Kiss of Snow

Chapter 47

HEART PUMPING LIKE a rapid piston, Hawke raised his head after the orgasm that had almost ripped him in two to look down at the woman who continued to hold him inside. Possessive thing. Nuzzling at her as she tried to open heavy-lidded eyes, he stroked his hand down her thigh and said, “Again.”

Her response turned the air blue.

Smiling against her skin, he took a lazy bite out of her breast, licking over the mark that was already fading. He’d just had the best orgasm of his life, and he felt like he had more energy than he knew what to do with. As for his body, it was more than ready. Remaining seated in her snug channel, he stroked and petted as he checked to make sure he hadn’t inadvertently hurt her with his claws.

There were no cuts, no injuries. The wolf relaxed, content to play now. When she bit him on the arm—hard—the instant he flicked a finger over her clit, he lifted his head. “Still sensitive?”

“Yes, so don’t even think about it.” Hazy, desire drugged words.

Moving his hand, he smoothed it down her leg instead, teasing his fingers over the soft skin at the back of her knee. “Hmm.” It was a pleasure all its own to pull out of her tight sheath, especially when her lips parted in a wordless murmur of reluctance.

Pleased with every single thing about her, he flipped her onto her stomach before she could object and slid right back in to the hilt. Her moan was deep, her hands fisting on the sheets. He knew she’d liked it—he could feel her pleasure in every delicate tremor of her internal muscles. “At my mercy,” he said, bracing himself on one arm as he ran the other along the curve of her spine.

Her hair, that silky ruby red fire, tangled with his hand, made him think of the darker curls between her legs. Body humming with remembered pleasure, he flexed his cock inside of her, felt her roll up toward him. It caused his entire body to throb. So he did it again. She responded.

It was a long, lazy loving this time, filled with hot scents and the quiet murmur of lovers lost in each other.

LARA straightened her hair in the mirror for the thousandth time and checked in with Lucy via the comm.

“Don’t worry,” the young nurse told her. “I’ve got everything covered. And I know you’re only next door if we have an emergency.”

“Sing-Liu—”

“Is fast asleep, her mate curled up around her. Take advantage of this time—you won’t have any free time soon if things go the way everyone thinks they will.”

Knowing the nurse was right, she nodded and signed off. Then she slid her hands down the front of her simple black wrap-around dress, tucking her curls behind her ears, knowing they’d pop right back out, and called her best friend, Ava. “How do I look?”

“Gorgeous, hot, and delicious.”

Lara’s lips twitched. “Thanks.”

Ava’s eyes turned solemn. “He came to you, Lara, so the man’s earned brownie points in my book, but it doesn’t alter who he is.”

“I’m not so sure,” Lara murmured. “I see beyond the shield now, Ava, and the man I see? He’s capable of giving me everything I need and more.” She had to hope, to believe that she could get Walker to see that, too.

“In that case,” her best friend said with a wide smile, “lock the door and kiss his brains out.”

Lara pressed her hands to her stomach at the idea of it. “I better go. He’ll be on time.”

He was.

She drank in the sight of him as she opened the door. “Hi.” Dressed in jeans and a crisp white shirt with the sleeves folded back to the elbows, he looked calm and contained and distant. She wanted to muss him up so badly she had to curl her fingers into her palms to restrain the urge.

Entering when she stepped back, he closed the door behind himself. His eyes lingered on her face, on her curls, before sweeping down the front of her dress, back up. “Why are we watching a movie, Lara?”

“I—it’s what people do on a date?”

“Do you want to do that?”

Unable to read anything on that calm face, in those steady eyes, she said, “We’re alone. We can do whatever we want.”

“In that case, I’d like to kiss you.” Reaching out, he curved his hand around the side of her neck.

“Oh, well . . .” Her lips parted of their own accord, and when he dipped his head, she could do nothing but stand on tiptoe, her hands tight on his shoulders.

He raised his head far too soon. “The sofa will work better,” he murmured and lifting her into his arms, carried her to the seat.

She found herself sitting on his lap moments later, one arm around his neck, the bottom part of her dress having split to reveal a dangerous length of thigh. It might’ve embarrassed her, except that Walker’s eyes were trained on that bared flesh, and all she could think was that she’d die if he didn’t put one of those big, capable hands on her.

“I,” he said, tugging the two parts of the dress farther apart, “don’t know much about intimacy.”

“No?” It came out husky. “You’re doing just fine.” So fine her heart was going to beat out of her chest at any minute.

“Do I have permission to touch you, Lara?”

Of course he’d ask. He was Walker. He took nothing for granted. “Any and all skin privileges you want,” she whispered, wanting no mistakes on that score.

