He yanked her hair, wrenching her head back until she was staring up into his cold reptile eyes. “No, Narumi, I didn’t have anyone kill her. I kept that pleasure all for myself. I took her far out to the Mojave and bashed her head in with a tire iron. Then I left her for the vultures and the other garbage eaters to fight over.”
Naomi’s gag choked out of her. Even though she had suspected something close to this all along, hearing him say it—hearing the satisfaction in his voice as he described how he’d brutalized a woman who had truly, foolishly, loved him—made the bile surge up her throat.
“You sick fuck. You monster!”
“It’s been great reminiscing, Narumi, but I’ve got to fly.” The fist that was wound tight in her hair twisted even harder now. And that pistol jabbed cold and hard against her temple. He nudged her once they were standing in front of the roof access door. “Open it.”
She did as he ordered, wishing for the chance to reach up and touch the gun that was cocked and loaded at her head. She’d never tried to finesse a weapon before, but dammit if there was any hope at all, she was going to try.
A warm breeze gusted at them from atop the fifty-two story casino. Overhead the sky was inky black, the stars out-glittered by the lights of the surrounding Strip. The moon cast a milky glow onto the roof’s concrete surface, and glinted off the black helicopter that sat on the large bullseye circle of the helipad. The rotors were unmoving, no sign of anyone in the cockpit.
At her back, Slater let out a curse. “Where the hell is my pilot? Barnes!” he shouted. “Why the fuck isn’t this bird ready to fly?”
“Barnes had another commitment.”
Asher’s deep voice was an unearthly growl coming from somewhere behind them.
With his hand still grasping Naomi’s hair, Slater whirled around, holding her in front of him like a shield. “What the fuck?”
Standing atop a large air conditioning unit, Asher looked like something out of a horror movie. Immense, seething, otherworldly with hisglyphschurning everywhere they were visible on his body. His eyes were molten coals, throwing off heat like a furnace. His lips were peeled back in a murderous snarl, baring his teeth and the enormous dagger-sharp lengths of his fangs.
He’d never looked more formidable than he did in that moment, but Naomi saw the way his chest labored with each breath.
And he was dripping blood from more wounds than she could count.
“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.”
