Wild and Free

by Kristen Ashley

  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.”

  “Oh,” I mumbled, not knowing what else to say.

  “You gotta have it all, bao bei, so I’ll tell you that, outside the information which I couldn’t help but knowing, I didn’t get involved. I didn’t know what I was delivering. I didn’t pay attention to what I was finding. I did the job. I didn’t take sides. We were free agents. We worked for anyone. We kept out of it. And if needed, I made a statement when someone would try to drag us in.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “They needed the hurt put on them to make the point, I did that too.”

  “Oh,” I mumbled again, that syllable a lot more tentative.

  Using his hand at my neck, Abel gave me a squeeze and a shake.

  “It’s the only thing I could do to take care of my family,” he declared fiercely. “We moved around a lot. Jian-Li could cook, as could her mother before her, but it takes time to establish a restaurant. By the time things would be rolling with that, we couldn’t enjoy it long before we had to leave. It’s not easy to set up house and a restaurant every decade or so. And I don’t die. I couldn’t be on the grid in any way. I have no social security number. No birth certificate. I couldn’t go to college, be a doctor, a lawyer. You live out in the open like that, people could cotton on. I could take money under the table. Be a day laborer. But they make shit. We needed more. So I did what I had to do to take care of my family.”

  I had no reply mostly because there wasn’t one. I could see this. I could even understand it.

  Abel took my non-response the wrong way.

  “I knew the information I found and shared. I knew the men who asked me to deliver shit were not good citizens so I could guess what I was delivering wasn’t food for the needy. But I did what I had to do.”

  “Became an outlaw,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he grunted.

  “We all do what we have to do, Abel,” I remarked, and his head twitched. “I mean, my mom isn’t the greatest mom in the history of momkind, but she’s my mom. And to be healthy, I don’t see her much. I know she doesn’t like this. She isn’t the greatest mom and it isn’t good that she wants me around mostly to bitch about Dad and make me feel like I’m nuts. But in her way, she also loves me, likes my company, so she feels our break. It isn’t healthy to be with her so I struggle with that being the wrong choice, but I feel in my heart it’s the only one.”

  “It isn’t the wrong choice,” he told me.

  I grinned. “It isn’t to
you because you kinda like me, and all that’s in your head is looking after me. But it is because she’s my mom. The only one I’ll ever have. She might not take me as I come without giving me shit about who I am, but that doesn’t make it right that I don’t take her as she comes. Two wrongs, no right.”

  “Seein’ with your mom, you’re too sweet for your own good,” he muttered.

  I decided to let it go. Dad felt the same. He didn’t think I should hold any guilt for cutting Mom out of my life (for the most part).

  Dad was wrong too.

  I didn’t discuss it with him either.

  “My point is, you shouldn’t worry about what you did,” I advised. “I could tell you didn’t want to give that to me, but that only means you’re a good person and you know it’s what you had to do, not what you wanted to do or got off on doing. So don’t worry about it.”

  It was then he declared, “That shit ends when all this other shit ends and I got you to look after too.”

  I gave him another grin and snuggled closer, whispering, “I kinda like bein’ hooked up with an outlaw.”

  He let his eyes drift away, muttering, “Says the biker’s daughter.”

  I gave him a squeeze and got his gaze back, happy to see it was smiling.

  That done, I kept at it, thinking I might as well get it all out in one fell swoop.

  “Taking us out of the heavy and into more heavy, you gotta know we’re covered, birth control-wise, since I’m on the Pill. You take me ungloved, you’ve never done anything but, so I’m assuming since you can’t get sick or catch disease, you can’t give anything to me. But the time was ripe about two weeks ago for me to make certain of that, so obviously, now, I need to make certain of it.”

  He slid his hand up into my hair, tucking my forehead back into the side of his neck as he shared, “You’re safe with that and you’re right. I don’t catch anything; I don’t carry anything.” He paused and his voice was quiet, his hold strong, when he finished, “And sucks, baby, hate to share this with you, but you gotta know, if you want, you can go off the Pill. I can’t get you pregnant either.”

  I blinked at his throat. “Yes, you can.”

  “Bao bei,” he said gently, giving my head a squeeze, “I can’t. Won’t go into specifics of how I know, but trust me, I know.”

  I pushed against his hand to look at him. “Werewolves can get humans pregnant. Sonia told me so.”

  “Vampires can’t get them pregnant and I’m half vampire.”

  “Then why are Lucien and Leah prophesied to have a brood of kids?”

  His big, hard body stilled under mine.

  Completely.

  And when he spoke, I actually felt the effort it took for him to force out the word.

  “What?”

  “Uh…you didn’t know?”

  “Fuck no,” he snarled.

  “Abel—”

  He cut me off by knifing up, forcing me to right myself in his lap, and his fingers clamped around my hips.

  “Are we prophesied to have kids?” he asked.

  “Um…when Leah told me that, she said we weren’t mentioned. I mean, obviously, they’re only going to be able to do that if they both survive this mess, which they will. And she also told me that normally vampires have trouble procreating, and never with humans. But things are changing and—”

  “You and me bein’ special, we might be able to have kids,” he finished for me.

  “Maybe,” I whispered.

  Staring into his eyes, both of them brown, I was warmed to my soul by the light shining there.

  “A family. My own family, my own blood. Sons and daughters who could be that for eternity.”

  I stared at him.

  God, how he’d suffered.

  God.

  I lifted my hands to his jaw and whispered, “Not a definite, honey, but maybe.”

  “Go off the Pill now.”

