Perhaps there would be no easy answer to their mating, no solution that wouldn’t tear their hearts to shreds, but they belonged to each other. Nothing could change that.
“You taste good, Riley.” A soft purr of sound against his pulse as she laved her tongue over the mark she’d made.
Shuddering, he decided he’d been good quite long enough. “Mercy.” He tried to pull her hand off his cock.
She tightened it. “You said I could pet you as long as I liked.”
“Didn’t say I wouldn’t try to fuck you in the middle of the petting.”
Her eyes snapped up to meet his. “That’s feline logic. You’re a wolf.”
“I’m learning from the best.” He couldn’t get her to let go of him, and to be honest, he wasn’t trying very hard. She was a hot glove over his aroused flesh. “I want wetness,” he whispered in her ear, nibbling on the lobe.
She squeezed his cock in reaction and he almost came. Barely able to stand upright, he swore. “Are you trying to make me a eunuch?”
A laugh, a flush of air against his skin. Strokes along his cock, slow, sure, possessive. “That’s one thing I’d never do—it’d be a crime against Mercy.” Finally, after one more tortuous caress, she released him, only to start sliding down his body.
“No.” He halted her, using his superior strength. “It’s my turn.” His turn to lick and suck and taste and adore. Nipping at her mouth when she growled softly, he cajoled her into a prone position on the ground—though of course, he made sure he was on the bottom, with her lying on top of him.
She kept kissing the mark she’d made, and every time she did, he felt a wave of raw emotion pass through him, a violent mix of tenderness, possession, hunger, and devotion. Desperate to shower that devotion on his mate, he urged her up his body. “Higher,” he said when she straddled his chest.
Her eyes, night-glow in the darkness, shimmered bright gold. “Are you sure?” And then she stroked her fingers down, through her own curls, and let out a gasp.
Having lost the power of speech, he just watched as his cat rose up on her knees and showed him slick, feminine fingers sliding through folds his mouth watered to taste. But he couldn’t stop this. It was the most erotic sight he’d ever seen. It was also, he realized in a primitive corner of his brain, an act of trust. Mercy was making no effort to keep an eye out for danger, leaving the task up to him.
She was, he understood with a twisting in his heart, letting him take care of her in her own way.
They were learning each other. Finding a middle ground. God, he adored her.
And then he stopped thinking. A subconscious part of his mind, a part that never really turned off in dominant changeling males, stayed watchful, alert for anything that might harm his mate, while the rest of him simply gloried in the beauty and sensual delight of her. The glide of her fingers through flesh damp with heat, with need, it pushed him one step closer to insanity.
“Mercy,” he said when he couldn’t take it any longer, not knowing if he was saying her name or asking for leniency. Gripping her waist tight, he pulled her up and took over the task of pleasuring her with his mouth. There was little patience in him tonight, but she seemed perfectly happy with his rough strokes, the grazes of his teeth, the relentless demand of his kiss.
She came on his tongue the first time, hot and wild. And when he shifted her limp form back down his body, coaxing her into sitting up enough to take him inside, she was a scalding silken glove, one made for him alone. He didn’t last long.
The last thing he remembered was his cat licking over the mark she’d made.
CHAPTER 49
The Ghost preferred to meet his fellow rebels in person so he could gauge their voices, their body language. He trusted no one. But Judd Lauren and Xavier Perez had been with him long enough that he didn’t expect them to betray him. That in itself was a concession he’d never thought he’d make.
Looking down at the untraceable cell phone in his hand, he considered which one of them to call. Xavier was human, Judd a Psy defector. Xavier had lived with emotion his whole life. Judd had only just begun.
Perhaps this time, the man who’d known Silence, and now knew something else, would be the better choice. Coding in the number as he stood in a desolate location no one would ever trace to his real identity, he called Judd.
The other man picked up after five rings. He had to have been asleep but his voice was clear when he said, “Didn’t expect to hear from you today. Guessing the Net’s in an uproar.”
The Ghost thought about his next words. “To what are you referring?”
“Still don’t trust me?” There was no rancor in the comment. “Councilors are being targeted for assassination.”
“It wasn’t limited to Councilors,” he told the other man. “Several high-ranking people in the substructure are dead.”
“But,” Judd said in a way that reminded the Ghost he’d once been an Arrow, an assassin, “it’s not the catastrophe it could’ve been. So, what do you need?”
“The answer to a question.” He laid out the facts dealing with the offer of voluntary rehabilitation. “Do I have any right to stand in the way of those who want to strengthen their conditioning? I’ve never been concerned with destroying Silence itself.” His goals were deeper, older. He wanted to cut out the rot, excise the sickness that threatened to destroy his people all over again . . . while their Council watched, complicit in their deaths. “But the Protocol is a weapon the Council uses to keep the populace in line.”
Judd took a long time to answer. “There’s a difference between making a free choice, and making a choice because you’re afraid of change. No one knows what the Net will be like with emotion—”
“We know,” the Ghost said. “Before Silence, our race was on the verge of extinction.” Violence and insanity had run rampant, savaging the PsyNet from within.
“Yes, exactly—
The Ghost considered this new avenue of thought, realized Judd was right. There could be no comparison between past and present—the future was a true unknown. “The weak ones won’t survive without Silence.” They’d break under the weight of their gifts.
“No,” Judd agreed. “Let them go. We can’t make the choice for them—we can only show them that maybe, they can find another way. Emotion is a powerful tool.”
Long after the conversation was over, the Ghost stood in the desolation of his lonely location and considered Judd’s words. Emotion . . . No, he thought. That was a path he couldn’t take. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
Because if the Ghost lost control, the Net would truly shatter.
CHAPTER 50
Mercy had intended to spend the morning discussing their untenable situation with Riley in the hopes of finding some kind of an “out,” but he got roused from bed three hours before dawn. “What?” she said, barely lifting her lids as he answered his cell phone.
His claws shot out. Realizing something was very wrong, she sat up and put a hand on his lower back as he finished the call.
His eyes were wolf when he glanced at her. “Three young men from the pack didn’t come home last night.”
Fully aware how wild the young ones could be, Mercy knew there had to be something more. “No question it’s foul play?”
A nod as he got up and began to dress. “Hawke called all three on their cells—those boys are over twenty
