Hostage to Pleasure p-5

by Nalini Singh

  “Then I was a success,” Ashaya said.

  Rina made a noise in the front. “I dunno. A lot of the posters are questioning whether you’re for real or just a publicity hound. Then there are the ones who accuse you of being a vindictive bitch because you were taken off a multimillion-dollar research project in favor of another scientist.”

  “So”—Ashaya’s eyes filled with a quiet intensity—“since they weren’t able to stop the broadcast, they’re going to try to discredit me.”

  “You knew that would happen.” Dorian watched her, examined her, knowing he’d never have a better opportunity. She was beautiful, something her intense intelligence had a tendency to overshadow. And beautiful in a very feminine way. Yet there was something missing—the spark that turned beauty into the truly extraordinary.

  He knew what that spark was, of course, knew it was missing because he’d seen it light her up from within bare minutes ago.

  Emotion.

  Heart.

  Soul.

  Ashaya had retreated, rebuilding her shields as she went. She’d said it was necessary but he wasn’t convinced. He didn’t want to be convinced. Because the woman who’d told him to get unused to ordering her around, hell, she was just about perfect.

  “You ask me, you have to do another broadcast pretty soon,” Rina said, breaking into his thoughts. “Right now it looks like you’ve cut and run, and that’s not exactly good for your image.”

  “I’m not particularly concerned about my image.”

  Dorian shook his head. “You might not be, but it’s what’s going to keep you alive.”

  “My becoming infamous hasn’t kept them from hunting me.”

  “It’s given them pause.” He considered what Zie Zen had said. “It’s probably why you’re not on the kill-on-sight list right now.”

  “Possible. But more likely, they want access to the data I have. Ming is perfectly capable of siphoning it out of my mind and leaving me an empty husk.”

  Dorian looked at her face, her slender shoulders, and knew she had the strength to carry this burden. “You’ll beat him. You made a stand when it would’ve been easier to run. That takes guts.”

  “You know why I didn’t run.” Iliana had run. She’d returned home in a body bag.

  “That doesn’t mean it took any less courage to go out there and fight for your son’s right to live, your people’s right to have a choice in whether or not they become nothing more than insects in a hive.” He quoted her with unerring accuracy.

  Ashaya broke eye contact. Dorian saw too much with that vivid blue gaze. “I’m not that noble. I did what I did out of selfishness—to save Keenan.”

  He shrugged. “I fight monsters to protect Pack. They aren’t any less dead because I do what I do out of a selfish need to save those I love.”

  “People who stick up their heads have a way of getting those heads blown off,” she said, clenching her hands on the denim that coated the muscled length of his legs.

  “I’ve got your back.” There was a promise in those words that whispered down her spine with the exquisite heat of a leopard’s touch. “You want us to set up another broadcast?”

  She swallowed, but nodded.

  “We’re here.” The driver brought the vehicle to a smooth stop.

  Dorian was already moving. She’d come to expect that from him. He could wait with a predator’s silent grace, but in life he was full of movement. Now she watched as he pushed open the back doors and jumped down. When he raised a hand to help her out, she shook her head and gestured for him to go on ahead to speak with his packmates. Her shields were already paper-thin. Much more and they’d be nonexistent. And to think how arrogant she’d once been, considering her defense of faux Silence unbreakable.

  What a joke.

  Of course it had been unbreakable in the Net. There was no one there who lived emotion every moment of every day, no one who challenged her as this wild changeling did. Other than her indefinable relationship with Amara, only Keenan had been a point of emotional weakness, and Ming had cut her off from him for months at a time.

  Her lips pressed tight as her feet hit the ground and she knew that, no matter what, she would never again let anyone keep her son from her. It had almost broken her when the connection between them had been sheared off. She wasn’t strong enough to bear the loss a second time.

  The connection.

