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.
With one arm raised to shield his face, he peered out at the yard and driveway.
Ned’s truck was already halfway to the desert road, bouncing over potholes and kicking up clouds of yellow dust as Naomi made her escape under the cover of broad daylight.