Her eyes dipped to the straining bulge of his arousal. “You want to.”
“What we want”—a voice as unbending as stone—“isn’t always good for us.”
Hearing the finality in that, she swallowed the need that urged her to keep pushing. “Thank you for coming to me.”
“Are you going to be alright now?”
The truth came out before she could censor herself. “No.” Without the erotic shield of Dev’s kiss, fear was already crawling up her legs, creeping into her lungs.
He didn’t say a word, simply got up and nudged her over on the bed. She shifted with alacrity, feeling the mattress dip to his side as he lay down beside her seated form. He was, she noticed, wearing only a pair of sweatpants, his chest a lithely muscled plane sprinkled with dark hair. Fingers curling into her palms, she found her gaze dropping, following the trail that— “Come here.” He held up an arm.
Jerking up her head, she felt her cheeks burn.
“I don’t bite.”
She wasn’t so certain. This man, he confused her. As hard as he was beautiful, and yet capable of a gentleness that left her floundering. Now, he just watched her, let her make up her own mind. There was only one choice, only one place she wanted to be.
The erotically charged taste of him still in her mouth, she scooted over and laid her head down on his arm. It curled around her shoulders, curving her into his body. And the contact—hot, real, Dev—shoved the fear aside. When he pulled a sheet over them, she didn’t protest, tucking her head against his chest, her fingers curling into the crisp hairs on his chest. The last thing she was aware of was his heartbeat.
Dev brushed Katya’s hair off her cheek and studied her sleeping face, his eyes lingering on the lush sweetness of her mouth. Hunger and innocence, it was one hell of a potent combination. His body surged at the memory, defying his efforts to keep it under control. Gritting his teeth, he sought out all the metal in the house.
The cool kiss of iron and steel brushed his mind, invaded his limbs. It wouldn’t last long, not with Katya’s slight form resting trustingly against him—but he’d use the calm while he had it, see if he could find answers to some of his questions in the ShadowNet. He’d heard stories of the PsyNet, that it was an endless field of black littered with millions of white stars, each star representing a mind, but it was a concept he had trouble understanding.
How could minds remain completely separate?
Closing his physical eyes, he opened a psychic gateway and stepped out into the organized chaos of the ShadowNet. Given their comparatively small numbers, the “skies” of this psychic network were stretched thin in comparison to the endless breadth of the PsyNet, but it was a riot of color, of connections.
From where he stood, he could see the solid threads that tied him to both sets of grandparents—his bond with his maternal grandmother was the strongest, but he was linked indelibly to all four, and the two couples were also connected to each other, though those links were much weaker. More threads linked him to uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, some thin, some strong, some on the verge of breaking.
And then, there was the strange, almost invisible dark thread that tied him to his father.
All the crisscrossing bonds made the ShadowNet a busy place to navigate. Most people tended to follow the lines of connection until they found the person they wanted—sometimes even then, the lines were so tangled that it took a few tries to locate the right thread. But the one that Dev wanted stood out like a beacon—bright silver and tough as titanium.
His maternal grandmother took no shit from anyone.
Smiling inside at the thought of the woman he’d loved since the day he’d first opened his eyes and seen her watching over him, he shot along the silver thread and “knocked” on the door to her mind. She responded a moment later. Conversation in the ShadowNet itself was difficult because of the amount of psychic “noise,” so they both hooked into the emotional line that connected them, creating a direct conduit for speech—and affording unbreachable privacy.
“Devraj.” His grandmother’s energy was strong, beautiful, carrying within it the echoes of incense and spice, silica and molten heat. “A little late to come calling, beta.”
Only his grandmother ever called him “beloved child” in the language of his mother. “I figured you’d be up working on your designs.”
“The glass is becoming more and more stubborn with age. Today, I meant to finish a stained glass window except the red refused to cooperate. It turned orange instead.”
He was used to the way she spoke of her precious glass as if it were a sentient being. “You still haven’t sent me my birthday present.”