Cipher

Chapter Thirteen

Dixie John didn’t serve breakfast to the public, but he had a habit of opening his doors when enough supernaturals wanted an early meal—especially if Sera smiled hopefully and promised to help out in the kitchen.

Her friend slipped into the back as Kat settled at one of the hastily pushed together tables in the center of the room. No one looked like they’d slept much, except for Patrick, who followed Sera and came back with a pot of coffee. “There’s more coming.”

Kat accepted the first mug. She needed it, since alcohol combined with a mere four hours of sleep had her blinking groggily at the world. Andrew, Julio and Miguel, on the other hand, mostly looked hungry.

At least Anna didn’t seem to be faring much better. Kat pushed the second cup of coffee toward her.

“Did you get any sleep at all?”

“Some.” She sniffed the brew and took a tentative sip. “Too much whiskey last night.”

It would take a lot of whiskey to leave a wolf that hung over. Kat’s celebration had been tinged with the knowledge that more enemies could be out there. Two beers had seemed like plenty, even spaced across the hours before Andrew drove her home. She didn’t think he’d rested any more soundly than she had, but at least they’d been together. Awkward and uncertain, but together, in all their celibate glory.

It was a start.

But an uneasy tension lay heavily in the room, belying the congenial atmosphere, and this time it wasn’t just her and Andrew. The others smiled and joked, but beneath the surface a thousand tiny gestures painted a complex and curious picture.

Callum had been the one to insist she pay attention. Empathy had made her lazy when it came to people.

Leaky shields and pushy emotions meant she always knew what people were feeling. Callum had told her to watch, too, to understand body language. She could almost hear his voice, crisply enunciated and perpetually serious. Not everyone has a Rosetta Stone for the human soul, Katherine. It’s a strength.

Use it.

So she did, watching the people around her as small talk washed over her. Anna had claimed a seat as far away from Patrick as she could get, and Kat would have bet her next paycheck it was deliberate, though she wasn’t sure why until she noticed the way Patrick kept trying to catch Anna’s eye. On the rare occasions he succeeded, the look Anna shot back was more fuck you than good morning.

Sera, by contrast, wasn’t a mystery at all. She brought out toast and sausage and managed to take everyone’s requests without actually looking at Julio once. Her studious disregard had passed casual a few months ago, but Julio remained oblivious to the way Sera avoided him.

He was less oblivious to her ass, which he seemed plenty willing to appreciate, and that was one emotion Kat was heartily glad she wasn’t being forced to share.

Next to Julio, Miguel just looked tense. Since his telepathy was every bit as strong as her empathy, she didn’t blame him. Kat caught his gaze and lifted her eyebrows, a quiet question they’d asked one another a thousand times. Too much noise?

His lips pressed together in a line, an expression that almost managed to look like a smile even though it wasn’t. Then he nodded and dropped his gaze to the table.

“Are you headed out of town soon, Patrick?” Andrew asked.

“After I eat, probably.” Patrick leaned his elbows on the table, and Kat found herself staring at the way his tattoos moved when his forearms flexed. “Alec called me after he talked to you. The Conclave’s moving a little slow in agreeing to officially hire me, but Alec asked me to get started anyway.”

Andrew gestured across the table with his mostly empty juice glass. “You should take Anna with you.

She was planning on running down a few leads.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Anna interjected. “He works alone. Don’t you, Patrick?”

His jaw clenched. “Not always. Two heads can think smarter than one, right?”

“That depends on the heads.”

Julio looked up, one eyebrow arched. “Did I miss something?”

“No,” Anna said quickly. Then she shrugged. “It’s fine. The job’s important. We can pool our resources, get it done.”

No one disagreed, and the conversation shifted, turned to discussion of plans and tactics. Julio and Andrew had responsibilities in New Orleans—responsibilities she’d already kept them from. Psychics weren’t a wolf concern, not when the bulk of the threat had been neutralized. Patrick and Anna chased down crazy supernaturals professionally.

