“Sean did.”

There was a silence and he cursed himself for hurting her. His arms tightened even more, as if by crushing her to him and nuzzling the top of her head he could somehow make up for his blunder.

“Yes, he did,” Mari said. “He blamed it on me.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. He made his choices; we all do. He can take his own responsibility. If I screw up with you, Mari, it’s on me.”

She reached up to trace his lips with the pad of her finger, hearing the ache in his voice. “Why do you persist in thinking you’re some kind of monster?”

“I don’t want you getting the wrong idea about me.” His voice sounded raw even to his own ears.

She smiled in the darkness. “I’ve been in your mind. I know you’re bossy and you like everything your own way. You think you’re jealous . . .”

“I am jealous. The thought of another man touching you makes me crazy.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “My father was so jealous, Mari, he couldn’t stand my mother talking and laughing with her own sons. He beat her every time a man glanced her way, which was often. She was a beautiful woman. I feel very possessive of you already. The idea of some man holding you in his arms, kissing you, sharing your body, just the thought alone, makes me feel violent. I don’t honestly know what I’d do.”

Ashamed, he wrapped his arm around her head, pressing her face into his chest so she couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t look her in the eye. “I could feel your emotions when Sean was fighting Brett. It sickened you to be the cause of that. I could do much worse, Mari, I know I’m capable. I was hoping I could hold you at arm’s length and I wouldn’t feel so strongly, but it happened and I can’t stop it.”

“You’re not your father, Ken. You’ve led a completely different life. You’ve been shaped by your own experiences.”

He gave a small, humorless laugh. “Exactly, Mari. Wonderful experiences. Witnessing my father kill my mother. Trying to do the old man in myself—hell, I wasn’t even in my teens. I plotted a thousand ways to murder him. I beat the hell out of two of my foster dads and I have no idea how many boys and men growing up. I chose special ops, Mari, I chose to be enhanced both physically and psychically; after all, it would make me a much more efficient killer. Those are the things that shaped my life.” He kept his tone absolutely emotionless, separating himself from the reality of his childhood the way he always did—the way he had to in order to survive.

Tears burned all over again. Hadn’t she cried enough this night? This time the tears weren’t for her, but for him, that little boy, the teenager abandoned by adults. Her life might have been stark and cold, but she hadn’t known any different. She had nothing to compare it to. In some ways it had been fun even, all the physical and psychic training. She’d felt special and eventually respected. But Ken had known love. His mother had loved him; Mari could feel the echo of that long-ago love in his mind.

He hurt so bad inside and he didn’t even know it. He wasn’t aware of it, only of the fire of rage or the ice cold of his lack of emotions. It was all or nothing with Ken. Fury or ice. “Ken . . .”

“Don’t!” he said sharply, because if she cried for him, it would be the end. No one had ever cried for him. His mother had been dead, and the rest of the world looked at Ken and Jack as if they were already the monsters their father created. Even back then, people had been right to be afraid.

His thumbs brushed at her tears. “You’ll tear out what’s left of my heart, Mari. Just stop. I can’t change what I am. I might want to, baby, but I can’t.”

“If you really were the same kind of man your father was,” she said gently, biting back the little sob that threatened to escape, “you would have killed Sean right there and then, while you had the chance, and to hell with my sisters. Your father wouldn’t have put himself through the hell of knowing another man was touching me and denied himself the pleasure of killing that man. My feelings wouldn’t have counted at all, but they do with you. You may have wanted to kill Sean—hell, I wanted to kill him—but you didn’t.” She squirmed out from under his arm and brushed kisses along the underside of his jaw.

He groaned softly. “Baby, you’re deceiving yourself. I’m not a good man. I sure as hell want to be and wish I was whenever I’m anywhere close to you, but the truth is, I’ve done things in my life, and will do them again, that take me right out of that category. I wanted to kill that son of a bitch, and someday I will.”

“Because he’s a threat to me, Ken, not because he touched me.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Mari; it’s both,” he replied grimly. He knew the admission condemned all chance of happiness with her. She was not the kind of woman to walk behind a man. He was a man who would constantly need to protect her, to make the decisions, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to change that. Unlike Briony, who accepted Jack’s domination, Mari would chafe at the restraints. She had been too long on a leash, and exchanging one for another wasn’t going to please her. Once she had a taste of real freedom, she would leave him and never look back.

The thought was crushing. It tore up his insides until he could barely think straight. He needed to focus on something else—anything else. Ken cleared his throat. “As soon as my brain heals a little bit, I can get word to Jack. Maybe he can warn the senator away if you really think Whitney might do him harm.”

“Absolutely I think Whitney intends him harm,” Mari said. “I think he put out the hit on him in the first place. When the command came down to protect the senator, I think it was a ploy to get us there and someone in our unit was going to assassinate him.”

“Sean?”

“Maybe. Probably. He said something that bothered me, something about already being Whitney’s prisoner. Sean’s always been able to come and go. He had far less restrictions than a lot of us.”

“He could have paid a high price for that. You have to consider the possibility that he sold his soul to the devil a long time ago.”

