And the sight of him…open and overwhelmed, sated by her touch and alive with light and colors only she could see.
The perfect moment, crystal clear and all hers. Whatever came next, she’d have this—the moment she knew he belonged to her.
Andrew laid a trembling hand on her cheek. “Kat.”
Her smile was probably more than a little goofy, and she didn’t care. “Hi.”
His answer was breathless, dazed—and equally goofy. “Yeah, that.”
Later she’d acknowledge that this was a temporary respite at best. That she needed help to unravel whatever tangle of empathy had twisted her up with Andrew. Later she’d worry about the data Ben was decrypting, and her mother’s past, and Derek’s child and the possibility of terrifying futures.
Now she eased his clothing back into place with gentle hands and rose. His chest was solid and warm beneath her cheek, his skin hot to the touch as she curled her fingers around his arm. “I can’t hold this forever. And not if I’m not in control.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He lifted her again, coaxed her legs around his hips. “We’ll take turns.”
“I don’t…” She hesitated. Swallowed. “I’m not ready to let it go yet. I like feeling you. I mean…just physically. Without all the empathy.”
“Then we’ll keep going slow.”
Kat nodded without lifting her head, unwilling to relinquish the odd peace that came with listening to his heart beating under her ear. “Slow is good. Fast makes it too easy to not deal with problems, and that never ends well for anyone.”
He sighed softly. “You’ve been hit with a lot over the last few days.”
She had, more than she could begin to process. Every time she tried to start, her brain skittered into a thousand worst-case scenarios. “I can’t handle thinking about that damn letter, because this isn’t even all of it. In a few days, Ben’s going to have those files rebuilt and decrypted. I don’t want to deal with any of it until I can deal with all of it.”
Andrew tightened his arms around her. “I get it. Triage. Look at the big picture, not bits and pieces of information.”
If the big picture didn’t break her. “I can’t get to a place where I think I’m okay and have the floor fall out again. It’ll hurt more.”
“I understand.”
He did. She could tell from the warm golden glow that encompassed her. It made it easy to ask for what she really needed. “Can we just…not talk about it, then? There’s other stuff to deal with, anyway. Like finding out if we’re still being followed, and figuring out why I’m getting my empathy all over you when Julio couldn’t feel it.”
“Plenty of things.” He kissed her again, a simple graze of his lips. “Can you get in touch with Callum and ask him about the empathy thing?”
She thought about her tutor. Straight-laced, coldly handsome Callum, who was rigid, severe and utterly impersonal. She thought about his designer suits, and how she’d never seen his hair mussed or out of place, like he’d stepped out of the pages of a men’s style magazine—or an ad for overpriced cologne. She thought about how she’d never discussed anything remotely personal with him.
She thought about having to explain her sudden inability to avoid dry-humping her way to orgasm against a shapeshifter’s thigh.
Not in this lifetime.
“I’ll talk to someone,” she promised, mostly because she wasn’t ready to tell him who she had in mind.
Callum might be the expert when it came to twisting empathy into a weapon, but when it came to sex with dominant shapeshifters…
Well. Any empath who climbed into bed with Alec Jacobson every night knew all there was to know about navigating the rocky path between psychic power and alpha instinct.
Chapter Ten
“Are you sure Alec can’t hear this?”
“No, honey.” Carmen finished winding her hair up on the top of her head and secured it with a clip.
“He’s on the phone in his study.”
“Good.” Fidgeting with the laptop, Kat adjusted it until the camera was just right, then sighed. “I’ve got empathy sex problems. Really, really fucked-up ones.”
The other woman’s expression didn’t change. “Okay. Is it a control issue?”
That was Carmen—calm and practical, no matter how potentially embarrassing the subject matter. Kat didn’t know if the talent was an empath thing or a doctor thing, but it was damn soothing. “It’s not control, I don’t think. I mean, not uncontrolled projection or anything. I’ve had slip-ups in the past. My range is wide enough that people would be affected. And they’re not.”
“So it’s more…focused on one person?”
Too late, Kat realized Carmen might have no idea who they were talking about. “It’s not Miguel,” she said quickly. “Andrew. It’s—I promise, I would not call and ask you for advice about sex with your brother.”
The other woman laughed. “I know. Alec told me he talked to Andrew, I just didn’t want to assume anything.”
“It’s Andrew,” Kat repeated. “And it’s…I don’t know. I worried about imprinting, at first…but it’s not just me. And it’s not projecting, but he feels everything I do. And it gets out of control. Fast.”
Carmen barely hesitated before asking, “Did you build your shields around him?”
“Of course not.” The answer came automatically, with so little thought that Kat forced herself to pause.
She’d tried to hold shields around other people, to block them from her gift, but to bring someone inside her personal shields would be too intimate, like letting them inside her skin.
Déjà vu. A knot formed in her gut until she remembered why. It’s like you’re inside my skin. Wasn’t that what she’d told Andrew, that night in his bed? Nerves twisted as she tried to deny it, to find a reason she hadn’t been so stupid and reckless. “How would you even do that? Callum taught me entirely new shielding techniques, and I’ve barely seen Andrew since then.”
“Obviously, you didn’t do it during your work with Callum. But, since then, have you been in any situations where you might have unwittingly rebuilt your shields around Andrew?”
The past week played itself out in her memory, a jumble of emotional highs and devastating lows.
She’d lowered her shields a dozen times—she did that constantly. But to rebuild them completely, so fundamentally that even the foundations could have shifted to bring Andrew inside-Oh, shit. “The burnout.”
Carmen leaned forward and propped her elbows on the polished wood of the desk. “That sounds like the sort of terrifying scenario where you might have done it instinctively.”
Terrifying instinct. Perfect. Almost as undesirable as having to tell Carmen the whole truth. “I might have gotten shot a little bit. Things were…complicated in the aftermath.”
“You might have…” The woman trailed off, stared for a moment and then returned in full doctor mode.
“Have you been checked out? Where were you hit?”
“Hold on.” Kat eased her chair back from the desk she’d claimed in one of the unused offices. Her T-shirt sleeve pulled up easily, and she twisted to show Carmen the mostly faded scar. “A healer took care of it. Well, one who’s a doctor and a healing priestess. She said it wasn’t bad.”
Carmen peered at the screen and nodded, mollified. “Looks like a graze. Whoever treated it did good work.”
Settling into her seat again, Kat straightened the laptop and met Carmen’s gaze. “Alec doesn’t necessarily need to know. Andrew said there’s a lot of shit going down up there, and I’m plenty safe with him and Julio lurking around, waiting to eat assassins.”