Twice, by the slot machines, he’d seen young women that could’ve passed for Naomi from behind. Gleaming raven hair and petite frames, but when they’d turned around, the resemblance ended.
He had to get her face out of his head—an almost impossible task since he’d thought of little else for all of the hours he was trapped inside waiting for dusk. Besides, she was clearly a pro when it came to disguises and blending in. She wouldn’t look anything like herself tonight. He had to think outside the box. Think like Naomi.
Another half hour went by without a sign of her anywhere at or near the slot machines. To continue his covert search of the casino floor, he moved on to the Spanish Twenty-One table closest to the pit of roulette wheels. Sliding a pile of chips onto the betting circle, he let his gaze trail over the tables and the players gathered around them.
It wasn’t until he caught sight of a little old woman across the floor from him, her back and shoulders hunched as if from the late stages of osteoporosis, that he stopped cold and stared.
Gray-haired and slow-moving, she wore a long dark skirt and a similarly bland tunic and flowy wrap that hung off her slight frame. He couldn’t see her face. Not any part of it, as she was walking away from him toward the ladies’ room along with a herd of chattering middle-aged women in matching bright pink baseball caps and team jackets emblazoned with embroidered dice on the back.
Asher stared so intensely that more than one of the cackling pink ladies turned uneasy looks over their shoulders, their most primal instincts sensing a predator hidden and watching within the throng. Not the little old woman, though. She kept walking, head down and shoulders up.
Asher felt a growl build from deep inside him. He would never mistake her scent. He picked it out from among the other heavier perfumes, spilled liquor, cigarette smoke, and countless stale smells that permeated the air of the crowded casino.
Just the tracest whiff of her warm skin beneath all of the clothing and artifice had all pistons firing inside him at once. Unbidden, carnal images of Naomi and him together blasted him in a rush. The two of them on his bed, him kneeling between her thighs, her head thrown back in ecstasy as he entered her.
His fangs throbbed in his gums and he sealed his lips together in a grim scowl to conceal them.
Not good.
He struggled to push down both the inappropriate thoughts and the sudden, persistent swelling of his cock.
The petite crone had disappeared around the corner into the restrooms and he swallowed hard past the grit in his throat, finally able to think straight again.
He told the dealer to put a marker on his spot and abandoned his cards to move in closer, until he was ten yards away from the restroom entrance. He took up a vantage point off to the side and waited, having half a mind to barge in after her. But the last thing he needed—the last thing either of them needed—was to create a scene. And there was the smallest chance that the old woman actually wasn’t Naomi.
An infinitesimal chance at best.
If that wasn’t her, he’d be damned. Hell, he probably was either way. He’d fed only a few days ago, but just the sight of the female had made him wild with the need to have her under his mouth. To close his teeth and fangs over that lean, silky neck and—
“Excuse me,” a timid male voice murmured behind him after he’d been standing there for several minutes.
He wheeled around to find a ginger-haired human in his mid-twenties waiting awkwardly, a nervous smile pinned to his face.
Asher glared back at him silently, irritated at having been interrupted.
“You’re, um . . . you’re standing in front of the ATM,” the other man murmured, his voice climbing an octave as he stared up at Asher, looking close to pissing himself.
Asher snarled and moved out of the way.
He turned back to the restroom as the pink ladies and a few other women who’d also been inside the restroom filed back out to the casino. No sign of Naomi, though. Impatient, he stepped far enough behind a large decorative column that the majority of his bulk was out of sight. Best case, he’d be able to intercept her without her bolting or bringing down the whole house with a scream or a struggle once she saw him there.
But he’d take her either way. He wasn’t leaving Vegas without her safely in hand.
As he stood in wait, another few minutes went by. Followed by a few more. Foot traffic in and out of the ladies’ room continued in a steady stream, but Naomi was nowhere to be seen.
Son of a bitch.
She’d ghosted him.
He wasn’t sure if it had been pure luck that she’d slipped out of the bathroom in those few seconds he’d been in conversation with the other man, or if she’d somehow sensed him at her heels and successfully dodged him. All he knew in his gut was that Naomi was not that bathroom anymore.
He bit back a string of curses, if only barely.
She couldn’t run far. Not this time. He’d found her once—or at least he thought he had—and he’d find her again. She was cagey and clever, but he was relentless. And if he had to tear the whole place apart tonight in order to save her from herself, he damned well would.
Because whether Naomi realized it or not, she was his.
To protect,he reminded himself sternly.
