Wild Embrace by Nalini Singh

can share the space,” he offered, though it was difficult for him to be in such close proximity to another being, and particularly to Tazia.
    â€œTazia,” he said when she didn’t reply.
    â€œI can’t.” Keeping her back to him, she leaned forward as if she’d drawn up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. “I know it may seem irrational and old-fashioned to you, but I was brought up to be . . . chaste.” The words were taut. “To be naked only with the man I took as my husband. I don’t live in that world anymore”—harsh strain in those words—“but I can’t discard who I am like it’s an old coat.”
    â€œI understand,” Stefan said, having already guessed at Tazia’s value system after so carefully noting every single thing about her in the year they’d worked together. “Your cultural mores are no more or less irrational than the protocol under which my people are conditioned.”
    He saw her shoulders relax. Rising, she walked over to sit on a rock nearer the spring, her eyes on the entrance and her body in profile to him. “Have you ever thought of breaking Silence?” she asked. “I . . . broke some of the rules when I left home.”
    â€œImportant rules?” he asked quietly.
    â€œYes. The most important.” Her hand fisted on her thigh, small and so fine boned that he sometimes wondered how she handled the tools necessary to her profession. Even with all the advances in tech, wrenches were still heavy; torque still required muscle.
    â€œI never did think about breaking the rules,” Stefan said. “The rules are safe. It’s why my race chose Silence over a hundred years ago.” Of course, had his conditioning been without flaw, he would’ve had difficulty even talking about the protocol.
    Tazia turned a little on the rock, enough that she could look at his face. “I’ve heard rumors about why, but never knew if they were true.”
    â€œOur psychic abilities are powerful, but they predispose us to insanity and violence.”
    â€œDoesn’t that scare you?” Then she half smiled. “Of course not. You’re Silent.”
    Stefan thought about how to respond to that. It was something he’d never have considered before Tazia, but her honesty deserved his own. “My Silence is problematic because of the trauma I suffered in childhood.”
    What even most Psy didn’t know about Silence was that the conditioning for those like Stefan, people with dangerously strong abilities, was reinforced by pain controls termed dissonance. If Stefan broke Silence on any level, he’d be punished with pain. The worse the breach, the more debilitating the pain, until it was possible it could kill him . . . Or that was how it was
meant
to work.
    Part of the reason Stefan had been shifted from Arrow training to the commercial arm of the Council’s telekinetic arsenal was that his brain was deeply resistant to certain aspects of the conditioning process, including the dissonance controls. His psychic trainers had finally declared it to be a fundamental flaw, one that could not be fixed.
    No one had wanted to release such a strong telekinetic into the commercial team, but a soldier without foolproof conditioning couldn’t be trusted in the field. He might fracture and, with his dissonance controls erratic at best, no one could be certain he wouldn’t take his partner or team with him when he lost control of his telekinetic powers.
    Tazia’s eyes widened. “So do you feel?”
    â€œI don’t know.” What he did know was that things had begunto change in him the first time he’d spoken to Tazia Nerif, parts of the conditioning just falling away. “I’m not as perfect a Psy as I should be.”
    â€œNo, you’re not.” Tazia’s dark eyes held his. “You care too much about these