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."

"But all at low-level positions."

"Sometimes that position is the only thing that stands between a life and starvation. And changelings aren't any different in that sense - high-level jobs in our businesses are always held by Pack."

"But," she said, "it isn't so much, is it?" She saw the truth in spite of his uncharacteristic gentleness. "Changelings have kept the Earth beautiful and pollution free, and it's mostly humans who've hung its walls with art and filled its corners with music. What's the Psy legacy - endless steel towers of pure function, businesses that deal in emotionless currency ... and Silence?"

The knowing that came to her was unexpected and as clear as the bright light of morning. "If we don't change, the Psy race will one day be forgotten." And that would be a tragedy. No one who'd seen the beauty of the PsyNet, the potential in it, the stunning energy of life even in Silence, could doubt that.

"Then change the future, Faith. Change the Psy."

An extraordinary task for a renegade from the Net. "Will you be with me?"

"I can't believe you asked that question," he mock-growled, throwing an arm around her neck and dragging her to him. "Of course I'll be with you, and so will the rest of the pack. We're family."

"Family." A bittersweet word. "Always?"

He bit the side of her neck. "Beyond always."

"He's coming." The words fell out of her mouth without conscious thought.

Vaughn drew back from her and gave a very low growl that she didn't actually hear, but which made every hair on her body stand up in attention.

"What - ?"

"It's a signal," he whispered, pretending to nibble on her earlobe. From the way she'd seen women looking at him ever since they'd entered the campus, she was probably the focus of considerable feminine envy. Something primitive in her was pleased by that, by the fact that this wild and magnificent creature was hers. He wasn't, and never would be, tame, but he was willing to play nice for her sake. And no one else's.

"Can you feel him?" The quiet question broke into her thoughts. She was shocked at how distracted she'd become from something so important. Vaughn did things to her she couldn't control.

"The knowing works with my ability. It's a kind of vision on a very deep psychic plane. I'm not telepathically connected to him." That horror only happened during actual visions.

"Then how are you going to find him?"

"I'm going to send out my telepathic senses. I'm a Gradient 6 telepath." Very powerful, though nowhere near where she estimated Judd to be. "If I brush up against other Psy, I'll withdraw before they can get a lock on me." She didn't mention that some of those minds could track her very, very quickly.

"But if I touch him, I'll attempt to pinpoint a physical location. It doesn't really matter if I can't - Judd can take the mental signature from my mind and use his stronger Tp abilities to zero in on the killer's position."

"I don't like that damn Psy being in your mind."

"Neither do I." Faith didn't think Judd was out to harm her, but he was an unknown, a rebel Arrow with undetermined loyalties. "It'll be a surface link, a simple data transfer."

"If he tries anything, use the bond."

Her heart skipped a beat at the welcome reminder that she'd never be alone again. "I will. I'm going to begin the search now." She 'pathed the same message to Judd.

I can see you. The masculine voice was so clear, her suspicions about Judd's status on the Gradient solidified into certainty. The man might not have the night-sky eyes, but he had to be near cardinal strong. If you keep the scan radius small, I can pinpoint him almost immediately after you.

Faith whispered the suggestion to Vaughn. "We'll have to change position and go out farther into the open as I scan. But it'll give us an unmistakable target when we do find him. Judd won't have to enter my mind, either."

Vaughn's answer was nothing she could've predicted. "Faith, this is your world. What option do you think will work best?"

"You won't try to overrule me?"

"Only if your choice puts you in unnecessary danger." The cat was in his voice, low and husky. "I can't protect your mind, but I sure as hell will keep your body safe."

She figured that was as good as it was going to get with her jaguar. "Then let's do it. If I start to feel we're getting too close and I can't find him, we'll stop. I don't want to paint a bull's-eye on myself." For the first time in twenty-four years, she was truly alive, and she had no intention of changing that.

Chapter 24

"If this works like I think it will," she said, "the second he feels me, he'll try to connect and that should give Judd the opportunity he needs."

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