  In the chaos of everything that had taken place, she hadn’t even thought about how she’d known to go to Keenan this morning. The link had shattered—she’d never forget the tearing pain of it—when he’d dropped from the PsyNet. And since that link should never have existed in the first place, she had no way to search for it. Yet she knew it had re-formed—the knowledge had nothing to do with logic, and everything to do with love.

  A hand on her lower back. Dorian’s voice in her ear. “Get in the car. It’s around the front.”

  They pulled away less than a minute later. “This is a longer route to Tammy’s,” Dorian said. “I want to make sure we don’t have a tail.”

  Heading into the shadows created by the tall stands of trees that covered the Presidio, he put the car on automatic. While most forested regions weren’t embedded for automatic navigation, this area was close enough to the city that it was a wild playground of sorts, hence the embedding, at least along the main route through it.

  “Now,” he said, sliding away the manual controls and turning to face her, his arm braced on the seat behind her, “tell me about your twin.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Amara’s lips curled upward when Ming LeBon’s face appeared on the large communications panel at the other end of the lab, a lab located somewhere in Death Valley—they’d moved her there after she’d told them she could find Ashaya, but only if she was in the same state. It was a lie, of course. One that got her closer to her twin. “Councilor. I trust your hunt was successful.”

  Ming looked at her with those too black eyes of his. Conversely, one side of his face was covered in a bright red birth-mark. Some problem with pigmentation, Amara thought, unconcerned. Very few things concerned Amara.

  “No,” Ming finally replied. “Your coordinates were incorrect.”

  “Truly?” Amara played innocent. “She was there.”

  “There were indications she might’ve been in the area. But the net was too wide.”

  “Ah.” She smiled and spread her arms open, palms upturned. “I’ll try to do better next time.”

  “I would rather you tell me how you’re able to track her in the first place.”

  Raising a finger, she waved it in a chiding manner. “No, no, no. That would break the rules.”

  “Rules?”

  “Oh, no, Councilor.” Amara laughed, and it was a premeditated act. “We both know I’m not quite right in the head.” She took a cold delight in being deliberately offensive to his calculating Psy mind. “But it doesn’t affect my intelligence so don’t treat me like I have the IQ of one of the rehabilitated.”

  “My apologies.”

  She knew the words were meaningless. He was humoring her because he thought she could hand him the implant that would allow him to control the entire Psy race. Perhaps he would share it with the other Councilors. Perhaps he wouldn’t. It made no difference to Amara. “As to how I track Ashaya, I—” She broke off with a theatrical gasp. “Oops, I almost let the cat out of the bag. Naughty me.”

  Ming stared at her and she wondered if he expected her to break. However, when he spoke, it was nothing expected. “You and Ashaya are identical genetic specimens. You gestated in the same womb, were brought up in the same environment.”

  “Until you made me run away.” She pouted. “Why did you have to go put a rehab order on me?”

  “And yet,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken, “you are fundamentally flawed, while Ashaya—despite her unfortunate political bent—has always been the perfect Psy.”

  Amara wondered if Ming really was as blind as he appeared
. Or had her twin managed to perfect her mask to that high a degree? Well, now, if that was true, then the game was going to be very, very interesting. Goody. “We are an enigma. Perhaps you’d care to study us before you eliminate us?”

  “You speak of your death with ease.”

  “I’m no fool, Ming. The second I hand you the implant, I’m dead and so is Ashaya.”

  “Which gives you good reason to delay.”

  “True,” she agreed with a careless shrug. “However, I find the thought of immortality quite… enticing. The implant will live on long after we’re both wiped from existence.”

  “Then you’re certain you can deliver?”

  She raised an eyebrow, giggling inwardly at the secret only she and Ashaya knew. Ming would forget all about the implant if he realized there was something far better already in existence.

  But that was their secret. Hers, Ashaya’s… and Keenan’s.

  CHAPTER 27

  When he smiles, he could demand anything from me and I would give it to him. I’ve never felt more vulnerable in my life. This man, this leopard, he could break me.

