GhostWalkers 10 - Samurai Game

I hid my talents instinctively and then later, when he was using my body for experiments, I thought that was what he wantedfrom 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 ofWhitney 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.”
    She was telling him something so difficult she trembled in the telling, but still, she held that firm, upright stance, with that serene expression on her face even though her eyes were alive with pain. She swallowed once, a hard lump he could clearly tell, but she didn’t waver. He almost stoppedher. Azami was a woman of courage, and yet telling him this dark secret took a terrible toll on her. It was all he could do to sit on the bed silently and wait for her to reveal the one thing she knew would keep them apart.
    Very slowly her hand went to the hem of her shirt. His breath caught in his throat as she lifted it, revealing her flat, defined abdomen and the soft skin there. He knew the