“Yeah,” I whispered on a grin. “You totally rock. Then again, you always did. You just didn’t know it.”
He stared at my face like he wasn’t seeing me, then suddenly, his eyes closed and he bent his neck so his forehead was resting on mine.
“I’ll take the craziness,” I kept whispering, and his eyes opened. “The danger. The uncertainty. I’ll take it all if this leads to you understanding how totally”—I squeezed his neck—“and completely”—I squeezed again—“awesome you are.”
Abel’s hands drifted up my sides and his eyes went from vague and incredulous to something I liked much better.
“Hungry,” he murmured, his hands stopping at the sides of my breasts, his thumbs gliding in.
“Hope you get Lilah champagne,” I told him. “The occasion merits it.”
“Don’t care what I get, just as long as it’s Lilah something, which, lucky me, is what it’s gonna be.”
Yeah, my man so rocked.
I smiled into his eyes.
His eyes smiled back.
Then his hands slid to under my arms and I was up.
Then I was down, on the bed, Abel on top of me, and seconds later, my man was feeding.
Minutes after that, Abel’s hand down my shorts, I was coming.
* * * * *
“Okay, this shit I do not like,” I declared irately the minute Abel closed the soundproofed door to our bedroom.
“Lilah.”
I turned to him and saw that was all he was going to say.
I, on the other hand, had a whole lot more to say.
It was late in the evening. Bjorn had been handled. The bad spy vampire, who was named Patricio, had been handled. The greedy, turncoat humans had been handled.
And due to Abel’s kickass ability, neither of the immortals remembered anything that had happened that day and Patricio was providing the report Abel gave him to give to the bad guys. That being, the excursion that morning was a training exercise for Abel, Xun, and Wei. Cosmo—Lucien’s friend and a vamp I met, who was tall, blond, hot (to the point he was at the “hottest” end of the scale), and nice—was still “in the wind” as far as the bad guys knew.
And last, the golem attack was to commence as planned.
This being the shit I did not like.
“They’re gonna attack us!” I snapped.
“They are and they’re gonna lose since we know they’re comin’,” Abel replied calmly.
“You hope,” I returned.
“I know,” he stated firmly.
“Neither Bjorn nor Patricio knew how many were coming,” I pointed out.
“Won’t matter. They had the element of surprise. Now they don’t.”
I shook my head. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
Then again, who would? My man was fighting golem tomorrow. Hell, he’d never even seen one!
And my friends were too.
Abel took the two strides that separated us and curved his arms loosely around me, tipping his head to keep hold of my eyes.
“It’s a solid plan, Lilah,” he said quietly. “We can defeat them and do it with them not knowing we had the knowledge in order to do that soundly.”
“What if they send a shitload of golem?”
“We’ll defeat them.”
“What if people get hurt?”
His arms got a lot less loose when he replied, “We’re at war, pussycat.”
I shut my mouth.
“You, Sonia, and Leah will be safe,” he declared.
“And you, Cal, and Lucien?” I asked.
“Nothing will happen to us.”
God, I hoped he was right.
“And you’re down with those who might fall tomorrow night?” I pressed.
“No,” he clipped, his voice suddenly curt. “I’m not down with that. I’ll never be down with it. I’m not down with Snake bein’ dead. Chen and Jabber are gettin’ better, but I’m not down with them havin’ that need. I’m not down with any of this shit,” he said, squeezing his arms on the any. “But I got no choice. You heard that guy. Overlords of humanity? That shit is whacked. And that shit can’t come about. Not a single person on this compound disagrees and they all know what’s at stake, including their lives.”
I looked to his throat, hating that he was right.
Abel kept speaking. “We got inside men, Lilah. Men who don’t know they’re inside men, but we got ’em. Today was good. Tomorrow will suck, but we’ll come out all right. Good shit happened today. Good shit that might help us make everything come out all right in the end. We should rejoice, then prepare for the next thing that will suck until we get past all the shit that will suck so we can get to a life that will not suck.”
He was again right.
I sighed.
Abel read my sigh and gathered me closer. When he did, I gave him my eyes.
“Your talk go okay with your dad?” he asked.
He’d been busy mind-controlling traitors while I had a word with Dad.
“He’s pissed at himself. I tried to explain no one blames him and nothing bad happened so he shouldn’t be so hard on himself, but I’m not sure how much of that he took in.”
“Gregor told me that Ursula has requested her room be soundproofed.”
At that, I finally smiled.
“Thinkin’ she likes the taste of my old man,” I muttered.
Abel made a face that clearly said we should stop talking about this just as there was a knock on the door.
He turned his head to look at it while I leaned to the side to look at it.