Driven to the edge, but unwilling to chance hurting Brenna, he focused his rage into manipulating an inanimate object instead. The sofa raised off the floor behind her. "Yes," he said, hoping she wouldn't notice. "So embrace the pleasure you get from me. It's not tainted."
She smiled, slow and bright. "You're wonderful, you know that? All logic and reason but wonderful." A simple statement that meant everything. "And even more so because you've been holding me all this time without complaining. I'm no lightweight."
He debated whether to say it and decided for truth. "I'm a Tk. It costs me nothing to hold you."
Her face clouded over. "You're using telekinesis to hold me up?"
"Yes. It's who I am." It was time they dealt with that. "Look behind you."
Frowning, she glanced over her shoulder. Her mouth fell open. "You're making the sofa...and the table, float!" She turned back to him. "Why?"
"Too much power. I have to release it somehow."
She wriggled and he knew she wanted to be freed. He let her jump down, wondering what she'd do now. Able to rein in his most dangerous emotions now that she was no longer touching him, he brought the furniture back down to earth.
"Lift me," she ordered out of nowhere.
"Brenna - "
She took a couple of steps back to give him more room. "Do it, I want to feel your...energy, differentiate it from his." A stubborn look.
Judd had the sudden realization that if he ever saw fear of himself in Brenna's eyes, it would break him beyond redemption. "Hold still." He could do it while she was moving, but she might inadvertently hurt herself if she pushed forward at the wrong instant and redirected his kinetic energy.
Then he simply did it.
"Judd." Her eyes went wide as she found herself standing in midair, two feet off the floor.
"Should I put you down?" It cost him literally nothing to do this. In fact, it lessened the dissonance because of the discipline required to govern his Tk.
"No. Take me higher."
He obeyed. To his surprise she began to laugh. "It's like I'm flying." Curling up into a ball, she did a flip in the air, forcing him to concentrate even harder to compensate. At that instant, he was her personal Arrow, a slave who'd do this for as long as she wanted, just to hear her laugh.
"Do something else!" A grinning order as she returned to an upright position.
He began to press on her legs. After a second, she seemed to understand and cooperated as he took her horizontal. Now she really looked like she was flying. Her expression was both delighted and startled at the same time.
"Okay," she said soon after. "Enough. I don't want to wear you out."
"I'm fine," he said, obeying nonetheless. Because she'd asked. There could be no connection between his Tk and her lack of choice.
"Baby, I have plans for that hot bod of yours and for those plans to succeed, you'll need all your energy,"
He made sure her landing was soft. "Did my power scare you?"
"No." She sounded vaguely surprised. "I think it's because he never did anything like that. He was only interested in causing pain and humiliation, not playing."
Play. Another changeling concept. "Was that what we were doing?" He watched her cross the floor to him, graceful and deadly - Brenna Shane Kincaid could destroy him, and yet he offered no resistance when she put her hand on his chest.
"Your skin burns!" She scowled. "What's wrong? Don't give me any crap about it being nothing. Your irises are pure black again - the gold is gone and I can't even distinguish the pupils. No - wait." Her forehead wrinkled. "The irises aren't black - they're a deep shade of red!"
"It's not something you have to be concerned about."
She let out a low growl that sounded like it should've come from a much bigger creature. "I swear, you're going to drive me to grievous bodily harm one of these days."
He couldn't resist. Reaching out, he ran his finger over her cheek, along her jaw, and down her neck, closing his hand about her neck once more. Petting. Gentling. "Then you'd have to find another hot bod."
Her lips twitched and she raised her hand off his chest to close over the wrist of the arm holding her. "Very funny, but I'm not that easily distracted. Baby, please."
He was almost used to being called "baby" by her. "It's nothing you can change. Why should I burden you with it?"
"Because, my Psy darling" - she tugged off his hand and laced her fingers through it - "that's what lovers do. Share."
"We aren't lovers." He had to grasp every shred of reason available to him, because the touch of her hand against his was shoving emotion through him like a battering ram.
"Judd."
