Squeezing the base of his p.e.n.i.s with a telekinetic ring, he reined in the driving urge to thrust inside her. "And my Sahara." Always his.

Sahara shivered and moved her hand down the concave slope of her stomach to splay her fingers over her navel. When she hesitated, he kissed her throat again. "No taboos."

Her hand ventured lower, the tips of her fingers disappearing under the creamy lace of her panties. Breath turning shallow at the visual stimuli that hit every single one of his pleasure centers, he watched her hand move under the lace as she stroked herself. His abdomen was rigid, his chest tight, the pleasure almost pain by the time she withdrew her fingers, the digits slick and shiny.

"Make me yours, Kaleb."

The throaty request, falling from lips plump and wet, snapped the ring of black ice. Slipping his hand under her thigh after repositioning his own, he spread her further and, tearing away her panties with a negligible use of his Tk, pushed inside her. She was tight. He was slow, deliberate. Moaning, Sahara dug her nails into his nape, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s flushed, her nipples lush beads he wanted to roll against his tongue.

Since he couldn't indulge in the latter, he covered one of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with a telekinetic hand, stroking down to squeeze her nipple. She clenched around him, her wetness molten. It took Kaleb's brain a microsecond to make the connection. Giving her neglected breast the same treatment, he rubbed at her c.l.i.toris with a phantom finger, while never faltering in the slow, steady rhythm of s.e.xual intercourse that had his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es drawn up tight against his body, the pain exquisite.

Sensing her body begin to tighten, he parted her l.a.b.i.a using telekinesis and squeezed her c.l.i.toris.

"Kaleb!" Sahara convulsed around his erection, her entire body shaking with the strength of her o.r.g.a.s.m.

Kaleb had intended to continue the slow pace that was an exercise in erotic control, but his brain short-circuited at the possessive clenching of Sahara's intimate muscles. Pushing her onto her front, her face turned sideways on the pillow, he fisted one hand tightly in her hair and slammed into her in a brutally deep and fast rhythm, her body tight and slick and of the woman who was and had always been his. It felt like madness, creeping red on the horizon.

Hurting her, the part of him that lived in the void screamed, I'm hurting her!

His muscles locked, his mind trying to force his body to pull out of her and failing. He didn't want to break the rawness of the connection, her skin as sweat-slick as his own, her body a hot, silken fist. "I'm hurting you," he managed to ground out.

"No, you're not!" Punching her fist on the pillow, Sahara undulated her lower body toward him. Move!

The feminine demand was the only thing he needed to hear. Pounding into her, he saw her fingers clench tight on the sheets, her lips part on a breathless cry, and then she was coming around him once more, the pulses harder, more viciously possessive. Caught in the vise of her pleasure, his back arched as white lightning tore through his spine.

The bed slammed back to the ground.

Hard.

So did every other item in the room.

SAHARA was attempting to gasp in air when a fragment of memory untangled itself from the vault.

"Did you steal this?"

"No. I earned it."

Her bracelet, she'd been talking of her bracelet with the man whose muscled body covered her back, both of them breathing as if they'd run a marathon. Never, she thought, had she asked him what he'd done to earn it; that wasn't a choice she had any intention of altering. Whatever price Kaleb had paid for the platinum that encircled her wrist, he had done so for her, and she would honor it.

His chest sliding against her back, Kaleb pushed up a fraction. Can you breathe?

No, but it has nothing to do with your weight. Come back. Fingers flexing as he obeyed, she released a shuddering exhale and tried to shape words with her mouth. It took her at least two minutes. "I want to do that again."

"I'm not sure our bodies can take it."

The icy tone made her toes curl-she knew full well he only went that cold with her when he was fighting to leash himself. Then he kissed her neck and she knew he'd lost the fight. To her shock, they did manage to have s.e.x again, her on her front, Kaleb's chest rubbing over her back, though he used his Tk to lessen the pressure of his weight. This time, it was slow and deep from start to finish.

"It feels like a full-body kiss," she whispered as her inner muscles began to clench in a quieter but no less potent pleasure.

Lips at her throat, Kaleb rocked her through the o.r.g.a.s.m, then filled her in a burst of liquid heat.

They were both drenched in sweat and sticky with s.e.x, but Sahara had no intention of moving. In fact, she wasn't certain her bones hadn't melted. So it was as well her lover was a cardinal Tk who could 'port them into the shower.

SHOWERED and dressed in fresh jeans and a soft pink cardigan from the closet she had in her original room, Sahara went hunting in the kitchen while Kaleb dressed in preparation for a comm meeting. The charcoal gray suit teamed with a steel blue shirt and charcoal tie was one of her favorites. There was something incredibly s.e.xy about a man so lethal that civilized dress only served to highlight the danger, not lessen it.

Discovering a stash of frozen meals he must've stocked for use after a high-calorie burn, she put several in the thermal device in the corner. The flavors would be bland by the standards outside the PsyNet, but right now, she could eat a small mammal. Stomach fluttering at the reminder of exactly how she'd used up the kilojoules, she was pouring piping hot pasta into a dish when Kaleb walked in, the fingers of his right hand slotting in his left cuff link.