  – From the encrypted personal files of Ashaya Aleine

  Ashaya took a deep breath. “My sister.” She stared out at the eucalyptus trees that had been brought into the region in an ecologically ill-informed decision, and survived all attempts at eradication. When fire struck, they burned up in a blaze of sublime fury. “My sister is like these trees. Perfect to look at, brilliant in her design—her brain is flawless, her intellect staggering—but all it takes to crumble that perfection is a single match.”

  Dorian brushed her shoulder with his fingertips, and she found herself leaning toward him. Right then, she needed his strength, needed to know she wasn’t alone. “She’s not insane,” Ashaya said. “On the surface, she appears to understand the difference between right and wrong. But… she doesn’t, not really. She does things without thinking through the consequences, things an ordinary person would consider cruel.”

  Dorian’s eyes turned flint hard without warning, his fingers stilling in their stroking reassurance. “She’s the sociopath you’ve been protecting.”

  “Yes,” she admitted, refusing to look away, refusing to apologize. “She’s my twin.” And the giver of the greatest gift in Ashaya’s life. “It was the only possible decision.”

  “Not for a true Psy.”

  “I suppose both of us were born flawed, just in different ways.” She waited to see what he would do, this predator who hated the Silent chill of her race with a blind rage that cut.

  “The rest, Ashaya, tell me the rest.”

  It was a relief to talk about Amara without having to obfuscate the truth. “We have an unbreakable twin bond—it’s why she can always find me unless I’m shielding to the best of my ability.” She kept her gaze on the distinctive red girders of the bridge rising up ahead, not wanting to face Dorian’s anger.

  Then his hand closed over the back of her neck and her stomach unclenched. She’d become strangely addicted to his brand of touch. Returning her gaze to him, she found his eyes heavy-lidded as he focused on tracing the line of her collarbone. Somehow, that made it easier to carry on. “The bond’s been there since birth and it’s not something anyone else has ever been able to detect. I don’t know how much you know about psychic networks…”

  “Some.” He glanced up and the stroke of his eyes was a caress she could almost feel.

  She barely stopped herself from reaching out to outline the perfection of his lips. “From what I’ve been able to discover, in the past, most emotional connections were visible in the PsyNet. Today, those links have been obliterated.” No more bonds of love. Or even of hate. Just emptiness. “Each mind is now a separate entity.”

  “Yeah? Then how the hell does Keenan know you love him?”

  “He doesn’t.” And that destroyed her. In protecting his life, she’d hurt his child’s heart so much.

  “Hell he doesn’t.” Dorian snorted. “That’s why he pulled that stunt—he knew his mom would drop everything and run to him.”

  Ashaya felt something in the region of her chest bleed at that statement and the shock of it was so powerful, she almost surrendered everything. “There is a link with Keenan—but it’s not visible, either.” Her voice broke. “I think my attempt at maintaining Silence is what makes it invisible—I’ve stifled my own son’s efforts to reach me.”

  “Stop.” He squeezed her nape in a gesture that was as dominant as it was… tender.

  It awakened even more of those conflicting emotions inside of her, the very things she needed to keep contained. Because when Amara started playing… “My twin will never kill me or put me in lethal danger, however harsh the game. In her own way, I think she loves me—I’m her only playmate, her only friend. But she might kill Keenan.”

  “Why? He’s a child, more importantly, her sister’s child.”

  Her heart rippled again and this time it was a different emotion, a wild, raw thing armed with claws and teeth. “Amara,” she said, trying to ride the violent power of this new feeling, “doesn’t see it that way. She thinks of me as belonging to her and of Keenan as an interloper.” And that was a bizarre twist in an already twisted tale.

  “Are you saying she’s the real danger?”

  “I’m saying that even if I somehow manage to hold off the Council, Amara will never stop hunting me. It doesn’t matter where I go, she’ll find me and she’ll start to play her games, start to try and push me to the edge of sanity.” She took a deep breath. “The most horrible thing is, when I feel, she becomes worse. It’s as if my emotions feed her madness. I’m afraid she’ll push me too far one day, make me hurt Keenan.”

