rites—as opposed to the Star Gala—had always been solemn, but now the sharpness of volatility gave the whole thing an edge that had Kelsey’s knee bouncing in unease.

The elder Pritcharts hadn’t come.

Dissidents two rows back whispered that the Pritchart parents had taken Emily and had splintered off to be with Wes. Other detractors speculated they themselves might join the Pritcharts, and that if enough Ofarians left San Francisco, Gwen and Griffin would be without power. They said that Gwen had already backed away from her own world, and that Griffin didn’t have a handle on things.

Kelsey felt sick, believing none of it, but unable to say anything. David hadn’t released news of Emily’s arrest, so it wasn’t up to Kelsey to reveal.

Where was David anyway?

Craning her neck around, she spotted him, standing with his arms crossed in a green tent serving as security central. He made measured assessments of his soldiers, who winged out along the edges of the amphitheater. Never before had there been such an ominous presence of them during the Rites.

She was sitting just seven rows below David, so when his jaw clenched and his brow furrowed, she couldn’t help but feel that maybe he’d sensed her eyes on him. And that he was deliberately avoiding her.

The Rites began with chimes, the symbolic call to worship. The sound of low, serious bells reverberated off the great trees shielding the amphitheater and then shot into the open, starry sky directly above. The congregation hushed.

Atop the center steps appeared three Ofarians robed in black. They descended to the stage in rhythmic motion and took their places behind three bronze urns filled with water. The first Ofarian, an elderly woman, swept the water into the air and heated it into a swirling, stationary mass of steam. The second, a middle-aged man, used his voice to lift the water from his urn and churn it in a midair cyclone. The final Ofarian, another older woman, sent her water surging into the air, only to freeze it with a crackle.

A children’s chorus shuffled into a balcony on the amphitheater’s left side. Griffin ascended to the stage and took his place in front of the ancient, enormous redwood tree around which the stage had been built. He looked like a leader.

The high, sweet voices of the children began to sing a song their ancestors had brought from the old world. It celebrated the beauty of the stars and the glory and goodness of the Ofarian people. They’d sung this song by rote for well over a century, and it had become nearly meaningless across the generations. But now the audience shifted uncomfortably under the words, as though hearing them for the first time and finding them as hypocritical as Kelsey did.

She understood why Griffin had kept this location for the Ice Rites this year. Too much upheaval at once might have backfired; he was letting his people use this place as an anchor. Everyone held memories of this forest and amphitheater. Every time Kelsey came here she flashed back to her first Rites at age six, remembering her awe at what the Fragment could do.

She remembered seeing David, too. As soon as he’d been old enough, his parents—also soldiers—had positioned him along the perimeter, teaching him how to observe.

Even Wes and Emily Pritchart had formed memories here. Kelsey had read Wes’s disturbing, rambling letter. In it, he mentioned this place, the redwood in particular. How he’d hid inside the open, rotted part of the trunk—as most Ofarian kids learned to do at a certain age—and Emily had tattled on him.

Strange that even though the letter had been addressed to Emily, the whole thing had been twenty pages of nasty preaching and vindictive speech aimed at no one in particular. Except for that short paragraph when he specifically mentioned her, and berated her for the redwood tree incident.

Delivery successful.

She’s been communicating this way with Wes for a while, David had said.

If the two Pritchart siblings had been crafty enough to pass each other messages through the trash, maybe that letter was more than a manifesto. Maybe it meant something even more horrible than an assassination warning.

More chimes resonated through the amphitheater and everyone rose to their feet, singing yet another hymn whose significance had shifted. At the top of the center steps, Gwen appeared in a long black robe, bearing the Fragment of Ofaria in her hands. All eyes turned to her. All eyes, except for Kelsey’s.

Hers found David.

As Gwen began her slow procession down the steps, Kelsey nudged her way past her parents, ignoring their questions, and into the far aisle. She took the steps by twos to the top, and ran around the back of the amphitheater.

She shoved aside the flap to the green tent. David swiveled around, hand on his weapon, eyes fierce.

“Kelse—”

“No time,” she whispered urgently. “I think the Pritcharts might have hid something in the redwood.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

David much preferred Kelsey’s anger over her panic. He’d never known her capable of fear, but now terror streaked across her face.

