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. . . .
