Heart of Obsidian

back. Taking her mouth, tasting her with his tongue, he broke the kiss to thrust in and out of her in a driving rhythm, the water dripping off his lashes to hit her cheeks.
    “Everything, Kaleb,” she gasped, her nails the sweetest pain on his shoulders, “give me everything.”
    “You have it.” All his secrets, anything she wanted. Even his scarred, maimed heart. “I love you.”
    Eyes of deep, deep blue locking with his, a single tear rolling down her face. “I know,” Sahara said, her heart breaking that he’d said the words for her. Hurt and brutalized beyond belief, shown not even an ounce of love until they met, it wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d believed himself incapable of the emotion.
    She knew he was more than capable of it, felt it in his every breath, his every touch, his every promise. That he knew he had the capacity for it . . . it was everything. “Tell me again.”
    Both arms under her body, his hands curved over her shoulders as he held her in place for deep, hard thrusts that made her intimate muscles clench in sheer pleasure, he paused, his hair dark against his forehead, his eyes holding the colors of twilight, and his body a sculpture of male beauty. “I love you. I will always love you.”
    Lightning, jagged and dangerous and beautiful, flashed overhead as he began to move again, his mouth seeking hers to lock them together. Around them, the rain was a thundering cocoon, theirs a private world. Kiss after kiss, stroke after stroke, they couldn’t get enough, would never get enough.
    He was so strong and hot and out of control, one of his hands now at her throat in a caress that her body instantly associated with erotic possession. She felt the orgasm approaching, tried to fight it off because she wanted more of this, didn’t want it to end, but it was too late, the pleasure tearing through them both in a wave of sensation as wild as the lightning that split the skies.
    Only this time, it wasn’t limited to their bodies. Their minds collided on the psychic plane, their thoughts crashing together in a splintering of astonishing color that made her cry tears that became rain as she saw all the pieces of him. “I love you, Kaleb.”
    * * *
    KALEB’S hand was tangled up in the wet heaviness of Sahara’s hair as she lay half on, half off his chest, their legs intertwined and every inch of skin slick with rain. Neither one of them wanted to go inside, in spite of the continuing downpour, but he’d put a heavy telekinetic shield over them to protect Sahara from what was in fact icy cold water.
    Inside the shield, the temperature was considerably higher, Kaleb’s ability to create and manipulate kinetic energy being used in a way most trainers would consider wasteful. It wasn’t. Not if it kept Sahara warm.
    “What was that?” she asked, chest rising and falling as her lungs struggled to drag in air. “At the end?”
    “Our minds connected.” It was an experience he’d never forget, Sahara’s love and spirit an intensity of light deep inside him, a candle flame that lit up the void. Damaged and twisted and scarred beyond all hope of repair, the part of him that
was
the void touched the candle flame in wonder, astonished that it was for him.
    For
him.
For Kaleb.
    This
was purity, this painfully beautiful thing Sahara felt for him, and it was a truth Pure Psy would never comprehend. But—“I’m sorry for what you must’ve seen.”
    “I saw wild, dangerous beauty. I saw devotion. I saw
you
.” Lifting her head off his chest, she fisted one hand against her heart. “I can feel you deep inside, a midnight star so impossibly strong and loving and
mine.
” Her voice trembled. “I’m so glad you’re mine. I won’t ever let you go.”
    This time, it was Kaleb who said, “I know,” devastated at being so wanted. “You are just a little possessive.”
    Sahara laughed, her eyes wet as, inside him, the candle flame continued to burn, the light a warm, enduring gold. But there was more. On the psychic plane outside their minds, a fine thread of midnight, distinguishable from the black of the Net only by the glittering obsidian facets of it, had woven intimately with one of golden light, the tie going from his mind to Sahara’s. “We’ve bonded.”
Look.
    Sahara’s eyes turned inward, her smile luminous.
“Kaleb.”
Laughing in open delight, she pressed kisses along his jaw, halting only when the fingers of one of her hands brushed the scar on his forearm.