Hostage to Pleasure

“Stop.” He squeezed her nape in a gesture that was as dominant as it was . . . tender.

It awakened even more of those conflicting emotions inside of her, the very things she needed to keep contained. Because when Amara started playing . . . “My twin will never kill me or put me in lethal danger, however harsh the game. In her own way, I think she loves me—I’m her only playmate, her only friend. But she might kill Keenan.”

“Why? He’s a child, more importantly, her sister’s child.”

Her heart rippled again and this time it was a different emotion, a wild, raw thing armed with claws and teeth. “Amara,” she said, trying to ride the violent power of this new feeling, “doesn’t see it that way. She thinks of me as belonging to her and of Keenan as an interloper.” And that was a bizarre twist in an already twisted tale.

“Are you saying she’s the real danger?”

“I’m saying that even if I somehow manage to hold off the Council, Amara will never stop hunting me. It doesn’t matter where I go, she’ll find me and she’ll start to play her games, start to try and push me to the edge of sanity.” She took a deep breath. “The most horrible thing is, when I feel, she becomes worse. It’s as if my emotions feed her madness. I’m afraid she’ll push me too far one day, make me hurt Keenan.”

Dorian tilted her face toward him when she would’ve looked away. “What did she do to you, Shaya?”

“You keep dropping the A off my name.”

“Do I?”

Another game. But this one held no intent to harm. “Dorian, your touch unbalances me, and that doesn’t just make Amara worse, it strengthens our twin bond. If she gets inside me, she can see what I see, hear what I hear. I don’t want her in this car with us.” I don’t want to share you.

Dorian couldn’t ignore her plea—even if it provoked the leopard to vicious frustration. Shifting back to his side of the car, he took the chance to check they were on track to Tammy’s house. “So, to chain Amara, you’ll go through life half-alive?”

“If it will keep Keenan safe, then yes.” A calm answer but her lips trembled before she pressed them into a firm line.

“She’s a danger to a son you love more than life, and yet you protect her.” Dorian couldn’t understand that.

Then Ashaya said, “She’s my baby sister, born a minute after me. I’ve been looking after her my whole life.”

His heart just about broke. Because he knew about baby sisters. He knew about the kind of love that bond engendered, how it was set in stone, how the thought of harming that precious life was anathema. You forgave little sisters for things you wouldn’t even consider forgiving others. But . . . “If she came after Keenan,” he asked, “what would you do?”

“You know.” A shattered whisper. “I would kill her. And it would destroy me.”

That’s the real reason why she ran, he thought, not because she was scared of Amara, but because she was afraid her sister would back her into a corner from where the only escape would be over her sibling’s dead body. One hell of a mess. “How, Shaya?” he found himself asking. “How is that you’re you and she’s—”

“—a monster?” Ashaya completed. “I don’t know. Don’t humans believe in a thing called the soul? Maybe that element comes hardwired. Maybe we were just born with different kinds of souls.”

Hearing the shredded heart she was trying so desperately to hide, Dorian wished he could reassure her that it wouldn’t come down to sister against sister. But he’d lost his illusions a long time ago. Sometimes evil did win. Sometimes, baby sisters did die.

The image of Kylie’s brutalized body was so fresh in his mind that when the dying woman staggered onto the road in front of him, he thought he was seeing a ghost. “Jesus!” He and Ashaya were both slammed forward against their restraints then hauled back as the car’s sensors picked up the obstruction and brought the vehicle to a shuddering halt.

Dorian recovered in less than a second, pushing up his door and running out to catch the woman as she collapsed. Her eyes were already filming over with the haze of oncoming death, her plain white shift so bloody it stuck to her slender frame. Flashes of ravaged flesh showed where the fabric had been torn by whatever it was that had cut through her body with such lethal ferocity.

“Hold on,” he said, bending to gather her into his arms so he could drive her to the nearest hospital.

“I can’t get her to respond to telepathic messages.” Ashaya’s shock was vivid enough to escape even her incredible control.

“Keep trying.” He picked up the woman, even though he could hear her heart beginning to stutter. She stared up at him but he knew she didn’t see him. “Who did this to you?”