Heart of Obsidian

me.”
    Jaw set and eyes fierce, she’d shaken her head. “I won’t let the darkness have you.”
    Her promise echoing in his head, he climbed with single-minded focus, his muscles straining to hold him to the wall as he fought to overcome the physical frustration that was a pulsing grip around his erection. It wasn’t until halfway through the third ascent that he could think again, his mind coldly rational.
    His campaign to win Sahara’s trust, he thought, was progressing according to plan. She’d not only called him when she felt under threat, she’d invited physical contact. The fact that physical contact was causing severe damage to his shields and his thinking processes was a side effect he’d have to handle. Backing off was not an option—her memories were becoming more lucid with each passing day, her psyche healing at a rate that spoke to a remorseless internal strength.
    Soon she would be ready to remember him, and why her subconscious had blocked him from her conscious mind in the first place. There were some things no one could take, some betrayals too reprehensible to forgive.
    “No! Don’t! Kaleb, stop!”
    Scraping the skin off his palm as he lunged for a grip, he blew out a harsh breath and continued to climb until it was only the cold stone and the next grip that mattered. And still he heard her screaming at him to stop.
    * * *
    IT was the creak that woke Sahara in the pitch-dark early morning hours, intruding on hazy dreams of a boy she couldn’t quite see.
    Snapping to full alertness with the speed and silence of someone who’d been at the mercy of others for too long, she nonetheless kept her eyes closed, listening with every cell in her body. It was a trick she’d learned during her years of confinement, a way to gather information while the guards thought her asleep.
    She flicked her eyes open only once she was sure the intruder wasn’t in the room. Her attention locked on the door, her pulse a drumbeat. Releasing a quiet breath, she listened . . . and just barely heard the stealthy movements of someone attempting to disengage the lock she’d flicked on for no reason but that she was obsessed with her privacy.
    Father?
    No response along the old telepathic pathway to her call, nothing but a dull silence that made enraged fear ripple through her blood. Reaching under the bed, she retrieved the butcher’s knife she’d stolen from an unused set of kitchen tools her father had been given by a patient who was an F, and as such, received goods from businesses as a matter of course. The idea of ever again being caught unarmed and vulnerable was her worst nightmare.
    Pushing off the sheets with care, she shoved the pillows underneath to create the illusion of a person and pulled the sheets back up, just as the lock snicked open. Heart thudding and eyes on the knob as it began to turn, she padded across the floor to press her back to the wall. She knew every inch of this house, her feet silent on the old wood that had given the intruder away.
    When the door opened, she waited only long enough to make sure she hadn’t made a mistake, that it
wasn’t
her father, before she struck. It might have been cleaner to use her ability, but Sahara had no intention of getting any closer to the stranger than she had to be before he was immobilized. All indications were that no one had any effective means of defense against her ability; however, she wasn’t going to bet her life on that assumption so soon after leaving the labyrinth.
    Screaming as the butcher’s knife buried itself between his shoulder blades, the darkly-clad intruder spun around, reaching for her with his arms and no doubt his mind. She felt nothing of the telepathic assault inside the obsidian shields that protected her, and it took little skill to avoid his hands, his balance destroyed by the blow she’d struck, the heavy blade lodged in his back.
    The man’s feet skidded in his own blood right as she caught a flicker at the corner of her eye, and suddenly the unknown male was thrown across the room.
    “Wait!” she screamed an instant before his back hit the wall, realizing Kaleb had to have detected the attempted attack on her shields.
    The man froze in midair, blood dripping to the floor in fat droplets.
    “Don’t kill him. We need to know who sent him.” Sahara went to step closer, but she was too slow.
    “Done.” The intruder’s body slammed into the wall, the blade thudding home against his breastbone with a