Cocky

Delilah

 

I was on my back in the leaves, the stars overhead, Abel’s hands curved around my ribs, yanking me down, his face between my legs.

He was sucking, deep and hungry, at my clit.

Glorious.

He stopped and buried his tongue inside.

My lips parted and my back arched. His fingers tightened and he drove me down harder on his mouth.

Yes.

His mouth opened on my clit again, tongue lapping, then came the suction.

I dug my heels in his back, feeling it coming, knowing it was going to be sublime.

He stopped, surged over me, his tongue bathing my neck, his cock ramming inside.

I felt his teeth tear through, my blood surging into his mouth, and my climax was on me.

“Abel, baby,” I moaned.

* * * * *

“What?”

My eyes opened and I immediately blinked at the unknown pillowcase my head was resting on.

“What?”

The question came again. I looked beyond the pillowcase and saw him sitting back in the armchair, the light next to him on, his legs straight, ankles crossed, head up, eyes open and on me.

And it hit my foggy mind for the first time that he was beautiful, every lean, scarred, amazing inch of him.

“What?” I parroted sleepily.

He lifted up and forward, bending his knees and putting his elbows to them, his gaze never leaving me.

“You called my name,” he told me.

“I did?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“I was asleep.”

He studied me with a look in my still-hazy-with-sleep mind that seemed a mingling of intent, amused and pained.

But all he said was “Yeah.”

I pushed up to a forearm, lifting my hand to pull the hair away from my face, watching him watch my hand do this and also seeing the pain intensify on his features.

Weird.

I dropped my hand and his eyes followed it before they moved back to my face.

When they did, I asked, “I was talking in my sleep?”

“You said, ‘Abel, baby.’”

Oh shit.

His head tipped to the side. “Good dream?”

“I…I don’t remember.” And I didn’t, for which I was glad, but also kinda not.

“Too bad,” he muttered, pushing to his feet and moving toward the bathroom area.

I shifted up to a hand in the bed, pulling the covers to my chest as I did so even though I was in his shirt, which was way big on me and provided excellent coverage.

In this position, I watched him go to the medicine cabinet, open it, and take something out, then turn and walk back to me, all the while talking.

“Didn’t get the wolf. Lost his scent at the bay. You talk to your dad this morning, got nothin’ else to give him.”

“That’s not good news,” I replied.

“No.” He stopped by the bed and tossed something on it. My eyes went to it as he finished, “It’s not.”

But I was staring at the new toothbrush in its wrapping sitting on the bed, my mind blank of everything. Absolutely everything. Everything but that fucking toothbrush.

“Givin’ you ten minutes,” he stated.

My head snapped up, the talons suddenly gripping my throat from the inside strangling me as I watched him start to turn.

Thus I had to force out my “A new toothbrush?”

He stopped turning and looked back down at me.

“Yeah, unless you wanna use mine, which I prefer you didn’t.”

I snatched it up in a grip so tight, the plastic buckled in my palm.

“A new toothbrush?” I demanded, my voice vibrating with extreme pissed-offedness.

His expression cleared, but his attention increased as he slowly and cautiously said, “Uh…yeah.”

It was then his words from the night before blasted through my head.

Helped I was fuckin’ her at the time, but yeah, she did. Bitch begs me to bite her. Seein’ as I need the blood, it works for me.

“You get a lot of company?” I asked in a way his only choice of answer was a firm, unwavering “Fuck no.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t answer that way.

I watched his body brace as I heard his lips say “Shit.”

I threw the covers back and jumped out of bed, leaning toward him, shouting, “Wrong answer!”

“Delilah—”

I interrupted whatever he was going to say by raising my arm and throwing the toothbrush at him. It bounced off his chest and landed on the floor as I started yelling.

“You fed from someone you fucked and you did that yesterday! The day you met me!” He lifted his hands like he was going to touch me, so I threw one of mine out, batting his away, shouting, “Don’t touch me!”

“I didn’t know you yesterday,” he pointed out.

“So?” I snapped.

