“I don’t intend on leaving.” The vamp paused, her expression tight with a grimace. “You push me out, and I promise that your precious Ari will come to a dreadful end. Don’t threaten me.”
They glared at each other for a long moment, then suddenly, her lips perked into a smile once again. “I’ll be ready to go in an hour.”
When Naomi was halfway down the carpeted hallway, he stepped from his room. “Who were you before Padraig turned you?”
On the night she arrived, Quinn had given her the spare bedroom. With her hand on the doorknob, she stilled. “A survivor.”
“Am I supposed to play cat and mouse with you all the time? I asked you a straightforward question.”
Her shoulders sagged and she turned to face him. The self-assured expression she wore evaporated. Naomi blinked and her gaze slowly rose to the ceiling. “I graduated with a marketing degree and married my college sweetheart. We wanted children, and I became pregnant. My husband’s dream came true when a New Orleans law firm offered him a position. His cases called for long hours, or so I thought. Driving home from my job, I passed a motel one night and recognized my husband’s car.”
Quinn listened, the story going in a dark direction.
“I parked in front of the motel room next to his vehicle and was going to knock on the door. He had to be there for business. Instead of knocking, I peered through the crack between the curtains.”
“Adultery,” Quinn said.
“I saw my husband on his hands and knees on the bed, and one of the other attorneys with the firm fucking him up the ass.” She bit her lip. “I lost my mind and drove into the French Quarter. I needed to think. To lick my wounds. In a seedy bar filled with smoke and a lousy jazz singer, Padraig approached me. Somehow, he made me feel better. I know now he’d used the vamp whammy to alter my thoughts. I was a victim all over again.”
“It’s called hazing, not vamp whammy, and your child?”
Her hand involuntarily rose, covering her abdomen with splayed fingers. “Died. In the transition.”
Naomi shook her head. If she were a human, she’d probably be crying. As a vamp, she couldn’t.
“When I came out of my stupor, I realized I was in labor, but I wasn’t in a hospital. Instead, I’d been locked in the basement of the house I showed you and your brothers. There were other women like me in the breeding nest.”
This was the first time since her arrival that she spoke openly about the events leading up to and during her time with Padraig. Quinn wanted to keep her talking. “Other women?”
“Pregnant women.”
For Quinn, this connected Naomi’s creator with a breeding nest. Padraig was definitely the vamp they’d been looking for. “You recognized Ellie.”
She swallowed and nodded. “Padraig wanted more like her. I don’t know why, Quinn.”
He slowly rubbed the back of his neck. “How did Ellie and her mother escape?”
As if perturbed with herself, Naomi seamed her lips and fell silent.
“I’m a vampire. I can’t see the future. Answering my questions may help us find Padraig. None of us are safe if we don’t figure out what he’s up to. I need your help to do that.”
“And then you’ll kill me.”
He chuckled. “Haven’t you figured out by now, my brothers and I are different?”
She stared at the floor for a moment in thought.
“I won’t harm you, Naomi.”
“But you won’t keep me, either.”
Propping his hand on the moss-colored wall, he considered his answer. “No one can trust you right now. You have to earn that trust from us. You have a lot to learn. When you feel more in control, you’ll want your freedom.”
She eyed him. “I still feel like crawling out of my skin some days.”
He nodded with understanding. Bloodlust couldn’t be ignored, only tempered by will. “Yes, but it happens less, correct?”
She crossed one shapely leg across the other, standing naked and bold, her perfect breasts like full tear drops with plump berries for nipples. “I suppose.”
“It takes time to handle the urges. When you control your mind, the instinct you have to feed and—”
“Fuck,” she finished for him.
Female vamps didn’t mince words. “Those urges will still exist, but they won’t dominate your every thought. You have a new life. An immortal life. Maybe you didn’t choose this. Most don’t, but you’ll find your way.”
Naomi nibbled on her top lip for a moment. “Padraig thought about you and your brothers. I saw