“I love you,” she breathed.
He nodded. “We’re going to get through this, Mary. Even if we’re limping and bloodied at the end. We will go on because … maybe she’ll come and see us someday, after she’s grown. Maybe she’ll remember us. Who knows. But even if she doesn’t, we have to still be a family together, you and I. Otherwise … God, the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.”
FORTY-TWO
“Wait, so you don’t have class?”
As Elise asked the question, she was pulling on her jeans in Axe’s bathroom upstairs, her damp, fresh-out-of-the-shower skin making it the kind of job she had to do sitting on the toilet with the seat down. Axe shook his head as he put shaving cream on his face and picked up his razor. “We were supposed to, but I don’t know what’s going on. The text said that the Brotherhood is ‘otherwise engaged,’ whatever that means.”
“So do you think we can go have First Meal together?”
“Sure, where?”
Okay, it was totally sexy, watching your male shave. And Axe was tragically efficient about the job, running those blades down his jaw, across his chin, over his upper lip. There was no light on above the mirror, but she could see well enough thanks to a candle he’d lit and put on the side of the porcelain sink.
“I love all the candlelight here,” she remarked.
Loved even more what it was flowing over: the great pads of Axe’s pecs, and his six-pack that was so sharp it threw shadows, and his long, low-hanging sex, and his heavy thighs.
He glanced at her. “You keep looking at me like that and we’re not going to make it out of this house before sundown tomorrow.”
Elise smiled. “Well, if you weren’t so good to look at, I wouldn’t stare so much. Anyway, I need to head over to Peyton’s and get my phone first.”
Axe frowned. “I’ll go with you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Worried about being seen with me?”
Elise recoiled and then stared up at him. “No, not at all. Why would you say that?”
“Because I’m jealous.”
Okay, that was hot. But then she did the math. “Wait, of Peyton?”
Axe rinsed his razor under the water, knocked it twice on the edge of the sink, and then resumed the de-bearding on the other side of his face. “Yeah.”
She put both her hands up. “Let me tell you right now, you have nothing to worry about. First of all, I saw him shirtless last night—”
Axe turned his head so fast, he cut himself. “What—”
“—and he doesn’t hold a candle to you. At all.”
His eyes narrowed at her. “Did he come on to you?”
“No, and he wouldn’t ever.” She got to her feet and eased into Axe’s body; extending her tongue, she lapped up the bright red blood—which caused an immediate physical response in her male. “He knows better.”
Before Axe could say anything else, she sank down onto her knees, opened her mouth … and slid his erection home, sucking him deep as she cupped his heavy sac.
“Oh, fuuuuck—” There was a bang and a crash as Axe fell back against the wall. “Oh, shit …”
Popping his erection out of her mouth, she ran her tongue up the underside of him, and then circled his head. “Still jealous of him?”
“Evkaeeio jgo eo faiofkal flla.”
Or something to that effect.
With a smile, she went back to work, stroking him, sucking him, twisting his balls, teasing him with the sharp points of her fangs. Soon, he was panting and straining, and then coming in her mouth—and she was relentless, milking him dry until he sagged, all his power gone and inside of her.
And oh, the way his eyes clung to her, as if she were the most sexually exciting and satisfying female on the planet.
“I owe you,” he said with a speech impediment she’d never heard come out of him before.
“And I look forward to collecting. I think I’m going to go downstairs now, though—or we’ll never get out of here.”
Axe mumbled something, and then she was leaving him be … with the biggest smile on her face.
There was a serious rush to turning a male like that into putty. Go fig.
Down by the dwindling fire, she got Peyton’s phone and called her own cell.
Her cousin picked up on the first ring. “Yellllllo.”
“Thank God you’re alive.”
“You, too. Where are you? And no, your pops didn’t call—you want to know why?”
“Why?” She switched the phone to her other ear so she could tuck in her shirt. “And please tell me it’s not because he drove over to your house the second the sun set to look everywhere for me.”
“He didn’t call because I reset the GPS locator.”
“You did what?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I made the GPS locator report that you’ve been in your room all night. Well, as of three a.m., which is a perfectly respectable time to come home.”
“Peyton, no offense. You aren’t that smart.”
“Screw that—I’m in school. The Brother Vishous himself taught us how to do it. So as long as your sire didn’t check your room, you’re good to go. Did no one call me?”
“I don’t know. You’ve got some texts, I didn’t read them. They’re not my business.”
“Well, nobody came looking for you in my room at my house. So I must have done something right. You can kiss my ass when I give you your phone back.”
“Excuse me?”
“Meet me in a half hour at the cigar bar—I’ll bring it to you then. And boooonus, I’m going to get off hearing you tell me how wonderful I am in your stupid bodyguard’s presence, because he’ll be there with the rest of us. He always shows up if there’s free food.”
Elise rolled her eyes to herself. But she did owe Peyton. Unfortunately. “You are such an egoist.”
“Ha! If I’m the reason you got to be out all day without getting in trouble? I’d call that accuracy, not ego, when it comes to me being a god.”
“I’ll see you soon.”
“I bet you can’t wait, either. Buh-bye.”
First stop actually turned out to be Elise’s family’s mansion, and Axe let her go into her father’s house alone. As he waited on her frozen front lawn, he wondered what it would be like to live in a place like that. With servants, and a museum’s worth of stuff, and money, money, everywhere.
He thought of his unheated, dingy cottage.
Had his mother made it happen? he wondered. Had she made it to where she had told his father she wanted to go? Mistress of a house just like this one?
Was she happy—assuming she was alive? Hell … did she ever think of him? Wonder what had happened to the son she had left behind?
As Elise emerged out of the front door, he could tell by the skip in her step that all was well. Her father hadn’t caught on.
“Are you ready?” she asked as she came up to him.
“Always. Everything okay with your father?”
“No problems—and I told him I was meeting Peyton out, with you as an accompaniment, and he was fine with that.”