Visions of Heat p-2

by Nalini Singh

  She felt her stomach twist itself into a tight knot. "You must stop touching me."

  "Why?"

  "It's too much." Especially on top of the betrayals he was asking her to attribute to her own people, her own family. "Please, Vaughn."

  She looked so fragile sitting there, all night-sky eyes and creamy skin. With any other woman, he'd have tugged her down and held her tight. Doing that with Faith, however, might cause her to panic, and right now he didn't want to make her vulnerable in any sense—the darkness could be waiting for a break in her defenses. But neither could he let her run. "Each time I do what you want, I'm helping your PsyClan and the Council imprison you."

  "Do you really believe that?"

  "Fear of touch is part of how they manipulate you."

  The arms she had wrapped around her knees seemed to tighten. "If I ask you to break contact because I'm going to go into a seizure or unconsciousness, you have to do it. That's the only way I'll let you keep getting closer."

  Satisfaction was his blood. "So you admit you've been letting me."

  She cocked her head with a haughtiness that would've done any cat proud. "I'm a cardinal. We're all born with more than our share of powers—I've spent the time since our initial meeting working out how to use them in offense."

  "Tell me."

  "No." Enticing in their confident mischief, her eyes were no longer the cold slate he'd seen that first night. "Why should I show someone I don't trust—and who doesn't trust me—my secrets?"

  "Ouch." He traced his fingers up and down her delicate spine. "You know how to go for the throat."

  "It keeps me alive."

  The jaguar didn't like hearing that, didn't like the thought of her needing such weapons, because that implied danger. "You have to leave. Find a way to boost your shields so you can deal on the outside and leave."

  Her smile was without any hint of amusement. "I'll die. That's an undeniable fact. The second I drop out of the PsyNet and lose the necessary biofeedback, my mind will shut down. Unless you can do for me whatever it is that Lucas does for Sascha."

  "How did you figure that?"

  "I'm not stupid, Vaughn. It's clear there's some type of psychic connection between the two of them." She dropped her chin onto hands folded atop her knees. "I can almost touch it, but not quite. It's as if it's something outside the Net but brushes by it."

  Every one of his senses went on high alert. If the Psy could pick up the Web that connected the alpha pair to their sentinels, DarkRiver would lose one of its crucial tactical advantages. However, if Faith was unusual, it begged the question why. He had a very good idea of the answer, but the cat never pounced before it was completely certain of success. That was what made him such an efficient hunter.

  "And if I were able to bring you out of the Net, do you think you could take me on?" He pressed the pads of his fingers a touch harder against her lower back.

  Her spine stiffened. "Don't push me, cat."

  It was the first time she'd really clawed at him. Intrigued, he spread his palm and slid it up to the curve of her ribs. Her breasts were so close he was having a hell of a time keeping himself from stroking even higher. "Or what?"

  "You don't want to find out."

  "Maybe I do." Moving with the animal speed of his kind, he had her flat on her back with him braced above her before she could reply. Her eyes flashed velvet black and then streaks of silver began to tear jagged lines through the rich darkness. "What the hell—?" That was when he spied the giant wolf in one corner of the room. The clearly rabid creature was crouching down in preparation for attack.

  Jaguar instincts took over.

  Shoving Faith to the side, he pounced soundlessly toward the wolf. .. and went straight through it. Only his agility saved him from making a racket as he landed hard on the carpet. The awareness of soft feminine laughter, so low that he could barely catch it, the sound rusty and unused, had him narrowing his eyes as he stood. "Very funny." He met the silver-black gaze of the woman sprawled on the bed watching him, dark red hair falling around a face she'd propped up on her hands. He didn't think he'd ever seen a more beautiful sight. Immediately, the sexually hungry cat in him amended that—if she were naked, that would be even better.

  "Did you beat the bad puppy?" she asked.

  He knew she didn't even realize what was happening. She'd laughed and now she was teasing. Would the change last or would she try to bury it? Not that Vaughn had any intention of letting her choose option two. "Illusions? Don't you need to get into my mind for that?" And his mind was changeling, nearly impossible for a Psy to mess with.

