It also gave the squad another ally in the world, the reason why Aden had made time in his brutal schedule for this meeting. “Do you need a teleport?”
Aden shook his head. “I’ll walk.”
Rabbit stared mournfully after the other Arrow before dropping his new stick at Vasic’s feet. Picking it up, he threw it far enough that Rabbit had to race, but the dog caught it, came back with his tail wagging. They played a little more before Rabbit abandoned the game in favor of jumping in the snow again.
“Aden believes our relationship gives hope to other Arrows,” he told Ivy. “If he’s right, and Aden is always right about the squad, it’ll mean the others may be inquisitive about us.”
Ivy halted on the edge of the frozen expanse of the Reservoir as Rabbit explored the roots of a nearby tree. “I don’t mind—family members are often nosy.” Her smile in her eyes, she searched his face. “Does it bother you? I know how private you are.”
He put his arm around her, buried his hand in the warm silk of her hair. “I would bleed for the squad, lay down my life . . . but now he asks me to share the one thing that is mine.”
“You’ll do it though, won’t you?”
“Yes.” Because he understood what it was to be in the gray, in the nothingness. “You’re my hope, Ivy, my beacon home on the darkest night.”
“Vasic.” Eyes shining wet, she cradled his face in her gloved hands, her kiss heartbreakingly tender.
Vasic didn’t know if he’d ever become used to the way Ivy touched him—as if he wasn’t stained with blood, as if he had the right to her affection, her care. But one thing he did know was that he didn’t want to be out here any longer. He wanted to be alone with her, to strip himself to the skin and press himself to the giving softness of her.
Grueling as the past week had been, they’d found the energy to make love in stolen moments between outbreaks. His favorite part was Ivy’s laugh when they got something wrong, like when they’d clumsily bumped noses yesterday afternoon in the heat of passion. According to her, they were on training wheels.
He’d never had so much fun making mistakes.
“I read a manual when I couldn’t sleep last night,” she whispered now, not startled by the sudden ’port back to the apartment. “Are you too tired to let me experiment on you?”
“I told you not to read any manuals yet,” he chastised, but didn’t stop her when she pushed off his jacket and tugged up his T-shirt. Peeling it off to drop it to the floor as Rabbit gave a long-suffering huff and wandered out to the living area, he stood in place and let her explore.
It was deeply pleasurable torture.
“You are so beautiful.” Rubbing her cheek against his pectorals, she leaned back to run both hands down his chest, a sigh leaving her lungs. “I could do this for hours.” A glance up through her lashes. “Women called you a ‘hunk’ in the comments to the Signal article.”
Vasic might not have had much experience in certain areas of life, but instinct whispered this was treacherous ground. “You don’t like the description?”
“I don’t like other women salivating over you.” A light scratch over his nipples.
Sensation arced through his nerve endings.
“You like that,” she murmured and did it again.
Hauling her to him, he kissed her until she was liquid in his arms. “I don’t care what any other woman thinks of me.” The only time he even noticed another woman was when she was near Ivy—and that was in the context of evaluating a threat. “Call me beautiful again.” No one else ever had, ever looked at him the way Ivy did. And she saw inside him, his empath, so if she said he was beautiful, he might even believe it a little.
“My beautiful man.” She shaped his torso, kissed the dip of his collarbone, drew in a breath that made her moan. “You smell so good.”
Nuzzling at her, he pushed off her coat, but when he went to unbutton the thick orange cardigan she wore underneath, she gripped his wrists. “No.”
Once he might have halted, uncertain. Now he could gauge her desire in the kick of the pulse at her throat, the flush of her skin. “Why?”
“Because you take over.” A scowl. “And I let you because when you touch me, my bones melt and my blood turns to honey.”
She may as well have stroked him all over. “I like melting your bones.” Breaking her hold without hurting her, he backed her to the nearest wall. “I read about a position I want to try.”
Eyebrows drawing together, she glared at him. “Vasic—”
He kissed her complaint into his mouth, her lips lush and sensual, her taste distinctly tart today. Vasic might not care about food, but he could explore the flavors of Ivy forever. “Undo the buttons,” he said against her lips, stroking one hand down to lie over her buttocks, the other braced palm-down beside her head.
Chest rising and falling in a shallow rhythm, she lifted her hands between them. “Next time,” she muttered, even as she slipped button after button free, “I’m ambushing you while you’re asleep and tying you up.”
Vasic felt the languorous, sexual part of his nature smile, stretch lazily. “I’ll buy you the rope.” He kissed and nipped at her throat. “Are you wet for me, Ivy? My penis is so hard it feels like a rod of iron.”
Groaning, she finished unbuttoning the cardigan and shrugged it to the floor. “A gag,” she gasped. “I need to gag you, too.”
You’re welcome to. He shaped his hand over the fragile lace of her camisole, bracketing her breast between thumb and forefinger. She wore a bra under the camisole, but it was of lace, too, and he could almost imagine he saw the dusky pink of her nipples beneath the rich white. Now, undo your jeans so I can tease you with my fingers.
Shivering at the telepathic order, she rose up on tiptoe and bit down on his lower lip. He took the sensual punishment with a smile. It wasn’t a smile as other people might think of it, his lips barely altering shape, but Ivy knew, her eyes glowing from within as she flicked open the button of her jeans.
“Shall I take off my camisole?” She whispered the question against his ear, soft, hot breath and erotic temptation. “I want to feel your mouth on my breasts, want you to suck hard and leave a mark.” Her own mouth grazing his jaw. “And your hands.” A throaty moan. “You have such big, strong hands, the way you rub around my—”
He growled at her, the sound coming from deep within his chest.
Laughing in the intimate space between them, she rose up against him, kissed him in sweet little sips, her hands on either side of his face. Every muscle in his body tense, Vasic surrendered to the kiss, to the possession that may as well have been steel chains around his body. When her lips moved down his neck, he shuddered . . . and realized they were about one and a half seconds from being swallowed up by a raging sandstorm.
Chapter 55
“STAY RIGHT HERE,” Ivy said after he ’ported them back to the bedroom. “Don’t move a muscle.” A kiss pressed to his sternum.
When she ducked out from under his arm, he didn’t go after her into the bathroom. Instead, he used the minutes it took for the water to fill the tub to regain a measure of control. And lost it all the instant Ivy returned to her earlier position trapped between his body and the wall.
“Maybe,” she said, lavishing kisses on his chest, “we could have a large water tank next to our home.”
Our home.
Vasic had never had a real home, and now he was going to have one with his empath. “I’ll build it myself,” he said through the flood of happiness in his blood.
Licking at him then blowing on the wet, Ivy leaned back against the wall. “Why didn’t Tks in the past use the same trick?”
“Probably,” he said, as she unzipped her jeans, “because they didn’t have the mental training to direct their abilities so specifically.” His words came out harsh, his breath ragged. “The damage caused was often significant.”