And the world splintered.
* * *
SAHARA opened her eyes to find Kaleb still straddling her body, her top shoved up her chest and the cups of her bra pushed down to expose her br**sts. The Tk on top of her had his gaze on her bared flesh, the intensity of his focus such that it caused her pleasure-lax muscles to twinge in renewed arousal.
As she watched, he reached out and fixed her bra, his fingers brushing her ni**les. Sucking in a breath, her abdomen taut, she stayed silent as he tugged down her top. His every action was careful, that of a man who knew he could be pushed off the edge and into the abyss with a single wrong move.
“Teeth,” he said in that same frigid tone she’d heard earlier, “are not always used in sexual play.”
Sahara’s chest rose and fell in a shallow rhythm. “No?”
“It is a matter of preference, according to the papers I’ve read on intimacy.” Lashes rising, obsidian eyes looking into her own, the black fire in them as hot as his voice was cold. “What is your preference?”
“Yes.” The confession felt as intimate as what he’d just done to her body. “With you.”
His expression altered to a hardness that made it clear who and what he was, his arms coming down on either side of her as he lowered his face until their breaths kissed. “It will,” he said in a silken whisper, “only ever be with me.”
Chapter 23
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Kaleb returned to the rock face, Sahara now safe in her bedroom.
She hadn’t run from him even after he’d exposed his murderous possessiveness where she was concerned. But then, they both knew she had the power to stop him, the only individual in the Net who could.
“If you ever do it,” he’d said when she touched her fingers to his cheek in a tender good-bye, “make sure you go all the way and end me.” Should he be left breathing after Sahara’s power sliced through him, taking the only thing that mattered, he’d become the monster Santano had groomed him to be. “Serial killer, mass murderer, there’s not a name for the evil that lives inside me.”
Jaw set and eyes fierce, she’d shaken her head. “I won’t let the darkness have you.”
Her promise echoing in his head, he climbed with single-minded focus, his muscles straining to hold him to the wall as he fought to overcome the physical frustration that was a pulsing grip around his erection. It wasn’t until halfway through the third ascent that he could think again, his mind coldly rational.
His campaign to win Sahara’s trust, he thought, was progressing according to plan. She’d not only called him when she felt under threat, she’d invited physical contact. The fact that physical contact was causing severe damage to his shields and his thinking processes was a side effect he’d have to handle. Backing off was not an option—her memories were becoming more lucid with each passing day, her psyche healing at a rate that spoke to a remorseless internal strength.
Soon she would be ready to remember him, and why her subconscious had blocked him from her conscious mind in the first place. There were some things no one could take, some betrayals too reprehensible to forgive.
“No! Don’t! Kaleb, stop!”
Scraping the skin off his palm as he lunged for a grip, he blew out a harsh breath and continued to climb until it was only the cold stone and the next grip that mattered. And still he heard her screaming at him to stop.
* * *
IT was the creak that woke Sahara in the pitch-dark early morning hours, intruding on hazy dreams of a boy she couldn’t quite see.
Snapping to full alertness with the speed and silence of someone who’d been at the mercy of others for too long, she nonetheless kept her eyes closed, listening with every cell in her body. It was a trick she’d learned during her years of confinement, a way to gather information while the guards thought her asleep.
She flicked her eyes open only once she was sure the intruder wasn’t in the room. Her attention locked on the door, her pulse a drumbeat. Releasing a quiet breath, she listened . . . and just barely heard the stealthy movements of someone attempting to disengage the lock she’d flicked on for no reason but that she was obsessed with her privacy.
Father?
No response along the old telepathic pathway to her call, nothing but a dull silence that made enraged fear ripple through her blood. Reaching under the bed, she retrieved the butcher’s knife she’d stolen from an unused set of kitchen tools her father had been given by a patient who was an F, and as such, received goods from businesses as a matter of course. The idea of ever again being caught unarmed and vulnerable was her worst nightmare.
Pushing off the sheets with care, she shoved the pillows underneath to create the illusion of a person and pulled the sheets back up, just as the lock snicked open. Heart thudding and eyes on the knob as it began to turn, she padded across the floor to press her back to the wall. She knew every inch of this house, her feet silent on the old wood that had given the intruder away.
When the door opened, she waited only long enough to make sure she hadn’t made a mistake, that it wasn’t her father, before she struck. It might have been cleaner to use her ability, but Sahara had no intention of getting any closer to the stranger than she had to be before he was immobilized. All indications were that no one had any effective means of defense against her ability; however, she wasn’t going to bet her life on that assumption so soon after leaving the labyrinth.
Screaming as the butcher’s knife buried itself between his shoulder blades, the darkly-clad intruder spun around, reaching for her with his arms and no doubt his mind. She felt nothing of the telepathic assault inside the obsidian shields that protected her, and it took little skill to avoid his hands, his balance destroyed by the blow she’d struck, the heavy blade lodged in his back.