Psy & Changelings 09 - Play of Passion

desk between them. “We were done.” Ice blue eyes swept over her face . . . her cheeks—which she knew were ridiculously freckled after all the time she’d been spending out of doors.
    “I didn’t know you and Drew were close.” It was a question phrased as a statement.
    She fought the urge to cover up the cheeks he continued to stare at and shrugged—a very human or changeling motion, something she’d picked up after spending almost three years outside the PsyNet. Once, she wouldn’t have answered Hawke’s implied question, awaiting a direct query. But once, she’d been Silent, her emotions chilled like so much ice . . . not full of so much fire that it terrified her.
    “Drew figures that since his sister is mated to my uncle,” she said, focusing on a spot beyond Hawke’s shoulder in an effort to regain her equilibrium, “that gives him the right to claim me as family.” She was a cardinal Psy, her psychic power blinding, but she still couldn’t figure out how Drew had snuck in under her defenses and made room for himself in her life. She just knew she’d miss him horribly if he ever left. “But,” she said, her voice stupidly breathy, “he says he’s not old enough to be an uncle, so he’s decided to treat me like another younger sister.”
    Most people would’ve rolled their eyes at the convoluted reasoning, but Hawke simply nodded, as if it made perfect sense. Of course, to him, it probably did. The predatory changelings she knew were all big on family—and she had to admit, it was . . . nice to be treated with such easy affection by those she trusted. Drew understood that she was powerful, that she could cause incredible damage, and yet he continued to tease her as mercilessly as he did his real sister, Brenna.
    Sometimes, Sienna even teased him back. Self-defense, she called it.
    “Do you want permission to return to DarkRiver land?” Hawke asked, and his voice was as cool as Drew’s had been warm, shattering what stability she’d managed to recapture. But no, she thought, remembering what Sascha had told her the last time she’d spent the night in the home of the woman who was a fellow defector from the PsyNet—and an empath able to sense and heal emotional hurts.
    No one can take from you what you don’t want to give. It is your choice.
    And, she thought, steeling her spine, she chose not to let this strange compulsion toward a man who wasn’t interested, who would never be interested, break her. “I wanted to say thank you,” she said, controlling her volatile emotions by reciting a calming mantra she’d learned during her conditioning in the PsyNet, “for letting me spend so much time with the cats.”
    Hawke finally walked out from behind that desk he always kept as an impassable wall between them. And that quickly, everything shifted, her shields trembling under the impact of him.
    “Has it helped?” he asked.
    “Yes.” She would not give in, not today. “My control over my abilities is far better.” Because he wasn’t constantly there , wasn’t breaking through her defenses with nothing but his presence. “Sascha and Faith have been helping me refine and strengthen my shields.”
    “Faith?”
    “F-Psy,” she said, referring to Faith’s ability to see the future, “have incredibly tough shields. And Faith’s recalibrated hers for maximum effectiveness.” For now, those same shields were giving Sienna a measure of peace.
    Though now, today, her heart beat like that of a trapped rabbit against her ribs, her skin suddenly too tight over heated flesh.
    Reaching out, Hawke touched the top of her right cheekbone. It was the barest graze . . . but it was the first time he’d touched her in over a year. Fractures cracked across her shields, sudden and vicious and threatening to shove her into the black abyss of her power.
    Trembling, she stepped back. “Please don’t touch me.” Choked-out words.
    Hawke curled his hand into a fist at Sienna’s near-silent command, his wolf snarling to get out, to teach this slender girl that he would not be rejected. “You have a cut there.”
    Her fingers lifted to that cheek, a cheek that also bore a scattered spray of sun golden freckles she hadn’t had the last time they’d spoken. “Oh,” she said after a moment, “that must’ve been from when I was with Kit yesterday.”
    His wolf pulled back its lips, baring the lethal sharpness of its canines. Kit was young, extremely dominant, and very close to Sienna in