“Sam,” David said to the other man in the security tent. “Take command.”

“Yes, sir.”

David grabbed Kelsey’s arm and steered her out of the tent and into the cold, black forest. In the residual light glowing from the amphitheater, her face looked ghostly pale. She began to babble about the communications between Wes and Emily, and the cryptic mention of the tree and the Rites in the letter. David gripped her arms, feeling her shake under the thick of her coat.

“We thought of that, too,” he said when she took a breath. “We already checked the tree. It was empty—no hiding kids, no foreign objects.”

“Check it again.” Her voice rose. “I just have a feeling.”

And as she said it, David did, too. It burned on the back of his neck.

“Wait here.” He spun, boots churning in the dead leaves, and sprinted around the amphitheater. The land sloped sharply downward, reminding him of the last time he’d chased after Wes Pritchart’s mess. Only the wide, black shapes of the great trees, creating holes in the night, told him where not to run.

The children’s chorus crescendoed into a familiar tune, meaning Gwen had reached the stage and now faced the audience. She would be lifting the Fragment above the people’s heads, praying in Ofarian. She would be setting the Fragment on the pedestal before she called down the starlight.

The feeling of dread built up inside David with every pounding step.

His toe struck a tree root. He went flying. No time to get his hands out. Not enough light to know what lay below. He hit the ground. Hard. A tree trunk abraded his cheek. The wound on his chest, mostly healed but not entirely, screamed with a new pain, and he knew he’d ripped something open.

Then small hands were on him, pulling him up and rolling him over. Patting him down.

“Jesus, Kelse,” he panted. “I told you to wait up there!”

She blinked rapidly, as though just realizing she’d chased after him, and replied in a shaky voice, “You might need me.”

“That’s what I have soldiers for.”

She didn’t move. Their quick, hard breaths came out white, mingling in the cold air. She touched his head, her fingers coming away red. No time for being doctored. He shoved to his feet, ignoring the wave of unsteadiness passing through him.

They’d found the bottom of the embankment, where the great, serrated trunk of the redwood thrust out of the ground, and the back of the stage jutted up against it. David reached into his vest and pulled out a small flashlight. Flicking it on, the beam of light struck the bottom of the redwood, where time had eaten away a hole big enough to fit at least a couple of kids.

He fell to his knees, stuck his head into the hollow. He sensed Kelsey next to him, crouching low, peering up. “See? Nothing.”

“There,” she said, pointing.

He followed her finger with the flashlight. The far side of the trunk that abutted the amphitheater structure had been chipped away. He saw it now: a fresh line running perpendicular to the ground, small enough to have been missed during a cursory check. He crawled inside and pressed against the chipped seam. A sizable chunk of the trunk fell away.

Access underneath the stage.

Holy fucking shit.

Pressing his ear radio, he murmured, “Capshaw under the stage. Possible security compromise. Prep but stand down until my word. Over.”

He and Kelsey exchanged a long look. He knew she was wondering why he didn’t ignite the soldiers into action right now, get everyone away from this place as fast as possible. But that’s exactly what Wes wanted. Even if there wasn’t anything under there, Wes wanted mass panic. An example of Griffin’s ineptitude. He wanted a frightening Ice Rites to go with the awful Star Gala last night.

In a flurry, David whipped off his bulky coat. “Stay here this time.”

He slipped the flashlight between his teeth and crawled inside the tree. Moist, earthy, and woody scents assaulted his nose. He squeezed through the hole on his stomach and pushed through into the dark under the stage. Coming to a squat, he swiped spiderwebs from his face.

Scratching sounds came behind him. Of course Kelsey wouldn’t have listened. Absolutely no time to argue about it now.

Removing the flashlight from his mouth, he speared it into the black. The stage was sixty or seventy feet wide—lots of ground to cover. Just ten feet above their heads, the Rites went on. Though he couldn’t hear Gwen’s words, he could tell by the songs being sung where they were in the ceremony. In a few minutes, she would use the Fragment to call the starlight and bless the Earth’s ice.

And that’s when he saw it. Kelsey did, too, her gloved hand clamping onto his arm.

A bomb.

