Chapter 40

Chapter 40

Henry will one day understand that I did him a favor. Auden was never suitable to take over his position as head of the Jackson family. Had the biograft succeeded, he'd have ended up with a child with an active ability; the graft was designed to expand her neural pathways and trigger a large-scale psychic expansion outside of her passive main ability.

I had hoped for a significant Gradient increase in her already-existing basic Tp. It seemed to me that "stretching" Auden's mind to make her more powerful had a higher chance of success than attempting to trigger a wholly new ability. That the endeavor failed has cost Henry nothing—Auden was already a useless part of his genetic legacy. He can no doubt create another child soon enough.

—Shoshanna Scott's private notes (20 February 2076)

AUDEN SWAM TO consciousness with the awareness that someone was stroking her breast to hip and back again with a lazily feline touch. Shivering, she opened her eyes to look into those so wild, she'd never mistake them for human.

"There you are." A purr of sound before Remi brushed his lips over hers.

She was so, so glad that the Arrow who was protecting her mind had created a second layer of shielding so that nothing of her emotions got through to them. Because she'd lost control at the end there, become nothing but a creature of flesh and pleasure.

"I didn't get to see all of you," she complained, her voice coming out rough.

Had she screamed at the end? Had he kissed her to capture the sound? It was hazy, her brain blurred with the sensations erotic and more extraordinary than she could've ever imagined. Because, unlike the videos she'd watched to teach herself about the intricacies of sexual intimacy, it hadn't been about just the body. She hadn't understood that until he touched her with such care, until he took such care with her.

Remi Denier had ruined her. She'd crave him to the end of her days.

"I wanted to see you," she said, turning into him, greedy and needy and unashamed about it—because it was him.

Taking her hand, he brought it to his body. "Oh, that was only the first act."

She gasped as her hand met the hard, warm ridge of his arousal. He was naked.

Heat rolling over her in a luxuriant wave, she glanced down. Her hand looked small and fine against the veined thickness of him, and she found herself thinking about what he'd said at the end. About her mouth.

Her stomach clenched. She'd never even considered she might want to do the act he'd described, but now…

She looked up at him. "Can I? What you said. With my mouth."

Claws against her skin as he stroked her back. "Zero to a hundred," he said, his purr more of a growl now—but intermingled within was laughter affectionate and intimate.

She nuzzled his throat as he'd done her, felt him smile.

"You know your limits, Cupcake?" That clawed hand curling around her throat. "Hmm?"

"No," she admitted, that pet name making her all warm and silly and happy inside. "That's why I have to trust you to stop me if I push it too far."

He kissed her, hard and deep and with such possessiveness that her inner muscles clenched again. They felt a little bruised, but in a good way. A delicious hurt. And that without him ever being inside her. She didn't know what would happen to her when he pushed his thickness inside her.

The idea made her squeeze her thighs together, the pressure exquisite.

"You are such a sexy bite of woman." He nipped at her lower lip. "And I do want to see this luscious mouth of yours on me. But I want to lick you to pleasure first. And even if it's physically safe, you're not ready."

Auden trusted his judgment—and given how hard she'd orgasmed after what they'd just done, she wasn't sure she'd survive the intimacy of his mouth on her most private flesh.

"Please," she begged, stroking her hand over him. "I really want to try." Her mouth watered, her breasts aching. " Remi ."

A groan before he put his hand on her shoulder and pushed gently down. But before she could move, he reached behind her to release her hair from its bun. "I need something to hold," he said on a growl. "So I can show you how to move your pretty mouth on me."

Her heart was a drum, her entire body electrified.

This time, he didn't stop her…but he did have his hand in her hair. He didn't push her when she just looked at him, stroking him with one hand. His thigh muscles had gone rock-hard, however, his breathing jagged.

It did things to her that she could affect him as much as he affected her.

He was so hot and hard in her hand that she felt like she could stroke him forever, but she got a tug on her hair now, a sign that her wild lover didn't have endless patience.

It made her even wetter, hotter.

Dipping her head, she closed her mouth over the tip of him. His hand fisted in her hair, his body rigid. " Fuck. " A low growl.

Confidence in her blood now, she drew him deeper and sucked a little. She knew she had zero technique, and no idea what she was doing, but he did what he'd said—he directed her. And she loved it.

Hands on his thighs, she found herself coaxed into a stroking motion with her mouth. Still shallow, nothing forceful, letting her get used to him. And oh, she liked it. Loved being able to give him intimate pleasure, loved the scent of him, the feel of him.