Light green eyes met hers for a blazing instant before he closed the callused roughness of his hand over her calf, ran it up to cup the back of her knee. “So soft.”

Shivering, she reached down to tug at his hand. “It’s sensitive.”

He didn’t move. “Does it hurt?”

“No. The other kind of sensitive.” The kind that had her nipples peaking against the soft fabric of her dress.

“Then I’ll touch you there again later.” Sliding that hand up over her thigh, he flattened his other over her spine.

When he didn’t make any other move, she looked up, met his gaze. “Walker?” He was a dominant, notwithstanding the fact that he didn’t wear a wolf’s skin. Men like that didn’t hesitate once they had permission.

“This”—a squeeze of her thigh that had her stomach tensing—“isn’t the only kind of intimacy, is it, Lara?”

Always, he surprised her, this man. “No,” she whispered, stroking her fingers up over his nape and into his hair.

“Will you tell me about your parents?”

Her heart twisted into a thousand knots at the quiet, powerful request. This wasn’t how she’d imagined the night would go. It was a thousand times better. “You know my father is Mack, the senior tech in charge of the hydro plant.”

“And your mother is Aisha,” he said at once, “one of the chief cooks.”

“Yes. They’re wonderful.” Smart and loving and devoted, both to each other and Lara. “Though my mother despairs of my cooking skills.”

“I know. Aisha’s the one who makes up the plates I bring you.” A spark of unexpected humor in that stunning green. “We get along very well—possibly because we’re in agreement on the fact that bullying you into taking care of yourself is not only acceptable, but necessary.”

It startled a laugh out of her to think of her vibrant, chatterbox of a mother and thoughtful, intense Walker as conspirators. “I wondered how you knew all my favorite dishes!” Wolf happy at the knowledge that the people she loved liked each other, she feathered her fingers through the hair that brushed his nape. “What about you?” she asked, so content in this moment that it hurt.

“Though the births were spread out over fourteen years, Judd, Kristine, and I were full siblings,” he said, running his fingers over her thigh. The caress made her suck in a breath, but she didn’t push for sexual skin privileges. Not now, when Walker was opening up to her in a way she’d never expected. “It made logical sense since the combination of maternal and paternal DNA kept creating high-Gradient offspring.”

“It sounds . . . but I guess that’s the way it is in the Net.”

“Yes. My daughter was conceived by the same method.”

But not brought up in the cold, Lara thought. Marlee had always been a child confident in her father’s protection and love, even when they’d first defected. “You’re a good father, Walker,” she said, placing her free hand on his cheek. “You understand children.”

Shadows moved across those rugged features. “That’s why they put me in charge of the telepathic children drafted into the Arrow Squad.”

Lara wasn’t shocked. Part of her had always known he’d been no ordinary teacher. Linking her arms around his neck, she leaned her head against his shoulder and said, “I’m here.”

As the minutes passed, Walker relaxed against the sofa, his hand smoothing up and down her back. Then he began to speak, telling her of being taken from his classroom as a twenty-two-year-old barely out of college and assigned to a school that offered intense one-on-one sessions to its students. “Ages four to ten,” he said. “I didn’t know then that the children were apprentice Arrows, but I saw at once why they’d been segregated, understood that they needed dedicated training.”

Lara didn’t know much about Arrows, but she knew Judd had been one, and so she could guess. “Their strength was dangerous.”

“Yes.” He tugged her closer, his hand rubbing the sensitive skin of her thigh. “I had no problem with my reassignment, with helping the children harness their abilities.”

She nuzzled at him, the act affectionate, nonsexual. “Something changed.”

Leaning into the tiny kisses she brushed over his neck, he said, “Day by day, I began to see the light go out of my students’ eyes in a way that was more profound than could be attributed to the Protocol.” The hand on her back slid down to clench on her hip, hard enough that she knew he wasn’t aware of it. “Then I began to notice how many of them missed a day or two for medical reasons.”

Lara’s eyes burned, her healer’s heart able to guess what was coming.

“Arrows are taught from childhood not to feel pain,” he continued. “The easiest way to do that is to put them through such excruciating pain that the mind learns to shut it out. The side effect, of course, is that it turns them into merciless killers.”

Lara swallowed her tears. “Judd.”

“As a Tk, he had a different teacher in a different location. His name was wiped from the family records, and according to the PsyNet he no longer existed.” The people who had sired Walker, Kristine, and Judd had signed away their rights to their child when he became too difficult to handle. “I had no idea where he was until he was old enough to skirt the psychic safeguards of his trainers, locate and teleport to my apartment.”

Walker thought of the first time he’d seen his now teenaged brother, glimpsed that same dead expression in Judd’s eyes that he saw daily on the faces of the children he taught. The only thing that had kept him going was that Judd had come home. Even after everything they’d done to him, he had come home.

