by Lara Adrian
“Your boyfriend’s Breed?” Slater gave a dry chortle. “I might’ve guessed your taste in men would be as questionable as your taste in roommates.”
God help her, she wanted to see Slater suffer. He deserved nothing less than a slow and protracted death—things she could only dream of delivering on him.
If Asher’s narrowed glower were anything to go by, he wanted Slater’s pain too.
He leapt into the air, a swift arc of motion that carried him over Naomi and Slater in less than a second. Slater looked up, gasping as he watched Asher vanish into the darkness.
“Holy shit! Where’d he go?”
The hold on Naomi’s hair fell away as Slater pivoted wildly with his weapon. And then Asher was in his face, grasping him by the throat.
Slater bellowed like a man possessed, squeezing the trigger over and over and over again. Sharp staccato clicks that didn’t release a single round.
“W-what the fuck?” he sputtered, disbelief in his wild eyes. “What’d you do to my gun?”
Asher raised a questioning brow at Naomi. She shrugged and smiled.
Slater’s grasp on his weapon went slack as Asher lifted him onto the toes of his polished loafers with the strength of one arm. Then he walked Slater backward across the rooftop, not stopping until they were very near the edge of the more than six-hundred-foot drop.
Slater clawed at Asher’s grip, but it was no use. “P-please,” he sputtered. “L-let me go. Oh, fuck. Oh, shit!”
Asher pushed him even closer to the ledge, lifting him until his feet barely skimmed the concrete of the rooftop. Slater’s face was a mask of horror, bleached white and slack. His cruel eyes rolled in his skull, as if his brain were torn between looking down at the Strip all that distance below him or into the emotionless face of the Breed male who literally held his fate in his hands.
“You can’t do this,” Slater gasped. “What do you want? I’ll give you anything!”
“Beg,” Asher said, inching him farther. Slater’s heels hung off the building now, his toes dancing on the very edge. “Beg for your life, and maybe I’ll let you live.”
“Please!” Slater wailed. “Yes, I’ll beg you! I’m pleading with you, please! Don’t do this to me!”
Asher shook his head. “Don’t beg me. Beg her.”
Slater swallowed, a strangled croak under the pressure of Asher’s fingers clenched around his windpipe. “P-please . . . Narumi, I am begging you! Forgive me. I loved your mother, I swear it. I never meant to hurt her. If I could take it back, I . . . I would take it all back, you have to believe me.”
“No. I don’t have to believe you.”
He choked on a blubbering sob. “Then let me make it up to you. Keep the money—all of it. You can keep it . . . I’ll give you more if that’s what you want.”
“It’s not what I want,” she replied tonelessly, feeling nothing for the man now. Not even hatred. He was nothing to her. Less than nothing. “I thought I wanted slow revenge on you after what you did to my mom. But then what you did to Michael—”
“I’ll confess to it all,” he blurted, desperation climbing as Asher continued to hold him aloft over the lights and noise of the Vegas Strip. He started sobbing in earnest now, his pride completely deserting him. “Please! For the love of God, tell me what you want from me!”
“Nothing.”
She shook her head and walked up closer to him, so he could see her face through the darkness—a face that looked so much like her mother’s—and know that Aiko Sato would live on in her, Narumi, long after Leo Slater and his empire were dust.
“I want nothing from you,” she told him. “And you’ll get nothing from me, either. Least of all, forgiveness.”
A low whine began to build inside him as he stared at her, fury rolling to a swift, hard boil. Spittle flew from his slack lips as he railed at her. “You cunt! You fucking little thief! I should’ve crushed your skull the same night I killed your whore of a mother. Goddamn it, let me go!”
Asher didn’t look to her for permission to see it done. His judgment on Slater was already passed; now all that remained was the sentencing. He tightened his hold and closed his eyes for a long moment.
Naomi realized what that was—that focused moment of hesitation.
He was savoring Slater’s final moments of fright, absorbing every facet of his terror and desperation so he would remember it forever.
