The Psy-Changeling Collection (306 page)

“I want skin,” she dared confess, though she wasn’t certain she’d survive the sensual impact.

“Yeah?” Max bent his head, his breath hot against her cheek as he stroked his lips over her skin in a slow, sweet glide, his hand closing over her hip in a grip so proprietary, it felt akin to a brand.

“
Max
.” Her legs trembled with the effort to stay in place, to soak in the feel of him—hard and strong, an erotic temptation.

“Enough.” Max stepped back. “Next time, I get your mouth.”

Gripping the back of a chair, she swallowed, tried to find her voice. It was gone, lost in the rush of thunder that was her bloodstream. Her eyes met Max’s again, and she saw the glitter in his gaze, saw, too, the skin pulled tight over his jaw. “It can’t affect you like it does me,” she finally managed to say, her throat raw. “You must be used to it.”

“So another man would work just as well for you?”

The answer spilled out of her. “Only you.” A dangerous confession, but Sophia didn’t have time to play games. Bitterness threatened to rise in a sharp, acidic burst, but she crushed it, determined not to give in to useless anger. “Only ever you.”

Max sucked in a breath, swearing low in his throat. “Good—because I sure as hell am not the sharing kind.”
With that harsh statement of claim—and she understood that that was exactly what it was—he turned to the door. “I’ll be back in a second.”

Max leaned against
the wall outside the meeting room, his breath coming in jagged gulps. The cool air did little to clear the scent of Sophia from his lungs. She was nothing he’d ever expected, everything he wanted.

And she was Psy.

Just now, when he’d touched her, when she’d touched
him
, her eyes had drowned in black. No iris, no pupil, no whites, nothing but an endless spread of black. It had shaken him, not because he was afraid—but because it was a reminder of the gulf between them. He’d seen the PsyNet in her eyes, a vast emptiness that he could never enter, and she could never leave.

Sascha Duncan did
, his mind whispered.

The elevator doors opened on the heels of that thought, disgorging Quentin Gareth, one of the two men Max and Sophia hadn’t been able to initially identify on the security footage.

“Detective Shannon.” The male’s prematurely silver hair glinted under the overhead lights. “I was told you had questions for me.”

“Thanks for coming.” Pushing off the wall, he opened the door to find Sophia sitting in a chair on the other side of the table.

The distance did nothing to eliminate the thrumming tension between them, so thick and hotly sexual that Max wondered how Gareth could miss it.

“Detective,” the man said as soon as they were seated, “if this could be as fast as possible, I’d appreciate it. I’m scheduled to catch an airjet to Dubai.”

Max was aware of Gareth’s travel plans, but unlike with human criminals, Psy—especially Psy this high up in the power structure—were far less of a flight risk. Nikita could track Quentin Gareth across the PsyNet if it came down to
it. “How about you just run us through your meeting with the victim,” he said in a tone he kept casual. Maybe Psy didn’t feel, but from what he’d seen, they were very, very good at reading and manipulating those who did.

“Our meeting was prearranged, but Edward reconfirmed once he returned from Cairo. The meeting covered a number of general ideas for expansion—we wanted to talk before I got caught up with the Dubai negotiations and he with his own projects.”

Responding to Max’s questions, Gareth told them he knew of no reason why anyone would’ve targeted Edward Chan. Max ended the interview on that point. “We need deep background checks on all four possibles,” he said to Sophia after Gareth left. “My gut says Marsha is clean, but she could have a skeleton in her closet that leaves her open to blackmail.”

“I’m already working on it.” Her voice was husky, a rough caress, a reminder of the sensual fever that had almost consumed them earlier. “I have contacts in Justice who can do it under the radar.”

Max clenched his hand on the arm of his chair. “You know,” he murmured, needing to release the tension in some way, “I think this table is strong enough to take your weight. You never did tell me what you thought of boardroom sex.”

She jerked up her head, a slight flush on her cheeks. But she didn’t back down. “I think we’d need a stronger lock on the door—and I’m not sure I’d enjoy being pounded against a hard surface.”

The word “pounded” acted like an aphrodisiac, sending his good intentions all to hell. “Then you can ride me,” he said, his cock a steel rod in his pants. “The view”—he ran his gaze over her breasts—“would make me more than happy to be pounded.”

