Heart of Obsidian (Psy-Changeling 12)

“I’m scanning for any minds in the vicinity, but the wolves rarely patrol this section—there’s nowhere to go from this point where sentries won’t spot an intruder.” Pulling out something from one of the pockets of his cargos, he held it out.

Half-gloves. Leather. To protect her palms from the rock. Exhilaration bursting through her bloodstream, she slipped them on, then moved to the rock face, took a grip on the first handhold, and began to climb. Finally, finally she felt alive again!

The wind was quiet and gentle against her face, the rock hard under her fingertips, the chill night air so clean and pure it almost hurt. Drawing it in, she found another hold, then another, and when her foot slipped, said, “No!” to halt Kaleb’s help, and got herself out of the situation on her own.

Heart thudding and sweat pouring down her temples, it took her over an hour to climb a puny increment of the jagged rock face, but she laughed in unadulterated delight as she pulled herself to a seat on a slight outcrop. “My arms are crying!”

Kaleb looked up from the foot of the rock. Takes practice.

As she watched, he began to climb, his body moving with such fluidity she couldn’t separate move from move. She knew without asking that he wasn’t using his telekinesis—Tks were generally physically adept, a known side effect of their ability. But Kaleb was better than adept. He climbed with a wild grace that hypnotized.

Stunned at the lethal beauty of him, she watched in silence until he was almost lost to her sight.

Come back. She was frightened, though she knew he was a Tk, would never die in a fall. But the fear, it was so profound, it clenched bony fingers around her heart and squeezed. As if she had witnessed him fall once, knew he could be hurt. Kaleb, I can’t see you.

He reappeared into view seconds later, backtracking with that same hypnotic grace. Halting beside her, he hugged the rock with a one-handed grip, his feet on a whisper-thin ledge, the muscles of his arm hard and defined. With his free hand, he drank from a bottle of water he’d had in another pocket, before passing it to her.

She took a drink . . . and the cobwebs fell away from her memories of the first night she’d spent with him. He’d given her water then, too. “Was I really that bad?” she asked. “You said I smelled like a pigsty.” The thought embarrassed her now as it hadn’t then.

“I was attempting to incite a response.” Taking back the bottle with that matter-of-fact response, he held out a hand. “Can you climb back down?”

Sahara considered the jellylike state of her limbs and forced herself to be realistic. “I don’t think so.” A second later, she found herself on the ground.

Lying on her back on the soft grass, she watched him climb down to land on his feet beside her, strong and muscled and dangerous. When he turned and met her gaze, her thighs clenched, a sheen of perspiration breaking out over her skin that had nothing to do with the climb and everything to do with a hunger that was no longer the desperation she’d felt in her bedroom, but a hotter, deeper ache.

It had been so long.

Breath turning shallow, she parted her lips. “Kaleb.”

* * *

KALEB had intended to keep his distance from Sahara until he was dead sure his shields were adamantine. Except now she looked at him with desire a red flush on her cheekbones, her chest rising and falling in a rapid rhythm, and it was a siren call to his own body. She had no comprehension of the power she wielded, didn’t understand that when he told her he’d line the streets with bodies for her, he meant every word.

As far as Sahara Kyriakus was concerned, he was a weapon she could point in any direction she chose. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her . . . except let her go.

“Kaleb,” she whispered again. “I’ve missed you.”

He broke.

Gripping her wrists together as he came down over her, he pinned them above her head. “You can’t touch me.” Her fingers curled at his low-voiced order, but there was no panic, her lips soft under the hard demand of his mouth, her thighs spreading to cradle him.

Even as slender as she remained, there was no doubting her femininity. Gentle curves under his free hand, her br**sts crushed against his chest, lips plump and wet. Until Sahara, he hadn’t understood why men murdered to possess a woman. Now the rage of it was a black fire in his blood, a deadly inferno that would engulf the world should anyone dare take her from him again.

When she began to struggle under his weight, he tightened his hold on the delicate bones of her wrists before he could rein in the violently possessive response. Opening his hand a second later, he waited for her next move. Should it be a rejection, he’d give every indication of accepting it, then strategize his next play—Sahara was as physically susceptible to him as he was to her, and it was an advantage he’d use without hesitation.

“I’m too hot.” With that complaint, she reached between them to unzip her sweatshirt and twisted to get it off. It left her dressed only in a warm but thin white top that hugged the mounds of her br**sts, the curve of her waist.

“Don’t,” he said, when she would’ve put her hands on him. “We don’t want that rock face coming down over us.”

Dropping her arms to the lush green grass, Sahara’s eyes went to the huge slab of rock at his back.

“You’re not exaggerating, are you?”

“No.” He had no need to exaggerate.

A subtle movement of her throat as she swallowed. He followed it with his gaze, aware of her pulse gaining in speed, her breath hitching. “I’ll keep my hands to myself,” she promised, voice rough. “But you can’t look at me like that.”