“Take a breath, Delilah,” he ordered.

“Fuck that,” I retorted, then demanded, “Why do you have an extra toothbrush?”

“You don’t want the answer to that,” he answered.

“Ding, ding, ding!” I yelled. “Wrong answer again!” Then I kept going. “Did I sleep in a bed last night where you fucked other women?”

“It won’t happen again,” he stated.

Oh my God!

“Damn straight it won’t!” I shot back loudly.

“Even if it’s to my peril, I think it’s pertinent to point out at this juncture that you’re in a serious fucking jealous rage and I haven’t even kissed you yet.”

I snapped my mouth shut.

He watched me do this before he grinned.

My stomach flipped over.

Oh yeah, he was beautiful.

“You wake up in a bad mood all the time or just when you think of me bangin’ another bitch?” he asked.

Needles pierced through my brain at his last four words, the pain so severe, I flinched and felt nausea roil up my throat.

“Hey,” his voice came soft at me. Soft and close.

I opened my eyes and saw him in my space, his face dipped to mine.

“What’s the matter with me?” I whispered, my recent uncontrollable and totally irrational behavior filtering through my conscious, freaking me out.

“You get you’re mine?” he asked back instead of giving me an answer.

I was not ready to commit to that verbally so I just stared at him.

He let that go but kept talking.

“If you’re mine, I’m yours. Not even gonna think of another man’s hands on you, much less anything else.” His jaw tensed even as he continued, talking mostly between his teeth. “Tear the room apart if I did.”

“This is freakadelic, Abel, and not in the good way freakadelic can be.”

His head twitched as his brows drew together.

“Freakadelic?” he asked.

I nodded once. “And not in a good way.”

He shook his head, but his features softened, most specifically his mouth.

Oh man.

Definitely.

Unbelievably.

Beautiful.

Uh-oh.

“I’m here,” he stated.

“I can see that,” I replied.

“And you’re here.”

“That I am,” I confirmed unnecessarily.

His face dipped closer. “We’re together, Delilah, nothin’ else matters.”

At that, I pulled in a soft breath, and as I did, his eyes dropped to my mouth as if he could hear it even though it was silent.

They moved back to mine. “Now you got ten minutes. I get time today, I’ll put up a curtain or somethin’, give you some privacy while we’re here. But until then, I’ll give you the room.”

After saying that, he turned, moved to the kitchen, flipped on the light switch that illuminated that space, then he went to the door and out of it, giving me the room.

It was then I realized he was talking about the bathroom area.

I bent to retrieve the toothbrush that caused my first-thing-in-the-morning psycho behavior and hurried to the bathroom area, not about to waste my opportunity for some privacy for my morning business.

I took care of it, including washing my hands, brushing my teeth, and splashing water on my face, before I turned to the room, still drying my face with a clean hand towel I’d grabbed from the shelves.

It was then I spied my purse and my body grew solid.

I stared at my purse over the hand towel I had pressed to my face as all the events of last night washed over me, every freaking whacked-out, impossible-but-they-still-happened one.

He’d saved my life. He might have saved me from getting raped, but he’d definitely saved my life.

He’d protected me, and of an instinct I didn’t know I had, I did what I could to protect him.

We’d both nearly died last night, and the last thing I knew before showering and hitting the sack was that he was out with his friends hunting a fucking werewolf.

But before he came home, he found my purse.

He found my purse.

Something I hadn’t noticed, even if I couldn’t believe for an instant I didn’t, came clear in that moment. It was so enormous, I dropped the towel and stumbled to the armchair, leaning a hand heavily into it, taking my weight in my arm, holding myself up, my eyes never leaving my purse.

It was gone.

“Holy shitoly, it’s gone,” I whispered.

I’d lived with it since I could remember. “It” being what my mother was convinced made me nuts. It convinced her enough to make me go see psychologists, three of them, all of them declaring I was attention seeking and, due to that, had an eating disorder and needed long-term psychological care and medication.