A small silver box, wired to cylinders. Tiny, blinking lights on a panel.

Delivery successful.

If he were Wes or Emily, he’d have the thing timed to explode right as Gwen called the starlight. Maximum impact. Which meant he had about ten minutes to shut the thing off.

“Bomb under the stage,” he murmured into his radio. “Hold your positions. Repeat, hold your positions.”

“You need to get everyone out of here,” Kelsey begged.

“No. You need to get out of here. Go, Kelse. Now.” He shoved her.

All he thought about was the potential chaos. It took five minutes to clear the amphitheater—his people had trained for that. If he didn’t take care of the bomb in four, he’d have them clear the area and deal with the aftermath and backlash.

He whipped out his phone, found the number he needed, and pressed “dial.”

Two rings. “Who is this?” came the woman’s suspicious voice.

“Adine? Adine Jones?”

Gwen had given David this number a month ago, but he’d never used it. Never imagined he’d have to. Adine Jones was a genius, according to Gwen—a technological master whose knowledge transcended this world . . . because she wasn’t of this world. She was Secondary, but not Ofarian.

“My name is David Capshaw. I’m friends with Gwen Carroway—”

“I remember you, David.” There were crunching sounds, like she was eating potato chips.

“Gwen’s in trouble. What do you know about bombs?”

She sputtered and dropped the droll attitude. “If it’s got wires and circuits, I know it. Lay it on me.”

“Here’s what I’ve got.” David passed the flashlight all around the bomb, describing corners and connections, wires and etched letters, the explosives themselves.

Adine whistled in a high arc. “That’s a short-range explosive. Small blast but capable of eviscerating anything or anyone within ten to twenty feet.”

And his beautiful, stubborn Kelsey still hovered right next to him.

David lifted his eyes to the stage directly above. To where Griffin Aames and Gwen Carroway stood together. With the Fragment.

Take out the leaders. Sacrifice the relic. Show the rest of the people how stupid and blind the new regime is for letting such a threat get this close. Assume control and build up the fractured society in your own way. Wes Pritchart’s perfect plan.

“Can I move it?” he asked Adine.

“No! Just do what I tell you.”

“Fuck.” David shook his head at the dirt, then said into his radio, “Prepare to get everyone off the stage on my word.”

“This’ll take a bit of finesse,” Adine said. He could hear her fingers flying across a keyboard. “You have an extra set of hands available?”

David didn’t want to, but he looked to Kelsey. He briefly closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“What do you need?” Kelsey whispered, and at that moment he loved her so much he nearly cried.

Her panic was gone. Her lips were pressed together in determination. This was the Kelsey he knew. The one who saw the problem, turned it over and over in her mind, and charged toward the solution.

“Go on,” he said into the phone, but firmly held Kelsey with his eyes. “Tell us what to do.”

Kelsey settled back on her heels and gave him a short nod of confidence. Adine started talking, fast enough he had to tell her to slow down.

“You have wire cutters?” Adine asked.

David patted his vest. “I have a knife.”

“That’ll do. Here’s where you make the first snip . . .”

They worked diligently, quietly. Kelsey held or turned or cut whatever object Adine told her to, all without breaking a sweat. The unflappable doctor, intensely working on an emergency patient.

Above, the song that pleaded for the stars’ blessing began in earnest. They were inside that five-minute mark, if that. All the lights on the circuit board were still lit up. All the Ofarians still sat in their seats.

“Okay,” Adine said, “when you dislodge the canister top from the fuse, you need to completely unfasten the smaller black wire within three seconds. Unfasten. Don’t bend it. Don’t cut it. You got that?”

David wiped perspiration from his forehead using his shoulder. “I got it.”

Kelsey wrapped her hands around the canister top while David pressed his fingers to the end of the indicated wire.

The lights on the circuit board started to blink. Faster and faster.

In the amphitheater, the song rose and rose. Gwen’s footsteps moved to center stage, and David knew she was taking her position behind the Fragment.

“Ready?” Kelsey whispered.

When he nodded, she unsnapped the canister top. Twisted. The blinking lights went nuts, bouncing all over the place. David’s fingers shook.

One.

Two.

The wire dislodged from the circuit board, the little metal tooth falling away, taking his heart and his breath with it.

