Holy heavens and Earth. He was a heartbeat away from following her into that sweet oblivion, his own body hard as stone, dying for a taste of her, dying to be inside her. Never had he been in so much pain for a woman.

Her eyelids lifted slowly, heavy with passion above stunned eyes. “I want you inside me. Now.”

Heaven help him, that’s all he wanted. All he wanted. And he couldn’t take her. She was human, dammit. Human. And even if she weren’t, his desire for her was nearly out of control. If he entered her, he feared he’d lose himself entirely. And if he went feral, he’d kill her.

That was something he was loath to do.

But he had to taste her.

His fingers released her wrists to slide into the softness of her hair as his mouth covered hers. She cried out, the sound halfway between a moan and a plea, as if she were drowning, and he was the only one who could save her. Or maybe he was just transferring his own feelings to her because that was exactly the way he felt. He’d die if he didn’t taste her.

His tongue swept inside her welcoming mouth, reveling in the sweet, exotic lushness. She tasted just as he’d imagined she would, only a hundred times better. Like the nectar of a rare jungle orchid.

Like heaven.

His tongue stroked hers, then her teeth and the insides of her cheeks, exploring the damp depths of her, thrilled when she did the same, as if she couldn’t get enough of him.

Heaven knew, he couldn’t get enough of her.

Kissing wasn’t enough. He unbuttoned her shirt with quick fingers and brushed aside the opening to cover her lace-covered breast with his palm, squeezing gently until she arched into his touch and moaned into his mouth. His fingers went to the tight little peak, pinching and rolling it between his finger and thumb until she was rocking against him in a half-crazed frenzy.

He pulled away from her mouth and tasted the sweet skin of her cheek and the salty tang of her brow.

His breaths were coming in short, shallow gasps, his own brow damp from the effort to retain some semblance of control. But why maintain control? Why not just take her? With his release, this crazed need would abate. He’d be able to get them both under control.

The logic almost made sense.

“Fuck me,” the woman groaned, her freed hand sliding between them to clamp around his painfully hard erection. “I need you inside me.”

Goddess. His hand slid to the button of his jeans, but as his fingers reached for the zipper tab, the bitter taste of hatred slid across his tongue. His hand stilled as he explored the taste and knew it was hers. A hatred of him, certainly, but also of herself. Self-hatred had a taste all its own.

She might have decided to play on their mutual attraction, but she was way past pretending, lost to passion’s madness. And despite his assurance to the contrary, she still thought him a killer. She hated herself for wanting him.

Goddess knew, he didn’t want this attraction any more than she did. He did not fuck humans.

It was all he could do to pull away from her, but he managed it. Barely. He gripped her shoulders and pushed her back to the wall. Her damp, swollen lips and slumberous eyes were nearly his undoing, until he saw the confusion in those eyes and the pain of betrayal, even if the betrayal was her own.

Once more he looked into those eyes and attempted to cloud her mind.

She shuddered. “Don’t.” The word was low, pained.

He was getting nowhere with her. Whatever had happened to thrust her in the way of his visions was making her immune to his control. And if he couldn’t control her, he had to eliminate her as a problem. Kougar was right.

The Ferals never destroyed life without justification, but humans who threatened the Therian race or any of its members, in any capacity, were eliminated without hesitation. Always.

The woman watched him with fathomless eyes, her lips parted as she struggled to catch her breath. “What now?”

A hard knot formed in his gut. He’d promised he wouldn’t hurt her. His hand reached for her, his thumb stroking her soft cheek.

From that first vision when he’d watched her face her death with a warrior’s toughness and fury in her eyes, he’d known she was different. When she’d faced him tonight, thinking her attacker had found her again, he’d tasted her fear on his tongue, yet she’d never whimpered. Never begged. She’d fought him. Even while her pulse raced, her mind had remained clear, her words calm, laced with a bitter wryness that had tugged at him. She’d won his admiration, which was something no human had done in a very long time.