I was of a healthy weight. I didn’t starve myself, didn’t binge, didn’t purge. I also was a good kid. I could be sassy. I could get in trouble, but nothing bad.

I just constantly felt “it,” but didn’t know what “it” was.

When Mom tried to force therapy and drugs on me when I was eleven, Dad stepped in, doing the impossible—an antisocial, antiestablishment biker winning custody of his daughter.

It took him four years and three appeals, but he did it. And while he was doing it, he’d managed to put up court-ordered obstructions to Mom medicating me (but, alas, I was forced into therapy; however, this was an hour a week I didn’t have to put up with my mother, and my therapist was an all right guy, so it didn’t scar me).

“That hunger inside you, little girl, you’ll quench it,” he’d told me when I’d shared it with him. The gnawing pain, the desperation to get it gone, the lifelong struggle to learn to live day to day with it, like someone with a chronic illness learning how to cope and live life even though the debilitating symptoms never went away. “You’ll know it when you find it and I know my Lilah. You’ll get it, fight for it, earn it, beg for it, but in the end, you’ll win it and you’ll be whole.”

Dad had been wrong.

I hadn’t known it when I found it.

Looking at my purse, I knew.

The pain was gone.

I’d found it.

My God, I’d found it.

Moving from the chair to the table, I snatched up my purse, digging inside even as I aimed my ass to a chair and collapsed into it.

I pulled out my phone, activated it, hit the buttons, and made the call.

I put it to my ear.

“Yo, little girl, how’s tricks in the Promised Land?” Dad’s gravelly, slightly sleepy (no doubt I woke him, he usually didn’t get up before ten), two-pack-a-day voice came at me.

“Daddy,” I whispered.

His tone was alert when he instantly responded, “Where are you? I’ll be on my bike in five minutes. Do I need the boys?”

Tears gathered in my eyes and I sucked in breath to control them.

“It’s gone,” I told him.

“What?” he asked sharply.

“The pain.”

He was silent.

I felt a tear slide down my cheek as I slid an arm around my belly, holding myself close, holding the fullness tight to me. “I’m whole, Daddy,” I whispered.

“What’s his name?” Dad asked gruffly.

I closed my eyes and another tear fell.

Dad so totally got it.

“Abel.”

“Kickass name,” Dad muttered.

I smiled and opened my eyes. “He’s got a Sportster.”

“I already like him.”

I felt a giggle slide up my throat but swallowed it down.

“There’s more,” I told him.

“Fuck. The asshole’s married, I’m gonna rip his dick off.”

“He’s not married.”

Well, at least all indications pointed to that fact. That said, I knew absolutely nothing about Abel except he was a heretofore fictional creature walking the earth.

I decided not to share that with Dad just yet.

But I did share, “I…I actually kind of do think I need you to call the boys and come out.”

His gruff was back to sharp when he asked, “Why?”

“Abel kind of saved my life last night.”

“What the fuck?” he bit out, and I could actually feel his movement through his words, either getting out of his recliner, where he’d fallen asleep watching something badass on TV (or porn), or rolling out of bed, leaving one of his bitches in it if he’d had company.

It was usually option two. As much as Dad was antisocial (this didn’t include “the boys”), he liked to get himself some enough that he’d put up with a woman, at least long enough for her to take care of his needs and make him breakfast before he got her ass out of his house.

At this point, I heard the door scraping open behind me and I looked that way.

Abel caught my eyes, and half a second later he was bending over me, his face an inch away.

“Why are you crying?” he demanded to know, then didn’t wait for my answer. He ripped the phone out of my hand, straightened, put it to his ear, and clipped, “You made her cry.” There was a pause before, “Yeah, I’m him.” Another pause before his eyes dropped to me and he muttered, “Right. Didn’t know. Just got in, saw tears on her face. Here she is.”

He then offered the phone to me.

I took it, my lips parted, my gaze never leaving him, and put it to my ear.

When I did, Dad must have sensed it with Dad Perception for he declared, “Already fuckin’ love that guy.”

Abel moved toward the kitchen as I said, “I…well, that’s good.”