Slater struggled frantically, spewing threats and curses. “You fucking bloodsucker. Let me go!”
Asher exhaled calmly and opened his eyes. “Okay.”
Then he dropped Leo Slater over the edge.
“Asher.” Naomi rushed to him, burying herself in his arms. The scent of his blood overwhelmed her. Everywhere she touched him, her fingers came away wet and sticky. “Oh, my God. What have they done to you?”
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m all right. I’ll live. Let’s get Penny and get out of here.”
Penny was just coming to inside the elevator when they returned from the roof. She threw herself into Naomi’s arms, shaking uncontrollably and weeping in relief that the ordeal was over.
It looked like a bomb had gone off in Moda’s lobby. The place was all but cleared out, except for a few shell-shocked stragglers, and numerous dead security personnel who lay in bloody pools where Asher had taken them down. Money and personal effects were strewn all over the floor, dropped by the hundreds of people who’d fled once the gunfire began.
And inside the nearly empty ruined casino, the musical chiming and racket of the slot machines competed with the blare of sirens from the arriving JUSTIS vehicles outside.
With Penny clinging to her, Naomi took her own comfort from the warmth of Asher’s arm draped around her shoulders as the three of them exited the casino.
“Excuse me, sir. Ma’am.” A female officer approached as soon as they stepped outside.
It was the same woman who’d responded to the call at Michael’s house earlier that day, Officer Reynolds. Naomi bristled at the sight of the woman, even though she couldn’t fault her for doing her job.
“Oh, hello. Ms. Fallon, isn’t it?”
At Naomi’s nod, the officer studied her with more than passing curiosity, then she turned her suspicious gaze on Asher. With his fangs extended and his eyes lit like coals, there was no mistaking him for anything other than Breed, but the law enforcement official didn’t even flinch.
“Can either of you tell me what happened in there tonight? From what we understand the machines malfunctioned and it sounds like casino management got a little . . . overzealous in their response to the situation.”
Asher grunted. “More or less.”
The officer looked him up and down. “You don’t look so good. We’ve got an ambulance out here, if you need medical attention. Or an emergency blood Host.”
He shook his head. “I don’t need any of those things.”
“What about you, Ms. Fallon?”
Naomi hugged Asher closer. “I just need to be home.”
They started to walk away and the JUSTIS officer cleared her throat. “Just one more thing, if you will.” When they paused, she gestured to the street several yards from the casino entrance. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the body that landed on the pavement a few minutes ago, would you? Hard to tell for sure, but we think it’s Moda’s owner, Leo Slater.”
Asher glanced at Naomi before meeting the officer’s narrowed stare. “After the amount of money he lost tonight, odds are good Slater probably jumped.”
The female snorted. “Suicide, then?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Asher replied.
The cop nodded. “All right, then. JUSTIS will be taking a look into this whole thing . . . but maybe not that closely,” she added, low under her breath.
And as she waved them off, Naomi glimpsed a peculiar mark on the officer’s wrist. The same teardrop-and-crescent-moon symbol she had under her chin.
“You all t
ake care now,” the officer called from behind them.
CHAPTER 26
Naomi stuck like glue to his side the whole drive back to the ranch. Asher knew his wounds were as severe as they were numerous, but they would have been much worse if he didn’t have some of her Breedmate blood inside him.
As bad as his condition was, that thought kept him grounded as he pushed Ned’s old truck to its limit in order to get Naomi and Penny home and safe as quickly as he could. His own needs could wait. After the night they’d just had—and having come too damned close to losing either one of them—he wasn’t taking any chances.
“Is he gonna be okay?” Penny whispered to Naomi as they arrived at the house. “Can vampires die?”
“Asher’s not going to die.” Naomi cupped the girl’s worried face, but turned a solemn look on him in the low lights of the dashboard. “Not as long as I have something to say about it.”
