Obsession Untamed (Feral Warriors #2)(14)

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 f**k 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.”