Hell, more than that, he was pretty damn sure he loved her.
He kept that stunning realization to himself, however, seeing very clearly that Dylan was anxious about leaving her mother alone in New York. Each mile they traveled closer to Boston, he felt her heart beat a bit faster. He didn't need to be bonded to her by blood to feel the tang of indecision rolling off her body in waves as she rested quietly against him in the backseat, her gaze fixed on the blur of scenery speeding past the tinted windows.
She didn't want to be here.
Rio didn't doubt that she felt some affection toward him. After tonight, he knew she did. And he had to believe that under different circumstances, she wouldn't feel so much like she wanted to bolt from the moving vehicle and race back home to New York.
"Hey," he murmured next to her ear as Niko swung the Rover into the gated drive of the compound. "We're going to figure all of this out, okay?"
She gave him a small smile, but her eyes were sad. "Just hold me, Rio."
He drew her farther into his embrace and pressed his lips to hers in a tender kiss. "I won't let anything bad happen. I promise you that."
He wasn't entirely sure how he could make good on a sizable vow like that, but seeing the look of hope in Dylan's eyes as she gazed up at him, damn if he wouldn't make it his life's mission to see the promise through, whatever it took.
The SUV rolled through and headed for the Order's secured fleet garage. Rio hated to let go of Dylan as the car came to a stop inside the hangar.
"Home, sweet home," Kade drawled, opening the passenger door and climbing out.
Nikolai shot Rio a look over the front seats. "We're gonna head down to the lab. Should we tell Lucan and the others you'll be around shortly?"
Rio nodded. "Yeah, right behind you. Give me ten minutes."
"You got it." Niko glanced to Dylan. "Listen, I'm really sorry about your mother. That's got to be tough. There just are no adequate words, you know?"
"I know," she murmured. "But thank you, Nikolai."
Niko held her gaze for a moment, then he clapped his palm on the seatback. "Okay. See you below, my man."
"Tell Lucan I'm going to be bringing Dylan in on the meeting."
Both she and Niko threw looks of surprise in his direction. Outside the Rover, Kade exhaled a wry curse and started laughing under his breath like Rio had lost his mind.
"You want to bring a civilian into a meeting with Lucan," Niko said. "A civilian he fully expects that you scrubbed tonight, like he told you to do."
"Dylan saw something tonight," Rio said. "I think the Order ought to hear about firsthand."
Nikolai considered him in silence for a very long time. Then he nodded like he could see that Rio wasn't going to budge on this. Rio could tell that his old friend realized that Dylan was not merely a civilian, or a mission Rio had failed to execute. By the glint of the warrior's wintry blue eyes, Rio could see that Niko understood just how much Dylan had come to mean to him. He understood, and based on the crooked smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth, he approved.
"Shit, amigo. Yeah. I'll tell him what you said."
As Niko and Kade strode off to the compound's elevator together, Rio and Dylan got out of the Rover and headed in a couple of minutes behind them. Hands linked, they took the elevator down the three-hundred-foot descent to the Order's headquarters.
It felt strange to walk the labyrinth of secured corridors and not feel like he had for the long months following the explosion - like a lost beast left to roam its lair without place or purpose.
Now, he had both, the heart of which could be summed up in one word: Dylan.
"Will you be comfortable talking about what you saw in that hospital room tonight?" he asked her as they traveled the corridors. "Because if you'd rather not, I can do it for - "
"No, it's fine. I want to help, if you think I can."
He stopped her in the long stretch of white marble hallway, not far from the glass walls of the tech lab where his brethren would be waiting.
"Dylan, what you did for me tonight - giving me your blood, staying with me when you had every right to leave me there and never look back...Everything that happened between us tonight, I want you to know that it meant something to me. I am..."
He wanted to say that he was falling in love with her, but he hadn't said those words in so long - hadn't believed he would ever mean them again, let alone mean them as deeply and honestly as he did now. He stumbled over the admission, and the awkward pause made the chasm seem even wider.
"I am...grateful to you," he said, settling on the other emotion that was filling his heart when he looked at her. "I don't know that I can ever repay you for all that you gave me tonight."
Some of the light seemed to dim from her eyes as she listened to him. "Do you think I would ask you to repay me?" She shook her head slowly. "De nada. You don't owe me anything, Rio."
He started to say something more - some other feeble attempt to explain what she had come to mean to him. But Dylan was already walking ahead of him.
"Shit," he hissed, raking his hand through his hair.
He caught up to her a few paces up the corridor, just in time to hear Lucan's voice boom through the glass of the tech lab.
"What the f**k do you mean, he's bringing her in with him? My man had better have a goddamn good reason for bringing that reporter back into this compound."
Any irritation Dylan had felt toward Rio for his polite gratitude was dwarfed by the dread that ran cold in her veins when she heard the Order's leader bellow in outrage. She didn't want to think she needed Rio's protection, but the presence of his broad palm coming to rest at the small of her back as they entered the meeting room full of eight grim-faced, combat-garbed vampire warriors was the only thing that kept her knees from quaking beneath her.