  I felt my eyes get huge.

  “Uh…what?”

  “Now,” he clipped, then declared, “We got a shot, we’re takin’ every shot we can get.”

  “Just a reminder, the state of the world is kinda shaky,” I told him.

  “It’s gonna get un-shaky and I’m gonna plant my babies inside you and we’re gonna have a family.”

  Wouldn’t that be awesome?

  I slid my thumb under his cheekbone and asked softly, “You want that, don’t you?”

  His eyes narrowed in a way that was kind of frightening even as his fingers clenched the flesh of my hips.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Fuck yeah, you’re hot. Your kids’ll be gorgeous.”

  His hands relaxed, his gaze softened and grew warm, and his tone gentled when he said, “Make little girls who look like you, spoil ’em rotten.”

  Oh God.

  Wouldn’t that be awesome?

  I melted into him. Abel felt it and twisted us so I was on my back, sideways on the bed, and Abel was covering me.

  “You want that, don’t you?” he whispered.

  “Yeah,” I whispered back.

  “Off the Pill,” he ordered again, gentler this time.

  “But—”

  “Off. The. Pill,” he repeated, not quite as gentle, so I knew I had to proceed with caution.

  “Okay, according to Sonia, werewolves are prolific,” I started quietly. “Vampires are not, but you have two halves to you. I see both traits in you. Anything can win out.”

  “And…?” he pushed when I quit speaking.

  “We make a deal,” I proposed. “I go off the Pill when we finish saving the world.”

  “Lilah—” he started but stopped when I suddenly lifted both hands to the sides of his head and lifted mine off the bed so my face was closer to his.

  “If something happened to you, I’d want that. I’d want that piece of you inside me, knowing I had a bit of you to hold with me for the rest of my life. But I have to think of him, or her, and what I think is, my man watched mother after mother die and I would not want that for my kid, not once, not ever.”

  His expression softened, but I wasn’t done.

  “I’m also thinking of you, baby. If this goes on for a while and you get me knocked up and something happens to me, you lose me and you lose that life we created. You’ve lost enough. I don’t want you to court losing more.”

  His expression got a lot less soft.

  “Nothing’s gonna happen to you,” he growled.

  “Maybe not. But give me this, let’s prepare for the maybe, because if it did, I couldn’t bear knowing you endured more than you had to.”

  “And what about you with me? What if you lose me?” he asked, and pain sliced through my insides, white-hot, boiling them until they felt liquefied.

  “Don’t say that again,” I wheezed through the pain.

  I watched his expression register understanding before he pressed his body into mine. “Right here, pussycat. All me, right here. Feel me and let the pain go.”

  “Yeah.” I pushed out, feeling him, letting his weight bear into me, and also feeling the pain lessen.

  Abel shoved a hand under me and up so he could stroke the side of my neck with his thumb.

  He gave it time, then asked, “Better?”

  I nodded.

  “Wrapped around your finger,” he said bafflingly.

  “Uh…what?”

  “You want that, what you asked for? Wrapped around your finger. In other words, bao bei, you have a deal.”

  I closed my eyes tight and slid my hands from his head to wrap my arms around him.

  I opened them and whispered, “Thank you, Abel honey.”

  “The minute we save the world,” he stated firmly and I smiled, the pain gone, and squeezed him with my arms.

  “Pills in the toilet the minute we save the world.”

  He grinned before he dropped his head to kiss me.

  He was in the middle of doing it, and I was in the middle of liking it a lot, when his phone sounded. It wasn’t his rin
ger. It was something else.

  He lifted his head, his eyes going to the nightstand, his lips muttering, “Fuck.”

  “What?”

  He looked to me. “Those kids Moose found?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Told them what to do. They did it. Now we got eyes and ears in that vampire’s house. Since we found Patricio and Bjorn, I went through every vampire, every wolf, every human at the compound to make sure we got them all. We did, but still, Callum wants only the inner circle to have eyes on that house. That alarm means I’m up. I’m supposed to take a shift, watch and listen. That alarm means I got half an hour to get down there.”

  Crap, just when we were out of the heavy and into the good stuff.

  “I’ll keep you company,” I offered.

  “Probably gonna be boring,” he warned.

  “Will you be there?” I asked and saw his eyes again warm. “So it won’t be boring,” I finished.

  “You know what else isn’t gonna be boring?” he asked, and I shook my head. “The shower we’re about to take.”

  “Right on,” I breathed right before I was out of bed and in the shower.

  My man.

  So.

  Awesome.

  * * * * *

  “Uh…what’d you say about boring?” I asked.

  Abel, whose lap I was perched on, murmured in disgust, “Jesus.”

  I stared at the television screen that was transmitting what was right then occurring in the vampire Miko’s house, this being him bending a young man, who had his jeans around his thighs, over a table and taking him hard up the ass.

  Miko was the enemy, but he was a vampire so he was gorgeous, built, and endowed.

  Thus, that was hot.

  I squirmed in Abel’s lap.

  “Fuck, is that shit turning you on?” he asked.

  I didn’t tear my eyes away from the screen as I answered, “It doesn’t you?”

  “Take you any way you want me to fuck you, baby, but guy-on-guy…” Abel paused. “Not my scene.”

  Obviously, I was down with that.

  But still.

  “You don’t have to do it to get off on it,” I shared.

  “Uh, thinkin’ you do,” he mumbled.

  I decided not to respond because he had a dick. He would know.

  “Christ, least he could do is give the kid a coupla days to recover before he went at him,” Abel kept mumbling.