It was the blunt response of a man whose animal side clearly saw no reason for lies.
'You think that makes me a coward, that I should go out there and experience the world. What you don't understand is that the world might kill me.'
'Then tell me.'
She'd known there would be no easy acceptance from this jaguar stretched out on her bed, all gleaming skin and amber-gold hair. 'One thing no one can fake is the reaction of my designation when surrounded by a large number of unshielded individuals. All species have a natural shield, though the changeling shield is far tougher, but the upper layer of the mind, the public self, is almost universally unshielded.'
'Mine?' His jaw tightened.
She shook her head. 'You're fully blocked. That happens with some individuals—an extension of the natural shield. However, in your case I'm guessing Sascha had something to do with it.' He didn't answer and she felt some unknown thing inside her shrivel. 'Not worthy of your trust, right?'
His fingers pressed lightly on her spine. 'Trust is earned.'
'I trust you.'
'Do you? Or have you been forced into that position?'
There was no answer she could give him, because she didn't know. Moving, she felt his fingers fall off her back, but now her toes were nudging his jean-covered thighs. 'The public mind,' she began, turning to what was familiar as a means of grounding herself, 'throws out a constant bombardment of thought and feeling. All Psy are trained to shield against those random pieces of data, to the extent that most no longer even notice the background chatter. But it's been well documented that F-Psy, no matter how strong their shields, are affected by those thoughts.'
'Affected how?' His hand slipped under the thin material of her top to lie against her lower spine.
She felt her stomach twist itself into a tight knot. 'You must stop touching me.'
'Why?'
'It's too much.' Especially on top of the betrayals he was asking her to attribute to her own people, her own family. 'Please, Vaughn.'
She looked so fragile sitting there, all night-sky eyes and creamy skin. With any other woman, he'd have tugged her down and held her tight. Doing that with Faith, however, might cause her to panic, and right now he didn't want to make her vulnerable in any sense—the darkness could be waiting for a break in her defenses. But neither could he let her run. 'Each time I do what you want, I'm helping your PsyClan and the Council imprison you.'
'Do you really believe that?'
'Fear of touch is part of how they manipulate you.'
The arms she had wrapped around her knees seemed to tighten. 'If I ask you to break contact because I'm going to go into a seizure or unconsciousness, you have to do it. That's the only way I'll let you keep getting closer.'
Satisfaction was his blood. 'So you admit you've been letting me.'
She cocked her head with a haughtiness that would've done any cat proud. 'I'm a cardinal. We're all born with more than our share of powers—I've spent the time since our initial meeting working out how to use them in offense.'
'Tell me.'
'No.' Enticing in their confident mischief, her eyes were no longer the cold slate he'd seen that first night. 'Why should I show someone I don't trust—and who doesn't trust me—my secrets?'
'Ouch.' He traced his fingers up and down her delicate spine. 'You know how to go for the throat.'
'It keeps me alive.'
The jaguar didn't like hearing that, didn't like the thought of her needing such weapons, because that implied danger. 'You have to leave. Find a way to boost your shields so you can deal on the outside and leave.'
Her smile was without any hint of amusement. 'I'll die. That's an undeniable fact. The second I drop out of the PsyNet and lose the necessary biofeedback, my mind will shut down. Unless you can do for me whatever it is that Lucas does for Sascha.'
'How did you figure that?'
'I'm not stupid, Vaughn. It's clear there's some type of psychic connection between the two of them.' She dropped her chin onto hands folded atop her knees. 'I can almost touch it, but not quite. It's as if it's something outside the Net but brushes by it.'
Every one of his senses went on high alert. If the Psy could pick up the Web that connected the alpha pair to their sentinels, DarkRiver would lose one of its crucial tactical advantages. However, if Faith was unusual, it begged the question why. He had a very good idea of the answer, but the cat never pounced before it was completely certain of success. That was what made him such an efficient hunter.
'And if I were able to bring you out of the Net, do you think you could take me on?' He pressed the pads of his fingers a touch harder against her lower back.
Her spine stiffened. 'Don't push me, cat.'
It was the first time she'd really clawed at him. Intrigued, he spread his palm and slid it up to the curve of her ribs. Her breasts were so close he was having a hell of a time keeping himself from stroking even higher. 'Or what?'
'You don't want to find out.'
'Maybe I do.' Moving with the animal speed of his kind, he had her flat on her back with him braced above her before she could reply. Her eyes flashed velvet black and then streaks of silver began to tear jagged lines through the rich darkness. 'What the hell—?' That was when he spied the giant wolf in one corner of the room. The clearly rabid creature was crouching down in preparation for attack.
Jaguar instincts took over.
Shoving Faith to the side, he pounced soundlessly toward the wolf. .. and went straight through it. Only his agility saved him from making a racket as he landed hard on the carpet. The awareness of soft feminine laughter, so low that he could barely catch it, the sound rusty and unused, had him narrowing his eyes as he stood. 'Very funny.' He met the silver-black gaze of the woman sprawled on the bed watching him, dark red hair falling around a face she'd propped up on her hands. He didn't think he'd ever seen a more beautiful sight. Immediately, the sexually hungry cat in him amended that—if she were naked, that would be even better.
'Did you beat the bad puppy?' she asked.
He knew she didn't even realize what was happening. She'd laughed and now she was teasing. Would the change last or would she try to bury it? Not that Vaughn had any intention of letting her choose option two. 'Illusions? Don't you need to get into my mind for that?' And his mind was changeling, nearly impossible for a Psy to mess with.
'I'm better than that,' Faith said, no hint of arrogance in her tone. 'My illusions are concrete in the sense that if a camera had been present in the room, it, too, would've seen the wolf.'
He prowled over to her and had the pleasure of watching those amazing lightning-shot eyes flicker and then shiver to a black that was somehow softer than the pure darkness in them after the visions. Going down on his knees beside the bed, he slid his hands under her hair and cupped her face. 'You feel like woman.'
Dipping his head, he kissed her. It was a chaste kiss from his perspective, a mere taste when he wanted to gorge, but she whimpered and clung to him. For all of five seconds. Then she pulled away. He swore under his breath, the language rough and explicit. This was not going to work if Faith couldn't bear anything more than an innocent kiss— touch was the cornerstone of what he was.
After that week he'd spent in the wild as a child, the only way the DarkRiver leopards had been able to make him respond was by surrounding him in touch. His first month in the pack, he'd slept in cat form, surrounded by other furred bodies. Deprived of touch, he tended to get more and more aggressive, more and more feral, the cat in him rising to the surface until the man was buried deep. Pack usually helped, but these days, he wanted someone else's strokes, 'Vaughn.' Faith made her voice very submissive, extremely nonconfrontational. 'Vaughn, your claws are out.' She could feel them against the skin of her scalp and face and she was terrified enough to admit it. Her reaction came from a primitive self that had existed before Silence, before civilization. All it cared about was survival... at any cost.
