“Walker . . . did we just . . .” Shocked words, rapid breaths.

Chapter 54

HE MOVED UP the bed to rise over her. “Lara?”

“Yes?”

“Let’s have sex first, talk later.” He might’ve been Silent once, but that man was long gone. The one who remained was holding on to his control by the skin of his teeth.

Hands on his chest, shaping and petting. “Okay.”

When he reached down to caress the slick heat between her thighs, she grabbed his wrist. “Let’s skip the foreplay this time.”

“Okay.” Spreading her thighs, he stroked into her, going slow because she seemed too tiny to take him. The heat of her was a sensual jolt that threatened to wrench the reins from his grasp. He’d thought about sinking into her tight grasp, thought about exploring this beautiful body with its soft curves, but never had he realized the savage impact of this act.

Mine. It was a primitive thought.

Right then, she locked her legs around him and thrust her body up at the same time.

Lara cried out as the aggressive heat of Walker slammed home inside of her, clutching at his back in a vain effort to find an anchor. Her mind was awash in shock and wonder, her body buzzed. She parted her lips to speak, found the words stolen by a demanding male mouth that set her free only long enough to ask, “Does it hurt?”

“So good.” She bit at his jaw, and he reacted the way he always did when she did that.

He took over her mouth, licking and tasting and demanding . . . while moving in her, slow and deep, one callused hand on her hip to pin her in place. Having hungered for this most intimate of skin privileges for so very long, she met him kiss for kiss, touch for touch, but it was crystal clear she’d never be the dominant in bed.

Her wolf had no argument with that. She was a healer. She needed a mate who was strong, able to care for her as she cared for others. Kissing at his neck as he reached down to cup her buttocks, to angle her for a deeper penetration, she felt her entire body clench. “Walker! Please.”

His next strokes were hard and fast and possessive, his kisses the same. Pleasure rippled over her in waves and then crashed, breaking her into a thousand splinters. She held him to the end. Never was she letting this man and his heart go. Never.

IT was after the third round of sex—yes, she was sore, and no, she didn’t give a damn—that Lara worked off enough energy that her brain started to function on any level other than the sensual. Snuggling close to Walker, who lay on his side beside her, stroking her curves with those delicious hands, she kissed his chest, licking up the salt-laced taste of dark water and snow-dusted firs.

Her wolf snuggled up next to him, too, bathing itself in the radiance of the mating bond. It was strong and steady, just like the man who was her mate. “You know this is for life, right?” she asked, half afraid he’d want to back off now that the buzz was gone.

“Yes.” He stroked his hand over her butt. “The mating bond will make it easier to keep an eye on you.”

“Walker.”

He switched positions so he leaned over her. “Lara.”

Oh, she knew she was going to have trouble with him—but damn if she wasn’t looking forward to it. “Can you see us in the web?”

“Yes.” A satisfied smile. “It’s rearranged itself so you’re by me. Where I can shield you.”

“I never knew you were this possessive.”

Her answer was a slow, hot kiss that had her rubbing herself against his thigh. Before he could take over, she pushed him to his back and rose to straddle him. Those distinctive green eyes lingered on the modest swell of her breasts with such carnal intent, her toes curled. When he reached up to touch her, explore her, he did so with such intense focus she felt as if she was the most intriguing thing he had ever seen.

He pinched her nipple in precisely the way she’d whispered she enjoyed that sultry night in her apartment. “Lara?”

“Yes?” It was a trembling question.

“Teach me more of the foreplay you like.”

She was a changeling, sensuality in her blood—and yet his blunt request had her breathless. “I like everything you do to me.”

“In that case”—he flipped her onto her back again, spread her thighs—“I think we should explore the concept of oral sex.”

Her brain hazed over. And stayed hazed.

Because once Walker Lauren put his mind to something, it didn’t budge—and the man did not leave any task unfinished. “Hmm,” he said after the orgasm left her a quivering mass of female flesh. “Let’s do that again now that I know what I’m doing.”

Now that he— “Touch me and die.” Grabbing those big shoulders, she hauled him up.

“No more oral sex?” A quiet, sexy smile she knew only she would ever see.

Her entire body melted. “Oh, no. Yes, to more oral sex.” Pushing him onto his back, she slid down his body.

Her mate, she learned, knew some very interesting words.

