Shudders rippled through his frame as she claimed his mouth in a deep, branding kind of a kiss after those caressing words. Wrapping her up in his arms, more than happy to be branded, he opened his mouth and licked at her tongue as she’d licked at his.

She growled, the rumble traveling from her body into his, and down to the heaviness of his erection. His penis had been rigid since first contact, but now, it throbbed so intensely it was a second heartbeat. He didn’t know what to do with it, but as Selenka didn’t seem to mind the aggressive heat shoving against the curve of her abdomen, he didn’t move away, didn’t attempt to give her space.

He didn’t want to give her space.

All he wanted was to get closer and closer and closer.

He ran his nails down her back.

A hiss of sound and she broke the kiss to nip at his throat. The next bite was harder and at the point where his neck flowed into his shoulder. Hard enough that he knew while she hadn’t broken skin, she would leave a mark. Blood molten, he also knew her bite wasn’t a punishment.

She licked at the mark, her clawed fingers lightly scraping his shoulders.

Chapter 22

Aunt Rita pens a special column today on intimate skin privileges for virgins. All you experienced types can turn the page. The rest of you, listen up—because Aunt Rita knows. Aunt Rita has done the horizontal tango for longer than you’ve been alive. She’s also done it vertically, diagonally, and upside down.

—From the February 2074 edition of Wild Woman magazine: “Skin Privileges, Style & Primal Sophistication”

“MINE.” A GROWL of sound against Ethan as the wet silk of his mate’s hair brushed over his body.

“Yours,” he said without hesitation, then gripped the side of her neck. “You’re mine, too.”

The eyes that met his were somehow wilder, the gold glowing. And her kiss, it was feral, her hand fisted in his hair. “Yours,” she said in a voice that was half-wolf, before she made a lithe movement that ended up with her legs hitched around his hips.

Ethan supported her with his hands under her buttocks, the strength of her thighs around him a delicious pressure, and the slick of musk in the air making his mind roar. He had no walls with Selenka, no boundaries. He kissed her back as raw and deep, his hands clenching on the curvy flesh in his palms.

The sounds she made encouraged him to open himself deeper, lower even more shields. Until the only ones left were those holding back his madness . . . and then the madness surged to smash against his shields with the force of a tidal wave, stabbing a sharp pain through his head.

Though he didn’t make a sound, Selenka wrenched back. “Blood.” It was a growled word.

Uncurling from around him, she dropped her feet to the floor, then twisted to grab a wad of tissues from the counter that held the sink. “You said you wouldn’t lie, that this was safe for you.” Her voice vibrated with fury.

“It is.” Ethan wiped away the blood, but the bleeding wouldn’t stop.

Tilting back his head, he squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t have a pain-feedback loop in my head. I want you with every cell in my body.”

Selenka stalked out into her bedroom, and when she walked back in, she was angrily tying the belt on a robe the color of a dark stormy sky. “Let me see that.” Taking the tissues from him, she dampened a clean part under the sink tap, then wiped away what appeared to be the last remnants.

They both waited, but the bleed appeared over.

“There’s something very wrong in your head.” Throwing the tissues in a small bin of obsidian green, Selenka thumped a fisted hand against her head. “I can feel you inside me, Ethan, and there are all these jagged points to you that don’t feel right.”

Ethan wrapped a towel around his hips, staggering under the agony spearing through his heart. “I told you I was damaged.” Had believed she accepted him despite that, that she’d seen him and liked him as he was.

A growl of sound before she stalked over and gripped his jaw. “It’s not about you. What I feel, it doesn’t ‘taste’ like you to my wolf and it won’t let my wolf in—I think it’s causing the static in our bond, interfering with our connection.” Dropping her hold, she folded her arms. “Ming LeBon put something in you that shouldn’t be there.”

Ethan wanted to believe that, but he knew what she didn’t. “What you’re sensing are incredibly powerful shields holding back the onset of Scarab Syndrome. It’s the only good thing Ming ever did for me—teaching me how to build titanium shields. I’d be a nightmare otherwise.” Not even for their bond would he drop those shields. “I can’t let you in beyond those shields. I won’t.” If he hurt her, he’d be lost, a creature of insanity and violence.

Selenka put her hands on her hips. “I don’t know if I’d go about believing Ming LeBon. Man just wanted to use and control you.”

