Unleashed (Unmemorable Series Book 2) Read online

  “If I have to, yes.”

  She turned away to hook the towel on a rack and placed the shampoo and conditioner in the shower. Their relationship bloomed out of nowhere and she still didn’t have a handle on how it went from zero to sixty so fast. Cain shocked the hell out of her when he tracked her to California and told her in no uncertain terms that they were stuck with each other. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that, especially when she was a freak. Cain had money, manners and power. He could have anyone, yet he chose a girl that he couldn’t remember unless he wore her hair around his wrist or drank her blood. It was so jacked up.

  “You promised me you’d try,” he said quietly.

  “I am trying.”

  “You’re afraid.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid!” she said and her voice echoed around them. “There’s us, the Unmemorables, the Battalion . . . Now we’re gonna try to lift a curse that’s been on the Unmemorables for centuries? Come on! Plus, some of the Unmemorables like being the way we are.”

  Cain crowded her against the vanity and stared at her with an unreadable expression. “Do you want to break the curse?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Because of Cain. Because she wanted to be normal. “You know why.”

  His expression softened slightly. “You’re the only female Unmemorable in history. That has to mean something. We have nothing to lose.”

  “You make it sound so simple,” she grumbled.

  “It is simple. Women complicate everything.”

  She scowled, but couldn’t keep it up when he smiled at her. “I honestly don’t know what you’re doing with me.”

  He drew her close. “How can I resist the woman that pelted me with rum cake and shot me with a pellet gun? Don’t you know that’s a major turn on?”

  Even as she began to giggle, he kissed her. It was a deep, reassuring kiss that made her moan in the back of her throat.

  “Excuse me!”

  Cain whirled away and melted into the wall. Raven’s heart drummed in her chest. She smoothed her puckered lips and stared at her supervisor who stood in the doorway of the bathroom. Rose’s eyes were trained on the wall where Cain had disappeared with her mouth hanging open.

  Chapter Two

  Raven swallowed and attempted to look casual. “Hi, Rose.”

  “I thought I saw...” she sputtered.

  “Saw what?”

  “You were kissing a man.”

  “What man?” Raven looked around to emphasize her point and frowned for good measure.

  There was a mixture of disbelief and confusion on Rose’s face. As her supervisor grasped for a logical explanation, inspiration struck. For the first time in her life, Raven decided to use her power to get out of this. She widened her eyes and pointed behind Rose to the bedroom.

  “What’s that?” she shouted.

  Rose jumped and whirled. “What?”

  Raven waited while Rose searched the room. When she turned back to Raven, she was rubbing the space between her brows and looked completely baffled.

  “What did I come in here for?” Rose muttered.

  Raven blew out a breath. She wasn’t sure how her power worked exactly, but it seemed that whenever an Unmemorable was involved, people didn’t remember the particulars.

  Rose tapped her pencil on the clipboard and gave her an inquiring look. “Is this your first room?”

  Raven nodded and Rose walked around the room to inspect her work. The supervisor made notes on her clipboard, but otherwise seemed satisfied. Raven keyed a code on the guest phone to alert housekeeping that the room was finished. Raven followed Rose to the exit. Her supervisor paused when she caught sight of the men in the hallway. The Unmemorables didn’t even attempt to act casual as they watched with their arms crossed. Raven shot them a threatening look over Rose’s shoulder.

  “Do you know these men?” Rose asked under her breath.

  “No,” Raven lied.

  “If there’s trouble, call security,” Rose said before she scampered off.

  Raven pushed the cart out of her way and slammed the guest door behind her. “What the hell are you good for if you don’t warn us that someone’s coming into the room?” Raven demanded.

  “She’s not part of the Battalion,” Luester said, gesturing after Rose.

  Raven pointed a finger at him. “Either do your job or not at all.” Before he could come up with a snide comment, she looked at Jackie. “And what about you?”

  Jackie shrugged. “Cain deserves it. Plus, the supervisor wouldn’t remember anything once she looked away from you.”

