Visions of Heat

CHAPTER 15

Faith found herself unable to close her fingers completely around him. How could anything so thick fit in her body? And why was she consumed with the curiosity to find out?

He hadn't said a word since that last barked command, his entire body supple stone that beat for her alone. In her hand he was almost unbearably silky, the skin covering his hardness delicate, surprising her. She hadn't thought her jaguar would be delicate anywhere. That was the last coherent thought she had.

She ran her closed fist up and down his engorged length, indulging the animal inside her, the primal being that knew only hunger, need, and sex. Her breasts hurt so badly that she ached to rip off her clothing and rub herself against his chest, but that would mean releasing him and she didn't want to. All she wanted was to squeeze and stroke over and over. And over again.

"Stop, Faith."

She shook off the unwelcome interruption and thought of the million other things she wanted to do to him. First, she'd place her mouth over the dark gold of his chest and taste the sweat and heat so temptingly close. Maybe she'd even take off her own clothes as a prelude to pasting her body flush against his.

"Baby, stop." A hand knotted in her hair.

She tried to pull away, but he was too strong. Then another big male hand covered the fingers she had around his erection and attempted to ease her off. She reacted by digging the nails of her free hand into his chest while squeezing his erection harder.

His snarl raised every hair on her body. She expected him to bite her. That was fine with her. What she didn't expect was for him to tighten the hand he'd placed over hers, pressing until she thought he'd cause her to hurt him.

"No!" She let go.

He stepped out of reach with jaguar speed, so quick that she had to grab the post to keep herself upright. Her head swam. She found her free hand reaching out for him. "Vaughn." It was nearly a sob. "Please.”

"Shh." He was behind her before she even saw him move. "Let me ease you down."

"Down?" Need crawled over her skin, pushed at the walls of her mind. But when she would've turned, he used his hands to hold her in place. Struggling with the frenzied rage of a wild thing, she twisted and kicked, her mind having no memory of its offensive capabilities. Right then, she was a wholly physical creature and in that arena, he was far too strong.

"No! No!" Turbulent clouds of anger gathered over the lightning.

Vaughn continued to hold Faith in place with his grip on her upper arms, while ensuring that no other part of his body touched hers. "Put up your walls, baby." The jaguar fought his choice, but a promise was a promise.

"No!"

The word was so violently obstinate, he knew that whatever was driving her wasn't quite sane. "See the forest in front of you?"

A sullen silence. Then, "Yes."

"There are others there who might see us."

"Others?"

"Yes. Do you want others to see me?" He spoke to a part of her she didn't know existed when it was that very part that was exacerbating her hunger.

The answer came without pause. "No."

"Then put up your shields." If she'd been fully aware, she might've challenged him that they could just as easily step inside the cabin. But of course, she wasn't anywhere close to being aware.

Her body shuddered, but she stopped arguing. It took a long time for her to say, "You should stop touching me now. And please put on some clothes."

He didn't push her this time, did exactly as she'd asked. It half killed him to walk away from the promise of what might've been.

It appeared as if the sensual overload had short-circuited some of the other lines of conditioning. An hour after skating on the thin edge of madness, Faith sat on the swing finishing a cup of coffee, Vaughn a larger-than-life presence against the railing across from her. Yet her mind was on someone else.

"My sister's name was Marine." It was a deliberate step into trust. "She was only twenty-two years old, but already integral to the PsyClan's business unit."

Vaughn didn't say a word. Maybe he knew she simply needed his presence, needed to know he'd be there to catch her if she fell. After all he, too, had lost a sister.

"We were less than acquaintances—I saw her maybe once or twice a year, if that. But I used to keep track of her.

I always justified it as staying up to date with the PsyClan as a whole, but that was a lie. I wanted to know my sister." She'd saved every school report, every training log. "She was a cardinal telepath." She glanced up to see if he understood.

His eyes didn't glow, but they pierced the soft black of the night nonetheless. "Extremely powerful."

"Yes." She drank some of the coffee. It warmed her body, but did nothing for the chill inside of her. "Most telepaths are specialized in some way, but Marine was a pure telepath— she could send and receive over distances you can't even imagine." She wanted him to understand the beauty of Marine's exquisite mind.

"Why was that such an asset if you have the PsyNet?"

"It's true that the Net allows us to communicate and meet regardless of our physical location, but it also involves a level of vulnerability. Our minds can be hacked while on the Net. Plus anything said on the Net, even words spoken behind the thickest of mental vaults, becomes in some way a part of the Net. No one may be able to access it, but the data is there. 'Pathing cuts out both those factors. No chance of being hacked. No records of any kind."

"Perfect security," Vaughn mused. "Her services must have been in high demand."

"Yes." But she'd taken time out of her busy schedule to train as a blocker for the day when Faith's mind broke.

"Did she look like you?"

Faith shook her head. "Our maternal DNA was different. After my birth, the PsyClan decided not to risk producing another F cardinal. We're valued because we're rare and they didn't want to glut the market." That cold reasoning had been explained to her long ago, no one seeming to consider the psychological impact it might have on a child to realize she was nothing but a product manufactured for a very specific purpose.

