Play of Passion

CHAPTER 5

Sienna ran her hands self-consciously over her hair, wondering how badly Drew had messed it up. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” The words came out stiff, jerky. No matter how composed she was around everyone else—until more than one wolf in the den had called her an “old soul”—she got to Hawke and it all fell apart.

He rose to his feet, his desk between them. “We were done.” Ice blue eyes swept over her face . . . her cheeks—which she knew were ridiculously freckled after all the time she’d been spending out of doors.

“I didn’t know you and Drew were close.” It was a question phrased as a statement.

She fought the urge to cover up the cheeks he continued to stare at and shrugged—a very human or changeling motion, something she’d picked up after spending almost three years outside the PsyNet. Once, she wouldn’t have answered Hawke’s implied question, awaiting a direct query. But once, she’d been Silent, her emotions chilled like so much ice . . . not full of so much fire that it terrified her.

“Drew figures that since his sister is mated to my uncle,” she said, focusing on a spot beyond Hawke’s shoulder in an effort to regain her equilibrium, “that gives him the right to claim me as family.” She was a cardinal Psy, her psychic power blinding, but she still couldn’t figure out how Drew had snuck in under her defenses and made room for himself in her life. She just knew she’d miss him horribly if he ever left. “But,” she said, her voice stupidly breathy, “he says he’s not old enough to be an uncle, so he’s decided to treat me like another younger sister.”

Most people would’ve rolled their eyes at the convoluted reasoning, but Hawke simply nodded, as if it made perfect sense. Of course, to him, it probably did. The predatory changelings she knew were all big on family—and she had to admit, it was . . . nice to be treated with such easy affection by those she trusted. Drew understood that she was powerful, that she could cause incredible damage, and yet he continued to tease her as mercilessly as he did his real sister, Brenna.

Sometimes, Sienna even teased him back. Self-defense, she called it.

“Do you want permission to return to DarkRiver land?” Hawke asked, and his voice was as cool as Drew’s had been warm, shattering what stability she’d managed to recapture. But no, she thought, remembering what Sascha had told her the last time she’d spent the night in the home of the woman who was a fellow defector from the PsyNet—and an empath able to sense and heal emotional hurts.

No one can take from you what you don’t want to give. It is your choice.

And, she thought, steeling her spine, she chose not to let this strange compulsion toward a man who wasn’t interested, who would never be interested, break her. “I wanted to say thank you,” she said, controlling her volatile emotions by reciting a calming mantra she’d learned during her conditioning in the PsyNet, “for letting me spend so much time with the cats.”

Hawke finally walked out from behind that desk he always kept as an impassable wall between them. And that quickly, everything shifted, her shields trembling under the impact of him.

“Has it helped?” he asked.

“Yes.” She would not give in, not today. “My control over my abilities is far better.” Because he wasn’t constantly there, wasn’t breaking through her defenses with nothing but his presence. “Sascha and Faith have been helping me refine and strengthen my shields.”

“Faith?”

“F-Psy,” she said, referring to Faith’s ability to see the future, “have incredibly tough shields. And Faith’s recalibrated hers for maximum effectiveness.” For now, those same shields were giving Sienna a measure of peace.

Though now, today, her heart beat like that of a trapped rabbit against her ribs, her skin suddenly too tight over heated flesh.

Reaching out, Hawke touched the top of her right cheekbone. It was the barest graze . . . but it was the first time he’d touched her in over a year. Fractures cracked across her shields, sudden and vicious and threatening to shove her into the black abyss of her power.

Trembling, she stepped back. “Please don’t touch me.” Choked-out words.

Hawke curled his hand into a fist at Sienna’s near-silent command, his wolf snarling to get out, to teach this slender girl that he would not be rejected. “You have a cut there.”

Her fingers lifted to that cheek, a cheek that also bore a scattered spray of sun golden freckles she hadn’t had the last time they’d spoken. “Oh,” she said after a moment, “that must’ve been from when I was with Kit yesterday.”

His wolf pulled back its lips, baring the lethal sharpness of its canines. Kit was young, extremely dominant, and very close to Sienna in age. That didn’t mean he was right for her. “He hurt you?” It came out a cold question, his wolf gone predator-still.

