Shield of Winter

  That protective urge, however, didn't explain the stiff distance he'd kept between them since the morning following the desert. Ivy might not know anything about intimacy except what she'd explored with Vasic--didn't want to learn with anyone else--but she trusted her instincts. Something was wrong, and her Arrow was holding it inside. He was so good at walling up his emotions behind icy control, but she was an empath.

  It was anger she'd sensed in him the last time he'd come close. A ferocious contained storm so dark and black that it had made her stagger . . . but it didn't shock. She was angry, too.

  The man she adored was dying, and there was nothing she could do.

  Shoving away the jagged pain of it because she'd made a promise to herself that she wouldn't waste the time she had with Vasic on regret, she pulled on her ankle boots in preparation for their upcoming walk. The anguish wasn't so easy to exile, of course, the tight ball of it pulsing in her chest.

  "Woof!"

  Swallowing past the pain with a determined smile, she rubbed Rabbit's head. "Come on, we're going to explore." But for a short visit to the park behind the building so Rabbit could stretch his legs, she and Jaya had spent the previous day in psychic exploration. Now she needed to test whether she could sense the infected on the streets.

  "And"--she scowled--"I think it's time I reminded my Arrow how to talk."

  Getting to her feet, she rubbed her hands on the jeans she'd paired with her white sweater and a raspberry colored coat she'd brought from home and never worn because she preferred Vasic's jacket. Unfortunately, it would make her stick out here when she needed to blend in. That didn't mean she was giving it back to him.

  A footstep at her bedroom door. "Are you ready?"

  Ivy looked up . . . and her mouth fell open. She'd become used to seeing Vasic in his black combat uniform, hadn't really considered what he might look like in civilian clothing. The answer was that he looked luscious. "Hot," that was the word the other races used; he looked hot.

  As hot as her skin at the sight of him.

  Blue jeans over his combat boots, black T-shirt, a black leather-synth jacket with a high neck that he'd left open, he was . . . Ivy didn't have the words. She just knew she wanted to pounce on him.

  No armor, she realized with a clenching of muscles low in her body. If she stroked her hands over his chest now, she'd be able to feel all that gorgeous, tensile muscle, the soft cotton of the T-shirt little barrier to her exploration. Especially since she could push it up, graze his abdomen with her fingertips.

  "Is something wrong?" He stepped closer as Rabbit ran back from where he'd been nosing around in Vasic's room.

  "No." Smiling, she stroked one hand down his jacket and thought only of hope, of an unknown future full of possible answers to the lethal question of the gauntlet. His death wasn't set in stone. So she would live with him, play with him, adore him. "You look gorgeous."

  Vasic closed his hand over hers, and it was rain on her parched soul. "Civilian clothing seemed appropriate."

  "Yes, very." Mouth curving at the fact he was utterly clueless of the impact of his masculine beauty, she dared brush her fingers over his shoulder just to touch him a little more. Her toes curled when he didn't protest her right to pet him . . . and the same audacious wickedness that had given her the courage to send him an erotic image, whispered another suggestion in her ear.

  Heart pounding hard and urgent against her ribs, she rose on tiptoe. "Will you bend a little?"

  "Why?"

  She bit down on her lower lip, saw his eyes follow the action, the winter frost of his irises shaded by his lashes. It twisted her stomach into knots, the confetti and the butterflies trapped inside. "Because I asked."

  A slight hesitation that almost made her want to smile, except that her blood was a surging roar in her ears, her skin prickling with a sensation she couldn't name. Then he dipped his head just enough that she could reach his mouth. Not giving herself time to lose her nerve, she curved her free hand over the warm strength of his nape and brushed her lips once, twice over his.

  She didn't know how to kiss, had never before done it, but she'd seen humans and changelings kissing, had convinced herself it couldn't be too hard. It was . . . because this was Vasic, who made her neurons stop working and her body hunger. Going down flat on her feet after that slight contact that shot lightning through her body, her chest heaving, she waited, unable to meet his gaze.

  When he didn't move, didn't speak, she lost her nerve at last, went to turn away.

  Unyielding male fingers manacled her wrist. "Ivy, look at me."

