Perhaps she should’ve been considering the ramifications of the scent and what it denoted about Amara’s increasing strength, but she found herself stuck on the first part of his comment. “That’s good, isn’t it? That I don’t stink.” She stared out at the water as day grew lighter. “It would make it impossible for you to guard me otherwise.”
Dorian didn’t like the metallic taint he could still feel on his tongue. Reaching forward, he slanted his open mouth across Ashaya’s, knowing he’d taken her by surprise. Heat and ice, honey and spice, the taste of her flooded his mouth. “That’s better,” he said, retreating before the urge to move his mouth to lower, hotter places became irresistible.
Ashaya stared at him, lips kiss-swollen. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“I decided to demand an interest payment.” The trapped leopard inside him reached out with claws that could never become real. Instead, the echo of them scraped along the insides of his skin, finding grooves laid by a lifetime of futile stretching. The movements of his beast hurt, as if skin were being torn apart. It had always hurt. And Dorian had never told anyone that it did.
Pity was the one thing he’d never accept or allow.
Now, the changeling heart of him had him moving his hand to brush over the smooth curve of Ashaya’s shoulder. Hot chocolate and cream, warm and vibrant, the feel of her soaked through his fingertips and into his blood. There was no fear or panic in the profile she showed him, but he felt the faintest of tremors deep within her skin. “How bad are the fractures in your conditioning, Shaya?”
For the longest time, she said nothing. He closed his hand over her arm, and slid it down, indulging himself in the feel of her even as he pushed her to react. That deep-seated tremor didn’t ebb, and then he saw her swallow.
“Bad,” she whispered. “The foundation was swept away a long time ago.”
He hadn’t expected the admission. “And you consider that a flaw.”
“No,” she said, surprising him a second time. “Psy were always meant to feel. Silence is the interloper. It cripples us even as it saves us.”
He stopped his stroking of her arm. “Then why not break it fully? Why cling to it?”
“Because”—her eyes locked with his, eerie in their crystal clarity—“Silence keeps the monsters at bay.”
“Are you one?” He found he’d moved closer, the exotic scent of her—thick honey and wild roses—seeping into his skin, curling around his senses.
“Yes.” An absolute whisper. “I’m one of the worst.”
The bleak darkness of her words should have cut through the strange intimacy growing between them but it didn’t. Dorian raised his hand to cup her cheek, to make her turn and look at him. “What kind of a monster saves the life of not one child but three?” He needed the answer to that question, needed the absolution it would provide.
He heard his sister’s screams in his dreams. He didn’t want to hear her accusations of betrayal, too. His heart twisted as the leopard withdrew into a tight ball of pain and sorrow, but still he touched Ashaya. “What have you done?”
Her lashes lifted. “I’ve protected a sociopath for most of my life, someone exactly like Santano Enrique.”
Fury rose in a blinding wave and his hand tightened on her skin.
One second’s loss of control and he could break her jaw
. Swearing, he released her and got up, turning to press his palms flat against the French doors. But the coolness of the glass did nothing to chill the red-hot crash of his anger.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Ashaya get to her feet, begin to move away.
“Don’t.”
She froze, as if hearing the lack of humanity in his tone. Perhaps it was because the beast had been trapped inside him for more than three decades. Perhaps it was because he’d done everything he could to turn himself leopard though he couldn’t shift. Perhaps it was just Ashaya. But at that moment, he was an inch away from losing the human half of his soul and giving in completely to the blind rage of the beast.
“I—”
“Be quiet.”
Dorian’s words were so lethally controlled that Ashaya knew
he was fighting the finest edge of rage. She’d miscalculated badly. No, she thought, the truth was that she hadn’t calculated at all. When she was with this changeling, all her abilities at subterfuge and self-preservation seemed to disappear. With him, she spoke only the truth. But, as she had learned in the twenty-six years of her life, truth was a tool. It should never simply be said. No, it had to be bent, twisted, colored, until it became a weapon.
