Hostage to Pleasure

She picked up the tweezers she’d found in the small cosmetic set in her pack. “Release me.” As soon as he did, she retrieved the chip and put it on a soft face towel.

“I used your watch to time it,” she explained, returning the timepiece. “The final parts of the solution will evaporate within the next minute, ensuring no moisture damage.”

Dorian left without a sound.

Putting the sudden move down to feline capriciousness, she focused on the chip. It contained data the Council would kill for. And not all of it had to do with the Implant Protocol. Now, she just had to survive long enough to—Her head jerked up as Dorian’s wild energy washed over her, through her. Her eyes dropped to his hands. “Messing with someone else’s property is rude in any culture,” she commented, trying not to think about the implications of her extreme sensitivity to his presence.

“Oops.” He smiled and there was something different about it, something . . . playful. “Here.” He handed her the organizer he’d pretty much taken over.

“Charm is wasted on me.” A lie. Charm, anger, or outright hostility, something about Dorian touched a part of her that hadn’t seen daylight since those lost hours on the day of her seventeenth birthday.

His smile widened. “Come on, Ms. Aleine. I want to see if that chip still works. I’ll even say please.”

“You have a very catlike curiosity.” She’d never spent much time around changelings, was unprepared for how unlike a human—in the broader sense—he acted. “Do you exhibit human characteristics in leopard form?”

The charm faded away to leave his face expressionless. “I wouldn’t know. I can’t shift.”

She halted in the process of sliding off the back of the organizer. “That’s not normal.”

He blinked, then burst out laughing. Again, the reaction was not what she would’ve predicted, having realized too late that her bluntness would probably be taken as an insult.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Dorian said, the grin creasing his cheeks turning him from beautiful to devastating, “an abnormal freak.”

He confused her. She knew how easy it would be to change that. All she had to do was unlock the emotional center of her brain, give up Silence, and accept emotion. Yes, there were pain controls built into the conditioning, but she had a passive ability and her scientific instincts told her that the more active the ability, the higher the pain. The Tk, aggressive Tp, and exceptionally rare X designations would probably suffer the most.

Of course, as far as she was concerned, the point was moot—for her, the pain would be negligible if perceptible at all . . . because the controls were already rotted away. One moment of decision was all it would take to break the shackles that remained. Then she could be a mother in more than name only. Then she could find a way to comprehend this leopard in front of her.

So easy.

And impossible.

She’d spent years determined to maintain total Silence for a reason, had succeeded so well that she’d fooled Ming LeBon himself. She’d even fooled herself, until— A hand waved in front of her eyes. She blinked. “I apologize,” she said, scrambling to rebuild the wall of lies that had kept her alive this long. “I occasionally become lost in thought.”

Dorian watched her with disconcerting intensity. She wondered what he saw. But all he said was, “Switch the chips.”

She did so, then slid the cover back on. Dorian held it for her while she stripped off her gloves. When she took it back, she found herself staring at the blank screen for several seconds. If she’d made a mistake, the game would be over before it began. Evidence was crucial. Otherwise the Council would squash her like a bug.

“Give it to me.” Dorian took the device with impatient hands and put in the password.

Files began scrolling across the screen at an unreadable speed. Ashaya’s legs threatened to turn to jelly.

“Hot damn.” Dorian whistled. “Guess you know what you’re doing after all. Brains and curves.”

The admiring whistle snapped her upright. “I had the distinct impression you wanted to kill me, not appreciate my curves.”

His teeth glinted as he gave her a grin that held a distinctly savage edge. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”

Flawless logic. Incomprehensible logic. She decided to return her attention to something she had a hope of understanding. “I need to get some of this information out into the media.” It would break her promise to Zie Zen, but her loyalty to Keenan came first. To keep him safe, she’d lie, cheat, even kill.

Turning off the organizer, Dorian gave her a lazy kind of look that did nothing to dull the steel in his tone. “Well, now, according to the intel I got while you were napping, you’re supposed to go under.”

She maintained eye contact, reaching into the same icy reservoir of calm that had helped her fool Councilors. “I try not to make a habit of doing what others expect.”