Her body felt oddly full, as if her skin were too small to contain her; the touch of his lips on her own was even more startling and shocking than the first time.

She jolted back, her lips burning.

His own chest heaved, streaks of color on his cheekbones.

Fascinated, she brushed her fingers over that color. He closed his eyes, and she found herself fascinated again because his eyelashes were long and lush. When she brushed her fingertips lightly over the edges of those lashes, he shuddered, his fingers sinking into her hips.

“Is this new for you, too?” she asked, then felt foolish. He was far further into a post-Silent life … and she’d rather not know if he’d been on this journey with another woman.

Irrational, illogical, jealous.

But it was too late; she couldn’t call back the question.

Opening those eyes full of galaxies, he said, “Yeah,” in a rough voice.

“Oh.”

When he used his renewed hold on the side of her neck to haul her closer, she didn’t resist. Their lips touched once more. Though braced for the impact, she shivered. So close to Canto, his body a wall of muscled heat, she felt a rapacious greed awaken inside her.

She wanted more. She wanted everything.

When he moved his hand to the back of her head, the survivor in her told her to teleport away, that he now had access to an incredibly vulnerable part of her nape. But the echo of 3K said the opposite.

She didn’t pull away.

Canto’s hand was big and warm as he cradled her head, his other hand still gripping her hip. She’d never been so possessed by someone else before, never wanted to be. But this felt good. As if she was being cherished.

Their noses bumped.

They broke off, stared at one another. Then Canto grinned—and things inside her broke.

“Guess we should practice more,” he rumbled, and, reinitiating the kiss, opened his mouth over hers.

The depth of intimacy made her moan, as together they figured out the sensual mechanics of kissing. For the first time in her adult life, she was being terrible at a skill and she didn’t care.

Then, just because she wanted to, she flicked out her tongue to brush his.

A deep groan emanating from his chest, Canto pressed his hand against the back of her head even as he leaned harder into her. Payal didn’t feel the slightest urge to resist. He wasn’t hurting her.

He’d never hurt her.

She could trust Canto. Her 7J.

CANTO was drowning in the decadent influx of sensation, and he didn’t care for rescue. He’d fuck up anyone who dared interrupt them.

Payal shifted on his lap just then; he sucked in a breath.

“Am I hurting you?” A murmur against his lips.

“I’m aroused.” Not as if he could hide it. “I’ve never been so hard in my life.” Even Psy couldn’t control autonomic reflexes, so he’d woken with an erection at times in his life, but it had never been like this.

So rigid it was painful.

When Payal looked down at his lap, her eyes wide and lips parted, he suddenly realized something. “I’m sexually able,” he ground out, his muscles locking. “The surgeons who worked on me weren’t thinking about sexual contact, just giving me back as much function as possible, but yeah, I’m able.

“Though that might one day change.” A bitter pill to swallow, to reveal. “Like I said before, there are no guarantees.”

Payal looked up, tiny frown lines between her eyebrows. “That makes you sad.” She stroked her fingers through his hair. “But it wouldn’t affect this, you know.”

He scowled. “Payal, of course it would.” It was one thing to be supportive, another to ignore harsh reality.

A wave of sensation licking down his body, right to his rigid penis … and beyond, to thighs he hadn’t felt in decades. He sucked in a breath. “What did you just do?” It came out a gritty rasp.

“I don’t know.” A shrug. “I touched you through your mind. Like this.”

“Fucking hell!” It felt as if she had her fingers around his rigid penis, was squeezing.

Telepathic contact didn’t allow this kind of mental stimulation. It was as if she was directly accessing sensory controls in his mind, then bypassing the damaged section of his spinal cord with some kind of a neural connector. A connector formed by her own mind? For that to happen, they’d need to have—“A bond,” he rasped. “There’s a bond between us.”

“I can’t see it,” Payal murmured, leaning in to take a kiss as if she couldn’t get enough of him. “But I feel you.”

He tried to feed sensation to her … and there she was: an icy flame he could sense with every psychic muscle. He sent his own erotic need through to her. She moaned and gripped at the short strands of his hair.

They came together in a tangled, wet kiss, the taste of her a kick to his senses and the feel of her inside him a thing the possessive heart of him hoarded close. When they broke apart this time, she touched her fingers to his lips. He kissed those fingers.

She shivered, went to lean inward. Her timepiece sounded a cool bell.

Inhaling shakily, she glanced down at it. “Ruling Coalition is ready to meet.”

He wanted her with a feral desperation. But they were anchors. The Net came first. Lifting her hand, he pressed his lips to the softness of her inner wrist. “To be continued.”

Her eyes flared. “I can take the call here, since it’ll be on the comm.” Sliding off him and to her feet, she smoothed her hands down her dress. “Unless you have an issue with me using your devices?”

“Baby, you can use anything of mine you want.” He held her gaze. “I’m assuming you want my input. Do you?” A question that sounded so simple but was a thing of trust, of bonds, of loyalty.

She didn’t look away, didn’t put distance between them. “Yes.”

“Come on.” He led her to the elevator. “Comm room’s downstairs.”

Payal halted, her voice hard when she said, “No.”

Chapter 32

 

We have lost too many of our brightest. We are broken.

—Fragment of text in the Journal of Shora Nek (no other identifiers found), held in the archives of the British Museum

CANTO GLANCED BACK at Payal, a frown carving his forehead. “You don’t like enclosed spaces?” Gentle words in a gruff tone. “You take the stairs, I’ll do the elevator. Meet downstairs.”