“I’m too hot.” With that complaint, she reached between them to unzip her sweatshirt and twisted to get it off. It left her dressed only in a warm but thin white top that hugged the mounds of her breasts, the curve of her waist.

“Don’t,” he said, when she would’ve put her hands on him. “We don’t want that rock face coming down over us.”

Dropping her arms to the lush green grass, Sahara’s eyes went to the huge slab of rock at his back.

“You’re not exaggerating, are you?”

“No.” He had no need to exaggerate.

A subtle movement of her throat as she swallowed. He followed it with his gaze, aware of her pulse gaining in speed, her breath hitching. “I’ll keep my hands to myself,” she promised, voice rough. “But you can’t look at me like that.”

Gripping her jaw in silent answer, he braced himself with his free arm beside her head, and then he branded her mouth with his own. You are mine . It was a statement telepathed along the private pathway that had formed years ago. Mine to touch. Mine to look at. Mine. Releasing her jaw, he stroked his hand down her throat to close over her breast.

Sahara shuddered.

Able to feel the pebbled hardness of her nipple under his palm, he took care in learning the shape of her. A gasp, her body attempting to shift restlessly under his. Sensitive, extremely so. Filing away the piece of knowledge, he rubbed his thumb over her nipple and she almost twisted out from under him, breaking the kiss to sob out a breath. “Please, please. More.”

Kaleb felt his closest PsyNet shield fall in a crash that almost took out the second. But he wasn’t dangerous to her. Not yet. “I’ll give you anything you want.” Holding her gaze, he slipped his hand under the bottom of her top to spread it on her abdomen. It quivered under his touch, her teeth sinking into her lower lip.

“That’s for me to do,” he said in a quiet rebuke that had her sucking in a breath.

His mouth was on hers an instant later, his teeth biting down on her lower lip a fraction too hard.

Back arching up from the ground, she broke the kiss . . . only to return for another, her tongue stroking against his with an intimacy that went straight to the rock-hard erection pressing against the zipper of his pants. As if she were licking her tongue along the rigid length of his penis and not inside his mouth.

This time, it was Kaleb who broke the kiss. “No,” he said when she would’ve initiated another kiss.

Chest heaving, Sahara licked her lips, and he had to look away before he broke his own rules and asked her to put her hands on the painful hardness between his thighs, to squeeze and stroke his naked flesh. He focused instead on his exploration of her body. Her pulse fluttered under his hand when he moved it to lie over her ribs, the moonlight shimmering on her skin. A little further up, he found lace, fine and silky.

“It was in the box,” Sahara whispered on a hitched breath. “Thank you.”

The fact she wore his gift against her skin pleased him, but it wasn’t enough.

Removing his hand, to her frustrated “No,” he pushed up her top to bare her breasts to the night . . .

to him.

Her body went utterly motionless.

Do you want me to stop? he forced himself to ask, the fury to possess a turbulent storm inside him.

Below that was an old and vicious rage, incited by the sight of the fine silvery scars that marked her flesh and that she likely no longer noticed. He did. He’d been there when each and every cut was made, remembered exactly how deep each wound had been, knew how much medical attention she must’ve needed to heal.

“No.” Her skin gleaming with the finest layer of perspiration, her breasts rising and falling as if in invitation, Sahara’s voice pulled him out of the blood-soaked past. “No, don’t stop, Kaleb.”

Wrenching his anger under control, and slamming down ice-cold shields around the violent surge of arousal provoked by the sound of his name on her lips, he concentrated on the creamy flesh cupped in delicate pink lace. It wasn’t what he wanted. Pulling first at one cup, then the other, he pushed the lace down until the heavy weight of her breasts spilled free, the soft pink providing a frame for the lush curves that melted the black ice around his pounding erection as if it didn’t exist.

* * *

SAHARA dug her nails into the earth in an effort to fight the urge to beg for Kaleb’s touch as he watched her with those eyes of madness. It should’ve scared her, the possessive darkness she saw in them, and perhaps part of her was terrified, but not enough to back away, not enough to end this raw wave of sensation, vivid and wild and alive.

Shifting position, Kaleb straddled her. The next instant, he placed his hands under her upper back, lifted her slightly, and put his lips around one aching nipple. She shoved a fist against her mouth to stifle her scream, the wet suction of his mouth as hotly erotic as the hard strength of his grip.

He moved to her neglected breast without warning, the night air cool on the wet of her other nipple.

Whimpering, she twisted under him, but there was no way for her to gain contact with the hard ridge of his erection, his knees planted on either side of her thighs. Teeth scraped her highly sensitive nipple an instant later, making her bite down on her fist. Stop! It’s too much!

Kaleb released her nipple, his lips wet, his eyes so dark they were akin to black pearls, a shimmer of midnight color in their depths. “Are you certain?”

The quiet question raised every hair on her body.

Not in fear. In the blinding realization of how tight a leash he had on himself.

Dear God. What would he do to her if he slipped that leash?

The damp folds between her thighs grew slick with a melting heat. Squeezing those thighs in a vain effort to find relief, she removed her fist from her mouth and whispered, “No. I can take more.”

Wanted more. Wanted everything.

Not asking a second time, Kaleb looked down at her breasts, his hair falling across his forehead.

Sliding a hand from under her back, he gripped one breast with a firmness that felt like a brand and lowered his mouth to her flesh again. Her mind went red, her back arching as if to thrust her breast farther into his mouth. Kaleb, I need— Tell me. Another scrape of teeth that scattered her neurons, her nails clawing the earth, crushed grass under her palms.

Touch me, please. I can’t— Here? He cupped her between the thighs in a raw intimacy, pushing up with the heel of his hand.

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 breasts. 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 nipples. 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.