Caressed by Ice

watch, too.”

“Trusting the cats, Hawke?” she teased.

He snorted. “Like I said, I’ll have my own men there.”

Relieved he hadn’t stood in her way, she was about to head back to her room when Hawke’s phone beeped. Since it was closer to her—on the floor with the sweatshirt he’d stripped off during training—she picked it up and handed it to him. It wasn’t her intention to listen in, but he motioned for her to stay.

The conversation was short and ended with Hawke saying, “You’ve tracked down the pack?” A pause filled with the most lethal anger. “Then do it today. We don’t know what else they might have been programmed to do.”

“Do what?” Brenna asked after he’d hung up.

“Judd’s not going to get back till after dark,” he said instead of answering. “He asked me to keep an eye on you.”

She concentrated on the first part of his response. “What does he do for you, Hawke?” Her heart was a block of cold stone in her chest.

His face went dangerously neutral. “I don’t know if I like your tone of voice.” It was a reminder of who he was.

But she knew her status, too. “I’m not a juvenile to be slapped down.” She faced off with him, eye to eye. “Answer my question. What do you ask from Judd in exchange for giving sanctuary to the kids?”

His pale eyes iced over. “Judd is a fully trained Psy assassin with experience in covert wet work. I’d be a fool if I didn’t utilize his skills.”

She choked back a cry. “How can you ask that of him?” An alpha looked after his own. He didn’t destroy them. But maybe Hawke didn’t consider the Laurens his own. After all, and for reasons she’d never known, he hated the Psy as much as her brothers did.

His face gentled, an unexpected softening of harsh masculine lines. Closing the distance between them, he cupped her cheek. “He is who and what he is, Brenna. If you want something different, you shouldn’t be with him.”

“He’s the only one I want to be with.”

“Then accept his beast like you do your own.”

Hawke’s words wouldn’t leave her alone as she went through the day. It was disturbing to think that she might be asking Judd to change when she professed to want him for himself. “But asking him to break Silence is different,” she muttered to herself as she scanned the details of another of the job offers Dr. Shah had forwarded her.

If Judd didn’t dismantle the conditioning, he’d continue to hurt each time they touched, each time he felt anything for her. How could a relationship survive under that kind of pressure? “No, Brenna, be honest.” She sighed and went to the next offer. While everything she’d thought so far was true, there was another truth—she wanted Judd to hold her, to offer her affection…to love her. A selfish need.

What if accepting his beast meant denying the needs of her own?

It made her head ache, especially when she added in the fact that her beast didn’t recognize Judd as her mate. The mating bond was conspicuous in its absence. “Enough.” Thinking herself to a standstill was not going to help matters. And if she didn’t stop thinking about Judd, she’d start to speculate about what it was he was doing today.

Covert wet work.

Her stomach turned. If he came to her with hands dipped in blood, would she accept him? Her fingers trembled. She had no easy answers to that question and that shook her. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to pay attention to the next offer on the list. It was from a corporation named Sierra Tech.

She knew a lot about ST—SnowDancer was the majority shareholder, at sixty percent. DarkRiver held twenty and a human conglomerate named Dekell the other twenty. ST was offering her a great package and her wolf would prefer to work for the pack. Not that all ST employees were wolves. It was considered a plum company to work for by scientists and techs across the globe. The only reason ST had no Psy employees was that it competed directly with several Council-backed labs.

Sierra Tech went to the top of her list, but she hadn’t made her decision. Her current frame of mind didn’t exactly lend itself to the task. Even when she finished looking over the offers and moved on to repair some small comm malfunctions for packmates, her mind remained chaotic. Lunch and dinner came and went, but she had no answer to her own uncomfortable question.

Would she hold Judd if he came to her after utilizing his skills as an assassin?

She went to bed mentally exhausted but woke after only a few hours of disrupted sleep…because she could smell Judd’s scent in her quarters. Getting out of bed still half-asleep, she saw it was four a.m. She walked out wearing the satin slip she used as her nightgown, her feet bare.

“Judd?” For a second, she couldn’t locate him. Then her night vision kicked in and she found him seated in an armchair close to the coffee table.

He was watching her, his entire body motionless. It didn’t strike her that she should be afraid or even wary. Yawning, she walked over and sat on his lap, curling her body into the armchair. His arms came around her without hesitation, one hand curving around her shoulders, the other sliding to close over the bare skin of her upper thigh.

The sensual contact brought her to full wakefulness. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she nuzzled at his throat. “Are you okay?”

His hand shifted to slide between her thighs, surprising a shocked feminine sound out of her. “Judd? Baby?” Something was wrong. With a changeling male, she would’ve let her body soothe him, used touch to connect. But Judd was Psy…and hers. At that moment, she knew the answer to the question that had tormented her all day—she would hold him, accept him, no matter what.

That was what mates did.

She didn’t care if there was no bond—no one was going to tell her she wasn’t meant to be with this man. “What do you want?” she asked, but he remained silent. Deciding to let instinct guide her, she softened for him.

His other hand tangled in her hair, tilting her head back in a sharp move. She went rather than resist. A woman who loved a dominant male had to know when to bend…and when to bite. His lips crushed hers, his hand squeezing her inner thigh. Moaning into the kiss, she opened her mouth. He didn’t wait for any more permission, ravaging her with a sensual fury that had her trying to press even closer.

Her body craved Judd. She had no desire to back off, perhaps because she hadn’t had time to be afraid, or perhaps because she could feel the hunger inside of him, a hunger only she could assuage.

He bit at her lower lip. She bit back.

His back muscles were rock hard under her palms as she splayed her hands and luxuriated in the unrestrained masculine heat of him. “No,” she protested when he broke the kiss to run his lips down her jaw and over her neck. She tugged at his hair. He nipped at her neck in reprimand. Something melted between her legs and when he stroked his hand farther north, she wanted to urge him to go faster.

He cupped her. Strong. Bold. Possessive.

She felt her claws threaten to release, sparks shooting behind her tightly closed eyes. And then he began to massage her like that, while her body simultaneously tried to get closer and writhe away. Her slip rode up and her bottom came in contact with the hard ridge of his erection.

A whisper of fear fluttered in her belly.

But her panties were gone, torn off her and oh God he was touching her skin to skin and his fingers were rubbing at the entrance to her body and—Crying out, she orgasmed with an almost painful clamping of internal muscles long unused. She buried her face in his neck and he held her there with his hand on her nape as he coaxed more and more pleasure out of her body.

The scent of him coated her tongue until she licked at him, taking the salt/ice/man scent inside. Slowly, the orgasm turned into a buzz of sensual heat, leaving her sated. Murmuring her pleasure, she relaxed back into her earlier curled-up position and opened her eyes. At first, she didn’t realize what it was she was seeing. Why were there pieces of wood everywhere? And did her kitchen bench look lopsided?