Blaze of Memory

“Maybe it already has—perhaps cause and effect are now locked in a feedback loop.” Kaleb touched a psychic tendril to the edges of the darkness.

Nikita kept back. “You could become infected with whatever it is that’s caused this.”

“No,” he murmured, almost absently. “I’m shielded.”

She knew it was more than that. Could it be that Kaleb had some affinity to the spreading stain? “Where else is it this bad?” This patch was small and isolated—as if the disease was hiding. Nikita would’ve considered the anthropomor phization absurd in any other context, but in spawning the NetMind, the Net had clearly proven it was an organism of some kind.

“This is the worst,” Kaleb responded, drawing back the psychic tendril he’d used to explore the darkness. “It’s as if all the dead threads have been migrating here, collecting in a pool.”

“That means it’s going to keep growing.”

“Unless we can find a way to negate those threads of darkness.”

She felt a flicker of warning. “Why are you showing this to me rather than to the Council as a whole?” They were allies of a kind, but there had been something else in that statement.

“I thought it’d be obvious,” he said. “Your daughter is a cardinal E-Psy.”

“I see.” And she did. The last time the Net had threatened to self-destruct, it had been because the E-Psy had been systematically eliminated. But the situation was completely different now. “There are millions of E-Psy present in the Net.” The Council had stopped the deletion orders on all E-designation conceptions once it became apparent that their simple presence—no matter if their empathic powers were kept ruthlessly contained—helped keep the mental fragmentation at bay. “This is something else.” The problem was, she had no idea what.

CHAPTER 14

It was dark. So dark. Darker than the night, than the midnight sun. No, that didn’t make sense. There was no such thing as a midnight sun. No . . . Alaska had a midnight sun. But that meant there was light all day long. Here there was no daylight, no sunlight, no hope.

She tried to curl her fingers and toes but couldn’t feel them. It was as if they’d been eaten up by the darkness. It was tempting to scream, to hear sound even if she couldn’t see, couldn’t feel, but she held it inside, locked within the walls of her mind. The monster had taken everything else she had.

She wouldn’t give him her screams.

But minutes, hours, days later, she lost the battle and her anguish poured out of her in a wave of sound.

Except . . . she heard only silence. The darkness absorbed even her scream.

And that was when she knew.

She truly was dead.

* * *

Heat.

Touch.

Life, electric in its fury. . .a kiss that demanded her participation.

Shuddering in surrender, she drowned in the scent of him. Wild and exotic. Dark and male.

A man who’d snarled at her, caged her. . . fed her.

“Dev.” Spoken against his lips, she was so loath to break contact.

His mouth took hers again before she could say anything more, his teeth sinking into her lower lip. She jerked, dug her fingers into solid masculine shoulders. Never, she knew, had she experienced anything even remotely similar. He was so hot, she wanted to crawl into him. His skin burned her fingertips, and she wanted more, wanted to be naked, to have him crush her to the sheets, his weight a heavy, immovable blanket.

Gasping in a breath when he released her, she stared into his eyes, wondering if he could read the clawing depths of her need.

“You back?” His voice was harsh, his eyes glittering fever bright.

Her breasts brushed against his chest with every breath, the tips so tight with need, it was almost pain. “Where did I go?”

“You were screaming your lungs out.” He continued to hold her in an embrace she knew she’d never be able to break. “Wouldn’t wake up no matter how much I shook you.”

“So you kissed me.” It had been, she was forced to admit, a highly practical decision. Even a broken Psy would react to something so completely against her conditioning. “Thank you.” It would’ve been prudent to pull back, but she’d never felt more alive, more real. “I think . . . that was my first kiss.”

A low, rough word. “Hell, I’m sorry.”

“Do it again.”

His lashes came down. Once. Twice. She expected refusal. Instead, he tugged back her head and brushed his lips over hers, a single hot caress. When she tried to get closer, he refused to let her. “Dev.”

“Don’t rush.” And then he touched his mouth to hers again, but this time, he lingered.

Acting on instinct, she sipped at the fullness of his lower lip, felt the rough warmth of his body tense against the palms she’d pressed flat on his chest. For a second, she was afraid he’d stop. But he deepened the kiss with slow, sweet strokes that made her fingers dig into the firm muscle under her hands as her body filled with a liquid kind of heat. Hips twisting in a hunger she barely understood, she tried to pull him closer.

“Enough.” Harsh, spoken against her lips.

“A little more.” Every hot breath, every stroke, every lick, it anchored her in the most sensual, most earthy of ways. “Touch me.”

His fingers tightened in her hair instead, his jaw setting in a way that was already becoming familiar. “Why were you screaming?”

Somehow, the softness of the question, the strength of his hold, made it easier to return to the nightmare. “I dreamed I was in the hole, the nothing-place, again.”

Something flashed across his face, something so razor sharp in its fury, it should’ve made her run. But all she wanted to do was strip him to the skin, feel his body hard and unashamedly male over hers. “Dev—”

“You’re scared,” he said, fingers on her jaw. “I’m not going to take advantage.”

Her eyes dipped to the straining bulge of his arousal. “You want to.”

“What we want”—a voice as unbending as stone—“isn’t always good for us.”

Hearing the finality in that, she swallowed the need that urged her to keep pushing. “Thank you for coming to me.”

“Are you going to be alright now?”

The truth came out before she could censor herself. “No.” Without the erotic shield of Dev’s kiss, fear was already crawling up her legs, creeping into her lungs.

He didn’t say a word, simply got up and nudged her over on the bed. She shifted with alacrity, feeling the mattress dip to his side as he lay down beside her seated form. He was, she noticed, wearing only a pair of sweatpants, his chest a lithely muscled plane sprinkled with dark hair. Fingers curling into her palms, she found her gaze dropping, following the trail that—

“Come here.” He held up an arm.

Jerking up her head, she felt her cheeks burn.

“I don’t bite.”

She wasn’t so certain. This man, he confused her. As hard as he was beautiful, and yet capable of a gentleness that left her floundering. Now, he just watched her, let her make up her own mind. There was only one choice, only one place she wanted to be.

The erotically charged taste of him still in her mouth, she scooted over and laid her head down on his arm. It curled around her shoulders, curving her into his body. And the contact—hot, real, Dev—shoved the fear aside. When he pulled a sheet over them, she didn’t protest, tucking her head against his chest, her fingers curling into the crisp hairs on his chest. The last thing she was aware of was his heartbeat.