“Fucker handed off the phone before I could have a word. Give it back to him. Wanna know what’s goin’ down with you and want that from him.”

“We don’t actually know,” I told him. “He and his buds went after one of the, uh…guys who got away, but they didn’t get him. So we’re at a loss.”

“He went after him?” Dad asked.

“Yeah,” I confirmed.

“No cops?”

Oh man.

“Dad—”

“He an outlaw like your old man?”

I didn’t know for sure, but I had a feeling he was.

Or he’d turned into one last night, for certain.

“We’ll just say that the proper authorities were not notified,” I stated, then stared as I watched Abel come out from behind the door of the fridge with one thing in each hand.

The first was a packet of bacon.

The second was a plastic bag filled with blood.

I swallowed.

He tossed the bacon on the counter, opened the microwave, and shoved the bag of blood in.

Gluk.

Through this, Dad hooted.

Then he asked, “You okay?”

“Freaked out but healthy,” I answered.

“Am I gonna lose my motherfucking mind at what happened to you?”

“It wasn’t that bad, Dad. Or, at least, Abel stopped it before it could get that way.”

“Thank fuck,” he muttered, then louder, “You still at the Bay?”

“Yeah.”

“Right. To gather the boys and be there, take at least two days. He got you covered for that?”

Abel was beeping buttons on the microwave as I said, “Yeah. He’s pretty, um…capable.”

“Ha!” Dad snorted. “Good to know. But you tell him one beautiful, shiny hair on my little girl’s head is fucked, I’ll have his throat.”

Dad was forty-eight years old and spent his time taking odd jobs that paid cash so he could avoid paying more taxes than he had to in order to keep his house and land. He drank. He caroused. He rode his bike. He got laid. He communed with his brethren. He frequently did things I never knew about because they’d scare me. And he loved me.

He also worked out. Sure, he sometimes lifted weights with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, but he did it.

Abel could still tear him limb from limb.

“That won’t be a problem. I haven’t known him very long, but so far he’s been pretty good at taking care of me.”

Abel turned and aimed his eyes my way.

I felt the look in them in my nipples, at my clit, and curving around my heart.

When Dad spoke again, I tore my eyes away and looked at my lap.

“All right, precious girl, gotta kick Charlene’s ass out, rally the boys, and get on the road. Hang tight. I’ll call you tonight and let you know when to expect us tomorrow.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

“Love you, Lilah.”

“Love you more.”

“Love you most, baby.”

He did.

I tried, I tried hard, but he definitely loved me most.

“’Bye.”

“Later,” he replied and I heard him hang up.

The microwave sounded and I looked that way.

“You drink bagged blood?” I asked.

Abel pulled out the bag and turned to me. “You gonna be squeamish?”

“I, um…well, probably.”

I mean, it was blood.

“Can drink it in the hall,” he offered.

“It’s your house, Abel,” I pointed out, though it wasn’t a house so much as a room.

“Can drink it in the hall, Delilah,” he repeated.

I didn’t repeat like he did. Instead, I told him, “People I care about call me Lilah.”

He gave me that look again that I felt at certain very good parts of me.

“Drink your blood,” I said, wondering how on earth I was saying that in a serious way when it was total insanity. “I’ll start the bacon.”

I pushed up from the chair, avoiding looking at him and moving to the kitchenette.

I found a frying pan in the cupboard and I already knew where the knives were, so I nabbed one and sawed open the package.

I was laying the strips in when I felt him move, so I looked to the side and watched him use the toe of his boot to open a trash can I hadn’t noticed on the other side of the oven. He dropped the empty bag in.

That didn’t take long.

A shiver slid up my spine.

“Blue is blood, Lilah,” he said quietly, and I focused again on him. “White is regular trash. Yeah?”

I leaned back and saw there were two trash bins, one blue, one white. I righted myself, pressed my lips together, and nodded.

He moved my way and stopped close, looking down at the skillet.

“More,” he declared.

“What?” I asked.

