Tangle of Need

Chapter 46

“RIAZ.” IT WAS a warning, her claws slicing into the sheets.

Chuckling, he laved a kiss on her nape and—to her surprise—obeyed her unspoken demand, rising onto his haunches, his thighs on either side of her hips. Just when she was about to turn over, he put his hands on her back and began to massage downward from her shoulders, his hands strong, his fingers knowing. She moaned.

By the time he got to the base of her spine, she’d given up even the vaguest thoughts of rebellion. “You have two dimples here.” A wet, luscious kiss to each that made her moan.

Apparently fascinated by the spot, he licked each dimple, rubbed his cheek against her skin. “I shaved especially for you.”

Her toes curled. “I appreciate it.” Though she was in no way averse to the rough scrape of his stubble, it melted her that he’d taken the time.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get my payment.”

Her heart thudded, every inch of her very aware she was in bed with a big, dangerous wolf who wanted to do distinctly erotic things to her. When he lifted his head, silken strands of hair sliding over her skin, she expected him to get off the bed, remove his jeans, but he stayed in place, moving his hand down to shape and caress her lower curves. “I can scent you, so wet and ready.”

The musk of the woman beneath him acted as a drug on Riaz’s senses, the slickness of her pure provocation when he circled the entrance to her body with a single finger.

“Riaz.” Not a warning this time. An invitation, her sweet curves rising to follow his touch.

Loving her so soft and pleasured, he shifted to kneel lower down her body, unzipping and shoving his jeans down enough to release his cock with a hiss of pleasure-pain. Squeezing his turgid flesh, he fought for control, found enough to caress his hands over her hips. “Up, Empress.”

“Empress?” She brought up her knees in a fluid slide, rising so her back pressed into his chest at the same moment.

The blunt head of his cock already bathed in her slickness, he simply flexed his hips and pushed into her with slow, exquisitely pleasurable deliberation. “Queen,” he grit out, fingers digging into her hips, “doesn’t seem enough.”

“Sweet talker.” His lover’s nails made tiny half-moon crescents on his thighs, her breathing ragged, her back arched, thrusting her breasts forward in sensual display.

Growling, he reached around to close his hands over the plump mounds. “Do what you will.”

She moved on him, squeezing and releasing, and he knew he wasn’t going to last much longer. Flicking one taut nipple in a way that always made her clench around him, he slid a hand down to fondle and tease the slippery nub of her clitoris.

“Riaz!” She spasmed around him in a burst of molten pleasure that ripped a scream out of her. But when she tried to ride him to completion, he dropped his free hand to grip her thigh, halting her.

“You’re my toy, remember?” This wasn’t just about sex, and he wouldn’t allow her to forget it.

“Then play with me.” She turned her face to demand a kiss.

Pleased at her trust, he gave her that kiss, and more, petting and caressing and indulging before he dropped his hand to her clit again. Playing with the hard little bundle of nerves until she was grinding her body against him in wild need, her breasts heavy and sensitive to his every touch, he took hold of her hips.

“Slow”—he lifted her off his cock, teeth clenched against the need to pound—“and deep”—he slid her back down to her long, hot moan—“and so wet.”

This time he lifted her until the head of his cock popped out. Pushing past her passion-swollen entrance made her come around him, her muscles clamping down in feminine demand. Hands rising to squeeze her breasts, he thrust deep, riding out the hot pulses of her pleasure. But he couldn’t come, not yet. Kissing her nape, he stroked his hands down her body to push her gently forward.

Ending up on her forearms, she shot him an amber-eyed look over the shoulder he’d bitten, her eyes hazy. That’s how he wanted her today. Pleasured and marked and knowing exactly who held the reins. Because while Adria was a dominant, she couldn’t be one in this bed. It would never work, not for either of them.

Fisting his hand lightly in her hair, he held her gaze as he pulled out, thrust again. And again. And again. Until she screamed and orgasmed so hard around him that her entire body trembled. Only then did he surrender, the orgasm all but ripping him in two.