In the hour before dawn, Kat had stared at the ceiling and wondered if resolution was important enough to press the issue. To insist that Patrick let her go with him. But Andrew would follow. Even in sleep, his arm had curled around her, hand splayed possessively across her hip. They’d barely moved past kissing in the days since she’d removed him from her shields, but the physical seemed inconsequential in the quiet moments. When none of the pain mattered, because he looked at her like she was the person who made him glad he was alive.

Andrew would follow her. He’d rip out those places that had been remade with an alpha’s need to protect his people, and focus all of that protection on her. He’d neglect duty, neglect himself and everyone in the world, and it might kill the man he’d become.

He would follow her, she knew it in her bones, and that made it worth staying.

Under the table, she reached for his hand and twined her fingers with his, the soft intimacy a thousand times more arousing than the wildest empathy-induced orgasm.

Let Anna and Patrick chase her past. She was chasing her future.

The paper shredder made a very satisfying sound.

Seated on Andrew’s couch, Kat watched it turn one page at a time into tiny strips of paper with black spots that seemed entirely innocuous. There were easier ways to destroy files, of course, but she’d made Andrew stop by Jackson’s office so she could abscond with the shredder.

It was cathartic, reducing a cult’s scheme for world domination into bits of paper spaghetti.

Andrew eyed the growing pile of shredded paper apprehensively. “Are you sure we don’t need a copy? Some sort of list…?”

“Ben made me a script.” She picked up the page that listed the psychics who needed to be eliminated and stared at Callum’s name for a moment. Then she fitted it into the shredder and watched it vanish. “I can use it on the corrupted files I pulled off the zip disk if I ever need to recreate the lists.”

“So it’s better than encrypted.” Andrew nodded. “That’s smart.”

“Ben’s smart,” she agreed. Opening the next file revealed a smiling picture of her own face, twelve or thirteen at the most. Ben’s color laser printer had recreated the vivid colors of what must have been a surprisingly high-resolution scan a decade ago. Her eyes were so blue. So young. “This is what my mother saw,” she whispered, tracing the boundary of the photo. “This is when she lost it.”

Andrew stroked a hand over her hair. “She probably had reservations already, but that… Yeah, that would do it.”

“This is why she told me about imprinting when I was too young to even understand it.” She moved her finger until it passed over the neat list of her uses. Controlling people. The one thing she’d never wanted to do, because she knew in her gut how horrible it could be to have someone else’s emotions guiding your choices. “My powers were out of control when I was a teenager. Puberty sucked. It wouldn’t have been so hard to break me. Remake me.”

“Hey.” He turned her face to his with a gentle hand on her chin. “She made sure that didn’t happen.”

“I know.” His eyes were as green as hers were blue. The colors of an oversaturated summer day, endless skies and perfect grass. The file slipped to the floor, and she raised her hand to touch his cheek, to feel his beard under her fingertips. “She protected me, even when she was crazy. Even when she was lost.”

“That’s right. We destroyed their experiment, and we’re going to find the rest of them too. Shut it all down, forever.”

They were supposed to be going slowly. Taking a step back from grinding their way to orgasm, or empathy-fueled blowjobs. But his beard scratched her fingers, and every touch seemed so important, now that she was feeling them with her body instead of her mind.

Rubbing her cheek against his palm, she let out a shaky sigh. “I feel like I shouldn’t be shy. We’ve practically had sex already.”

He kissed her cheek and spoke, his breath blowing over her skin. “Not like this, we haven’t.”

If her heart pounded any harder, people would hear it on the street below. “Are we about to have sex?”

“Don’t know.” His voice deepened. “Do you want to?”

A helpless laugh escaped her. “I’ve wanted to since about the time I discovered my sex drive. I was a late bloomer.”

“Mm-hmm, and there’d be no harm in waiting a little longer, either. It all depends on you, Kat. What you need.”

