Still he held her. Still his hands remained on her body, keeping her close up against himself. He did not step away. Did not turn free. Did nothing to reinforce the knowledge that she was forbidden to him.

“I’m Docia,” she answered back at last. “I know you say I’m someone else, too, but I don’t feel that so much yet. I feel like I’m still just Docia. Nothing has changed for me. I’m just me.”

Even as she spoke, she absently scratched at her shoulder. He pressed his lips together and reached to hook a finger into the collar of her sweater. The soft knitted material gave easily, identifying her braless state as he exposed her shoulder and took note of a lack of a strap. He forced himself to ignore the onslaught of heated speculation that tidbit of knowledge threatened to provoke in him. The area of her upper scapula came into view, and the redness of it was distinct.

“This rash,” he said quietly, “is the evolution of the ouroboros. The mark of the Bodywalkers.”

“Mark? What kind of mark?” she demanded.

He reached up with his left forearm, catching the cuff of his shirt in his teeth as a means of pulling up the sleeve of his sweater, exposing the ouroboros tattooed on his forearm. The dual sinuous, elegant snakes were deeply entwined, the head of each snake devouring the tail of the other snake; around and around they went, in perpetuity, a never-ending cycle, the perfect symbol of the symbiotic Bodywalkers, whose lives could not exist without their hosts and whose hosts could not survive without their Bodywalkers’ spirits. And as he turned his wrist, the tattoo glimmered with the iridescence of black scaling, as if they were very real. And if she watched long enough, she would realize that the snakes wrapped around the Egyptian dagger were actually in motion. The tattoo was a living thing on his body, a phenomenon exclusive to the Blending.

“I’m going to have a tattoo? A snake tattoo?” She didn’t sound horrified. There were no delicate sensibilities being offended here, he realized immediately. It was pure fascination, and her mink eyes were warm with a seemingly secretive delight. “I always wanted a tattoo. I never had the guts. The needle scared the bejeezus out of me.” She reached up to fondle her bare, irritated shoulder. “It will be visible with certain clothing. Tanks and camis and such,” she noted.

“Do you wish to keep it hidden?” he asked, unable to keep from following her fingers over her skin with a couple of his own. She was so very warm, and it radiated with the permanence of the tattoos she spoke of into the pads of his fingertips.

“No. I don’t see why. Yours is very beautiful.” She then reached with both hands to touch his forearm, her fingers running through the light, crisp hairs, tracing the winding snakes. The active sensation of her touch on his skin was like the unexpected smack of a cold hand against a hot cheek. Not that she was cold. Far from it. Only that everything about it was sharp, unexpected, and shocking to his whole body. That one simple touch. He must have gripped hold of her at her waist, because she let out a surprised gasp. Knowing how strong he was and how fragile she was as yet, he pulled away sharply. Yet everything about the action felt wrong. It was like leaping out of the warmth of the fine, beautiful desert and plunging into the brutality of an icy, dangerous mountainside.

Then of all things, she blushed. Not because of some shyness that he could perceive, but because of this sense of rejection he felt emanating from her in a wave of tangible emotion, the power of it prickling all over his skin. She didn’t want to feel this way, certainly not visibly, and he could see that struggle all over the awkward turn of her body as she tried to shelter her expression. It was the first indication he had that she was just as aware of or affected by the chemistry roiling between them as he was. He had thought that somehow it was all in his own head … that he was losing hold of the clarity of who he was.…

He took a breath, slow and deep, and tried to shake off those thoughts. He would not be one of those carbons who went mad, the dissolution of the self and core of who they were so faded over time that they became utterly lost. Just shallow copies of the greatness they once were. His original, Vincent, had come with a stunning fortitude and strength that powerfully reinforced everything that made Ram who he was, who he always had been. A king in his own right, in his time. He had once been powerful enough to choose any woman he wanted. None were off-limits to him.

None.

But this one was. Because he held his friendship and his loyalty with Menes dear, he could not betray either of them by looking sideways at his queen and mate. The sands of time had flowed over and over again, and every single time Hatshepsut and Menes had cleaved to each other with stunning devotion and need.

So much so that Hatshepsut’s death a hundred years ago at the hands of seditious Templar traitors had devastated Menes, and Menes had thrown himself into death in order to follow her to the Ether, rather than forcing himself to live without her.

But this creature was not yet Hatshepsut. The queen was all but dormant inside of her, too weak to move. Perhaps too weak to observe.…

Ram lifted a hand to her, touching her head where her injuries showed worst, although not nearly as bad as when he’d found her a few hours earlier. But he ignored that sign of the Blending and let his touch skim back into her hair.

“What are you … ?”

But she already knew the answer. It was eager in her eyes and in the step forward she took, the way her chin lifted to present him with the opportunity of her mouth. He smiled for a moment, the expression hard on his face, feeling the bittersweetness of the moment.

This is what you choose to trade away your honor for? Vincent questioned inside of him.

It was. And if Vincent did not understand what drove Ram to touch his lips against hers, he quickly learned. Ram had suspected there would be something there, that an experience like no other was awaiting him, and it immediately crystallized for the two male essences sharing their single body. It was a brief touch, barely a kiss, but it was enough to make her draw her breath in sharp surprise. The sensation was all-powerful, a whippet of heat and electricity lashing away from the contact, scoring them both. She drew back with surprise, but he was having none of that. His hands shot to her upper arms, locking around them like steel manacles, holding her and dragging her forward again, this time for a deeper touch … a deeper kiss.

