Samurai Game

“No, she wanted to purchase one of our satellites. I had turned down her father. I had to meet her and decide whose side she was on.”

Sam believed her. “Has Whitney contacted you since he…” He trailed off, not wanting to say the words. It had to hurt, being discarded, even though Whitney was a monster. He was the only parent the orphan girls had known. He’d collected them from orphanages when they were mere infants.

“Threw me into the streets?” she finished for him. There was no bitterness in her voice. “It was the best thing that could have happened to me. My father loved me and taught me how to believe in myself-and believe in the world again. He gave me an honorable code and a way to make a difference. I had nearly fifteen years with a man who respected life and fought evil. He gave me every opportunity and showed me that, although many doors might be closed to me, there were other honorable paths for me to follow.”

Sam frowned. He heard that hurt, wistful note in her voice when she’d said, “many doors might be closed to me.” What did she long for?

The pad of his thumb slid over her lips. “How can any door be closed to you, Azami?”

That threw her-just for a moment he saw that sudden insecurity and it shocked him. Azami was a woman of confidence. She was intelligent and a skilled warrior. What could she long for that could be unattainable to her? Every protective instinct he had welled up. His hand curled tighter in her hair. White hair? What would that be like for a child of Asian descent? To be so traumatized that even the hair on her head betrayed her?

“Azami, I want to know. Show me the worst you have.” He could only hope his expression stood for him, the sincerity of his voice. He leaned forward to press his forehead against hers. “I don’t know your world or your cultures. I know this is too fast and you don’t trust it, but we fit. You and me. We fit together perfectly. When you’re in my mind, there’s no loneliness, only warmth and security. We have this one chance and everything around us doesn’t matter. Together we can do anything at all. Accomplish anything. I know it. I can’t explain it, but I know it to be truth. Show me. Let me be the one to show you that you can have everything you want with me.”

“You don’t know me, Sam. I’m not the woman you think I am.”

He lifted her head with his fingers beneath her chin and looked her in the eyes. “I attended a meeting today with my team. There were three people connected to Whitney’s pipeline to the White House who supposedly died in accidents. I don’t think they were accidents. You have every reason, just as we do, to try to stop Whitney. You can teleport, you’re highly skilled with weapons, including a blowgun, and if someone told me to take a shot in the dark as to who might be responsible for those deaths… Well, honey, my money would be on you.”

She didn’t blink, and he admired her all the more for that expressionless serenity she faced adversity with. She reached out with both hands and framed his face, all the while looking him in the eyes. “Do you wish to know the truth for yourself or for your team?”

“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