A small pause. “I won’t go back and kill him unless he proves a renewed threat.”

“That, I can accept.” Her breath caught as he changed position slightly, his shoulders brushing the sensitive skin of her inner thighs—just as his cell phone rang.

Answering it, he listened then said, “Time?” A slight pause. “I’ll be there.” He slid away the phone without further words.

“A meeting?” she asked, using her hands to massage the heavy muscle of his shoulders again, having sensed his pleasure in the act before they’d begun to argue. “It must be an important deal for an in-person discussion.”

“It’s not business,” Kaleb replied, angling his neck to the side so Sahara could reach a tight spot.

No one else would he allow this close to his jugular. But Sahara? “Harder,” he said, undoing two more buttons on his shirt so she could slide her hands inside the open collar.

“Like this?” It was an intimate question as she exerted just the right pressure.

“Hmm.” Stroking his thumb over the curve of her anklebone, he let his eyelashes close, his body languid. It was a state he only ever found with Sahara, and in all previous instances, it had been after sex.

“There’s a small bottle of oil on the bathroom counter in the aerie,” Sahara said softly, continuing to touch him with a sensual possessiveness that made even the part that lived in the void, dark and violent, turn lazily quiescent. “It was part of the pack of toiletries set out for me. Can you get it?”

Catching the detailed telepathic image she sent to him, of the bottle and exactly where it was in relation to the rest of the bathroom, he retrieved it without effort. An instant later, a scent he identified as vanilla drifted onto the air, Sahara’s hands no longer on his skin. “Take off your shirt so I don’t get oil on it.”

Kaleb had no desire to move, but he did as she asked. The feel of her warm hands on him, the oil making it easier for her to glide over his skin, dig deeper into his muscles, was his reward. Tactile sensation, he thought, had certain addictive qualities. But only when it was Sahara whose thighs bracketed his shoulders, Sahara whose voice was a murmur in the dark as she told him of the pleasure she found in touching him.

“In your reading on current events,” he said several minutes later, before his increasing arousal could blur his senses, “did you come across references to an insurgent named the Ghost?”

“You want to talk politics now, when I’m doing my best to seduce you?”

The husky, laughing question had him tugging at her arm until she got the message and came around to straddle him. “You have no need to seduce me.” He was hers. Always. “The process, however, is enjoyable.” True physical intimacy, he thought, had far more nuances than he’d previously understood, having conflated it automatically with sex.

Sahara’s lips curved. “I’ll just keep going, then.” A slow kiss as proprietary as the hands she returned to his shoulders when she drew back. “As for your question . . . according to several Beacon back issues,” she said, a thoughtful cast to her expression, “prior to the Council’s dissolution, the Ghost was responsible for a number of information leaks that put the Councilors into the position of having to explain themselves.

“He was also,” she said, running her thumbs down the tendons in Kaleb’s neck, “rumored to be involved in the explosion of a lab that was allegedly working on a bioneural chip to force people to be Silent.” Sahara shivered, clearly horrified by the idea. “My impression is that he’s responsible for fomenting dissent in the Net against the entire Council superstructure, fracturing their power base from the inside out—and that his goal is the fall of Silence.”

“Yes.” Kaleb was unsurprised she’d already managed to gather so much data—Sahara Kyriakus had been born with a mind both thirsty for knowledge and able to process it at high speeds. “The Ghost is a dangerous individual to anyone in power.”

Sahara’s hands went motionless, the deep blue of her eyes troubled. “Kaleb, you can’t hurt this person. So many of your goals align with the Ghost’s—this rebel is fighting against the rot at the core of our race, and so are you. You can work together.”

“There can’t be two powers in the Net, Sahara.” It would only fracture and divide the populace.

“The Ghost has a stay of execution for the present, but his time is coming to an end.”

Chapter 35

SAHARA SHOOK HER head, her voice grim. “If you harm the Ghost, you risk inciting another wave of rebellion, this time directly against you.”

Again, she displayed how well she knew him, using logic rather than any emotional plea for the safety and well-being of their race, a plea she knew would fall on deaf ears. “It won’t come to that.”

The death of the rebel would cause an acute and violent disturbance in the fabric of the PsyNet, and that, Kaleb would not permit. Not when the Net would soon belong to him. “The Ghost will simply fade from the limelight at a certain nonnegotiable point.”