It was like unleashing a tempest. Something he of all people should understand, and yet he did not. Where it came from, he hardly knew, but suddenly there was thunderous sensation riding through him, shocking bolts of heat coursing through his veins. It was that instantaneous and that overwhelming. Thunder and lightning crashed outside of the house, shaking it from the rafters down, making her startle. He ignored it. He crushed her delicate mouth under his, squeezed her arms so tightly it was a wonder they didn’t snap. But he quickly realized he must maintain his hold on her arms for all he was worth or his hands would find other things to do, find other flesh to hold.

And they had yet to touch tongues.

A situation he rectified a moment later. The moment it happened, the moment she parted sweet, shy lips to give him his way, it felt as though her whole body went limp against him, as if in a faint, but her moan of delight was lusty and vibrant and shook him to the very seat of his pounding heart. The souls inside him lit up like tinder as he kissed her deep and well. What was Vincent and what was the great Ramses were suddenly being pulled apart, so that for the first time since their Blending each could experience the moment as himself. It was a raw, humbling sensation, and it was all the more antagonistic for it. As they came together again, it was with like purpose …

We must have her.

Vincent led the way this time, loosening his grip on Docia’s arms and putting his hands on her in other ways. Better ways. He caught the curve of her upper back and shoulders, fondling the shape of her through the pettable softness of her sweater. Within a few moments he was contemplating getting his hands on her ass when her hands suddenly made an appearance. He had no idea where they had been before that moment, but right then, as they smoothed their way up over the expanse of his chest, he felt the need to growl in response to the boiling sensation in his blood. Ramses was of like mind, it seemed, because the sound came to life, rumbling out of his chest and into her mouth. It must have sounded a bit daunting because she gasped a little and pulled back, taking the moment to suck in a few needed breaths.

She licked the sugar of their shared kisses off her lips, and he was instantly hard. Before that moment he’d been too stunned with feeling her on a spiritual level; raw lust had honestly not entered the picture. But now it was there, powerful and dominant, riding him with the violence of quolls in heat. Making him want to do the very same to her.

He jerked back from her, needing to breathe and clear his head, needing to get some sort of handle on the virulent, violent desire infecting him so thoroughly that he feared he wouldn’t have control over what he was going to do next.

For all the pleasure of the moment, it was a sensation he did not like. For all the burn of his arousal, his heart still ruled, and it began to speak to him firmly and seriously.

She is weak and injured and not capable of the vigor we are seeking, the vigor we will need to satisfy us.

And then, a darker version of the same voice.

She is our queen. She belongs to another man. The man we call our closest friend.

Treason. What he had done would be considered an act of treason, not to mention a stone cold deception.

“I … ,” he stammered.

No. He would not say he was sorry. He would not apologize for listening to his entwined souls, both of which had wanted her more than he had ever wanted a female before in any of his previous incarnations. He cursed aloud. He should be ashamed, yet he refused to be.

“I will not regret touching you,” he rasped.

Then he pulled away from her, his movements jerky and awkward because she had gone so limp and was suddenly left to recover her own footing and strength. Surprise and confusion were written all over her; she tried to speak, but like him, she was too overwhelmed by what she had just experienced to put many words together.

“You have much to do,” he said hoarsely. “You have enough complications to figure out without me adding to them.”

She had another man about to step from the Ether, and when he did she would immediately fall in love with him, as she had done time and time again over the ages.

And if she didn’t do so because of something he did, he would never forgive himself … and neither would Menes. And Menes’s jealousy knew no bounds when it was warranted.

Thousands of years of friendship or no, Menes would kill him. And Ram had no doubt that Menes would find a way to keep him dead.

Ram let go of her, no longer able to touch her as his conscience pricked him with nauseating reality. He turned sharply on his heel and left her.

This would be the end of it, he vowed to himself. He had dared to taste the forbidden. He would never do so again.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Leo had never had patience for the law and their slow-assed way of doing things. Not that all cops were useless. Take Jackson— he didn’t just write a paper report and push it off, eager to make it someone else’s problem and responsibility. There was a reason Jackson had a perfect record in traffic court and an equally good one in criminal court when it came to remembering the details of the arrests he made. The regulars on his beat called him “the Nightmare” because of it. They would know that when they saw that K-9 car or heard Chico barking his ass off in pursuit of them that they were going down in a bad way. It was their choice whether they’d have holes in them or not before all was said and done, whether they were caused by bullets or a dog’s teeth. Jackson had been fast-tracked for detective a long time ago, but that had been before Chico and the K-9 had come into his life. Becoming a detective had been put on hold because Jackson had found his passion in the K-9 unit. Leo knew Jackson could not bear the idea of leaving the field, leaving his partnership with Chico, to sit behind a desk and muddle through the more complex side of criminology.

But now Chico was dead, and Jackson had missed court for the first time in his career to sit by his sister’s side as she struggled for her life. Docia meant everything to Jacks. She was all the family he had left, and vice versa, and it had been that way since their parents had died when Jacks was just turning eighteen. He had almost lost nine-year-old Docia to the system and had sworn never to let that happen or come close to happening again. He’d pulled it off, too. Not just pulled it off, but pulled it off famously. He had kept her housed, fed, and reasonably happy, all while going to school and the Academy.

But the truth was that Leo had had a lot to do with that. While Jacks was trying to make something of himself, Leo had been his … well, his marital partner, in a way. Leo had been in the service at the time, living off base and stationed at West Point. His apartment had been small, but it had been big enough for two men and one little girl. They’d made it work until Leo had gone off to join the Rangers and Jackson had come out the other side of the Academy.