She scrunched up her face. “That is not a sensual image, not when I know it’s Morpheus you’re likely using as a comparison.”
The tart response got her a kiss, a deep, intense claiming. “How’re you feeling?”
“Fine. My inexplicable”—but viciously strong—“shields are still holding on the PsyNet.”
“That’s good, but I was talking about the physical.”
Her body flushed. “Oh.” She’d made a visit to the bathroom, had looked at her face in the mirror, amazed at the rumpled, pleasured woman with the kiss-bruised mouth who’d stared back at her. “I’m a little tender, that’s all.” It felt strange to have such a conversation, and yet she could. Because it was Max.
He smoothed his hand over her abdomen. “Let me know when you’re ready for round two—like I told you, practice, lots and lots of practice, makes perfect.”
Catching the teasing light in his eyes, she punched him lightly on the shoulder, before turning to face him. “Thank you for making the experience so very . . .”
“Interesting?” A flash of the lean dimple she adored.
“Yes,” she said, tracing the laughter with her fingertip, feeling her own lips curve. “It was
supremely
interesting. That’s a high compliment.”
“I’m so glad.” Sliding one arm under her head, he draped the hand of the other over her hip. “For a Psy, you were okay.”
“And you weren’t bad for a cop.”
They looked at each other, both of them utterly delighted in the moment. She wanted to snuggle closer to him, but her body was still humming with sensation. Better to wait a while, she thought, let things quieten a fraction. “Turn around.”
To his credit, he didn’t pretend not to know the reason for her demand. Scowling, he did as asked. The tattoo ran along the length of his spine, a sword with the tip just below his nape and an intricate hilt at his lower back. It was a gorgeous piece of art.
Fascinated by the spare beauty of it, Sophia pushed down the sheet so she could view the whole thing. “When did you have this done?”
“Sixteen,” he said. “I thought I was hot shit.”
She considered the boy he must’ve been—tough but slender, his musculature still developing, and wanted to trace every inch of that tattoo with soft, adoring kisses. “The blade’s so empty in comparison to the artwork on the hilt.”
His muscles bunched. “I left it blank on purpose. For you.”
Her throat locked. She wanted to give him a gift, too . . . a gift as precious, as enduring. “It’s near lunchtime in Port Vila. You could probably catch the professor in his office.”
Turning to face her, he said, “I know.”
Sophia stroked her hand down his arm, worried. “Why do you sound the way you do?” As if he was holding something tightly in check.
He shuddered, bending his head so his forehead touched hers. “I’m afraid.” A stark admission. “What if it isn’t River? Or what if it is . . . and he doesn’t want to see me?”
“Why would he reject you?” Max had fought for his brother, tried to save him.
“I’ve always thought that he went down the wrong path partly because of the guilt he felt at the way our mother always treated us so differently.” River had been her golden child, Max the whipping boy. “I tried to shield him from it, but I couldn’t, not in the end.”
Sophia’s fingers twined with his on the sheets between them. “If this is your brother, if he’s the boy I saw in that flash of backsight, he cares for you to the depths of his soul.”
“Sometimes, that isn’t enough.” Max knew he sounded harsh, but it was the only way he could handle this. If he allowed it to matter, it would hurt too fucking much. “I wouldn’t blame him if he doesn’t want to be reminded of the past.”
Sophia squeezed his hand, leaving the decision up to him, those violet eyes warm with an intense, unbreakable loyalty.
In the end, there was only one thing he could do, his love for his tormented, damaged younger brother stronger and far more tenacious than the fear that sought to hold him back. Picking up his cell, he made the call—the conversation with the professor took less than a minute, with the elderly man promising to pass on Max’s details to this River who might be his brother. Hanging up, Max released a long breath and drew the scent of Sophia into his lungs.
The temptation to curl up around her and just forget the world was almost overwhelming, but the cop in him wouldn’t settle. He’d taken an oath, made a promise. “I should let you rest,” he said to the woman who was trying so hard to make sure he had a family, “but . . . want to come on a stakeout?” His anger at being helpless in the face of her failing shields threatened to make him bitter, but he fought the ugliness, refusing to taint the beauty of this strange, beautiful joy between a cop and his J.