There was another small silence. Mari chewed on her bottom lip while she turned that idea over and over in her mind. “If he did, and all this time he was reporting to Whitney, he would have told him I was going out with the team in order to try to talk to Senator Freeman and Violet.”

“Which is why Whitney made certain Sean pumped you full of Zenith. It was Sean, wasn’t it?”

“Whitney usually gives it to us before we go out on a mission. He was gone. Sean wanted to protect me.”

“Whitney had him give a particularly strong dose. That’s why you healed so fast and then crashed so hard.”

“Do you think Sean knew what he was giving me?”

Ken wanted to tell her Sean was just bastard enough to make certain no other man had her if she didn’t return to him, but she’d been hurt enough. “I doubt it, honey. Whitney gave Zenith out routinely. It was more for his protection than anything else.”

“Because dead men—or women—can’t talk.”

“Exactly.”

“After you used mind control on me,” Mari said, “I wondered why you didn’t on Ekabela’s men. It isn’t easy and it takes a tremendous toll.”

He nodded. “It isn’t easy to clear your mind and keep it focused when someone is cutting you into little pieces.”

“I guess not. And the aftermath is a killer. You’d have to be somewhere totally protected to use it. They would have had you at their mercy anyway.”

“Like any psychic use, mind control has tremendous drawbacks, even more than most psychic talents, because you’re using such powerful energy. I don’t think Whitney can accept that. He wants his GhostWalkers to be flawless. That’s why he’s looking to the next generation. He’s thinking our children won’t have the repercussions of using psychic ability because they’ll be born with it.”

“I didn’t think of that. I just think of Whitney as insane. He’s gotten worse and worse over the years. He doesn’t seem to have to answer to anyone, and because of that, his experiments have become more bizarre.”

“Do you think Senator Freeman knows what goes on here?”

She shook her head. “Violet married him before Whitney started the breeding program. She couldn’t know. That’s why it was so important one of us speak to her. Why would Sean let me go if he planned on killing Freeman?”

“Because if Violet and Senator Freeman were dead, it wouldn’t matter that you were there. And you’re a sniper. They could have made you an accessory to killing a vice-presidential candidate. You wouldn’t be able to go anywhere or do anything with that threat hanging over your head.”

Mari pulled the cross and chain from under the mattress and slipped it over her head so that his gift settled in the valley between her br**sts. She loved the feel and weight of it. Her fingers went to the edge of his shirt. “The guard won’t be here until about five-thirty this morning. We have some time before you have to get out of here.” She pushed up the hem, exposing the crisscrossing scars. “I’ve wanted to do this ever since the first time I saw you.” She bent her head and kissed him, her lips satin soft against the forming ridges. “Can you feel that?”

He could—just barely. A soft shimmer of promise only, skating across his skin. He should stop her. The more he touched her, the more he possessed her, the more difficult it would be later to give her up. “Like a whisper.” His voice was hoarse.

He wasn’t man enough to stop her. Her wandering little mouth was just below his navel, teeth teasing scars, rasping over rigid skin, her tongue doing a little dance to ease each stinging bite.

“What about that?”

He closed his eyes, shifting onto his back, letting her work his pants open and down off his hips. It was dark in the room, but she could see the pattern of scars carrying lower and covering the thick, long erection she was building with those tiny sharp teeth, soft lips, and moist, velvet tongue. “Lower,” he growled. “Lower and a little harder.”

“You have no patience.” Her soft laughter played over his abdomen like a feather. “I’ll get there. I want to do a little exploring first, just see what feels the best.”

She might kill him before the night was over. Her lips were heated silk, gliding over him like butter, a sensation almost beyond his ability to feel—almost. It was just enough to make his c**k jerk and come to attention in breathless anticipation. Her teeth drove the breath from his lungs and sent fire rolling in his belly. Tiny, stinging bites covered by a stroke of her tongue.

Of its own accord his body arched toward her, his fists gripping her hair as a groan tore from his throat. His balls actually pulled up tight, so tight he feared he might explode as his c**k filled, stretching the scars painfully, his erection thickening, lengthening, and bulging with urgent need. He thought to say something—maybe a protest, hopefully not a plea—but his mind and tongue couldn’t get around the words when she wrapped her fingers around the base of his shaft in a tight fist.

He looked down at her, at her large chocolate eyes, so dark with hunger, her expression eager and hungry. She looked wildly beautiful, the darker shadows playing over her na**d body. His gold cross swayed with her br**sts, teasing along her skin, caressing her as she moved over him. He could see his marks of possession on her skin from their earlier lovemaking and that sent another rush of heat surging through his veins.

Mari didn’t shrink from his vivid scars, the rigid lines crossing back and forth over his groin and scrotum. She studied him, fascinated, as if he were an ice cream cone and she couldn’t wait to start, but wasn’t certain where to begin. He held his breath as her head dipped forward and she licked a glistening bead from the top of the broad, lined head. She didn’t just lick. There was that same faint sensation as if butterfly wings had brushed over him, and then her teeth followed, scraping along the damaged skin, dragging out a cry of pleasure from him.