Kat closed her eyes. Breathed in the scent of him. “I want you to be in control this time. Just for a bit, because I’ve never—” She took another breath and imagined dragging in courage with the oxygen. “All the stuff I said to you in the hotel, about my emotions being hardwired…it’s not wrong. It was the wrong reason for what was going on, but it’s not wrong. I don’t know if I can keep everything together the first time I have sex with someone I love.”

His breath hitched, and he dropped one hand to her shoulder. Pulled her closer. “I don’t think anyone can.” His mouth descended on hers, coaxing and desperate all at once.

It was Andrew, and her, and her empathy was locked down tight enough to survive the psychic version of a nuclear bomb and she still lost the ability to think when his lips parted over hers. Her brain lurched drunkenly between sensations, thrilling at his kiss and reveling in his touch, and then she managed to get herself into his lap, and that was the best yet.

He settled her carefully against his erection and broke the kiss to blow out a shaky breath. “Bedroom. If I’m in control, I’m doing it right.”

Freedom from responsibility might have its perks. She kissed his jaw, then higher, moving toward his ear. “If you’re in control, you have to get us there. I’m busy.”

He rose but swayed. “How busy? Because if you’re going to do that…”

Kat laughed and hid her face against his neck. “You could set me down and make me walk, you know.

I’m not tiny. Not even with Zola chasing me around her dojo ten hours a week.”

His hands tightened on her thighs, held her closer. “You’re perfect.”

There could be no doubts that he meant it, not when the words caught in his throat and came out so rough they sounded like his beard felt, rasping and scratchy enough to send heat spiraling through her. “I believe you.”

He headed toward the bedroom, a low laugh rumbling out of his chest. “You sound surprised.”

“Do you really want to talk about cultural pressures and female body image right now?”

“No.” He laid her on the bed and straightened, reaching for his shirt. “No, I really don’t.”

Fabric hit the floor, and Kat decided that Andrew needed to be naked. Constantly, or at least until she burned through every fantasy she could come up with.

Most of them involved her being naked too, so she dug her fingers into the hem of her T-shirt and yanked it up. The bed dipped, and his hands joined hers in guiding the garment over her head.

Shirtless. Shirtless was progress. She ignored his pants and her bra and wrapped her hands around his ridiculously solid biceps so she could tug him back to the mattress with her. “I don’t know where to touch first. I want everything.”

“We can take our time, hit on everything at least once.”

Touching him thrilled her. She spread her fingers wide against his chest, and it felt so good. Just touch, so simple, so laughably mundane. He could bend steel and she could kill with her mind, and she was drunk on the simplest brush of skin against skin.

“No empathy, right?” Andrew asked, his breath stirring the hair at her temple. “You’re getting giddy.”

“Because it’s you.” Easing her hand to the side, she savored the feel of him under her fingertips until her thumb found his nipple.

He sucked in a breath and slid his fingers into her hair to cup her head. “It’s me.”

Kat lifted herself up onto her elbow and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “Have you thought about this?

What you’d do if you had me in your bed?”

He considered it with too much gravity to be believed. “About every fifth heartbeat or so, I think.”

A few inches up, and her mouth hovered over his ear. “If you tell me one of your fantasies, I’ll tell you one of mine.”

“Do I get points deducted if mine includes costumes?”

“Depends on what kind. No metal bikinis.”

“Damn it.” He smiled—a joyous expression edged with heat. “Princess Leia’s hot.”

“Perv.” And because joking with him, laughing with him, was the hottest thing of all, she closed her teeth on his earlobe and moaned.

Andrew rolled her, pinned her hands and body to the bed. “We have to go slow.”

Gentle as he was, the fingers around her wrists were strong and unyielding. She liked the weight of his body, the thrill of being on the receiving end of his focused intensity. “I thought we were going slow. For us. We’re redefining glacial, here.”

“Not quite.” He eased his hands down her arms, all the way down her sides. “Trust me. Once we get going, it’ll be anything but glacial.”

“I was talking speed, not temperature.” Her nipples ached enough to make her bra uncomfortable, the wrong kind of friction when she wanted his hands, or his mouth. “You are really hot.”

