Visions of Heat (40 page)

“Some things are meant to be.” Vaughn bit her neck, forcefully bringing her attention back to him. “You were never going to be anyone’s but mine.”

“You’re very possessive.” She tilted her head to meet his gaze. “So am I.”

The jaguar in his eyes was pleased. “I like your claws.”

She stretched to brush her lips over his unshaven jaw. “Do you think you can teach me to purr?”

“Baby, you purr every time I stroke you into orgasm.”

Lightning swept over her and everything seemed to become sharper, more in focus. She pushed away and rearranged her body until she straddled him. Face-to-face. It was fast becoming her favorite position, though she did have to bargain with Vaughn for it—her changeling’s preferred mode of sex was far more raw. Her flesh heated at the memory of his driving thrusts as she put her hands on his shoulders and leaned in to kiss him. But the expression on his face made her pause. “What?”

“I love watching the lightning in your eyes.”

She smiled. It seemed right that her eyes now reflected her mind.

“Is it talking to you again?” Vaughn asked, having learned to read the shift in their bond that signaled a visit.

She nodded. “It’s curious about you.”

“What does it want to know?”

“Everything. It’s thirsty for life, for hope, for sunshine.” She spread her fingers over his skin. “Like me. Make me purr, Vaughn.”

“Inside or outside?”

Her eyes went wide and she looked up at the night sky, a blanket of beauty and darkness, light and shadow, black and white, as it should be. “Here.”

“What about your curious friend?” He slid his hands under her shirt.

Sensation skittered along her nerve endings. “It’s gone.” The NetMind came and went throughout the day, touching her mind as a child would touch its mother’s, looking for reassurance that she was still there. It would be back. And it would teach her more about itself, learn more about her and their world.

“Good. I don’t like an audience.” His hands came up to close over her unfettered breasts. “You’re mine to see, to touch, to pleasure.” His fingers squeezed her nipples.

She knew she should protest his possessiveness, but the thing was, she liked her jaguar like this in bed. She liked being his. Liked belonging to a male who’d never let her go, never give her up, Council be damned.

Those fingers were driving her mad and when his mouth followed, she fell into insanity. But what sweet insanity it was.

In the Web of Stars, a hundred rainbow sparks crept into Faith’s mind without her conscious knowledge. These were the sparks born of an empath, the single functioning empath in the world, the only one who’d escaped the torture of Silence. It was the lack of working empaths in the PsyNet that had sentenced the F-Psy to certain madness. Yes, to be born a foreseer was to be born with a higher chance of madness, but before Silence, it had been a tiny percentage of the minority who succumbed, not the majority.

The Council didn’t understand that in its attempt to purge the E designation from the Net, it had also destroyed the F designation and so many others. Because everything was connected. Everything had a purpose.

The PsyNet was no longer fully functional.

But the Web of Stars was. It was different from the PsyNet and always would be. Because this Web had rainbows and sunshine, emotion and heart, predatory hunger and utter loyalty. Now those sparks healed the broken pieces of Faith and she never even knew that she’d been fractured.

Turn the page for a preview of the next paranormal romance by Nalini Singh

Caressed by Ice

Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!

A fist crashed
into Judd’s cheekbone. Focused on eliminating his opponent from the field, he barely noticed the impact, his own fist already swinging out. Tai tried to evade the blow at the last second but it was too late—the young wolf’s jaw slammed together with a thick sound that spoke of damage on the inside.

But he wasn’t down.

Baring teeth stained red from a cut on his top lip, he rushed at Judd, clearly aiming to use his heavier build as a battering ram to smash his adversary into the hard stone wall. Instead it was Tai who ended up with his back slammed against the stone, his mouth falling open as air whooshed out of his lungs in an uncontrollable blast.

Judd gripped the other male by the throat. “Killing you would mean nothing to me,” he said, tightening his hold until Tai had to be having trouble breathing. “Would you like to die?” His tone was calm, his breathing modulated. It was a state of being that had nothing to do with feeling, because unlike the changeling across from him, Judd Lauren did not feel.