  “But she might remember a guy that ran through a freaking wall!”

  Jackie looked at Cain with a wicked grin, clearly unrepentant. She tried to run over the Unmemorable’s toes with her cart, but they were nimble and on guard for retaliation. In her next room, she was happy to find it occupied since it forced the guys to stay outside. Normally, she didn’t like cleaning when the guest was in the room. It usually meant that the guest was paranoid or a pervert. This lady was neither. She was recovering from a bachelorette party and apologized for the smell of vomit that lingered in the air. Raven was relieved the guest made it to the toilet each time. She cleaned around the poor woman, sprayed an air freshener that smelled like oranges and scooted out of the room within fifteen minutes. The guest was in bed and too miserable to bear anything louder than the occasional squeak of Raven’s shoes on tile.

  Her last three rooms were checkouts, which usually took an hour apiece, depending on how messy the guest was. The first checkout was clean. Businessman, she figured from the minimal use of anything except for the desk. The second checkout looked like a tornado ripped through it. The lampshades had gobs of jelly on them, goldfish crackers were smashed everywhere and the trashcans overflowed with takeout trays, dirty diapers and filthy wipes smeared with stuff.

  When Jackie barged in behind her, she turned to him. “Since you’re here, why don’t you empty the trash?”

  Jackie shot her a look of comical, wide-eyed horror. She crossed her arms and waited. Although the Unmemorables lived with a curse, they flipped it to their advantage and lived a privileged life. Jackie could do whatever he wished (legal and illegal) and walk away without fear of arrest or prison. The Unmemorables were rolling in money and she didn’t want to know where it came from. An Unmemorable could walk into a bank, look right into the camera and walk out with millions. She knew from experience that any camera would power down or take blurry images of an Unmemorable.

  While Jackie decided whether he should empty the trash, she went into the bathroom. She stopped in the doorway when she saw the tub covered in a layer of bronzer. There were handprints of some kind of Gerber food everywhere and the smell made her take a hasty step back. She walked past Jackie who was still frozen in place and pulled out bags, spray and sponges. She attacked the bathroom with vigor and was sweating by the time she finished. Raven grabbed clean towels and amenities while Jackie finally got up the courage to help. He gagged as he tipped the pile of dirty diapers into the large trash bag attached to her cart. The smell made the rest of the men scatter and she pat Jackie on the shoulder as he coughed in the sink.

  “It gets easier,” she said.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” he croaked.

  Jackie wasn’t good for anything else after that. After he emptied the trash, he staggered into the hallway and disappeared. Men were so fragile. Even Cain wasn’t brave enough to enter this room and she cleaned in peace. When she moved to the last, she paused in the entrance. She stood there so long that the guys crowded around her and then pushed past.

  “Kinky,” one of the guys said and flicked a whip.

  The Unmemorables clustered around an array of sex toys on the bed and gave each other manly grins. While they reminisced about their experience with the toys, she found one clear hooker heel. There were suspicious splashes on the wall she didn’t want to examine too closely and the Unmemor
ables were handling objects she had no idea what they were intended for. They wouldn’t touch a dirty diaper, but they handled sex toys other people used without thinking. Men were disgusting. She turned back to the cart and bumped into Cain. Her face flamed as he looked over her head.

  “See anything good?” he asked.

  “Go away!”

  He chuckled and gripped her waist. “We don’t need it.”

  She shoved him out the door. “I’m going to do this room and then I’ll come up to the penthouse. These idiots will be in the room with me. I don’t think I can get them out until they’ve inspected everything.”

  “I can wait,” Cain said.

  Cain clearly wasn’t bothered by the room that reeked of sex, but she was. She didn’t want the Unmemorables to catch her blushing and she would if Cain stayed. She wasn’t a prude, but she also wasn’t as blasé about this type of thing as the Unmemorables. She’d never gone on a date in her life, much less had a one-night stand, which was all she would’ve been able to experience since no one could remember her. Apparently, male Unmemorables were just fine with one-night stands since their knowledge of the toys was so extensive.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  Cain looked beyond her to the Unmemorables and gave her a quick kiss. “What do you want to eat? I’ll have it ready when you come up to the penthouse.”