Lara’s hand curved gently around his nape. “He came to you, not your parents.”

That she understood the words he didn’t say, couldn’t speak . . . “We had no connection to them beyond our biology.” Fisting one hand in her springy curls, he anchored himself to the present. “Defection wasn’t something we even considered at that time. There was nowhere for us to go, the Council was so powerful.” All he’d been able to do was ensure that his brother knew he hadn’t been forgotten, would never be forgotten.

Then history had begun to repeat itself with Sienna, and it was the final straw. “Lara, I need you to know”—because he didn’t ever want her to look at him and wonder—“I never hurt a child in my care.” He’d risked everything to teach his students telepathic tricks they weren’t permitted to know, and then he’d taught them how to hide the knowledge. It had been the only weapon he could give those small, vulnerable minds.

“Oh, Walker, I know you would never harm a child. I know.”

The unswerving conviction in her voice, it destroyed something hard and dark and ugly inside of him, sanded away more and more of those jagged edges. His lips were on hers before he knew he was moving, the warm strength of her a benediction he’d never expected.

SIENNA didn’t realize anything was wrong until after Hawke fell asleep, having first exhausted her into limp incoherence. When she’d recovered after that second loving to complain that she hadn’t gotten a chance to explore his body yet, he’d laughed and promised that she could have her turn—after he got the edge off.

“Pretty long edge,” she’d gasped ten minutes later, hair falling around her face as he slid into her from behind for the second time.

That had earned her a kiss on the back of her neck, his fingers curving down to flick the tight bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs. “You have no idea.” A knowing touch circled her clit as she quivered from the shock of his first caress. “See that chair? Having you astride me is next on my list.”

The rough greed in his voice had sent heat rocking over her body, a darkly pleasurable sensation. However, this, what she felt now, was uncomfortable, as if her body was boiling from the inside out. Wiggling out from under Hawke’s arm, she muttered, “Bathroom,” when he would’ve stopped her, and made her way to the private alcove at the back of the cabin. Throwing water onto her face, she wiped it with a towel, but her skin continued to burn.

That was when she looked in the mirror.

And stopped breathing.

Her eyes were gold—blazing, flickering gold. Swallowing, she tried to quiet the panic that had her pulse in her mouth. The second level of dissonance hadn’t kicked in, so whatever had caused this, it didn’t indicate a dangerous loss of control. With that reassuring thought, she went within her mind, ready to reinforce the shields that contained the buildup of X-fire. To find them burned out. Oh, God.

The lines of dissonance programming had literally been buried under an avalanche of power. That should’ve been impossible—the pain should’ve blanked her into unconsciousness long before it got to that stage . . . except she was an X. A cardinal. No one knew how her power functioned, not in truth.

Connected as the events seemed, she knew the collapse wasn’t as a result of the emotional impact of the previous two nights—her response to Hawke had been wild and dark and passionate long before they’d shared intimate skin privileges. “Calm,” she said out loud. “Calm.” When she had some kind of a handle on herself, she began to rebuild that which had been burned away . . . only to watch as the cold fire began to devour it at almost the same instant.

Horror filled her veins, speared through her mind.

But at the center of it was a cold, clear understanding.

She’d thought she’d beaten the X-marker, but all she’d done was corral it—there was no way to stop its progression. Her periodic purges had acted as a pressure regulator, but that regulator was no longer big enough. The power had grown in an exponential cascade over the hours she’d slept, until it was a massive beast shoving at her shields, wanting out.

All indications are that your power develops in erratic and unpredictable surges. At some stage, the surge will overwhelm.

She’d forgotten Ming’s prediction, or perhaps she hadn’t wanted to remember it. In this, the bastard had proven right. “No panic, Sienna. Think.” Pacing in the confines of the bathroom, she realized the first thing she needed to do was earth the cold fire, buy some time.

It took her five minutes to sneak outside without waking Hawke, and she was convinced he didn’t rise only because he could scent her and knew she was safe. The instant her bare feet hit the forest floor, she punched her power into it, the ground burning with phantom flames for almost a minute before the X-fire soaked into the earth.

Yet when she looked into her mind, she saw that by morning, the buildup would be close to critical once more. The cold fire was voracious, and it wanted to consume everything in its path, but that wasn’t the most terrifying truth she saw inside the conflagration of her mind. Synergy, the catastrophic crest of an X’s power, wasn’t just possible, it was highly probable.

There was no going back once an X hit synergy.

Glancing behind her at the cabin, she rebuilt a second layer of shields before walking back inside. Her eyes had returned to normal, and so she allowed herself to stay with Hawke, to sleep in his arms this night.

One last night.