Hair combed and tie knotted, no trace of pa.s.sion in his expression, he was Kaleb Krychek, cardinal Tk and former Councilor, once more. The transformation was so complete that it shook her, making her conscious of the level at which he could compartmentalize-and leaving her with the troubling question of exactly how much of himself he ever showed her.

Then he touched his finger to the arch of her cheekbone, and the fear splintered, because only her Kaleb touched her in that way.

Sitting down to eat, neither one of them spoke until they'd almost completed the meal.

"My father just came out of isolation," she said, having received the update while she was heating up the meals, relief a shuddering emotion inside her. "Anthony called."

"I can take you to him."

"Your meeting?"

A slight pause. "My aide is rescheduling it now."

Sahara wasn't the least surprised that Kaleb had put her first. He always did. "Thank you," she said through the painful burn of a tenderness she wasn't certain he'd ever accept. "But"-she met those incredible night-sky eyes-"I need to ask you a question first."

Kaleb dosed her water with a vitamin and mineral tablet. "Ask."

"How could you possibly not have been wiped out by what you did at the university?" Cardinals might be gifted, but their abilities were still finite. "You had enough energy left over to 'port us both to the other side of the world."

Waiting until she'd drunk half her fortified water, he said, "Do you know about the Amplification Effect?"

She shook her head and, because she didn't like the distance in his expression, reached out to tangle her fingers with his.

"Per the effect," he said, not repudiating the touch, "an individual with two midlevel abilities, for example 4.7 in telepathy and 3.9 in psychometry, can sometimes use one to amplify the strength of the other, pushing themselves into the 8 or higher range." He paused to finish a high-energy nutrient bar. "No one has ever considered if the effect would hold true if an individual had two cardinal-level abilities."

Sahara couldn't imagine the storm of his power. To be a cardinal was to be off the scale. To be a dual cardinal was incomprehensible. "What happens if you amplify?"

"My dual-cardinal status already makes me stronger than other cardinals, by an unknown factor." No arrogance, only cold fact. "I believe there must be a low level of unconscious amplification taking place at all times. That's why my abilities didn't flatline at the university, and have, in fact, never flatlined."

Teleporting away the wrapper of the nutrient bar, he said, "As a very young child, I once lifted the wreckage of a bullet train off a trapped survivor-even a cardinal child shouldn't have been capable of that."

Sahara struggled to understand what he was saying. "Have you ever consciously amplified your abilities?"

"As a test, yes. Amplification impacts my telekinesis, not my telepathy. I could conceivably reach the earth's core with the resulting power, destroy the planet from the inside out."

She had no words, not for a long time, her fingers twined with those of a man who held the fate of the world in his grasp. "Kaleb?"

He didn't answer, but she knew she held his attention.

"Promise me something."

"Yes?"

"That you won't destroy the Net." If he struck out, she knew it wouldn't be against the humans or the changelings, but against his own kind; against the ones who had taken her-and almost broken him.

"I told you," he responded in the same coolly pragmatic tone he'd used for the entirety of their conversation. "I've decided against it."

"That's not what I asked." She held the obsidian of his gaze. "I want you to promise to never destroy the Net." No matter what happened or didn't happen to her.

A pause filled with a thousand unspoken words . . . and the words he did speak, they made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck rise. "Some things need to be broken to become stronger."

Chapter 30.

"DO YOU THINK," she whispered, "that holds true for me?"

He went very, very still. "No. You should've never been hurt."

Something in those words, in the dead rage of his tone, made her mind open the doorway to a second vault hidden inside the first. She entered and flinched, a sea of viscous red spreading across her irises. Her breath caught in her throat, dots swam in front of her eyes . . . and Sahara realized she'd stopped breathing, her heart losing its rhythm.

A hand on the back of her neck, a man with eyes of obsidian on his haunches in front of her chair. "It's gone, done. He's dead."

He's dead.

Her lungs expanded in a rush of air, her subconscious understanding-reveling in-his words, even if her conscious mind did not. Her chest still hurt, shards of gla.s.s in her veins as she reached out to touch the hard line of his jaw. "Something bad happened to me, didn't it?" Worse than the captivity, worse than the torture after she created the labyrinth.

Kaleb knew he'd made a major tactical error. But he'd promised Sahara he'd never lie to her, so he said, "Yes," and waited.

"I'm not ready yet." Her hand fell to his shoulder. "Not strong enough yet. But I will be soon."

He had no doubts about that. "Do you want to go to your father now?" he asked, wanting her mind off the one subject that held the potential to destroy the bond between them.

If she ran, he hoped she would do as he'd asked and make sure she didn't leave him alive. Because without Sahara, the world would learn what a child became when his trainer wove nightmares into his mind-of knives slicing into flesh, of women begging for their lives-then put the blade into his hand.

