much sensation overloading her. But she had to speak, she had to make him understand. "You don't know me," she whispered.
He raised his head. "I know you inside out."
"No, Lucas. I'm not changeling - I'm Psy. My mind is who I am."
"Liar." He pinched one wet nipple.
Her entire body shuddered and for an instant she was nothing but a creature of the flesh.
"You're as much animal as me." It was a husky whisper against her ear. "As sexual, as hungry, as needy."
She shook her head, shaken by the power of his words, the addiction of his touch. "I could kill you with one thought."
He rubbed his jaw across the skin of her upper breasts. "Could you, kitten?"
That easily, he won their personal war. Lucas was more important to her than her own life. "Don't," she said. "Stop this before it's too late."
"No one can stop it. I'll kill anyone who tries."
Looking into those cat eyes, she was certain he meant every word. She was as certain that she had to stop him before he tied himself to a woman who was so deeply broken, she wasn't even sure she was Psy anymore.
A day later, Sascha sat in the living area of the safe house trying to think up arguments to convince Lucas of the soundness of her plan. The problem was, she hadn't figured out how to create the diversion that would give the killer a head start to scenting her. She'd spent the whole day trying to think of something and all she'd come up with was a crude "bomb."
If she couldn't work out anything else by tomorrow, she'd have to use that - Brenna had suffered enough. At least neither Enrique nor Nikita had tried to contact her so far. She assumed that they were distracted by their own plan to catch the serial killer.
Lucas had been in and out throughout the day and she guessed that he'd been putting plans in place in case they weren't able to save the lost SnowDancer. Right now, he was standing by the window, staring out into the night. His skin glowed a burnished gold in the soft light of the lamps around the room.
"What information did you steal?" he asked, turning to look over his shoulder. He'd barely spoken to her that day but had touched her at every opportunity.
She remained curled up in the corner of the sofa, watching him as warily as a gazelle might watch a lion. Lucas wasn't human, wasn't Psy. He was a predator and he'd decided she was his. It was going to take everything she had to get away from him before she destroyed them both.
Even if Lucas didn't allow her to execute her plan, the Council's mercenaries would hunt her down on the PsyNet the second her failing shields revealed her flaw. Her firewalls were already starting to show the finest of hairline fractures. She might not be able to save herself but she would save Lucas. She would not sentence him to a life without a mate, no matter how much she ached for him to belong to her. "My family's history."
Someone walked into the room from the kitchen. Tamsyn's slender frame was followed by Nate's larger body. "Hope we're not interrupting."
"There's nothing to interrupt," Sascha said quickly, thankful for their presence. She needed a buffer between Lucas's demands and her own clawing desire to give in to them. "I was just telling Lucas I stole information about my family from the PsyNet."
Lucas shifted from his position by the window and headed over to the sofa. His eyes tracked Nate's every move and Sascha felt a huge wave of almost dangerous possessiveness hit her. In a quiet moment while Lucas had been out, Tamsyn had shared that leopards were highly unstable at this stage of the mating dance and liable to attack anyone they saw as a threat.
She'd asked Sascha not to dispute Lucas's claim, warned her that fighting an alpha male during mating was simply not done. Sascha understood why Tamsyn had cautioned her but knew she couldn't follow the healer's advice, not if it meant a lifetime of loneliness for this male she adored. But she let him sit beside her on the sofa, let him put her feet on his thighs, let him massage her calves.
"Why would you need to steal information?" Nate frowned and took a seat as far from Sascha as possible. Tamsyn perched on his lap with her arm around his neck.