Slave to Sensation

CHAPTER 11

Evil. An interesting word choice from a Psy. “Nikita likes power. If the Council goes down, so does that power.” He raised a hand and rubbed his knuckles along her cheek. “Think about it.”

“I need time.”

“You don’t have long. He usually keeps them for seven days before killing them.”

“Seven days of torture.”

“Yes.”

Silence descended over them. Even the forest outside had stopped whispering. It felt as if the whole world was holding its breath. He continued to caress her nape, her cheek, her chin. Her skin was as tempting as warm silk.

“You don’t have skin privileges,” she said, after what seemed like forever.

“What if I said I wanted them?” He didn’t stop touching her, didn’t stop gentling her as he would a changeling woman of whom he’d asked too much too soon. He’d taken a risk in telling her everything but it had had to be done. Sascha was their last chance.

“It’s useless to have such privileges with the Psy. We can’t return them.” There was something defeated about her.

Lucas didn’t like seeing her this way, hurt and bruised. Guilt squeezed his heart. It shouldn’t have torn him up that he’d done this to her. Everything he did was for Pack. It was part of the price of being alpha. For the first time, he resented paying that price, resented having to hurt this woman.

He shifted an inch closer, deciding to let the panther’s sensuality out to play in order to make it up to her. They’d discussed darkness and death, horror and evil. But that wasn’t all he was, all she was. If he wanted to pull her out of the Psy armor she wore like a second skin, he’d have to tempt her with the beautiful side of emotion, rather than burying her in ugliness. “Was Dorian right?”

She finally turned her head to face him. “About what?”

“He said that sleeping with one of the Psy was like sleeping with a hunk of concrete.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Her shoulders squared.

“Never slept with one of your brethren?”

“Why would I? Procreation, if desired, can be done far more efficiently using scientific methods.” She sounded so prim it was a provocation.

“What about fun?”

“I’m Psy, remember? We don’t have fun.” A small pause. “In any case, I don’t see the point of sex. It appears messy and completely impractical.”

“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, darling.” He wanted to grin. Her stiff posture and oh-so-practical words were textbook Psy… as if she’d studied them.

“That’s an unlikely possibility,” she said, and sounded almost as if she believed. “I think it’s time I left—it’s after five.” She glanced at her timepiece.

“A kiss,” he whispered in her ear.

“What?” Her body stilled.

“I’m giving you a chance to try out some of that messy, purposeless interaction you don’t understand.” Taking her earlobe between his teeth, he bit down gently. The slight jerk of her body was unmistakable. Letting go, he cupped her cheek with one hand and turned her face toward his. “How about it?”

“I don’t see why—”

“Think of it as an experiment.” He ran his thumb over the softness of her lower lip, wanting to taste her more than he wanted to breathe. The urge to tease had turned into a craving to take. “You Psy like your experiments, don’t you?”

She gave a slow nod. “Perhaps it’ll help me understand why changelings and humans place so much emphasis on marriage and bonding.”

He didn’t give her a chance to change her mind. Bending his head, he ran his lips across hers in a quick, hot slide. Warm, soft, delicious, they invited him to return. When he did, he kept the kiss shallow—tugging at her lower lip, easing the hurt with his tongue, then suckling her upper lip. A soft, innately female moan silvered into the silence.

Heat seared him.

This was no block of concrete. He could feel the rise and fall of her breasts against his forearm, inviting his palm to go lower. For now, he satisfied himself with the pounding heartbeat he could feel in her neck, with the jagged breath she couldn’t hide. The Psy could shut off emotion, but it was far harder to shut off the body’s hunger for touch.

Sascha could see the edge of the cliff dropping away in front of her and she didn’t care. Never in her life had she felt this much sensation, this much pleasure. Her fantasies were nothing compared to the reality of Lucas. The lazy greed with which he was kissing her was the most dangerous of temptations. His movements were so languorous, so subtle, so sensually slow that she’d opened her mouth to him before she knew it. Shocked at how far she’d come, she pulled back.

He didn’t fight her withdrawal, watching her with those cat-green eyes tempered by arousal. “Enough experimenting, kitten?”

The endearment was straight out of her dreams. Terrified by her own reaction and by the realization she could see in his eyes, she said, “I’d like to return home.” She knew she hadn’t answered his question. She also knew that she couldn’t say the words expected of a Psy without it being such a huge lie that she’d give herself away. The truth was, she hadn’t had enough. Not by a long shot.

“All right.” He leaned down and nipped at her lower lip with those sharp predatory teeth.

Marking her.

Sascha was home by eight a.m. Exhausted, she took a shower and started preparing for the day ahead. The first thing on the agenda was a meeting with her mother. Then she had to check on a couple of other family projects. After that she had to face Lucas again. Her face flushed as she tried to put her hair in order.

She couldn’t forget the feel of his hands in her hair, the pleasure he’d taken from touching her. Yet it hadn’t been the pleasure that had almost broken her. It had been the need she’d felt in him, the need for touch, for peace. It had captivated her that he’d found surcease in her, a Psy, one of the enemy.

Part of a race of killers.

Grim reality wiped away every trace of lingering pleasure. She couldn’t accept his accusation, couldn’t give up everything she believed in so easily. Perhaps she’d never fit in but the Psy were her people, all she had. Lucas had kissed her but he was a changeling and when push came to shove, he’d always choose his pack over her.

Wait for me outside.

The image of Lucas ordering her to leave, when Dorian had fragmented, merged with thoughts of him in bed with a woman called Rina. He’d never treated her as anything but an outsider, she thought, deliberately forgetting that visit to Tamsyn’s home because it didn’t fit, and she needed something to go right, something to make sense.

She needed to belong.

The second she turned against the Psy, she’d be saying good-bye not only to her life, but also to any hope she had of ever fitting in anywhere. Even if she somehow survived the anger of the Council, who’d take in a rogue Psy? Not DarkRiver. She could still remember the hatred she’d glimpsed in Dorian’s eyes as he’d accused her of being from a race of psychopaths.

Lucas had stood by Dorian while pushing her out—she’d been left on her own, once again an outsider. The leopards had come together for their packmate, but who’d come together for her when she’d found herself unconscious on the floor of her apartment? No one.

Because she was nothing but a tool.

Lucas had never hidden his nature. She’d known from the start that he’d utilize every advantage he had to get his way… even if it involved something as distasteful as kissing one of the stinking, metallic Psy. He was using her to gather information and the second she delivered, he’d be done with her.

Sharp pains stabbed her stomach but she stood her ground and forced herself to face the truth. As she’d always feared, the changelings had picked up on her flawed nature and were exploiting it to get what they wanted.

Lucas was exploiting it. Exploiting her.

“Stupid,” she whispered, righting tears. “I’m so stupid.” How was it possible that the rest of her race repelled him, but she didn’t? It wasn’t. Only her pitiful need to be accepted, to be valued, had let her believe something so improbable. She’d been guilty of participating in her own deception.

It was time she stopped letting him blind her with emotion and the dangling threads of false hope and started thinking like a Psy. Maybe it wasn’t too late to salvage her position, at least within the family. The first thing she had to do to ensure that was to tell Nikita everything she’d learned—she might never be a perfect cardinal, but she could be a perfect daughter. This was her chance to make a place for herself as something other than a mistake.

Humiliation and hurt combined to make a dangerous mixture. She wanted to make Lucas pay, wanted to wound him as he’d wounded her, shatter his dreams as he’d shattered hers. He’d taught her so much about his people. He shouldn’t have. In the end, she was Psy.

And he was the enemy.