"So the M-Psy selected a number of maternal candidates whose genetic history lacked any foreseers." They'd also chosen highly telepathic women, for the very reason that one day Faith would need a keeper, and her father preferred to retain power in the hands of the immediate family. "It worked. Marine was a Tp cardinal with no hint of F designation abilities. She had skin like ... like milk coffee, and a mental voice so clear, it had the resonance of a perfectly tuned bell. Her mother was from the Caribbean."

"But she lived with your PsyClan?"

"That was part of the reproduction contract. The maternal side of her family was interested in seeing if they could produce an F-Psy, so my father allowed them to use his genetic material on another female in their line.

"The resulting male offspring has never been considered part of NightStar, as Marine was never considered a member of the Caribbean family." She paused at the look on his face. "You don't understand. Neither do I. I don't think I ever did. If I had, I wouldn't have been so hungry for knowledge of Marine.

"I used to imagine playing with her as a child—before that kind of imagination was conditioned out of me. She was this fantasy and everything I needed in a friend." But never in reality had there been any hint of friendship in their dealings with each other, two perfect Psy with ice water running in their veins. "Now I won't ever have the chance to know her. She's gone." For always.

She stared fixedly at a point past Vaughn's shoulder. When he moved to stand beside her, his hand stroking her unbound hair, she didn't tell him to move away. She needed to know that he'd heard her silent sorrow, that he knew about Marine. Someone had to know, someone had to remember in case Faith didn't make it.

A single tear streaked down her face and it was the first time such a thing had happened in her memory. It was liquid fire across her skin, so hot, so pure. "She was killed to satisfy bloodlust, her life snuffed out because the darkness was hungry for pain and torture. And I was too weak to stop it." She uncurled the fingers of one hand and rubbed it across her heart, trying to ease the guilt that had twisted a knot inside of her.

"You didn't have the skills." Vaughn's voice was so consciously gentle it hurt.

"Didn't I? Or maybe I didn't want to see what the visions were trying to tell me, was too much of a coward."

"The guilt won't ever go away," he told her with changeling frankness, "but you can stop it from being so corrosive."

"How?"

"By doing something that balances the scales, by saving someone else's daughter or sister." The sharp blade of knowledge cut every word.

She looked up into his face, unsurprised to find his eyes gone utterly cat. "Will you tell me about her?" Already she knew this jaguar walked alone. But she wanted him to trust her this much at least.

His hand stilled on her hair. "My sister starved to death because I was too young and weak to find enough food to keep her alive. And I miss her every day of my life."

Faith reached out in an effort to give comfort, the first time she'd done so. The hand she put on his thigh was tentative, but it held so much and, though he said nothing to acknowledge the act, he began to stroke her hair again.

"What was her name?"

"Skye." His voice dropped until it was more growl than human. "Our parents abandoned us in predator territory with nothing but the clothes on our backs."

"But they were changelings."

"Being animal is no guarantee against evil." Vaughn's thigh turned rock-hard under her hand. "My parents weren't evil, but they were caught up in it—I have to think that to keep myself sane."

She stayed silent, trying to give him what he'd given her.

"My parents were very young and unmarried when they had me—most jaguars don't follow human customs. Skye was born three years later. When she was two and a half, they joined a new church and got married. Soon afterward, they gave up their worldly possessions and we began living in a commune." His voice was hard. "That wouldn't have mattered if I hadn't begun to notice the way some of the 'elders' looked at Skye. She was a baby and they wanted to put their hands on her."

Faith couldn't imagine anything so horrendous. "You protected her."

"I got her killed." Vaughn had lived with that knowledge for over two decades. "I was always with her—I refused to allow them near. I was labeled a problem child and my parents had to discipline me according to their new religion." Hours of beatings, of isolation, of being told he was "full of sin."

It had terrified him that they'd get to Skye while he was locked up, but his parents must not have been completely lost because they'd always kept Skye close while he was being punished. "When it became clear that I wasn't going to relent and that I'd taught the other kids to be wary of the elders, too, they began a campaign to get rid of us. They told our parents to prove their devotion to their new God by giving up the 'fruits of sin,' the children they'd borne out of wedlock."

"How could ... ?" Faith shook her head in bewilderment and he realized how hard he'd clenched his hand in her hair.

Softening his grip, he smoothed the silken mass. "It took a long time for my parents to buckle under." But by the end of it, his mother hadn't been able to look at him without seeing sin and his father had stopped hearing anything Skye had to say. "When they put us in the car and told us we weren't coming back, we were so happy." He could remember every glittering facet of the hope that had gripped his ten-year-old heart. Because despite everything, he'd still been a child.

"Instead, they took us deep into the forest and left us there." That was when they'd spouted the evil they'd been indoctrinated with. Skye had cried and tried to run after them, but they'd been full-grown jaguars and she'd been a baby. Following, Vaughn had waited until she was too exhausted to run anymore and then he'd found them a place to hide.

"Oh, Vaughn."

"She died in my arms five days later." His heart had broken so completely that day he hadn't been sure it would ever recover. "I buried her in a cave." Where it would never rain and she'd never be cold again. "Afterward, I decided to keep walking. I wanted to get to my parents so I could kill them."

