SLAVE TO SENSATION

“You’re on guard here,” he told them. “I’m taking Clay and Dorian.”


Sascha took a sip of tea and thought about what she was going to do. Returning home wasn’t an option. Ever. After the night she’d spent in Lucas’s arms, she could no longer keep up the pretence of being a normal Psy. Her shields were holding on the psychic plane but maintaining her mask in the real world had become impossible.

Then there was the fact that Lucas had marked her.

The second she’d walked into the kitchen, Tamsyn’s eyes had gone to the bite mark on her neck. She’d thought the healer would be angry given what she’d told Sascha the day before. Instead, the other woman had grinned and said, “I bet you’re starving.”

So far no one had mentioned the screams. Or the long scratch marks on Lucas’s arms. She’d nearly died when she’d come down to find him sitting at the table wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt. It was one thing to come apart in his embrace, quite another to have others bear witness to her utter surrender. At least he was putting on his black leather-synth jacket for the meeting with Hawke.

“Stay here,” he ordered, though she’d made no move to leave. “You’re not strong enough to hack the Net again even if we agree to your idiotic plan. Stay out of it. Rest.”

He was right. Ghosting Henry had drained her more than she’d guessed. It would take at least one more day for her to recover enough to implement the plan. “I can only last another few days.” The pressure inside her was intensifying minute by minute. “We have to act before then or they’re going to find out about me and attempt containment.”

Those cat-green eyes narrowed. “No one is going to contain you.” He walked around to her side of the table and bent down to kiss her right in front of his people. It was no peck on the cheek. She gripped onto his waist and held on as he kissed her in a way that was blatantly sexual and possessive without end.

A minute later he was gone, leaving her starving for him. When she glanced at the two sentinels, she saw no reaction on their faces. Vaughn scared her. He wasn’t cold and distant like Clay, but there was a prowling darkness behind his eyes that made her wonder just how close to the surface his beast was.

Mercy was a little more approachable but she couldn’t get rid of the feeling that the sentinels wanted her gone. She couldn’t blame them. She was part of a race guilty of helping the worst kind of scum. Who knew what she’d drag Lucas into?

“Are you here basically for my safety?” she asked, aware that there weren’t any other vulnerable people in the house.

They nodded.

“Thank you.” She put her hands on the table and made herself meet the male sentinel’s eyes. “I know I’m not what Lucas needs but let me have him for a few more days. After that I won’t be a problem.” She refused to allow self-pity to destroy the magnificence of what she was experiencing, but what she’d said was fact.

The changelings didn’t know the extent of the PsyNet. It had eyes and ears in every corner of the world, shadows within shadows. It was impossible to escape it physically even if her mind could somehow survive the mental separation.

Wherever she went, whatever she did, they’d hunt her down. They would’ve done so for any renegade because dissent undermined the Silence Protocol. However, her case would garner an extreme reaction—she was Nikita’s daughter. Not only did she know too much, her defection would strike at the heart of the Council’s image of invincibility.

Vaughn leaned forward, those strange almost gold-colored eyes focused completely on her. “If I’d thought you were going to harm Lucas, I would’ve ensured you never had the chance.”

“So the fact I’m still breathing is a vote of confidence?” Sascha would not let him intimidate her, no matter that he made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up in primordial warning.

His lip quirked. “No.”

Mercy put down her coffee cup. “Stop playing with her mind, Vaughn. I think she’s been through enough.”

“I think our Psy is a lot tougher than she looks, aren’t you, Sascha?” Dark-gold eyes searched her face for something she couldn’t even begin to guess at. She just knew that what was looking at her wasn’t wholly civilized.

“I had to be to survive.” Sascha held his gaze. “Even as a child, I knew that if they found out I was different, I’d be slated for rehabilitation—a kind of psychic brainwipe.” To this day, she could hear the shuffling feet and mumbled whispers of the rehabilitated as they traversed the halls in the inner sanctum of the Center.