  His voice curled around her like a stroke. Taking a quick breath, she obeyed the order and felt her spirits dive. His face was drawn, his expression stark. "I did it wrong, didn't I?"

  "I need to tell you something." He held her in place when she would've pulled away. "I was planning to lie to you, but I can't. Not when--"

  Ivy felt her blood run cold as he cut himself off, suddenly realizing this had nothing to do with her bad kissing technique. "The gauntlet. It's worse."

  Vasic didn't draw out the agonizing suspense. "Yes. Eight weeks, maybe less."

  A keening cry broke from her lips. Shaking and still making that horrible sound she couldn't stop, she collapsed against his chest. His arms locked around her, one big hand cupping the back of her head. "Every Arrow in the squad is searching the Net for answers alongside me." His breath hot against her ear as she sobbed so hard, it felt as if her body were shattering like glass hit from within. "I am not giving up, not this time."

  Somehow, she heard him through her anguish, heard what he was trying to tell her. Her Arrow who'd once placed no value on his life now understood that it had worth. It only made her sob harder. Vasic held her throughout, strong and warm and so breathtakingly alive that she couldn't imagine him any other way.

  "Please, Ivy." He rubbed his cheek against her temple. "You are causing Rabbit distress."

  Her breath hiccupped.

  "And me." It was a rough murmur. "Don't cry."

  His words splintered her already broken heart. She sucked in air, tried to temper her breathing. It took time, but eventually she could speak without her words fracturing, though her voice was hoarse. "Tell me the details."

  Vasic gave Ivy a concise summary of the problem. He hated himself for savaging her so badly, but when she'd caressed him sweet and soft, her body open to his, he'd known he couldn't betray her with a lie, couldn't touch her on a false promise.

  Now her jaw was set, her eyes red-rimmed but clear. "Together," she said. "We will handle this together--if you shut me out, I'll take a sledgehammer to the ice." Her hands fisted on his T-shirt, tugged him down. "I mean it."

  No one had ever cared so passionately about him. "My fierce, courageous Ivy," he said, slipping his hand from her hair to her nape. "Will you kiss me again?"

  Her lashes fluttered, her cheeks coloring, but she drew her eyebrows together in a severe vee. "Don't avoid the question."

  "Was it a question?" Moving his thumb over her skin, he said, "Anything you want, you can have. I have no defenses against you."

  Ivy's throat moved as she swallowed. Remembering how her skin had felt under his lips that night when he'd indulged himself so selfishly, he bent down and tasted her. Cream and salt and Ivy. He wet the flesh, sucked, felt her pulse kick.

  Her pleasure intensified his, the psychological dissonance no match for the power of it. The brain was an elastic organ, and his had begun to learn that emotion wasn't the enemy. Especially when it brought with it such exquisite sensation.

  "I want to explore every sensation with you," he said, taking another taste before he raised his head. "I want to crush the softness of your naked body under mine, want to learn how to touch you so you'll make tiny sounds of need, want to feel your fingers curling around my penis while I put my mouth on your nipples and suck."

  Vasic's bluntly sexual statements made the place between Ivy's thighs liquid, heat uncoiling slumberously t
hrough her veins. "I"--she coughed to clear her throat, her breath shallow--"I want to do that, too. All of it."

  He squeezed her nape. "Kiss me," he repeated.

  Ivy licked her lips, slid her hands up to his shoulders, and confessed. "I don't know what I'm doing."

  "Neither do I," he responded, the glittering silver of his eyes on her mouth. "Arrows learn by repetition and practice until the basic skill is honed, at which point we begin to specialize."

  The words should've been dry, but they made her breasts swell, her nipples so plump and tight the lace of her bra became abrasive. Because he was talking about repetition and practice when it came to intimate contact. Kissing. Touching. Sex. Her lips parted and he lowered his head.

  "Do it again, Ivy," he murmured, his breath mingling with her own. "Repetition--"

  "And practice," she completed, and brushed her lips over his.

  Again and again and again. It felt better each time. Especially since he was holding her so firmly against his body that her breasts were crushed against the hard muscle of his chest. Ivy inwardly cursed her sweater, her coat, even her bra.