  She said the first thing that came to mind. “Steak.”

  Cain nodded and walked down the hallway. She turned back to the idiots and ignored the bedroom for now. She listened to the murmur and occasional laugh of the Unmemorables and hummed to cancel out what they were saying. When she couldn’t avoid the bedroom any longer, she walked up to them with hands on hips.

  “You want to take that with you?” she asked the guy who winked at her earlier. He was holding the whip in his hand.

  “Already have one. This one is new. Mine’s broken in,” he said with a lecherous smile.

  She kept her expression bland. “That’s nice for you. Since you’re so familiar with all this crap, why don’t you be a good boy and trash it for me?”

  “Sure, baby.”

  “What’s your name? You look like a Chippendales dancer.” She could easily believe the scandalous stories she overheard while she cleaned the bathroom.

  “I get that a lot,” he preened and puffed out his chest.

  “I always thought the Chippendales dancers were gay,” Raven said and the cocky grin slid off his face. “What’s your name?”

  “Bam Bam,” Jackie supplied since Bam Bam was temporarily stunned.

  She blinked. “Bam Bam?”

  All the Unmemorables laughed.

  “If you can’t figure it out then Cain’s not doing his job,” Luester drawled.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Cain can take care of me and all of you without breaking a sweat, apparently.”

  The other two snickered and she turned to them.

  “And you two?”

  “That’s Harvard.” Jackie pointed to a dark-haired, brown-eyed guy that hadn’t participated as much in the sex talk. He wasn’t dressed in leather like the others. He wore a crisp button up and a sweater vest.

  “And Ace.” Jackie pointed to the last guy in the group who saluted her. She saw that he had a set of four aces tattooed on one wrist and a set of dice on the other. He had rips in the knees of his jeans, a lip piercing and was blonde with brown eyes.

  “Why Ace and Harvard?”

  “He graduated from Harvard and Ace is good at cards.” At her suspicious look, Jackie said, “Neither of them cheat.”

  She waved her hands at the scary array of sex toys. “Take that crap with you. I have work to do.”

  They obliged and tossed the lube and toys, but pocketed the unused condoms. This time the Unmemorables lounged in the room while she cleaned and since they weren’t in the way, she allowed it. She couldn’t help tossing them a glance every now and then. These men not only shared the same curse, they shared blood, which was hard to wrap her mind around.

  She couldn’t figure out why the Unmemorables were here. They lived like spoiled kings and took advantage of their Unmemorable power by being daredevils. She left Cain to visit the Unmemorable headquarters, hoping for guidance and an explanation about the curse. Instead, she was confronted by Gerald, her father and leader of the Unmemorables. Gerald didn’t believe in the prophecy and wanted nothing to do with her since she was “banging Henson.” She wasn’t sure what to think about the prophecy, but now she had Cain. For the first time in her life, she had something to live for and it was worth fighting for. If she could get rid of the Unmemorable curse maybe she wouldn’t feel so damn guilty about Cain having to wear her hair like a rosary. Her Unmemorable power was part of the reason the Council and Battalion was hounding her. Apparently, she also inherited secret assassin skills that took over when she was in survival mode. That made her coveted by both sides. Well, one fucking problem at a time, she thought.

  “Why are you all here?” she asked.

  All talking stopped immediately.

  “You said you’d try to break the curse,” Jackie reminded her.

  She decided that she didn’t need to know why they wanted the curse reversed. She had her reasons and if they were after the same goal, better yet. “Okay. You have some ideas on how to break the curse?”

  “We could have tried this days ago if Cain wasn’t cock-blocking,” Luester said.

  She smiled sweetly at him. “Like I said, he’s been taking good care of me.”

  “Shut up, man,” Ace told Luester and jerked his head at Harvard.