JUDD had gone to Xavier’s to pass over a data crystal encoded with information relating to a woman his friend had been searching for, for years, but as he waited for Xavier to finish speaking to someone in his office and come on out, he found a black-garbed male taking a seat on the moonlit back steps next to him.

He wasn’t surprised—he’d expected this from the instant his family’s cover had been blown. “Hello, Aden.”

Aden looked out at the kitchen garden behind the church. “I did not expect to find you so near a place of worship.”

“Have you come to kill me?”

“Those are my orders.”

“Since I can teleport, that means Vasic is nearby.”

Aden looked at him for the first time; that face with its high cheekbones, olive skin, and uptilted eyes was that of the quintessential Arrow. Cold. Without any indication of a man behind the mask “Vasic was taken off Jax when you were,” he said without warning, referring to the drug that turned Arrows into killers.

“Did it help him?”

“He says there was nothing left in him to save.”

Judd’s eyes went to the emblem on the shoulder of Aden’s uniform, a single star. “Kaleb didn’t give the order.”

“Ming.” Aden turned back to look at the garden. “He doesn’t understand us, never has, though he once wore the badge of an Arrow.”

Judd leaned forward to brace his arms on his knees. “I broke the code. I left the squad.”

“To save an X.” Aden echoed his move, unusual from a Silent Arrow.

“Silence was meant to save the Xs, save all of us who don’t fit into the normal world.”

“It’s failed, Aden.”

“Yes. For some at least.” A long pause. “The Council no longer exists, though the populace doesn’t yet realize it. The factions are already forming behind the scenes.”

“You’re talking about a civil war.” One that would devastate the Net.

“Perhaps it’s been inevitable since the instant our race chose Silence.”

Yes. “How long?”

“There’ll be a small lull as each faction gathers support . . . months, Judd, not years.”

Bells rang somewhere in the distance, and they both went quiet.

“Has Walker ever told you he had me as a student?” Aden asked after the echoes faded.

Judd shook his head. “He doesn’t speak about his time in the squad’s schoolroom.”

“What he taught me . . . tell him it has saved the life and sanity of more than one Arrow.”

Judd thought of his brother’s brilliance at telepathic deceptions, without which they would’ve never have escaped the Net, and wondered just how Aden had utilized those skills. “If you need me, I’ll stand beside you.”

“You exist. Sienna exists. It’s enough. You not only survived, you’ve found happiness. I don’t understand the emotion, but I know it’s better than the dark. So do the others.”

Hope, Judd thought. That was the word Aden couldn’t find. “What will you do?”

“Silence is falling.” No change in the tone of his voice, nothing to betray the scale of what he was talking about. “We will watch, wait, and fight the war when it comes.”

Judd didn’t ask on which side Aden and the Arrows would stand. He knew.

DIZZIED by the turn of events that had left her with decades, maybe a century left to live, Sienna was more than grateful when Hawke took her to the privacy of their cabin. She found herself being kissed an instant later. She wanted to nip at those firm lips, even knowing it would be a very bad idea. Might just get her devoured. “Wait, I—”

“No talking,” he said, a bare millimeter between them. “Skin privileges first.”

“Talk first.” She dug her nails into his chest.

Picking her up, he pinned her to the wall, her legs around his waist. “Okay.” Clever hands opening the buttons of her shirt, a sexy mouth on the skin of her throat and the upper curves of her breasts.

“Hawke.” It was a moan, her fingers in his hair.

“You don’t need these, do you?” Her jeans and panties were torn into fragments moments later, his hand cupping her with heated possessiveness as he kissed the life out of her.

“Off.” She pulled at the sides of his shirt, heard a button ping to the floor.

He refused to help her, more interested in playing with her slick flesh, in teasing and tormenting the breasts he’d bared by cutting her bra with a claw. But Sienna had claws of her own. Putting her lips to his ear, she said, “I want to rub my breasts against your chest.”

She was on her back on the bed with breathtaking speed, a naked Hawke above her moments later. He snapped his teeth at her. Laughing, she did the same. And then she pulled him down and did exactly as she’d demanded.

Her wolf let her play, played with her, and it wasn’t until they were lying on the rug in front of the fireplace—Hawke dressed in a pair of jeans barely buttoned, her in his shirt—nibbling at a tray of food that Sienna plucked out the key she wore around her neck. “What does this open?”