Caressed By Ice

"I didn't mind." Heat in the air, so thick she could almost touch it. Her eyes dropped to his erection, hard and heavy against his jeans. She wanted to feel him in her hands, to experience more of the animal passion he'd shown her tonight.

Something smashed to the floor, jolting her out of the erotic fantasy. Her eyes widened as she realized he'd thumped the armchair - one of the few undamaged pieces of furniture in the room - hard onto the floor.

"I need to leave." He pulled out a phone, skin stretched tight over his features.

It made her wonder if he was as tightly stretched in other places.

"Brenna."

"Why not?" She met his gaze. Stubborn. Needy. Changeling to his Psy. "I don't care if you destroy the whole apartment."

His hand clenched on the slim width of the phone. "As the state of this room shows, I'm no longer listening to the dissonance. It's not keeping me in check. All it would take to kill you would be one mistake in the heat of passion. One."

The taut restraint in his voice cut her. "Judd, I need you." They had to find a way past this. She was so hungry she was almost to the point where she wanted to cry. "I need your touch and I need to touch you in return."

A crack appeared in the casing of the phone in his hand. "Where's your comm console? I'll call someone to stand watch - you're not safe from Timothy's assailant."

"No." She thrust a hand through her hair, fingers shaking with need such as she'd never before felt. Yes, changelings craved touch. But this was something so primal it was a claw inside of her. "I'm awake. I'll stay that way. I'll call you if anything happens."

"Somebody is trying to hurt you." Something not wholly on the side of the angels moved at the back of his eyes.

She had already decided she wasn't going to run from what he was, but that didn't mean she was going to submit to his every wish. "I don't need a babysitter if I'm wide-awake." She swallowed. "Go. Looking at you makes me want."

For a timeless second, it appeared he wouldn't listen. Then he turned on his heel and left even as she reached out to touch the odd glint of dark red she thought she saw at the side of his face. "Oh, God." She fought the urge to collapse, to rage at the unfairness of it all. Instead, she pushed up her sleeves, found the vacuum-bot, switched it to manual, and began to clean up the dust Judd hadn't manage to corral.

Judd touched the wetness near his jaw and brought his fingers up in front of him. Pale red stained his fingers. His first guess was that he'd been cut by a piece of flying debris but when he moved to the mirror over the sink, he discovered his mistake.

The blood had leaked from his ear.

Extreme dissonance.

His body was literally fighting itself, the conditioning and its attendant pain controls slamming up against the emotions he shouldn't have been feeling. He wiped away the blood and did an internal check. The rupture had already healed over, his body having automatically utilized the same technique as the one that made his scars disappear.

But he knew it couldn't keep up with what was happening inside him. Sooner rather than later, he'd have to shut down every facet of emotion, every glimmer of passion. Because otherwise, his brain would look exactly like those of the hyena children he'd seen.

Bloody. Battered. Irrevocably broken.

Several hours after her cleaning frenzy, Brenna found herself bad-tempered from lack of sleep, lack of touch, and a sensual need that refused to quit. It probably wasn't the best of times for her to be charting a hack, but she'd made a promise. So here she was with Dorian in the second subbasement of DarkRiver's business HQ.

The blond sentinel had growled at her several times, but she'd just snarled back.

"You're going about it ass-backwards," he said for the fourth time in an hour.

Brenna's eyes narrowed. "The whole plan is to sneak in, not stampede so loudly that everyone from the Psy Council to your uncle in Poughkeepsie can hear us."

"Where the hell is Poughkeepsie anyway?" Dorian pushed into her personal space, standing with his hand on her chair as he leaned over her shoulder to look at the screen.

Brenna was itching for a fight after the frustrated night she'd had. But there was something she had to talk to Dorian about. "Can I ask you a question?"

"What?" He scowled, tapping at her screen and threatening to shift the pathway she'd mapped out. "You should've gone - "

"Dorian."

Her tone must've gotten through to him because he swung around to take a seat in the chair beside her, swiveling so he faced her profile. "What is it, kid?"

He was the only one she let get away with calling her that - she had guessed that Dorian, who had lost his sister to Enrique, saw her as another baby sister. It was the reason he acted so bossy with her. That was more than okay with her, because while Dorian was hard to read, if he was anything like Drew and Riley, then his sister's murder had to have devastated him, tearing into the protectiveness at his core.

