Which was why my shields were currently up high. Whether it helped or not I had no idea, because I certainly wasn't going to risk reading him.

"Is it not usual for those who fight Gautier to be given leave? Why are you going in today?"

"Why are you so damn fixated on this?"

He shrugged. I wasn't for an instant believing the casualness behind the gesture. "I'm curious, that's all."

"Yes, it is unusual. But then, I'm not the usual guardian candidate, am I?"

"No, you are not."

I frowned at the edge in his voice, but the kettle chose that moment to whistle its readiness, and I turned away from him to pour my coffee.

Bad mistake.

Though my hormones quickly formed a differing opinion as his arms slid around my waist. "Why is it so hard to believe I am here to see you?" He lips brushed the side of my neck, sending a shimmer of delight right down to my toes.

But as much as my hormones had formed a cheer squad for some vampire loving, the itchy feeling he was here for more than just me wouldn't go away.

"Why did you suddenly show up on my doorstep after two months of no contact?"

"We had contact."

"One night in two months? Hardly enough loving to keep a gnat awake, let alone a werewolf."

"Running a multinational business sometimes takes more time than I would wish." He slid one of my top's shoestring straps off my shoulder. The brush of his lips against the flesh between my shoulder and neck felt like the touch of flame. "And our deal was you could be with others when I wasn't there. I'm sure you didn't go without."

"Oh, I didn't, trust me." I tried concentrating on making myself a coffee but it was damnably hard when he was so close, so warm, and so very, very tempting. "And you're saying you had no time to even leave a message?"

"Why did I need to when we were sharing erotic dreams at night?" The second strap slid away with some help from his fingertips, then the top itself was being tugged down to expose my breasts. The warm air caressed my skin, as enticing as the man behind me.

"They were only dreams, Quinn. It would have been nice to have something with a little more substance."

"Which is what we now have."

His hand splayed across the flat of my stomach. Heat pooled under his fingertips, flared across my flesh like a flash fire. Lord, his touch was even more intense than I'd remembered.

His hands slid up to my breasts, pushing them together as he began to tease and pinch my engorged nipples. I squirmed against him, wariness momentarily forgotten as every inch of me vibrated with the hunger now flowing through my veins.

As if sensing the fall of reluctance, he began to kiss me, caress me, tease me, until tiny beads of perspiration covered my skin. Until every inch of me was trembling, and I was hovering on the edge of a climax, aching for the release he was keeping from me.

When his caress finally moved down, I groaned in relief. His fingers played around my thighs, close but not close enough to where I actually wanted them. Needed them. After a few more torturous moments, he hooked his thumbs under my panties and pushed them down my legs. I stepped free, then toed them to one side. He pushed up my skirt as I widened my stance, then his fingers were slipping through my slickness from behind, caressing and teasing until I was moaning from equal measures of pleasure and frustration. His soft chuckle whispered heat across the back of my neck, then his fingers were in me even as he pressed his thumb against my clit. As he began to stroke, inside and out, I shuddered, writhed, until it felt as if I was going to tear apart from the sheer force of pleasure.

And then he was in me, claiming me for real and in the most basic way possible. I groaned again as he gripped my hips, his fingers bruising as he held me still for too many seconds.

But oh, it was so glorious, just standing there, my body throbbing with need, his body deep inside mine, heavy and hot with the same sort of need. I loved the way he seemed to complete me. It had nothing to do with his size or his shape or anything physical, because I'd certainly been with men who outstripped him in all those areas.

This was far more—was almost as if when our flesh was joined, our spirits combined and danced as intimately as our bodies.

He began move, not gently, but fiercely, urgently, and I was right there with him, wanting everything he could give me. The deep down ache blossomed, spreading like wildfire across my skin, becoming a kaleidoscope of sensations that washed through every corner of my mind. I gasped, grabbing the bench for support as his movement grew faster, more urgent. Then everything broke, and I was unraveling, groaning with the intensity of the orgasm. He came with me, but it wasn't just his juices that flowed into me. So, too, did his mind.

And he was raiding my thoughts and my memories as fast as any thief fearing discovery.

Anger unlike anything I'd felt before surged through me, and without even thinking about it, I lowered my shields and let him have it with every ounce of psychic strength I had.

He made a gargled sound, then the force of my psychic punch wrenched his body from mine and he was flying through the door, out into the living room, where he landed with a thump on his back.

I re-shielded fast. Pain hit, but it might as well have been a leaf tossed on the wind, my anger was so strong. I grabbed my knickers and marched into the other room.

"You bastard!" I flung the panties at him, though why I had no real idea. It wasn't like it was a knife or a stake or anything that useful.

Which is probably just as well, because right then, I would have used either one of them.

He rubbed a hand across his eyes, then slowly raised himself up on his elbows. "How the hell did you do that?"

"What the fuck does it matter, given what you just did?"

"If you'd tell me the truth for a change, I wouldn't have to resort to such measures!"

His voice was as loud and as angry as mine, but there was a tremor in his tones that suggested I had hurt him. Part of me was fiercely glad. Part of me hated it.

"I have a right to privacy. In my life, and in my thoughts."

"This is different."

"Why? Because you're a twelve-hundred-year-old vampire who no longer has to obey the rules?"

"And yet, for all my age, and for all my psychic skills and knowledge, you just ripped through my shields as if they were paper. And then you sent me flying. You couldn't have done that a few months ago."

A cold hard knot formed deep in the pit of my stomach. He was right. God help me, he was right. Even though Jack had been training me in the fine art of breaking through psychic shields over the last few months, I'd never managed to break through all his shields, no matter how hard I'd tried. And Quinn was far more powerful than Jack.

I licked my lips, and pushed the thoughts away. Now was not the time to think about the implications of his statement, or what it might mean to the future I so desperately wanted.

"Don't try changing the fucking subject."

He sighed, climbed a little unsteadily to his feet, and redressed himself. "I admitted to you months ago that I was, in part, using you. You were my quickest way of finding information about my missing friend—information that the Directorate, and my friendship with Director Hunter, wasn't providing. That hasn't changed—though the reason certainly has."

"So that's why you're back now?"

"Partially. Something changed yesterday afternoon. Something is happening. I can feel it."

He could feel it? How? We hadn't shared dreams in any way yesterday, so he couldn't have leeched information that way. And, usually, he could only catch my thoughts if he was physically near.

But maybe he had been. Maybe he'd been here in Melbourne all along, and just hadn't contacted me.