Now, her left temple was pounding like a drum, her senses foggy after the pistol-whipping that had been the crap icing on an already shitty predicament.
At first, when Leo Slater’s henchmen had confronted her on the elevator at the casino, she’d been pissed at herself for getting caught, but it had never occurred to her that she wouldn’t survive the night. Shocking how quickly things had escalated. Even when they took her straight down to the basement and out through the secret underground entrance to the garage, she was confident she’d squeak through somehow. But then Gordo, the big guy with the noxious breath, plowed his fist into her forehead and it was lights out.
She woke up as they were hauling her out of the trunk in the middle of the desert under a black sky. Not good.
But even then, she hadn’t given up on herself. She was skilled at getting out of tight spaces and dangerous fixes. Hell, she’d survived so much in her twenty-six years that nine lives wouldn’t have cut it. She was sure she’d been born with a dozen-plus. It was only the sight of the gangsters’ guns and the tomblike silence of the Mojave’s back forty that made her worry that her streak of seemingly endless luck had finally run out.
She’d always been wired for fight over flight, but she clued in pretty quick that her only hope of escape was to fake meekness and lull the three idiots into a sense of complacency as they marched her out onto the sand. All she had to do was play her role and bide her time until she had a chance to make a break on foot. It had been a good plan—her only plan, really—until Gordo’s buddy got impatient and smashed the butt of his Beretta against her cheek.
The last thing she remembered was dropping to the ground and pleading for them to spare her. Some of that had been part of her game, but as her vision had begun to fill with stars and her skull became thick with cotton, she realized a moment of true fear.
Odds were damned good she was about to die.
Thenheshowed up.
Not some white knight riding in to save her, but a Breed male. Big. Grim. Lethal.
Possibly the only thing worse than eluding certain death at the hands of Slater’s henchmen was the fact that she’d been spared by an even bigger threat to her existence.
She wasn’t sure why the immense vampire had come to her rescue, but she wasn’t about to stick around and find out. Whatever his reasons, she wasn’t keen on offering up her carotid in payment.
Not to mention anything else the snarling immortal might have in mind.
So, she was back to Plan A.
Run and hide, then figure out a way to get back to Las Vegas in one piece.
If only her legs were on board with that plan. Every step over the hard, uneven sand seemed to require Herculean effort, like trudging through molasses. The night was as dark as pitch, but she was slowed even more by the fogging of her vision and the incessant drumbeat inside her battered skull. Nausea rolled over her, making her stagger.
“Suck it up, buttercup,” she berated herself under her breath. “You’ve gotten through worse shit than this. Just keep moving. Keep pushing.”
Buoyed by the self-directed pep talk, she put her head down and took another few steps . . . only to run into a massive wall that seemed to materialize out of the cool night air.
Except this wall was warm. Hot, even. And constructed of muscled flesh and immovable, solid strength. And this wall smelled good too. Dark spices mixed with clean soap and something less easy to define. She breathed the scent in and moaned in reflex at the vast improvement over anything else she’d been inhaling all night.
“There’s no need to run.” The deep voice jolted her mind back to cold reality.
Holy shit!
She leapt back, then pivoted around and bolted in the opposite direction with everything she was worth.
But there he was in front of her again, blocking any hope of escape.
She drew up short, huffing and sagging, on the verge of passing out.
“I said stop running, girl.”
“Fuck you!”
She tried to dodge him, but his big body was faster. Unearthly so. “You realize you’re only wasting what little energy you have left, don’t you?”
Was he taunting her, or just stating the sad facts? Either way, she didn’t like it.
She glanced up, forced to tilt her head so high in order to see his scowling face that the hood of her sweatshirt jacket fell back off her head.
Immediately, she wished she hadn’t looked. It wasn’t that he was ugly, as much as she wanted to pretend he was. Not quite handsome, but arrestingly masculine. Compelling on a primal level that made even her contused senses respond with unwanted appreciation.
His face was rugged and shadowed beneath the shaggy brown waves of his overgrown hair, as though Heaven’s sculptor had taken a rough-hewn block of stone and chiseled away until he was almost done and then stopped. Hard planes, sharp angles, square chin.
