Psy & Changelings 02 - Visions of Heat

the pleasure of watching those amazing lightning-shot eyes flicker and then shiver to a black that was somehow softer than the pure darkness in them after the visions. Going down on his knees beside the bed, he slid his hands under her hair and cupped her face. “You feel like woman.” My woman.
    Dipping his head, he kissed her. It was a chaste kiss from his perspective, a mere taste when he wanted to gorge, but she whimpered and clung to him. For all of five seconds. Then she pulled away. He swore under his breath, the language rough and explicit. This was not going to work if Faith couldn’t bear anything more than an innocent kiss—touch was the cornerstone of what he was.
    After that week he’d spent in the wild as a child, the only way the DarkRiver leopards had been able to make him respond was by surrounding him in touch. His first month in the pack, he’d slept in cat form, surrounded by other furred bodies. Deprived of touch, he tended to get more and more aggressive, more and more feral, the cat in him rising to the surface until the man was buried deep. Pack usually helped, but these days, he wanted someone else’s strokes.
    “Vaughn.” Faith made her voice very submissive, extremely nonconfrontational. “Vaughn, your claws are out.” She could feel them against the skin of her scalp and face and she was terrified enough to admit it. Her reaction came from a primitive self that had existed before Silence, before civilization. All it cared about was survival . . . at any cost.
    A shock wave of psychic power would stun the predator holding her prisoner, but might possibly cause permanent damage. She couldn’t bear the thought of that. “Don’t hurt me, Vaughn.” She deliberately used his name again. “I need to feel safe with you.” Irrational as it was, she did feel that way even now.
    He’d gone cat on her, but those claws were pressed so lightly against her skin they didn’t even threaten to bruise, much less cut. However, she knew that control was a fine edge and, right now, the jaguar in Vaughn’s eyes was walking the thinnest part of it. “You’ll never forgive yourself if you hurt me.”
    “I would never hurt you.” His voice was a guttural sound caught between humanity and the animal within. “Touch me.”
    About to refuse, she stopped herself. Why was he making that request at this moment? She was smart, she could figure this out. Suppressing her body’s instinctive fight-or-flight response, she closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe in a pattern meant to foster mental clarity. The scent of Vaughn rushed into her, wild and earthy, but it somehow had a centering effect on her chaotic thought processes. Why would a changeling demand touch when so out of control? Logic stated it was because he believed it would help reestablish discipline. And if logic was wrong?
    “I’m trusting you.” Excruciatingly aware of his unsheathed claws, she moved with slow precision and brushed her lips over his. He felt hot, primal, unapologetically male. Her mind started to misfire almost immediately. Tonight had pushed her too far even before Vaughn had gone cat on her. Her brain screamed that she was on the verge of a meltdown. Too bad. She would not let Vaughn down. He’d brought her out of her nightmare—she could do no less for him.
    Her teeth accidentally grazed his lower lip and the growl that came from him poured into her mouth. She froze. That was when sharp teeth caught her lower lip and bit down in a way that whispered temptation. Something low and deep in her burned and the conflagration of her mind was joined by the shuddering heat of her body.
    Her stomach tautened, sweat glimmered over her skin, and somehow her hands were clenched in Vaughn’s hair, his scalp under her fingertips. Heat and touch, desire and need, power and fury, it all thrust into her in a brutal wave that tore away her innermost shields. Suddenly the pleasure was pain and the pain edged her vision with ebony.
    Vaughn felt it the second Faith broke. Claws long since retracted, he pulled back from the kiss because she seemed unable to do so. “Faith.”
    Breathing ragged, she opened eyes gone the bad kind of black. “It’s taking me under.” The words were a statement of the inevitable.
    Rage threatened to shatter his newfound control. “No, it’s not.” Getting up off the floor, he watched her rearrange herself to lie on her side in the center of the bed. Her eyes tracked his every movement.