  Then Vasic said, "I think I understand the mechanics," and gripping her jaw with his free hand, angled her head, and placed his mouth over hers.

  Her lips had been parted to ask him something--she didn't know what--and so the kiss began far more intimately than any of the others. And it only grew deeper from there. Vasic didn't hold back. No, her Arrow did as thorough a job of investigating kissing as he did of any other operation, his touch confident as he changed the angle by minute degrees to find the perfect fit.

  Then he did, and it felt wonderful.

  All hot and wet and delicious in a way she'd never imagined.

  Making a needy, hungry sound, she wrapped her arms around his neck. The action made her nipples rasp against the lace of her bra, his hair raw silk in her grasp and his body a rigid wall that somehow fit perfectly against her own.

  God, she liked kissing.

  When Vasic broke contact, his forehead pressed against hers and his breath jagged, she caressed his cheek, kissed the clean-shaven smoothness of his jaw. Never had she felt so alive, so pleasured. But below that was a sexual hunger brutal in its ferocity, hard and dark . . . and then she knew. It wasn't her desire she was sensing. It was his.

  Body melting even further, she kissed his jaw again. "I'm picking up your desire. Do you mind?"

  "No." He kissed her again on the heels of that statement, one hand on her lower back, the other on the side of her neck.

  Then he licked his tongue against hers.

  Her brain exploded.

  Ivy wasn't sure she had a rational thought in the hot, tangled minutes after that. She copied his action, found it made him crush her even closer, the hard ridges of his body digging into the softness of her own. Hot, ragged breaths, voracious mouths, strong male hands on her skin . . . Ivy became a creature of pure sensation.

  It was the blare of a siren on the street that jerked them to their senses. Staring at Vasic, Ivy found the breath to say, "I want to try everything on your list." Only with her Arrow could she be this bold; only with him could she strip herself to the skin and feel utterly safe.

  His hair a little tumbled from her touch, he took her hand. "We'll begin after the reconnaissance."

  *

  FIFTEEN minutes later and Ivy's heartbeat had calmed enough that she could take in the street around them. She couldn't help but feel a teensy bit smug--the first time she could recall feeling the emotion--at the glances they attracted from other women and the occasional man. Vasic got what she thought of as the "sigh" look, the one that indicated a melting in the bones, while Ivy was the recipient of pure narrow-eyed envy and good-natured grins that said she'd done well.

  Yes, she thought, she had. And Vasic's looks had far less to do with that than the strong, loyal, courageous heart of the man hidden behind the Arrow.

  Vasic wasn't the only male in the party who drew attention. Rabbit didn't like the leash he had to be on in the city, but he was well behaved, and when an elderly human lady stopped to gush over him, he took the praise as his due. Quite unlike the far larger male by Ivy's side, one who noted everything but seemed affected by none of it.

  Vasic's battle readiness was a reminder that much as she wanted to pretend this was a date, as she'd read about in the novels she'd "accidentally" downloaded onto her reader back home, they were out here for a far bleaker reason.

  Anchoring herself in the warmth of Vasic's hand clasped around her own, Ivy began to listen with her empathic "ear."

  Tension dominated the air, understandable given what had happened in the neighboring street. Psy, human, changeling, the race didn't matter; the emotion was the same. She hadn't expected to find many changelings in such a compact city, but while they were a minority, there were enough. Of course, she was only guessing with her identification of them as changeling--but there was a wildness to their emotional scent that echoed that of Lucas Hunter.

  "Do you know the species of changelings who live here?" she asked Vasic.

  "Eagles are the apex predators." Releasing her hand as a large group exited out of a restaurant right in front of them, he put his own on her lower back and angled his body to take the accidental shoulder hit of one.

  "Sorry!" the human male called back, before carrying on.

  Tucked against Vasic's side, Ivy didn't try to keep her smile from her face--even as an influx of dark emotion battered her senses. Dread, sweat-soaked terror . . . and below that the taste of rot, of infection. A businesswoman who passed them in a hurry of swift strides smelled so pungently of it that Ivy went to stop her.

  Vasic caught Ivy's hand.

  Chapter 34

  "IT'S A DEATH sentence at present," he said when she began to argue.

