Excerpt
Torrin paced around him, defiant. Quintus reached out and took Torrin’s hand. “I’ve treaded as close to the line for you as I could and still do my job to keep you safe. No one’s had it easy, Torrin, but at least we can all get through it if you’d just sit down.”
Torrin paced around him, defiant. Quintus reached out and took Torrin’s hand. “I’ve treaded as close to the line for you as I could and still do my job to keep you safe. No one’s had it easy, Torrin, but at least we can all get through it if you’d just sit down.”
Torrin looked down to where they touched. His large, dark olive hand made Quintus’s smaller, pale one look delicate. It was hard to make someone five feet eleven inches, one hundred and ninety pounds look fragile but at nearly six and a half feet and a slimmed two hundred and twenty pounds Torrin managed it. He let his thumb stroke the milky skin along Quintus’s thumb. His long-term memory was fuzzy, but of what he had he could count the number of times his Handler had touched him with bare skin outside of a medical emergency. This would be the eighth instance in twelve years Torrin could recall. Empaths in general didn’t like skin contact with people outside their Triads ... especially other Empaths.
Quintus stared at their hands as well, as if he couldn’t quite make sense of it. The silence grew. Thirty seconds, sixty, ninety seconds and then Quintus looked up at Torrin. Sky-blue eyes had gone glacial-white, and Torrin shivered beneath the Gaze. Sincerity and the echo of old grief moved up his arm from where they touched, while Torrin’s anxiety and loss moved down.
“I’m sorry, Quintus. I owe you everything, including the chance to be here and be an ass. I’ll sit down.”
Quintus blinked and only clear blue skies stared out at Torrin once more. “Thank you, Agent St. James. You have my sympathy. I could not imagine how this was for you. I wish I could make it easier.”
Their hands fell away from one another--a near autonomous motion that made them separate beings again. Torrin sat down and pulled the paperwork toward him. The hard copies became a blur as they moved from point to point in Quintus’s ever-methodical manner.
“How long?” Torrin gave no qualifier or context. He didn’t need to.
“The first six years. Until it was quite clear you could not see beyond Riley and Sky. There was no room for me and so I ceased looking for it. Being your Handler became enough, Agent St. James.”
Quintus never looked up. He passed another datapad for Torrin’s thumbprint and continued on with their task. Torrin wanted to push. How do you not push when you realize someone used to be in love with you? How do you leave it alone when in the touch of a hand your glorified babysitter becomes a well of lost potential?
The first day at PsiCorps, Torrin had imprinted onto Riley and Sky like a hatchling to movement. Each had dominated their psychic categories, setting records in CyberPsi and Psychometry that still held in the Corp more than a decade later. He’d been so dazzled and swept up in their skill and confidence that Torrin had never wondered about his choice. He had never considered what would have happened if he’d just sat at a different table for breakfast that first day; just one table over in the empty seat beside Quintus.
“This is the last set.”
Torrin nodded and took the papers and datapad. Quintus read off the pertinent points aloud, and Torrin took stock of the other man. Quintus’s hair fell in thick, raven waves that captured the light and threw back blue highlights. Skin, merely pale before, shone alabaster in contrast, clear and smooth; trapped in a youth that would not begin to wane for several decades more ... if then. Matte black lashes fringed midday blue eyes that sat large in his face, not quite balanced out by a strong nose and full mouth.
The curve of his neck, strong but almost slender; the set of his shoulders, masculine but streamlined, the body muscled but lean; men like Quintus danced the line between pretty and handsome. A rounding of the jaw, a certain set of the eyes, a half inch there and a quarter turn here, and Quintus had come down firmly on the side of pretty with handsome close enough to lean over and lay its head on his shoulder.
He’d noticed Quintus’s beauty before, on more than one occasion. But now his mind fought to put it in the context of a different choice, a life unlived.
“Will you require another Handler, Agent St. James?”
Torrin blinked. “What?”
“You’re staring, trapped in a thought cycle. There is a great deal on your plate right now and you have no time for what ifs. Do you require another Handler to get through the last of the trial or shall we move past this?”
Torrin nodded. “We’re past it. I’m fine.” He looked down at the papers and started going through clauses and signing agreements. Had he ever touched Quintus intimately before they became Handler and agent? He seemed to remember touching his face while they were shielded. Had that happened? The holes and blurs in his long-term memory gaped in mocking, but Torrin could almost feel the smooth skin glide beneath his hand like silk and cream, leaving the imagination open to what the rest would feel like.
“Agent St. James!”
Torrin looked up and fought to focus. He’d begun to trance unintentionally.
“Did I project?”
“Yes.”
Well, damn. Torrin rubbed his face and laid his forehead on the table. The cool wood calmed his thoughts. The scent brought to mind home and safety. He and Sky had bought a table similar to this one ... similar. Sky and Quintus shared a similar pale beauty, though Sky’s was darker, richer, aged ivory rather than new snow. But it had looked stark against the grain of the wood as they christened the new table. Would Quintus be even more striking against the mahogany? Would his cries sound as intimate and soul-searing off the unfamiliar walls of the safe room? Black hair spilling--raven feathers on wood--the way Sky’s had fanned like rubies tossed in the sun. No, in the snow, rubies in the snow, the two of them naked against the wood.
“Agent St. James!”
