VISIONS OF HEAT

Something sizzled along Faith’s most intimate inner skin and, though it wasn’t painful, it demanded. Fearful that it was a trick, but incapable of ignoring the flaring pain of nerve endings snapping to wakefulness, she uncurled from her protective crouch. And saw energy arcing through her mind, silver and bright, passionate and unstoppable, a lightning storm that burned away the lingering echoes of malignant darkness.

Her blood began to pump with heat that burned. Around her, a thousand fires sparked to life. She stood in the center, protected but not shielded from the inferno. These flames wanted to caress, to touch, to stroke.

Unable to take the wild hunger of the storm, to withstand the intensity of the conflagration, she willed herself from the dream and into waking life. But the dream followed her to the outside. Her lips were on fire. Her body exploded with heat. Enfolding her was a stronger flame, skin that seemed to burn with a higher temperature than her own, living heat that lay against her nape, under her thighs, against the cheek she had pressed to a hard muscled surface.

She tried to suck in a breath, but her mouth had already been claimed. Her lashes flicked upward. Night-gold eyes met hers, brutal, savage . . . and safe. Her lips were freed for the second it took her to gasp a breath and then reclaimed. She found that her hand was on his shoulder, holding on, holding him.

Her mind spun with too much sensation, but the alternative was worse. In her not-quite-conscious state, she wasn’t sure the darkness wouldn’t return if she broke away from this overload. So she embraced it, shifting to wrap her arms around the neck of the dangerous male in her bed, melding her body to his.

If it came to madness, she’d rather drown in heat than be sucked into the sadistic cruelty of darkness. The woman heart of her was aware that his hands were on her back, pressing her to him, and that while those hands were big and powerful, they did no harm. Then even that thought was swept under the shock wave of sensation and she became nothing but flesh, a creature who had no mind and no thoughts. Her eyes closed.

Vaughn sensed Faith’s utter surrender. The cat was ready to take what was his, but the man knew this wasn’t the kind of submission that would ever satisfy him and it might just scar her. She wasn’t giving in to him. She was using him to escape the darkness. Vaughn didn’t mind being used by Faith, but he did mind that she wasn’t conscious of who it was she clung to.

He broke the kiss and had the pleasure of feeling her nails dig into his skin as she tried to make him return. “Faith.”

She pressed closer, her eyes remaining shut.

“Faith.” He made his voice a command edged with the roughness of a growl. It wasn’t difficult. This aroused, he had trouble controlling the beast. It was something Faith was going to have to learn to deal with, but not today. Today was about keeping her safe. “Open your eyes.”

She shook her head, but her hands slipped down from around his neck to curl into fists against his chest.

A slow smile spread over his lips. “I’m not naked.” Taking one feminine fist, he pressed it against his jean-covered thigh, then had to bite back a very sexual demand when the fingers of that hand spread and sent sensation straight to his groin.

“Are you real?”

It was a question that made it brutally clear how deep she’d retreated into her mind before he’d pulled her out. Leaning forward, he nipped at the skin of her neck. She jerked and opened her eyes at last.

Silver lightning sparked in their night-sky depths, vivid and wild.





CHAPTER 11





“What?” she asked, when he continued to stare.

“I can see lightning.”

“How—?” She shook her head but didn’t shift off his lap, and that told him everything he needed to know. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She gave him a wary look. “Why are you being so agreeable?”

Because the cat found it amusing to tease her. “I’m always agreeable.”

The wariness turned into full-blown disbelief. “You’re playing cat games with me.”

Surprised by her quick understanding, he shrugged. “I am a cat.”

“You’re right.” Then she did something that stunned the hell out of him. Drawing up her body, she took a deep breath and brushed the most fleeting of kisses over his lips. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have made it out on my own.”

Raw anger wiped out the playfulness. “What the hell were you doing going alone into that kind of a vision in the first place?”

“You know I can’t control them.”

Pressing her closer with hands that threatened to go clawed, he stared straight into those lightning-storm eyes. “Then learn.”

Faith blinked, not sure how to handle Vaughn in his current mood. But everything she’d learned about predators, about him, told her not to betray her lack of assurance. “I can hardly learn to control something without rules,” she pointed out, “and there are none for the F-Psy, none that ensure the visions will only ever come when I want them to come. Yes, I can usually set them off with certain markers, but I can’t hold them back for long periods of time.”

“Who says?”

“My trainers, the PsyClan, the Council . . .” Understanding dawned. “Why wouldn’t they teach me to block the visions if there were a way?”