"Fuck," he gritted out again, his hand tight in her hair. "I'm going to come. In your mouth or on your breasts, those are your choices."

Auden's brain hazed again.

Lifting her mouth, she said, "Breasts," even though she wasn't conscious of making a decision.

Wet heat on her flesh, the intimacy of it searing.

Even more intimate was what came after. Remi carrying her to the shower, stripping her, then stepping into the cubicle with her and soaping her all over. He wouldn't let her do it in return however. "I need to prepare for the op," he said, kissing her neck from behind as he stroked the flare of her hips. "I will not be able to do that, beautiful, if you keep putting your hands on me."

Auden loved how he said those things to her…how he meant them. Even though her body wasn't taut and trim as she'd seen on changelings. She'd just had a baby, but even before those changes, she'd always been more curves than muscle.

But it turned out that Remi did love her "cuddlier" form.

She saw that in the wickedness of his grin when he toweled her dry, and felt it in the playfulness of his kiss and the little slap he gave her bottom. He enjoyed her body. She'd never known how good such a simple thing could feel.

The happiness buzzed through her even after she'd gotten into some comfortable clothes and sat down in bed with the organizer she'd abandoned earlier. Remi, dressed only in sweatpants, lounged beside her on one arm, his eyes on the screen. "Where are you going to look?"

"First, I have to link into the house system, but that shouldn't be too hard since I'm on-site." It only took her a minute, her mind clear on the process. "I was able to get into some secure files before, so I'll try there first. Might be a clue in old documents they forgot to move to a vault."

But after touching the screen to bring up the necessary access page, she found herself entering code after code in an unbroken chain. Shimmering, the screen went blank for a moment before clearing to reveal a stark dual S symbol in solid black against a starlit background. Black on black, the symbol erasing the stars beyond.

Auden gasped and peered closer.

"What is it?" Remi's previously languid form was predator-ready.

"My mother's private mainframe—remote access to it, anyway." Auden's heart was thunder in her chest. "I have no idea where it's actually located, but I know it exists. My father mentioned it to me at some point."

"Auden?" Remi's big body sitting up next to her now, his arm braced behind her.

Making a listening sound, she frantically scanned the files that were opening out in front of her in a rapid-fire cascade. She was half-afraid they'd vanish as fast as they'd appeared.

"Are you sure you don't know the physical location?"

She started to ask how would she, when she realized what she'd just done. Face going ice-cold then red-hot, she slumped back against his arm. "How do I know? How could any part of me know?"

She jolted forward a heartbeat later. "The answers might be in here. This is the heart of all her operations."

"Could she have told you the access codes while you were impaired?"

"No," Auden said at once. "This was her private archive. She'd rather have let it crumble to dust than allow anyone else inside."

Her fingers moved on the screen, pulling out data, drilling through files. "What's this? ‘Architect.'?" She frowned. "It's a sizeable subsection of the files."

Remi whistled, the air of it brushing her cheek as his naked upper body curved slightly around her. "The Architect," he said. "Arrows told me about that. Individual behind terrorism designed to destabilize the world and fracture the Trinity Accord."

"Hmm." Auden scanned the files before putting them aside.

"No surprise she was the Architect?"

"My mother loved power more than anything else in the world. Manipulation like that sounds right up her alley." A sharp stab of pain in her temple, agony so visceral that it burst blood vessels in her eyes.

···

REMI smelled blood before he saw the first drop fall from Auden's nose to the screen of the organizer.

Her face was frozen, gone blank, the metal in her scent beginning to deepen.

In transition.

Not permitting himself to second-guess his plans, he moved at leopard speed to the kit. Inside was his ace in the hole.

He was shoving it into her hand in a matter of a second or two.

Auden's fingers spasmed to clench around the tiny knit cap.

Her body jerked an instant after that. "My baby ." A whisper. "I can feel her. So unformed, her thoughts more sensation than anything else. I feel Finn, too. Affection, care. Another person, the person who made this. Concentration. Cramped hands. Happiness. And I feel you. Wild protectiveness. A feral love."

Remi's heart squeezed. "You're bleeding. I'm going to grab tissues from the bathroom." He did so even as he spoke. "Here."

She dabbed at her nose with her free hand, her other holding on to the knit cap so hard that a vein on the back of her hand throbbed. After she finally stopped bleeding, she went into the bathroom to clean up.