Sienna’s eyes widened. “No. I wasn’t looking where I was going on the run back from a sparring session and I tripped.” An embarrassed look. “I’m never going to be as graceful as a changeling.”

Hawke said nothing, could say nothing, his mind filling with images of the young leopard male touching her, laughing with her as he helped her up from the earth. “How much longer are you planning to stay in the den?” He’d fought against her going to DarkRiver, but there was no arguing that she was far more stable now than she’d been before.

“A while longer. I miss Toby so much when I’m with the cats,” she said, referring to the little brother she loved with an intensity that was almost wolf in nature. “I also want to talk with Judd about some things to do with my abilities. But later this month, I’m going on a small hiking trip with Kit and a few other novice soldiers in DarkRiver.”

“Make sure you speak to Indigo so she can adjust your duties.” Hawke’s wolf was scraping at the insides of his skin now, his vision starting to blur. “And stay out of my way while you’re here.” The order came out harsh as the edge of a rusted blade.

Sienna’s face went white even as fury tightened the corners of her mouth. “Don’t worry. I didn’t come back to see you.”

Indigo stood with her back to the airport wall, waiting for Riaz to exit his gate. She’d already tracked down and spoken to all the teenagers on her half of the list, informing them they needed to be packed and ready to head out into the cold but spectacular beauty of the mountains in a couple of days’ time. The responses had ranged from gulps to outright glee.

She’d also had a message from Drew saying he was almost through his half of the list, too, but hadn’t actually seen him since the meeting with Hawke. That only fired up the burner on her anger—because if nothing else, she’d expected an apology for his behavior. Instead, he’d acted like nothing had happened. Idiot.

Scowling, she lifted her head just as Riaz appeared in the stream of passengers disembarking from the New York flight. At six feet two, he was taller than her by four inches and built along the lines of his solid grace in wolf form. It was all pure muscle—and Riaz knew how to use it well.

He scented her from the gate, teeth flashing white against his dusky skin as their eyes connected. “Hola, bella,” he said, dropping his bags on the floor and lifting her up in a powerful hug as she met him halfway.

Laughing, she kissed him on the jaw, feeling the rasp of stubble against her lips. “Hello, stranger. You back for good?”

“Depends who’s asking.” A lazy smile in those eyes that were such a pale brown as to be beaten gold. Unusual. And for most females, fascinating. He raised an eyebrow when she continued to stare. “Did I grow a second nose or something?”

Stepping out of the soap-and-earth-and-warmth of his embrace, she watched him pick up his bags. “No, but you’ve put on some more muscle.” It was a dodge. Because in truth, she’d been thinking something far different—that Riaz, with his jet-black hair and eyes of Spanish gold, was gorgeous and sexy and—very importantly—a dominant only just below her in the hierarchy. The difference wasn’t enough to bother her wolf. And they’d never had a problem with physical chemistry.

All facts to consider.

Riaz’s lips curved into a deeper smile as he hefted one duffel over his shoulder while gripping the other in his free hand. “So you noticed. Want to feel?”

“Sexy you might be; Don Juan you’re not.” Laughing at his affronted look, she led him to the vehicle, and they clambered inside after dumping his bags in the trunk. “How was Europe?”

“It was all pretty girls, flash hotels, five-star food,” he moaned, pushing back his seat as far as possible so he could stretch out those long, powerfully muscled legs. “I thought I’d go mad.”

Smile tugging at her lips, she waved her debit card at the parking gates, and they opened with a quiet swish. “Poor baby.”

Riaz said nothing for several minutes, putting down the window to let the wind ruffle his hair. “God, it’s good to be home, Indigo.” Heartfelt words, the homesickness of his wolf evident in every syllable. “I can’t wait to run through the forests, to walk in the den, to shoot the bull with the rest of you.”

“You’ve been back now and then.”

“I always knew I’d be leaving again,” the other lieutenant said, “so I never really gave myself a chance to settle. But now . . .” He exhaled, long and slow. “Anything I should know?”

“Riley’s gone to meet his mate’s grandparents.”