He answered with a hoarse noise of encouragement as he slipped one hand beneath her and unhooked her bra with a quick motion. A practiced move, and relief swelled at the fact that it wasn’t her first time, that his confidence and intensity could be sexy instead of blindly intimidating.

Andrew slid the lacy fabric free and tossed it behind him, but when he bent low again, he touched his lips to her collarbone, her shoulder. The middle of her chest.

Too slow. Kat clutched at his short hair and groaned. “I’m not a virgin. We can go slower the second time? Or the fifth?”

His mouth skimmed her breast as he raised his head to meet her eyes. “You’re not a virgin,” he agreed as his cheeks reddened. “But this isn’t—I’m not—”

“A tiny man?” she guessed, trying to keep from smiling. He was stammering. “Andrew, I’ve seen you with an erection. I didn’t faint. I’m pretty sure it will all work out, anatomically speaking.”

He didn’t share her amusement. “I just don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered.

That subtly, the power shifted again. Maybe it would always be like that between them, a seesaw of give and take, Andrew’s desperate need to minimize the danger to her body against her equally powerful need to protect his mind and heart. They could hurt each other, destroy each other, so easily—so accidentally-They could. But they wouldn’t. For the first time, she was sure. Kat lifted her hands and cupped his face. Gave him the power, because right now she had plenty to spare. “Then we’ll go as slow as you want to. Until I’m whimpering and begging and ready to kill you for how bad I need you inside me.”

His eyes darkened, but he smiled again. “The death threats are sexy.” Then he kissed her, slow and deep.

And endless. Not that he couldn’t kiss, oh hell, could he kiss, but the sheer sensuality of his tongue teasing against hers had her twisting restlessly long before he decided to move on.

To her neck, next, which had her arching her head back in a silent plea that he granted with a soft nip.

He must have liked the way she whimpered, because he did it again and again, until her breaths rasped in and out and she wondered if it was possible to go insane from too much physical pleasure.

Then he moved to her ear. Licks. Nips. He kissed her until she whispered his name, then switched to the other side and started all over, working his way down her throat with a concentration that made her consider snatching the power back and taking him.

But he needed this. Needed every moan he coaxed out of her, needed the pleasure that made her skin flushed and sensitive. Needed her to be ready for him, as if she wasn’t already aching and wet, embarrassingly aroused and ready to beg in earnest.

She did, when his beard scratched across her breasts, his mouth hot and open on her chest. “Andrew… oh, my God, please—” She caught his hair, tried to tug his mouth to her nipple, babbling helpless pleas that she’d have to deny later.

“Please what?” He tugged at the button on her pants.

“Your mouth…” She didn’t finish. Not when it might distract him from finally taking off her pants.

“My mouth,” he agreed. Then he closed his lips around one nipple and sucked hard as he opened her pants.

It felt so good she spent a terrified moment wondering if her shields had shattered. But no—it was her own pleasure, physical and mounting under the skillful play of his tongue. Or maybe deeper than physical, as if his calculated, deliberate seduction stroked across months of fantasy and years of longing.

She needed him. Wanted him. Loved him.

Andrew’s movements took on an edge of desperation as he yanked her pants and underwear off her hips at the same time. He groaned without lifting his mouth or breaking contact, and his hand slipped between her thighs.

This was critical overload. Too good, too much, and not enough by half. She tried to move her legs apart and groaned when she found them tangled in her pants. “Off,” she whispered, twisting to try to reach her clothing without losing the heat of his mouth or the sweet relief of his fingers.

But she lost both as he straightened, up on his knees, and tossed the rest of her clothes aside. “Night stand,” he whispered.

It took her five seconds to understand and twice that to roll to her hands and knees and drag open the drawer. Inside she found an unopened box of condoms tucked next to a couple of paperbacks. Mysteries with vague covers and huge shiny fonts, and she couldn’t believe she was paying attention to books when she could hear Andrew unzipping his pants.