  "I'm better than that," Faith said, no hint of arrogance in her tone. "My illusions are concrete in the sense that if a camera had been present in the room, it, too, would've seen the wolf."

  He prowled over to her and had the pleasure of watching those amazing lightning-shot eyes flicker and then shiver to a black that was somehow softer than the pure darkness in them after the visions. Going down on his knees beside the bed, he slid his hands under her hair and cupped her face. "You feel like woman." My woman.

  Dipping his head, he kissed her. It was a chaste kiss from his perspective, a mere taste when he wanted to gorge, but she whimpered and clung to him. For all of five seconds. Then she pulled away. He swore under his breath, the language rough and explicit. This was not going to work if Faith couldn't bear anything more than an innocent kiss— touch was the cornerstone of what he was.

  After that week he'd spent in the wild as a child, the only way the DarkRiver leopards had been able to make him respond was by surrounding him in touch. His first month in the pack, he'd slept in cat form, surrounded by other furred bodies. Deprived of touch, he tended to get more and more aggressive, more and more feral, the cat in him rising to the surface until the man was buried deep. Pack usually helped, but these days, he wanted someone else's strokes, "Vaughn." Faith made her voice very submissive, extremely nonconfrontational. "Vaughn, your claws are out." She could feel them against the skin of her scalp and face and she was terrified enough to admit it. Her reaction came from a primitive self that had existed before Silence, before civilization. All it cared about was survival... at any cost.

  A shock wave of psychic power would stun the predator holding her prisoner, but might possibly cause permanent damage. She couldn't bear the thought of that. "Don't hurt me, Vaughn." She deliberately used his name again. "I need to feel safe with you." Irrational as it was, she did feel that way even now.

  He'd gone cat on her, but those claws were pressed so lightly against her skin they didn't even threaten to bruise, much less cut. However, she knew that control was a fine edge and, right now, the jaguar in Vaughn's eyes was walking the thinnest part of it. "You'll never forgive yourself if you hurt me."

  "I would never hurt you." His voice was a guttural sound caught between humanity and the animal within. "Touch me."

  About to refuse, she stopped herself. Why was he making that request at this moment? She was smart, she could figure this out. Suppressing her body's instinctive fight-or-flight response, she closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe in a pattern meant to foster mental clarity. The scent of Vaughn rushed into her, wild and earthy, but it somehow had a centering effect on her chaotic thought processes. Why would a changeling demand touch when so out of control? Logic stated it was because he believed it would help reestablish discipline. And if logic was wrong?

  "I'm trusting you." Excruciatingly aware of his unsheathed claws, she moved with slow precision and brushed her lips over his. He felt hot, primal, unapologetically male. Her mind started to misfire almost immediately. Tonight had pushed her too far even before Vaughn had gone cat on her. Her brain screamed that she was on the verge of a meltdown. Too bad. She would not let Vaughn down. He'd brought her out of her nightmare—she could do no less for him.

  Her teeth accidentally grazed his lower lip and the growl that came from him poured into her mouth. She froze. That was when sharp teeth caugh
t her lower lip and bit down in a way that whispered temptation. Something low and deep in her burned and the conflagration of her mind was joined by the shuddering heat of her body.

  Her stomach tautened, sweat glimmered over her skin, and somehow her hands were clenched in Vaughn's hair, his scalp under her fingertips. Heat and touch, desire and need, power and fury, it all thrust into her in a brutal wave that tore away her innermost shields. Suddenly the pleasure was pain and the pain edged her vision with ebony.

  Vaughn felt it the second Faith broke. Claws long since retracted, he pulled back from the kiss because she seemed unable to do so. "Faith."

  Breathing ragged, she opened eyes gone the bad kind of black. "It's taking me under." The words were a statement of the inevitable.

  Rage threatened to shatter his newfound control. "No, it's not." Getting up off the floor, he watched her rearrange herself to lie on her side in the center of the bed. Her eyes tracked his every movement. "Did I help you?"

  "Yes." He licked the taste of her off his lips.

