Heart of Obsidian

“There’s been no breach.” A pause before he shifted to face her, one of his hands lightly cupping the side of her jaw, his eyes a black inferno. “I want more.”


Caught off guard at the realization that his arousal hadn’t been tempered by the interruption, Sahara’s lips parted in a gasp. Kaleb took the silent invitation, his mouth on hers as he pressed her back to the glass, his erection pushing into her abdomen in hard demand. Moaning, she sucked on his tongue as his hand came up to cover her breast . . . and the world turned to shards of glass, the windows exploding in a glittering shower of deadly snow.



*



KALEB had Sahara out on the terrace before she could be hit by a single splinter of glass. Her eyes huge, she watched the glass collide in the middle of the room before the shards fell to the floor in an oddly musical crash. Ignoring the sight, Kaleb found his gaze locked on the slick wetness of her lips.

A single thought and he could have them in the bedroom, could have her naked, the skin-to-skin contact total.

“You’re bleeding.” Sahara’s fingertips skated over his shoulders, where he’d been hit by a few stray splinters.

Blood. She had bled more than he’d thought possible.

The cold whisper of memory succeeded in doing what the glass hadn’t, reminding him of the damage that could be done by an out-of-control Tk. Forcing his fingers to release her arms, he turned away to look out through the bars of the railing and into the gorge, the air cool against his skin, the sun not yet at full strength.

With each breath came another piece of reason. Both his PsyNet and personal shielding, he saw when he checked on them, were over half-gone. They hadn’t collapsed—they had exploded one by one, going outward from his core. Not a fatal failure, three of his outer shields holding firm . . . but close. Closer than he’d come since he was a child.

A few more minutes and his abilities would’ve gone rogue.

“This is dangerous.” Sahara came to stand beside him, but she didn’t attempt to touch, leaving enough distance between them to prevent accidental contact. “For both of us.”

Already rebuilding his shields, Kaleb reached out to grip the iron bars, his arms spread wide. “You were never at risk.” The obsidian shield he’d placed around her was impregnable.

That very impermeability was the reason he couldn’t go obsidian himself. It would leave him cut off from the data streams of the Net, a deadly blindness. Now, his renewed shields fractured before reaching maximum strength, Sahara’s proximity problematic. Fixing an isolated location in his mind, he said, “I’ll return in an hour,” and teleported out.



*



SAHARA didn’t attempt to stop Kaleb, the glitter of glass when she turned to look into the living room proof enough of why he needed to distance himself from her. Staring at the sunlight as it was refracted by the shards, creating beauty out of destruction, she leaned her back against the iron bars that encircled the terrace.

“You were never at risk.”

“Wasn’t I?” she whispered, thinking of the madness of her surrender. Even after recognizing how far he walked in the darkness, even after hearing the chill inhumanity in his voice, even after seeing the calculation in his gaze before he kissed her, she had given in to the rage of need that lived inside her.

And in him.

Kaleb may have begun the kiss with a calculated motive—but he had been her partner in the madness by the end, his body as aroused as her own, his mind as enslaved as hers. Fingers trembling, she pushed back her hair and took a seat on the lounger, her eyes trained on the smooth wooden planks that made up the terrace. It wasn’t healthy, this obsessive need she had for Kaleb, not when her trust in him was born of a past she couldn’t consciously remember.

Even more, when she didn’t know who she was, who she’d become.

She was still there when Kaleb returned, walking onto the terrace through the doors of his study. It was clear he’d showered, washing off the blood and sweat both. His hair was in place, his suit pants a crisp black, the same color as the silk tie at his throat, a fresh white shirt covering his upper body. He hadn’t folded back the sleeves as he often did at home. Instead, cuff links glinted at his wrists.

The mask was back in place.

“I’ve organized damage repair,” he said to her, sliding his hands into the pockets of his pants. “I’ll need to relocate you for a few hours tomorrow to give the human crew time to get the work done.”

Sahara, her body in a kind of shock at the rawness of what had passed, tried to find some hint of the same in Kaleb and failed. “Aren’t you afraid they’ll sell information about your home?”

“No.” It was said with the brutal confidence of a man who knew he scared people far more than could be alleviated by any monetary incentive.