The bed slammed back to the ground.

Hard.

So did every other item in the room.

SAHARA was attempting to gasp in air when a fragment of memory untangled itself from the vault.

“Did you steal this?”

“No. I earned it.”

Her bracelet, she’d been talking of her bracelet with the man whose muscled body covered her back, both of them breathing as if they’d run a marathon. Never, she thought, had she asked him what he’d done to earn it; that wasn’t a choice she had any intention of altering. Whatever price Kaleb had paid for the platinum that encircled her wrist, he had done so for her, and she would honor it.

His chest sliding against her back, Kaleb pushed up a fraction. Can you breathe?

No, but it has nothing to do with your weight. Come back. Fingers flexing as he obeyed, she released a shuddering exhale and tried to shape words with her mouth. It took her at least two minutes. “I want to do that again.”

“I’m not sure our bodies can take it.”

The icy tone made her toes curl—she knew full well he only went that cold with her when he was fighting to leash himself. Then he kissed her neck and she knew he’d lost the fight. To her shock, they did manage to have sex again, her on her front, Kaleb’s chest rubbing over her back, though he used his Tk to lessen the pressure of his weight. This time, it was slow and deep from start to finish.

“It feels like a full-body kiss,” she whispered as her inner muscles began to clench in a quieter but no less potent pleasure.

Lips at her throat, Kaleb rocked her through the orgasm, then filled her in a burst of liquid heat.

They were both drenched in sweat and sticky with sex, but Sahara had no intention of moving. In fact, she wasn’t certain her bones hadn’t melted. So it was as well her lover was a cardinal Tk who could ’port them into the shower.

SHOWERED and dressed in fresh jeans and a soft pink cardigan from the closet she had in her original room, Sahara went hunting in the kitchen while Kaleb dressed in preparation for a comm meeting. The charcoal gray suit teamed with a steel blue shirt and charcoal tie was one of her favorites. There was something incredibly sexy about a man so lethal that civilized dress only served to highlight the danger, not lessen it.

Discovering a stash of frozen meals he must’ve stocked for use after a high-calorie burn, she put several in the thermal device in the corner. The flavors would be bland by the standards outside the PsyNet, but right now, she could eat a small mammal. Stomach fluttering at the reminder of exactly how she’d used up the kilojoules, she was pouring piping hot pasta into a dish when Kaleb walked in, the fingers of his right hand slotting in his left cuff link.

Hair combed and tie knotted, no trace of passion in his expression, he was Kaleb Krychek, cardinal Tk and former Councilor, once more. The transformation was so complete that it shook her, making her conscious of the level at which he could compartmentalize—and leaving her with the troubling question of exactly how much of himself he ever showed her.

Then he touched his finger to the arch of her cheekbone, and the fear splintered, because only her Kaleb touched her in that way.

Sitting down to eat, neither one of them spoke until they’d almost completed the meal.

“My father just came out of isolation,” she said, having received the update while she was heating up the meals, relief a shuddering emotion inside her. “Anthony called.”

“I can take you to him.”

“Your meeting?”

A slight pause. “My aide is rescheduling it now.”

Sahara wasn’t the least surprised that Kaleb had put her first. He always did. “Thank you,” she said through the painful burn of a tenderness she wasn’t certain he’d ever accept. “But”—she met those incredible night-sky eyes—“I need to ask you a question first.”

Kaleb dosed her water with a vitamin and mineral tablet. “Ask.”

“How could you possibly not have been wiped out by what you did at the university?” Cardinals might be gifted, but their abilities were still finite. “You had enough energy left over to ’port us both to the other side of the world.”

Waiting until she’d drunk half her fortified water, he said, “Do you know about the Amplification Effect?”

She shook her head and, because she didn’t like the distance in his expression, reached out to tangle her fingers with his.

“Per the effect,” he said, not repudiating the touch, “an individual with two midlevel abilities, for example 4.7 in telepathy and 3.9 in psychometry, can sometimes use one to amplify the strength of the other, pushing themselves into the 8 or higher range.” He paused to finish a high-energy nutrient bar.

“No one has ever considered if the effect would hold true if an individual had two cardinal- level abilities.”

Sahara couldn’t imagine the storm of his power. To be a cardinal was to be off the scale. To be a dual cardinal was incomprehensible. “What happens if you amplify?”