He met her gaze as his palm slid down the long column of her throat, and he saw the question in her eyes. She wasn’t ready to die. He could feel her will to live rushing over him with a force like liquid steel. Yet she waited, watching him, with grace and courage.

As his palm stroked her throat, he knew he couldn’t do it. Human and fragile as she might be, there was something peculiarly strong about her. Inexplicably rare.

Deep inside him, he felt something stir, as if the tiger within raised its head, scenting something on the wind.

He couldn’t take her life.

But neither could he let her go. Sliding his finger to the hollow at the base of her ear, he pressed.

The woman collapsed, unconscious, and he swept her into his arms. Somehow, he was going to have to find another way to steal back his visions and get control over her.

Hawke and Kougar were going to think he was starting to lose his ability to reason.

And he wasn’t entirely sure they’d be wrong. He didn’t have to have premonitions to know Delaney Randall was going to be trouble.

♥ Uploaded by Coral ♥

Chapter Six

Tighe pushed through the safe-house door Hawke held open for him, the unconscious woman in his arms.

Hawke lifted a single winged brow. “Any luck?”

“None.” Frustration plucked at his fraying nerves. Nothing about this mission had gone right, with the possible exception of the ease with which he’d gotten into Delaney’s apartment. From the moment he’d touched her, every plan had taken a nosedive.

Each time he’d tried to cloud her mind, she got more excited, as if someone had gotten inside her and changed all her wiring. And maybe someone had, if inadvertently. His clone. Goddess knew what had happened when that bastard attacked her.

It almost certainly explained Tighe’s inability to catch her mind. It didn’t explain how she’d gotten under his skin. The passion he drew in her was heady, certainly, but the fire that had burned in him when he’d pressed his body against hers, that burned in him still, was way more than a simple reaction to her own fire. There was something about the woman that sent his senses into a barrel roll.

“I couldn’t cloud her mind,” he informed his companions. “She reacts to my attempts, just not in any way that’s the least bit useful.”

“How?” Hawke’s keen eyes gleamed with curiosity.

Tighe growled by way of answer. He glanced at the sofa, considered laying the woman down, then discarded the idea. Even though he knew she was fully out, some part of his brain, some instinct, made him certain she’d escape him the moment he released her. And he wasn’t letting her go.

“The information might be useful, buddy,” Hawke pressed.

Tighe scowled, then relented. “When I push into her mind, her body reacts.”

“Reacts how?”

Damned nosy Feral. “Sexually, Hawke. She reacts sexually. I pushed hard enough that she came.”

Hawke whistled, that eyebrow of his lifting again. “Interesting.”

Tighe snorted. “Yeah. And bloody useless. I’m still no closer to clouding her mind.”

“Did you try to seize control during her orgasm?”

Tighe stilled. “No. Damn.” At the moment of sexual release, the body and mind were most open. Open to bonding with a partner. And open to being captured by a mind capable of control. “It took me by surprise.” Hell, he’d been fighting his own release so hard he hadn’t given a single thought to taking advantage of hers. Not in that way. “I’ll try it again.”

If Jag had been there, he’d have demanded to watch, the asshole. Hawke just nodded.

“You should have killed her.” Kougar stood in the doorway of one of the bedrooms, watching them, his arms crossed over his chest, his pale eyes emotionless.

Tighe’s grip on the woman tightened. No one ever really knew what went on in that Feral’s head. For as long as Tighe had lived at Feral House, rumors and speculation had swirled around Kougar. Of all of them, his past was the most deeply cloaked in mystery. They knew he was the oldest among them, but if anyone knew how old, he hadn’t shared it.

Centuries ago, rumors had swirled that Kougar was half-Mage, that he’d been responsible for the deaths of the seventeen—seventeen Ferals killed in a mysterious cave, seventeen whose animals had never again risen to mark another. But Lyon trusted him. And that was enough for Tighe. In the six centuries Tighe himself had been a Feral, Kougar had never proven himself anything but loyal.

