Hostage to Pleasure

He pressed a finger against her lips. “When you want something so bad it hurts,” he said quietly, “and you bury it, bury it so deep that you convince yourself it no longer matters… and someone tells you you can have it, it’s terrifying. What if you take the chance and you’re wrong? What if you let yourself feel the loss and it’s this huge pain and you can’t put it back in the box?”

Ashaya kissed his finger and moved his hand so it lay over her heart. “I’m not an expert on emotion,” she said in her honest way. “Most of the time, I have no idea how to deal with the storm inside me.”

“You’re doing fine.”

“But see, Dorian, I know one thing.” She pressed her hand to his chest. “There are two huge hurts in you. You let yourself cry for Kylie but you’ve never let yourself face the other loss.”

The way she’d simply accepted Kylie’s memory as a part of their lives made him love his mate even more. “You accepted my sister,” she’d said when he’d asked her about it one night, “how can I possibly do any less for yours?”

His guilt, too, was gone. It had burned away during that same conversation-when he’d told Ashaya about Kylie’s fierce spirit. “She hated bullies,” he’d said. “She was ten years old when she saw some kids picking on another boy at school. She flew at them, scratched them up, got into trouble for fighting. But she didn’t care. She made friends with that kid, stuck with him until his family moved to another town.”

“Such a big heart she had,” Ashaya had murmured. “Such a beautiful heart.”

That was when he’d heard Kylie’s laughter in his mind, seen her chiding face.

Of course I would’ve accepted her, big bro. Stop being silly and let her make you happy. Or I’ll haunt you.

He’d finally understood that his sister, with her huge heart, would never have wanted him to feel guilty about this beautiful, perfect thing called the mating bond. That simple knowledge had given him a powerful kind of peace.

But Ashaya was right; as far as his latency went, he’d never even tried for peace. “If I mourn for it,” he said to her now, releasing the vicious control that had allowed him to survive as a child without half his soul, “then I admit it’s gone forever. I don’t want to do that, Shaya. I don’t want to tell my leopard that it’s going to be trapped inside me until death. I don’t want to think of it as a separate being. I want to be complete.”

Ashaya nodded, eyes shiny. “I’ve got it almost ready to go. I thought I should be prepared in case you-”

“Let’s do it. Soon as you’ve finalized everything.” The decision was made. “That way, we’ll know quicker if it doesn’t work.”

A burst of panic in Ashaya’s eyes. “Dorian, I’m so sure but what if-”

“Then I go on,” he said. “At least we’d know that we tried. No regrets.”

A jerky nod. “No regrets.”

And he knew that the words were true. No matter what happened with the trapped animal inside his body, both cat and man were one in this moment, in this truth. Ashaya Aleine was his. And he was hers. Leopard and man. Man and leopard. All of him.

EPILOGUE

It’s been three months. Dorian has forgiven me, and I’m trying to believe that it doesn’t matter-he managed to make me say those very words last night. I’m blushing as I write this. The things he comes up with… it’s enough to shock a scientist.

I think I hear him. Better turn this off-he keeps trying to steal it so he can read my secrets. Silly cat. He is my biggest secret.

– From the encrypted personal files of Ashaya Aleine

Dorian was not in a good mood. The cat still trapped in his body was clawing at him, his mind was full of growls and other leopard crap he didn’t want to deal with, and his favorite rifle had just broken. “Shaya!”

His mate poked her head out from the tent where she’d been sitting. Taking her and Keenan camping had been his idea. Noor had tagged along. Oddly, of the two adults, it was Ashaya who was enjoying herself the most. Even the organizer only came out when she wanted to write about her experiences-in a journal she refused to let him read.

“Shh,” she said, “our son is having a nap with his girlfriend.” She took in his mud-splattered clothing. “Oh, dear.”

He muttered a few choice words. “Towel.” He’d dunked his entire body, clothes and all, in a nearby stream, washing off most of the mud, but he was soaking wet.