Now, she looked at the tight plane of Dorian’s bare back, all taut muscle and golden skin, and knew that self-preservation dictated she should obey him. She should stay silent, give him time to get his emotions under control. But Ashaya hadn’t escaped one cage only to be forced into another. And she didn’t like the idea of a cold, controlled Dorian. It was a dangerous confession, but one that gave her the courage to face down his leopard. “You ask me to tell the truth,” she said, fighting the surely lethal temptation to touch him, stroke him. “And yet when I do, you order me to silence. Hypocrisy isn’t limited to the Council, I see.”
His head snapped in her direction, his eyes almost incandescent with rage. “Keep going.”
She might’ve spent her life in a lab, but she wasn’t stupid. She understood he wasn’t giving her permission—he was throwing down the gauntlet. Going against every one of the rules that had kept her alive this long, she picked it up. “You’re attracted to me.” The lush hunger of his kiss had been a living brand, leaving her permanently marked.
The bunched muscles of his forearms turned to granite. “A Psy expert in emotion?” Mockery laced with the iron strength of an anger that stung at her with the force of a whip.
“You touched me,” she said. “I don’t have to be an expert to understand the reason behind that.”
“Do you think that makes you safe?”
“No.” She took a step forward. Stopped. Because she hadn’t meant to do that. “I think it puts me in more danger. You don’t want to be attracted to me and I unders—”
“Don’t you dare tell me you understand.” He pushed off the glass to stalk to her. At that moment, she saw not the man but the leopard within. And she realized the truth far too late—he wasn’t human, wasn’t Psy, was
changeling
. The leopard lived in every aspect of him, from his strength to his anger to his rage.
She tried to move back. Not fast enough. He gripped her chin,
held her in place. “Do you know what I understand?” he whispered, crowding her. There was no wall at her back but she couldn’t make herself move, unable to break the dark intimacy of his hold. “I understand that you come from the same psychopathic race that took my sister from me.
“I understand that you’re one of the monsters who protects those murderers. I
understand
that, for some reason, you make my fucking cock twitch.” Brutal words, delivered in a voice that was so soft, so exquisitely balanced, it cut. “I also understand that I’m not led around by the balls and that I’ll kill you before I allow you to bring that sickness into my pack.”
She believed him. “Just don’t take that step because of your discomfort at being attracted to me.” It was a compulsion to push him, to claw back. A strange thought, since she had no claws.
His fingers tightened fractionally and he swore, low and hard. “Oh, don’t worry, Ms. Aleine. Now that you’ve shown your true colors, all I have to do anytime I’m tempted to make a pass at you is remember that you have a hard-on for sociopaths. Any attraction I feel will die one hell of a quick death.” Turning away, he strode toward his bedroom. “Get dressed. We have an early meeting to get to.”
She stood in place long after he’d disappeared, staring out through the glass, but seeing nothing. Her mouth pulsed with the faded imprint of Dorian’s lips, hard yet soft, a strange dichotomy. His anger had flamed off him, hot enough to singe. But—her fingers lifted to her lips—he hadn’t used his power to bruise her. Not even at the end.
She knew that didn’t denote any care on his part. No, it was merely part of the code he lived by. Dorian would take her life without a blink if she proved a traitor or a threat, but until then, he wouldn’t hurt her. Predatory changeling men were rumored to be protective as a rule. She didn’t think Dorian was any different.
Why, then, did his reaction matter? Why then did she have to fight the urge to walk into his room and demand he stop yelling at her and listen? Why then did he make her so blindingly angry that it spilled out past the broken Silence she kept trying to fix, past her need to protect Keenan, past everything?
Why then … did Dorian make her feel?
There’s no more time. I’ll be a fugitive by the time you wake and find this letter. I go knowing that you’ll keep your promise, that you’ll protect her.
—From a handwritten letter signed “Iliana,” circa September 2069
Dorian was pulling
on a white T-shirt when his phone beeped. “Yeah?” he snarled.
“Make sure you get Ashaya out without anyone spotting her.” Clay’s voice. “Teijan says people have been sniffing around.”
“Gee, that’s a news flash. We know the Council is hunting her.”
“Not Psy. Humans.”
That gave him pause. “Shit. The Omega virus. Some lamebrain wants to use it as a bioweapon.”
Clay grunted in agreement. “One way to take out the Psy.”
