“I’m not doing this for my dad,” she returned. “I have a long, tall drink of serious hot-guy werewolf vampire. I can’t take his side and not be the best I can be.”
Abel froze, staring at her in the mirror.
Take his side and be the best I can be.
“Abel, I need to spritz on more perfume,” she told him.
He didn’t move.
Take his side and be the best I can be.
“I don’t want you to get a blast of it, honey,” she stated.
He slid his hands to cross his arms over her belly, yanking her into his frame, bending his head and using his chin to shift her hair out of the way so he could bury his face in her neck.
There she didn’t smell like hairspray.
There she smelled like Delilah, fresh and sweet and tangy.
“They’re already inside, Lilah. You need to get the lead out,” he said softly there, kissed her, and let her go.
“Okay, baby,” she muttered before she spritzed, quickly turned, squatted, dug through bags, and put on jewelry. Then she sat on her ass and pulled on her socks and boots.
He moved close to her and offered a hand.
She lifted hers and he took it, hefting her up, way up, surprising her into giving a quiet cry as he took her clean off her feet. She automatically swung her legs around his hips, her female parts pressed to the side of his hip, his hand leaving hers so that he could wrap his arm around her back and hold her close.
She curved her arms around his shoulders. He turned his head and looked down at her, seeing her eyes were wide.
“Hold on, bao bei,” he murmured.
She nodded.
He moved.
He heard her gasp as he went about taking her upstairs as fast as they could get there, including opening and closing the steel door and the back door to the restaurant.
All this took seconds.
As they came to a rocking halt in the kitchen, he smelled Jian-Li’s lunch.
He also smelled biker. Five of them.
He gave Delilah a slight shake and she unwrapped her legs from his hips. He put her to her feet and looked down at her.
Her hair was slightly tousled and her eyes were huge and bright.
“That…was…awesome,” she breathed.
He grinned.
She leaned deep into him, her hand hitting his stomach. Smiling up in his face, dazzling and gorgeous, she whispered, “Let’s meet the parents.”
Meet the parents.
He’d have that once. With her. Doing something natural for a human, something Abel couldn’t ever have until her, knowing he found the woman for him and adding humans to his life, his family, giving him more.
More family, which was the only real joy he had in his long life.
Or, at least that joy would last for a while.
Abel wanted to kiss her for that reason and others besides.
He didn’t. He shifted so she’d let him go, but he took her hand and led her into the restaurant.
When he did, he saw instantly that Jian-Li was in hostess mode, nodding, smiling, and greeting the bikers who were gathered inside. Xun, Wei, and Chen were close but off to the side, giving her space to do her thing.
He took in Delilah’s family and saw instantly they were hardcore.
They weren’t bikers.
They were live, breathe, eat, drink, fuck, bleed, and die for the life bikers.
And he knew the one to the front was Delilah’s father. He knew it because she had his hair and his eyes and he had a tinge of her scent. It was masculine, but the tang was underlying it. She got her pale roses-and-cream skin from somewhere else, but she got serious goodness from her father.
He was maybe five foot eleven. He was stocky with a hint of a gut. And he was in leathers— chaps over jeans, jacket, even a suede shirt.
His dark but salted hair was long, as long as his daughter’s, but just the back. The top was clipped and spiked. The mullet to beat all mullets that only a guy like him could pull off.
His face was weathered. It was clear he had no problem with sun and wind, drink and food, likely drugs. He lived his life, every fucking minute of it, and he enjoyed the fuck out of it, all of this written on his face.
Then something else was written on his face as he noticed Abel and Delilah coming into the room.
Love and joy. Pure. Absolute.
Delilah pulled her hand from his, raced across the room, and Abel forced himself to stop and freeze in that position, his jaw clenching, feeling a muscle dance in his cheek as she threw herself into her father’s arms.
He knew from what she’d told him that they were very close. She adored the man, trusted him, her affection for him was extreme. Abel also knew from the look he’d just witnessed on her father’s face that he returned all that.
Thus that man would never harm her.
Abel still felt the overwhelming urge to forge straight to them and tear his woman out of her father’s arms.
“Daddy!” she cried as her father shook her in his hold, her feet off the floor, arms around his shoulders, face in his neck, his face wreathed in smiles.
“My little girl,” he husked, his voice beyond gravelly, straight to shards.
Finally, he let her down but didn’t let her go, just positioned her a foot away, his hands holding her at her forearms out in front of them.
That was when Abel moved, immediately getting close, wrapping his fingers around her upper arm, forcing himself to pull her away but doing it gently. He felt her eyes come to him, saw her father’s eyes move to him. But when he got her where he wanted her, he did not hesitate to clamp an arm around her shoulders and tuck her tight, her front to his side.
“Things have been intense,” he said quietly to her father. “I get who you are to Lilah. She told me. But the first time I had eyes on her, she was not in a good way. So I’m not good with men touching her. Any man. This might wear off. But until it does, I hope you get me.”