HAVING left Naya with Lucas at the Chinatown office, Sascha glanced at the jaguar who’d driven her up when he brought the SUV to a stop near the den at around a quarter to six that night. “I think,” she said, “we all agree I no longer need a bodyguard here.” It was an implied question.

“It’s not about trust,” Vaughn responded. “It’s about showing strength. Our alliance doesn’t change the fact that we’re two predatory changeling packs.”

Sascha felt her lips curve into a rueful smile. “Just when I think I know everything there is to know about changelings.”

The amber-blond male wasn’t one of the more tactile sentinels, his reserve part of his nature, but now he rubbed his knuckles against her cheek. “Don’t worry, we won’t take back your pack membership.”

Laughing at the sly feline humor, she got out of the vehicle, her telepathic senses alerting her to the fact they were being watched the en-tire way to the den. Another show of strength, a quiet reminder that SnowDancer had its lethal reputation for a reason. Lara met them at the entrance, her corkscrew curls in a ponytail, the pale lemon yellow of her shirt skimming the curves of her body. “It’s good to see you.” The healer embraced Sascha with a warmth that was genuine.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to make it earlier.” An issue had arisen with a juvenile, something she’d had to handle in her position as mate to the alpha. “The spike in Alice’s level of consciousness?”

“Slight but holding.” Stepping back, Lara smiled at Vaughn, the fox brown of her gaze warm in the way of healers—of all the people in a pack, they were the only ones who had no trouble interacting with, or being welcomed by, other packs, even those who might otherwise be the enemy. “Hello, Vaughn. How’s Faith?”

“She wanted me to thank you for the photos you sent.”

Lara waved away his words. “She saved the lives of those pups with her prediction—she’s got a claim on them now.”

A quiet nod from Vaughn.

“Do you want to come with us, or head out to catch up with the soldiers?”

“I’ll come.”

Nodding, Lara led them to the infirmary, updating Sascha on Alice’s most recent readings as she did so. “The single bit of good news,” she said as they walked into the infirmary, “is that minor shift in her level of consciousness, but it is so small we have to accept it could be a natural fluctuation.” She gestured to the open door of a patient room. “Alice’s.”

“I’ll wait here,” Vaughn said, taking a watchful position outside the door.

Leaving the jaguar to his post, Sascha followed Lara inside. As always, Alice lay silent, her body covered by a soft sheet, her skull by a fine computronic skullcap that monitored her cerebral functions, while a number of other thin tubes ran out of her body. However, she was breathing on her own, her chest rising and falling in so gentle a rhythm, it would’ve been easy to miss had the rest of her not been so very motionless.

Sascha’s attention locked on the fine bones of Alice’s face. Marked by faint lines of tension, that face wasn’t peaceful in repose, as if Alice was fighting from within, struggling to get out. “I can sense her. The emotional resonance is faint, but it is there.” Sascha intended to strengthen it even further, having been mentally honing her ability to amplify, after reading about the technique in the groundbreaking book Alice had written more than a hundred years ago.

One of the strongest and most unique gifts of a cardinal empath is the ability to dampen emotions. This study has briefly mentioned how that ability can be—and has been—utilized to control riots, but the same skill can be used in reverse to heighten emotions. However, the latter usage has the effect of draining the E, and even cardinals can only actively maintain it for a span of minutes, ranging from three to seven.

Alice hadn’t described how E abilities worked on the psychic level, the thrust of her thesis more an anthropological study on empaths as a designation. As a result, Sascha had been left with tantalizing clues but no practical guidance. When she had first tried to control a volunteer “crowd,” she’d exhausted herself in minutes.

Only later had she realized she’d actually been attempting to force emotion into the crowd rather than dampening their own. It had been a start. While she still hadn’t cracked how to dampen emotions, she did think she could heighten them. “I wish I had a teacher instead of stumbling about in the dark.” It frustrated her at times like this, the power within her that she had no idea how to shape.

“You already know more than any other E-Psy on the planet—give yourself a little more time.” Squeezing Sascha’s arm, Lara moved to the control panel at the end of the bed. “The readings don’t show any problems. You can start whenever you’re ready.”