  "At least I'm strong enough to do that."

  "You're strong enough to get past all of it. You've gone from being unable to bear anything to accepting and giving a kiss in a very short period." He climbed back onto the bed. And though it went against every one of his instincts, he left enough distance between them so as not to overwhelm her.

  "I wish I were strong enough to do more ... be more." Her voice was a whisper, but the cat was sure he heard an undertone of cold rage. Good.

  "You see the future, Faith. That makes you extraordinary."

  She moved an inch closer, surprising him. "Don't go until I wake. I'm concerned the dark visions will come again and my shields are currently fragmented."

  In other words, she was scared. And if she could feel fear, then she could experience pleasure. "When have I ever given you any indication that I'd leave you even if you asked?"

  "Will you wait for me the night after tomorrow? I know I said five days but the visions are accelerating too fast. I think I can work it out so no one will miss me."

  "Be careful." Her PsyClan was too powerful not to be connected. One hint of suspicion about the clan's prized asset and the Council would put Faith under complete lock-down from which it'd be far bloodier to extract her. He didn't mind blood, but he did mind that she might be caught in the crossfire. "Sleep, Red. I've got you."

  Her eyes closed and soon afterward, he felt the fear coating her fade away. While she slept, he stood watch. Perhaps the Psy would've said he could do her no good on the physical plane when she was a psychic being, but twice now he'd seen and smelled the ugly reality of the menace that had held her captive. Instinct said that if he could keep that darkness from her, he'd keep her safe.

  He didn't leave her until dawn broke and her eyes opened.

  CHAPTER 12

  Faith woke just in time to see Vaughn pulling himself through the skylight. He was so agile, so strong, and so exotic that she couldn't help being fascinated.

  "What are you doing to me?" she whispered long after he'd gone.

  Last night, she'd fragmented, broken conditioning and felt. But it had come at a high cost—her mind had literally stopped as she'd slipped into sleep. And there had been pain, such excruciating pain. She hadn't let Vaughn see the extent of it, somehow knowing that her pain would hurt him. But now she allowed herself to remember the agony, remember the cold emptiness of her mind shutting down section by section.

  She'd been reacting to the changelings ever since she'd met them, reacting to Vaughn. Not only had she let them push her into feeling, she'd begun to consider the possibility of breaking Silence. Today she knew differently. The blocks couldn't be so easily bypassed. Yes, she'd somehow skirted the upper levels of prohibition, been able to bear some touch, experience some emotion. But the second she'd tried to go deeper, she'd been punished with vicious swiftness.

  It was now starkly clear to her that of course pain had to have been built into the conditioning for it to hold. It was a classic Pavlovian technique—pain for "bad" behavior, rewards for good. As an adult she could reason out the method, but as a child she would've been vulnerable to an extent that was unimaginable.

  All they would've had to do was hurt her enough times for "inappropriate" behavior that she shied away from the pain and complied with their demands. It was also certain that the focalized pain wasn't the sole method used to ensure compliance. However, she'd guess it to be one of the major components of the behavior modification section of the Protocol.

  Did her knowledge of the underlying basis of conditioning mean she might be able to break it? The harder question was, did she want to? Last night, she'd said she wished to be more than the woman she was. But to become that woman, she'd have to give up everything she'd ever known, turn her back on her whole world. She'd have to abandon her father, her PsyClan, her very people.

  And all she'd gain would be a life on the outside with a race so completely unlike her own. She had no idea how to deal with them, a race that considered her an abomination against nature. No, she thought, that wasn't completely fair. Vaughn didn't seem to think her an unfeeling machine. But even he wanted her to change, to not be what she was, to shatter Silence and live a different life.

  But giving up her identity as Faith NightStar, Cardinal F-Psy and linchpin asset of the NightStar Group, was no easy choice.

  Vaughn catnapped on the high branches of a tree for a few hours before relieving Mercy of her watch. When he saw her waiting dressed in human form, he realized she wanted to talk. Shifting, he caught the pants she threw him and pulled them on. "What is it?"

