Part of him wanted to stroke her... and part of him wanted to bite.
Slave to Sensation
Nalini Singh
Psy/Changeling, book one
ebook, 352 pages
Published September 1st 2006 by Berkley Books
ISBN 9781101042953
In a world that denies emotions, where the ruling Psy punish any sign of desire, Sascha Duncan must conceal the feelings that brand her as flawed. To reveal them would be to sentence herself to the horror of “rehabilitation”—the complete psychic erasure of everything she ever was…
Both human and animal, Lucas Hunter is a Changeling hungry for the very sensations the Psy disdain. After centuries of uneasy coexistence, these two races are now on the verge of war over the brutal murders of several Changeling women. Lucas is determined to find the Psy killer who butchered his packmate, and Sascha is his ticket into their closely guarded society. But he soon discovers that this ice-cold Psy is very capable of passion—and that the animal in him is fascinated by her. Caught between their conflicting worlds, Lucas and Sascha must remain bound to their identities—or sacrifice everything for a taste of darkest temptation.
I needed a break from Kenyon's League series because, let's face it, no one in that universe was going to live up to Syn. No one! Besides, Caillen pissed me off and his is the next story.
Sascha is a Psy. She should be free of emotion, but she's not and considers herself flawed for it, fearing what the Council would do to her if they ever found out. As the Psy and Changeling races come together to form a business deal in land development, her role among the Psy brings her to Lucas Hunter with the charge of negotiating terms and finalizing the details of the contracts.
Meanwhile...
Lucas is on the hunt for the Psy responsible for a number of female Changeling's deaths. To find the culprit, he must understand the Psy and their mysterious PsyNet that mentally links each of their kind. He sees his chance with Sascha, but his inner beast, his panther, senses something more. Sascha reacts. To him. To the world around them. She reacts in a way no emotionless Psy ever would. And so, he begins to push, bringing her into his world, where Sascha is introduced to touch, smell... and chocolate.
Lucas was a good alpha. Gentle, but necessarily harsh when provoked. His relationship with Sascha evolves nicely from boardroom to bedroom through a small number of shared dreams and interactions with fellow members of the DarkRiver pack. As it ends, Sascha learns she is a classification of Psy thought long extinct, an E-Psy. An Empath. Breaking from the PsyNet, her life is saved by her mate bond with Lucas as the pack's web nourishes the part of her mind dependent on the connection linking all Psy. She uncovers the identity of the serial killer and the wolf and feline packs find a truce, uniting against their common enemy.
3 out of 5 stars.
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