CHAPTER 21 #2
Faith was surrounded by fire. Rough, yet deliciously smooth, the contrasting textures enticed her to open her eyes.
Gleaming skin lay under her cheek and her fingers were stroking through dark-gold chest hair as if petting a great big cat.
The last word opened the floodbanks of memory and she woke fully with a gasp.
“Shh.” One of Vaughn’s hands stroked down her spine while the other pushed damp hair off her forehead.
“You’re free.” The bindings were shreds on the headboard.
“Hmm.” He moved so she was half under him and he could kiss the line of her neck.
“I survived.” She was remembering that explosion in her mind, when everything she was and everything she’d ever been had seemed to be wiped out.
His teeth scraped her skin and she shivered. Lightning danced along her bloodstream, nerve endings already sensitized to the extreme.
“You taste good, Red.”
Her body was loose, her limbs heavy and sated. “Vaughn. I felt too much.” Yet she was still here, still functioning. She checked her shields. To her shock, the ones against the PsyNet were holding strong, as if anchored by a source outside of her overloaded mind. Impossible.
All her other shields were gone.
She clenched her fingers, only then realizing she’d sunk them into Vaughn’s hair. “My shields.”
“Mmm.” He was licking at her pulse, quick flicks that tugged at something low in her, something rich and dark and hungry. So hungry.
“The ones that help me hold out the world, they’re gone.” Burned out.
“Rebuild them. Later.” Moving down her body, he ran his teeth over the upper slopes of her breasts.
Swallowing, she tried to think. She was safe against other Psy.
There was no one out here but Vaughn. And he’d already been everywhere inside of her, gone so deep that she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to push him out, or that she’d even want to.
One large hand stroked down her side and lingered in the hollow where waist flared into hip.
She found herself holding her breath in anticipation, her mind emptying of thoughts of shields and protection. She was a novice at emotion caught in the claws of the most powerful of them—so much so that she failed to check the vision channels for damage.
Vaughn nuzzled between her breasts and made his way down her tensed stomach, dropping kisses on every inch of exposed skin until he reached the curls at the apex of her thighs. One hand closing over her thigh, he dropped a kiss on those curls. Her back arched. “Not yet.”
He finally looked up. Those cat eyes were sated, golden and pleasured. “Why?” It wasn’t a demand, but as close to a purr as she’d ever heard a human being sound.
“I need to calm down a little.” She tugged at his hair and to her surprise, he came without argument, kissing his way back up her body. A body that had been well used and was already aching for more. It was her mind that wasn’t ready.
When he was braced over her once more, she ran her hand down his jaw and found herself unable to stop nuzzling at his throat, dropping kisses on his pulse.
“Why can’t I stop touching you? I might’ve broken conditioning, but I’m still Psy.
” Still from a race where touch was infrequent and cold. “I shouldn’t be so needy for touch.”
“You’re hungry.” He ran one hand up to close over her breast in a gesture that screamed possessiveness. “You’ve been starving for decades.”
“But . . .” She licked salt from the skin of his shoulder and curved a leg over his waist.
“The shield holding you back burned out.”
How did he know that? Not that it mattered to her. “Does that mean I’m mad?” Right this moment, she didn’t care.
“No. It means you’re free.”
“Mmm.” Pulling herself up using his shoulders, she drew his head down in a kiss that was so luscious, she melted. He was all slow heat and seduction against her mouth while his hand gently massaged her breast.
When his thumb rubbed over her nipple, she moaned into the kiss, but this time it wasn’t lightning that flickered through her bloodstream but a thicker, richer vein of fire.
It spread with languorous ease and she was filled with it before she could even think to fight.
Pleasurably overwhelmed, she wrapped her arms around him and curved her other leg over his back.
When he slipped inside of her again, it felt like perfection.
He moved in a slow, sensual rhythm, a sated predator giving his woman everything she wanted.
The hand on her breast slid down her body to cup her buttocks and hold her at the tiniest angle, but one that let him touch things in her that turned the slow-moving river of lava into a boiling inferno. But still it didn’t overwhelm.
She rode the waves of pleasure that lapped at her as he rode her, his lips on her mouth, his tongue dancing with hers.
And when he finally pushed her over, she didn’t crash.
Instead the heavy fire inside of her turned into a shimmering mass of sensation.
Rich and lush and addictive, it took her under and she went with a smile.
Faith let the spray of the waterfall that was Vaughn’s shower wash over her, hardly able to stand upright. Not that she had to. A certain changeling was more than ready to help.
He nipped at her neck. “Stop thinking.”
“Too late.” She turned in his arms and wrapped her own around his torso. He was so beautiful, so deliciously male that it kept surprising her. Her self-restraint where he was concerned was close to zero. But in spite of her lack of impulse control, her mind remained sane.
“I think we’re clean enough.” His hands were big and warm on her skin. “Come on.”
She followed him out onto the drying platform and let him rub her down with a huge fluffy towel. “Silk sheets and plush towels,” she said with a sigh, unaccustomed to such hedonistic pleasures. “You like comfort.”
“I’m a cat. Soft silky things make me purr.” He nipped at the vulnerable skin of her thigh and smiled at her shudder. “Sometimes, though, they make me want to bite.” Rising from his kneeling position to tuck the towel around her body, he caught her rusty attempt at a smile.
“What?” One eyebrow rose.
She shook her head. “You’re a pussycat.”
