Desolation Road (Torpedo Ink 4)

His voice dropped an octave. Turned sexual. Sensual lines were carved deep into his face. He brought the back of her hand up to his jaw and rubbed along the faint bluish bristles there. She tried not to breathe him into her lungs, but there was that faint scent of sandalwood she associated with him.

“I might, under the right circumstances.” Unfortunately, that was strictly the truth.

He sucked the tips of her fingers into the heat of his mouth and then bit down gently on them. “That’s the right answer. Thank you for looking past the club.”

“I need to know what you meant when you said they were all protecting me.”

“I’ll tell you, Scarlet, but you’re going to get pissed. Let me start at the beginning so things won’t be out of context and then you’ll understand. That way, we’ll have a chance. More than anything, I want a chance with you.”

She believed him. Over the last ten years she had worked very hard at developing the ability to learn how to listen to voices to discern the truth from lies. Maybe part of believing him was she desperately wanted him to be real. She glanced around them once more.

Absinthe had led her to the last table in the long row away from the street. The man she had pegged as the most dangerous sat at the table closest to them with the dark-haired woman and two other men. Now that she could see the men, they all looked dangerous. These men weren’t just average everyday businessmen or simple hell-raisers as Absinthe portrayed them.

Scarlet assessed them now that she was closer. She was definitely in over her head. She had trained with a man that others who were threatening spoke of in whispers, yet she knew these men in the Torpedo Ink colors were equally as dangerous, or more so. She should have recognized it in Absinthe immediately, but she’d been too enamored by him. She’d first seen him in a library, the most non-threatening place in the world.

“Every one of the charter members of Torpedo Ink, our club, was born in Russia. Our parents were opposed to the same candidate, a man who had a powerful friend by the name of Sorbacov, who commanded a secret military branch. Mostly the families were feared because most of them not only had money and influence, but because they had some form of psychic gift or talent that ran strong in their family. At that time, the government was secretly acknowledging that there was truth to these gifts and were trying to utilize them for the military, something these families were against.”

He had told her about Sorbacov when he disclosed the information about his murdered family. This was something that also rang true. She had looked up psychic gifts when she was trying to find ways to improve her own meager talents. She had traced the more detailed experiments back to Russia.

Master returned with two bottles of cold water. Up close he was daunting-looking. She could see tattoos running under his shirt and climbing down very muscular arms. He had faint scars on his face and neck.

“Scarlet, Master. Master, miledi, Scarlet.”

Master had a killer smile. “Nice to meet the woman who conquered the unconquerable.”

“Is that what I did?”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s exactly what you did.” Master saluted her and sauntered back to his seat.

Absinthe hadn’t protested, but his eyes looked more crystal than ever. His thumb slid over her inner wrist, landed directly on her pulse. “You seem very susceptible to him. Do you prefer him to me? Tell me the truth.”

“No woman would prefer him to you,” Scarlet blurted before she could stop herself. “All I can think about is you. I can’t sleep or eat. I just want to be with you. Sometimes I think I’d do anything for you and then I remember I barely know you and that it’s crazy to be so obsessed.”

He brought her wrist to his mouth and pressed a kiss over her heartbeat. “Funny that I feel exactly the same way about you.”

“Do you?” She was horrified that she’d told him the truth. What was wrong with her?

“Yes. I’m giving you things about myself I’ve never told anyone else. No one knows what I’m going to be telling you outside of those that are the charter members of Torpedo Ink. If you stay with me, you’ll know things about me that even they don’t know.”

That was a lure right there. Absinthe wasn’t the kind of man to just share everything about himself with everyone. He didn’t have relationships. She looked around at the other tables. If she were to make an educated guess, she doubted if any of these men or women really did. Or if they did, like Absinthe, they didn’t go into them easily or often.