Last Guard by Nalini Singh

Chapter 41

Research. Research. Research.

—Unofficial Mercant motto (per posting on family message thread)

AFTER CANTO PUTtogether the anchors who’d assist with the occlusion, they practiced the maneuver in the Substrate. “It’s so simple,” Canto said, his mind already working on multiple other possibilities using this technique. “Hard on my energy levels, but the merging with other anchor minds? It’s not difficult. Actually feels like I’m stretching out kinked muscles.”

Payal gave him a penetrating look. “For you,” she said precisely. “I’ve shadowed you on every merge, and I think you were born with the ability to be the nucleus for such large-scale actions.”

The nucleus.

That was exactly what it felt like, as if the other anchors were becoming part of him, part of a living cell. “What if I couldn’t do it?” he asked, his jaw clenching. “We’d have had the plan, but no one capable of putting it into play.”

Payal turned the full force of those beautiful, intelligent eyes on him, unblinking in her focus. “Canto, do you really believe it’s a coincidence that the anchor who reached out to bring us all together is also the same anchor with the ability to be the nucleus of a large-scale action?”

“I hear sarcasm, 3K.”

“You’re imagining it.” Straight face, but he felt her amusement in the bond between them. “I’m just asking a fact-based question.” She held up a hand when he would’ve argued—regal as a queen—and said, “What set you on the course of connecting us all? Do you remember?”

“Seeing the empaths rise and gather.” A once-stifled designation that was now a powerhouse.

“Was that the trigger, or did it just help you form your thoughts?”

Canto frowned, considered it. “I had a dream,” he said softly. “I’d almost forgotten that. It was this crazy, disjointed dream that showed anchors linked together in a constellation rather than as separate stars.”

Again, the image flared vividly against the screen of his mind. Of that constellation linked by lines of energy, so vivid and strong. Far stronger than the lonely stars alone in the Substrate. “It was so broken, that dream. But that image, it stuck with me.”

“Broken like the NetMind is broken?”

He sucked in a breath, stared at her. “Fuck, it was a message.” Now that she’d dragged him to the damn water, he couldn’t help but drink. “It’s still trying to help us, even though it’s dying.” Anger knotted his spine. The NetMind was as much a part of the Net as any one of them. It was a child and it was dying of a cancer they couldn’t fix.

Payal’s hand closed over his fisted one. Opening out his fingers, he turned his hand and wove his fingers through hers. It felt natural, as if they’d always been meant to be entwined.

“How do we achieve occlusion?” she said. “Work it through with me one more time.”

His “robotic” Payal had felt his rage and was trying to help him fight it. Fuck, he was gone for her. Lifting their linked hands, he kissed the back of hers. Then he began to go step-by-step through the plan his mind had fathomed from his first glimpse of it.

It involved shrinking the PsyNet rather than cutting off a piece. In simple terms, Canto and the twenty merged hubs would become a superanchor for the duration of the occlusion, and that superanchor would haul the Substrate toward itself, bringing with it all the minds in the vicinity.

The PsyNet could exist with sparse psychic energy, the reason why it existed in the most remote regions in the world, but it could not exist with zero psychic energy. As a result, the empty sections would “collapse” inward, leaving the Net permanently smaller. “Simple.”

Payal gave him a look.

Grumbling at her, he hauled her in for a kiss. Somehow they both ended up naked on the sofa, the forest a darkness pressing against the glass of the balcony doors. Canto set his mind to do an automatic scan—no way in hell did he want to share the sight of his lover with anyone who might decide to drop by for a visit.

She sat on his lap, soft and welcoming and curious. “I did a bit of research.” Her hands doing that thing on his shoulders, that soft petting that made him turn to mush.

A slow smile spread across his face. “So did I.”

Big eyes.

A luscious kiss—then he set her beside him. She watched with a confused expression as he got into his chair, which he’d parked right next to the sofa. “The bedroom?” she asked.

“Nope.” Shifting so he faced the sofa, he engaged the brakes, then crooked a finger.

She came, retook her position on his lap. It felt so good to have her soft weight on him, to see her eyes as they touched, as they learned one another. She shivered when he nipped at her breasts. He shuddered when she scraped her nails gently down his chest. Her wet heat rubbed against his hard cock with every movement.

He ran his hands down her back, squeezed her lower cheeks. “Soft,” he murmured appreciatively, loving that softness as he loved the gentle curve of her stomach and the roundness of her thighs.

“Hard,” she whispered in return, shaping his biceps.

Payal had a thing for his arms. Canto wasn’t complaining.

Sucking at her neck, he gripped her hips to still her when she began to move faster on his cock. “Remember that research?”

Her hand in his hair, she held him to her throat. “What?”

Nipping lightly at her, he pulled back. “On the sofa.”

“Canto,” she complained.

He bit down gently on her plump lower lip. “Promise it’ll be worth it.”

Face flushed and nipples hard and inviting, she teleported herself to the sofa even though it was only a few inches. He laughed at her small display of temper and released the brakes to edge a bit closer, then engaged them again. “Impatient cat.” Putting his hands on her thighs, he tugged her forward. “Hmm, not quite right.”

He reached to her left, grabbed a couple of cushions. “Sit on these?”

A scowl. “You want me higher? I’m a Tk.” Then she levitated … at the perfect level to his face. “See? Now can we get back to intimate skin privileges?”

His brain short-circuited. Grabbing her under the thighs, he hauled her toward him. And put his research to good use between her thighs. Her scream was short, sharp before her body crashed to the sofa—or would have, if he hadn’t used his upper-body strength to ease her down.

Shoving the pillows under her hips to raise her to the perfect height, he went back to his pleasurable task. His research had taken him to a clinical sex manual, but there was nothing clinical about the taste of Payal on his tongue, nothing clinical about how her short, breathy screams made his cock pulse, nothing clinical at all in what it did to him to have to hold her hips tight because she was thrashing too hard in pleasure.

He knew it was pleasure because she was wide-open to him on the mental level. And right now, her brain was hazed by wave upon wave of orgasm. Turned out positive feedback worked on Canto—and made him want to wring even more pleasure out of her. He licked, he sucked, he learned the folds and softness of her body.

He even slipped his tongue into her.

“Canto!” It was a scream as her thighs clamped around his head.

Things crashed and broke. He thought it might have been the other sofa. He didn’t give a shit. Because Payal was orgasming so hard that the feedback through their link was threatening to make him come.

Lifting his head before it was too late, he hauled her back into his lap … and thrust into her while her body yet rippled from the final echoes of her pleasure. Wrapping her arms around his head, she pressed her face to the side of his and let him move her lax, lazy body as he wished.

To have her so limp and sated, it was all the validation he needed that he’d gotten it right. If there was a touch of desperation in the way he thrust into her, the kisses he demanded, the way his fingers dug into her curves, it had nothing to do with their upcoming separation. Because no matter what, Canto wasn’t about to let her go.