Her fingers clenched on the muscled heat of his back, the fine cotton of his shirt crumpling under her touch. “You came back.”
Closing his hand around her throat, he stroked gently, his mouth demanding on her own. She spread her thighs to accommodate his body, her core slick and soft. When he tugged at her cardigan, she reached down and pulled it off over her head to throw it to the floor. It left her dressed in a bra of delicate lace, her breasts straining at the cups.
Kaleb released her throat to look down at her breasts . . . and her bra straps tore in half, the center of the bra ripping to have the piece of lingerie falling off her body. It was the first time he’d used his Tk in such an intimate way, and her shocked surprise turned into pure pleasure when—still holding her gaze—he ran his fingers lightly over her nipple.
This time, his name whispered from her lips in a soft moan.
Looking up, his hair falling across his forehead, he closed his hand over her breast and settled his weight more heavily on her. Then he kissed her. Until her nails dug into his back and she was so wet between her thighs that her musk perfumed the air. Through it all, he petted and stroked her upper body with a hotly possessive hand that made it clear Kaleb Krychek considered her his.
And still, he didn’t say a word.
SAHARA under his hands, soft and silky and responsive. Sahara’s touch on his back, her taste in his mouth, the scent of her arousal a drug. Sahara who said his name as if it meant everything. Sahara who was and had always been the biggest fracture in his Silence. “Sahara.”
The deep blue of her eyes shimmered with emotion he couldn’t read, her fingers brushing his lips then her own in a silent invitation he had no intention of refusing. Her mouth opened at the first touch of his, her body arched and her thighs locked around him. He was caged by Sahara and it was the most painfully pleasurable confinement of his life.
Gripping the back of her neck, he tasted her so deep, she’d never forget the taste of him. Mine, he thought, you are mine.
When her hands went to the buttons of his shirt, he let her open them to the waist, slide her hands inside . . . press her lips to his skin in a sweet, hot kiss that splintered the second to last of his outer shields, the cracks going outward in a spiderweb that could collapse at any instant. The part of him that lived in the void, a creature without reason or boundaries, roared with black rage at being denied again, but that part—possessive and violent and of his soul—would die for Sahara in a heartbeat, and it knew he could crush her rib cage, collapse her lungs if he lost his grip on his abilities.
Wrenching himself up onto his elbows, he drew in harsh breaths and made a futile effort to reconstruct the shields. Impossible with Sahara so soft and sensual around him, accepting him though she knew the blood that coated his hands, stained his soul. Perhaps, the twisted, broken mess in the void said, perhaps she won’t turn away once she remembers the hotel room and the pain and the screams.
“How bad are your shields?” Tenderness in her eyes.
“Bad.” A fraction more sensation and the rawness of his emotions would not only be exposed on the PsyNet, his telekinetic and telepathic abilities would slip the leash. But when Sahara would’ve relaxed her legs from around him, he reached back to hold her in place, his hand flexing on her thigh.
She tightened her grip. “Obsidian, Kaleb. Did you go obsidian?”
“No.” The obsidian shields might be impenetrable and unbreakable, but as Sahara knew, they were also absolute. “I’ll be cut off from the flow of information in the PsyNet for the duration.” He had never disconnected from the Net to that extent, had thousands of pieces of data flowing into his mind at any second.
Sahara traced his lips with her fingertip, the lightest of caresses. “If you’re not filtering Net data, can you divert that energy into maintaining a grip on your abilities?”
Kaleb did the calculations, nodded. “It’ll bring the risk of a catastrophic breach down to twenty-five percent.” Not great odds, but not bad, either, not with Kaleb’s control.
“Is there even a hint of anything major on the horizon?”
“No.”
“Can you still be reached via a telepathic call?”
“Yes.”
Sliding her hand over his nape, the charms on her bracelet cool against his skin, she whispered, “Then let the PsyNet take care of itself for an hour or two, and take care of me instead.”
He didn’t have to choose; there was only one option.
“Not here.” He couldn’t be certain of the security.
Sahara gasped as they ’ported into his bed . . . then pushed aside his shirt and leaned up to place her lips on the skin she’d bared. Slamming down the obsidian shields fed of his telepathy and augmented with the kinetic energy of his Tk, he pushed up Sahara’s leg to make more room for himself between her thighs—and released the leash.
Chapter 26
KALEB TUGGED SAHARA up with a grip in her hair, taking her mouth with a slow, concentrated fury that made it clear she was now the sole focus of all that merciless power and attention and will. Moaning into the kiss, she surrendered, opening herself to anything and everything he wanted.
Buttons tore as he ripped off his shirt, and then the naked heat of his chest was crushing her breasts. A slight shift and he closed one of his hands over her left breast, fondling and squeezing with unhidden possession as his tongue rasped over her own, his mouth slanting to create the perfect fit.
Fingernails digging into the heavy muscle of his back, she met him kiss for kiss.
My Kaleb, mine.
His thumb rubbed over her nipple, his fingers strong and sure on her flesh, his hold that of a man dead certain of his welcome. When he broke the kiss to plump up her breast in his hand before sucking the top part of it into his mouth, she cried out and attempted to get impossibly closer, the hot suction a dazzling pulse of sensation. Releasing her throbbing flesh after she was halfway to madness, he looked down at the shining wetness of her skin, her nipple furled into a tight, begging point that he plucked with his fingertips.
Her womb clenched.
Running her mouth down his throat, her need for him a feral thing, she made a vocal complaint when he lifted his body off hers. A hot look, a strong male hand in her hair as he branded her with his kiss, then drew back again to rip open the zipper of her jeans, pull them off. His belt buckle bit into her abdomen when he returned to her mouth, his erection an aggressive demand against her that made her want to squirm.
Except he was deliciously heavy, pinning her in place. No one else would she have trusted in such a position of power, no one but the most dangerous man in the world. Unable to get enough of his kiss, of the connection that was a fist punching through her diaphragm to grip her heart, she locked her ankles tight at the base of his spine and spread her fingers on his upper back.
“I want to kiss every inch of your back,” she managed to say between kisses.
“Later.” Thrusting his hand into the rear of her panties, he cupped her lower curves, taking her startled cry into his mouth, his voice a dangerous, seductive blade in her mind. Soft and smooth and mine. Always mine.
Sucking in desperate breaths when he set her lips free to kiss his way along her throat before coming back up to claim her mouth once more, she ran her nails down his back. It was harder than she’d intended, his mouth and hands doing things to her that left her devastated, the marks ones he’d wear for a day at least.