He didn’t ask her again if she was sure.

Gripping her under the knee, he thrust her thigh up and outward, fitting himself even more firmly against her. Amber glowed in the night darkness as he pushed in. She moaned at the stretching sensation on the border between pleasure and pain, her body clasping spasmodically around him. Jaw clenched, he kept one hand on her knee, holding her spread for him as he worked his erection inside her with slow care.

She clutched at the earth, lifted her hips toward him.

Teeth bared, he pushed in all the way. A stab of pain threatened to derail her pleasure, a whimper escaping her throat.

Alexei stopped at once. “Memory?” Perspiration glimmered on his temples, his muscles rigid.

“I just . . .” She sucked in a breath. “You’re big.”

A wicked grin that flat-out slayed her, but he stayed motionless while she got used to the feel of his heat and strength lodged inside her. It made the hard little nubbin between her thighs pulse. She squeezed her muscles experimentally. Breath harsh, Alexei slid one hand underneath her to cup her bottom as he drew out, then pushed back in.

Barely able to breathe through the heavily luxuriant sensation, Memory wrapped her arms around him and held on for the ride to come. He took it excruciatingly slow, until sweat rolled down both their bodies, and she’d melted between her thighs. “Faster,” she gasped.

“Only when I’m certain you won’t hurt.” He moved his hand to her breast, plucked at her nipple.

Memory moaned again. “I’m so ready I’m slippery,” she protested, jerking up her hips at the same time.

She didn’t know if it was the words or the erotic motion that did it, but Alexei braced himself with one hand beside her head and then he began to move. With a speed and a power that made her body shudder and electrified her nerve endings. She moved with him, able to see the precipice beyond which they would fall. So close. So close.

Desperate, she closed her own hand over her breast and squeezed as he’d done.

“Fuck!” Alexei’s eyes on her breast, the hand he had behind her going clawed, his body thrusting into her own with a sensual aggression that pitched her over the edge. She didn’t fall. She flew. On wings of pleasure so deep and wrenching that she was aware of nothing but the blinding power of it—and of Alexei.

She heard him shout out his own climax, felt the shockingly intimate heat of his release inside her, managed to open her drugged eyes in time to see his head thrown back, his arched body silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Her inner muscles clenched again, but this time, the pleasure was softer, more languorous.

When Alexei came down on top of her, she wrapped her legs around him, one hand in his hair, the other on his back. And there they lay, limp and sated as the night breeze wicked the moisture from their bodies.

* * *

• • •

ALEXEI felt a dangerous awakening inside him, a stirring he couldn’t permit. But it was too late. The mating urge had woken for Memory; the wolf had chosen its other half. And wolves mated for life. Shuddering inwardly at the painful gift, he rolled off Memory and onto nature’s carpet.

His skin was tougher than hers, the surroundings part of his natural habitat. Turning so he was on his side, he placed one hand on her abdomen because he couldn’t stop touching her. Couldn’t stop touching his mate.

Of course it was her.

Tough, defiant, a survivor. An empath who looked at him and saw not just the pretty face, but the darkness beyond—and who touched him with an unguarded affection he shouldn’t crave. But he’d kill any other man who dared touch her—where Memory was concerned, he was selfish and possessive and not the least bit rational.

He’d never let her go.

“I like that,” she whispered sleepily. “A lot.” Curling into him, she petted his chest. “Can we dance naked every night?”

Cupping her breast, Alexei pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “Every morning, too,” he rumbled, both parts of his nature in favor of arousing a sleepy, warm Memory and sliding into her body as the first action of the day.

She rubbed her nose against his chest. “Can we stay out here?”

“You’ll get too cold.” He wrapped her up in his arms, his mate with the heart of a lioness. In his mind flickered images of Etta’s mauled body, blood bubbling out of her mouth as she breathed her final breath.

Her mate had done that to her.

Brodie had done that to her.

Alexei’s wolf brushed against the inside of his skin, its hunger for its own mate a visceral pain.

Chapter 47

I am losing myself piece by piece. So today, I choose to go out on my terms, when I know myself . . . and before I can commit the heinous crimes this madness demands.

—Suicide note left by Scarab subject Ricky J.

THERE WERE REPORTS all over the PsyNet of an attack against Es in San Francisco’s Chinatown . . . and he’d had a second blackout on his walk home. He’d woken in his bed with blood dripping from his nose and his heart pounding.

