Hostage to Pleasure

CHAPTER 19

Ashaya lay in the dark, exhausted but unable to sleep.

Ekaterina was dead.

So were the others. All because they’d thrown their loyalty behind Ashaya. She wanted to believe that some had escaped, but she knew Ming LeBon. He would’ve struck hard and without warning. The entire lab had always been rigged to blow from the inside—a supposed precaution against the spread of a lethal bioagent.

Now Ming had utilized that “safety feature” and unless he’d pulled Ekaterina out because he had some use for her, she was dead. Even if he had done that, the woman Ashaya had known was as good as dead. Ming would’ve used his abilities to turn her into a mindless automaton. Ashaya didn’t want to think of Ekaterina being violated that way. Better that she’d died in a single instant.

Like the others. So many others.

Ashaya wanted to turn away from the brutal reality of all those deaths, but she had no right. Because no matter what Dorian had said, this was on her. If she hadn’t provoked the Council with that broadcast, Ekaterina would still be alive. What she couldn’t understand was why Ming had done it, killed so indiscriminately. He knew Ashaya only as the most perfect of Psy, without an emotional flaw that would lead her to mourn her lost colleagues. Had he done it for no reason other than to send her a message? Was he that coldly practical?

Yes, she thought, remembering what he’d said to her once.

You are necessary. I would never simply kill you.

No, he’d torture her, break her, first. Even if that meant he had to kill everyone who might have stood with her.

No survivors.

Wrong, she thought fiercely. There were survivors—scientists on the outside who had sided with her over the implant issue. They were the ones who’d made sure her note about Keenan reached Talin McKade—she hadn’t trusted Zie Zen not to stop her. As far as Ashaya was aware, she and Zie Zen alone knew the identities of those courageous men and women. Zie Zen would never be suspected of rebel activities. Which left Ashaya. She couldn’t let Ming recapture her. Because if he tore open her mind, more people would die.

More blood would stain her hands.

Oh, Ashaya, you’ve been very, very bad.

You’re going to be a mother to your son.

Ashaya curled into a fetal ball, telling herself she was merely thinking things over so she could plan her next step. But the lie was too big to swallow. The past was catching up with her, cracking the brittle wall of false Silence around her mind.

I thought you had a heart of fucking ice the first time I met you, but I never took you for a coward.

Dorian was right. She was a coward. Staying away from her son when all it would take to keep him safe from the worst monster of all was a single bullet. Keenan would never have to know the chilling truth once Amara was gone. All she had to do was look into eyes identical to her own, into a face she’d promised to protect, into a mind linked to hers since before birth, and pull the trigger.

Her stomach revolted.

Resisting the urge to throw up, she began to chart the cool certainty of DNA patterns inside her mind, giving herself a firm mental command for sleep. It didn’t come. At least not then. She lay awake, perhaps for minutes, perhaps for hours, and when exhaustion did finally suck her under, it was only to return her to the one moment she most wanted to forget… but that she relived every night with clockwork precision.

She was in a hole, hard-packed soil all around her.

A grave, her mind whispered.

Like before.

No, she told herself, reaching for Silent calm. She was seventeen years old, had basically completed her progress through the Protocol and graduated with honors in her chosen specialty. The Council was planning to offer her a training position in one of its top labs. She was going to accept. She couldn’t be in a grave. There was wood above her—planks, they were planks.

See, not a grave. But the air was growing heavy, dirty, harder to breathe.

“Amara,” she said, asking for help, for an explanation.

Only the rumble of earth and rock greeted her. Dust whispered through the planks. One of the pieces of wood fell in, crushing her leg. She didn’t notice, knowing only that her resting place had been covered with earth, that no one would hear her. She could’ve gone into the PsyNet, could’ve screamed for help that way.

But she couldn’t. Because in that moment of understanding, of knowing that she’d been entombed again, something snapped inside of her. She lost her sense of humanity, of logic, and became a creature of pure primitive chaos. She screamed until her throat was raw, until her hands were bloodied and her cheeks wet with tears.

She screamed until Amara decided to dig her up again.

Ashaya came awake with sudden, quiet alertness. It could be no other way. If she’d woken up screaming in the lab, it would’ve alerted others to her aberrant mental state. And Ashaya had no wish to end up in the Center, her personality erased, her mind reduced to the level of a blithering idiot’s.

Conscious that sleep would elude her now, she got up and walked out of the bedroom, judging her dark red pajama bottoms and black T-shirt reasonable enough should Dorian prove to be awake. Her hand stilled on the doorknob as she considered whether or not she wanted to venture out and chance speaking to him.

He would call it cowardice.

She called it self-preservation.

Because Dorian was creating giant chinks in her armor, making her question everything, even her decision to keep her distance from Keenan. Her hand tightened on the knob. He didn’t understand. Everything she’d done, every single act in the years since his conception, had been to ensure Keenan’s safety.

Choking dirt in her throat, grit in her teeth.

Shaking off the flashback, she opened the door. There was no one in the living area of the apartment—the safe house—but a wall sconce had been left burning. It gave her just enough illumination to make it to the kitchenette. Once there, she turned on the light using manual rather than voice activation and, since it was five a.m., began to prepare breakfast.