“I didn’t.” Exhaling and wishing he could turn back time so he was holding and kissing Selenka again, he shoved both hands through his hair. “When I felt the first stirrings of new power, I decided to ease up on my shields and see what lay beyond, see if Ming had crippled me on purpose. What emerged was madness.” Howling screams that echoed and echoed.

“Recently, I saw an audiovisual ad for a human-made movie. The movie is set in a historical hospital for the criminally insane. The howls of the residents were like the ones inside my skull.” A broken thing, shards of glass in the brain. “Something isn’t right with me, Selenka.” It was a truth he couldn’t escape. “But it’s me, not anything Ming put in me. I feel the Scarab power screaming now, shoving at my shields, trying to break free.”

“I refuse to believe that.” Selenka swept out a hand in a hard slice, a warrior queen in full flow. “My wolf would never mate me to a man caught in the grip of madness.”

He would go to his knees, lower his head for her sword if she asked, but he couldn’t give her this. “How do you know?”

The question quivered between them.

“I know.” Selenka thumped her chest with a flat palm. “I know.”

“What if you’re wrong?” Ethan demanded on a wave of turbulent heat. “Who will I be to you then?” He had never been embraced as she’d embraced him, and he couldn’t bear to lose that, couldn’t bear to go back to being alone in the dark.

Yet even as he asked the question, his anger flatlined. Shaking his head, he said, “I can’t be anything but a risk to you in madness. I’ll remove myself from the equation long before that happens.”

Selenka moved so fast that he had no hope of avoiding her. He slammed up against one of the rock walls, and though it was uneven, it wasn’t sharp . . . and fury or not, she’d held back, so he was able to brace himself with his palms on either side of him. His mate knew his skills, had calibrated her movements with precision.

Looking after him even as she bared her teeth and hauled down his head with one hand in his hair. “Do not ever,” she said, her voice no longer wholly human, “speak of ending yourself. You belong to me now.”

It was the one thing Ethan couldn’t—wouldn’t—give her. “I won’t allow myself to become a threat to you. I won’t ever be an out-of-control mass murderer again.”

Selenka was an alpha, used to going toe-to-toe with anyone and coming out satisfied by the outcome. But this? She wasn’t fucking satisfied, yet she knew she had not a hope in hell of changing Ethan’s mind.

Her Arrow mate had spoken quietly, in that voice so beautiful it was a song each time he opened his mouth, but that he was resolute was unmistakable. He would not bend in this, would not change his mind.

I am the knight to your queen.

She might not agree with his choice of description, but it was how he saw himself—and no knight would ever put his queen in danger, especially not danger that came from within.

Furious with him, and at the same time intensely proud to have a mate who could withstand her even at her angriest and most aggressive—she kissed him. Hard. “This conversation isn’t over.”

“What happens now?” A searing tautness to him.

Selenka’s instinct was to protect, to shield, but Ethan didn’t need protecting in this place that was their private den. As she’d pointed out, he was no zaichik, and she’d ruin them both if she forgot that. “Are you still in pain?”

“A faint throb at the back of my skull, but the sharp pain has passed.” He watched her with eyes that gave nothing away . . . but she felt his need all the same, a contained explosion held so tightly that it was a touch away from ignition. “I am fully capable.”

Selenka knew he hadn’t meant that as a double entendre, but she decided to treat it as one anyway. Her mate had never played—but he was mated to an alpha wolf now, play an integral part of his life. “I know all about your capability,” she murmured with a slow smile, as she reached down to brush the length of his cock through the towel.

Ethan turned to stone, his breathing going rough and shallow. Sweat beaded along his hairline, darkness spreading out from his pupils to eclipse the whites of his eyes. She’d witnessed the effect with other Psy and always found it eerie, but with Ethan, it was simply another indication of her mate’s emotions.

“Should I stop?” she murmured huskily as she tugged off the towel.

The cords of his neck straining stark against his skin, he shook his head.

Her own pulse not exactly steady, she brushed her fingers over his naked length—and this time, he all but stopped breathing. Her breasts had been full and swollen, her core slick since they began, but his reaction squeezed everything inside her to breath-stealing tightness.

She’d intended to play, make his first time gentle and slow, but realized then and there her plan wouldn’t work. It wasn’t about her own trembling fingers or feral hunger. No, her wolf could keep it together if it was about making this a pleasurable experience for her mate—but Ethan wasn’t yet at a place where he could ask for what he needed, or rush her when the play got too intense. This was torturous to him right now.