Hostage to Pleasure

CHAPTER 37

Play.

Yes, she thought through the erotic haze of sexual need, a cat would want to play. “What game?”

“I’ll go faster if you can talk me into it.”

She wasn’t even sure she could put together a coherent sentence at this stage. In desperation, she squeezed her internal muscles. It made him shudder and drop his head. “Do that again.” A demand that held hints of the predator he was, the dominant sentinel used to command.

“Go faster first.” Ashaya scratched him again, having realized his skin could take it, and not only that, that he liked it.

A low growl that shouldn’t have been able to come from a human throat. He tore her hands off his body, pinning them on either side of her head. “Messing with a leopard, sugar? Not smart.”

She tightened her muscles again, and saw his face suffuse with pleasure. It made her stomach clench, along with other, lower things. Her curiosity, always her biggest asset in the lab, was now fixed on Dorian. She wanted to explore his body in every way she could. Then she wanted to do it again in a thousand different positions. She wanted to make this cat purr.

“I can read your thoughts,” he said, eyes gleaming.

“Can you?” She moaned as he continued those oh-so-slow movements of his.

He bit her shoulder again, harder this time. She felt her body coat his with another layer of hot dampness even as lights started sparking behind her eyes. “Let go,” he said in a voice touched with a rough tenderness that undid her. “I’ll hold you safe.”

Yes, he would, she thought. So she rode the wave of pleasure, let him ride her through it, and when the next wave crested, she buried her face in his neck, licking at the salt of his skin.

Something very close to a purr rumbled through his chest. And at last, he began to move faster, the hard heat of him a pounding beat inside of her. She held on, was held safe… even as she held him safe.

Dorian was feeling very much the cat when he blinked open his eyes—after his heartbeat finally calmed. His first instinct was to check the security panel. Still okay. Good. ’Cause he had no intention of moving—his body was loose, his limbs relaxed, and his leopard curled up in a sexually satisfied ball, complete with smug feline smile. Not to mention, he had a damn sexy woman half-comatose next to him. He grinned at her complaining moan when he ran his fingers over her abdomen.

Ticklish, he thought, delighted. She was ticklish.

Flattening his palm on her, he rolled the good feeling through his mind, wrapping it around himself like a cloak. The guilt he’d deal with later, he thought, caging it when it began to rise. But it wasn’t so easy. The thoughts ate away at him. His sister’s death. His parents’ pain. His own violent rage. And now his pleasure.

But though the realization hurt like hell, he couldn’t regret it. Not this. Not his mate.

Ashaya turned her head, looking at him with those perceptive eyes. “Emotion is a complex system, isn’t it?”

He traced her profile with his fingertip. “One way to put it.”

“A plus B doesn’t always equal C.” Her tone was contemplative, her luscious skin warm and a little damp under his palm.

“No.” Yawning, he glanced at the bedside clock. “It’s almost one in the morning.”

“Hmm.” She gave a delicate yawn in response to his own.

“That’s called the pandiculation reflex, you know—the urge to yawn when you see someone else do it.”

“Now that’s what I call pillow talk.” He yawned again and had the surprise of seeing a tiny smile light up her face.

When sleep came, it was in a soft whisper. He slept curved around her, his senses alert for any hint of an intruder. But when he awoke no more than ninety minutes later, it was to the awareness of Ashaya watching him. “You look like you’ve never seen a cat in your bed before.”

Color brushed across her cheekbones. “You know I haven’t.”

He was about to tease her some more when he caught the edge of a scent that didn’t belong. Even as he moved to grab his jeans from where he’d left them, the security panel pinged to warn him of a breach in the outer perimeter. “Get dressed.” Smile wiped off, he zipped up the jeans and headed to the door. “Be alert, but don’t come outside.”

He stepped out without waiting for a response. A minute later, another man appeared from the silky dark of the trees. Andrew had clearly been in his animal form, because he was naked now—and at ease with that fact, as was the way of changelings. Though Dorian was leopard to Andrew’s wolf, they understood each other. The SnowDancer male’s sister had also been taken by Santano Enrique. Unlike Kylie, Brenna had survived, but only after going through the worst kind of torture.

