He took her bag and slung it over his own shoulder. “It’ll work out, Kat.”
She smiled, and he couldn’t tell if she was lying when she said, “I know.”
Andrew was building things.
Fresh from the shower, Kat followed the faint noises down the stark, undecorated corridors of the Southeast council headquarters’ third floor. Cleaning up and converting Alec’s newly purchased warehouse had taken second priority after reestablishing the supernatural clinic last year, but signs of renovations were everywhere. She hadn’t wandered during her last stay, but now she passed several clean rooms with fresh coats of paint before finding Andrew and Julio.
Julio was nodding along with the music undoubtedly playing on his earphones while he sanded a spot on the wall, and Andrew wiped his arm across his forehead as he picked up a damp rag. “Want to help?”
“Sure.” The view might help her stop brooding, in any case. Explosive orgasms aside, she hadn’t managed to spend much time getting to look at Andrew without lust and empathy fogging them. As long as she didn’t touch him… “Toss me the rag?”
He did, and the muscles in his arm flexed as he waved to the far wall. “That one. We’re not quite done sanding this side of the room yet.”
Bare arms. He should always have bare arms. She caught the cloth and moved where he’d directed, but couldn’t resist the urge to peek at him again.
He was beautiful.
If life was fair, she’d be able to savor touching him. Instead of awkward, jumbled encounters, there could be slow seduction. Kissing. God, she wanted to kiss him, just feel his mouth on hers and enjoy a growing urgency that didn’t swallow them both whole. To have an orgasm that was more than misfiring synapses and emotional overload. She wouldn’t have the knot of worry in her gut, the fear that needing him had so badly damaged the foundations of her control that she’d never master her gifts when he was there to make the world fuzzy.
The damp rag left wet streaks on the wall as she swiped it in slow, aimless circles. If life was fair, it would just be the two of them in the room. So easy to picture Andrew as he was now, sweaty and covered in plaster dust, muscles flexing, eyes dark… The way he looked at her before empathy exploded, like he wanted to touch every inch of her.
They’d never been naked. He’d never even gotten a hand into her pants, or under her shirt. She’d never felt that beard against her breasts, or her stomach, or—God help her—her thighs, and the mental image of Andrew coaxing her knees apart threatened to blow her brain into little pieces.
She wanted life to be fair.
His hand closed over hers as he corrected her technique. “Straight lines down the wall.”
He was breathing too hard. So was she, but oxygen couldn’t be making it to her head, because the world was fuzzy around the edges. All she could see was her hand, trapped under his. If she eased her other hand up the wall, would he catch that one too? Pin her to the wall and skate along the darker edge of the fantasies she tried to pretend she’d never had?
His fingers slid down to her wrist, closed around it firmly for a moment—and let go.
In a second, she’d be panting. This arousal might be in her head, but it still twisted up her body.
Tightened her nipples, made her ache. Made her wet. She rocked back and found Andrew still behind her, and arousal had curled around him too.
His erection pressed against her, and she could see the dizzy, frantic series of events unfolding before her as if she had Julio’s precognition. His hips rocking against her ass, maybe one hand drifting around her body, into her pants, pressing between her legs until the rough touch of his fingers sent her-Julio. Oh Christ, if Andrew’s touch shattered her control, her projection wouldn’t just affect him.
Kat tore away from his body with a whimper, stumbling so hard she slammed into the opposite wall.
Julio jumped back and plucked one of the buds from his ear. “Kat, what the hell?”
Air whistled through her teeth as she stared at him, taking in confusion in upraised brows and a hint of concern in his widened eyes-And nothing else. No arousal. No desire—thank God, no lust—and relief weakened Kat’s knees until she slid to the floor with a soft thump. “You can’t feel it.”
“Uh, feel what?”
Adrenaline was making it worse. Her heart pounded until the world throbbed with it, and she couldn’t make herself look at Julio. Not with Andrew a few feet away, intense and barely contained. She had to wet her lips twice to speak. “Andrew?”
His answer shouldn’t have been an answer at all. “Julio, get out.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Kat caught a glimpse of Julio scrambling toward the door. A moment later it slammed shut, and she sucked in a breath. No, panted. She was panting, tiny hitching breaths as the intensity of the need between them twisted again. “He couldn’t feel it.” It was important. She knew it was important.
Andrew closed the distance between them, towering over her in a way that sent her base instincts wild.
“I feel it,” he said, and Kat forgot why anything else could possibly be important as he lifted her, pinned her to the sheetrock with his hips and groaned.
For a terrifying second, Kat thought she might come from the sound alone.
The sheer insanity of her response woke reason. They couldn’t do this. His skin was hot under her hands, arms bare, muscles flexing as he held her up, but they couldn’t do this, couldn’t fall into each other like helpless, rutting fools every time a stray fantasy caught either of them. It was absurd. Untenable. Like living the porno version of their lives, where every situation dissolved into impractical sex.
It was getting worse. She hadn’t even touched him this time, not until he was already hard, caught in the grip of whatever made her dig her fingernails into his shoulders and whimper every time he ground against her. Lust. Blind lust, and not romantic at all when they didn’t have a choice.
Desperation seized her, and she squeezed her eyes shut and ignored her body, shut it out with discipline borne of training under Callum’s strict tutelage. He’d put her through hell, but nothing so hard as this.
Nothing like trying to ignore the sweet, dark thrill of her back against the wall and Andrew’s hips redefining the meaning of bliss with every perfectly timed rock.
Finding a half-trance was damn near impossible. Stretchy yoga pants were faint protection from the jean-covered erection grinding between her thighs, and Andrew liked grinding into her too much.
Throbbing heat gave way to little bursts of sensation, pleasure thick with the anticipation of release, and Kat fought for the will to continue. She wanted this, wanted every second he touched her, every scrap of emotion that bled from him, even the feral possession, especially the ravenous, animal need-—but she wanted more. More than lust. She wanted him to choose her.
Whispering his name, she twisted the power flooding her and let it go, invoking the filter that bled feeling into color.
With her eyes closed, she couldn’t see the effects, but she could feel them. The emotional silence echoed, like the quiet after a violent explosion. It took a moment for her to connect to her own body again, to find the physical sensations that had seemed pale compared to the psychic maelstrom.
Or maybe not so pale. Warm tension pooled between her legs, and she moaned when the tiniest shift of her hips rubbed her against Andrew. “Oh…”
Instead of backing away or putting her down, he groaned again and caught her mouth in a blistering, hungry kiss. Teeth scraped her lower lip, and the growling noise he made in his throat drove her mouth open on an answering gasp. Then it was his tongue, hot and dangerously intent, and by the time she found the willpower to tear away, she couldn’t think.