Cipher (8 page)

She hadn’t expected her powers to recharge so quickly. After a burnout it could take days for them to come back online at full strength. Kat reinforced her shields to be safe, but didn’t move. She barely breathed. “I know better than to poke a shapeshifter when he’s asleep. It’s my fault.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Something inside her broke at the utter lack of self-forgiveness in his eyes. He looked exhausted. Worn out. “I was just going to let you know that I’m ordering some room service…and that you can take the bed. I’ll fit on the couch better than you do.”

He rubbed both hands through his hair and stood. “It’s a king. Plenty big enough for both of us.”

Share a bed with him? If she’d had a masochistic streak, maybe. Or if he was going to sleep in a parka. Fear had a funny way of waking up all of her nerves, and a lot of them seemed to be tracing the memory of his chest under her palms.

Which made her feel warm—and she could only hope it wasn’t an obvious kind of warm. “We’ll figure it out. You need to eat something before you go back to sleep. Wanna look at the room-service menu?”

Andrew shook his head. “Whatever you get is fine. I’m not picky.”

Kat swallowed and eased herself upright, then rose to her feet. “Okay, but if you leave me to my own devices, I’m ordering like, every expensive dessert on the menu.”

His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Two for me.”

Maybe that was how she looked when she was shaking and scared that her empathy was a weapon that would destroy the people she loved. Not the mirror she’d expected to look into, but a powerful one.

So she did what he’d done. Reached up and framed his face with her hands, and shivered at the texture of his beard against her palms. “I will never be afraid of you, Andrew Callaghan.”

His chest heaved with shaking breaths, and he groaned as he grabbed her wrists. “It’s dangerous, Kat.
I’m
dangerous.”

“So am I.” She swiped her thumbs over his cheeks and willed him to believe the same words he’d told her the day before. “Andrew, I’m still mostly burned out, and you’ve got strong shields for someone who’s not a psychic. But I couldn’t just hurt you—I could destroy you. I could drive you to your knees and make you crawl for me. I could take away everything you are.”

He closed his eyes, but he didn’t release her. “Then that makes this a doubly bad idea.”

Andrew was going to walk away from her again, and the tense parts of her that had started to unwind over the last few days would shatter. The only way to save anything was to let him go before he came up with a polite, stilted reason. “I understand.”

“No. No, you really don’t.”

He bent his head and kissed her.

The world stopped.

His lips were warm. Firm. As firm as the fingers locked around her wrists, holding her hands to his face. She’d played out this moment in a thousand girlish daydreams and more than one guilty adult fantasy, and imagination hadn’t provided the little details. The heat of his body, the strength of his grip, the way she melted, like chocolate left in the July sun, and from nothing but that innocent contact.

His lips, on hers. Parting, and oh
God
, he knew how to kiss, like he was hungry, like he loved the taste of her, and Kat became mortally certain that her knees were going to give out if he got his tongue in on the action. Her body throbbed with the rhythm of his mouth moving on hers, until she was one exposed nerve, and she would have begged him to touch her anywhere—everywhere—if she wouldn’t have had to stop kissing him.

When he released her wrists, it was only to grip her hips and lift her, mold her to his body, and she moaned her gratitude. He was harder than he looked, an unforgiving wall of muscle and smooth skin, so distracting and arousing that she didn’t realize they were moving until he stepped over the threshold.

Into the bedroom.

“Open,” he rasped, and lowered her to the bed.

Her back touched the mattress—gentle, so damn gentle—and Andrew stretched out over her, shirtless and beautiful, and her brain fritzed out like a fried circuit board as she obeyed and parted her lips.

He touched them with his tongue, a soft sweep of one lip and then the other, and kissed her again, deeper, one hand winding in her hair. That stirred old memories, brought to life every unacceptable fantasy she’d had of their anger and hurt and longing all coalescing into a dark passion that would satisfy her body even as it cut her heart to pieces.

But there was no darkness in the grip of his hand, just a gentle control, a sweet hint of dominance that barely deserved the description, but thrilled her anyway. The throbbing was back, magnified into an ache that pulsed in time with the stroke of his tongue. Every time she tried to catch a breath it escaped in tiny, helpless noises that would have embarrassed her if she hadn’t been burning alive.

He dragged his mouth to her chin and then her throat, nipping lightly when she tilted back her head. The scrape of his teeth curled her toes, and the sheer insanity of the way her body reacted splintered fear through her.

She fisted both hands in his hair and dragged his head back, panting for breath. “What are we doing? Are we—”

He panted too, his eyes glazed with pleasure and need. “Are we what?”

If she let him keep touching her, she’d fly apart before she got her pants off. “We can’t do this without talking about it. Sex with an empath as strong as I am—it’s not that simple. I could hurt you. Hurt
both
of us.”

Andrew’s chest rumbled, as if a growl formed that he didn’t quite voice. Then he rolled away. “I didn’t think.”

Disappointment made her voice shake. “You shouldn’t have to. It wouldn’t be that bad if you were anyone else…but with you I’m—I’ve got—” She covered her face with her hands, and now she was disappointed and embarrassed. “My empathy might as well be hardwired into my sexual responses. Is there a girl version of premature ejaculation?”

He choked on a snort. “I don’t think anyone minds it, usually.”

Maybe her violent reactions had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with chemistry. Maybe wanting Andrew so long had built a tension that would make even innocent touches feel fantastic. Maybe she was in denial.

Maybe she didn’t care.

The room seemed too warm as she rolled to her knees. Andrew had his hand over his face, which made asking the question a lot easier. “If it gets too overwhelming…can we stop?”

He rolled to his side, propped on one elbow, and studied her, his expression intense. “We can stop whenever you want. Whenever you need to.”

Christ, she was a teenager, making rules about where her prom date could touch her while they groped in the back of his car. Except she’d never gone to prom. She’d been sixteen her senior year, struggling with the violent surges in power that made puberty a worse nightmare for a psychic than for the average hormone-riddled teen.

And Andrew—Andrew was
not
a teenage boy. He was six-foot-something of shapeshifter alpha bastard who had to have his share of instinctive needs. “That’s not going to drive you crazy?”

“I have two hands, Kat,” he reminded her. “I can take care of things myself.”

It was not remotely okay to pause and savor that image, but she couldn’t stop herself. Andrew, stretched out, his face slack with pleasure, the muscles in his arm flexing as he curled his fingers around—

She slapped her hands over her face and actually whimpered. “That was mean.”

“Was it?”

Anything else she said would reveal her newly formed and overwhelming need to watch him and his two hands take care of things. So she leaned down and kissed him again.

He held the back of her head and fit his mouth to hers, slow this time. Easy. A gentle kiss from a controlled man trying to make her feel safe, with no clue that his tender protectiveness turned her inside out.

If her empathy had been at full power, she would have come when he stroked his hand from her hair to her collarbone, and then down to her breast. She moaned, imagining how much hotter his callused fingertips would be against her suddenly tight nipples.

Not that the silly butterfly tank top offered much protection. Kat shuddered and tore her mouth free of his, then shoved at his shoulders until he rolled onto his back. Sliding one leg over his body was reckless, and 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.