"Come for me," he demanded. "I want to taste your surrender." His fingers moved in a faster rhythm, stroking her so intimately that she had no defense.
The pleasure swept her under and it was lighting and fury, heat and hunger. But it wasn't a cascade, the overload shooting down the mating bond to the wild heart of a jaguar more than able to handle the influx of sensation. When she came down from the rush, it was to find herself held against him as he withdrew his fingers from her body. The musky scent of her filled the air, rich, heady, and ultimately female. And though his erection was a hard flame between them, she somehow knew that her surrender had only increased his sensual patience.
Lazy, sated, she didn't protest as he carried her from the workshop to the bed and stroked her onto her hands and knees. She arched into his touch, enjoying the feel of him running his hands down her back, over her buttocks and down the insides of her thighs. Spreading her for him. When he pushed down between her shoulder blades, she remembered his erotic fantasies and, bending her arms at the elbows, she lowered her head to the sheets and tilted up her bottom.
Her mind was pure lightning by this stage, but she refused to give up. Instead, every time the pleasure threatened to sweep her under, she gripped tight to the mating bond.
"Good girl," Vaughn murmured, one hand on her buttock. "I think I know what you're doing. I can feel you holding on to me deep inside."
That he was pleased wasn't even a question - she heard it in the indulgent sensuality of his tone. Not really considering the consequences of success, she sent an erotic request down the bond simply to see if she could.
His hand squeezed. "Baby, I can't see an image, but I think you just read my mind."
That was the only warning she got before he ravaged her with his mouth, pure demand and rough heat. She screamed at the first touch and orgasmed at the second. Ten minutes later, she was shuddering almost continuously, her body held up by Vaughn's hands on her hips. The man was relentless. But still she didn't cascade, her mind soaking up the sensations like a starved thing.
"Hold on." A dark whisper, a breath of air across exquisitely sensitive flesh.
She whimpered... and he used his teeth to capture the engorged flesh of her clitoris. A wave of black crashed into her. The pleasure was so acute, so piercingly sensual that she sobbed as she shattered, clutching at the bond with desperation armored in sheer need.
That was when he took her.
Hot, hard, dominant, nothing that came before could compare to this claiming. She felt branded on a level that went beyond sex and heat, claimed, owned.
Both ways. It was a thought from her mind to his, a feeling that required no words to be understood.
"Oh, yeah, baby. I'm yours." Hot breaths against her neck as he bent to kiss her pulse before rising up, tightening his grip on her hips, and riding her to ecstasy.
Even then, she didn't cascade, didn't go mad ... didn't break.
Only hours later, Faith stood beside Vaughn's tense form as they waited in the courtyard of the private university where she'd placed the target. She couldn't see the others through the mirrored lenses of her sunglasses, but knew they were there, silent shadows to ensure justice was done.
Anticipation simmered in her blood, veins filled with the most physical energy she'd ever felt, Vaughn's wildness mixing with her own on a level beyond telepathy. She was becoming a tiny bit jaguar with each contact and that was fine with her. Claws were sometimes necessary. Today, those claws were helping her withstand the impact of so many unshielded minds within receiving distance.
Looking at the gently leafy campus, at the students walking alone or in groups, Faith felt her resolve harden into granite. If they failed, an innocent woman would lose her life, this campus would be forever tainted by a darkness no amount of soap or water could wash away, and Marine's ghost would find no peace.
So they would not fail.
"We'll get him." Vaughn's voice was husky in her ear.
"How do you always know what's on my mind?" she asked. "I wasn't sending you anything." They'd spent some time after last night's tumultuous loving working out that while Vaughn couldn't hear her words, he could read the emotions she sent with unerring accuracy.
"There are other ways of knowing and I'm going to have fun introducing you to all of them." A thread of steel underlay his teasing words. The jaguar wasn't in charge right now, but it was very, very close to the surface. Because she might be in danger.
"Vaughn, I'm not weak. I can protect myself." She wouldn't die on him as his sister had, but neither would she hurt him by referring openly to an event that had scarred him so violently. However, she could try to address those scars in an oblique way. "I didn't cascade yesterday and once I would've believed that impossible. My strength is increasing day by day." Perhaps being Psy hadn't taught her about emotion, but it had taught her about strategy. That skill could be put to use for good as well as evil, couldn't it? "Vaughn?" she said, when he didn't respond.
"Yeah?"
"Not everything about the Psy is bad, is it?" It caused a tearing pain inside of her to think that everyone she'd ever known, that her father, her sister, had been nothing good.
"Hell, no. You're not."
"I'm not talking about individuals. The Psy as a race have done some good, haven't they?"
"They were once the most amazing people on this planet." His response was a surprise. "Take your gift. Without it, civilization might've been destroyed a thousand times over."
"That was before. What about now?"
"They create more jobs than their own race can ever fulfill, employ millions of humans and even some changelings."