The Power of Three by Kate Pearce Page B

you.”
    “ Does that bother you—that I fuck
him?”
    “ How could it?” She opened her eyes
wide at him. “He’s only messing around with me. You’re his
mate.”
    “ I don’t think he’s messing around.”
Ash put the fish on the warmed plates and brought it over to the
table where he’d already placed a salad. “Come and eat.”
    He collected his own plate and the
half-finished bottle of wine and sat opposite her. Her moan of
appreciation as she sampled the fish did strange things to his
stomach and made him want to lean across and kiss the shine of
sauce from her lips.
    “ This is delicious.”
    “ Thank you.”
    “ You really are good at everything,
aren’t you?”
    “ Obviously not everything. I’m supposed
to be this great diplomat and yet I can’t string a coherent
sentence together when I’m near you.”
    “ You sound just fine to me.” She
carried on eating. “Your shields are almost as good as
mine.”
    “ Almost?”
    She nodded. “Now that I’m sitting close to
you, I can pick up a little more.”
    He instinctively checked his defenses, and
felt the brush of her mind against his own. “And what does it tell
you?”
    “ That I find you
fascinating.”
    He smiled into her eyes. “The feeling is
mutual.”
    “ And it terrifies me.”
    “ Why?”
    “ Because.” She put down her fork and
gestured at the space around them. “I don’t belong
here.”
    “ It’s just an apartment. Surely what’s
important is who lives in it.”
    “ And that’s you and Esca.”
    “ And you.”
    “ I’m just passing through. It’s just so
foreign to me.”
    “ You’re not enjoying your work at the
university?”
    “ Being a test subject?” She shrugged.
“It’s interesting and I like the people I’m working
with.”
    “ But you still don’t think you fit
in.”
    “ I’m Etruscan. I was brought up to
believe I was scum and existed simply because I was of use to my
government. Coming here where everyone is a telepath is literally
mind-blowing.”
    “ Don’t you find it freeing?”
    “ Yes, and that frightens me even more.”
She blinked at him. “I’d never met an adult male telepath before I
joined Esca’s Special Forces team.”
    “ And then you had sex with
him.”
    She groaned. “Yeah.”
    “ And then he introduced you to
me.”
    “ Yeah .”
    He picked up her plate and stood up. “Not all
mated couples have sex with everyone within their group. We can
just link minds and not bodies.”
    “ Really?” She looked up at him. “I
don’t know if it’s possible to separate the two. When Esca kissed
me…”
    His cock jumped at the unstoppable visceral
image that passed between them. He carefully put the plates down on
the counter and turned back to her. She’d risen to her feet and was
regarding him warily.
    “ Why don’t you kiss me,
Soreya?”
    “ What?”
    “ Maybe you won’t feel the same as you
did for Esca, and we can just be friends.”
    “ Is that what you want?”
    “ I want you to have choices . You’ve been denied that opportunity all
your life. If you don’t want me, then I’m okay with
that.”
    Liar. His
conscience whispered and he thrust the thought away. He would give
her space. It was the least he could do considering that he’d do
anything to fuck her, own her, meld with her—anything at all. That
wasn’t like him. Perhaps he was saving himself as well.
    She rubbed a hand over her mouth and
approached him as warily as a hunted animal. “I’m not sure if this
is a good idea.”
    “ It’s just a kiss.”
    “ And what if I immediately want you?
Does that mean that every time a Pavlovan telepath kisses me I’ll
want to fuck them?”
    “ You’re afraid of that, aren’t
you?”
    “ That I’m so desperate to be with my
own kind that I’ll whore myself out to anyone? Yeah, that scares
me.”
    “ Did you fuck your way through Esca’s
team and Trenx’s crew?”
    “ No, but none of them kissed
me.”
    He leaned back against the counter and