She grabbed the box of condoms and turned to find him naked beside the bed, staring down at her with lust and desire and a tenderness that turned her inside out. “Lie down, Kat.”

For the first time, she saw the cracks in the control, saw that the restraint that seemed so much a part of him was hard-won and too easily shaken by everything she did.

So she eased back against the mattress, the box clutched in one hand. He took it from her with careful movements, pulled one free and put it on.

The bed dipped under his weight as he stretched out beside her, still moving slowly, deliberately. He touched her face, smoothing his thumb over her lower lip.

“How?” she whispered, unable to look away from his face. “How do you want me?”

“Just like this.” Andrew dropped quick, soft kisses on her face as he moved over her and settled between her thighs. The head of his cock rested against her, ready but not pressing deeper.

It could be anticipation…or fear. Kat rubbed one foot over his calf as she nipped at his chin. “I know I’m human. I know you don’t want to hurt me. But I could stop you, Andrew, no matter what. You can let go, because I’ve felt what’s inside you, and I trust you.”

“I know.” He kissed her, his hips flexing. “That’s the best part.” The flexing turned into a gentle rock, forward and back, each motion bringing him just a little deeper inside her.

If her empathy had been weaker, she could have shared it with him. Opened her heart and wallowed in the pleasure he took from her, from how it must feel to press forward one torturous inch at a time. She could have given him the giddy joy that accompanied her body stretching to accommodate his cock.

Dropping her shields would leave them vulnerable to the uncontrolled feedback, but she had words.

And she used them, clutching at his shoulders as his next rock pushed deep enough to steal her breath.

“I’ve wanted this for so long. You, inside me.”

He gritted his teeth, and his arms shook, muscles standing out in sharp relief. “Did you mean it? Let go?”

A fraction of his strength would leave her broken, and she didn’t care. Couldn’t imagine a world where any need he had could be met with her pain. “Show me. All the things we’ve been missing.”

Andrew bent his head and caught her mouth with a hoarse groan as he thrust deeper—not too deep, but enough to dance the line between too good and too much. Moaning, she tightened her legs around his hips, a silent plea for a moment to adjust, then licked his lip.

He froze, then returned the tiny caress. “A minute?”

“A few seconds,” she corrected, rocking up. Taking him, taking the pleasure and the hint of discomfort, the sensation somehow more perfect because it was as imperfect as they were. The rough edges and pain made it real, made it worth it, because it wasn’t easy and they wanted each other enough to fight.

So she bit his lip and growled. “Deeper. I want all of you.”

He echoed her growl as he eased into her, slowly but not stopping until his hips rested against hers.

“Better?”

“Perfect. Told you it would be…” It was the best she could manage when every sense was overwhelmed with him. She smoothed her hands over his tense shoulders, restless now. She tried to ignore the heat of his skin and the way his cock felt, buried so deep. Ignored it just long enough to issue her warning. “If—if I come, I could slip a little. Even with my shields in place…if I’m feeling that much, some of it might leak through.”

“If you come?” he asked, his voice tight.

Kat groaned and dug her head back against the bed. “Why do you think the porn-star orgasms freaked me out so much? It’s never been—been easy before. But it’s never—” She met his eyes, his wild, damn-near feral eyes, and wondered if her heart was in her own. “It’s never been you.”

“It’s me.” He stared down at her as he began to move. “It’ll always be me now.”

The way it should be, the way it needed to be, and she was glad she wasn’t a virgin, that she knew how to find his pace and meet his steady thrusts, that she could enjoy the friction and the skillful way he found the right angle, like he’d turned all of that intense concentration on claiming her through pleasing her.

And he did. It got harder to focus with every moment, the slow build of give and take, of deep thrusts and the way he lifted one of her legs higher on his back and growled low in his throat.

Words began to bubble up, a lifetime habit of babbling taking a turn for the obscene as his next advance kindled a wild anticipation, a climax suspended out of reach. “Harder, you can fuck me harder. Make me come, make me beg to stop coming…”

Andrew covered her mouth with his and thrust harder, the muscles in his back rippling as he moved. So good, so good she couldn’t stop the frantic animal noises, or the way her fingernails left scratches down his arms when the first heat of orgasm bloomed.