Nothing could have prepared her for the blush that streaked across his cheekbones. Grabbing a towel, he began to dry himself, but the full-bodied grin across his face was so gorgeous and rare that she stared. “Yeah, well, you sucked all the meanness right out of me.”
She found her own smile growing wider, an unfamiliar action that was suddenly natural. “How long will this transformation last?”
“Until I get hungry for you again.” He wrapped the towel around his hips. “Which could be anytime soon.”
His delectably slow kiss was welcome. “You’re insatiable.”
“Just for you.” He tapped his finger on her nose and the gesture was so silly, so tender, so unbelievably heartbreaking.
“Why don’t you smile more?” She liked his smile, liked seeing such uncomplicated happiness on his face.
“Never had much to smile about.”
Looking into that smile, Faith gave up her last hazy dream of somehow returning to the only world she’d ever known. “I’m never going back.”
The smile faded and something darker whispered into his eyes, something wild and savagely possessive. “Good. Because I wasn’t planning on letting you go.”
She laughed and it was the first time in her life she hadn’t been afraid.
Silence had numbed her, but what she finally understood was that it was a numbness caused by fear.
Her race was so afraid of their own talents, their own unique minds, they’d crippled themselves. But she was no longer in bondage.
Throwing her arms around Vaughn’s neck, she let him pick her up and spin her around in a circle. They’d talk about his stubbornness, his liking for getting his own way, but not now. Not in this perfect moment.
Perhaps her newfound happiness was why she made the mistake, why she forgot that there were things hunting her that didn’t live on the PsyNet, things that had direct access to her mind.
She went to sleep in Vaughn’s arms, but woke to find herself in the grip of malignant darkness.
She knew she could move, could alert Vaughn, and he’d probably be able to bring her out of it.
But with the fire of Vaughn’s chest pressed to her back, she knew where she was, when she was.
Her shields against the visions might’ve burned out, but her emotions were wide awake.
And though those emotional muscles were unfamiliar, she was confident she could use them if the need arose—they were as natural a part of her as Silence had been unnatural.
It would be hard, but not impossible to break out of this vision.
Decision made, she let the vision sweep her under in an ebony wave of malevolence, let it swirl around her, let it show her.
Vaughn knew Faith was having a vision. Beneath closed eyelids, he could see her eyes flickering in rapid movements that were not those of deep sleep. He’d awakened when the cat had sensed a change in the rhythm of her heart rate. Now her scent, too, changed.
There was something not quite right about it, a sick miasma that made it seem as if she’d been infected by something vile.
The beast raged to tear her from the grip of the vision, but Vaughn forced himself to think.
Maybe Faith didn’t want it to stop—he’d thought she’d been awake and aware when it started. Able to make a choice.
He never wanted to stifle her gift as Silence had, but fighting the beast was hard, especially when the man had the same protective instincts.
The urge to shake her awake intensified when he glimpsed the hovering edges of a physical darkness above her.
It couldn’t get in, but circled like a vulture just waiting for a vulnerable spot.
Growling low in his throat, he held Faith closer.
But ironically the sight also calmed him—it hadn’t fully clawed into Faith, which meant she could break out on her own.
If he made the decision for her, he might steal from her a chance to avenge her sister’s death.
And the need for vengeance was something both parts of his self understood.
“I’m here,” he whispered in her ear. Then he settled down to keep watch over her and hold back the darkness. It didn’t matter that a psychic phenomenon should have had no physical form. He knew it existed, he saw it. And he would not let it touch Faith.
Even in the depths of the vision, Faith was aware of Vaughn beside her, a wall of pure fire between her and the ugly menace that awaited. That was unusual enough to have broken her concentration had she not already made the decision to complete this. The darkness would never again steal a life.
Even if Faith had to end his.
The vision began to change from the unclear mix of emotion that had first roiled around her, the curtains of darkness parting to once again show her the face of the woman he meant to kill.
The scene was clean—part of the stalk, not the kill—which left her free to concentrate on details that might identify the target rather than battling her own fear responses.
By the time the vision faded, she thought she had what she needed.
She was about to pull out when she felt a tug that signaled more was to come.
Calm from the lack of brutality in the opening scenes, she let the next phase roll over her.
Blood dripped down pale green walls, soaked into the slightly darker carpet, splattered the comm console.
A charnel house she could smell—hints of putrid death hidden in the iron-rich taint of blood.
Revolted, she could do nothing as he walked farther into the room, placing his feet in the dark red liquid that had once run in a living being’s veins.
The blood in the bathroom had had nothing to soak into. His feet slapped into it with a splash.
Her mind shuddered under the overload. The carnage, the smell, the sporadic flashes of backsight that had her hearing screams of such terror that her bones chilled, it all smashed into her with the force of a truck going a hundred miles an hour.
That was when she realized she hadn’t survived the sexual heat with Vaughn.
The earlier cascade had fractured her mind on the deepest level.
It had no ability to withstand the fury of this blood-soaked vision.
She felt herself start to cascade again but this time, it was nothing survivable—the Cassandra Spiral.
A silent scream tore free from her psyche.
The Cassandra Spiral was the worst grade of cascade, turning victims into mute vegetables without reason or sentience.
No one survived without rapid M-Psy intervention.
But there were no M-Psy here and she was drowning, sinking so fast that soon she wouldn’t be able to breathe. The blood was creeping up her body, coating her feet, her legs. . . .