Hostage to Pleasure (Psy-Changelings, Book 5) - Nalini Singh

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Hostage to Pleasure (Psy-Changelings, Book 5) - Nalini Singh

Description~
Separated from her son and forced to create a neural implant that will mean the effective enslavement of her psychically gifted race, Ashaya Aleine is the perfect Psy--cool, calm, emotionless...at least on the surface. Inside, she's fighting a desperate battle to save her son and escape the vicious cold of the PsyNet. Yet when escape comes, it leads not to safety, but to the lethal danger of a sniper's embrace.

DarkRiver sniper Dorian Christensen lost his sister to a Psy killer. Though he lacks the changeling ability to shift into animal form, his leopard lives within. And that leopard's rage at the brutal loss is a clawing darkness that hungers for vengeance. Falling for a Psy has never been on Dorian's agenda. But charged with protecting Ashaya and her son, he discovers that passion has a way of changing the rules...

Oh dear…I think this one rates right up there with the first book in the Psy/Changling series!! This book was HOT TO TROT!

We met Dorian a few books back. His sister got tortured and murdered by Enrique, a member of the Psy council. So when Dorian is forced to watch over Ashaya and her son Keenan (aka K-man) after escaping her community tempers flair!

Ashaya lived her entire life trying to keep her son safe from the council. She rarely even seen the boy b/c he was kept caged up (but safe) in exchange for Ashaya’s scientific work. She sets it up to where Dorian and the other cats get K-man out and away. Now safe in the arms of the cats both Ashaya and K-man are on the run from being sought out…not only by the council but Ashayas CrAzEd twin sister. Who will reach them first…the council? Her twin? Or Dorian and his lust?

Ashaya wants to expose the Psy council for the murderers they really are…so you would think her and Dorian would get along right?!?! WRONG! Dorian sees Ashaya as the cold Psy that killed his sister and Ashaya sees Dorian as a treat to her hold on Silence. In the last book Ashaya and Dorian met briefly when she helped get Talin her kids back. With a gun to her head Dorian felt the rage inside…yet couldn’t pull the trigger. This pull back and forth continues into Hostage of Pleasure. The cat in Dorian wants to play yet the man wants to KILL! EPP! So needless to say, there are a ton of fights in which both parties end up getting hurt. Dorian makes it his personal promise to not only break this cold woman before him but to bring her to his bed!

This book was great! Its was very real (besides the changelings etc lol). Dealing with the loss of a loved one can hit you big time…and boy do you feel for Dorian in this book! I thought it was super touching how Ashaya was able to reach out of her Psy shell to help him grieve and get over his hurt. In the same aspect Dorian was able to get to Ashayas level of thought about her twin seeking out to kill her. See her sister isn’t right in the noggin ;o) so it didn’t feel right just thinking they would take her out. Ashaya wanted more than anything to keep her sister safe but at the same time she had to worry about her son K-man.

Another cool thing I didn’t really mention in the last review was how much the larger story was growing. The Psy community is slowly breaking down and everyone is seeing small fractures…places to take advantage. We meet this new secretive human alliance that goes to attack Ashaya! We don’t find out too much but we know they wanted to keep her alive…for what…idk?!?! So that’s pretty exciting to see new people coming into the picture! Will the “weak” humans come out on top of this all out war??? Who knows!

Snippet~
He sat back on his haunches and watched her get back up into a sitting position. Her eyes went to his handiwork. “You’ve had some training.”

He bit back the urge to snarl at her frigid tone. The ice of it was a fist around his cock, arousing him against all reason, all sense. “First aid.” He shrugged, stuffed everything back into her pack, then paused. “You need anything from here?”

“Everything.”

“Tough.” He did up the straps. “I have to carry you as it is—”

“I can—”

“Yeah, you can crawl,” he snapped, “but that isn’t going to get me home in time to catch a few z’s.” And nowhere near fast enough to contain the leopard’s enraged attempts at exploding from within his skin. He couldn’t shift, had never been able to. But the cat didn’t know it was trapped. Right now, it wasn’t even sure if it wanted to savage Ashaya or f**k her. “Since I can’t dump you here, I might as well get rid of you as fast as I can.”

It was a deliberate attempt to provoke, but her face, a face that had haunted his dreams for two months, remained expressionless. Two damn months, he thought again. Endless nights of waking in a sweat, frustrated and hard. And angry, so angry. The sole thing that had kept him from going out and hunting her down had been an enraged defiance against a sexual pull that had begun to turn into an obsession.

Now here she sat, looking up at him with those eyes that were the wrong color—and that blatant lie only stoked his fury.

“You have a lot of antipathy toward me.”

No, what he had was a bad case of lust. But he wasn’t an animal in rut. And his one stupid, drunken mistake in college aside, he didn’t sleep with women who might just freeze his balls off in the night. “I’m going to stash your pack up in the branches. The lynx won’t come near it now that it has my scent on it. Someone can grab it for you tomorrow.”

Ashaya didn’t argue, knowing she had nothing with which to bargain. “Another debt?” She’d recognized his voice at once as that of the sniper. After all, she’d been hearing it in her dreams for eight long weeks.

“Don’t worry. We’ll collect.” With those words, he shrugged into the pack and began climbing.

She couldn’t believe the way he moved. It was so smooth, it appeared effortless. He was ten times faster than she had been, a hundred times more graceful. If she’d had any doubts as to what he was, they would’ve been wiped away by that display. “Changeling,” she said as he jumped back down. “Cat.”

He raised an eyebrow, his eyes a pitiless blue so true—even in this darkness—that she wondered at its existence. “Meow.”

Something hidden sparked to life in her mind, and she found herself thinking that the sniper was beautiful. Darkness, she’d always cloaked him in darkness, but he was a golden god. “How did you know I was here?” Her breath came in pants as she managed to get to her feet, one hand braced against the tree trunk. Her palm landed on something sticky. Her own blood, she realized.

“I’m an F-Psy.” A mocking answer. “You’re going to have to ride on my back. Try not to stab me while you’re at it.” He came to her, turned.

The instant she put her hands on his shoulders, she froze. She hadn’t had this much close contact with another being for longer than she could remember. Even with Keenan, she’d kept her distance, aware that only Silent coldness would keep him safe. But there was no point of comparison between her weakness where Keenan was concerned and this changeling who seemed to despise her.

And yet who fascinated her on a level it was madness to even consider.


Next is Mercys book and I know she gets with a wolf so Im pretty pumped! Look for that review within the next month…I could seriously eat these books UP!

I give this book a total of...