  Dorian tilted her face toward him when she would’ve looked away. “What did she do to you, Shaya?”

  “You keep dropping the A off my name.”

  “Do I?”

  Another game. But this one held no intent to harm. “Dorian, your touch unbalances me, and that doesn’t just make Amara worse, it strengthens our twin bond. If she gets inside me, she can see what I see, hear what I hear. I don’t want her in this car with us.” I don’t want to share you.

  Dorian couldn’t ignore her plea—even if it provoked the leopard to vicious frustration. Shifting back to his side of the car, he took the chance to check they were on track to Tammy’s house. “So, to chain Amara, you’ll go through life half-alive?”

  “If it will keep Keenan safe, then yes.” A calm answer but her lips trembled before she pressed them into a firm line.

  “She’s a danger to a son you love more than life, and yet you protect her.” Dorian couldn’t understand that.

  Then Ashaya said, “She’s my baby sister, born a minute after me. I’ve been looking after her my whole life.”

  His heart just about broke. Because he knew about baby sisters. He knew about the kind of love that bond engendered, how it was set in stone, how the thought of harming that precious life was anathema. You forgave little sisters for things you wouldn’t even consider forgiving others. But… “If she came after Keenan,” he asked, “what would you do?”

  “You know.” A shattered whisper. “I would kill her. And it would destroy me.”

  That’s the real reason why she ran, he thought, not because she was scared of Amara, but because she was afraid her sister would back her into a corner from where the only escape would be over her sibling’s dead body. One hell of a mess. “How, Shaya?” he found himself asking. “How is that you’re you and she’s—”

  “—a monster?” Ashaya completed. “I don’t know. Don’t humans believe in a thing called the soul? Maybe that element comes hardwired. Maybe we were just born with different kinds of souls.”

  Hearing the shredded heart she was trying so desperately to hide, Dorian wished he could reassure her that it wouldn’t come down to sister against sister. But he’d lost his illusions a long time ago. Sometimes evil did win. Sometimes, baby sisters did die.

  The
image of Kylie’s brutalized body was so fresh in his mind that when the dying woman staggered onto the road in front of him, he thought he was seeing a ghost. “Jesus!” He and Ashaya were both slammed forward against their restraints then hauled back as the car’s sensors picked up the obstruction and brought the vehicle to a shuddering halt.

  Dorian recovered in less than a second, pushing up his door and running out to catch the woman as she collapsed. Her eyes were already filming over with the haze of oncoming death, her plain white shift so bloody it stuck to her slender frame. Flashes of ravaged flesh showed where the fabric had been torn by whatever it was that had cut through her body with such lethal ferocity.

  “Hold on,” he said, bending to gather her into his arms so he could drive her to the nearest hospital.

  “I can’t get her to respond to telepathic messages.” Ashaya’s shock was vivid enough to escape even her incredible control.

  “Keep trying.” He picked up the woman, even though he could hear her heart beginning to stutter. She stared up at him but he knew she didn’t see him. “Who did this to you?”

  The answer came out strangely clearly. “My father.”

  She had soft brown hair, gilded skin. And the pitch-black eyes of a Psy in the death throes. Then those eyes faded to gray, her body going limp against him. He felt his arms clench, his heart twist. But the memories evoked by the sight of this girl’s body could wait. Leopard and man both had only one priority right now—to protect the woman who stood beside him, one hand clasped around the lost girl’s. “Leave,” he said.

  Ashaya looked up at him. “Dor—”

  “She’s dead. A Psy team will be sent out to investigate within the hour.” Sascha had taught him that—death alone was an acceptable excuse for leaving the PsyNet. All Psy who dropped from the Net without explanation were searched for, a search that didn’t stop until a body was found, or death confirmed. “It might be sooner if she got out a telepathic mayday. You can’t be here when they arrive.”