Riaz shook his head, that black-as-night hair whipping off his face as she accelerated. “I couldn’t believe he’d mated with a cat when I heard, but having met Mercy on my last trip home, I can say the man has excellent taste.” Another comfortable silence, then, “So, what was that at the airport about me being tall, dark, and irresistible?”

“I don’t recall using those words.”

Eyes of beaten gold met hers full-on for a single instant before she returned her gaze to the road, and he moved his hand to the back of her neck, massaging gently. It was a familiar and intimate touch. Unlike with Drew, her wolf allowed this one. Because Riaz had earned the wolf’s trust on that level, been given that right. He hadn’t simply tried to claim it the way Drew had—as if a few kisses gave him the prerogative to demand everything. Her hands clenched on the manual steering wheel.

“I’m not attached, Indigo,” Riaz said with a solemnity that struck her as somehow “wrong,” though she couldn’t put her finger on why. “So if you’re thinking you need someone with whom to work off the tension, I’m more than happy to oblige.”

Shoving away the memory of Drew’s kisses, the infuriating arrogance of his attempt to use her touch-hunger against her, she nodded slowly. “I’m thinking about it.”

It gutted Andrew, fucking eviscerated him, to see Indigo laughing with another man, a man who had no concept of the true value of the woman beside him. No, that was unfair. Riaz’s remarkable eyes sparked with intelligence, with respect, when he looked at Indigo. The male lieutenant understood exactly who she was.

Staying in his shadowed spot—in the back of the room where all the senior members of the pack had gathered to throw Riaz an impromptu welcome-home party—Andrew sucked on his beer and forced his attention off the couple on the other side—to something, anything, else.

He saw Hawke speaking with Elias and Yuki, glimpsed Sing-Liu playfully grabbing her mate’s ass, and—He blinked. Walker Lauren was here. That wasn’t a huge surprise, because though quiet, the Psy male had turned out to be a genius when it came to dealing with young hotheads, to the extent that Hawke had assigned him as the go-to man for the ten-to-thirteen-year-old crowd.

What held Andrew’s attention was the fact that Walker was standing very close to Lara, and from the expression on the healer’s fine-boned face, the way she was all but poking the much taller man in the chest, she was well and truly pissed. Walker’s own expression was more difficult to read, but—

Low female laughter. Intimate. Painfully familiar.

Clenching his jaw, he refused to turn, to watch.

“You look like you’ve been gut-punched.” Quiet words from a man who’d once been the shadow in the dark, the assassin you’d never see, never know about, until it was far too late.

Andrew glanced at his sister’s mate as Judd came to stand against the wall beside him. “I feel worse.”

Judd’s eyes were on the other side of the room—on the curious tableau presented by his older brother and Lara—but he spoke to Andrew. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

And that was why—in spite of the fact that the other male dared get into bed with Andrew’s beloved sister on a regular basis—Andrew liked Judd. “No, but I need to get the fuck out of here.”

Judd didn’t say anything, just put down his own drink and melted away in the direction of the door. Andrew followed, leaving his unfinished beer on a table in the corner as he walked out, refusing to torture himself any further. It had always been bad, seeing her interact with other men in a way she simply didn’t interact with him, but never like this—because he knew just how dangerous Riaz was to his own goals.

His senses told him there was nothing sexual between Indigo and Riaz . . . now. That last word was the operative one. Because the way Riaz looked at Indigo, the way she looked at him—they were considering it on some level. And if Andrew wasn’t careful, proximity alone might push them into making a decision that would rip Andrew’s heart into a thousand pieces.

“This way.” Judd nodded at a corridor that led eventually to one of the less utilized exits. Leaving through it, they walked out past the White Zone—the area closest to the den, where their young were free to play—and into the more densely forested area beyond. Sandwiched between the heavily guarded perimeter and the equally well-guarded entrance to the White Zone, it provided a massive range for adult and juvenile wolves to run in, play in, and come to find solitude.

Like now.

Silence was something Judd was good at, but after almost ten minutes of it, the Psy male glanced at Andrew. “If it was me,” he said, “I’d understand the need to walk alone. But you’re a social individual, one of the most popular people in SnowDancer.”

The unspoken question hung in the air between them.