by Lara Adrian
Bad idea, letting his mind take the wheel down that road.
But he was already picturing her in his head. Already wondering how soft her impossibly perfect skin would feel under his fingertips, under his mouth . . . under his naked and thrusting body.
Fuck.
He gritted his teeth and forced the fantasy out of his mind. Best he forgo the rest of his examination of her. If she had broken bones or other problems, he’d just have to wait until she was conscious and could tell him what was wrong. Right now, all he needed was for her to open those warm sherry eyes and sit up to take the pain medicine he brought for her.
“Zoe, can you hear me?” She moaned quietly in response, her brows pinching in a frown. “Open your eyes for me. It’s time to wake up.”
When her head started to thrash on the pillow, he reached for the dislodged compress. At the same moment her face swiveled toward him again, landing her cheek against his open palm.
The skin-on-skin connection shot through him like a bolt of lightning.
Her eyelids flipped open as if she might have felt the power of it too.
For one instant—an instant that seemed to last an eternity—their gazes locked and held. She murmured something in her raspy, sleep-thickened voice but Asher was beyond hearing it. Ripped from his spot on the edge of the bed with her, he was hurtled into another place and time, his mind snagged on a painful memory.
Her memory.
Steeped in the sights and sounds and emotions of the moment, he was living it all through her senses. Through one of the rawest experiences of her young life. And she was sobbing. Choking on little girl tears as she sat in the middle of a squalid one-room apartment clutching a stuffed pink teddy bear to her chest.
“Mama, please, don’t go! Why can’t you stay home with me tonight?”
An elegant young Japanese woman dressed in a red silk dress and high, thin-heeled sandals came out of the open bathroom and squatted low until they were eye to eye. She was beautiful, her delicate oval face framed in a long curtain of shiny black hair. Smoky dark brown eyes dominated her features, and tonight her lips were slicked with scarlet color so glossy it looked like glass.
“Now, Narumi, didn’t you promise Mommy no tears tonight?” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her gaze. “You know how hard I work. Doesn’t Mommy deserve to go out and have some fun with other grownups once in a while?”
A sigh and a hesitant nod. “I guess so. But I don’t like your new friend. He hurt your face last time.”
The pretty smile faltered. One slender hand came up to the ghost of a bruise that lingered beneath her left eye, not quite erased by the makeup that covered it. Mommy wore a new ring on her finger since it happened. The deep red gemstone glittered as she dabbed tenderly at her cheek.
“Don’t you worry about Mommy, okay? I’m a big girl, I know what I’m doing. I can take care of myself, all right? And so can you, pumpkin. Now, be good for me and get dressed for bed. I promise I’ll be home before you wake up in the morning.”
“No, you won’t.” A soft recrimination, uttered on a raw, aching throat.
A sigh was her only response. She leaned in and her red lips felt cool and sticky against her daughter’s brow. Then she stood up and smoothed out her dress, pausing to take one last look in the mirror before she glided to the chipped and aged door.
“I love you, sweetheart.”
She scurried out, the sound of her high heels clicking on the apartment building’s steel stairwell as her terrified little daughter moved to the window and peered through tattered drapes at the large black limousine that idled below, praying that the bad man inside wouldn’t hurt her mommy again.
Asher’s hissed curse punctuated the silence of the bedroom. The adult version of that sobbing, frightened child had since drifted back into her slumber. He was glad for that now, relieved to be freed from her gaze as he drew his hand away from her face and stood up.
His heart was hammering as painfully as hers had been. Sorrow and anger clogged his throat, along with the fear and loneliness this child had apparently lived with on regular basis.
It was almost too much for him to bear. How she’d managed to cope with the force of those powerful emotions at her tender age he had no idea.
He stepped away from the bed, watching her sleep. He would come back to wake her and give her the pain meds and water. Right now, he needed air.
He needed space to breathe for a few minutes, at least until the overwhelming blast of Zoe’s emotions—or, rather, Narumi’s—had a chance to subside.
CHAPTER 4
Naomi woke to someone at her bedside repeatedly washing her outstretched hand with a warm, wet cloth.
One that tickled and smelled strongly of Alpo.
Peeling one eyelid open, she waited for the banging in her skull to kick up again like it had been doing all night, but there was no pounding ache. No muffled cotton-head feeling or dizzying wave of nausea. That was a relief. The worst of the storm that had been raging in her cranium after the blows she’d suffered from Slater’s goons had finally passed.
Her vision was clear now. And it was suddenly filled with the panting mush-mouth and inquisitive big brown eyes of a giant yellow hound nosing into her face from the side of the bed.
“Well, hello there.” She frowned, swallowing on a dry mouth. “Who are you, the hospital comfort animal?”
The thick tail started thumping enthusiastically in response, a soft whine building as the beast attempted to get closer to her, practically crawling up on the bed.
“That’s Sam,” a deep voice answered, disembodied thanks to the massive dog blocking her view of anything else in the room.
But she knew that low growl. She’d been hearing it in her dreams most of the night, nagging her to open her eyes at least half a dozen times, bossing her like a drill sergeant when all she’d wanted to do was sleep for days.