"First, Judd knows but that's all. Don't tell anyone else, okay?"

His surfer-blue eyes were piercing. "I can't make that promise until I know if it'll affect either of our packs."

"It won't." Glancing over her shoulder to double-check that no one was listening, she turned back to the DarkRiver sentinel and simply asked what she needed to know. "How do you deal with not being able to change into animal form?"

Dorian's face reflected surprise. "Most people dance around that. Like they're afraid of hurting me." His voice said that that was a ridiculous worry.

"Please tell me." She held his gaze. "Please, Dorian."

Realization dawned. "Oh, damn, sweetheart. That bastard messed you up, didn't he?" Reaching out, he stroked a hand over her hair. "How bad?"

The gentleness brought tears to her eyes. "I can use my teeth and claws, but I can't shift fully. No loss of strength, speed, or flexibility."

Dorian dropped his hand to lie on the back of her chair. "I grew up latent - I never had anything to lose." His tone was matter-of-fact. "But you're different. Are you sure it's permanent?"

"I don't know anything. But I want to prepare myself for the worst-case scenario." That way, her heart couldn't break all over again.

"Alright." Dorian's handsome features settled into decisive lines. "The first thing you have to do is stop feeling sorry for yourself."

She swallowed but didn't defend her emotions. This was why she had asked him. Dorian might see her as a sister, but he was the kind of brother who'd give it to her straight.

"You survived," he said, "and you aren't a basket case. You should be fucking proud of yourself. He tried to cripple you, but he didn't succeed."

"No. But he stole something precious from me...he stole my wolf."

The depth of pain in those words stopped Judd in his tracks. He'd raced down here after discovering Brenna's absence from the den, ready to face the consequences of last night's critical breach. But he wasn't prepared for this. For a Brenna with trembling hands and a whisper of a voice.

Moving soundlessly out of the doorway, he leaned his back against the wall and hoped they were too distracted to scent him. He knew he should leave, should allow her privacy. But he couldn't. Brenna should've asked Dorian's opinion while Judd was with her - but she hadn't. Because Judd was Psy and couldn't give her comfort.

Not only had he never truly understood the staggering depth of her loss at not being able to shift, he'd left her in the early morning hours when she had needed him so desperately. How could he blame her for going to another man for succor? Yet he did.

"Enrique stole a lot from you." Dorian's voice cut through the air. "But you can get some of that back."

"How?"

"Build on your strengths, Brenna. Become so damn good at those things that no one dares to hold the other against you."

Good advice, Judd thought, his fingers curling into fists.

"Okay. Okay." Brenna sounded as if she was putting that will of hers to good use.

"Anytime you need me, just call. Alright, kid?"

Judd's fists were so tight, he was in danger of fracturing his own bones. He understood why Brenna had needed to talk to Dorian. He even understood that the leopard saw Brenna as a young sister, not a potential lover. None of that made any difference. Judd wanted to be the one she turned to when in need.

Ice picks of pain shoved through his skull, dissonance so vicious it nearly shut down his consciousness. The countdown was getting inexorably closer to the end. Uncurling his fingers with sheer force of will, he watched the blood rush back in. Last night had made it clear that he'd already crossed too many lines, broken too many rules. Soon, it would be too late to draw back.

"Thank you, Dorian."

No, he would not pull back. Brenna was his. His to pleasure. And his to comfort. Squaring his shoulders, he stepped into the doorway.

Chapter 32

Dorian and Brenna both looked up. He'd expected surprise and perhaps fluster, but Brenna's face reflected an expression he could define only as relief. Getting up off her chair, she pressed her body into his, burying her face against his chest. "You need to hold me."

He could follow orders, especially when they were given in a familiar female voice hiding a tremor. Raising his arms, he wrapped them around her body. She didn't seem to mind being crushed, her own arms holding on tighter.

Dorian's eyes met his over the top of her head. The leopard had an inscrutable look on his face. But when Judd inclined his head in thanks, Dorian returned the gesture.

After escorting Brenna back to the den sometime around three in the afternoon, Judd left to help Sascha with the deer. Brenna had decided to stay behind because she had a viral problem to figure out, but her torn loyalties were obvious.

"Your work is important," he told her. "We need to strike at the Council's heart."