Sophia’s face lit up with an almost childish pleasure. “Really? Yes!”
And he knew he’d do anything in his power to keep that light in her eyes.
“Okay,” he said once he’d checked in with the manhunt team—no sightings, no information to help him narrow the search grid, his frustration as acute as theirs—and they were on their way through the darkening city, “word is, some Psy are having secretive meetings around town. No one knows why.”
“We’re going to observe one of these covert meetings?”
“Yes. Clay’s informants say it’s pretty certain the place we’re heading to will be the gathering point tonight.” The leopard changeling had sent through the message earlier. “For now—we’re just going to watch, see if we can get an idea of what’s going on, gauge if it might be connected to the Nikita situation.”
Not that long afterward, Max brought the car to a stop in the exclusive Pacific Heights neighborhood, parking between two other similar black sedans. This particular street was a historical landmark, maintained much as it had been in the early twentieth century, the trims on the graceful Queen Anne-style homes decorative, the colors distinctive even in the muted light.
“This is exciting,” Sophia said, wide-eyed, just as the streetlights sensed the approaching night and switched themselves on.
Max bit the inside of his cheek. “Yeah, and don’t think I take all my dates on stakeouts. You’re special.” Such an impossibly simple statement to describe the depth of what he felt for her.
“I’m flattered.” A husky chuckle. “Oh—I may have discovered what was bothering you about Quentin Gareth’s file—I meant to tell you after you got off the comm, but we got . . . distracted.”
Max’s body purred at the thought of that distraction. “Still feeling tender?”
“Max.”
Reaching out, he closed his hand over her thigh, gave a little squeeze. “So?”
“Yes.” He could hear the blush. Then she said, “Are you erect?”
Hell.
“I should know better than to tease you.” Grinning, even as he shifted to ease the pounding erection she’d brought to life, he said, “So, Quentin Gareth?”
“Has a well-hidden discrepancy in his early records. It says he went to an Ivy League college from age eighteen to twenty-three, and he did. However, he wasn’t actually at college for six months of his final year—he enrolled in no classes, took no exams.
“When I dug deeper, I discovered he’d won a place in some kind of work experience program.” She touched her fingers to the hand he had on her thigh, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles. “There’s nothing inherently suspicious in that, but the fact that he hid it instead of putting it on his CV tells me he either did so badly during the program that he wants it gone from his work history—”
“—or,” Max completed, “he’s got a secret he doesn’t want us to uncover. Where was he posted?”
“That’s the thing. There’s no record whatsoever of where he spent those six months.”
Max caught something with his peripheral vision. “Stay relaxed,” he said to Sophia. “It’s dark enough that they won’t be able to see us.” Though the streetlight in front of the target home made their quarry very visible.
Two men and one woman walked up from the other side of the street, entering the house after a quick knock. Two more women, middle-aged this time, followed. The sixth attendee was a much older man, his hair in tight gray curls.
Sophia jerked forward without warning. “Is that who I think it is?”
The individual who’d caught her attention paused on the steps of the house, glancing around as if conscious of being watched.
“Son of a bitch,” Max murmured as Ryan Asquith shifted on his heel and walked inside.
CHAPTER 39
Councilor Kaleb Krychek was just getting into his car for the drive to his office in Moscow when he felt it. A telepathic ricochet. Catching the returning tracker with a psychic hand, he leaned against the vehicle. He had thousands of these invisible psychic constructs scattered throughout the Net, all of them primed to scan through billions upon billions of bytes for data for one name.
This was the first one that had returned since he began his search six years, five months, and three weeks ago.
He was careful with the old and fragile construct, not wanting to lose what it had brought back to him. It took him almost ten minutes to penetrate the layers of his own security—and then, there it was.
That
name, linked to information that had passed through a distant part of the Net two weeks ago. The information was fragmented, the trail would be difficult if not impossible to pick up, but that mattered little at this point.
Because at last, he had confirmation that his quarry was alive.
