Tangle of Need

air, summer a distant memory this far up. The chill did nothing to cool the fever in her blood, the need ravaging her body, a need that threatened to make her a slave when she’d finally found freedom.

Desperate, she focused on the majesty of her surroundings in an effort to fight the tumult within, her wolf clawing at the inside of her skin in violent repudiation of her choice to back off. In front of her lay tumbled glacial rocks, huge and imposing, beyond them the rich, deep green of the firs that dominated this area. Above it all was a sky so blue it hurt.

Home.

The slam of a door, followed by the thud of boots on the earth shattered her fragile attempt at control, and then Riaz was standing in front of her. Suddenly her view was hard muscle and implacable strength, the wild, dark scent of him in her every inhalation.

“We are not leaving,” he said, his skin caressed by the sunlight that gilded his hair a gleaming blue-black, “until we work this out.”

Feeling trapped, suffocated, she shoved at his chest and slipped out to stand beside the car rather than with her back to it. “Don’t you put all the blame on me.” Fighting back was instinct, her internal composure shattered. “You’ve been picking at me since the day I was pulled into the den.”

He growled, and the rough sound rasped over her skin, wrapped around her throat. “Self-fucking-defense. You took one look at me and decided you hated my guts. I want to know why.”

Jesus, Adria thought, how had she gotten herself into this? She wasn’t this woman who couldn’t control her words, her thoughts. She was calm, stable, sensible, had been the levelheaded pivot for her friends when they’d all been hormone-fueled teenagers. She was the one who’d talked them down from the adrenaline-induced ledge she was now riding.

“Look,” she said, making the conscious decision to wrench herself back before her frustrated wolf took control and she found herself feasting on male lips currently thin with anger, “it’s nothing personal. I’m generally a bitch.” According to Martin, she was one with a stone heart.

Riaz snorted. “Nice try, but I’ve seen you with others in the pack.” He took another step toward her, invading her space and her senses, the scent of the forest serrated with a sharper edge that was pure furious wolf. “I’ve even seen you smile. How about you crack open one for me?” Eyes of dark gold drilled into hers.

Hell if she was going to allow him to walk all over her. “Get out of my face.”

“You sure you want me to?” he asked, a dangerous angle to his jaw. “Maybe the reason you react like a hissing cat around me is because you want me even closer.”

She sucked in a breath.

Riaz’s eyes widened.

“Damn.” It was a wondering statement.

A fraction of an instant later, strong, rough-skinned hands cupped her face, a voracious mouth slamming down on her own, the potent scent of aroused male and the exotic, luscious taste of citrus and bitter chocolate flooding her senses.

Adria froze for a second before her touch-starved body took over, her wolf clawing to the surface. Grabbing at his shoulders, she devoured that sensual, demanding mouth, tangling her tongue with his, licking and sucking. When he hitched her up with a single powerful move, she wrapped her legs around his waist and let him slam her against the door of the rugged all-terrain vehicle. He tasted as sexy and dangerous and infuriating as he looked, one big hand thrusting into her hair, the other gripping her hip.

Parts of her body that had been in cold storage for a lot longer than a year sparked to wakefulness, hungry and wild and more than a little feral. Riaz growled when she drew blood with her claws on his nape, only to deepen the kiss, shoving the hand on her hip under her shirt to close over her breast and squeeze.

The shock of the proprietary hold almost snapped her out of the madness, but then he pushed up her bra and the rough warmth of his palm on her bare flesh was a jolt to the system that splintered rational thought. Unable to get enough of his mouth, she sucked on his tongue, his lips, before kissing her way down the stubble of his jaw to grip at the tendons of his neck with her teeth.

Growling deep in his chest, he pulled her head back to take her mouth again. He wasn’t the least bit gentle, but she didn’t want gentle, her claws digging into his shoulders as her body moved with raw impatience against him. Taking his hand off her breast, he tore the button off her jeans, tugged down the zipper. It was as she broke the kiss to gasp in a breath that he shoved his hand into her panties and through the damp curls between her thighs—to spear two blunt-tipped fingers into her in a hard thrust that made her scream and break apart in a powerful clenching of muscles.

The orgasm was a naked blade, one that cut her in half with the primal viciousness of it and left her bereft at the same time. Opening her eyes when he withdrew his fingers, she saw a glittering expression she understood all too well. Fury. At her. At himself. “Put me down,” she said, shaken to the core by the violent depth of her response.

Never, never had she orgasmed that hard … and felt so lost, a block of ice in her gut.

Not saying a word, he did so, putting his hands on her waist to help stabilize her when her legs wobbled. “Get your hands off me.” She’d be damned if he’d touch her with that look in his eyes, his anger a brutal heat that slapped her with every breath.

LETTING go of the stiff woman in his arms, Riaz turned on his heel. “Fuck.” What the hell had just happened? He didn’t even like Adria, and yet he’d betrayed his mate with her, would’ve had his cock balls-deep in her by now if she hadn’t stopped things. That cock pulsed, so rigid it was painful. No.

“Here.”

He turned in time to catch a bottle of water.

“Wash your fingers,” she said, red streaking the defined arch of her cheekbones. He knew the color had nothing to do with embarrassment, even before she bit out, “I don’t particularly want to advertise my lapse in judgment,” through gritted teeth.

A second later, she was inside the car, a sculpture in ice, no hint remaining of the demanding female wolf who’d been wet and hot and tight around his fingers not two minutes ago.

Chapter 3

COUNCILOR KALEB KRYCHEK examined the consciousness of the individual he’d first been alerted to by the NetMind, the neosentience that was the librarian and guardian of the Net. The consciousness in front of him was moderately powerful—that of a Gradient 5.7 telepath employed by a major corporation. The male’s Silence was flawed, minor fractures visible to the careful eye. But that was an ordinary enough situation, and not what interested Kaleb.

This male had the bad luck to be uniquely susceptible to the unnamed and largely unnoticed disease that was carving silent, deadly runnels through the PsyNet. Others had been infected earlier, and were all now dead or insane. The mass outbreak at Sunshine Station had claimed one hundred and forty-one victims, eleven of whom had originally been put into involuntary comas in the belief they could be saved.

They couldn’t.

Subject 8-91, however, continued to function in spite of his advanced infection, leaving Kaleb to conclude that something had altered in the sickness within the Net, making it able to survive longer within its host. Contracted via direct contact with one of the “diseased” sections of the Net—though Kaleb was apparently immune to the effect, likely as a result of his connection to the twisted twin of the NetMind—the infection didn’t yet spread from person to person, but there was a high chance it would mutate further, becoming even more noxious.

Subject 8-91 was the first host the NetMind had found of the new variant, and as such, he’d become Kaleb’s barometer, his “canary in a coal mine.” The old saying was apropos. If 8-91 continued to react as he’d done to date, he would show the catastrophic effects of the quietly spreading rot before anyone else in the Net.

No, Kaleb corrected himself, 8-91 is already showing the effects. The male had had a violent outburst in his sleep two days ago, so violent that he’d broken