  Harvard got to his feet and pulled out a list from his pocket. “I’ve been researching how to reverse curses and I have some things we can try. The first thing is a cleansing bath.”

  She waited for Harvard to laugh, but he just stared at her. “You’re serious?”

  “We’re going to start with a simple curse breaker. There’s no sense in going deeper and doing sacrifices if this will work,” Harvard continued clinically.

  “Sacrifices?” she echoed.

  “Maybe this will work.” Harvard pulled a tiny pen out of his pocket and tapped it on the pad. “I figure its best to start small before we hit the heavy stuff.”

  “If she’s the woman from the prophecy,” Luester said.

  She ignored him and asked, “What’s a cleansing bath?”

  “It’s a ritual to wash off a curse. You’ll be submerged in a tub of oils. You soak for ten minutes, we say some incantations and then we’ll see.” Harvard hesitated and then added almost apologetically, “We have to be touching you.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Bam Bam drawled.

  If a simple bath could reverse the curse why not try it? “I’m not doing it naked.”

  Harvard shot Bam Bam a reproving look. “Bam Bam acts like a pervert, but he’s secretly a romantic.”

  Bam Bam’s smile vanished. “No, I’m not! Dude, why would you say something like that?”

  Bam Bam looked so offended that Raven chuckled. She headed back to the cart to grab clean water glasses that weren’t filled with lube or liquor. She had two in one hand when a man peeked over her cart. She started, but his eyes weren’t on her, they were searching the room.

  “I left my cell phone,” the man said in a distracted voice.

  Her eyes popped. The guest barely looked old enough to drink, much less participate in the debauchery that took place in this room. He had a sweet baby face and wore a polo with lime green stripes that threw her off even more.

  “I didn’t find one,” she said, trying to keep her voice even and nonjudgmental. Obviously, the guest wasn’t ashamed enough to avoid his room. This was Vegas, though. Nothing should shock her.

  “I know it’s in here,” the guest insisted and tried to push her cart to the side.

  The Unmemorables were in the other room and from the entrance, you couldn’t hear or see them, thank God. She hoped they’d stay out of sight so the guest wouldn’t freak.<
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  “Where do you think you left it? I can look for it,” she said.

  “I don’t know where I left it,” he said impatiently and stepped into the room.

  She took a couple steps back with the water glasses in her hand. She watched him open several cabinets and turned to look under the table. Her instincts screeched in warning. She turned just as the guest lunged for her.

  Raven took a step back and slammed the glasses against his head. The guy staggered and blood dripped from the shards embedded in his temple. She looked around for another weapon as Luester came around the corner. Luester took in the scene in a split second and pulled a gun from under his jacket. He fired as the stranger made one last clumsy grab for Raven. He howled as blood sprayed from a hit on his shoulder. The stranger shot Raven a murderous look before he disappeared into thin air.

  Raven stared at the blood and glass on the floor and then at Luester. Her hands trembled as she plucked pieces of glass out of her palms. She grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her hand as the rest of the Unmemorables came around the corner.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” Jackie asked.

  “The Battalion’s here,” Luester said grimly. “Fucking Traveler just escaped.”

  “You didn’t kill him?” Bam Bam asked incredulously.

  “She was in the way,” Luester growled.

  Raven pointed a shaking finger at him. “I was defending myself.”

  “Are you going to quit this fucking job now?” Luester barked.

  She bent down to pick up the glass, but Luester grabbed her arm and hauled her up.

  “Ace, clean it up,” Luester ordered and shoved her into the living room. He pushed her down on the couch with such force that she bounced. “You hurt?”

  She flexed her throbbing hand. “No.”

  “Liar,” Luester snarled and knelt in front of her. He unwrapped her hand and examined the deep, oozing cuts. “It’ll heal in an hour.”

  She healed from a gunshot wound within a couple days, so the cuts on her palm paled in comparison.

  “Why the hell didn’t you yell when he first came in?” Luester asked.