Psy & Changelings 02 - Visions of Heat

imagined she saw colors. Impossible. “I think that’s why Vaughn can pull you out—his touch awakens that buried center.”
    Faith’s stomach clenched at the mention of the cat who’d somehow become integral to her life. “Even if you’re right and I find that area of my brain and reinitiate the protections, it won’t stop the visions, just make them easier to escape, correct?”
    “Faith.” Sascha sighed. “If you continue to try to block your gift as it’s been blocked for twenty-four years, you’ll destroy yourself from the inside out.”
    And go insane, Faith finished silently, hands clenching into rigid balls under her thighs. “If I accept these visions, it’ll be the same as accepting emotion and I won’t be able to hide that for long. I’m too closely watched. The end result will be the same—incarceration in a mental health facility.” Another trap with no way out.
    “You always have choices. The question is, are you willing to see them?”
    Or are you a coward hiding behind the convenient shield of Silence?
    Words Sascha would never say, but Vaughn would in a heartbeat. He wasn’t gentle like the cardinal beside her. He was a predator and he went for the throat. And she watched the forest for him until he appeared for her in a flash of gold and black—a jaguar circling her, protecting her, perhaps caging her. She should try to run, try to escape, but of course, there was nowhere to go.
    Not when the real threat was inside her own mind.
     
    Vaughn did another sweep of his range and confirmed that the second sentinel in the area, Dorian, was keeping to the outer boundary. Only Vaughn was allowed so close to Faith. Even having Dorian in the same wide range made him want to react with brutal violence. The jaguar suddenly understood the extreme possessiveness that gripped DarkRiver males during the mating dance, understood why some of them turned close to feral.
    Because the same violent fury was riding him now.
    He roared and everything in the forest went silent. Brooding but ever watchful, he began to once again consider how to seduce the object of his hunger. He wasn’t a fool. He knew sex would amp up the electricity between them, not turn it down. But if he didn’t have her soon, he might gnaw off a paw.
    The cat was frustrated with the man. Take her, it said; pleasure will crush her fear. The man wanted to agree. It would be so easy. Except that it would be a lie. No one raised as Faith had been, in the privacy-less box she called a home, would so quickly be able to adapt to the ferocity of his needs. And a Psy? Impossible.
    Sex might actually send her into the very seizures she’d been conditioned to expect.
    But she felt him on the psychic level, an intimacy he’d never expected. That she could pick up only his most erotic thoughts delighted him. It gave him the best of both worlds—his privacy and the ability to seduce her without subjecting her to touch, which might send her over the edge.
    Sensual hunger beating in every surge of blood, he began to think of Faith and all the ways in which he wanted to take her. The jaguar, being a jaguar, wanted to enter her from behind. A view nothing could match, the man agreed. So much to explore, to stroke, while she lay helpless. His body reminded him of the sharp bite of pain that had been her response to his earlier provocation. Maybe not so helpless, he grinned inside. But this was his fantasy and here she was his—submitting, asking to be touched, to be kissed, to be mounted.
    Something “pinged” against his mind.
    He went predator-quiet as he tasted the touch. Ever since Sascha had discovered the Web of Stars that linked the sentinels to their alpha, they’d been experimenting with its tactical uses. Sascha alone had so far been able to send language—to Lucas—but both Vaughn and Clay had proved able to “knock” in a crude sense.
    Vaughn could also sense emotion sent by Sascha but he’d never before “heard” anything else. Sascha remained the sole person who could receive everyone, though it looked like Lucas might be able to train his mind to do the same. As a result of their work with the Web, Vaughn had learned that his packmates’ mental scents were the same as their physical ones. And he knew what they all tasted like.
    Definitely not woman and hunger, need and fear, passion and musk.
    The cat wanted to purr. Encouraged, he continued with his erotic fantasies, playing with a woman he’d decided was his.