The lights died. The bomb now nothing but a pile of metal and liquid in the dirt.

Overhead, Gwen’s voice rang out in Ofarian. Through the tight seams of the stage floorboards streamed thin beams of stunning blue and violet light. The stars had answered Gwen’s prayers, and cast their power and light into the Fragment. The rock then refracted it toward the urns, the heavens descending to touch their element in all its forms. The crowd stirred with the spectacle.

“Bomb disabled,” he breathed heavily into the radio. “Stand down. Await orders.”

David looked to Kelsey. Now her tears came, making her eyes shimmer like ocean shallows. She smiled and started to laugh. He reached out and yanked her to him with all the strength he had. He fell onto his back, pulling her with him down to the dirt, not caring whether he bled again under his shirt.

He only knew the greediness of his mouth on hers, the strain of their breath as they tried to catch it, and the wonderful way her legs parted over his hips. Only when his lungs cried out did he push her away, his hand curling over her hair, her mouth pressed innocently to the hot, damp skin of his neck.

He could’ve stayed like that forever, just the two of them drowning in adrenaline and euphoria . . . but he heard Gwen’s muffled voice starting a new chant to bless the Earth’s ice. The Rites would be over soon.

He gently set Kelsey aside and sat up, touching a dirty finger to her shining face. “Come on.”

Leaving the bomb, they crawled out into a forest that was bursting with light emanating from the Fragment on stage. High above, the bared branches of the trees reached into that light, as though they, too, wanted to be blessed.

A tingle on his senses brought his head around, his eyes peering into the pitch of the forest. He’d been chasing Wes long enough to know his signature, that he was near. The asshole wouldn’t have missed this show for the world.

“Stay here,” he told Kelsey. “I’ll send someone to get you and the bomb. And for stars’ sake, listen to me this time.”

“Where are you going?”

“To get Pritchart.” He slid the flashlight into his vest pocket but kept the knife at hand.

Now worry darkened Kelsey’s eyes. Not when faced with a messy, explosive death herself, but when he was about to charge after the enemy. He didn’t know whether to roll his eyes or kiss her.

He stepped close enough she had to lean back to look up at him. “You want to know what I really wanted to ask after I won that stupid game with your cat?”

She nodded. A piece of copper hair blew across her face, attaching itself to her lip, and he tugged it down.

“I was going to ask you why you didn’t want to marry me,” he said. “And then whatever you said was the reason, I was going to fix it. Fight for you. Make you mine. Because I’m in love with you.”

Then he stepped back, basking in her surprise, delighting in the way his heart felt lighter in her presence now. Twelve years of hiding how he felt . . . gone. Like that first kiss, he should have done it much, much sooner.

With a smile of his own, one that showed her everything he felt, he turned and sprinted into the forest.

“Teams C, F, and M with me,” he huffed into the radio. “Circle around the western forest.”

Tonight, he would finally bring in his prey.

CHAPTER NINE

Three days later, David finally got some sleep. Noon on a Tuesday and he was stretched out on the couch, sun on his face, one arm thrown above his head. A new puzzle book lay split over his belly.

Griffin had given him the day off. Which was completely expected since David had chased Wes Pritchart through the forest for nearly thirteen hours before finally catching him as he tried to steal a car. After dragging Wes out of the woods, David had had to escort the criminal to the jail located in the old Plant in bumfuck Nevada. He’d spent another whole day making statements and giving testimony.

The capture had been huge news, quieting the dissidents—for now; he wasn’t sure how long that would last—and rallying Griffin and Gwen’s supporters.

Griffin had decided to keep the bomb a secret. No one needed to know, he’d said, how close Wes had come to succeeding. The soldiers knew, of course, but they were loyal. David was fine with Griffin’s decision. He didn’t need or want recognition. That wasn’t why he’d done what he had. Protect Griffin and Gwen and the Fragment—that’s all he’d been focused on. That’s all he’d ever wanted.

Well, not all.

He hadn’t seen or spoken to Kelsey since the Ice Rites. As soon as he got back to San Francisco he’d asked about her, but she’d been immersed in her lab. Still was, as far as he knew. There’d been trouble at her clinic, and he’d been reluctant to disturb her in the middle of it.