CHAPTER 40
I’m writing this as you sleep beside me, your breathing easy, the lines of stress smoothed away—and I don’t know how to describe what I feel for you. I don’t have those words. It hurts, this emotion in my heart, this inexorable ache.
—Sophia Russo in an encrypted and time-coded letter to
be sent to Max Shannon after her death
Sophia lay in bed the next morning, her limbs loose and her body utterly sated. So, this was what pleasure felt like, she thought in wonder. This was what poets wrote about and artists painted. This was why humans gave each other secret smiles and changelings murmured in their mates’ ears.
The bathroom door opened to reveal a tiled enclosure full of steam just as Morpheus jumped onto the bed and padded around to sit right up against her abdomen. She took the hint, stroking his solid form. “You shower in water far too hot for you,” she said to the beautifully muscled male who walked out from the heat and headed to where he’d thrown a change of clothes last night.
After they’d seen Ryan enter that stately Queen Anne, she and Max had decided she should return home, tear apart Ryan’s file. Her cop had called up a white-blond changeling male named Dorian to drop her home, while he’d stayed on Ryan until close to three a.m., leaving only when his friend Clay had arrived to take the watch for a few hours. She’d heard him return home, heard him confer with the manhunt team for over half an hour.
“Looks like Bonner’s parents provided him with access to a private jet,” he’d said to her when he stumbled into bed. “Bastard could be anywhere. I’ve alerted the local airports, let the cats know.” He’d gone straight to sleep after that . . . but woken an hour ago with more than enough energy to make her gasp.
“You’ll boil,” she said, as another wave of steam escaped the bathroom.
An unrepentant wink. “Heat is good for you.” Towel hitched around his lean waist and hair damp, he looked young, incredibly approachable.
A rumble against her palm as Morpheus began to purr. “I was thinking about calling Quentin Gareth’s college.” Having discovered nothing incriminating in Asquith’s files, she was staying behind today to sort through the PsyNet data she’d cached—in the hopes of unearthing something that might tie Pure Psy directly to the attacks on Nikita’s people. “But if he has alerts set in place, it could tip him off.”
“Hold off on that,” Max said, throwing the towel on the bed. “I might be able to get the information another way.”
The intimacy of watching him dress was a tightness in her chest. “Come back to me, Max,” she said quietly.
“How could I resist?” A solemn look, a kiss that held emotion that made her soul ache. “You’re holding my heart hostage.”
Ten minutes later and far too soon, Max walked to the door, with her behind him. “I’ll be on the phone to the manhunt team throughout the day, too, so leave a message if you can’t get through and I’ll call back.” Reaching out, he tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Building security has Bonner’s image—they know not to let him up to you under any circumstances.
“Enforcement’s on alert, and Clay’s also put the word out among DarkRiver’s network of informants.” A squeeze of her hip. “If you go out—and I’d rather you didn’t—don’t forget to take one of the security guys with you. Or better yet, call me, and if I can’t get away, I’ll call DarkRiver, organize a leopard escort for you.”
Remembering the warped arousal she’d read in Bonner during the Gwyn Hayley scan, Sophia hugged her arms around herself, the tiny hairs on her body rising in primitive warning. “I plan to stay in.” Being outside in the general population was becoming more and more unbearable. “And I won’t be entering the PsyNet, so don’t worry about that either.”
He touched his lips to her temple. “How are you?” A rough question that held a thousand unsaid things.
She placed her hand over his heart, soaked in the incredible gift of his presence. “Still here.” But her telepathic shields were so thin that
any
touch by an unstable personality could perforate them.
A hard kiss. “I’ll check up on you every hour. Don’t even try to stop me.”
He was gone an instant later.
Knowing she should have protested, but reassured by his protectiveness, she fed Morpheus—who graciously permitted her to stroke him once—then took a quick shower. Afterward, refreshed, she changed into a pair of soft velour pants—they were like nothing she’d ever before worn. She’d bought them on impulse several months ago, in a decision so non-Psy she hadn’t required a medic to tell her she needed to go in for reconditioning. But she hadn’t worn them until now.