Asher. She remembered his unusual name. Against her will, she remembered his ruggedly handsome face, too, the chiseled cheeks and strong jaw that made her pulse speed a little faster in her veins.
What the hell was he doing at the hospital with her?
And then it hit her—she wasn’t in a hospital emergency room bed. She was in a bedroom of a small house. One that evidently belonged to the lethal Breed male who’d turned Gordo and his two buddies into buzzard bait.
She’d been sleeping in the big vampire’s bed.
“Oh, my God.” She scuttled back against the headboard, drawing her knees up to her chest. The abrupt movements combined with her mounting alarm made her temples throb, but she had bigger problems at the moment than a bump on the head. She glared at him over the grinning, drooling face of the hellhound who’d now managed to get all four paws up on the bed.
“What have you done to me?” Frantically, she felt her neck to make sure it was still intact. It was. And now, both he and the big dog were staring at her as if she’d lost her mind. “You said you were going to take me to the hospital last night.”
He stepped further into the room, holding a steaming mug in his hands. “Yes, I did.”
“You lied to me.” Did that actually surprise her? She knew better than to put her trust in any man, so what had she done? Put her faith—and her life—in the hands of a proven killer. A fucking vampire, for crissake. “I’m out of here.”
She whipped her legs over the other side of the bed and pushed to her feet. Not good. The wooziness was back again, not as awful as it had been out in the desert before she had apparently passed out for the night, but enough to knock her back onto her behind on the mattress.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he stated calmly. “And I haven’t done anything to you, except make sure you were comfortable and that your head injury didn’t worsen overnight.”
“I’ll bet.” She scoffed, too outraged to worry about making him angry. “Is that what you tell all of the hapless women you capture and drag out here to your lair?”
“My lair?” Chestnut b
rows quirked, he glanced around the sparsely furnished room with its hand-hewn four-poster bed and chunky nightstands. Adjacent to the foot of the king-size bed stood a chest of drawers topped with an old television set that would have been an antique a decade ago.
Not exactly a Gothic house of horrors, but what did she know about the Breed? Most reasonable people had given up on the antiquated view of vampires in the two decades his kind had been living in the open among humans.
And her experience with members of the Breed wasn’t much. Purely by choice.
She preferred to keep it that way, especially after witnessing Asher’s deadly skills last night.
Right now, the only thing she needed to do was find the nearest exit.
She tried to stand up again, but the enormous hound had belly crawled up next to her and flopped his big head in her lap. She sighed, finding it hard to resist the pleading eyes that stared up at her, begging for her touch. Begrudgingly, she scratched him behind the floppy ears and under his jowly chin.
She felt Asher’s eyes on her from the other side of the room. “You like dogs?”
“Of course, I do. What kind of monster doesn’t like dogs?” She glanced over her shoulder at him and found him scowling. “He belongs to you?”
He gave a faint shake of his head. “He’s Ned’s dog.”
“Who’s Ned?”
“A friend. He died last year and left me this ranch.”
Naomi tilted her head at him. “Then I hate to break it to you, Asher, but Sam’s your dog now.”
Cobalt blue. That was the color of Asher’s eyes. She hadn’t been sure last night in the desert. It had been too dark, and his gaze had been too hot, lit up like amber coals from the moment he arrived on scene to take care of the men who’d hurt her.
He watched as she continued to stroke and pat the blissed-out dog. Those deep blue eyes reached inside her somehow, feeling oddly familiar after everything that happened last night. His gaze felt intense, far too intimate.
“I think you just made a friend for life,” he said, the corner of his broad mouth tugging in a wry smile. And it was a nice smile too. Transformed the hard angles and stern lines in a way that made her stomach flip like it did on an amusement park ride.
She immediately stilled her hand, folding her arms across the front of her bed-rumpled hoodie. Dammit, she did not want to warm up to this male—this dangerous stranger. Nor his dog, for that matter.
“Do you have a phone I could borrow?”
Asher’s smile vanished. “What for?”
“I need to call someone and get a ride out of here. You said it yourself last night, I need to see a doctor.”
He shook his head. “You’ll be fine. The concussion could’ve been worse. What you need right now is rest and nourishment.”
He held the mug out to her. Watery yellow broth with pale noodles and tiny flecks of carrot and diced, anemic white meat swam nearly to the brim.
“What’s this?”
“Breakfast. I know from living with Ned that humans are in the habit of eating in the morning. Unfortunately, all that’s left in the cabinets are some of his old staples. I found a can of soup that wasn’t going to expire for another few weeks. I don’t expect it will give you botulism.”
Gee, after a rave review like that, how could she refuse? But his deadpan offer of canned chicken noodle for breakfast was in earnest. He had actually cooked something out of consideration for her, even care, if his solemn expression were any indication.
Still, she had places to go. People to reassure that she wasn’t lying in the middle of the Mojave with a bullet in her head. Poor Michael was probably out of his mind with worry now that it was morning and she still hadn’t returned home or checked in to let him know she was okay.
God forbid he get so concerned he would call in a missing person’s report.
The last thing either of them needed was to invite the police to start sniffing around.