“Max,” Sophia said in a very tight voice, “if you don’t behave, I’ll—”

It was probably for the best that Andre Tulane, the final
individual on the surveillance footage, arrived then. He gave them the same basic story as Quentin Gareth.

“Any one of them could’ve done it,” Max said after the man left, “even Marsha. All she’d have needed was a couple of minutes while Sascha went to the bathroom.”

Sophia’s responding words were practical . . . even if her voice continued to rub across his skin in sweet, hot strokes. “Maybe. But according to my recollection of the interview with Sascha, they were together when she felt Edward die.”

Max frowned, thought back. “You’re right. I’ll confirm with Sascha in any case.”

Nodding, Sophia said, “We should listen to the audio made by DarkRiver.”

Taking out his cell phone, Max played the file. “Edward Chan’s bio said he grew up in France”—a sharpening of interest, the first scent of their prey—“so that’s got to be him. Which means Chan welcomed someone
back
into his apartment just prior to his death. The time stamp on this file fits the time line perfectly.” Getting up, he walked to lean back against the table beside Sophia, unable to resist running his finger down her arm. “The wording tends to clear Ryan Asquith, even if he is a telekinetic.”

She shivered but didn’t pull away, her hand dangerously close to his thigh. He wanted her to raise it, place it on him, go higher. Smothering a goan at the erotic image, he focused on her mouth instead. “Yes,” she said, her lips soft and lush, “Asquith only went inside the apartment at the end. But by the same token, he is the newest, least known member of Nikita’s staff.”

“Yes”—his own voice was sandpaper rough—“but he wasn’t working for her when the elevator charge was laid.” Remembering the note he’d written while she’d been out of the room earlier, he took it out of his pocket and dropped it into her bag, making certain to just barely brush the back of her hand. It was a silent continuance of their play, a dare.

Sophia parted her lips, but whatever she was going to say was lost as she sucked in a breath, a spread of black staining her eyes. “
Max
.”

Sophia felt herself
kicked into a memory retrieval with ruthless force. Except this was different. Not only the violence with which she’d been plunged into the memory, but her orientation within in. Usually, with other people’s memories, she saw what the individual in question had seen, looked through his or her eyes.

Here, it was as if she was an impartial observer, a third party wholly unconnected to the events playing out below—in what appeared to be a filthy alley crushed between two dirty tenement buildings.

They were children. Two boys. The dark haired one was painfully thin, his legs too long for his body, his eyes liquid dark in a face that was so beautiful, she knew he must’ve gotten teased for it—but he’d grown into that face, turned it savagely masculine with sheer strength of will. “You gotta stop this,” he said to the boy opposite him.

He smiled, that boy with his incredible lilac eyes and hair the color of ripe wheat turned to gold. If the first boy was beautiful, this one was a young god. His lips were flawlessly shaped, his skin porcelain, and his voice, when he spoke, as clear as the purest of bells. “Why?”

“Why?” The first boy, the boy Sophia knew, grabbed his friend’s arm, turning it over to reveal the ugliness of needle tracks. “If this is what it’s doing to you on the outside, what do you think it’s doing to you on the inside?”

The other boy smiled again and this time, Sophia caught it, that odd disconnection in his gaze, the stare of someone who wasn’t quite present. “It takes me flying, Maxie.”

“It’s fake.” Max’s hands on the other boy’s face, forcing the golden child to meet his gaze, his voice flint hard. “It’s just make-believe. You know that. When you crash, it hurts.”

A moment of strange clarity. “So what? What’s so good
about our life? Huh?” The golden child cupped Max’s face in turn. “One of her men tried to touch me last night.”

Cold rage turned Max’s expression to ice. “I’ll kill him.”

Truth, Sophia thought, that was the unvarnished truth.

“It’s okay. Mum screamed and kicked him out.” He pressed his forehead to Max’s in a painful kind of affection. “She protects me. Why doesn’t she protect you?”

Thin shoulders sagging for an instant. “I don’t know, River.”

A vivid blackness, a connection being cut, and Sophia felt air whistling into her lungs in a violent, biting rush.

“Sophie! Look at me.” Max’s hand on her cheek, a tactile shock that made her eyes snap open.

He dropped his hand at once, white lines bracketing his mouth. “Talk to me.”

