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 brows 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.
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 any 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.