gnawing ache in his gut. He wanted the world to know she was his—make certain no one would dare lay a finger on her.
It took every ounce of will he had to fight the craving and lead her to the bar stools on this side of the kitchen counter. Dropping her hand, he put both of his around her waist and lifted her onto a stool.
Her hands flew to his shoulders. Gripped.
A sweep of black erased her irises between one blink and the next.
“Sophie.” He squeezed her waist. “Stay with me.”
“I’m right here.”
“Your eyes.”
“Oh.” She blinked, but the black remained. “It happens when we utilize a strong burst of psychic power, or . . . I suppose”—a wash of color across her cheekbones—“feel an intense emotional response.”
The maleness in him smiled in sensual satisfaction. “I like the sound of that.” Leaning forward, he slicked his lips over her own, a tease that made his cock throb—but conscious of how far he’d already pushed her, he was on the other side of the counter before she exhaled and swiveled to face him.
“That,” she said, “was . . . interesting.” Her chest rose and fell in long, deep breaths, her skin colored with a heat that invited a man’s mouth.
The excruciating pulse of his body, the unremitting hunger, might’ve consumed him if he hadn’t had something critically important in mind for this evening. “Let me finish making this sauce,” he said, voice rough with sexual desire. “You want to shred the lettuce for the salad?”
He waited until she’d washed her hands and retaken her seat before asking the question to which he needed an answer before he could begin to work out how to engineer her defection, how to keep her forever. “Sophia—I’ve been patient.” His hand fisted, because he knew this truth would be nothing good, but at least he’d have a starting point. “Tell me where Js go when they stop working.”
A quiet, quiet moment. “Some who are removed from the active roster early enough take up desk jobs in Justice,” she said in a voice so soft he had to strain to hear her, “others go insane, and the rest of us . . . we die.”
CHAPTER 23
Max staggered, bracing his hands on the counter.
“My Sensitivity”—she glanced back at her discarded gloves—“is a result of failing telepathic shields. They’re so thin now that when they shear, the thoughts of every man, woman, and child in this city will smash into my brain, crush my mind.”
The brutal forecast had Max clenching his jaw. “How long?”
“Not long.”
Anger—hot, protective, violent—was a rush of white noise in his ears. “When were you planning to tell me?”
Sophia swallowed at the tautly held fury in that question. “I’m sorry.” It hurt her to see him so angry with her. “I thought if you knew how . . . broken I truly was, you wouldn’t want me.”
“Sophie.” A low, dark word, a shake of his head that made the sleek black strands of his hair catch the light. “They’ll rehabilitate you if they find out how close you are to the edge, that’s the bottom line?”
“Yes.”
His shoulders firmed, the intelligence in his eyes a razor. “They can’t do that if you’re out of the Net. We’ll figure out a way to fucking rebuild your shields once you’re safe.”
He was fighting for her, she thought with a wrench deep inside of her.
“Sascha isn’t dead.” Max pushed back from the counter, folding his arms across his chest. “Neither are the other Psy in DarkRiver.”
“Yes, they’ve found an exit route.” Finished with the peeling, she began to slice the cucumber into precise, thin slices. “However, even should such an exit be open to other Js, I couldn’t take it.”
A silent pause, his thrumming anger a whip against her skin.
“I function as a minor anchor.” Sophia knew she shouldn’t be speaking of this. The agony spearing through her nerves, a conditioned response, told her it was deeply forbidden. But she wanted,
“Keep talking.” It was an order.
Part of her wanted to rebel, but she knew she’d pushed him too far—anything more might destroy this bond between them, this beautiful thing that had never been meant for someone so broken—but that she refused to give up. Max was
Max tapped the counter in front of her. Jerking up her head, she saw him holding out a hand. “Knife.”
She gave it to him, realizing the cucumber was now in hundreds of tiny, tiny squares. “Oh.”
No shrug, no smile that revealed the lean dimple in his cheek. The loss speared through her. She’d seen human and changeling women coax their men into smiles, but had never imagined she might one day need to do the same. Or that she’d so desperately want to. Getting off the stool, she wiped her hands on a towel. “Max —”
“No.” He pinned her with his gaze. “So help me, Sophie, I’m so fucking mad at you right now—” He blew out a breath. “Help me set the table.”
She gave in, aware for the first time that Max’s relentless will would, of course, translate into an inexorable kind of anger. Neither of them spoke again until they were seated across from each other, their meals in front of them. Morpheus appeared out of nowhere to sit on her feet.
“Don’t feed him,” Max said. “He’s getting fat.”
She gave him an innocent look even as she discreetly dropped a piece of bread for the cat—who seemed to have a strange predilection for it. “Of course not.”
A glint of amusement lit the cold fire in his eyes. “If”—he sat back, a tiger momentarily at rest—“anchors are usually cardinals, why are you doing their job?” His biceps drew her eye as he clasped his hands at the back of his head.
It was difficult to think past the compulsion she had to get up and peel Max’s T-shirt off his body, long- dormant instincts awakening to tell her that touch would reach him far faster and deeper than words ever could.
“You don’t get to play”—a low, dark voice—“until you’re straight with me. Then we’ll talk about punishment.”
Her toes curled. “Cardinals,” she managed to say through the crashing wave of need, “are rare, and cardinals who can be anchors are even rarer.” Agony spiked out of nowhere, wiping out the other sensations. There was, it seemed, one thread of conditioning still active in her—the Council did not like Psy speaking about the critical network of anchors.
“However, non-cardinal individuals can sometimes develop the ability to merge with the Net.” She gripped her knees tight in order to ride out the increasing waves of pain. “We’re not true anchors—more like . . . small weights on the net, helping to keep it in shape, in place. There aren’t enough true anchors to do everything.”
Morpheus patted her foot with a paw. Glad for the touch of reality, she snuck him another piece of bread as Max spoke. “Now
She blinked, having never thought of it that way. While she was still trying to figure out how the shortage
