reading between the lines, at reading body language.”
“Yes, I think I will.” Pressing a kiss to his shoulder, she let her mind meander back to a subject she’d been mulling over earlier that day. “I think something is happening among the Forgotten.”
“I get that feeling, too.” He shifted so that more of his body tangled with hers. “Those guards on Cruz—I’m not sure Dev is only worried about the Psy. Word is, some of his own people are moving against him.”
“Do you think the Forgotten are starting to have the same problems that drove the Psy to Silence?”
“If they are . . . Dev has a hell of a problem on his hands.”
Katya felt as if she’d been arguing until she was blue in the face. Dev didn’t argue back—he simply refused to change his mind. “Are you insane?” she was finally driven to yell, as they prepared to catch a few hours’ sleep at the same little bed-and-breakfast they’d stopped at before. They’d driven half the night, compelled to get away from the malignant violence that marked Sunshine. But from the instant Dev had mentioned going after Ming, she’d had only one thought in mind—stopping him. “That’s what he wants! It’ll make it so much easier for him to kill you.”
Dev pulled down the blankets, having stripped off to his jeans while she changed into sweats. “Get in before you freeze your pretty ass off.”
“Dev, you can’t just ignore me.”
“I said,
Anger rose in a wild flood. “Don’t treat me like a child!” Picking up the thing closest to her—a shoe—she threw it at him.
He moved out of the way with fluid grace. “That wasn’t a smart move, baby.” Calm words, but the heat in his eyes was a slow-burning fuse.
Too furious to be able to read whether that heat denoted anger or desire, she said, “Oh, yeah? How about this one?” She threw the other shoe.
He shifted his head aside without really seeming to move. Then he reached for her. She went to spin away . . . only to realize he’d backed her into a corner. “I swear to God, Dev, I’m so mad at you—”
A finger against her lips.
Startled, she stopped talking.
“You’re mine,” he said in a quiet, implacable voice. “Now and forever.”
Her entire body trembled with the force of that vow.
“I will let nothing, and no one, take you from me.” Gold-flecked eyes that pierced her very heart. “Do you understand?”
“I’m not going to let you kill yourself,” she whispered against his finger. Pushing it away, she put her hand over his heart. “If you walk into a trap because of me, if you die . . .”
“I won’t. I’m not stupid and I don’t intend to go into this blind. We gather intel and we move when he’s vulnerable.” He reached out to brush her hair off her face. “He’s powerful, but he can’t defend against every eventuality.”
“He’s evil,” Katya whispered, her eyes black with memory. “I’ve never felt anyone so devoid of humanity.”
“If good runs when evil rises,” he said, his palms braced on the walls on either side of her head, “then the world has no chance at all.”
“He won’t give you the key.”
“Then he’ll die.”
“Killing Ming”—her lips moving against his—“won’t save me. Even if we somehow find a way to undo or block the programming, the mental prison is autonomous, linked to and fed by my own mind.”
“But it’ll give you freedom. Only Ming knows you’re alive—you could live out your whole life with no one knowing about you on the Net.”
“Yes,” she said, but he saw a flicker of unease in her eyes.
About to ask her what she was thinking, he found his lips taken in a very feminine way—soft, lush, and absolute.
Katya drew the taste of Dev—heat and demand, passion with an edge of steel—deep within, shoving aside a truth that had been bleeding into her mind day by slow day. Today, here, with the thick blanket of snow insulating them against the outside world, she wanted simply to be a woman who’d found herself lucky enough to be in the arms of this incredible, complex man.
When he crushed her into the corner, taking over her world, she shuddered and thrust her hands into his hair. The dark fire of him seeped into her bones, warming her from the inside out. Sliding her fingers through the rough silk, she stroked down over his shoulders and to the temptation of his chest. “I love touching you,” she said into his mouth, shaping the muscled planes of him with palms that couldn’t get enough. The sprinkling of dark hair was deliciously abrasive—she ached to be naked, feel the sensation on her breasts. “I want to take off my clothes.”
He closed his teeth over her lower lip. “That’s what I like to hear.” Light words, but his face was stark intensity. She knew he could be tender, had felt his care, but beneath the surface, Devraj Santos was a warrior— with a will that was unbreakable.
Shaking with the power of her own emotions, she pressed a line of kisses down his jaw, along his neck. “I’d like to please you this time.”
His hand fisted in her hair. “You please me by simply being.”
She licked the taste of him into her mouth, felt her body clench. Though his muscles tensed, he stood in place and let her explore the hard male beauty of him. “I don’t understand,” she whispered, “how my race could’ve ever given this up.” When Silence first began, there would have been lovers, couples who burned for each other.
“Some didn’t.” Hot breath against her ear as he leaned in to let her better reach his neck. “For some, the price was too high.”
His pulse fascinated her, so strong, so vivid, and now, jagged with desire. For her. A little curl of feminine power snaked up her body, heady and hungry. He was such a strong man that knowing she had the ability to affect him like this was a drug of its own. Grazing her teeth along the column of his neck, she ran the nails of one hand gently down his chest, making sure to scrape past one flat male nipple.
He hissed out a breath. “Do that again.”
CHAPTER 42
“Like this?” A light caress.
“Tease.”
Smiling, she gave him what he wanted—to his husky groan—before pushing at him to shift back. He resisted. She insisted.
A single inch.
Just enough for her to move her head down so she could close her teeth delicately around the nipple she’d tormented. He swore as her teeth slipped, grazing his chest. When she shifted her attention to the side she’d neglected, he accommodated her by giving her another inch.
Warm, golden brown skin under her hands, her lips, the wild, edgy scent of him in her head, a little bit of heaven. Having him all to herself, to enjoy without guilt or worry, if only for this broken instant in time, it was nothing she’d ever regret. No matter what. Shoving the latter thought to the darkest recesses of her brain, she tried to kiss her way down his chest. “Give me room.”
“No.” He tugged up her head with the hand fisted in her hair.
She licked at his skin, blew out a breath to cool the wet. He shuddered. Nuzzling at him, she pushed. “It’s my turn.”
“I’m going to embarrass myself if you put that pretty mouth of yours anywhere near my cock.” Blunt words, as blunt as the erection pushing against her lower abdomen.
Skin tight with the impact of that erotic image, she pushed again. “I want to taste you. You had your turn
