Shards of Hope (Psy-Changeling 14)

They were both dressed only in T-shirts and sweatpants, and the thin cotton fabric of the tees didn’t stop the heat transfer between them. Zaira wasn’t sure how long she lay there unmoving before her bones began to stop trembling and her heart calmed, the scent of Aden in her every inhale. It was warm and quintessentially masculine and deeply familiar.

Lifting her hand, she placed it on his chest, right over his heart. His pulse, steady and strong, gave her a rhythm to lock on to and use to normalize her breathing. When he ran his hand up and down her back, she didn’t protest, the contact further easing the excruciating tension inside her. His hand was big, strong, and so was he. Most people didn’t consciously realize it, but Aden wasn’t a small man. He was lithe with muscle, his strength intense.

“I’m sorry I bit you.” She didn’t know why she’d done that; maybe she’d wanted to scare him, but part of her thought she’d done it because she wanted to keep him. Like an abused animal clawing at someone trying to do it a kindness because it didn’t know any better.

“I saw one of the RainFire females bite her mate earlier.”

“Was she angry with him?”

“No. It appeared to be an affectionate act.”

Her mind thought that over, considered it from every angle. “They’re changeling, have more primal drives.”

“Some drives are universal.”

She jerked at the feel of his teeth biting down on her ear. “Why did you do that?”

“Now we’re even and you have no cause to feel as if you crossed a line.”

Reaching up, she rubbed at the bite, the abused, broken, uncivilized thing inside her not quite certain what to do. “You bit me,” she said again.

He brushed away her hand and ran his thumb over the spot. “Does it hurt?”

“No.” It had just been the unexpected nature of it that had bewildered her. “Biting is acceptable in changeling society, not in Psy.”

“I haven’t heard that rule.”

Thrown off center by his behavior, she turned and tucked her back against his side, holding his arm possessively where it curled around her upper body. “Are you going to bite me again?” The insane rage that was part of her needed parameters to handle this.

“Maybe.”

She frowned at that answer, too confused to be worried about the breakdown in her discipline in allowing the facial expression. “I’ll bite you back.”

“Okay.”

Her frown deepened as she realized he was determined to win the argument, determined to show her that there was nothing wrong with the fact she’d gone vicious on him. Since she couldn’t think of a good counterargument, she decided to see how far he’d take this—twisting around, she bit him again, this time on the jaw.

The only difference was that she made sure not to draw blood.

He flipped her, and suddenly they were locked in hand-to-hand combat. Neither one of them, however, was trying to punch or hit. Instead, they were trying to get in under each other’s defenses. He was heavier and stronger than her, but she’d always been better at this; she’d taken him down more than once, and now, managed to flip him onto his back.

But when she would’ve leaned in and bitten him again in this contest that was a game, he pulled off a difficult maneuver that put her on her back and then he was over her, the two of them breathing heavily.

Chapter 25

“DON’T DO IT,” she warned, feeling the rage inside her claw to the surface.

He did it.

The bite was on her lower lip this time, almost exactly on the spot where she’d bitten him earlier. He didn’t hurt her, but the rage crashed outward, only it didn’t want to harm him. It just wanted to keep him, possess him. Twisting her legs in a move she knew he’d never expect from her, given her lighter weight and body mass, she unbalanced him and suddenly had him on his front, while she knelt with one knee on his back, her hand on his nape.

“I win,” she said.

She half expected him to rise up and throw her off. Since she wasn’t actually going to break his neck or hurt his spine, the countermaneuver would’ve worked. But he spread his hand and patted the bed twice in a silent signal that acknowledged her win.

Smiling—and conscious deep inside that this was bad, very bad, the two sides of her nature now existing in one moment—she came down over him, her entire body lying along his. He brought in his arms so that his head was resting on his hands, but didn’t ask her to move. “You smell good,” she said, wishing she was bigger so she could touch all of him at once.

“It must be the soap and other toiletries.”

Playing her fingers through the heavy silk of his hair as she lay on him, the uncivilized rage creature a living pulse in her every cell, she took a deep breath. “Yes, but it’s also you.” Beneath the faint scents of the toiletries was the scent of the boy she’d first met, but it had matured, become deeper, more richly masculine.

He lay still as she ran her hand along his arm and over the taut curve of his biceps, the sleeve of the T-shirt bunching under her touch. It made her feel drunk to touch him like this, made her feel as if she was spinning out into a darkness that had no end. But, like an addict, she couldn’t stop. When she rose up enough to push up his T-shirt, he tugged it off over his head.

She rubbed her cheek against the warm, smooth skin of his shoulder, sliding her hand over the muscles of his back at the same time. Under her, his breathing altered, became more erratic. Lying against him, she stroked her hand over his biceps again. “You like this,” she murmured. “You like being touched by me.”