They headed toward the house, Naomi tucking herself under his arm. He didn’t mistake the concern in her careful steps, nor in the steady pound of her heartbeat. Her love for him buoyed him, as much as her petite body wedged tightly against him propped him up as he hobbled onto the porch.
“You have a dog?” Penny’s eyes lit up the instant she spied Sam waiting to greet them. She had a decent-sized knot on the back of her head from Slater’s assault in the elevator, but all of the day’s traumas seemed fleeting for the girl in the face of the old hound’s eager reception. She raced to the screen door ahead of Asher and Naomi. “Look at him, he’s so cute!”
Even Asher had to admit, if begrudgingly, that the dog was a welcome sight after the hellish past few hours. They stepped inside, Asher leaning heavily on Naomi. His blood dripped in multiple puddles on the floor, making Sam whine and tilt his big head at him in wary curiosity.
Naomi gently cupped the girl’s head with her free hand. “Penny, will you do me a favor? Take Sam into the kitchen over there and see if he needs some food or water while I help Asher clean up.”
“Sure. C’mon, Sam!” She headed off, led by the enthusiastic dog who had never met a stranger.
Asher grunted. “She’s resilient.”
“Most kids are,” Naomi said. “That’s the only way they can survive a lot of the time. Right now, I’m most concerned about you.”
She marshalled him into the bathroom and sat him down on the closed toilet. “Sit still,” she commanded him, turning to search the cabinet for a clean washcloth and towels and a pair of scissors, which she used to cut away his blood-soaked, grime-stained T-shirt.
He let her work, telling himself it was simply for the pleasure of watching her tend him, but the truth was he’d taken a lot of hits. The gunshot wounds hadn’t killed him, but they sure as hell would have slowed him down or dropped him if it hadn’t been for her blood, feeding his body the way no amount of human blood ever could.
“You saved me, Naomi.”
She slanted him a glance and shook her head. “Not yet, I haven’t.”
“Yes, you have. When I stopped on that desert road a few nights ago, I thought I was saving you. But I was wrong. It was you who saved me.”
He couldn’t resist reaching out to stroke her black hair, hooking some of the ebony strands behind her ear so he could see her face and watch those tender, almond eyes gaze at him in such focused attention.
And love.
It humbled him to see that emotion directed at him, to feel it pulsing and alive within his bond to her.
“You need blood, Asher.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “But more than that, I just need you.”
He curved his fingers around her nape and drew her close for his kiss. He could have gone on for hours without letting her go, but the worst of his wounds were still bleeding and the arousal making his heart pound even harder wasn’t helping.
“Drink from me,” she urged him, drawing back and gathering her hair away from her neck. “Take all you need.”
God help him, he didn’t have the will to refuse. He sank his fangs into the soft column of her throat and drank, then drank some more. Her blood rejuvenated him instantly, mending torn flesh and muscle, repairing bullet-shattered bone. The rounds embedded in him were pushed out one by one. They clinked against the bathroom tiles as they fell.
On a shivery sigh, Naomi stroked her fingers in his hair and held him close as he gave himself over to the power of her healing, intoxicating red cells. As his body knit back together, desire roared through him.
He wanted her, but not here. Not like this. When he made love to her next, he wanted to do it slowly, reverently. He wanted to make love to her as his mate.
He groaned and swept his tongue over the twin punctures, sealing them closed.
“I need you,” he whispered against her skin, his voice rough with emotion. “Not just in my blood, Naomi. But in my life forever.”
He pulled back and took her face in his palms, his transformed eyes bathing her milky skin in a warm amber glow. “I love you so much. For a few minutes tonight, I didn’t know if I was ever going to be able to tell you that again. When I saw Slater take you up in that elevator and I wasn’t able to reach you in time . . . fuck. I was so afraid I was going to lose you.”
She shook her head, leaning forward to kiss him. “I love you too, Asher. I never want anything to separate us.”
“Nothing will,” he assured her, then blew out a harsh breath. “I was so damn proud of you tonight. Even though it scared me shitless to see you take Slater on the way you did, I was in awe of you, the fact that you don’t run from any challenge. No matter how much I might wish you would.”
