The bleak darkness of her words should have cut through the strange intimacy growing between them but it didn't. Dorian raised his hand to cup her cheek, to make her turn and look at him. "What kind of a monster saves the life of not one child but three?" He needed the answer to that question, needed the absolution it would provide.
He heard his sister's screams in his dreams. He didn't want to hear her accusations of betrayal, too. His heart twisted as the leopard withdrew into a tight ball of pain and sorrow, but still he touched Ashaya. "What have you done?"
Her lashes lifted. "I've protected a sociopath for most of my life, someone exactly like Santano Enrique."
Fury rose in a blinding wave and his hand tightened on her skin. One second's loss of control and he could break her jaw. Swearing, he released her and got up, turning to press his palms flat against the French doors. But the coolness of the glass did nothing to chill the red-hot crash of his anger.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Ashaya get to her feet, begin to move away. "Don't."
She froze, as if hearing the lack of humanity in his tone. Perhaps it was because the beast had been trapped inside him for more than three decades. Perhaps it was because he'd done everything he could to turn himself leopard though he couldn't shift. Perhaps it was just Ashaya. But at that moment, he was an inch away from losing the human half of his soul and giving in completely to the blind rage of the beast.
"I - "
"Be quiet."
Dorian's words were so lethally controlled that Ashaya knew he was fighting the finest edge of rage. She'd miscalculated badly. No, she thought, the truth was that she hadn't calculated at all. When she was with this changeling, all her abilities at subterfuge and self-preservation seemed to disappear. With him, she spoke only the truth. But, as she had learned in the twenty-six years of her life, truth was a tool. It should never simply be said. No, it had to be bent, twisted, colored, until it became a weapon.
Now, she looked at the tight plane of Dorian's bare back, all taut muscle and golden skin, and knew that self-preservation dictated she should obey him. She should stay silent, give him time to get his emotions under control. But Ashaya hadn't escaped one cage only to be forced into another. And she didn't like the idea of a cold, controlled Dorian. It was a dangerous confession, but one that gave her the courage to face down his leopard. "You ask me to tell the truth," she said, fighting the surely lethal temptation to touch him, stroke him. "And yet when I do, you order me to silence. Hypocrisy isn't limited to the Council, I see."
His head snapped in her direction, his eyes almost incandescent with rage. "Keep going."
She might've spent her life in a lab, but she wasn't stupid. She understood he wasn't giving her permission - he was throwing down the gauntlet. Going against every one of the rules that had kept her alive this long, she picked it up. "You're attracted to me." The lush hunger of his kiss had been a living brand, leaving her permanently marked.
The bunched muscles of his forearms turned to granite. "A Psy expert in emotion?" Mockery laced with the iron strength of an anger that stung at her with the force of a whip.
"You touched me," she said. "I don't have to be an expert to understand the reason behind that."
"Do you think that makes you safe?"
"No." She took a step forward. Stopped. Because she hadn't meant to do that. "I think it puts me in more danger. You don't want to be attracted to me and I unders - "
"Don't you dare tell me you understand." He pushed off the glass to stalk to her. At that moment, she saw not the man but the leopard within. And she realized the truth far too late - he wasn't human, wasn't Psy, was changeling. The leopard lived in every aspect of him, from his strength to his anger to his rage.
She tried to move back. Not fast enough. He gripped her chin, held her in place. "Do you know what I understand?" he whispered, crowding her. There was no wall at her back but she couldn't make herself move, unable to break the dark intimacy of his hold. "I understand that you come from the same psychopathic race that took my sister from me.
"I understand that you're one of the monsters who protects those murderers. I understand that, for some reason, you make my f**king c**k twitch." Brutal words, delivered in a voice that was so soft, so exquisitely balanced, it cut. "I also understand that I'm not led around by the balls and that I'll kill you before I allow you to bring that sickness into my pack."
She believed him. "Just don't take that step because of your discomfort at being attracted to me." It was a compulsion to push him, to claw back. A strange thought, since she had no claws.
His fingers tightened fractionally and he swore, low and hard. "Oh, don't worry, Ms. Aleine. Now that you've shown your true colors, all I have to do anytime I'm tempted to make a pass at you is remember that you have a hard-on for sociopaths. Any attraction I feel will die one hell of a quick death." Turning away, he strode toward his bedroom. "Get dressed. We have an early meeting to get to."
She stood in place long after he'd disappeared, staring out through the glass, but seeing nothing. Her mouth pulsed with the faded imprint of Dorian's lips, hard yet soft, a strange dichotomy. His anger had flamed off him, hot enough to singe. But - her fingers lifted to her lips - he hadn't used his power to bruise her. Not even at the end.
She knew that didn't denote any care on his part. No, it was merely part of the code he lived by. Dorian would take her life without a blink if she proved a traitor or a threat, but until then, he wouldn't hurt her. Predatory changeling men were rumored to be protective as a rule. She didn't think Dorian was any different.