“My dual-cardinal status already makes me stronger than other cardinals, by an unknown factor.”

No arrogance, only cold fact. “I believe there must be a low level of unconscious amplification taking place at all times. That’s why my abilities didn’t flatline at the university, and have, in fact, never flatlined.”

Teleporting away the wrapper of the nutrient bar, he said, “As a very young child, I once lifted the wreckage of a bullet train off a trapped survivor—even a cardinal child shouldn’t have been capable of that.”

Sahara struggled to understand what he was saying. “Have you ever consciously amplified your abilities?”

“As a test, yes. Amplification impacts my telekinesis, not my telepathy. I could conceivably reach the earth’s core with the resulting power, destroy the planet from the inside out.”

She had no words, not for a long time, her fingers twined with those of a man who held the fate of the world in his grasp. “Kaleb?”

He didn’t answer, but she knew she held his attention.

“Promise me something.”

“Yes?”

“That you won’t destroy the Net.” If he struck out, she knew it wouldn’t be against the humans or the changelings, but against his own kind; against the ones who had taken her—and almost broken him.

“I told you,” he responded in the same coolly pragmatic tone he’d used for the entirety of their conversation. “I’ve decided against it.”

“That’s not what I asked.” She held the obsidian of his gaze. “I want you to promise to never destroy the Net.” No matter what happened or didn’t happen to her.

A pause filled with a thousand unspoken words . . . and the words he did speak, they made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck rise. “Some things need to be broken to become stronger.”

Chapter 30

“DO YOU THINK,” she whispered, “that holds true for me?”

He went very, very still. “No. You should’ve never been hurt.”

Something in those words, in the dead rage of his tone, made her mind open the doorway to a second vault hidden inside the first. She entered and flinched, a sea of viscous red spreading across her irises. Her breath caught in her throat, dots swam in front of her eyes . . . and Sahara realized she’d stopped breathing, her heart losing its rhythm.

A hand on the back of her neck, a man with eyes of obsidian on his haunches in front of her chair.

“It’s gone, done. He’s dead.”

He’s dead.

Her lungs expanded in a rush of air, her subconscious understanding— reveling in—his words, even if her conscious mind did not. Her chest still hurt, shards of glass in her veins as she reached out to touch the hard line of his jaw. “Something bad happened to me, didn’t it?” Worse than the captivity, worse than the torture after she created the labyrinth.

Kaleb knew he’d made a major tactical error. But he’d promised Sahara he’d never lie to her, so he said, “Yes,” and waited.

“I’m not ready yet.” Her hand fell to his shoulder. “Not strong enough yet. But I will be soon.”

He had no doubts about that. “Do you want to go to your father now?” he asked, wanting her mind off the one subject that held the potential to destroy the bond between them.

If she ran, he hoped she would do as he’d asked and make sure she didn’t leave him alive. Because without Sahara, the world would learn what a child became when his trainer wove nightmares into his mind—of knives slicing into flesh, of women begging for their lives—then put the blade into his hand.

“This is my legacy. You will continue what I have begun.”

“Kaleb.” Sahara’s fingers in his hair, her eyes seeing too deep. “Don’t leave me again. Don’t go away.”

She’d said those words to him before. And his answer, it was the same. “I won’t. I’ll always be here. For you.” Only for her.

Her eyes mysterious with thoughts unvoiced, she stepped into his arms when he rose, her hold fierce. It was the greatest of ironies that the only person who had ever held him as if he mattered was the one person who did not need to hold him at all. If Sahara called, he would come.

Always.

“Let me take you to your father.” Using Leon Kyriakus as the lock, he completed the transfer.

They came in beside the bed where Sahara’s father lay surrounded by complex machines that regulated his body while he healed. Face crumpling, Sahara left Kaleb’s arms to take the older man’s hand, sinking into a chair placed beside the bed. “Father.”

Eye on the small window that allowed the NightStar guard on watch outside to look in on occasion, Kaleb shifted out of view, positioning himself against the wall beside the old-fashioned inward- opening door. If the female—whom he identified from the back as a high-level telepath skilled in mental combat, her petite size distinctive among Anthony’s most trusted security people—had spotted him during the ’port, Kaleb would’ve dealt with it. Since she hadn’t, there was no cause to add further stress to the situation.