Hostage to Pleasure Read Online Free PDF Page A

sister. If he could’ve split a vein, torn out his heart, given up his soul, and known it would bring her back, he’d have done so in a heartbeat.
    But he couldn’t, so he’d learned to live with the grief, learned to live despite the guilt, had even fooled the pack into thinking he was getting better. Perhaps even fooled himself. Until her .
    He’d almost shot Ashaya Aleine at first sight.
    Not because she was evil. Or because he’d considered her a dangerous wildcard. No, the sole reason he had almost put a bullet through her was because the instant he’d caught her scent, his cock had gone as hard as fucking rock. The unexpected and unwanted reaction had ratcheted up the raw, angry fury of his guilt until it was an ever-tightening noose around his throat, a burning in his heart. All he’d wanted to do was destroy the cause of his shattering betrayal to Kylie’s memory.
    Attracted to one of the Silent?
    His mouth set in a grim line. He’d cut off his own balls before he accepted that.

CHAPTER 4
    He haunts me. The sniper. In my dreams, he is a black shadow with his eye focused on the scope of a rifle. Sometimes, he puts down the weapon and walks toward me. Sometimes, he even touches me. But most times, he presses the trigger. And kills me.
     
—From the encrypted personal files of Ashaya Aleine
     
 
Ashaya returned to consciousness with the realization that something had gone very wrong. Her mind was functioning, but her body wasn’t. She was paralyzed. A human or changeling, creatures of emotion, might have panicked. Ashaya lay in silence and thought through the situation.
    Unless she had gone blind, her eyes were closed, possibly taped shut, though she didn’t have the senses to verify that. Closed eyes meant a medical facility of some kind, either a clinic room or the morgue.
    Her body wasn’t picking up the sensation of cold or warmth, so she couldn’t verify that either.
    Her hearing wasn’t working.
    Her nose wasn’t working.
    Her mouth wasn’t working.
    That was when claustrophobia nibbled at the edges of her consciousness. She was buried in the most final way—inside her own body. Her limbs were all completely useless, making escape impossible. No, she thought, dragging her thoughts back under control before they eroded the cold Silence that had kept her alive this long. She wasn’t human or changeling. She had another world open to her. Inside her mind, she felt for the link to the PsyNet. There it was, strong and unwavering. Whatever had gone wrong, it hadn’t affected her psychic abilities.
    Following the link, she cautiously lowered her shields and swept her psychic eye across the area she now occupied. Familiar minds began to appear within seconds. She withdrew at once. That was the problem with the PsyNet. Though her initial position was based upon her physical location, because the PsyNet was a psychic construct, the instant she lowered her shields, it began to shift to accommodate her—as if each version of the Net was unique to the individual.
    It made no logical sense because the PsyNet followed no laws of physics or math. No one had yet found out what rules it did follow, but one thing was clear—Ashaya couldn’t venture into the Net again without taking precautions to ensure none of her “knowledge” of others leaked out. She knew it could be done, even knew some of the mechanics of how—Amara had taught her.
    She began moving and shifting her mental shields, devising fail-safe upon fail-safe. The next time she opened her psychic eye, she saw everything through a dull haze. Her shields were so bulky as to hinder any attempt to actively surf the Net, but that was fine. Right now, it meant she was an invisible dot among millions of other dots. If she “knew” no one, no one knew her.
    Taking a chance, she slit a tiny gap in her shields and listened to the chatter of the Net. Thousands of pieces of information filtered through, but as none of it was relevant, she forced