“My team will figure things out without my help. They’re already close. You have to make the decision whether or not we’re your enemy. We’re not and have never been your enemy, but you need to know that for yourself. You have to know that I’m with you all the way, Azami. I don’t give my word lightly and I know you’re the one. The only one for me.”
“Is it possible that Whitney somehow paired me to you?” she asked.
He could hear the underlying horror and fear in her voice. He shook his head. “I don’t see how he could have. In any case, maybe his gift is in the knowing which couples belong. I belong to you and it has little to do with sex. I’m attracted to you, yes, that drive is there and I think that’s very obvious to you. But it’s so much more than that. I think about you, Azami, and you make me smile. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a woman, and I’ve spent a hell of a long time looking. Give me this chance.”
She regarded him for what seemed an eternity, her serene demeanor hiding her thoughts, but he could feel the tension in her. She moistened her lips and his heart stuttered. She’d come to a decision and for one moment he wanted to stop her. If she crushed every chance, he’d have to abide by her decision—but he wasn’t certain he could. He knew with absolute certainty that they should go through life together, and if he couldn’t have her, no other woman would measure up in his mind.
“I was useless to him, remember?” This time she let the hurt show in her voice. The child was still there. “I wasn’t worth stitching up properly. There was no way to correct the damage he did to my body.” Or my mind.
She poured into his mind, filling him with her warmth and her emotions. She was every bit as afraid to end what they had as he was.
Sam knew he was using a delaying tactic, but it was still important. “When you have so many amazing gifts, why didn’t Whitney value you more?”
Regret and guilt flashed in her eyes. “I hid everything from him. I suppose I didn’t really understand that if I showed him a psychic gift he wouldn’t use me for experiments. I could hear the other girls screaming sometimes and he knew what they could do. He felt sick to me, and it grew each time I was around him. I think I instinctively hid any talent and he couldn’t detect one. That must have made him crazy because he prided himself on knowing who was psychically gifted and who wasn’t.”
“You were just a toddler.” He reached to pull her across his lap and fire took his breath as he stretched his abdomen, reminding him he wasn’t 100 percent. He breathed away the pain and held her to him, wanting to comfort the child as much as the woman.
“I knew when he touched me that something was wrong. I knew he didn’t love any of us and never would. I hid my talents instinctively and then later, when he was using my body for experiments, I thought that was what he wanted from me. I probably was half crazy with fear all the time. A child doesn’t think the way adults do.”
“Surely you don’t blame yourself for what Whitney did to you,” he said, nuzzling the top of her hair. He couldn’t detect any white hairs, but she’d probably dyed her hair right before visiting the compound so there would be no roots for anyone to see.
Azami turned her head to look at him. “I was a child. Of course I blamed myself. He was so cold toward me. I never once got a smile from him like some of the other girls. I never felt worthy. It was almost a relief that I was used for experiments because at least then he told me I was useful. That was part of his brilliance—to withhold love and approval so we would do anything to try to please him. A part of me knew he was completely mad, but the child just wanted his love and approval.”
Again Sam experienced that tremendous flare of rage. It roared through him bright and hot, shaking him with the savage intensity. He was a thinking man, not a primal warrior, but he felt like one in that instant. He needed to kill Whitney, to wipe him from the face of the earth and out of Azami’s memories. How could any human being traumatize an infant to the point that her hair would actually go white when it was naturally black?
He brushed a kiss on top of her head, helpless to do anything but try to silently comfort her. He couldn’t imagine what her father had found in that alley, a child so torn and weak with a mop of white hair and skin over bones.
“I watch Lily and Ryland with their son, and the way they treat him is so different—the complete opposite,” Azami said. “He’s a happy boy. I can feel the love they have for him and the way he responds.”
Of course that would be important to her. He should have known she would check on the condition of an infant in the care of Whitney’s daughter.
“We protect the compound so that there’s no chance of Whitney getting his hands on one of the babies. He’s tried, and we know he’ll try again.”
“He won’t stop,” Azami said. She shifted away from him. “Sam, you know we won’t work. I think about it all the time and there are far too many complications. I have a company, my brothers, you have your team and your family.”
“That’s logistics, Azami, and you know it,” he said. “If we want this, we’ll find a way. There’s always a way. You’re afraid, and it’s not of my team, or what I do, or even me.”
She slipped off his lap, back onto the floor, the movement graceful, flowing water over stone. There wasn’t even a whisper of sound, reminding him what she was in that beautiful package—a lethal weapon. She didn’t need guns or arrows; her father had trained her to be a woman to be reckoned with and given her the honor and code of the samurai. In his way, her father had ensured that Whitney could never again torture her.
Yet Whitney still lived in her head. Sam could feel the man as sure as if he was standing in the room with them. He colored everything in Azami’s life whether she knew it or not. She stood, her head up, the woman her father had taught her to be, facing him, eyes steady, mouth firm, shoulders straight, unapologetic for who she was, yet she was reluctant to let him all the way into her life. And that was all Whitney.
Sam waited, his pulse pounding in his ears. He could taste her in his mouth, feel her rushing through his veins, and yet she was so far from him.
“Azami Yoshiie is an illusion,” she finally whispered, her voice filled with sorrow and despair. “From my dyed hair to my seemingly perfect body. Azami doesn’t really exist.”