The woman who walked out of the bathroom was cool, calm, collected…and held that knit cap as if it was the most precious diamond in all the world. After lifting it to her mouth, she pressed a kiss to it, then held it out to him. "Just in case."

He took it and knew he was breaking her heart in doing so, even if she had asked. "I'll keep it safe."

"I know." Her trust was a punch to the heart, bringing him to his knees.

"What happened, little cat?"

"Rage formed of Silence," she murmured. "An overwhelming sensation of cold beneath the rage, and I could swear it was directed at me for being inside the private archive." Her eyes narrowed. "But I don't care if the other me doesn't want me looking."

She sat down again, her face grim. "Let's find out what I'm not meant to see."

But though she spent hours in there, there was too much material to wade through to find anything—even when she tried using her own name as a search term. The only thing she was able to confirm was that Henry hadn't known about the biograft. That didn't alter what he'd done in giving her up, and she'd already accepted that the father she'd once loved had never existed.

She finally gave up at eleven, her eyes gritty, knowing she had to be up in four hours to access the basement.

···

THEY made their move at three in the morning, long after everything had gone quiet. Rina had already prowled the corridors in leopard form, and Auden could well imagine the reaction of anyone who ran across her during her patrol, those nightglow eyes a warning to the hindbrain.

The sentinel had told Remi that the staff had left the premises, with only Charisma Wai in the house. Last Rina had seen—ten minutes ago—the aide had been alone in her office. "Dr.Verhoeven's still up, too—I did a quick sortie outside, spotted him inside his lab. But," the sentinel had added, "I did just hear the back door open and close, so either Wai's gone out or someone else has entered. Interval between open and close was too short for more than one person to come in or go out. You want me to do another sweep, make sure?"

"No," Remi had said. "A single extra person shouldn't cause us any problems."

Rina had further confirmed that the lighting through the hallways was on muted night settings, and any lights set to activate to motion—such as in the kitchen—had also switched over to the night settings.

Now Auden fixed a black knit cap over her head, having already pulled her hair back in a tight bun to create a sleeker fit. Remi had scowled at her action, and she'd blushed, thinking of how he'd fisted his hand in her curls, and how later, when she'd put it up for the shower, he'd purred to her about how much he loved her hair.

She'd learn to do the same, she decided then and there, to give him frank words of appreciation and affection. She'd tell him she loved the breadth of his shoulders, was fascinated by how he had a hundred colors in his hair, that his thigh muscles made her mouth water, and his smile caused the butterflies in her stomach to take flight.

She adored everything about Remi.

Cap on, she smoothed her hands down her black sweater. It was the same shade as the cap and the tights on her legs. She'd even pulled on the gloves she used to dull her psychometric sensitivity in day-to-day life.

"You look like a cat burglar." The stroke of a big hand down the curve of her spine.

Her skin shimmered beneath her clothing, attuned to his touch as she'd never before been attuned to anyone. She hadn't even thought this was possible for her.

Then had come a leopard alpha who'd taught her to shoot, fed her delicious pastries, and made her laugh…and in the doing, prowled right into her heart.

Unable to not touch him when he was near, she ran her hand down his black T-shirt, his lower body clad in cargo pants the same color. His boots were dark and heavy and she had no idea how he managed to move with graceful silence in them. She'd gone for simple trainers because Remi had told her socked feet were too much of a risk, given that they had no idea what surfaces they'd face under the trapdoor if it proved to not be a hidden security suite.

"I'll try to be as quiet as possible." She knew she had nowhere near his stealth, but she wasn't about to let him fight her battles, take all the risks.

A quick kiss that made her warm inside before they set off.

Auden had already seen Rina in leopard form when the other woman entered the bedroom to give her report earlier. Despite their previous encounter, however, she sucked in a soundless breath at seeing the leopard who sat against the wall opposite the bedroom door, its tail curled on the polished wood of the floor.

Never, she thought, would she become used to the wonder of it.

The jungle cat rose to walk over to Remi, allow him to run his fingers over the top of her head. "Two hours max," Remi murmured. "Any longer without contact and you send in the troops."

Rina rumbled low in her chest in acknowledgment, the sound more vibration than actual audible noise. Her tail brushed against Auden's leg at the same instant that she turned to situate herself against their bedroom door, and Remi indicated for Auden to follow him.

It was time to unearth the secrets of Shoshanna's house.