Ghostwalker 05 - Deadly Game

chest. "But neither are you."
    Ken watched the way her throat worked as she swallowed the water. He could barely keep from leaning down and touching his tongue and teeth and fingers to that fragile expanse of skin. He longed to taste her. To put a mark of ownership on her. To brand her his to the rest of the world. And that need disgusted him. He had faced danger his entire life, but this one woman held more threat to him personally than a thousand rifles had ever done. She would take his honor and his self-respect and expose his deepest, ugliest secret to the world.
    "Why wouldn't Briony come to see me, if you really know her?"
    "Jack doesn't trust you."
    "That wouldn't stop me." She was inexplicably hurt. If she found out where her sister was, she would move heaven and earth to catch a glimpse of her – as long as she could be certain Whitney would never find out.
    Ken allowed her to lie back, and he straightened, once again giving her a feeling of loss.
    "You said you were there to protect the senator. Do you know who gave your team that order? I'm assuming someone said there was going to be an assassination attempt on him."
    He looked so remote – so utterly alone. She felt that way inside, where no one ever saw who she was. No one ever cared who she was. She was a soldier. It was everything and yet nothing at all. She sometimes felt, especially recently, as if she had no humanity left – as if it had been stomped or trained out of her. She wasn't certain which, but it was gone. Do you feel that way? She asked it silently, wanting to reach out to him, needing to connect after she'd raked at him with her claws. Do you feel as if you have no humanity left in you? That they stamped it out and made you into something you don't even recognize anymore?
    His gaze moved over her face, seeing too much. For one moment she felt connected, as if he had managed to crawl into her skin and share it with her. I was born without humanity so I have never had it to lose.
    The words were harsh, but his voice, moving through her mind, was a caress, stroking at her insides, raising her temperature and setting her on fire. She was struck by the utter honesty in him, when what he was saying was impossible. Ken obviously believed what he was saying, and that confused her. What kinds of monsters were hidden behind that mask of scars? He'd once had a face of masculine beauty. Had that been a mask as well?
    She studied him, trying to be objective, trying to really see him when the chemicals in her body were reacting and rushing through her bloodstream in wild abandon. Whitney was fond of experiments. He had a way of twisting everything good into something that left a bad taste in one's mouth. She had been raised with discipline and control, but to her orderly mind, everything Whitney did seemed to be chaotic and wrong – a subtle or not-so-subtle form of torture.
    Mari shook her head. "Whitney has no humanity. He's cruel and callous and hasn't an ounce of kindness or compassion in him. You aren't like that."
    "Don't kid yourself, I'm exactly like that."
    "You do kind things."
    Ken shrugged his shoulders. Most of the time he felt nothing at all, but when he did, it was an icy rage that burned so deep it terrified him. Now his emotions were all out of whack and he wished he could go back to the familiar. He did kind things because he had to do them – it was necessary to keep Jack safe. And above all else, Ken wanted Jack in the world, happy and healthy and living his life. One of them had to survive, and Jack was extraordinary.
    Ken bent down once more, his breath stirring tendrils of hair from her face, his expression harsh. "It gets results."
    She studied the scars up close. The torture had been recent. She should have been intimidated, but Mari didn't scare easily. She knew soldiers, and she recognized control when she saw it. Ken had discipline and restraint down to an art. She reached up and brushed his face with her fingertips, needing the tactile experience, the flood of information that could accompany a single touch of skin to skin.

    Everything inside Ken went still as her fingers traced the pattern of his scars. She left tiny pinpoints of fire burning on his face, when he couldn't feel his own touch. He didn't have sensation on most of his body, yet he could feel her beneath his skin, sparking damaged nerve endings to jump and sizzle with electric current. The sensation spread from his face to his chest, a heat so thick it