VISIONS OF HEAT

“It’s what mates do.” He kissed her for several long minutes, grounding his beast in the feminine scent of her. By the time he drew away to pull the pad from his pocket, there was a healthy flush to her cheeks. “See this?”


She took the pad. “It looks like a remote of some kind.” She placed it in the center of her palm, her curiosity apparently cutting through the residual shock. “Exceptionally compact and nothing that’s on the market at this time. I’d say it’s a prototype from Exogenesis Labs—they had me do some work last year.”

“It’s to blow up the car.”

Her head jerked up. “They wanted you dead.”

Suddenly, he knew she was right. Faith was too important to kill. “Wanted is the operative word. I assumed you could talk to Sascha—can you?”

“I’m not sure about ’pathing, but if the Web works the same way as the Net, I can try to do it that way.”

“Tell her to give Lucas a message: We need a cleanup crew. Five cats to our location.”

“How will they know where to come?”

“They know the general area where I left the car and they’ll track us the rest of the way by smell.”

Nodding, she closed her eyes. “Okay, I’m trying a telepathic page. She’s not that far and I know her . . . there you go. She’s receiving me.” Silence for a few beats. “Lucas says they’re on their way. One extra man to take me back to the aerie.”

“Fine.”

She opened her eyes. “Why do I have to go back?” Stubborn, her forehead furrowed with lines.

“Because you can’t drag one of these bodies where it needs to go.”

She swallowed but didn’t admit defeat. “And where would that be?”

“Nikita Duncan has the bad luck to live closest to us.”

“I see.” She looked at her feet and then back up at him. “You felt no guilt at killing those men.”

He waited, able to see her working something out in her head. Though he’d never admit it aloud, he was a little worried. She’d seen him at his most brutal. Now he waited for her reaction.

“And yet, it was clean. You didn’t taunt them and you didn’t get pleasure from it.”

“I will when I take down animal prey.” He wasn’t going to lie.

“I think I can deal with that because it’s natural.” Ignoring the blood, she wrapped her arms around his waist, her fingers delicate points of heat where they brushed his skin. “I won’t say I wasn’t shocked by the way you dispatched the assassins so quickly, but I wasn’t repulsed or horrified. This is who you are. And I love you.”

The simple declaration brought him figuratively to his knees. Enclosing her in his arms, he let the tension seep out of him. This was who he was. And she loved him. It was all he’d ever wanted.





Faith followed Dorian along the path back to the alpha pair’s lair, glancing over her shoulder to try to catch a last glimpse of Vaughn. But he was already gone, a blur in the forest. Five leopards and one jaguar. So much power. So much fury. For her.

“I could run with you,” Dorian offered after ten minutes. “I’m latent, but I have the strength of a changeling.”

“I’m sorry.” Faith made her tone very polite, conscious that Dorian didn’t like her. “I don’t know what latent means in your world.”

“I can’t shift into leopard form.” Said without any hint of self-pity.

She looked at him. With his sky-blue eyes and blond hair, he looked more like a college student than the merciless predator he was. “Thank you, but no. I’m not comfortable being that close to anyone but Vaughn.”

He nodded and they kept going. She thought over his words, wondered if that was why he had such anger in his eyes. But that anger was directed at her and she’d had nothing to do with his latency. After almost half an hour of silence, she decided that the only way to know was to ask. He was family now.

“Why don’t you like me?”

He didn’t answer for several long minutes. “I don’t know you, so I have no reason to dislike you as a person.”

It didn’t take her long. “My ability. That’s it, isn’t it? You think I could’ve prevented something.”

“Not you. Foreseers as a whole.”

“You’re right. Maybe we could have.” That they hadn’t, was a tragedy. “But I don’t think foreseers ever saw everything. If they had, then nobody would’ve ever been murdered, no great disaster would’ve ever killed millions.” It was something she’d been thinking over. “So maybe we could’ve prevented whatever it was that happened to you, but maybe we couldn’t.”

“At least you could’ve tried if you’d been on the outside.”

“Yes.” That was an irrefutable truth. “Yes.”

He didn’t say another word for five more minutes. She spent the time thinking over her own statement. It was what she believed, but it was also a guess. She didn’t know what past F-Psy had seen. Those records had been purged from the PsyNet, lost in the mysteries of time.