He’d wait for her. He’d been waiting for twelve years; what was a few days more?

A gentle knock sounded on his door, so quiet he was sure he’d imagined it. But no, there it came again. He sat up, the puzzle book sliding to the hardwood floor. The prickle of an Ofarian signature out in the hall buzzed in the back of his brain.

He opened the door and could not suppress his wide smile.

Kelsey looked like sunlight after a month spent underground. She wore those jeans again—the ones with the holes, as though she’d known they drove him crazy—and a fitted, white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She carried her winter coat in the crook of her arm, and he wondered how long she’d been standing out here before she’d knocked. Her hair was down, and he hoped it was because of what he’d told her in the hotel.

She gave him a quick once-over, skimming up his bare feet, plaid flannel pants and white undershirt. Her eyes landed on his face with a gasp that was very un-doctorlike. “Look at you. Why didn’t you come to the clinic?”

He’d avoided the mirror since he got back. The black eye was probably still pretty purple, but the throbbing along his cheek where Wes had landed a fist or two had lessened.

He waved her off. “It was just a couple of punches. I’ll live.” The way she frowned at him was turning far too impersonal, so he steered her attention elsewhere. “How’d you know which apartment was mine? Not that I’m complaining.”

At first she tried to look away, to hide her blush, but then she seemed to change her mind and looked him right in the eye. “I’ve always known where you live.”

Today was just getting better and better.

He opened the door wide and stepped back. “Then maybe it’s time you came in.”

She wandered inside, and he tried not to stare at her ass in those jeans, but who was he kidding? He let her look around his small, bright apartment, just as he’d assessed hers days earlier.

“Sorry to drop in on you like this. I should’ve called.”

He closed the door, excitement steadily pumping through his body. He gave her a lazy grin. “No. You should always come over unannounced. Look how I dress up for you in preparation.”

Her bow lips quirked, but there was sadness and trouble behind her sky blue eyes. He could only guess it was because of the clinic. “I heard,” he said seriously, “about what Emily had done to your records.”

She ran a hand through her hair and he noticed her fingers quivering. “Yeah. She’d been altering results. Changing patient reports, tainting findings, and messing with samples. I can’t recreate the tests. I’ll have to start all over.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s not why I came.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

She took a deep breath. “I came to tell you a story.”

“A story?” The sun burned through the corner bay window, hotter than a day at the beach. He gestured to the big, comfy chair in shadow. “Have a seat then.”

She lowered herself to the cushion and put her purse on the floor. “You like puzzles,” she said with a bit of wonder, pointing to his book. “Emily’s cipher.”

He shrugged and sat on the couch opposite her, hands clasped between his thighs. “Just a hobby. The cipher they were using is one of the simpler ones.” He didn’t want to talk about that, now that she was here. “So, what’s this story about?”

She matched his stare. Amazing how twelve years of protecting his feelings had always led to such agonizingly awkward and terrifying encounters with her. Now that she knew how he felt, it was so much easier to be around her. How did that work, exactly? Shouldn’t it have been the opposite?

“It’s about you and me,” she started, “and why we were matched. Didn’t you ever wonder about that?”

He sat up, resting his elbows on his knees. “All the time.”

“It was me. I did it.”

She was acting all bashful, like he’d actually be mad about that. He hid his smile, but it was trying its best to poke out.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

She licked her lips. He wanted to lick them, too.

“At last year’s Star Gala, I got pretty drunk. Well, drunk for me. I was excited to be almost done with my residency and I just wanted to let loose. My mom, she must’ve had a bottle of champagne all by herself, and she found me and asked me about finally being matched in marriage. She’d been matched right after school, too, you see.”

He leaned forward. “So what’d you tell her?”

“That I wanted you. No one else. It had always been you.”

Wes’s punches had never struck him this hard. They’d never been this thrilling either.

“I didn’t tell her because of the alcohol—well, maybe that helped—but because it was the truth and I knew I wouldn’t get you anyway. If I could never tell you, I could tell my mom, right? Then the next week she came to me and said that the Board had approved the match. You remember what kind of pull she used to have with the Board?” He nodded. “Well, it turned out she went to them and asked for the two of us to be matched as a favor to her, and for the daughter who would take her place as the head Ofarian doctor. They agreed.”

