He kept hold of her face as he urged, “I’ll comfort you when we’ve finished our mission. Now, you must go. Help your sisters.”
She held his eyes, hers brimming with tears, before she nodded, pulled free, turned, and continued to walk up the stairs.
Yuri watched until she disappeared.
Then he again pulled out the phone he’d put back into his pocket, engaged it, moved his thumb across the screen, and put it to his ear.
* * * * *
Her body jolted against his and Yuri opened his eyes to the dark.
He folded her closer.
“Sleep, button,” he murmured.
“Mom,” she breathed.
“Your mother is safe in the other room.”
And this she was, slumbering in the other bedroom attached to his suite, with Ruby and the other two in another suite on that floor. In the hall stood a guard of vampire soldiers, complements of The Vampire Council.
Aurora, however, was in his bed with him. Somewhere she’d gone without demur (not a surprise) and somewhere her mother had allowed her to go without a fight (a definite surprise).
Another surprise was that she’d slid between the sheets—her little frame enveloped in one of his shirts—and promptly passed out.
“I’m dreaming that feeling,” she whispered.
He knew what she meant and wished he could wash it away from her.
He couldn’t.
All he could do was remind her, saying, “Your mother is safe in the other room.”
She pressed closer. “Jane. Marianne. Jordana—”
Yuri cupped her cheek with his hand, pressing it to his chest as he tightened his other arm around her, and murmured, “Shh, sweet. It’s done and there’s no undoing it. You have work ahead of you, and what little I knew of those women, forging in to face what they knew they might face, they’d want you to rest so you can focus on that and quickly get to where your memories of them are comforting, not solemn.”
“Yeah,” she mumbled. “They would.”
“So close your eyes, Aurora.” He slid his hand into her hair and through it, then back. “Sleep,” he finished, continuing to run his fingers through her long, silken hair.
She pressed closer, winding an arm around his middle, before she relaxed into him.
Yuri continued to run his fingers soothingly through her hair.
“You feel good.” Her voice was muffled against his chest, sounding mostly asleep. “All warm and hard and soft and nice.”
Yuri kept his gaze to the ceiling, continuing his ministrations with her glorious hair, and fought getting hard in the way she was not describing.
Her weight pressed into him as sleep claimed her.
Only then did he succeed.
Chapter Twenty
You Want That, Don’t You?
Delilah
I wandered naked out of the bathroom and saw my man in bed, his back against some pillows shoved up against the headboard, one leg straight, one leg bent, also naked, totally hot, eyes on me.
I went to the bed, put a knee in and then the other, and walked on them to him as he watched. When I got close, I swung a leg around him, straddling him, and rested against him, tucking my face in the side of his neck, wrapping one arm around him, laying the other hand on his chest.
Abel curled both arms around me.
Post-morning-sex snuggling.
The best.
“I think Moose wants his own vampire,” I told his throat.
I felt his body move with his amusement and I gloried in the feel.
“Your dad’s been sharin’,” he guessed.
“Yeah,” I confirmed.
“Hook caught the eye of one and there’re tons of ’em around. Probably won’t be hard for Moose to get his own.”
Using my index finger, I drew mindless patterns on the warm silk of his skin, muttering, “That’d be good. Might keep him around and out of trouble.”
He gave me a squeeze and whispered, “You worried.”
Absolutely, I worried. We’d lost Snake. I didn’t even want to imagine losing someone else I loved.
I thought this.
I said, “Yeah.”
“He’s home now,” Abel pointed out.
“Yeah,” I repeated.
Abel started drawing his own mindless patterns on the skin at the small of my back.
I had no idea, but I’d put up a good argument that he did it better.
“What’d you do before me?” I blurted, not knowing where it came from, just knowing it came out.
His fingers stopped. “What?”
I pressed my hand flat on his pec, lifted my head, and looked down at him.
“Before me, before this,” I began to explain. “What did you do to make your way in life? You know, your business that wasn’t messy.”
His eyes shuttered as his mouth muttered, “Cuddled close, sneak attack.”
That didn’t sound good.
“Abel?” I prompted.
He looked at me as he slid a hand over my hip to my belly, up between my breasts, and up where he curled it around the side of my neck.
“Did whatever I could do,” he stated cautiously. “Someone needed somethin’, I got it for them. Someone needed somethin’ delivered, I delivered it. Someone needed information, I got it.”
“I…” I shook my head. “For money?”
“Depending on what it was and who it was for, money or markers,” Abel explained, still watching my face closely. “Xun, Wei, and Chen did their bit, getting a lock on the lay of the land, so by the time I showed, we knew who was who and how they fit. If it was a big player who it would be good they owed markers, that’s what we asked for. If it was somethin’ else or dangerous for a mortal, but it wouldn’t be dangerous for me, we asked for money, and not a small amount of it.”