He looked to me. “More bacon. You’ve only got four strips in there and I’ll eat four at least.”

I felt my brows shoot up. “You eat human food?”

He stared into my eyes, then reached to me, took the bacon out of my hand, and tugged more out, placing the strips in the pan, all while talking. “Right. Quick education. I day walk. Got no problem with the sun. Sleep at night, though I’m a night person, not a morning person, but that only means I like to sleep in and stay up late, not that I need the night. And when I sleep, I don’t do it in a coffin.”

“Okay,” I said when he stopped, thinking all that was good news, the coffin part especially, because, well…euw.

He tossed the package on the counter and reached for the drawer by my hip. I slid out of the way as he opened it.

He grabbed a fork, closed the drawer, and looked at me.

“No problem with silver. No problem with holy water. No problem with garlic. Ditto crosses. Don’t need to be invited into anyone’s house. In fact, outside of needing blood to survive, nothin’ you think you might know about vampires or werewolves is true. This includes me not transformin’ to wolf at the full moon. I can do it whenever I want and never do it unless I want to. I also can’t turn people. Not that I’ve tried, but as far as I know, I was born this way.”

“As far as you know?” I asked as he started moving bacon around in the skillet, which was now sizzling.

“Was found in an alley. I was a pup. Had transformed, did it then whenever because I hadn’t learned control. Woman who found me took me in, thinking I was a stray puppy or dumped. Told me later I freaked her shit when I turned into a toddler, though she didn’t use those words.”

At this exceedingly sad story, I felt my insides freeze even as my lips whispered, “Oh my God.”

He stopped scooting bacon around and looked at me. “Yeah.”

“What did she do?” I asked.

He shrugged. “She tried to find my folks, and when that failed, she raised me.”

“Just like that?” I pressed.

“Don’t know her thought process. She didn’t share that with me. All I know is all I knew was her. Her love. Her kindness. Her understanding. Her protection. I have no memories of before her. She figured out all I was before I could form a coherent thought, seeing as I’d catch rats and suck them dry and try to latch on to her whenever I got the chance, baring my fangs. She brought me animals to keep me alive until I learned to do what I needed to do, and only then did she let me go out and find humans.”

I could not believe I was hearing this.

But I was hearing it, and I had to admit, it was utterly fascinating and extraordinary even if it was tremendously sad.

I mean, what kind of person would take into their home and then raise a werewolf vampire?

No other answer to that except a really good one.

“Was she Jian-Li?” I asked.

Something profoundly sad moved over his features as he looked back down to the bacon saying, “No.”

Okay, it was not the time to dig deeper with that.

“Learned to do what you needed to do?” I prompted as he flipped bacon.

He looked to me. “Teeth are sharp, Lilah. Fuck you up. Pain, and that pain is bad. But I got it in me to protect against that. Figured it out on a fluke. Somethin’ happens if I lick the skin before I bite. Means no pain to who I’m drawin’ from.”

“Well, that’s good,” I muttered.

“Yeah.” He grinned. “And I hesitate to wake the wildcat in you that tells her tale through your green eyes, but it’s also bad. Somethin’ happens in my mouth when I feed, so if I’m doin’ something else at the same time, means I can numb things.”

I was confused. “Numb things?”

“Numb…” He paused and leaned slightly into me. “Things. Things you don’t want numbed say I take a break from drawing to do other shit with my mouth.”

I felt my eyes get big as I whispered, “Oh.”

“Yeah.” His eyes went to my mouth. “Oh.”

I swallowed.

He lifted his gaze to mine.

“I eat real food,” he stated, kindly taking the conversation out of the hot zone. “I do not fly. Nothing like that. Don’t turn into a bat, just a wolf. But as you know, I’m a fuckuva lot faster and stronger than your average man. I hear better, see better, smell better, all that shit.”

“That’s cool, you know,” I told him softly, mostly because, it not being fresh and flipping me out, it absolutely was.

He was back to the bacon. “It’s a burden and a boon.”

I was again confused. “How is it a burden?”