  "Nothing major," she said. "I wanted to know if you could cover my grid two Fridays from now. I have a late shindig." Mercy worked for CTX, a communications network funded by DarkRiver and SnowDancer in concert. It was a good position for a sentinel—work took a backseat to Pack business and management fully understood. Possibly because management was made up of wolves and cats.

  "No problem."

  "How's it going with your latest piece?"

  "It's done." He'd already begun a new project. A sculpture in marble of a woman who was passion and heat, temptation and mystery. "If you run into Barker, can you tell him it's ready for pickup?"

  Mercy nodded, her red hair blowing softly in the wind. The color reminded him of Faith, though his Psy's hair was darker, more like ripe cherries. "Will do." She waved goodbye. "Catch you later."

  Vaughn decided to run part of the watch in human form—his speed and strength were more than enough to take on most intruders. As he moved, he considered his new piece. He knew it would be stunning, the best he'd ever done. He also knew he'd never sell it.

  The forest zipped past him as he ran, his mind on the curving lines of a woman with night-sky eyes. But he wasn't so distracted that he missed the blur of leopard yellow where there should have been only forest. Backtracking, he followed the scent to find two cubs engaged in a- mock battle. His growl had them splitting apart and staring at him. They knew they were in big trouble.

  "I thought I heard Tamsyn say you were going to spend today with Sascha." He folded his arms across his chest, wondering how Tamsyn—DarkRiver's healer and the cubs’ mother—dealt with her double dose of trouble without tearing out her hair. "What are you doing way out here?" Cubs were curious by nature—it wasn't unusual for them to wander off while exploring, and they were safe within Dark-River lands. But they still needed limits. And the first rule was, no moving more than a mile outside the home they were supposed to be in.

  The cubs dropped on their bellies and mewed, trying to charm their way out of this.

  "I'm not Sascha or your mother," he told them, though he was amused. These two would make good soldiers when they grew up. They'd also attract women the same way Kit, one of the older juveniles, currently did. "Let's go."

  Getting up, they started to pad their way in front of him. Identical twins in human form, Julian and Roman were identical in cat form, too. Only th
ose who knew them very well could distinguish one from the other. Vaughn had always been able to do so, perhaps because his beast was so close to the surface. Herding them back into the safe zone, he crouched down to their level. "You know the rules. They're for your protection and to ensure the women don't go insane." That was no lie. The maternal females were already driven to the brink by some of the stunts the cubs and juveniles pulled. "You want Sascha to go nuts looking for you?"

  Small shakes of kittenish heads.

  "Then stay in the perimeter." He knew Sascha could track the twins using her psychic gifts, but that didn't alter the rules.

  One small clawed paw scratched at his arm. Another joined it on the other side of his body. He chuckled. "No, I'm not that mad. Come on, let's go tell Sascha you're okay." Shifting, he allowed them to playfight with him for a few minutes before he escorted them back to the aerie from which they'd made their escape. Sascha was standing at the foot of the tree.

  "I think I'm going to put a leash on you two," she said, sounding very, very sure and very, very Psy. "And didn't I say something about turning you into rats if you misbehaved?"

  Both cubs froze.

  "What do you think, Vaughn?"

  He nodded in agreement. Julian looked at him like he was a traitor and Roman tried to hide behind a tree. Laughing, Sascha picked Roman up by the scruff of his neck and kissed his furry face. Julian ran over and started growling for attention. As she scooped him up, Sascha nodded at Vaughn. "Thanks for finding the Terrible Twosome. I swear, I turn my back for a second and they're gone."

  He made a deep, throaty sound to let her know that was alright.

  "I'm working with Zara on a revised plan for one of the new houses in the complex," she told him, referring to their outside-Pack design consultant. "Apparently the wolves aren't happy." When he snarled, she smiled. "Yes, I know. Damn wolves. You're as bad as each other, not one of you ready to fully embrace the new treaty."

  Julian and Roman wiggled in her arms and she looked down. "Okay, okay. We're going into town to meet Lucas and Nate." At the mention of Nate, their father, the cubs got excited. "I've got clothes for you two little beasties in the car."