  Confirming it when she could offer no cure, Ivy realized, would do nothing but rob the woman of hope. And hope, cried Ivy's own bruised heart, was everything.

  Tears in her throat, she turned back to continue walking and almost ran into an overalled man bearing the badge of a major comm company on his front pocket. "Oh, I'm sorry."

  A curt nod at her apology and he was gone, the infection in him, too. Again and again and again, she tasted the fetid miasma of it, until her stomach began to churn. Yet when she glanced into the PsyNet, she saw nothing . . . nothing but Vasic right beside her. Oh God. Understanding crashed into her with the force of a freight train.

  "You and Abbot"--she half turned into Vasic's body--"you're no longer safe." Arrows had been protected by default at the compound, the infection leery about approaching the heavy knot of high-Gradient empathic minds. Now, Vasic was open on multiple sides.

  "Our shields are extensive. The infection has shown no signs of penetrating them."

  Ivy shook her head, her hand on his gauntlet. "What about the microscopic filaments? We can't even see them!" It was horrifying to know that that ugliness could invade his brain, destroy what made him Vasic. "I need to tie my shields to yours."

  We'll talk about this back at the apartment.

  She brought up the subject again as soon as they walked out of the elevator door onto their floor. "You know I'm right." Having already unclipped Rabbit's leash, she dropped it onto the hallway table after Vasic entered the apartment first in order to clear it of threats.

  "How can shields protect me if the infection comes in through the biofeedback link?" he asked.

  She stared at his back, wide and strong. "You knew."

  "The infection is in the Net," he said, striding over to check her bedroom, Rabbit trotting at his side. "That means we're all vulnerable to breathing in the poison if we come too close to it."

  Yet he--the other Arrows--had all agreed to walk into an infection zone. And these men and women saw nothing heroic about themselves. "I can't tell you how I know," she whispered after he'd cleared his own bedroom, too, "but I know that linking my shield to yours will extend my immunity to you." The knowledge was a rapid
stream of visuals in her head, as if she was being sent a message by a mind at once innocent and vast.

  It should've scared her, but there was absolutely no harm in the sender. No, it felt like the touch of a child . . . an oddly wise one. "Vasic," she said when he didn't respond. "Let me do this." Protect you this much at least, she thought through the rain of tears inside her soul.

  "My task is to shield you." He folded his arms. "Not the other way around."

  Ivy wanted to shake him. Striding over until they stood toe-to-toe, she held the winter-frost gaze that had become the center of her existence. "You won't be able to protect me if the infection burrows into your cerebral cortex and turns you into a madman."

  Vasic didn't want Ivy near his mind, didn't want to risk tainting her with the darkness that lived in him. However, he couldn't refute her point--should he become infected, he could turn on her, snuff out the luminous candle of her life. "The others should also connect to their Es." They might be separated, but he remained the leader of this unit.

  "I've already telepathed Jaya." Ivy stroked her hands down the sides of his jacket.

  He hadn't ever been touched as much. Raising one hand, he closed his fingers over the fragile bones of her wrist, holding her to him.

  Not disputing his right to the contact, Ivy said, "We'll talk to everyone else the instant the merge is complete."

  She closed her eyes, and ten heartbeats later, the flat black of his shielding became interwoven with the translucent color of hers. The increased visibility was anathema to an Arrow. Vasic would deal with it because hiding Ivy was impossible--and shouldn't be done. Any attempt to suffocate the wild beauty of an E, of his E, was a crime he'd punish with lethal efficiency.

  He'd been handling the curious and dangerous attention she drew since the instant they relocated. He hadn't had to execute anyone yet, but he would the instant any individual posed a threat. He wasn't a good man, but she was something exceptional. He would protect her . . . till the day he died.

  Unacceptable, said the grimly resolute core of him, his eyes on the gauntlet.

  "Vasic?" Ivy's fingers curled into her palm. "I can feel you."

  He could sense her as well, in a way that meant he'd be able to tell if she was hurt or in pain. "Good," he said, and used the technology that was killing him to send out a message to the unit about merging shields, while Ivy got on the comm and did the same with the Es.