At least he remembered the conversation with the women on the street. Unless that had been a hallucination created by his fractured mind. Maybe he’d never left his apartment, had instead spent the lost hours locked in fever dreams.

Seated on the side of his bed, he dropped his head, rubbed his face. It was pure luck that he hadn’t made any critical business errors that exposed his erratic sanity. Now this report of Es being attacked by an unknown mind during a block of time for which he had no memories. He had to know what he’d been doing during that time. He had contacts in Enforcement, might be able to gain access to surveillance—

His eye caught on something clinging to the edge of his shirt cuff. A white piece of paper, possibly part of a decoration. Printed with rabbits. The symbol of the new year, according to Chinese culture.

“I was in Chinatown.” He had to say it out loud, had to accept that his life was spiraling out of control. Yes, it was possible he’d picked up the small piece of flotsam just walking the streets, but the blotter pages he kept in his bedside drawer didn’t lie.

Pulling open that drawer, he lifted out the sheet: the words Honeycomb-Designation E crawled across the page over and over again. He had no memory of writing them, but they were in his hand and he’d discovered the pages after another lost block of time. Another fugue.

Now Es were being attacked by a powerful mind that more than one person had dubbed “ill-disciplined,” but no one could identify. It was a mystery when such powers were generally well-known. The reporters had begun to theorize about “emergent Psy.”

Paper crackled as he fisted the blotter pages in his hand.

He wasn’t psychotic or blind to reality: the PsyNet needed empaths. Never while conscious would he assault any member of Designation E, but he wasn’t conscious much these days.

He had to return to the crystalline sanity of the past, had to shut down this rogue power. There was just one problem: he’d already tried more than once and failed.

Chapter 48

Access denied. Breach of Enforcement seal will result in a five-year jail term.

—Computer response to E. David Renault’s attempts to enter any of his properties, including those purchased over a decade earlier using false identification papers

MEMORY WOKE WITH a smile and an ache low in her body that made her blush. Turning in bed, she ran her hand over the imprint Alexei had left beside her and bit down on her lower lip, her cheeks aching from happiness. He’d held her all night, her golden wolf, had only left before dawn because he had duties at his den.

“I’ll be seeing you soon, lioness.” A promise sealed with a predator’s demanding kiss.

Happily breathless at the thought, Memory got out of bed and headed into the bathroom. She cherished the aches in her body, ran her fingers tenderly over the reddened patches on her skin. She’d gained those marks playing with a wolf.

Her wolf.

The smile held until her eye fell on a scar on her ribs. It was small, barely there. She’d been bitten by an insect in the bunker when she’d been about thirteen—the tiny creature must’ve entered via a ventilation duct. It turned out she was allergic to it. She’d had a fever by the time Renault checked on her and the infection had left a scar.

Frowning, she showered, then got dressed for the day: a button-down shirt in fuchsia-pink with white piping on the sleeves, paired with dark blue jeans and a thin purple belt. Her socks were blue-green with pink polka dots, and she tied a cute purple scarf with a tiny white print around her throat. She’d finally given back Alexei’s jacket, so she picked her own out of the closet: a dark olive-green, it had epaulets on the shoulders.

Taking it out to the kitchen, she left it hanging on the back of a chair while she prepared her breakfast. Her sparkly sneakers sat just inside the doorway, where she’d kicked them off the previous night. Smiling again as a dark heat uncurled low in her body, she went out onto the porch to eat . . . and her eyes went automatically to the cabin across from hers.

Every single morning since the attack, she looked across. And every single morning, she saw a closed door. No Jaya with her huge smile and generous heart. No black-clad Arrow with “killer” blue eyes leaving to begin his shift. Just a horrible, painful emptiness.

Abbot will make a full recovery.

Memory hugged the echo of Sascha’s words to her heart, a hopeful shield against the cruel emptiness of the cabin . . . and when she thought of Yuri, she focused deliberately on the things they’d discussed during their walks. She would remember her friend alive and strong and intelligent, and she’d trust in his strength and survival instinct.

When Sascha arrived not long afterward, she didn’t make Memory ask for an update. “I just heard from Ivy,” she said as she pulled off her coat. “Abbot’s made telepathic contact with Jaya and the medics think he’ll be awake within thirty minutes.” Her smile was a thing of pure light. “No trace of permanent damage.”

Eyes burning, and throat too thick to speak, Memory nodded.