Hostage to Pleasure

“Be quiet.”


Dorian’s words were so lethally controlled that Ashaya knew he was fighting the finest edge of rage. She’d miscalculated badly. No, she thought, the truth was that she hadn’t calculated at all. When she was with this changeling, all her abilities at subterfuge and self-preservation seemed to disappear. With him, she spoke only the truth. But, as she had learned in the twenty-six years of her life, truth was a tool. It should never simply be said. No, it had to be bent, twisted, colored, until it became a weapon.

Now, she looked at the tight plane of Dorian’s bare back, all taut muscle and golden skin, and knew that self-preservation dictated she should obey him. She should stay silent, give him time to get his emotions under control. But Ashaya hadn’t escaped one cage only to be forced into another. And she didn’t like the idea of a cold, controlled Dorian. It was a dangerous confession, but one that gave her the courage to face down his leopard. “You ask me to tell the truth,” she said, fighting the surely lethal temptation to touch him, stroke him. “And yet when I do, you order me to silence. Hypocrisy isn’t limited to the Council, I see.”

His head snapped in her direction, his eyes almost incandescent with rage. “Keep going.”

She might’ve spent her life in a lab, but she wasn’t stupid. She understood he wasn’t giving her permission—he was throwing down the gauntlet. Going against every one of the rules that had kept her alive this long, she picked it up. “You’re attracted to me.” The lush hunger of his kiss had been a living brand, leaving her permanently marked.

The bunched muscles of his forearms turned to granite. “A Psy expert in emotion?” Mockery laced with the iron strength of an anger that stung at her with the force of a whip.

“You touched me,” she said. “I don’t have to be an expert to understand the reason behind that.”

“Do you think that makes you safe?”

“No.” She took a step forward. Stopped. Because she hadn’t meant to do that. “I think it puts me in more danger. You don’t want to be attracted to me and I unders—”

“Don’t you dare tell me you understand.” He pushed off the glass to stalk to her. At that moment, she saw not the man but the leopard within. And she realized the truth far too late—he wasn’t human, wasn’t Psy, was changeling. The leopard lived in every aspect of him, from his strength to his anger to his rage.

She tried to move back. Not fast enough. He gripped her chin, held her in place. “Do you know what I understand?” he whispered, crowding her. There was no wall at her back but she couldn’t make herself move, unable to break the dark intimacy of his hold. “I understand that you come from the same psychopathic race that took my sister from me.

“I understand that you’re one of the monsters who protects those murderers. I understand that, for some reason, you make my fucking cock twitch.” Brutal words, delivered in a voice that was so soft, so exquisitely balanced, it cut. “I also understand that I’m not led around by the balls and that I’ll kill you before I allow you to bring that sickness into my pack.”

She believed him. “Just don’t take that step because of your discomfort at being attracted to me.” It was a compulsion to push him, to claw back. A strange thought, since she had no claws.

His fingers tightened fractionally and he swore, low and hard. “Oh, don’t worry, Ms. Aleine. Now that you’ve shown your true colors, all I have to do anytime I’m tempted to make a pass at you is remember that you have a hard-on for sociopaths. Any attraction I feel will die one hell of a quick death.” Turning away, he strode toward his bedroom. “Get dressed. We have an early meeting to get to.”

She stood in place long after he’d disappeared, staring out through the glass, but seeing nothing. Her mouth pulsed with the faded imprint of Dorian’s lips, hard yet soft, a strange dichotomy. His anger had flamed off him, hot enough to singe. But—her fingers lifted to her lips—he hadn’t used his power to bruise her. Not even at the end.

She knew that didn’t denote any care on his part. No, it was merely part of the code he lived by. Dorian would take her life without a blink if she proved a traitor or a threat, but until then, he wouldn’t hurt her. Predatory changeling men were rumored to be protective as a rule. She didn’t think Dorian was any different.

Why, then, did his reaction matter? Why then did she have to fight the urge to walk into his room and demand he stop yelling at her and listen? Why then did he make her so blindingly angry that it spilled out past the broken Silence she kept trying to fix, past her need to protect Keenan, past everything?

Why then . . . did Dorian make her feel?





CHAPTER 21


There’s no more time. I’ll be a fugitive by the time you wake and find this letter. I go knowing that you’ll keep your promise, that you’ll protect her.