That thought only renewed her need to get out of there and back to Las Vegas as soon as possible.
Gently pushing away Asher’s offered mug of soup, she shook her head. “Thank you for the thought, but I’m really not hungry.”
She dislodged Sam’s snoring bulk from her lap and forced herself to stand. Not so bad this time. She just had to take things easy.
“So, about that phone,” she said to Asher. “I’ve got someone waiting to hear from me and I really should be going before he sends a search party. He tends to worry when I’m out of touch for an hour, let alone all night.”
Asher’s face darkened the longer she rambled. “Sit down. You should rest some more. It’s too soon for you to be on your feet.”
“No, it’s not.” She spread her arms as if to show him how much better she felt, even did a little jig despite the woozy feeling that followed. “See? Ninety-nine percent back to normal.”
“I said sit down, Narumi.”
She went stock-still, every muscle in her body seizing up, every cell clanging with shock at the sound of that name on his tongue.
Her oldest name. The one she had refused to use since her mother’s death when Naomi was eight years old.
“What did you just call me?”
He set the mug of soup down on the nightstand. “That’s your name, isn’t it? Not Zoe. Narumi.”
“No.” Her head shook side to side. “No, that’s not my name. But you’re right, it’s not Zoe, either. My name is Naomi. I haven’t used that other one for a long time. I don’t like to hear it. In fact, only one person other than my mother even knows that name, and it sure as hell shouldn’t be you.”
“You’re talking about Michael?”
As if the first bout of shock wasn’t staggering enough, now this? “How do you know so much about me? What the hell is going on here?”
“You talk in your sleep, for one thing,” he replied calmly. “Which isn’t surprising considering how much you talk when you’re awake.” At her small scowl, he went on. “You mentioned your man’s name several times while I was tending you overnight. And in your daze before you lost consciousness out in the desert.”
Part of her felt compelled to correct him about Michael being “her man” but that was just one more fact about her life that was none of his business. It was the other insight he seemed to have that troubled her the most.
“How do you know my given name? Do you . . . did you know my mother?”
“No.”
“Do you know Leo Slater?”
His brow creased even deeper. “No. I do not know him, either, but I am familiar with his name.”
“Everyone in a two hundred mile radius of Las Vegas knows his name,” she bit back icily.
“Yes,” he agreed, holding her in a suspicious, narrowing gaze. “Is he the casino boss you attempted to steal from last night?”
He must have taken her silence for the confirmation it was. A curse hissed out of him and he scoured his hand over the whisker-darkened grizzle of his jaw. “What does Leo Slater have to do with your mother?”
“Nothing. Forget I brought either of them up.”
His answering chuckle was grim. “You ask too much, Naomi.”
She hiked up her chin. “Tell me how you know my other name. I think you owe me that much, don’t you?”
For a moment, she wasn’t sure he’d respond. He seemed lost in his own thoughts, pacing a tight track on the other side of the bed from her while Sam slept like the dead between them.
“Every one of the Breed is born with an extrasensory or other preternatural ability unique to them,” he explained. She nodded, not entirely ignorant of a few of the basics of their species, much as she wished to be. “My gift—though I use the term loosely—is the ability to experience full sensory recall of another person’s memories when I touch someone. Only the most painful ones. The traumas. The moments of darkest fear or agony. The memories never fade. Once I feel them, they never leave me again.”
“I’m sorry, Asher. I don’t . . . I can
only guess what that must be like for you.” Naomi stared at him, losing a bit of her grasp on the anger and indignation she felt just a moment ago. She couldn’t imagine anything so awful. Being cursed to bear someone else’s worst experiences and never be able to escape them.
Which meant he now knew some of her pain too.
“You touched me last night?”
“Not intentionally. I’m careful.” His lips pressed together, then he exhaled another harsh curse. “Last night when I came in to give you water and pain pills, you grew agitated. You were tossing your head on the pillow and I . . . reached for you. For a moment, I touched your face.”
She blinked at him, recalling as in a dream all of the times he came in to check on her, to gently rouse her and make sure she was okay and not in any discomfort.
“What did you see?” God, she hated how small her voice sounded, how weak and afraid.
“You were young, I’m guessing four or five. Your mother was with you in a studio apartment. She was wearing a red silk dress, getting ready to leave on a date with someone waiting in a limousine outside.”
Naomi’s breath leaked out of her on a sharp sigh. “I remember that night. It wasn’t the first, or the last. But I remember the red dress.”
“You begged her not to go,” Asher went on, his deep voice quiet, sober. “You didn’t like her new boyfriend because he was abusing her. Even at your young age, you recognized that. And you were crying. You were afraid for her, and terrified to be left alone.”
Naomi felt those emotions gathering in the back of her throat now. She remembered everything about that moment. She remembered thinking that one night her mother was never going to come back.
And then one night, finally, she didn’t.
She inhaled, pushing the memory down before it made her feel any weaker for how she had failed to protect her beautiful mother. The only person who had ever cared for her, loved her. At least until Michael came along and gave her the sibling she never had. During their shared time on the streets as orphans hustling tourists and scraping to get by however they could, they had cobbled together an unconventional little family of misfits.