Cipher

straddling his stomach was insane. “You’re too hot. My brain is going to overheat.”

Muscle flexed under her as he shifted slightly and gripped her hips. “Isn’t that the point?”

The fine hair on his arms tickled her palms as she touched him, sliding both hands up until they passed his shoulders and she was stretched over him, clutching the blankets on either side of his head. A position of power— if you were fool enough to think an alpha shapeshifter couldn’t dominate a lover from flat on his back.

She might be on top, but the need pulsing through her answered to him. Her body answered to him, held captive by empathy and her growing suspicion that some of the arousal turning her inside-out was coming from him, in spite of her shields.

He held her gaze and thrust up, and suspicions and shields were the last thing on her mind as the hard ridge of his erection rubbed against her. Instinct had her moving before she could stop, grinding down to chase the too-perfect pleasure that couldn’t possibly be twisting inside her already.

But it was. Her elbows gave out, and she sprawled across his bare chest, open mouth pressed to his shoulder. Moaning, she clenched her eyes shut, afraid to move. “I can’t come before you’ve barely touched me.”

He flipped her onto her back and stretched out over her, one knee between her legs. “You can come whenever you damn well please.”

It was permission, though she doubted he realized how imminent it might be. She drove her fingers into his hair and dragged his mouth to hers, kissing him with open-mouthed desperation, as if she could drown her terrifying lack of control in physical sensation.

Even as he kissed her in return, his knee pressed closer, rocking hard between her legs, and he murmured something into her mouth.

She couldn’t understand. She didn’t care. Her mouth fell away from his as she arched her head back, digging it into the mattress. She was practically riding his damn thigh, and opening her eyes was the final mistake. Andrew stared down at her, intense and hungry, eyes heavy-lidded and face flooded with passion.

For her. He wanted to see her pleasure. He wanted her to come.

Critical mental processes shut down as she dug her heels into the bed and lifted her hips. She arched one last time and gasped when his muscular leg rubbed against her clitoris in the perfect, perfect rhythm, right in time with the blood pounding in her ears.

Her empathy twisted sharply inside her, taking in his satisfaction in her responses and drowning her in it. She came with a scream, an honest-to-God cry that mixed surprise and pleasure, and she couldn’t find the wit to be embarrassed about it. Not when empathy had triggered a physical response so intense she wanted to scream again. All that was missing was touch, skin on skin, or— fuck, the actual act of fucking, him driving into her, taking her, claiming her.

Andrew groaned and buried his face against her shoulder, his body shaking. “Fuck—God—” White-hot ecstasy slammed into her, surreal because no physical reaction accompanied it. His orgasm, a desperate, intense fulfillment that fed her empathy, and realizing that he’d come roused her body until she trembled on the knife’s edge. One strong thrust of his hips set her off again.

She twisted. She writhed. She came hard, so damn hard her whole being shook with it, even as she ached, empty, craving him inside her to make this complete and beautiful and real.

“Fuck! ” He rolled off her and hit the bed, still shuddering, one arm thrown across his eyes. Relief and loss tumbled end over end as Kat gasped in a helpless breath that made the stars in her peripheral vision dance.

Slowly—too slowly—the chaos faded, leaving her limp and wrung out, sprawled across the bed fully clothed and more naked than she’d ever been in her life.

Suddenly, Andrew shot upright, leaving her staring at his rigid back as he spoke. “You okay?”

“I’m—” Humiliated. “I’m sor—” He cut her off. “Stop. You can’t apologize to me for this. It’s not right.”

Kat covered her face with hands that trembled. Too much, too fast, and now she had to confront the reasons why such an insane feedback loop could have happened with her shields locked firmly in place.

“You don’t understand.”

“Which part?” He laughed, a little desperately. “The empathy overload, or the part where I just came in my jeans?”

“Both. More. It’s…” Her body hummed as she sat up, her hands falling to her lap. “We need to talk.

About a lot of things. Things I should have told you before we—before this.”

He shook his head and eased off the bed. “I’m going to change. I’ll be back in a minute.”

As soon as the bathroom door closed behind him, Kat rolled from the bed and fought to smooth her clothing back into place. Her loose braid was disheveled, half-undone from his fingers. Tiny tingles danced up her spine at the memory of callused fingertips sliding against her neck as he tilted her head back and kissed her-Pleasure stirred, sluggish but terrifying in its quiet insistence. Andrew called to her body. He’d flipped her on. Short-circuited the gate governing her libido. Every input came back TRUE, and he didn’t even have to be in the damn room.

She couldn’t begin to fathom the reasons, but her terrified brain whispered one word, over and over in an endless loop. Imprinting. The only thing that made sense, and she didn’t know what was worse-imagining that it could be true, or having to tell Andrew.

Her gaze fell to the rumpled bedspread. If she did have to tell him, she couldn’t do it here. So she gathered the shreds of her courage, dragged herself to the marginally more innocuous territory of the couch, and waited.

He needed time more than anything else, so he jumped in the shower.

A cold one, since his body didn’t seem to have gotten the memo about recovery time and how he shouldn’t have a throbbing erection right after an orgasm, even if he was relatively young and virile.

That’s what you get for dry humping an empath, dumbass, he told himself viciously as he chattered under the frigid spray. A change of clothes and a cold shower. It sounded like the punch line to a bad joke, the kind that didn’t make anyone laugh.

His arousal had subsided by the time he climbed out, toweled off and dressed in clean clothes, but he took a moment anyway, because what came next was more unappealing than leaving the bathroom to talk to Kat.

He stared into the mirror and forced himself to go over the possibilities. She could tell him that it was a mistake, that a moment of horny weakness had made her stumble into his arms. Or— oh God—even worse, that it wasn’t right because she was still tangled up with Miguel Mendoza, though she’d talked like that shit was over.

Do it or quit, but you gotta pick one. Alec’s words, echoing in his head. Sound advice, except that he was pretty sure Alec would kick his ass for about a dozen different things he’d done in the last two days.

“Fuck it,” he whispered, and shoved open the bathroom door.

Kat was huddled on the couch in the other room, one leg tucked under her and the other foot bouncing nervously on the floor.

Her gaze landed on him for a split second before skittering away. “There’s so much stuff, I don’t know where to start. I don’t know how much you know about the creepy dark side of the psychic community.”

“What you’ve told me, or Derek.”

“Derek doesn’t know much of it. He couldn’t, or he really would have locked me in a closet until I was twenty. Empaths…” She dragged in a deep breath and let it out in a shaky sigh. “Lots of psychics are in danger during their formative years. Lots of us have powers that people would love to exploit. But empaths who don’t have fully developed protections are…vulnerable.”

It sounded like Ben’s warning. “Are you talking about the fact that there are people who would use them?”

“I’m talking about how people use us. If you get ahold of a strong receptive empath when they’re young, or you can manage to break an adult, we’re trainable. A patient person can make us love anyone, or anything. And I don’t mean make us think we love it. It’s real.”

“I don’t understand.”