Exhaling quietly to center herself, Sascha took one of Alice’s thin, pallid hands in her own and closed her eyes. However, before she could begin, she had to identify the other emotions that lingered in the vicinity so she could establish a baseline: Lara’s intense focus, her concern; Vaughn’s alert watchfulness and curiosity; the tenor of a deep friendship emanating from two changelings in another patient room.

Baseline laid, she narrowed her attention to Alice.

Frustration.

Clean, clear but so faint she had to strain to sense it. Isolating the emotion with meticulous care, Sascha began to do what she’d theorized. Instead of bluntly pushing emotion into Alice, she instead “hummed” an emotional note that resonated with Alice’s frustration.

If it worked as she thought it should, it would change the depth of Alice’s frustration, bring it to the surface of her consciousness. Once there, it should continue to resonate at the higher frequency, stimulating Alice’s mind until the human woman had the strength to break free. Sascha didn’t know how long she’d been humming the note, changing the psychic range to find the perfect pitch, when something “clicked.”

“I’m seeing a blip.” Lara’s quietly excited voice came from a distance. “I think it’s working.”

TWO days after their return from Venice, and Adria had no idea what she was doing about to walk into the Delgado house in San Diego. Riaz had caught her around four that afternoon, just after she’d completed her second session with a unit of Indigo’s novices who wanted to learn the style of martial arts at which Adria was proficient. Sienna Lauren, who’d been the first to sign up, was turning out to be well suited to the discipline.

“It’s the underlying order of it,” the young woman had said. “I like the fact the entire art is built on a base of hundreds of set moves that the fighter puts together in unexpected ways.”

It was Sienna she’d been chatting with when Riaz appeared on the edge of the outdoor training area. “I managed to get two tickets on the high-speed train to San Diego,” he’d said when the younger woman had taken her leave. “Departing in two hours.”

Startled, it had taken her a moment to figure out what he meant. “We can’t take off again so soon after Venice,” she’d said, heart in her throat.

“Return trip tonight—we’ll get back into the den around two a.m. You’re done for the day, right?”

“Yes, but I was planning to catch up on some paperwork.” Like all dominants in charge of minors, she made sure to keep their parents updated with weekly reports.

“Do it on the train.” He’d tapped her cheek with his finger. “Come on, Empress. I want you to meet my family.”

She’d been hit sideways by the emotional import of the request—the fact Riaz had invited her so close to the heart of his personal pack … it made a thousand butterflies awaken in her stomach.

“The gardens are stunning,” she commented now as they stepped out of the taxi, one hand unobtrusively on her abdomen in an effort to soothe the fluttering within.

“You have wonderful taste, dear!” The same small, curvy woman she’d seen at Hawke and Sienna’s mating ceremony appeared unexpectedly from around the side of a sprawling rosebush, hands held out and a huge smile wreathing her face. “I’m so glad to meet you, Adria.”

Adria leaned down to accept Abigail Delgado’s hug, the scent of her a mix of spices she couldn’t name and a sweet floral note. “Me, too,” she said, suddenly tongue-tied.

When Abigail stepped back, Adria looked up to see Riaz, dressed in jeans and a chocolate dark shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, being hugged by a tall man who had such strikingly similar features it was clear they were father and son. The only difference was that the thick black of Jorge Delgado’s hair was faintly threaded with silver, the fine lines at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth adding a quiet depth of character. “God,” she said without thinking, “Riaz is going to get even more beautiful as he grows older.”

Abigail’s delighted laugh made Adria color, but Riaz’s mother tucked Adria’s arm into her own and squeezed. “It’s a terrible cross we have to bear, sweetheart.”

Meeting those twinkling eyes at the whisper, Adria burst out laughing, the butterflies taking flight to leave her wolf happy on an elemental level. Later that night, when Riaz tucked her to his side as the train punched through the opaque veil of night, she knew the dinner had been akin to the possessive dominance of his loving after Venice—her lone wolf was claiming her in his own quiet, determined, and inexorable way.

Her heart stuttered, jubilant and terrified in equal measures.