Nalini Singh: Visions of Heat

She blinked against the light coming off the porch— Lucas had turned on the single bulb—and he saw her eyes for the first time with the sight of a man and not that of the beast. They were just as unearthly, just as beautiful. Two pieces of captured night sky.

Faith looked up. And up. As she'd guessed from the feel of him at her back, the jaguar was tall in human form. His hair was a thick amber-gold, long enough to brush his shoulders, and his eyes ... they were an odd almost-gold, the eyes of a cat made human. There was nothing soft about him, nothing tame. Yet she, a woman who'd never before understood the concept, found him beautiful. It was an inexplicable reaction, one her brain couldn't accept, going as it did against every rule of Silence.

Her breath caught in her throat and she started to breathe faster than was optimal. She knew she was having a stress reaction, but she couldn't stop it. Her heart rate started to speed up a second later. Remembering a simple anchoring technique, she clenched her hand on top of the open car door and squeezed. But the physical action had no effect.

Suddenly, there were big hands on her face forcing her to look up and meet those odd eyes. "Stop it."

She lifted her own hands and tried to pull his off. Didn't he know that he was making it worse? The pressure had increased a thousand times at the skin-to-skin contact. Heat, sensation, power, everything that was him seeped into her and threatened to short-circuit her already overstretched mind.

"Vaughn, let her go." Sascha's command was a gift. "She can't handle that much sensation."

"Yes, she can." Those cat eyes stared down into hers.

She wanted to fight him, but had no idea how to use her abilities in a nonfatal attack. Starting to feel dizzy, she swayed. Her eyes locked with his. "I'm going to lose consciousness." Starkly aware of the possible danger to her PsyNet shields, she was numb to the physical agony of nerves going haywire.

"No, you're not. If you do, you'll be helpless." Vaughn didn't loosen his hold. "Do you want to be at my mercy?"

She tried to tell him it wasn't a choice she could make.

Her body was shutting down. And then the last neuron flickered and went out.

Swearing, Vaughn caught Faith's body before she fell and hurt herself.

"Damn it! Why didn't you let her go when I said?" Sascha ran to cradle the face of the woman in his arms.

"She's too scared of everything." His beast was driven by instinct and it said that what he was doing was right. "We can't afford to baby her."

Sascha looked like she wanted to argue, but then Lucas stepped up beside her. "He's right. Faith has to learn to deal—if she can't handle touch or normal human interaction, how the hell's she going to learn to handle those visions she says she's been having?"

"You two don't understand. This woman has almost never been touched, much less spent time with people who don't follow the rules of Silence. You know what I was like and I wasn't isolated as she's been." She took her hands off Faith. "Bring her inside. I think she'll be alright in a few minutes— it doesn't read like a seizure."

Vaughn carried Faith into the cabin. Her weight was slight, her whole body built on a small scale. But he'd felt the power of her eyes when they'd looked into his, felt the enormous strength of will inside those fragile bones. She was strong and she needed to find that strength if she was going to survive. The cat knew that as an absolute truth. And sometimes the jaguar understood things far better than the human male.

Once inside, he sat down on the sofa with her in his arms, ignoring Sascha's frown. She narrowed those eyes so like Faith's and yet somehow completely different. He'd never before noticed that cardinal eyes were unique from Psy to Psy, had never been close enough to two of them to compare. But he knew that he wouldn't ever mistake Sascha's eyes for Faith's.

Sascha turned to Lucas and threw up her hands. "You talk to him."

Lucas looked at Vaughn. "He knows what he's doing." Vaughn wasn't so sure. He just knew that Faith couldn't be allowed to be scared of touch. She couldn't. And if there was something slightly inexplicable about his reaction, it was probably because he wasn't Psy.

Sascha cornered Lucasin the small kitchen. "Why is Vaughn acting so irrationally?" she said under her breath, cognizant of the cats' superior sense of hearing.

Her mate smiled and she felt the tug of it in her stomach. The reaction was still new, still powerful. She wondered if it would ever settle down—she had a feeling not, not when she was mated to this male.

The smile changed to reflect his knowledge of her susceptibility to him—pure feline satisfaction. "I can't read minds."

"Lucas." She found a glass and rinsed it out. "I felt nothing off Faith. Nothing."

His body went hunting-quiet. "Like before?"

Sascha didn't like remembering her first brush with the reptilian coldness of a mind that had given off no emotional feedback. The Psy might've buried their emotions, but they were there, a low-level hum most of her race didn't know existed, but which she'd always sensed on a level deeper than consciousness.

However, there were some who literally gave off no emotion . . . because they'd never had any feelings to subjugate— sociopaths given ultimate freedom by Silence. "No," she said quickly. "Not like before."

He glanced out of the kitchen and through to where Vaughn sat holding Faith. "But?"

She walked to stand in the circle of his arms. "It's like she's encased in a shell, more so than other Psy. Everything's so tightly contained, it isolates her in a way I can barely imagine." His heartbeat was a steady rhythm under her hand, but what brought her a feeling of such safety could well kill Faith.

"This woman has had literally no contact with any race other than her own, and you heard the extent of even that limited contact. We're overloading her senses and the only way she has to cope is by shutting down."

"The seizures—do you think they're a real possibility?"

Sascha took a moment to think. "I don't know for sure. The F-Psy rarely fed data into the PsyNet when I was connected, because in most cases, what they learn has been paid for by someone. But my instincts say she thinks they're real, that she's been taught they're real."

"So she could subconsciously bring one on?"

"Yes." Sascha had once believed she was a cardinal with-out power—she knew exacdy what it was like to live a lie for so long that it became the truth. "Faith has no concept of a life outside of the world in which she was raised. That she's here at all is a testament to the strength inside of her."

"Good. The weak don't survive."

Vaughn feltthe woman in his arms stir. Her eyes blinked open almost immediately. "Breathe deep," he instructed the instant she started to freeze up. "If you pass out, we'll have to go through this again."

"Please let me go."

There was no vulnerability in her tone, nothing that gave away her emotional temperature. Then again, she was Psy— she had no feelings. Frowning at the jaguar's demand to continue holding her, he allowed her to sit up on his lap. When she pushed at his arm, he dropped it so she could stand.

She rubbed her hands over her pants. "Where's Sascha?"

"I'm here." Coming out of the kitchen, Sascha handed Faith a glass of water. "Drink."

Faith did so without argument, then put the glass on the table in front of the sofa. Vaughn watched and waited as she looked around for a place to sit. Lucas had already claimed the armchair and now pulled Sascha to sit across his thighs. Faith was left with the option of sitting beside him or in an armchair on the far side of the room. She took the sensible alternative, but tried to put as much distance between them as she could.