Hostage to Pleasure

This time his glance was filled with cold rage. “My sister was butchered, Shaya. Butchered. One of the Silenced tortured her, cut her, broke her. Then he brought her home and killed her in her safe place.” His hands clenched so tight she was afraid he’d shatter his own bones. “Her skin was still warm when I reached her. I heard the echo of her scream as I ran up the stairwell and some nights, that scream haunts me until it’s all I can hear.”

She couldn’t imagine the depth of his horror, but that nameless knowing inside her, a knowing attuned only to this leopard in human skin, comprehended that his grief could also turn into a kind of poison. The wonder of it was that it hadn’t already.

His pack, she thought, recalling the look in Lucas Hunter’s eyes that day on the CTX balcony. Dorian’s packmates hadn’t just looked out for him, they’d refused to allow him to drown under the crushing weight of his tormented anguish. “You were getting better,” she said, shoulders tight with sudden realization. “Before I came into your life, you were getting past the loss.”

“You’re mine.” A flat declaration that was no answer.

“It was me,” she said, hand dropping off his arm. “I pushed you back into the poison of rage.”

“Ashaya.” A warning.

“No,” she said, raising her voice to be heard above the roaring silence of his anger. “I’m Psy and you swore to destroy the Psy. This… connection we have, it’s not something you were ready for, not something you’re comfortable with-”

“I’m more than fucking comfortable with you.” The words were bullets. “You don’t get to walk away from this using some self-serving psychological bullshit.”

“I don’t want to walk away!” He was inside her, this cat. And his hurt pulsed in her own heart. “I just want you to face up to the truth.”

He snarled at her, a sound that raised every hair on her body. “What the fuck do you want me to say, Shaya? That I never expected to fall for a Psy? That it kills a part of me that keeping you safe is now more important to me than destroying the Council? That the guilt of the pleasure you give me is a dead weight in my chest? Is that what you want?” A vicious question. “There, I’ve said it. But you know what?” He backed her to the window, closing his hand around the side of her neck. “It doesn’t matter shit. The leopard recognizes you, knows you were meant to be mine.”

“What about the man?” she asked, refusing to let him silence her with the sheer force of his anger. “What does the man think?”

CHAPTER 40

“The man wishes this was easy.” His finger rubbed at the ragged beat of her pulse. “He wishes you were changeling or human so he wouldn’t have to question his need to hate the Psy, so he wouldn’t have to look into his sister’s accusing face every time he closes his eyes, so he damn well wouldn’t have to feel a traitor to his own vows.”

Pain, such pain tearing through her. “I’m sorry.”

“No, Shaya, don’t be sorry. Because even while the man is wishing that, he knows that he wouldn’t trade you in for anything… even if that trade would bring his sister back from the grave.” The incredible depth of his guilt was a shadow that turned the blue of his eyes to midnight. “I’ll stand watch outside.” He left her without another word.

Ashaya stared at the closed door, her heart filled with a turbulence of emotion she was far too inexperienced to fully comprehend. All she knew was that Dorian was hurting. Hurting so badly that it threatened to break his heart. She raised a hand, rubbing it unconsciously over her own chest. She was an M-Psy-she had no capacity to heal emotional hurts. She didn’t even know how to begin.

The only thing she could do for Dorian, the only gift she could give him, was to enable his body to shift. That’s what she would work on, she thought, clinging to the familiar, the easily understood. It was a good solution, a solution that utilized her skills… and yet she knew it was wrong. She couldn’t sit here, willfully ignoring the truth-she had shoved Dorian to the edge of the abyss.

The only question was, was she ready to walk over the edge with him?

Ashaya had never considered herself a coward-she’d survived the Council with her mind intact, had put her life on the line to help others escape certain death. But tonight, this choice, it was the hardest of her life. She knew that if she went after Dorian, if she accepted his pain as her own, it would be an irrevocable step.

Keenan, she thought, her mother’s heart clenching-he was already at home with these cats. This choice would take nothing away from him. But Amara… she didn’t know what would happen to Amara. Her twin had been with her since birth, since before birth, their minds linked, their souls connected. A single tear streaked down her face as she cried for the loss of a relationship that had never stood a chance, but that held her prisoner.

Then she stood, wiped away the tear… and walked outside.