Tai’s lips shaped into a curse but all that materialized was an incomprehensible wheezing sound. To a casual observer it would have seemed that Judd had gained the advantage, but he didn’t make the mistake of lowering his guard—so long as Tai hadn’t conceded defeat, he remained dangerous. The other male proved that a second later by slicing upward with hands turned to claws.

Those sharp talons cut through leather-synth and flesh without effort but Judd didn’t give the boy a chance to cause him any real injury. Pressing down on a very specific pressure point in Tai’s neck, he slammed his erstwhile opponent into unconsciousness. Only when the changeling was completely out did he release his hold. Tai slumped down into a seated position, head hanging over his chest.

“You’re not supposed to use Psy powers,” a husky female voice said from the doorway.

He had no need to turn to identify her but did so anyway. Extraordinary eyes in a fine-boned face topped by a choppily cut cap of blonde hair. Those eyes had been normal and that hair hadn’t been short before Brenna had been abducted. By a killer. By a Psy.

“I don’t need to use my abilities to deal with little boys.”

Brenna walked to stand beside him, her head just reaching his breastbone. He’d never realized how small she was until he’d seen her after the rescue. Lying in that bed, barely breathing, her energy had been contracted into a ball so tight that he hadn’t been sure she was still alive. But her size meant nothing. Brenna Shane Kincaid, he had learned, had a will of pure, undiluted iron.

“That’s the fourth time this week you’ve been in a fight.” Her hand rose and he had to stop himself from jerking away. Touch was a changeling thing—the wolves indulged in it constantly and without thought. For a Psy it was an alien concept, something that could ultimately foster a dangerous loss of control. But Brenna had been broken by an evil spawned of his own race. If she needed touch, so be it.

Faint imprints of heat on his cheek. “You’ll have a bruise. Come on, let me put something on it.”

“Why aren’t you with Sascha?” Another renegade Psy, but a healer not a killer. Judd was the one who had blood on his hands. “I thought you had a session with her.”

Those stroking fingers slid to linger on his jaw before dropping off completely. Her lashes lifted. And revealed the change that had taken hold five days after her rescue. Eyes that had once been dark brown were now a mix he’d never seen on any sentient being, human, changeling, or Psy. Brenna’s pupils were pure black but surrounding those dots of night were bursts of arctic blue, vivid and spiking. They jagged out into the dark brown of the iris, giving her eyes a shattered look.

“It’s over,” she said.

“What is?” He heard Tai moan but ignored it. The boy was no threat—the only reason Judd had allowed him to land any of his punches was because he understood the way wolf society worked. Being beaten in a fight was bad, but not as bad as being beaten without putting up a solid resistance.

Tai’s feelings made no difference to Judd. He had no intention of assimilating into the changeling world. But his niece and nephew, Marlee and Toby, also had to survive in the network of underground tunnels that was the SnowDancer den, and his enemies might become theirs. So he hadn’t humiliated the boy by ending the fight before it began.

“Is he going to be alright?” Brenna asked when Tai moaned a second time.

“Give him a minute or two.”

Glancing back at him, she sucked in a breath. “You’re bleeding!”

He stepped away before she could touch his shredded forearms. “It’s nothing serious.” And it wasn’t. As a child he had been subjected to the most excruciating pain and then been taught to block it. A good Psy felt nothing. A good Arrow felt even less.

It made it so much easier to kill people.

“Tai went clawed.” Brenna’s face was furious as she glared down at the male slumped against the wall. “Wait till Hawke hears—”

“He won’t hear. Because you won’t tell him.” Judd didn’t need protecting. If Hawke had known what Judd truly was, what he had done, what he had
become
, the SnowDancer alpha would have taken him out at their first meeting. “Explain your comment about Sascha”

Brenna scowled but didn’t press him about the scratches on his arm. “No more healing sessions. I’m done.”

He knew how badly she’d been brutalized. “You have to continue.”

“No.” A short, sharp, and very final word. “I don’t want anyone in my head again.
Ever.
Sascha can’t get in anyway.”

“That makes no sense.” Sascha had the rare gift of being able to speak as easily to changeling minds as to Psy. “You don’t have the capacity to block her.”

“I do now—something’s changed.”

