Read Psy & Changelings 02 - Visions of Heat for Free Online Page B

“You’re very quiet,” she said, blindingly aware of the lethal danger scant inches away. “I guess it’s one of the benefits of being a leopard.”
    A low, deep growl.
    “I don’t understand.” What had she said to provoke that aggressive reaction?
    Suddenly, the leopard loped off and she was left alone again. “Wait!” But he was gone. Logic stated she should get up and start walking. Sooner or later, she’d run into another member of DarkRiver. Leaving her pack on the ground, she stood and took a couple of steps in the same direction as the cat, hoping to see a path.
    A hand closed around her neck and a hard male body pressed against her back, a line of living fire. She went completely motionless. He might be human now, but she knew with every ounce of her being that this was the same predator who’d growled at her a second before. The hand around her neck wasn’t the least bit painful, but she felt the power in it, understood that he could crush her windpipe without effort.
    “I am not a leopard,” he said into her ear, and the sound was so rough she wondered if he’d come back fully from the animal.
    “Oh.” Her mistake was no surprise—she knew less than nothing about the reality of changelings. Her world had never been one where they intruded. “I apologize for offending you.”
    “Aren’t you curious what I am?”
    “Yes.” She was also curious about his human face. “Can I turn around?”
    His soft chuckle vibrated along her body and demanded her complete attention. “It’s not that dark, Red—I didn’t have any clothes with me.”
    It took a few moments for her brain to work through that statement. The second she did, she became hyperconscious of the sheer heat of the body aligned so closely to her own. The part of her that craved new experiences wanted to turn, but she knew that would be sheer foolishness. This man was hardly likely to indulge her intellectual curiosity about his body. He’d almost bitten off her head for daring to call him the wrong species.
    “Please let go.”
    “No.”
    The flat no took her by surprise. Nobody said no to her, not like that. They always tried to couch it in more polite terms. That treatment may have kept her cooperative and rational, but it had also left her no tools with which to deal with the hard reality of a world where people didn’t follow the accepted rules of behavior. “Why?”
    “Why not?”
    She raised her own hand to the one he had around her neck and tugged. No movement. The message was clear. He wasn’t going to hurt her, but neither was he going to budge. “If you’re not a leopard,” she said, deciding to attempt a civilized conversation, “then what are you? You’re in DarkRiver territory and according to my information, it’s a leopard pack.”
    “It is.” His thumb stroked absently over her skin. She cut off the physical reaction before it began. If her body felt, then soon her mind would want to experience emotion and that was unacceptable.
    “You’re not with DarkRiver?” Had she been fooled into trusting the wrong cat?
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “Why are you refusing to tell me anything?”
    “For all I know, you’re a spy or an assassin.”
    The logic of his statement couldn’t be refuted. “I only want to speak to Sascha and leave. The Council would mete out severe punishment if they knew.”
    “So you say.”
    She became aware that he smelled of the earth and the forest, of a kind of animal energy that was alien to her. Alien, but not unpleasant. If she’d felt things like that, she might even have admitted that she . . . appreciated the scent of him. “Jaguar,” she said almost before the thought fired through her neurons. “Panthera onca . ”
    His hand stroked her neck. “Very good.”
    “I read a book approximately two months ago about different cat species.” At the time she’d thought it a strange choice, but had been compelled to finish it nonetheless. “You can’t blame me for not