Dorian thought of a world without Psy. His gut twisted at the wrongness of the idea. “Genocide isn’t pretty, no matter the target.”
“I’m not going to argue with you. Tally’s three percent Psy— Damn it, she hit me.”
Clay’s joking comment caused something to click in Dorian’s brain. “Don’t these idiots realize the virus would jump the race barrier so fast it’d give us whiplash? Before Silence, Psy were having children with the rest of us—hell, half the planet probably has some Psy blood. Like you said, Tally’s—”
“Did I say you could call her Tally, Boy Genius?”
“And didn’t I tell you to stop using that nickname or I’d throw
Talin
in the nearest body of ice-cold water?” Dorian shot back, but some of his tension receded. He frowned. “Talin’s Psy blood is negligible, but if Sascha and Lucas have a kid, or Faith and Vaughn …”
“Council had to know,” Clay said. “Omega would keep their people in line. And as a bonus, it’d wipe out the humans and pesky little changelings.” A pause. “Tally says they’d probably keep some humans around to clean, sweep, and bow to their greatness in the streets.”
Dorian smiled. Tally had that effect on him. If he’d expected anything, he’d expected to fall for a woman like her. Hottempered, crazy possessive, and loyal as hell. Instead, he found himself drawn to a woman he— He blew out a breath, trying to get a handle on his reignited temper. “Council might know, but I bet you the people trying to get their hands on the data haven’t thought this through. You can’t contain a virus to one race, no matter how you engineer it.”
“Yeah, well, the world is full of idiots. Just keep Aleine safe.” Another pause. “Tally says be nice to her—she’s the reason Jon and Noor are alive. If you hurt her, I’ve been ordered to kick your pretty ass.”
“Tell Tally thanks for the compliment.” He hung up to the sound of Clay’s growl. The instant he stopped concentrating on something else, Ashaya’s scent rushed back into him in a wave of intoxication. Wild honey and the lush, hot bite of woman. His body grew heavy. Hungry.
I’ve protected a sociopath for most of my life …
And still he wanted her.
He didn’t know who he was more disgusted with—her or himself.
They were in
the car, heading out of the city, when Ashaya finally asked Dorian where they were going.
“Someone’s coming to see you.”
She thought that over. The list of people who might know to contact DarkRiver to reach her was very, very short. “Where’s this meeting going to take place?”
“A location that won’t compromise the pack.”
That told her less than nothing. But she was patient. Her ability required hours upon hours of pure thought. Falling back on that ability, she brought out the slide she’d put into the small knapsack at her feet and began to focus her psychic eye. It was the part of her mind that saw not a spot of blood but the clear shapes of cells, of chromosomes, of genes.
Of the three races, it was the changelings who’d proved the most difficult to fully fingerprint. Whatever it was that allowed them to shift, it had refused to give up its genetic secrets. Ashaya knew the likelihood of her finding an anomaly, where others had failed, was very low. But for that very reason, the task was intellectually stimulating, a puzzle she was confident would take her mind off the changeling sitting only a foot from her.
She was wrong.
It was as if there was a wash of psychic heat coming off Dorian. When she paused to push up the sleeves of her white shirt, it was to find the tiny hairs on her arms standing up. “Can you tone down your energy?”
“I’m not Psy.”
She pushed her sleeves back down, covering up the evidence of her unruly physical response to his proximity. “You’re not a restful individual to be around.”
“And if that’s a surprise, you really know shit-all about changeling males.” He snorted, wondering what kind of men she was used to. Then he remembered. “Larsen.” The other scientist had taken, experimented on, and killed children. “You’re used to reptiles.”
“Larsen,” she said quietly, “was truly abnormal and I knew that from the instant I met him. That’s why I refused to work with him.”
He’d expected a political nonanswer and gotten a glimpse of the complex, fascinating woman within the Psy shell. In spite of the caustic mix of anger and sexual need that continued to simmer in his veins, he wanted to peel apart all those layers and find out who Ashaya Aleine really was. Protector of monsters or savior of innocents? “I thought he was running an independent project in your lab.”
“Later, he was.” Her voice chilled a few degrees. “An experiment I didn’t authorize. However, prior to that, the Council presented him to me as an assistant.”