by Lara Adrian
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.
And none of the people she loved would ever need to scrape or hustle again as long as Naomi had something to say about it.
Which meant she really needed to get her ass back to Vegas, and soon.
Smoothing her rumpled clothing and hair, she came around her side of the bed, edging toward the open door. She wasn’t going to kid herself that she could outrun Asher, but she hoped by showing him that she was steady on her feet he might be inclined to grant her that phone call.
She cleared her throat. “I guess this is the part where I say thanks a lot or sorry for the memories, then get on my way. Unfortunately, Gordo trashed my cell along with my ID back at the casino, so do you have a land line out here, or maybe a satellite phone?”
She took a step nearer to the threshold, and suddenly the bedroom door slammed shut all on its own. “Holy shit.”
She whirled to find Asher still standing several feet behind her, his face unreadable. But those deep blue pools were sober and determined. “We need to talk, Naomi.”
“I thought we just did.” She swallowed, but kept her facade of flippant confidence firmly in place. “This was fun, Asher, but I’ve got people waiting for me to come home, so I’ll thank you to let me go now.”
He didn’t budge. “You have a mark under your chin, Naomi.”
“I’ve got marks all over me, thanks to Gordo and his asshole buddies,” she scoffed, pretending she didn’t understand in spite of the alarm that was building inside her.
But Asher wasn’t playing her game. No, the Breed male was as deadly serious as she’d seen him thus far. “I’m talking about the symbol. The teardrop-and-crescent-moon. I’m talking about the fact that you’re a Breedmate.”
She shook her head as if she could refute both the birthmark and what it meant.
“You’re a Breedmate,” he insisted. “One of a small number of women on this planet who are something more than mortal. Something more than simply human.”
Naomi swallowed hard. She had been twelve years old before she learned that the unusual red birthmark she bore had separated her from other girls. She’d simply counted herself lucky that she never got sick—not even a sniffle—and that she’d been born naturally strong and athletic.
It wasn’t until she was in foster care for the third or fourth time that she met another girl who had the same symbol somewhere on her body. Jessamine’s mark was on her belly, hiding in a field of freckles that sprinkled most of the pretty red-haired girl’s fair skin.
Jessie knew things Naomi didn’t. Things her mother had whispered about the Breed and what women with the Breedmate mark meant to them. How only Breedmates could bear vampire offspring, and only after a mutual blood bonding with a Breed male, a connection that would link the mated couple in both body, heart, and emotions for as long as they lived. Which, as a mated pair, meant something close to eternity.
And, like the Breed, Breedmates had unique talents and abilities all their own too. Jessie could conjure storms and other weather at her will. Naomi’s talent wasn’t nearly as awe-inspiring, but it had proven useful to her over time.
Most recently, last night at Leo Slater’s casino.
But it wasn’t going to help her deal with the formidable Breed male studying her intensely from an arm’s length away.
“You are a Breedmate, Naomi. And as a Breed male, that means I am honor-bound to protect you. At least until you’re somewhere safe with people who will help you stay that way.”
“Honor-bound to protect me?” She barked an uneasy laugh. “Well, if that’s all this is about, then no worries. I hereby release you from that obligation. So, we’re done here.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, Asher. It is.” As she loaded up her arguments in the hopes of persuading him to let her go, the rest of what he said started sinking in. “Wait a second. What do you mean, until I’m somewhere with people who can help me stay safe? What people?”
“The Order.”
“What?” She gaped at him, torn between outrage and disbelief. “The Order, meaning that group of warriors who are the most lethal and dangerous-to-know Breed males walking this good Earth since . . . well, I guess since you stepped foot on it?”
A grim smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “They were here first, actually. Hundreds of years before I was created. And the Breed as a species has been walking this planet for much longer than that. Thousands of years.”
“Whatever,” she shot back, incensed and not a little nervous. “I don’t need a history lesson. What I need is for you to let me go, Asher. Right. Fucking. Now.”
With her rising voice, Sam sat up on the bed and cocked his head at her. She scowled at the dog and his obstinate owner.
“It’s too late,” Asher informed her evenly. “I’ve already alerted the Order of the situation through an old friend of mine who’s in contact with them. Someone will be getting in touch with me soon to make further arrangements for your transport to a Darkhaven safe house.”
Holy shit, he was dead serious. He had every intention of steamrolling her into his twisted notion of protection, no matter what she said or wanted.
“No. This is nuts. You’re nuts if you think you can just lock me up in this room and hold me captive until what? Until you or your friends from the Order ship me off to someplace I don’t know and don’t want to be?” She crossed her arms, fuming now. “We have a word for that, you know. It’s called abduction.”
He took a step toward her, then another, until less than a foot separated them in the small room that seemed to be shrinking before her eyes the closer Asher came to her. His big body radiated heat and that spicy, delicious scent that had clung to the blanket and sheet on the bed and drove her mad most of the night.
“I have a life of my own, Asher. I have people I care about waiting for me in Vegas. I want to go back to them. I want to go right now.”