Tai coughed to full wakefulness and they both turned to watch him as he used the wall to drag himself upright. Blinking several times after getting vertical, he lifted a hand to touch his cheek. “Christ, my face feels like a truck ran into it.”

Brenna’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“I—”

“Save it. Why did you come after Judd?”

“Brenna, this is none of your concern.” Judd could feel blood drying on his skin, the cells already clotting. “Tai and I have come to an understanding.” He looked the other male in the eye.

Tai’s jaw set but he nodded. “We’re square.”

And their relative status in the pack’s hierarchy had been clarified beyond any shadow of a doubt—if Judd’s rank hadn’t already been higher, he would now be dominant to the wolf.

Shoving a hand through his hair, Tai turned to Brenna. “Can I talk to you about—”

“No.” She cut him off with a wave of her hand. “I don’t want to go with you to your college dance. You’re too young and too idiotic.”

Tai swallowed. “How did you know what I was going to say?”

“Maybe I’m Psy.” A dark answer. “That’s the rumor going around, isn’t it?”

Streaks of red appeared on Tai’s cheekbones. “I told them they were talking shit.”

This was the first that Judd had heard of the clearly malicious attempt to cause Brenna emotional pain, and it was the last thing he would have predicted. The wolves might make vicious enemies but they were also fiercely protective of their own, and had closed ranks around Brenna soon as she’d been rescued.

He looked at Tai. “I think you should go.”

The young wolf didn’t argue, sliding past them as quickly as his legs would carry him.

“Do you know what makes it worse?” Brenna’s question shifted his attention from the boy’s retreating footsteps.

“What?”

“It’s true.” She turned the full power of that shattered blue-brown gaze on him. “I’m different. I see things with these damn eyes he gave me. Terrible things.”

“They’re simply echoes of what happened to you.” A powerful sociopath had ripped open her mind, raped her on the most intimate of levels. That the experience had left her with psychic scars was unsurprising.

“That’s what Sascha said. But the deaths I see—”

A scream ripped the moment into two.

They were both running before it ended. A hundred feet down a second tunnel, they were joined by Indigo and a couple of others. As they turned a corner, Andrew came tearing around and clamped his hand on Brenna’s upper arm, jerking his sister to a halt and raising his free hand at the same time. Everyone stopped.

“Indigo—there’s a body.” Andrew snapped out the words like bullets. “North East tunnel number six, alcove forty.”

Brenna wrenched out of her brother’s hold the second he finished and took off without any warning. Having caught the unhidden blaze of her anger before she’d quickly masked it, Judd was the first to move after her. Indigo and a furious Andrew followed at his back. Most Psy would have been overtaken by now but he was different, a difference that had predestined his life in the PsyNet.

Brenna was a streak in front of him, moving with impressive speed for someone who had been confined to a bed only months ago. She’d almost reached the number six tunnel when he caught up. “Stop,” he ordered, his breath not as ragged as it should have been. “You don’t need to see this.”

“Yes, I do,” said on a gasping breath.

Putting on a burst of speed, Andrew grabbed her from the back, linking his arms around her waist to lift her off her feet. “Bren, calm down.”

Indigo raced past, a flash of long legs, dark hair streaming behind her.

In Andrew’s grip, Brenna began to twist furiously enough to cause herself harm. Judd couldn’t allow that “She’ll calm down if you set her free.”

Brenna jerked to a stop, chest heaving and eyes surprised. Andrew wasn’t so silent. “I’ll take care of my sister,
Psy
.” The last word was a curse.

“What, by locking me up?” Brenna asked in a razor-sharp tone. “I’m never going to be put in a box again, Drew, and I swear if you try, I’ll claw my hands bloody getting out.” It was a mercilessly graphic image, especially for anyone who had seen the condition she’d been in after they had first found her.

Behind her, Andrew paled, but his jaw remained set. “This is what’s best for you.”

“Perhaps it’s not,” Judd said, meeting Andrew’s angry eyes without flinching. The SnowDancer soldier blamed all Psy for his sister’s pain, and Judd could guess at the line of emotion-driven logic that had led him to that conclusion. But those same emotions also blinded him. “She can’t spend the rest of her life in chains.”