He looked back to me and I held my breath at what was in his eyes.

“You live your whole life being different from everyone, Lilah, things can get shitty. They can also get ugly. People are assholes. The good ones are hard to find. There’s no one who knows what I am except Jian-Li, Xun, Wei, Chen, and now you.”

“But…what about the women you…well, used to feed from?”

His lips quirked at my emphasis on “used to” before he turned away and lifted a hand to grab a plate off the shelf. I lifted my own to grab the roll of paper towels and pulled some off to line the plate.

All this was done while he spoke.

He just didn’t say enough.

“I take care of that.”

I finished lining the plate and looked to him. “How?”

He flipped the bacon again, he just didn’t speak.

Uh-oh.

“How, Abel?” I pressed.

I should have known it was coming when he turned off the burner.

Then again, I hadn’t known him for even a day so I really couldn’t have known.

But one thing I could say for him, he gave it to me straight.

“I can control minds.”

I blinked, stared, then took a step away.

Only then did I breathe, “What?”

“I can control minds,” he repeated.

“Oh my God.”

“Don’t do it to Jian-Li or my brothers. Never. And won’t do it to you.”

“But you can…you can…glamor people?”

His brows shot together. “What?”

“Glamor,” I snapped. “Like, you know, on True Blood.”

His jaw got tight before he relaxed it and replied, “Told you, Lilah, nothin’ you think you know about vampires or werewolves is true.”

“But you said you can control minds,” I shot back, sounding like I was getting panicked, probably because I was.

“What’s this thing from this show?”

That surprised me. “You haven’t seen True Blood?”

“Fuck no.”

“Why not?” I asked. “I mean, if I were you, I’d at least be curious.”

“Lilah, focus. What’s this thing you’re talkin’ about from this show?”

I nodded, took in a breath, and explained, “See, the vamps look into their vic…um…well, the person’s eyes, kinda mesmerize them, and tell them what to think or say or do, or maybe tell them to forget something. Then they think or say or do that, or, you know”—I threw out a hand—“forget it.”

He looked unsettled when his gaze went back to the bacon and he muttered, “Fuck.”

“Oh my God, you can do that,” I whispered.

He looked back to me. “No and yes. I can do that, all of that, but I don’t have to be lookin’ in their eyes. Don’t even have to be in the same room with them. Just gotta have laid eyes on them at one point, be able to remember what they look like, and I have to be relatively close. Then I can do it.”

“Oh my God!” I cried, not knowing if this was awesome or terrifying. “How close do you have to be?”

“Within a block.”

My mouth dropped open.

He looked to my mouth, then back to my eyes. “It will never happen with you,” he stated.

I closed my mouth only to open it to ask, “Would I know if it did?”

There was a brief hesitation before his “Not really, no.”

Not really, no?

I did not like that.

I took another step back.

He turned fully to me and his face got hard. “You have my word.”

Suddenly, I glanced around frantically. “Could this…is all of this…?”

I snapped my mouth shut and took two more steps back.

“Fuck, Lilah,” he bit out. “I did not control your mind to be here.”

“Dude, this, all of it…” I waved both of my hands in the air. “It’s super-sized weird.”

“It’s also real.”

“How do I know that?”

“You trust me.”

My voice pitched higher. “How do I do that?”

“What would you never do?” he asked suddenly.

“What?”

“What would you never do?”

I took another step back, fairly shouting, “I’m not going to tell you that!”

Then, suddenly, I started barking like a dog.

I got three barks out before I heard his voice in my head saying, Stop.

I stopped, lifted my hands, and clamped them over my mouth, retreating three more steps.

“That’s what it feels like,” he said carefully, moving slowly my way. “I had to do it once, just this once, so you’d know how it felt and you’d know what’s happening right now isn’t that.”

I took my hands away from my mouth and said, “But I didn’t feel anything.”

I started barking like a dog again, two barks this time before his voice was again in my head, telling me to stop.

“Again?” he asked.

Was he sadistic?

“No!” I shouted.