Psy lived on nutrition bars and she found them perfectly acceptable—they provided everything a body needed to survive. However, she was also fully capable of making do. That thought in mind, she found milk and a sealed container of some kind of wheat cereal, as well as a banana.

Food prepared, she stood at the counter and ate it in measured bites. Taste was nothing that could be bred out, but those of her race were conditioned to consider it a danger. To prefer one taste over another was a slippery slope, one that could easily lead to sensuality in other areas of life. Considering how precariously she was balanced on that slope, Ashaya ate with a deliberate lack of attention to the tastes.

Amara was asleep now; Ashaya could feel it. It gave her a chance to fix the fissures in her shields that had allowed her twin to slip through and find her. She filled her mind with the patterns she knew best—the twining strands of DNA, the proteins glittering like gemstones on a twisted wire of bronze. White noise. A shield.

Hiding from Amara.

Protecting Amara.

She finished the meal in five minutes, and only then realized that her injured leg hadn’t so much as twinged. Excellent. Cleaning up after herself took only another three minutes. Rather than go back into the bedroom, she walked to the large French doors that led out to a small balcony overlooking the bay—the glass was clear, the balcony railing formed of iron bars that sliced the view into rectangular pieces. She took a cross-legged position on the soft carpet, her back straight, her eyes on the dark swell of water in the distance.

It was cool where she sat, as if the chill of the outside air had stained the warmth inside. She resisted the urge to touch the glass, and turned her senses inward, into her mind. It was where she felt the most free. She wasn’t quite sure who or what she was in her body—it had never truly seemed to belong to her. The psychological separation wasn’t healthy, she knew that. But it was a coping mechanism. After the horror of her seventeenth birthday, she’d needed some way to keep her psyche together.

Dorian threatened that separation. She didn’t want to know what the result would be if she tried to reintegrate the pieces. Dangerous thoughts. Again, she pushed them away, concentrating on the white noise of DNA… and, behind that psychic wall, on the lethal chill of secrets she’d carried so long, they were burned into her very cells.

She’d told a number of lies during the broadcast.

But those lies hid a far more perilous truth, and it was a truth that Ashaya intended to protect to the death. Except Ming had upped the stakes and her original plan of publicity, misdirection, and distraction lay in shreds at her feet.

The entire plan had been stupidly simple—to make herself so visible that neither her nor her son’s death or disappearance could be swept under the carpet. Zie Zen was a good man and his advice to run had been reasonable, but she knew exactly what happened to those who tried to outrun the Council—she had an eleven-year-old death certificate to prove it. Ming had been tracking and executing rebels for decades.

Since she had no chance of killing Ming, she’d weighed the variables and decided to take a stand. The bonus had been the destruction of Protocol I—she didn’t want any child exposed to the horror of implantation. It had all been going as it should… until Ekaterina’s murder.

Her mind filled with images of the destruction of the Implant lab, but this time, she maintained her calm. Ekaterina was dead, but Keenan, her little man, was alive.

She would let no one snuff out that life.

Dorian watched Ashaya from his bedroom doorway. He’d been sleeping the light sleep of a leopard on guard, but even so, he’d dreamed. Not of ice and death, but of a beautiful woman’s cries of pleasure. In sleep, he’d run his tongue over that perfect silky skin, so rich, so tempting that he’d barely resisted the urge to bite, to mark.

Then she’d whispered, “Do it. Take me.”

He’d woken hard as a rock, and very aware that Ashaya, too, was awake. He’d listened to her move around, figured out that she was grabbing some breakfast. Joining her had sounded like a good idea. But by the time he got his erection under control, she’d finished her cereal, and was taking a seat by the window.

Intensely curious about her, he simply watched as she brought her breathing and heartbeat under a level of control he’d never witnessed in any living creature. It was almost as if she’d willed herself out of existence.

He came closer on silent feet. It was as he crouched down beside her that he realized how fragile she really was. Intellectually, he’d always known that her bones were weaker than his, her physiology much more breakable. But when she was awake, he tended to forget. He saw only the cold steel of her spine, the chilly determination of her gaze. Strength. He saw a woman of incredible strength.

But now, as his eyes took in the naked skin of her nape, framed by two tight braids, he glimpsed the vulnerability of her. Her body was curvy, quintessentially female, but delicate, too. He had the certain awareness that he could close his hand over her shoulder and crush it.

His beast snarled at the idea.

Agreeing with the sentiment, he maintained his silence and continued to study her. As he’d witnessed a number of times now, she could put on the appearance of a perfect Psy on cue, but he knew in his gut that that was all it was—an appearance. No woman could have faked the reaction he’d scented in her on the balcony. Fury. Pure, pissed-off female fury.

But not only was her act damn good, the fact that she’d survived in the Council ranks for as long as she had meant she was also brilliant at the games of manipulation that were the Council’s stock in trade. Yet she’d never played those games with him, choosing brutal honesty instead.

