Psy & Changelings 05 - Hostage to Pleasure

soft feminine heat and frustration. “Kit,” he called out, not releasing her, “we’ll be down in a sec.”
    The juvenile stopped, his hearing good enough to have caught Dorian’s words despite the distance and the closed door. “Oooookay.”
    Ashaya tugged at his wrists again. “I need to go check on Keenan.”
    He freed her—the terror she’d felt for Keenan continued to echo in her eyes. “What did he do?” he asked as he got off the bed. “What freaked you out so badly?”
    She stood up and began to twist her hair into a single braid. “Keenan is highly intelligent. His IQ has been tested in the genius range.” Finishing her braid, she turned back to the bedspread to search for the hair ties.
    He leaned against the door and watched her. It was a nice view. “And?”
    “And”—she found the hair ties and secured her braid before turning to face him—“it means he likes playing inside his mind. That’s fine, but because of his telepathic gifts, he possesses the ability to go so deep that his brain ‘forgets’ about his physical body. Things stop working—I’m afraid one day, he’ll compromise a critical organ.”
    Dorian scowled. “No fail-safes?” Most living organisms had some natural fight reaction.
    “No,” she said and glanced away. “No, he wasn’t born with those.”
    He tasted the lie, but couldn’t figure out what she could possibly have to hide on the point. “His stay with the Council had to have exacerbated the tendency.” Violence stirred within him at the memory of how he’d found Keenan—the blindfold, the earplugs.
    “Yes.” A flat statement that may as well have been a blade, it held such deadly intent. “But we practised building a manual fail-safe each time he came to visit—doing it until it was almost instinctive—and he kept his promise.”
    Stubborn kid, Dorian thought, pleased. “Can we trust him to keep his word after this lapse?”
    “I think so.” A pause. “I believe he only broke it today because he was scared of being in an unfamiliar environment.”
    Dorian gave a short nod, and pulled open the door. Ashaya’s face was perfect in its expressionlessness as she walked through, but he wasn’t going to be fooled again. He could scent the confusion in her—and, hidden in that confusion—a distinct thread of feminine arousal. His leopard clawed at him, desperate to get to her. It felt like knives gouging at him from the inside out. “Let’s get downstairs,” he said, knowing his tone was on the wrong side of feral.
    Ashaya began to follow him down. “You’re prone to mood swings.”
    Mood swings? He stopped halfway down the steps. “Women have mood swings. Not men.” It was a growl.
    “That’s untrue.” She kept walking, completely unaware of the danger of having a pissed-off leopard at her back. “But it’s a misapprehension many people share,” she threw back over her shoulder as she reached the ground floor. “Men are as prone to the chemical imbalances that cause shifts in mood.”
    Dorian caught up to her in seconds, but didn’t have time to correct her own “misapprehension” before they reached the kitchen. Tammy and Kit were both sipping coffee inside, and he could hear the sound of cartoons from the living room off to the right. “Twins still at your folks’?”
    “Yes.” Putting down her coffee, Tammy shot Ashaya a considering glance. “I apologize if this offends you but we weren’t sure about Keenan. I sent my children to stay with my parents until we could figure out if he was safe to have around the cubs.”
    Ashaya didn’t look away from Tammy’s direct gaze. “He’s only dangerous to himself. His telepathy is strong, but nowhere near strong enough to break changeling shields.”
    Tammy nodded. “Fine. But I’m going to wait for someone I trust to confirm that. Right now, he hasn’t interacted enough with Sascha for her to make the call.”
    “Of course.” Ashaya sounded so cool and collected that if Dorian hadn’t seen her curled around Keenan today, he’d have believed she didn’t care a whit. And he wouldn’t have heard the fury buried beneath the politeness.
    Ashaya did not like her son being treated as if he might be a danger to others. Dorian couldn’t blame her. Neither, he knew, would Tammy. Protectiveness in a mother was expected. They’d just never thought to see it in one of the Psy. Not after the way Sascha’s mother, Councilor Nikita Duncan, had cut her