She was so stubborn she could have been Psy. But he was even more so - he'd learned not to give away anything even under the most extreme pressure. Which was why his decision to tell her made no sense. "Each time I break Silence, there's a feedback reaction; you know that."
She nodded, expression solemn. "What Faith said about the pain."
"It's called dissonance and it accumulates." Pain in his head, in his nerves, in his very bones. "I have to extend a certain amount of power to keep it contained."
Brenna jerked her hand from his without warning. "In real-speak, you hurt every time I touch you, every time we connect!"
He grabbed her hand again. "It's a programmed reaction, one I can handle."
When she tugged this time, he didn't allow her to get away.
"And that's another thing," she muttered, "how come you're so strong?" She didn't wait for an answer. "What happens if you try to dismantle the conditioning that causes the dissonance?"
"I can't afford to disengage that conditioning." An immutable fact. "I need the spikes of pain - they keep me from killing by telling me when I'm getting too close to an emotional reaction that might lead to the unintentional activation of my abilities."
"Okay, but why can't you get rid of the other parts of the Protocol - so you don't get hurt for feeling things below that unsafe level?" She bit her lower lip and gave him a guilty look through her lashes. "I asked Faith for help in getting you to break Silence."
A flare of red. "If you want to know something about me, come to me."
"I needed some advice!"
This time, it was Judd who pulled away. Walking to the other side of the room, he turned his back to her, bracing his palms on the wall. "There is no way to break Silence. Not for me. I refuse to become a danger to you or anyone else. This - tonight - is as far as I can go."
Brenna wanted to kick something. Instead, she went to stand behind him and, after a slight hesitation, put her hand on his muscled shoulder. His skin was a fever. It hurt her to know that her touch hurt him, but she also knew if she stopped touching him, she'd lose him to the talons of Silence. "Listen instead of doing the alpha male thing on me."
"Hierarchy is a changeling concept."
She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed herself to his back. Then she bit him - a light graze over his naked back. He didn't growl as a wolf male might have, but what he did was just as dominant, just as deliciously sexy. She didn't want a puppy - she wanted a man with teeth. And Judd had plenty.
Looking over his shoulder, he gave her a dark glance. "Keep pushing and you might not like the result."
Something sizzled under her fingertips, a thousand tiny teasing bites. Delighted, she pressed a kiss over the skin she'd bitten. Judd looked away, pressing his hands harder on the wall in front of him. It had the effect of further defining the muscles in his back.
"What was that you did?"
"A controlled use of Tk." His voice was arctic in its extreme focus.
Dangerous, he was dangerous. Again her brain tried to tell her something important, but she was concentrating too hard on getting through to Judd. "Just listen, okay?" She kept going before he could interrupt. "I've been talking to Faith more than you know. She thinks that maybe Silence isn't all bad."
"The Protocol gives sociopaths free rein." Words that sliced with their brutal cold.
She shivered. "That almost felt like you cut me." The sensation had been of a knife passing close to her skin. It scared her - Santano Enrique had taunted her with his scalpels hour after hour. Sometimes he'd done more than simply taunt.
Judd turned to stone. "Stop touching me. I'm losing control."
There was something in his voice that made her obey. She unclasped herself from him and took a couple of steps back. He didn't turn as he spoke. "I can cause telekinetic damage that looks like a cut, literally turn my will into a blade."
She swallowed at the image. "Okay."
"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said, every muscle on his back tight.
Her fear transformed into pure tenderness. God, the man was so hardheaded, so unwilling to see the truth. He'd likely kill himself before harming her and he thought he had to convince her of that? "I said it almost felt like you'd cut me. You didn't actually."
"So close, Brenna. Too close. You should be running, not trying to convince me to test my chains even more."
"That's exactly it," she said, fisting her hands in order to keep her distance. Touch was natural to her, the lack of it unbearable. Especially where Judd was concerned. "Maybe you can choose which parts of Silence you want. Where is it written that you have to accept or reject the entire Protocol? Faith says the skills she learned under Silence help her fight the cascades triggered by bad visions."
"What about Sascha?"
She breathed a sigh of relief - he was listening. "You know the answer. Silence was plain bad for her; it ran totally counter to her abilities. But not for Faith - "