But he rarely spoke. Instead, he watched silently, waiting, until the time came to fight. Then he fought with a skill and ferocity worthy of any berserker.

He was a good man to have on your team as long as you weren’t looking for anything approaching warmth or friendliness. Kougar didn’t possess an ounce of either.

Tighe might trust him at his back, but he was a long way from trusting him not to eliminate the human woman the moment he got a chance. Particularly since they all thought Tighe was slowly losing his mind.

A warning growl rumbled deep in his throat as he met Kougar’s pale gaze.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“Killing her might be a mistake,” Hawke said.

“Why?” Not that Tighe didn’t agree, but he was half-afraid his own reasons had more to do with fearless dark warrior’s eyes than anything remotely logical.

Hawke shrugged. “There’s no guarantee you’ll get the full visions back if she’s gone. Right now you’re still getting snippets, right?”

“Sometimes. Hell, I don’t know if I am or not. It’s not consistent. At first I was seeing her as she got the visions, along with glimpses of the killing. Then just the glimpses. But I haven’t seen anything in hours.”

“What if she dies, and the visions die with her? We’ll have lost a powerful weapon.”

Tighe silently thanked his friend, his grip on his captive easing. Hawke was right. Maybe somewhere in the mess that was currently acting as his brain, he’d had the same thought.

“The next time she has a vision, buddy, try to get into her head. Even if you can’t steal it back, maybe you can share it. Enough, at least, to figure out where the attack is taking place.”

He met Hawke’s gaze. “I’ll work on her. Both on clouding her mind and on accessing her next vision. But we don’t need an audience. You’re leaving.” His gaze shifted to Kougar. “Both of you.”

Kougar’s expression didn’t change, it never did, yet he sensed the warrior’s disapproval.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Tighe.” Hawke’s brows drew down. “If you lose control, you could kill her.”

Tighe’s gaze swung to Kougar’s. “Then problem solved.” He looked back at Hawke. “It’s a risk we’re going to take, Wings. This woman may be human, but she’s a fighter through and through. And FBI. She’s already seen my face. She doesn’t need to see yours, too. Not until I’m sure I can clean her memory. Besides, I’ve got to get her sexually aroused again, and I’m not having an audience for that.”

An odd protectiveness had him tightening his grip on the woman in his arms. The thought of anyone else listening to her cries of passion, to her scream of release, filled him with a strange and jealous anger.

Calm, Tighe. Calm.

He took a deep breath and met Hawke’s gaze. “Unless you want to see my claws, this discussion is over.”

“Understood. We’ll grab our things and take off, but we won’t be far, buddy. We’ll keep an eye on the house.”

Five minutes later, as the two Ferals closed the door behind them, Tighe stood in the middle of the living room, looking down at Delaney Randall. His mind told him to lay her down, but his arms refused to let her go. Why? What was this strange need in him to hold her? A need that went beyond merely keeping her from escaping. It was a need that went against every ounce of logic in his head.

Was it merely the unruly attraction he had for her getting out of hand? Or was it the madness that was slowly disintegrating his ability to act logically? To act sanely.

A madness that could ultimately destroy them both.

Delaney eased out of sleep, a purr in her throat at the feel of warmth at her back. Warmth. Man.

The killer.

A cold wash of adrenaline cramped her stomach, sending her pulse careening into her ears as her mind snapped fully awake.

He’d knocked her unconscious. Which beat the hell out of killing her, for sure, but the arms of a killer was not where she wanted to be.

Slowly, she opened her eyes a slit in case the man at her back wasn’t the only one in the room. But all that met her gaze were the shadowed furniture and walls of a dark, unfamiliar bedroom. A single, large window covered by sheer curtains glowed from the light of a streetlamp.

Not her apartment. He’d knocked her out and kidnapped her. That could make escape infinitely more difficult since she had no idea where she was or who else might be around to stop her if she managed to escape him.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try.

In the distance, a truck downshifted, the sound merging with the low rumble of predawn traffic. City traffic. She doubted he’d taken her far.