He’d been called “baby” by so many women, it would be impossible to count.
None of them felt like it felt when Delilah said it.
Having used up his reserves of control to keep his hands off Delilah, he went to the fridge and got out a bag of blood, seeing only two left in there. If he’d known a warm, delicious meal and its accompanying fuck was not in the cards for him for the foreseeable future, he would have stocked up.
He hadn’t.
He’d have to see to that tomorrow.
He nuked the bag and sucked it back. He needed at least three a day, even if he was feeding and fucking. He’d taken one before he went running. But that one, as did the one he was currently consuming, left him hungry.
Definitely needed more.
He moved to the blue trash can, toed it open, and threw the bag in, his jaw clenching at seeing what was inside as he did.
He didn’t like what he saw even though he needed it for sustenance. It was all he knew, all he’d ever known, but that didn’t mean he didn’t understand it was utterly repugnant on every level. He rarely fed in front of his family because they tried to bury it, but his senses were vastly superior to theirs and he felt it. He knew it disgusted them. And Delilah, not surprisingly, hadn’t let her eyes wander to him even once while he was having his breakfast.
She’d get off on him drawing from her. He knew it, just as he knew he had to be careful with it. Due to his first and second mothers, Hui’s and Mei’s, efforts, he’d never once killed or even harmed a human being while feeding. And that shit was not going to happen with him drawing down Delilah’s needed supply of blood. So he figured, when he got her there, he could give her that while fucking her maybe once a week.
That said, the bags sucked. They worked, but they sucked. There was nothing as good as a woman writhing under you, her pussy drenched, that smell in your nostrils, her blood in your mouth. It was revolting at the same time it was fucking true.
He’d had decades of bags. He’d have decades more.
Centuries.
Hui was his first mother; Mei was his second, raising him through human teen years after they’d lost Hui. Mei had told him during his second half century that he’d have many lots in life.
“But never forget, bao bei,” she’d said, her hand curved around his jaw, her eyes tipped back to his height of towering over her. “You are a miracle. A miracle. A miracle brought to this family. A miracle upon this world. Never forget, and if you don’t, you will endure.”
They were a miracle, a family over six generations, accepting him as he was.
He was no miracle.
He was a monster.
He looked to the bed.
Another miracle, a dark-haired, green-eyed temptress coming to him in his dreams, then appearing in his life, accepting him and the insanity around her, ending her second night as a part of his life sleeping in his bed.
The miracle and the monster.
Abel winced at the thought.
But that thought was much easier to bury and he did so without effort.
And he did it without effort because he’d had a shitload of practice.
Chapter Six
You Okay Now?
Delilah
I opened my eyes and saw the light shining on Abel sitting back in his armchair, his eyes on me just like the morning before.
“Hey,” I called sleepily.
“Hey,” he replied, his tone strangely tight.
“You okay?” I asked, not moving, my head to the pillow, my eyes taking in his big frame, memories of the day before instantly available.
He’d been tensed and freaked, understandably so. Though, why he had to take off, I didn’t know.
That said, when Xun brought me back down to his room late yesterday evening, I was touched to see the simple white shower curtain covering the stall and a door providing privacy for the toilet. It said a lot, like the purse. Primarily that he might be gone, but his thoughts were on me.
It was what I’d needed.
Perhaps not weirdly, but annoyingly, the longer he was gone and I didn’t know where he was or how he was, the more that pit in my belly opened up again. And it opened, and opened, and opened. Then the pain came back.
In the end, it was so bad, I didn’t know how I got to sleep. You would think I’d be used to it, but it being gone, then having it back again, it all seemed fresh.
And excruciating.
I just knew that when Abel touched my hair and told me he was home, I wasn’t very awake, but I felt the pain was gone.
That was not something I relished, needing to be attached at the hip to some guy, and I hoped it was the situation that caused it, not his distance.
“Fine,” Abel answered, taking my thoughts from yesterday-him back to the right-there him.
“Sure?” I asked quietly.
“Yeah, Lilah,” he answered quietly.
“Thanks for the bathroom,” I said.
He shook his head and his lips tipped up, but he didn’t say anything or move any further.
“Dad called,” I told him. “He and the boys are making good time, but they won’t be here until around two today.”
“You tell Jian-Li?” he asked.
I nodded my head on the pillow.
“She’ll see to a welcome spread.”
“She says she’s closing the restaurant after lunch,” I shared.
“Like I said, she’ll see to a welcome spread.”
I grinned at him.
His eyes dropped to my mouth and he frowned at me.
That was weird.
Then again, he seemed weird. Not that he was a normal guy, just that he seemed weirder than normal.
I pushed up to put my head in my hand, elbow in the pillow. “You sure you’re okay?”