What right do you have to call me anything? You, with your prejudice and your self-pity.

It made him want to bare his teeth, but not in anger at her—he’d been acting like an ass and she’d called him on it. But there was one thing he couldn’t understand—the way she wouldn’t go to her son. He’d offered to take her again this afternoon. She’d refused.

Yet even that disquieting fact wasn’t enough to temper his hunger where she was concerned. Lucas was right—he was snarling at her because he wanted her as he’d never before wanted a woman. His leopard was constantly fighting him for control, trying to overrule his humanity. It was strong. Getting stronger. So strong that Dorian had begun to wonder if a latent could go rogue in the true sense of the word, losing his humanity and surrendering completely to the savagery of the cat… becoming a leopard on two legs, a man who cared nothing for a woman’s fragility, only for her submission.

Her eyes opened.

Locked with his.

“Why are you watching me?” Her eyes, he saw, were not blue, not truly. They were a vivid pale gray with blue shards coming in from the outer ring to hit the pure black of her pupils. Strange eyes. Wolf eyes.

“My leopard is fascinated by you.” By her sensuous, flawless skin, her wild hair, her damn curves. He leaned in and blew a gentle breath that made a rebel tendril dance. “I dreamed of running my tongue across your skin.” He spoke to release some of the tension, to leash the beast before it broke its bonds. “Of exploring you in long, slow licks.”

She didn’t break the deeply intimate visual connection. “You’re crossing lines again.”

Hell, yeah. It was either that or go insane. “And your heartbeat just got erratic.” The cat smiled, pleased. Ashaya Aleine wasn’t as immune to him as she liked to pretend. “What would happen if I tasted you? If I took a bite out of you?”

Another spike in her heartbeat, music to the leopard’s ears. But when she spoke, it was to say, “Nothing.”

He gave her a sleepy-eyed look that he knew screamed challenge. “Then come here.”

“You’re disturbing me.”

“Good.” He smiled, playful and wicked, realizing he had the advantage—Ms. Aleine wasn’t used to playing with cats. “I don’t like being ignored.”

“Get used to it,” she said, surprising him, delighting him. “I’m working.”

“Oh?” He was genuinely interested. “I though M-Psy saw inside the body and diagnosed illnesses.” His family had consulted several when his inability to shift had become apparent. All had been brilliant, but not one had understood what it meant to a changeling to be denied half of who he was.

Ashaya’s gaze skimmed down his body. “Isn’t that an uncomfortable position?”

He’d listened to her body, knew she was aware of him on a level she’d never admit. It soothed the cat, even as it ratcheted up his need. “I’m fine, sugar,” he said, fighting the urge to sink his teeth into the delicate curve of her neck. He tended to like his sex slow and intense, but right now, with this woman, his body wanted hard, furious, a little rough. Reining in the leopard’s territorial instincts made sweat bead along his spine. “M-Psy?”

She became very still, as if she’d sensed his tenuous control. But she didn’t retreat. If she had…

“Like all Psy designations,” she said, “medical, or M, is an umbrella term that covers a wide range of specializations. It includes those unusual few who can actually heal—”

“Anything?” He’d never heard of a Psy with that power.

She shook her head. “No, their scope is limited. Some can reset bones, while others can seal wounds—the types of things that might be needed in the field. The healing abilities apparently appeared in children born during the Territorial Wars, though there’s no proof of that. As far as I know, no M-Psy can psychically cure diseases or reverse hereditary conditions. May I continue?” A scientist’s cool question.

He wanted to bite her. “Go on.”

“The scanning you mentioned is the most well-known and prevalent manifestation of the M designation. My ability is a subset of that—I can’t see broken bones or diseased organs, but it’s because my mind sees too deep.”

“How deep?”

“To the DNA level.”

His cat’s attention was momentarily diverted from the seduction of her skin. “No one can do that. It would make you a walking DNA scanner.”

“Yes,” she said, not seeming to realize she’d maintained constant eye contact. “Only a very small percentage of the M designation possesses the ability. Even fewer master it to the level where we become more accurate than the machines.” Her eyes traced his lips and his entire body grew taut with the caress—she might not call it that, but that’s what it was. She was stroking him. Purring inwardly, he didn’t move, didn’t break the spell.

“Because of available equipment,” she continued, “it’s a fairly redundant ability in itself. You have to pair it with study—it was my knack for working with nanotech and implants that made me of interest to the Council. My ability gives me an edge with technology at that level of miniaturization.”

He wondered what she’d do if he gave in to temptation and flicked his tongue along her full lower lip. “How does your gift work?” he asked, curling his hand into a tight fist. “You see me and know my genetic blueprint?”

She shook her head. “Not quite. Depending on what I’m searching for, it can take hours, days, weeks, sometimes months, to tease apart the DNA.”

“Why tell me all this?” He was a leopard sentinel. Even half-insane with this unwanted craving, his brain cells were working just fine. And he knew there had to be a reason for her unusual openness. “What do you want?”

She bit her lower lip.

His blood rushed to his cock. The roaring in his ears was so loud, he almost missed her next words.

“I want your DNA.”