"This is my legacy. You will continue what I have begun."

"Kaleb." Sahara's fingers in his hair, her eyes seeing too deep. "Don't leave me again. Don't go away."

She'd said those words to him before. And his answer, it was the same. "I won't. I'll always be here. For you." Only for her.

Her eyes mysterious with thoughts unvoiced, she stepped into his arms when he rose, her hold fierce. It was the greatest of ironies that the only person who had ever held him as if he mattered was the one person who did not need to hold him at all. If Sahara called, he would come.

Always.

"Let me take you to your father." Using Leon Kyriakus as the lock, he completed the transfer.

They came in beside the bed where Sahara's father lay surrounded by complex machines that regulated his body while he healed. Face crumpling, Sahara left Kaleb's arms to take the older man's hand, sinking into a chair placed beside the bed. "Father."

Eye on the small window that allowed the NightStar guard on watch outside to look in on occasion, Kaleb shifted out of view, positioning himself against the wall beside the old-fashioned inward-opening door. If the female-whom he identified from the back as a high-level telepath skilled in mental combat, her pet.i.te size distinctive among Anthony's most trusted security people-had spotted him during the 'port, Kaleb would've dealt with it. Since she hadn't, there was no cause to add further stress to the situation.

The guard proved herself by opening the door thirty seconds later, the ebony of her skin dulled by the pane of gla.s.s that lay between her and Kaleb. Clearly recognizing Sahara, the armed woman didn't dispute her right to be there, but asked, "The teleporter who brought you?"

"I have direct telepathic access to him. He'll take me back when it's time."

Satisfied with the soft-voiced answer, the guard closed the door behind herself and took up her sentinel position once more. Kaleb stayed in the shadows, thinking about the complexity of the lie Sahara had told-which wasn't a lie at all, simply a statement that invited the guard to draw the conclusion that the teleporter had departed the premises.

Sahara, with her intellect and her talent for shaping language to serve her needs, was much further along in her recovery than she realized. Today she'd shied from the bloodiest of the memories that connected them, but the clock was ticking down at rapid speed. Body and spirit, mind and heart, it was unlikely to be long before she faced the past with the same stubborn will that she had survived it.

He had known it would come down to this, to a day of final reckoning.

What he didn't know was if they would survive it.

SAHARA spent the majority of the next two days at her father's bedside, Vasic 'porting her in and out. The Arrow did the task with quick efficiency, but he made Sahara uncomfortable, his Silence a cold gray frost. Kaleb, however, threatened to cause too much friction with her family, and right now, she wanted the focus on her father; he'd woken up at last, was able to speak.

As well, Kaleb had a critical item on his agenda-hunting Pure Psy.

Sahara hugged her arms around herself as she stood on the landing outside her aerie, looking out into the falling dark of night at the end of the second day. She should've long since asked the question that continued to haunt her: Just how far would Kaleb go to seize control of the Net?

It made her sick to even consider that he'd work with Pure Psy, but if she looked at the situation through the filter of cold, hard logic, the partnership made perfect sense.

"Some things need to be broken to become stronger."

The fanatical group had proved itself skilled at destruction, and as evidenced by the single star on her bracelet, Kaleb had no loyalty to the PsyNet.

None.

She couldn't blame him for it-how could anyone expect a child to have faith in a system that had left him at the mercy of a monster? Now that tormented child was a deadly man, and though Sahara loved him in ways that tore at her soul, the aching resonance of old emotion tangling with the stark beauty of the fragile new trust that had grown between them, she also understood his choices might be untenable.

Yet when he came to her that night, she couldn't bear to ask the question. If she was wrong, it would wound him-and the wound would be all the worse because he'd encase it in black ice and refuse to acknowledge the damage. If she was right, it would force her to act in a way she never wanted to act. To erase Kaleb from the world . . . No, she didn't have the strength to face that choice.

A little more time, she bargained with herself. Only a few more days. Pure Psy will need to regroup after a major operation like the university strike. I have time yet to love him.

"I've drained the bounty account," he told her from his position leaning against the outer wall of the aerie, his tie off and his white shirt unb.u.t.toned at the collar. "The information will have already begun to leak. You're safe."

His protectiveness stabbed at her heart. If he had crossed the line, if she had to use her ability to end him, it would break her. And this time, she wouldn't come back. "That means I can leave the forest," she said around the rock in her throat. "No one in the wider world has any reason to recognize me."

Kaleb slipped one of his hands into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, the charcoal fabric sitting perfectly on shoulders that might yet bear the marks she'd made on his body two days before. "A means of defense," he said, having retrieved a sleek little gun. "This is considered one of the most dangerous weapons in the world, because even a child can point and shoot and hit his target." Showing her the controls, he handed it over. "Make sure the safety is on at all times unless you want to debilitate or kill."

Sahara forced herself to handle the deadly piece, knowing he was right. Her ability wouldn't protect her if an aggressor shot at her from a distance. "I expected you to attempt to stop me from leaving the protective zone inside DarkRiver land."