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.”
