Born of Fire

If he had one single brain cell left in his head, he’d deplete her memory and dump her in the nearest hole. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to be so cruel. Unlike her, he had a conscience about handing people over to those out to torture, kill, and maim them.

Sighing, he picked her up from the floor and carried her from his bedroom to the couch.

Damn, she weighed nothing. Didn’t the woman ever eat? If he were still a doctor, he’d run a nutrition diagnostic on her. She couldn’t be healthy at this weight.

But then, like him, she was a gutter rat and it was hard to find food in the sewers. That kind of desperate hunger never went away even when there was food around.

The whistle blared again. “Syn?”

He gave a small prayer of thanks Caillen Dagan had seen the right moment to call him. That boy had always had good timing . . .

With a final look at the shapely form draped across his couch, he crossed the room and picked up his earpiece that kept him in contact with the pilots who worked for him.

“Yeah, Dagan, what do you need?”

“Kasen just called and she’s accepted a run to Lyrix. She wants me to go with her and I don’t dare let her go alone. You know how rough that place is. Anyway, I was supposed to do the Prinum shipment for you tonight and since I can’t be in two places . . . Is there any way you can get someone to cover for me?”

Syn glanced back at the tracer on his couch, debating the sanity of leaving her.

“Syn?”

He frowned at Caillen’s anxious voice. Caillen hated asking for help and Syn had never been one to deny a friend in need. Besides, Caillen protected nothing like he did his sisters, and he respected the man’s devotion. If there was anything he understood, it was that family came first.

And Caillen was like a brother to him. “Sure, I’ll do it.”

“Thanks, bud, I owe you.”

Clicking off the link, Syn tossed it back on the counter and shook his head. Caillen had always been a bit waxed when it came to his sisters. So waxed that in all the years Syn had known him, he’d only met one sister, Kasen, and that had been by pure accident.

Something bad had happened to one of them when they were teenagers and it’d severely scarred Caillen. Syn had no idea what it was, since he tended not to pry into people’s personal lives.

He figured if Caillen wanted him to know, he’d volunteer it. Until then, it was none of his business.

A soft moan drew his attention back to his current problem. Intrigued by his catch, he returned to the couch.

He stared down at her, hoping he was wrong about her identity . . .

She didn’t look like a Dagan. At least not Caillen or Kasen, but then genes were screwy things. He didn’t really look anything like his sister or mother either.

Except for his eyes . . .

He flinched at the reminder. His father had punished him well for sharing that bit of his mother’s DNA. The sad thing was, his father had actually loved her and while they’d been together, he hadn’t been quite as psychotic. But after she ran off, he’d turned his hatred for her to the two kids the bitch had left behind.

He pushed that thought away and stared down at the tracer.

For now, she lay unmoving, her long, reddish brown braid falling over the cushions, down to the floor. Picking it up, he marveled at the silken texture. He’d never seen hair quite that shade. Dark red strands were entwined with gold, brown, black, and ash. Like rich mahogany.

The leather Armstitch battlesuit she wore was of an outdated style, probably around ten years old and by the fit of it, it looked like she’d bought it used. Still, the cut complimented her lithe, slender figure even if the color did nothing to accentuate her exotic features.

Damn, the woman was built taut and tight, and he could just imagine her wrapping those long, sexy limbs around his body while she . . .

Stop it, asshole.

That was easier said than done as he stared at her and his cock twitched. He traced the line of her full, rosy lips with his knuckle, taking delight in the slight, sensual tickle of her breath against his skin. He hadn’t been with a woman in awhile. Too damned long, now that he thought about it. An obvious fact given the way his body craved a woman who wanted his head. And not the one he wanted to share with her.

There was no real reason for the long stretch other than he didn’t like personal entanglements and women, while entertaining for a couple of hours, had a nasty habit of screwing him over any time he gave them a chance. The one thing Mara had taught him with crystal clarity—he couldn’t do enough right in his adult life to shut out all the wrong he’d done as a kid.

More to the point, no woman would ever forgive him for the genetic link he shared with a monster.

So he always kept his liaisons to a single night with women he didn’t know. Women he could keep at a safe, emotionless distance.

And for the last six months, he hadn’t been able to find any woman even remotely appealing.

Until now.

I am psychotic . . . just like my dad.