However, Dorian’s acceptance of Andrew only went so far. And it was nowhere near enough to allow him this close to Ashaya. “What are you doing here?” Though SnowDancer and DarkRiver had free range over each other’s territory, the wolves preferred to stick to the higher elevations.

Andrew’s eyes shifted over Dorian’s shoulder. “I can smell her.”

“Don’t.”

The younger male grinned. “She’s all over you, too. Is she as sexy as she smells?”

Dorian knew Andrew was deliberately jerking his chain. “Why don’t you come closer and find out?”

“Do I look stupid?”

“You look like a wolf.”

Andrew bared his teeth. “I thought we were friends.”

“And I thought you got posted back to San Diego.”

The other man shrugged. “I came back to visit my baby sister, check up on that mate of hers.”

“She’s fine,” Dorian said, relaxing a little at Andrew’s deliberately nonaggressive stance. “I’ve been keeping an eye on her.”

“Yeah, I know. She’s always muttering about how she has three overprotective morons for brothers now.” Andrew snorted. “Wait till she has a baby girl. I can’t exactly see Judd being any less feral.”

Dorian grinned in agreement. Judd was his sparring partner and one cold son of a bitch. Except when it came to Brenna. “Cut the shit, Drew. You didn’t come here wanting to shoot the breeze.”

“To tell the truth, I wasn’t planning to talk to anyone at all.” Andrew rotated his shoulders, as if resettling his bones, before leaning up against a slender fir. “I was out for a good, hard run. Decided to come down here for a change of scenery.”

Dorian nodded. “But?”

“But I saw something, thought it might be important. Then I caught your scent and voilà.” A sly glance behind Dorian. “I caught another scent, too. A much more delectable one.”

“You know, Drew,” he said conversationally, “Judd’s right—you have a fucking death wish.”

“What the—!” Andrew stared at the quivering handle of the knife blade stuck into the tree trunk he’d been leaning against. “Where the hell did that come from?”

Dorian was about to answer when he heard something behind him. His senses sharpened—he hoped to hell that Ashaya wasn’t about to do something stupid and walk out. The second she did, this would escalate. Because no matter how much he liked Andrew, Dorian wasn’t ready to allow any unmated male near her. Not yet, not when the mating dance remained incomplete.

But the next sound he caught turned his cold fury into a smirk. “She has a gun pointed at you.”

Andrew’s eyes shot toward the cabin. “Should’ve known you’d hook up with some chick as crazy as you are.” Light words but his eyes were already serious. “I saw Psy guards. Fully armed, black uniforms, right on the edge of your territory.”

“Shit.” He stuck his hand into a pocket and found the phone he hadn’t bothered to take out when stripping earlier that night.

“Wait.” Andrew thrust a hand through his hair. “It didn’t seem like they were looking to mess with us or you. Far as I could tell, they were taking every care not to step over the boundary lines.”

That made Dorian pause. “We’ve had no problems with the Council since we fucked with their computer systems.” The sabotage had been in retaliation for an attack on a defenseless changeling group under DarkRiver’s protection. “You sure they’re not out to attack?”

“Seemed more like they were searching for someone.”

Dorian’s neck prickled. “Coordinates.”

The SnowDancer male rattled them off. At the same time, Dorian’s phone came to life in his hand. When he answered, it was to hear Lucas say, “Got reports of Psy activity on the borders.”

“Hold on.” He nodded his thanks to Andrew as the other man made good-bye motions. An instant later, the SnowDancer shifted in a shower of multicolored sparks and then a sleek silver wolf was shooting away in the opposite direction. “Luc, I think they’re tracking Ashaya, probably through her twin.” He’d already given his alpha a quick rundown on Amara’s psychic bond with Ashaya when Lucas had arrived with Sascha to drive Keenan up to the SnowDancer den.

Lucas swore softly. “What else have you got?”

Retrieving his knife from the tree trunk, he slid it back into a pocket while telling Lucas about Andrew’s inadvertent discovery. “If they have tracked Shaya here, might be they’re trying to cut off her escape routes, set it up so they can grab her outside our territory.” Not that it would work. Dorian would hunt down anyone who dared take his mate from him.

“Won’t happen. I’m on my way to have a chat with them.”

Dorian’s instincts, the instincts of a sentinel sworn to protect his alpha pair, awoke with a vengeance. “Who’s with you?”