Then barked.

Then stopped.

“Do you feel it, Lilah?”

I hit bed, stopped moving, and lifted my hand his way. “Stay away from me.”

“Pay attention, close attention, to everything,” he ordered.

“Please stay away from me,” I whispered.

Then I barked.

And stopped.

But I heard it then. Felt it. His voice in my head, whispering what to do, and the barely perceptible frisson it sent along the back of my neck, both of these beginning and ending in less than a heartbeat.

He stopped two feet in front of me and spoke quietly. “The women I fed from, they know me, they remember me, they remember what we do together. They remember everything except me feeding. I free them from that block when it happens so they’ll want it, ask for it, get into it, but I put that block back up when I’m done with them. When I was younger, I did shit all the time, stupid shit, and I’ll admit, sometimes mean shit. But I learned from that. It can bite you in the ass and it isn’t nearly as satisfying as you’d think it’d be, even if they deserve it.”

He took a step closer.

I leaned back over the bed.

He stopped moving but kept at me.

“The stupid shit I did, the people I did it to, they didn’t know why they were doing what they were doing, or that I did it to them. They knew it wasn’t them, but they still did it. It was fucked what I made them do, but it was more fucked watching them react to doin’ something they knew wasn’t in them to do. The women, I erase my bite from their minds. They know they miss it, and when they get it back they think they forgot it, want it, have it, before I take it away again. They just don’t know I’m the one doing it.”

“Right, well, don’t ever do it to me again,” I hissed.

“You were freaking and needed to understand,” he explained.

“You made me bark like a dog!” I shouted.

He lifted his hands in the air and flicked them out impatiently. “Delilah, serious as fuck, would I tell you I could control minds if I intended to control your mind?”

That made sense.

Which sucked.

“Don’t get rational with me when you just made me bark like a dog,” I snapped.

“I didn’t harm you,” he returned, dropping his hands.

“That doesn’t matter.”

“I’d never harm you.”

My back shot straight at his tone, a tone that made the words he said burrow inside like they were writing themselves on my soul as a never-ending vow.

“You need to know me,” he said, his voice gentling. “You need to understand what I am, what I can do, who I am. I’m giving that to you. I’m doing it honestly. Nothing held back. You need that. We need that.”

He was right.

That sucked too.

“I think you might get all this is gonna take some getting used to,” I noted in my defense.

“Yeah, I get that,” he replied.

“It’d be freaking awesome if it wasn’t so fucking weird and didn’t come with people trying to kill us.”

I saw his body relax and his mouth get soft before he agreed quietly, “Yeah.”

“You want honesty, I’ll give it back to you,” I began. “All if this is totally flipping me out and I’m hanging on by a thread here.”

“How can I help that?”

He asked the question straight out and instantly, and after he did, my eyes fell on my purse on the table.

Shit.

I looked back to him. “We’re connected, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“No clue.”

“Doesn’t it freak you?”

“No, ’cause for the first time in my life, with you finally in it, I feel whole.”

Oh my God, he felt like me.

He felt like me.

I closed my eyes and let myself feel it, something I’d never felt in my life until him.

Whole.

Even in all the crazy, it felt marvelous.

I opened them again.

“Is there more about the world I don’t know? Like, does Superman exist?” I asked.

“Vampires and werewolves roam the earth. It’s a possibility,” he answered.

I smiled as I asked, “Could you kick his ass?”

“Absolutely,” he replied.

“Cocky,” I muttered.

He tipped his head to the side. “You want bacon and eggs?”

“Do I have to drink the eggs raw?”

His brows shot together. “Fuck no.”

“Then yes.”

His mouth still soft, he shook his head and reached his hand out to me. “You get the bacon, I’ll get the eggs. We’ll make breakfast, eat it, and you can tell me about your dad.”

I looked into his eyes.

Then I looked to his hand.

Finally, I reached out my own.

His closed around mine and he gently pulled me to the kitchen.

He let me go to get the eggs.

I took care of the bacon and commenced in telling him about my dad.