He slowly shook his head, the first signs of remorse edging into his determined blue stare. “I’m sorry, Naomi. What you want isn’t possible now. Not when you and I both know there is a powerful man in that city who wants you dead. I cannot send you back there to get killed.”
“I can handle myself.”
“That may be so,” he said, almost gently now. “But you are too precious to take that risk.”
Did he mean too precious to the Breed, or something else? The way he was looking at her, she couldn’t be sure. His low, tender voice made her veins run hot, loosening something deep inside her. Something soft and yearning.
She backed away from him, needing the space in order to breathe. “I want to talk to Michael. I need to see him, Asher. You can’t keep me away from the only family I have!”
Anger and frustration swelled inside her, bringing a sting to the backs of her eyes. Tears welled, but she refused to let them fall—not even in an attempt to sway his sympathy. Assuming the monstrous vampire had any to speak of. Instead, she stared up at him mutinously.
The sight of her rising emotions only seemed to harden his handsome face. He exhaled a heavy sigh. “You can get in touch with your Michael or anyone else you like . . . once you’re in the Order’s hands and out of mine. Then you’ll be their problem to deal with.”
Without another word, he stepped around her and stalked to the bedroom door. “Sam,” he growled, his pointed finger a command for the dog to leave the room with him.
Naomi looked at him in disbelief, shocked that this was really happening. “Where are you going?”
He didn’t give her an answer. “I expect the Order will be in contact anytime now. With a
ny luck, you’ll be on your way out of here come nightfall.”
He walked out, closing the door behind him.
Naomi listened to the metallic snick of the tumbler as he locked her inside. She bit her lip, hopeful as his long strides and Sam’s clicking paws retreated down the hallway.
Then she swiped impatiently at the tears that spilled onto her cheeks now that she was alone. And she smiled, feeling a small spark of hope kindle to life in her breast.
Out of here come nightfall?
Fat chance. She’d be out of here within the hour—or die trying.
CHAPTER 5
“Stop looking at me like that.”
Sam lay on the floor of Ned’s furniture workshop, his chin resting on his outstretched front paws while his sad brown eyes stared up at Asher in silent judgment.
For the past twenty minutes since he left Naomi locked inside the bedroom at the other end of the rambling house, Asher had been weathering Sam’s disapproval—and his own self-directed disgust. On a muttered curse, he picked up a detail chisel to refine some of the scrollwork on the piece of furniture he’d been trying to perfect for the better part of a year now.
The handcrafted headboard, once it was finished, would replace the old one in the master bedroom. Not that he didn’t appreciate Ned’s craftsmanship. Hell, before the old man became blind a few years ago and could no longer enjoy his favorite art form, he’d taught Asher everything he knew about coaxing beauty and function from even the most ordinary slab of wood. Ned’s furniture was sturdy and comfortable, much like the man, and although Asher appreciated his friend’s work, it was just that the bedroom didn’t feel like his so long as Ned’s belongings dominated the space.
Asher hadn’t been in any big hurry to make the transition, but he enjoyed having something productive to do with his hands, especially during the long stretches of daylight out in the desert.
And now, when it was all he could do not to think about the female being held against her wishes and her will in the other part of the house.
“You really think I wanted to lock her up like a damned prisoner?” he asked Sam, chipping carefully into one of the complicated flourishes he was carving into the headboard. “You think I don’t know what a fucking violation that is, taking away someone’s freedom?”
He knew better than most. For nearly the first half of his life, he’d been enslaved in a place he didn’t want to be, his life belonging to someone else. Dragos’s assassin program, the Hunter program, had been a brutal, cold existence. One Asher had endured from birth to early manhood, along with a number of other Breed males unfortunate enough to have been created in that sadistic madman’s lab.
Asher and the others like him—all of them half-brothers by blood and eternal brethren by the shared hell of their experience—had been kept enslaved by a shackle not even the strongest first-generation Breed male could break. There were times Asher could still feel the cold polymer of his ultraviolet-powered collar fastened around his neck.
There were moments when he still woke up bathed in icy sweat after nightmares—vivid, full-sensory memories—of what those UV collars could do to someone exploded with brutal clarity in his mind.
The Hunters’ enslavement had been so complete, none of them even had names. Every boy, teen, and man in the program was referred to simply as what he was—a Hunter. Just one of the many ways Dragos ensured none of them ever felt whole. They were property. Tools and instruments, not feeling beings. They were nothing more than lethal weapons to be called upon—or destroyed—at their master’s whim.
The names they called themselves came later, after the survivors escaped the lab and had to learn to make their own way out in the world beyond their collars and cages.
Asher blew out a harsh sigh, shaking off the talons of his past before they could drag him any deeper.
Sam was still staring at him expectantly, as though measuring Asher’s character by how long it was going to take him before he got up and let their beautiful hostage free.
Or maybe the judgment was coming from inside Asher’s own conscience.
At least Naomi’s captivity would be temporary. It couldn’t be more than a few hours until the Order stepped in to take better control of the situation. Then she would have her freedom again, though not back in Las Vegas for a while. Not until and unless the warriors deemed it was safe for her to return, which likely meant after Leo Slater and any other enemies she may have made had time enough to forget her.