She laughed softly, pressing her forehead to his. “I guess I’m a lot like my mom. It’s strange how much I realize that now. I thought she was weak, but Slater’s confession proved just the opposite. She stood up to him. In the end, she took him on too. And he killed her for it.”
Asher cursed, fury flaring in his gut. “I wanted to make him suffer in his final moments.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I saw what you did . . . with your gift.”
He couldn’t deny it. “That was the first time I ever savored a death. Now, every time I think about what he did to you and to Michael, even to your mother, I’ll remember his horror. I’ll remember his hopelessness and I’ll like it.”
“Asher.” She caressed his cheek, her gaze tender. Then she bent her head and began to kiss the patches of his chest and torso that weren’t riddled with mending wounds.
“You’ve healed me, Naomi. In places you can’t see too. But you’ve also ruined me. I never want to know what it’s like to live a day without you in my life.”
She looked up at him. “I’m not going anywhere. This is home. Right here,” she said, lifting her head to kiss his mouth. “And right here.” She placed a kiss to the base of his throat, then another to the center of his chest, where his heart banged strongly behind his sternum. “And right here.”
Asher smirked. “Keep going. I’m all yours.”
She laughed and stood up, taking his hand as she reached into the shower and turned on the water. “Let’s work on the rest of you first. But I definitely want to come back to that idea.”
CHAPTER 27
Naomi stepped out of the master bedroom wearing Asher’s T-shirt, her hair still damp from the shower. As much as she wanted to lose herself in the comfort and passion of his arms, her thoughts were also on the little girl inside the house with them.
She crept up the hallway and smiled to find Penny sound asleep on the sofa, Sam’s big body wedged tight against her on the thin cushions. The child slept as if she hadn’t had a good rest for weeks, and maybe she hadn’t. As quietly as she could, Naomi walked over and retrieved a crocheted afghan and placed it over both the snoring dog and the girl.
She stepped back, simply gazing at the peaceful scene, her heart clenched with contentment.
“Hey.” Asher’s low whisper caressed her senses as he came to stand beside her in nothing but a lo
ose-fitting pair of gym pants. His wounds were all but vanished now, the worst of them nothing but raised pink marks on his golden skin. “Sam’s in his glory.”
Naomi nodded. “I can’t stop thinking about the rest of them. The other kids back in the city.”
He placed a soft kiss to her shoulder. “We’ll go back tomorrow night, as soon as the sun’s down.”
“What if we don’t find them all, Asher?”
“Then we’ll go back again the next night, and the one after that. Until we bring them all home.”
“Home,” she murmured, turning to look at him. “I like the sound of that.”
“Me too.” He lifted her chin and brushed his lips over hers. “Come with me, Naomi. The girl will be asleep until morning.”
He brought her back to the bedroom and closed the door silently behind them.
His kisses were passionate, yet tender. Reverent. Worshipful.
As weary as she was from their ordeal, his mouth on hers awakened a feverish desire. She wanted him. Each touch left her on fire. Each kiss left her desperate for more.
And he wanted her too.
Naomi slid her hand beneath the slack waistband of his pants and took his length in her grasp. He was pure steel as she stroked him, yet velvet and hot against her palm. When he reached under her T-shirt to caress her breasts, she sagged against him. Then he moved his hand to the drenched and aching juncture of her thighs and she was lost, whimpering softly with longing.
There was no hesitation once he brought her to their bed. He entered her with a long, slow stroke that nearly made her come on the spot. They made love quietly, chasing a swift, shared release that left both of them shuddering with the intensity of their need for each other.
It was some time before either of them moved or spoke. Naomi had never felt more joy in all her life. Nor more fulfillment. But her thoughts kept coming back to Slater and the unforgivable price Michael had paid for participating in her pointless quest for vengeance.
The souvenir tote bag full of Slater’s money sat in the corner of the bedroom. She stared at it, hating the sight of it now.