“Fade?” Sahara’s fingers dug into his muscles as she continued to caress him regardless of their discord. “Kaleb, everything I’ve read tells me this rebel has survived years of being hunted. He’s not the type to quietly disappear, even if it’s you giving the order.”

“He’ll listen to reason. The Ghost’s actions,” he said over Sahara’s inarticulate sound of disbelief, “show him to be an eminently rational individual.”

“Really?” It was a comment rife with disagreement. “Putting that aside, how do you even propose to find him? He’s a shadow.”

“I already know his identity, and have since he made his first move.”

Hands fisting on his shoulders, Sahara shook her head. “I don’t think he’ll fall in with your plans.

This Ghost seems to be just as relentless and driven as—” A sudden pause, her eyes narrowing.

“You,” she whispered. “It’s you!”

“Of course it’s me,” Kaleb said and took the mock punch Sahara aimed at his jaw, her skin soft against his. “No one else has access to the depth of data at the Ghost’s fingers, and the ability to be anywhere in the world in a split second.”

Sahara attempted to look stern, but she was too delighted by the fact Kaleb had just played a game with her—with cool eyes and an icy tone that had blinded her to what he was telling her. He was right: the Ghost could be no one but the cardinal Tk who held her. Else, Kaleb would’ve eliminated him long before the rebel became such a dangerous adversary in the Net. It was a truth as inexorable as the staggering power at his command.

The one question that remained and that she would not ask was why.

She knew the answer, knew it was written in blood and born of the sadistic pain survived by a gifted, scared child who’d had no one to whom he could turn. “Is that what the call was about?” she asked instead, leashing her anger because this night, it was theirs. She would permit no echo of evil to taint it. “You have fellow rebels?”

“Yes,” he said, tugging her forward for a kiss.

Opening her mouth for him, Sahara decided further discussion could wait. Right now, she wanted only to drown in the taste of Kaleb. No other male could ever match the visceral passion he aroused in her, and she’d met her share during her time with DarkRiver. Sensual and strong, affectionate and tactile, the leopard males laughed easily and considered play a normal part of life. The soldiers who patrolled her area were friendly, and a number had flirted openly with her, would’ve gone further had she offered any encouragement.

Sahara hadn’t—because it was only Kaleb she wanted. “I was very smart at sixteen,” she murmured, leaning down to kiss his throat, the scent of vanilla warmed against his skin and intertwined with his own natural scent making her breath catch. “I claimed the sexiest man in the world as my own.” Perhaps he was irrevocably damaged, scarred to the point that she’d have to destroy them both in order to save their very race . . . but she would not take that step until all hope was lost, her Kaleb fatally fractured at the vicious hands of a long-dead madman.

“I want to feel your skin against mine,” he said, his body still languorous in a way rare for Kaleb as he tugged off her pullover and got rid of her bra.

Then, as the stars glittered overhead and the world spun another hour closer to what might be a catastrophic global war, Sahara kissed her lover. Pressed against the ridged muscle of him, his hands strong against her back, she threw back her head as he went for her throat. Pleasure rippled through her in a sultry wave, the shooting star that passed across her vision a shimmer she grabbed onto with both hands.

We’ve earned this, earned our future! A fierce cry in silence. Just give us our time.

It was the simplest of wishes, but as Kaleb took her mouth with the relentless demand of his own, one of his hands rising to cup the back of her head, she knew it might also be one of the most impossible.

* * *

AN hour after he’d taken her under starlight, her body a flow of feminine curves, Kaleb didn’t fight Sahara’s decision to return to the aerie. Faith was no doubt waiting for her, and Kaleb had plans for the night of which Sahara would not approve.

Tatiana was huddled feverish and dirty in the hole where he’d left her, her hands bandaged using the rudimentary medical supplies. Blood on the walls made it appear she’d attempted to climb her way out, or perhaps she’d lost her sense of reason and pounded at the concrete until it shredded her flesh and tore off her nails.

Keeping a vigilant eye on his shields, he leaned against the wall across from her. “I thought you could use some company.”

Eyes flat and vicious as a snake’s looked at him, Tatiana’s Silence beginning to flake away at the edges. That disintegration didn’t impact her mind. “You need something. What’s the bargain?”