Free Visions of Heat by Nalini Singh Page A

betrayal and was set in stone.
    It was the leopards who’d come to his aid at a time when he’d lost everyone and everything that mattered. And it was Lucas who’d extended the hand of friendship that had brought him back from the savage edge of an all-consuming rage. He’d lay his life down for his alpha and until this moment, nothing and no one had ever threatened to shift the intensity of that focus. That Faith was doing so after only a few hours made him more than suspicious of the reality of his response.
     
    Faith fell asleep seconds after her head hit the pillow, body and mind both worn out. But that didn’t stop the visions. Nothing ever stopped them when they were determined to find her.
    Darkness brushed her consciousness. Her heartbeat accelerated. She recognized this darkness. It wasn’t friendly, wasn’t something she wanted to see. But it wanted her to watch. There was a twisted pleasure in it, pleasure she understood because it wasn’t her own but generated by the darkness. During these visions, she was the darkness and if she’d felt fear, that fact would’ve terrified her. But of course she wasn’t scared—she was a product of Silence.
    It wasn’t crushing yet, the darkness. It felt . . . satisfied. Its needs had been fulfilled for the time being and it was relishing the bloody rush. But then it showed her a glimpse of the future. A future she could no more not see than she could stop breathing.
    Suffocation.
    Torture.
    Death.
    Unable to bear the ugliness, she tried to draw back. It refused to let her. Her heart beat in a dangerous, jagged rhythm. This was impossible, her practical Psy mind tried to point out. But it was drowned out by the primitive core of her psyche. It screamed because it knew that this was possible.
    Sometimes, visions didn’t let go. Ever. The end result was insanity so deep and true that no more than twisted fragments of the mind remained. Faith clawed at the darkness, but there was nothing to hold on to, nothing to fight her way out of. It was everywhere and nowhere, an enclosing prison she couldn’t break. Her racing heart began to go sluggish as her mind concentrated every ounce of energy on finding a way out. Only to slam up against a blank wall.
    Touch intruded, a sensory alarm so shocking that it snapped the twining threads of the vision. She woke with a gasp, her eyes clashing with a pair that were not quite human. A ragged breath later, she became aware of hands holding on to her upper arms. Skin to skin. Her tank top was soaked with perspiration and, by rights, she should’ve begun to cascade because of the sensory overload, but she said, “Don’t let go.” Her voice was a rasp. “Don’t let go or I’ll fall back in.”
    Vaughn tightened his hold, worried by the look in Faith’s eyes. There was something unfocused about them, as if she wasn’t fully awake. “Talk to me, Faith.”
    She kept breathing those jerky ragged breaths and then, to his surprise, reached out to put her hands flat against his bare chest. Her touch was pure heat when he’d expected coolness. It burned and the jaguar wanted more. “Don’t let me fall back in. Please, Vaughn. Please. ”
    He didn’t understand what she was so afraid of, but he was a sentinel—he knew how to protect. His senses had lit up in warning minutes ago, though Faith hadn’t made a sound. He’d walked into her room on silent feet, expecting her to wake and tell him to get the hell out. Instead, he’d found her barely breathing, her skin sheened in sweat, her hands curled into fists so tight she’d been bleeding from tiny cuts made by her nails.
    Now those same instincts had him locking his arms tight around her. Touch unsettled Faith; maybe it would unsettle her enough to bring her back from wherever it was that she’d gone.
    Pure black.
    He finally realized what it was about her eyes that had worried him—the complete lack of stars. He’d seen Sascha’s eyes do that before, but there had been