David could only stare. “No one ever got to pick their mates.”

She shook her head, her brow furrowing. “And I felt horrible about that. Why should I have gotten the person I wanted when so many others had to marry who the Board told them to? It didn’t seem fair. I was sick with guilt.”

“That was such a weird time,” he said, his faraway gaze drifting out the windows to the tall buildings just outside.

“But the worst part was,” she went on, “I’d wanted you for so long and I was ecstatic at finally being able to be with you. And then at our matching ceremony you looked like a ghost who’d been dipped in bleach. Like you were caught in a mass of gears and would never be able to get out. I’d done that to you, I realized. I started to panic, worrying that if you’d ever found out I was the one who’d asked for us to be matched, who’d essentially tricked you into marriage, you’d hate me.”

David fell to his knees in front of her before she could say another word. His hands slid up her thighs, his fingers digging into the crease of her hips. “You want to know why I looked like that that night? Because I felt guilty, too, that I’d been given the woman I wanted. And because I was so happy, and you looked so trapped. I assumed you’d been roped into marrying someone below your class, and that you were upset about it.”

“But that wasn’t true at all!”

His cheeks hurt he smiled so big. “See? We both suck because we made bad assumptions. We both suck at showing how we feel.”

She exhaled. “I’m done with sucking.”

He laughed, leaned forward, and brushed his stubbly cheek with her smooth one. “God, I hope not.”

To his delight, she shivered but didn’t pull away. Instead her arms slid around his waist. He almost shouted in victory as she tugged him tighter into the cradle of her thighs.

“You want to know the day I fell for you?” she said against his neck.

“You know the actual day?”

“I know the actual moment.” She drew a long, slow breath. The words trickled across her skin. “‘There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved.’”

He took her shoulders and pushed her back to search her face. “Are you serious?”

She was smiling now, that smile he remembered from that day in class. She nodded and reached for her purse. She pulled out the most incredible thing he’d ever seen: one of those slips of paper from Creative Writing. Laminated.

“And it’s the truth, isn’t it,” she murmured, her focus dropping to his mouth and awakening a pounding in his cock.

“Amen to that,” he growled, and consumed her mouth with a hard, wet, driving kiss. Her tongue tasted even better than it had that night in the hotel. The emotion that fueled him burned even stronger than the moment right after they’d defused the bomb.

Because she loved him.

That knowledge made his dick hard as a spike, and he ground into her. When she wrapped her ankles around the backs of his thighs, pressed herself even harder against him, the sound that came up from his throat didn’t even sound human.

At last he pulled away, stunned to realize he’d lain himself across her, his weight pressing her into the cushion, her penny-colored hair spraying out with static across the back of his favorite chair.

He struggled to breathe. “We’re so pathetic. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“The same reason you didn’t.”

He pushed her hair away from her face. “How could two smart people be so dumb and insecure?”

“It’s one of the world’s greatest mysteries.” Her hands slipped beneath the waist of his pants, grabbing his ass, and he groaned again. “It should have been you to speak first.”

“Me?” he said drowsily, because her hand had traveled to his front and now stroked him over his underwear.

“You’re the motormouth. You gave me that string to hold. You kissed me first. You—”

“Kelsey, shut up,” he murmured, his eyes closed against the slide of her hand. “Unless you want to tell me to come.”

She froze. His eyes opened. They smiled at the same time. And suddenly they were teenagers, the twelve years between them vanishing. They were messy and fumbling and giggling, grappling awkwardly at each other’s clothing, shivering in anticipation. He couldn’t steady his fingers to undo her buttons, so he just ripped off her shirt. He’d been dying to see what she looked like in one of his anyway.

He pulled off her jeans, paused only half a second to appreciate the gold lace of her underwear, and then those were gone, too. The sun shifted, coming through the window to hit her body perfectly, all spread out before him.

As he draped himself over her, kissed her, then entered her body in one smooth thrust, she said, “I want to start over. With us. Only this time I know how it’s going to end.”

“How?” he asked, pulling out slowly, making her gasp.

“With you marrying me.”

He kissed her again, pushing back into her heat. “I thought you’d never ask.”