"How did you get out?" Her voice was soft, passing no judgment on his need for retribution.

"I didn't. I collapsed two days later." But even exhausted, broken, and lost, he'd been caught in the claws of the most vicious kind of anger. "What I didn't know was that I'd inadvertently walked into DarkRiver territory." If only their parents had left them a little less deep in the forest, Skye, too, would've survived.

"A sentinel found me within hours. Once I could talk, they asked me what had happened and were ready to go for blood on my behalf. But it wasn't necessary. My parents were dead by then."

He felt Faith's shock in the sudden jerk of her head. "What?"

"My mother tried to come back for us." Knowing that gave him some sense of peace, some sense of there being a better God. "My father was determined to stop her. Two adult jaguars fighting in animal form can do a lot of damage—he killed her, then committed suicide."

Faith stood and his hand dropped from her hair. "I'm sorry." Inching closer, she touched his cheek in a caress that lasted a mere second.

However, he knew exactly how much it had to have cost her after her earlier meltdown. "It was better that way. If they'd lived, I would've been the one to kill them." And that might've destroyed him beyond any hope of redemption. "DarkRiver tipped off Enforcement about the cult, and it was raided and shut down. Because the victims included humans who opposed death, they were incarcerated rather than subjected to changeling law." Blood for blood, flesh for flesh, life for life. The judgment had left him with nothing on which to focus his anger, his rage.

He could've gone very bad, but DarkRiver hadn't let him.

"How did you survive?" Faith asked, hugging her arms around herself. "How? That much pain? How, Vaughn? How can you be so strong?"

"Sometimes rage can be a good thing. It keeps you going when nothing else remains." He met those night-sky eyes, so eerie, so beautiful. "Be angry, Faith. Use the need for vengeance as your shield against the darkness while you hunt it down."

"What if I don't have that in me? What if I'm too weak?"

"What if you do?" he countered. "What if you only have to open the door?"

Faith made it back to the compound in the nick of time. The comm console chimed as she exited her room early the next morning. It was Anthony again.

"Father."

"Faith, I have some information for you."

"I understand." She turned off the screen and returned to her room. Locking herself in, she leaned against the wall, closed her eyes, and opened a door on the psychic plane. Anthony's roaming consciousness was waiting for her as she stepped out. Like her, he preferred to travel incognito, his true strength masked by patterns of ordinariness.

"Follow me."

They were behind the walls of a NightStar vault less than a minute later in real time. Most people who wanted privacy in the Net tended to use a simple room that could be created instantaneously. Of course, the security status of that room depended on the strength of the Psy involved in its creation.

In contrast, the NightStar clan could afford to maintain a number of permanent vaults on the Net, sustaining them with a constant trickle of power from most of its members. All the vaults were impenetrable as far as hacking was concerned, but Faith wondered if the NetMind was able to enter them at will. And if it could, did the Council then have a way to retrieve the data it collected?

"I have allies in the Council ranks," Anthony told her. "People close to the Councilors."

"What have you learned?"

"You're one of the favored candidates for replacing Councilor Enrique."

"Who are the others?" Faith kept her mental self calm. She couldn't afford to let her physical mind's disrupted state bleed over to this roaming self. Her father was far too strong a Psy not to detect the anomaly.

"It appears that the name of an M-Psy was also put forward, but the Council is concentrating on you and a Tk named Kaleb Krychek."

"I've heard his name mentioned in relation to several events within the Council."

"Correct. Kaleb has climbed extremely high in the ranks at a very young age—he's about to turn twenty-seven. He's highly competent at reading and initiating power plays."

"While I have no experience with such strategic games."

"You have an advantage he lacks."

"I'm an F-Psy." And the Council enjoyed being in a position of power. Her skills would increase that power by several magnitudes.

"I've prepared a file on Kaleb." He showed her the point in the vault where it was stored and she downloaded the information into her roaming mind. "He's dangerous and has certainly killed, notwithstanding the lack of evidence."

"I'll take care to ensure I don't become the victim of an unexpected accident."

"It's not clear which of the Councilors are backing you and which favor Kaleb, so don't let your guard down around any of them."

"They're not Psy I'd ever let my guard down around."

"Who approached you?"

"Shoshanna Scott."

"What was your impression?"

"That she hadn't made any firm judgments." Except for the blood on her hands. Faith crushed that thought as soon as it awakened. It could not be allowed to color her Net presence. "I'm assuming I'll be contacted by the others in due course."

"If you need to speak to me at any stage, don't worry about formalities. 'Path."

She nodded, cognizant it was a privilege. Anthony might be her father, but only a select few had the right to initiate telepathic contact with him. "Of course. Thank you for the file. I'll study it carefully." She meant that. Her mind might be starting to spin out of control, but it wasn't yet gone and neither was she. Maybe she could still salvage her sanity and her life as a Psy, the only life she knew how to live.

What she refused to think about was the inevitable consequence of achieving that goal—never again being able to experience the exquisite agony of emotions that pleasured as well as hurt... never again tangling with a jaguar.