“Not here.” Her throat was shredded, lined with a million splinters. “Get me home. Please, Max.”

And somehow, he did.

Her knees buckled the instant they were inside his apartment.

“I’ve got you.” Catching her up in his arms—and being careful to avoid any skin-to-skin contact—Max carried her to the sofa. But instead of setting her down, he took a seat with her in his lap. “Shh,” he said when she grew stiff. “Let me hold you.”

“Max—”

“I need to do this.” A fierce whisper.

When he did nothing except hold her, she relaxed, laying her head on his shoulder. It was so tempting to place her hand on his other shoulder, but he was only wearing a fine cotton shirt and she wasn’t sure if the barrier would be strong enough. Not after the impact of what she’d seen, and with him so warm and solid around her, the scent of him an unambiguously masculine blend of heat, soap, and a fresh pine that she knew was his aftershave.

Drawing it in, she sighed, melting into his embrace. She could have cuddled into him forever, but she had to know, had to ask. “Who is River?”

Max froze at the quiet question, his heart punching against his ribs so hard, he half expected to see blood dot his chest. “My younger brother.”

Sophia stilled within his arms, but her question, when it came, was practical. Psy. “You have clear markers of Asian descent, while he was unquestionably Caucasian.”

The logical query calmed him, gave him an anchor. “He looked—looks exactly like our mother.” River had been her shadow and her mirror. And in the end that knowledge had broken his brother. “We had different fathers. His was as blond as our mother.” While Max’s was an unknown, a man who’d given him only the genetic heritage of another culture. “No one ever believed we were brothers.” But they were. They’d come from the same womb, grown up in the same hell.

“Is he—” A pause, a long breath. “You wanted to use the past tense.”

Another stab of pain, but he didn’t tell her to drop the subject. It had been so long since he’d spoken of River to someone who’d known him—and somehow, he knew his J did. “River disappeared when I was almost fourteen and he was eleven. He was so lost in the drugs by then that I know he can’t have survived long . . . but part of me wakes up every morning hoping that when I open the door, I’ll see him on the other side.”

Sophia shifted position, her gloved hand rising to curve hesitantly over the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, Max. I didn’t mean to invade your memories.”

“I thought my shield—”

She shook her head. “Most telepaths who are born with the ability to be Js often also have some latent or weak F abilities.”

Max frowned. “Foreseers see the future.”

“Usually, yes. But there is a small subgroup that sees the past. It’s termed backsight.”

He knew she was talking so factually because she’d read his pain, was trying to distance him from it the only way she knew how, his vulnerable J with a heart that understood
how much memories could hurt. “You saw River in a flash of backsight.”

“Yes. It’s the first incident I’ve ever had.” Eyes haunted, she placed her hand on his shoulder. “If statistics hold true, that’s probably the single one I’ll ever experience.”

“You sound glad.”

“I’ve never felt so helpless,” she whispered.

“What did you see?” His heart twisted—there’d been no horror in her eyes, so perhaps she’d seen a slice of happiness.

“You and your brother in an alley. You were trying to talk him out of doing drugs.”

“I tried so many times.” Max dropped his head against her. “He was the one person I loved, the one person who mattered. But I couldn’t save him.”

“He was so young,” Sophia said.

“And damaged—so much that he couldn’t see any other way out.” Max wished he could go back in time, convince River that none of it was his fault. “He blamed himself for things over which he had no control.”

Her hand stroked his nape, soft, hesitant, but gaining in confidence. “He said . . . he said . . .”

And he knew she hadn’t missed out on the horror. “Tell me.”

“He said she didn’t protect you.”

The pain of the child he’d been speared through him. “It was as if my mother had two personalities.” One for each son. “As an adult, I know I could’ve done nothing to bring on the kind of hatred she felt toward me—but part of me still believes that I did something to make her treat me the way she did.” His voice broke.

Sophia’s breath whispered over his hair as she held him, as she, a woman born of a race with no emotion, gave him more affection than the woman who’d given birth to him.

CHAPTER 21

Sascha lay curled
up in bed around six that evening, tired though she’d done very little. But she didn’t feel the need to move—it was nice to lie surrounded by the warm, masculine scent of the panther who was her mate. Snuggling into his pillow, she opened up the text that was her own personal guidebook—and an endless source of frustration.