Hostage to Pleasure

“I thought I heard Sascha mention something like that.”

Suspicion gelled into knowledge. “You’re part of DarkRiver.” The leopard pack that had two Psy members, one of whom was Sascha Duncan, daughter of Councilor Nikita Duncan.

“That’s no secret,” Mercy said but Ashaya sensed a rise in the tension blanketing the room-after a lifetime spent negotiating the cutthroat waters of the Council substructure, her survival instincts were razor sharp.

Dorian’s voice sliced through the tension with the lethal efficiency of a steel blade. “Put yourself under.” It was an order.

One Ashaya chose not to obey. She was already so vulnerable. If she put herself into the trancelike state that was the Psy version of anesthesia, she’d be placing her life totally in their hands. Preferring to remain conscious, she gritted her teeth and buried her face in the pillow. The choice, she told herself, had nothing to do with the fact that it was Dorian who’d given her the command.

Dorian’s eyes narrowed at Ashaya’s defiance. “She’s not out.” He was certain she couldn’t hear him. Her withheld screams had to be a solid wall in her ears.

Mercy didn’t stop what she was doing. “Her choice. She’s keeping her leg immobile, that’s all that matters.”

“And people call me hard.” He shoved his instinctive urge to protect into flippancy, but his hands curled, claws scraping inside his skin. The leopard was still agitated, still trying to break through the human shell it had never managed to shed. The choking need to shift was something he’d learned to live with-he’d had no choice, having been born latent-but the hunger hadn’t been this bad since childhood. One more thing to blame on Ashaya Aleine. “Would you like a hacksaw, Dr. Frankenstein?”

Mercy scowled at him. “Let me concentrate. Med school was a long time ago, you know. And I only went for a couple of years.”

He grunted but didn’t interrupt again. As she worked, he found himself unable to move from his position beside the bed, the leopard insisting he watch over Ashaya. But even that obstinate cat understood she was nothing like the two Psy women he knew and respected. Both Sascha and Faith had heart, had honor. Ashaya, on the other hand, was one of the Council’s pet M-Psy, the butcher in charge of creating an implant that would turn the individuals of the PsyNet into a true hive mind.

She was also, a part of him insisted on remembering, the woman who’d saved the lives of two children at considerable risk to her own, mother to a little boy whom Dorian had promised to protect… and the only female to have awakened the leopard to raging sexual need with nothing but her scent.

He’d dreamed about her.

Always the same dream. Night after night.

He was in the branches of that tree again, Ashaya’s face in his sights. A slight squeeze of the trigger and she would cease to exist, to complicate his life. But then she laughed, eyes sparkling, and he knew it was just a game.

He was standing in front of her now, pulling her braids apart so he could thrust his hands into her hair and crush the electric coils of it in his palms. She was still laughing when he took her lips, such luscious, soft lips.

Such cold, cold lips.

The leopard grew angry, thrust her from him. She stood there, unmoved. Then she raised her hands and began to undress. She was beautiful in the moonlight, her skin gleaming with the night’s erotic caress. Entranced, he walked to her. She put her arms around his neck, pressing her lips to his pulse.

As his hands cupped her breasts, the warmth leached out of her. Her eyes filmed over with frost… and he realized she was turning to ice in his arms.

What a fucked-up dream, he thought, staring at the back of Ashaya’s head. What was worse was that despite the screaming horror of it, he always woke with a pulsing hard-on, his body beaded with sweat, his heart racing a hundred miles an hour. Hungry, he was so damn hungry after two months of those dreams-with no relief in sight.