She came in stages, in slow motion, or maybe it just lasted forever. Her body seized, drawing tight and tense. She had time to turn her head and gasp in one frantic breath before everything exploded outwards, pleasure and pain and her, all the tension and longing releasing in one moment of utter, reckless abandon.

His arms collapsed, and his elbows dug into the bed as his careful rhythm broke along with his control.

“Kat. Kat.”

Instinct prompted her, or the vague memory from last time, the echo of his satisfaction. She lifted her chin and turned her head, offering him the vulnerable spot where her pulse beat with the too-quick tempo of her body’s shuddering release.

He bit her as he hit his peak, a rough caress that would surely leave a bruise, but the pain was nothing compared to the sound he made, completion and pleasure so profound that she couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to him.

Just a little, a tiny crack in her outer layer of shields, but Andrew flooded her with a possessive joy that triggered something primal in response. It tumbled free in breathless words, maybe not the right ones for a dominant shapeshifter, but the right ones for them. “I love that you’re mine. I love being yours.”

He rolled to his back, taking her with him, and wrapped both arms around her. He didn’t say anything at first, only panted for breath as his trembling subsided. “Did I hurt you?”

Exasperated, Kat stretched up and bit his chin. Hard.

“Can’t help it,” he murmured with a smile. “Thought you would’ve figured that out by now.”

“Uh-huh.” She settled her cheek back against his chest, where she could enjoy the way his heart thudded loud and fast. “And you need to figure out that if you hurt me, you’ll be the first to know. I’ve got some pretty scary defenses, even when I’m not feeling lethal.”

“Shh.” His thumb stroked over her neck, over the sensitive spot where he’d bitten her. “I meant this.”

Kat shivered and arched into the gentle touch. “It’s a symbol. Even if I didn’t kind of like it, I’d get off on knowing how much you like it.”

“It’s not about that,” he protested quietly. “It’s about needing it.”

“The symbol?”

“The mark.”

“So that everyone else would know? Or so I would?”

“I don’t know—both?”

She lifted her head so she could meet his eyes. “I do know. I think I’ve always known. Maybe that’s why I never pushed, even when everyone laughed and said my big dumb crush wasn’t a secret. I wasn’t ready for this. It was too…forever.”

His expression had turned grave. “It doesn’t have to be, not if it’s too much for you. I swear, Kat, sometimes I think I’d live with half your heart if that was all I could get.”

If he kept saying things like that, her heart might thud its way out of her chest. “You don’t have to. It’s not in very good shape anymore, but it’s all yours.”

“I want it.” Not a shred of doubt. “I love you.”

She’d known. She’d felt it, seen it in the wild colors that surrounded him. But hearing it… Such certainty. Such quiet passion. It tightened her throat until her words came out in a whisper. “I love you too.”

He closed his eyes for a moment before shifting her to the bed, settling her gently. “I’ll be right back.”

Kat eased under the covers, her limbs shaky, as Andrew headed for the bathroom. Her neck throbbed where he’d bit her, and she’d no doubt have the sort of bruise that people pretended not to see but couldn’t stop staring at.

The shapeshifters would recognize the symbol. Julio would probably ignore it. Sera would smile knowingly, and Miguel… Miguel hadn’t felt the need to mark her. It had been part of why they’d worked so well together, that affection that never crossed the line into possession. Sex had fizzled, but their friendship hadn’t.

Except for the fact that she’d been avoiding him since Andrew had come back into her life.

Kat rolled over on her back and closed her eyes. She could think about navigating ex-lovers and shapeshifter instinct in the morning. Tonight was about her, and the man who crawled back into the bed and gathered her close. With Andrew’s arms around her, the world could be just the two of them. Crazy cults and complicated friendships drifted away, leaving her at peace.

They could do this. Together, they could do anything.