Kiss of Snow

Of course he’d ask. He was Walker. He took nothing for granted. “Any and all skin privileges you want,” she whispered, wanting no mistakes on that score.

Light green eyes met hers for a blazing instant before he closed the callused roughness of his hand over her calf, ran it up to cup the back of her knee. “So soft.”

Shivering, she reached down to tug at his hand. “It’s sensitive.”

He didn’t move. “Does it hurt?”

“No. The other kind of sensitive.” The kind that had her nipples peaking against the soft fabric of her dress.

“Then I’ll touch you there again later.” Sliding that hand up over her thigh, he flattened his other over her spine.

When he didn’t make any other move, she looked up, met his gaze. “Walker?” He was a dominant, notwithstanding the fact that he didn’t wear a wolf’s skin. Men like that didn’t hesitate once they had permission.

“This”—a squeeze of her thigh that had her stomach tensing—“isn’t the only kind of intimacy, is it, Lara?”

Always, he surprised her, this man. “No,” she whispered, stroking her fingers up over his nape and into his hair.

“Will you tell me about your parents?”

Her heart twisted into a thousand knots at the quiet, powerful request. This wasn’t how she’d imagined the night would go. It was a thousand times better. “You know my father is Mack, the senior tech in charge of the hydro plant.”

“And your mother is Aisha,” he said at once, “one of the chief cooks.”

“Yes. They’re wonderful.” Smart and loving and devoted, both to each other and Lara. “Though my mother despairs of my cooking skills.”

“I know. Aisha’s the one who makes up the plates I bring you.” A spark of unexpected humor in that stunning green. “We get along very well—possibly because we’re in agreement on the fact that bullying you into taking care of yourself is not only acceptable, but necessary.”

It startled a laugh out of her to think of her vibrant, chatterbox of a mother and thoughtful, intense Walker as conspirators. “I wondered how you knew all my favorite dishes!” Wolf happy at the knowledge that the people she loved liked each other, she feathered her fingers through the hair that brushed his nape. “What about you?” she asked, so content in this moment that it hurt.

“Though the births were spread out over fourteen years, Judd, Kristine, and I were full siblings,” he said, running his fingers over her thigh. The caress made her suck in a breath, but she didn’t push for sexual skin privileges. Not now, when Walker was opening up to her in a way she’d never expected. “It made logical sense since the combination of maternal and paternal DNA kept creating high-Gradient offspring.”

“It sounds . . . but I guess that’s the way it is in the Net.”

“Yes. My daughter was conceived by the same method.”

But not brought up in the cold, Lara thought. Marlee had always been a child confident in her father’s protection and love, even when they’d first defected. “You’re a good father, Walker,” she said, placing her free hand on his cheek. “You understand children.”

Shadows moved across those rugged features. “That’s why they put me in charge of the telepathic children drafted into the Arrow Squad.”

Lara wasn’t shocked. Part of her had always known he’d been no ordinary teacher. Linking her arms around his neck, she leaned her head against his shoulder and said, “I’m here.”

As the minutes passed, Walker relaxed against the sofa, his hand smoothing up and down her back. Then he began to speak, telling her of being taken from his classroom as a twenty-two-year-old barely out of college and assigned to a school that offered intense one-on-one sessions to its students. “Ages four to ten,” he said. “I didn’t know then that the children were apprentice Arrows, but I saw at once why they’d been segregated, understood that they needed dedicated training.”

Lara didn’t know much about Arrows, but she knew Judd had been one, and so she could guess. “Their strength was dangerous.”

“Yes.” He tugged her closer, his hand rubbing the sensitive skin of her thigh. “I had no problem with my reassignment, with helping the children harness their abilities.”

She nuzzled at him, the act affectionate, nonsexual. “Something changed.”

Leaning into the tiny kisses she brushed over his neck, he said, “Day by day, I began to see the light go out of my students’ eyes in a way that was more profound than could be attributed to the Protocol.” The hand on her back slid down to clench on her hip, hard enough that she knew he wasn’t aware of it. “Then I began to notice how many of them missed a day or two for medical reasons.”

Lara’s eyes burned, her healer’s heart able to guess what was coming.

“Arrows are taught from childhood not to feel pain,” he continued. “The easiest way to do that is to put them through such excruciating pain that the mind learns to shut it out. The side effect, of course, is that it turns them into merciless killers.”