“Mercy and Clay will have my back. Sascha’s going to stay out of sight and keep an eye out for any attempts at psychic interference.”

“Sascha’s a cardinal but she’s not trained in—”

“Did I tell you my mate’s been hanging around with the bloody assassin?” A growl.

Dorian calmed. “Judd’s been teaching her to scan for interference? Good.” He switched gears. “When did you get back from the SnowDancer den?”

“Half an hour ago. Sascha decided Keenan would take it better if we all treated his being in the den as a normal visit. Both Hawke and Judd have their eye on him, but the kid settled down easy as pie after he met Walker,” he said, referring to Judd’s older brother.

“None of us up there?” Dorian was sure the SnowDancers would look out for Keenan, but he didn’t want the boy to feel completely lost among strangers.

“Hawke thinks I have issues with trust, but I had Rina and Kit follow us up. Keenan knows Kit and it’s good training for both of them to spend some time with our main allies,” he said. “Look, I’m almost there. I’ll give you a call afterward.”

Dorian put the phone in his pocket and turned to find Ashaya in the open doorway. “I thought I told you to stay inside.”

“The other man left.” She held up the rifle he’d had stashed in his closet. “And I don’t have to be a good shot to hit a man from this distance.”

“Yeah?” He watched as she tried to tuck her hair behind her ears. The unruly stuff refused to stay in place, dancing gleefully in the quiet air currents rushing through the trees.

“I heard some of what you said—have they tracked me this far?”

He couldn’t lie to her. “Amara must’ve told them.”

“No.” A stubborn shake of her head. “She would never betray me.”

“Shaya—”

“No, Dorian.” Her hand clenched on the rifle and she frowned. “Even if they broke her mind, she’d find some way to misdirect them. This is too close—there’s too much of a chance they’ll actually locate me. Not like in the chaos of Chinatown.”

He was swayed by the sheer belief in her tone. “That leaves only one other option.”

She gave him a questioning glance as he got rid of some of the vegetation from his front wall to expose a window. “They’re not tracking you,” he said. “They’re tracking Amara.”

The rifle trembled in her hand. “I guess I knew that.”

“She in your head?” Walking up, he took the rifle and nudged her back inside.

“No.” She thrust both hands through her hair. “The psychic ‘door’ on my end of the bond is closed. I don’t know when or how that happened, but it doesn’t matter. We’re still aware of each other—she’s following that awareness.”

“Like a homing beacon.”

“Yes.”

Door closed, Dorian tapped in the security code and reinitiated the perimeter alarms. “Can you do it in reverse? Track her?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to.” Her cheekbones stood out sharply against her skin. “It’s dangerous. If I focus on her, I might open my end of the link. There’s no telling what she might attempt to send through or do. I can’t risk it when I don’t know how I blocked the link in the first place.”

“Fine. Andrew didn’t mention seeing her, so she can’t be too close. We have time.” He checked the rifle, then began to go through his other weapons, pausing only long enough to send Luc a quick message about the possibility of it being Amara the Council soldiers were tracking. “If you want to shower, do it now.”

She hesitated. “What if it’s a red herring and she’s going after Keenan?”

Instinct had him shaking his head. “Amara’s out for you.” And the boy was as safe as they could make him, protected by a pack that took threats against children very seriously.

Ashaya nodded. “I’ll be quick.” Her voice shook a little, but she was as good as her word, returning in seven minutes.

Dorian decided to take the chance to shower, too—Amara might not be changeling, but it’d be plain lazy not to worry about a scent trail. “Use the window to keep an eye out.” He put the rifle in her hands, kissed her because he missed having the taste of her in his mouth, and ducked into the shower.

Three minutes later, he was out and rubbing himself dry. “Shaya?”

“Nothing.” She poked her head around the door to give him a troubled look. “How can I still want you even when things are so out of control?”

Throwing the towel over a railing, he began to pull on his clothes. “I once heard Faith say that some things are set in stone.” Pants on, he tugged her to him with one hand behind the damp weight of her hair and took her mouth in a hotly protective caress. “We’re one of those things.”

She stayed in his arms for a few more seconds before pulling away. “You’re saying we were inevitable.”

“No.” He shook his head, shoving wet strands of hair off his face. “We made choices, you and I. But the time for choices is over.”