Asher wished it would only be a matter of time before he was able to forget the female. Putting Naomi out of his mind would have been impossible even before he touched her and absorbed her painful memory of her childhood.
He couldn’t deny his attraction to her. With her dark, delicate outward beauty she was the loveliest woman he’d ever laid eyes on. But combined with her fiery, tenacious personality and quick intellect, not to mention her core of indefatigable inner strength, he’d be a goner if he had to spend more than a handful of hours in her company.
None of that made him feel like less of a bastard for the boorish way he’d handled things with her today.
He glanced at Sam and shook his head. “Go ahead and say it. I’m an asshole.”
The dog yawned and flopped onto his side to nap, having apparently given up on Asher’s sense of honor.
Asher grunted. “I guess that makes two us.”
Probably three, counting Naomi.
Given her tenacity and obvious courage, he’d expected to hear some protest or other sounds of rebellion coming from the bedroom at the other end of the house. But she’d been utterly quiet back there, almost resigned to everything he’d told her. He hadn’t hoped for her distress, but he hated to think the fight had gone out of her that easily.
And there was a part of him that wondered if her apparent capitulation was anything but. . . .
His phone buzzed on the workbench beside him. The display showed no number, but when he spoke with Scythe in Italy a few hours ago, the male told him to expect a call from one of the Order’s leaders in the area.
“Asher, this is Kade,” said the deep voice on the other end of the line. “I head up the Order’s command center in Lake Tahoe. I understand you’ve got a situation on your hands.”
“You could say that.” He gave the Order commander a run-down of everything that had happened in the desert last night, culminating with Asher’s discovery of Naomi’s Breedmate mark and his decision to bring her to his place.
“You did the right thing,” Kade assured him. “If this female’s put herself in the crosshairs of a son of a bitch like Leo Slater, there may be no place far enough for her to run. Slater’s not someone to fuck with. If the rumors are true, there’s hardly a square mile of desert surrounding Vegas that doesn’t contain at least a dozen graves filled with someone who either got in the way of his temper or his profits.”
Asher’s veins tightened to hear the Order warrior confirm what he already dreaded. “Naomi’s got both strikes against her after trying to steal from his casino last night.”
“Why’d she do it? She had to know if she failed, Slater was going to come after her with guns blazing. How much money is worth that kind of risk?”
“I don’t know,” Asher replied. “But I don’t think this is the first time she’s attempted something like this.”
“How so?”
“She was wearing a disguise, a damn good one too. She looked like a teenage boy when I first saw her. I never would’ve guessed she was a female, let alone a full-grown woman. If she’d been able to make off with whatever she attempted to steal from Slater’s casino, all she’d have to do is ditch the disguise and make her getaway. They’d be looking for school-age punks, not a beautiful woman with the face of an angel.”
“Face of an angel, eh?” Kade replied, a hint of amusement in his deep voice.
Asher cursed himself for the slip. His opinion of Naomi’s beauty had no relevance to the conversation. And if he didn’t already
know that Kade was blood-bonded to his own beautiful woman, his Breedmate Alexandra, Asher might have found even less humor in the warrior’s intrigued response.
“Does Naomi know she’s a Breedmate?”
He considered her less-than-enthused reaction, and her lack of surprise when he tried to explain what her birthmark meant. “She knows.”
Kade made an approving noise. “Has she been told you’re bringing the Order in to provide protection and a safe house for her?”
“Yes.”
“How did that go over?”
Asher grunted, a non-answer that no doubt expressed more than words could. “There is a man,” he told the warrior. “A human, I’m guessing. He’s in Las Vegas. He’s . . . important to her.”
“A lover?”
Asher’s molars clenched involuntarily. “I don’t know. Possibly.”
“Okay. We’ll sort everything out with her once we have Naomi in hand,” Kade said. “We’re still a good six hours from sundown, but I’ll send a team out to your place ASAP. In the meantime, just keep her calm and comfortable . . .”
The Tahoe area commander was still talking, but Asher’s ears were suddenly tuned to another sound. Sam heard it too. His droopy ears perked, he lifted his head and glanced at Asher in question as the unmistakable rumble of Ned’s old Chevy roared to life outside.
“Holy hell.”
“Something wrong?” Kade asked.
Asher’s feet were already moving, the phone still held to his ear. In a flash of movement, he was standing in the main living area of the house. The door to the master bedroom stood ajar. So did the door leading out to the porch.
“The pick-up plan’s going to have to wait,” he muttered to the other Breed male. “I’ve got a problem over here.”
“Something happen with the woman?” Kade’s voice held a grave edge. “Is Naomi all right?”
Asher scoffed under his breath. “Yeah, she’s fine. She’s stealing my damn truck. I’ll be in touch.”
He ended the call, daylight blasting in from the yard. The noontime desert sun scorched his eyes, and that unforgiving ultraviolet light drove him back in spite of the fury that all but spurred him to charge out and drag the foolish woman back inside. But he was too late to reach her.