Wild and Free (The Three #3)(118)
Without hesitation, Yuri looked to her approaching and answered, “Your daughter.”
She shrugged a shoulder and muttered, “Right, I get that.” She stopped three feet away and declared, “I’m driving.”
“Barb, we had this discussion on the way here. You aren’t driving. If I’m in a car, I drive. And further, it’s my car,” Yuri said.
“I’m still driving,” she retorted.
“You absolutely are not,” he returned.
“You got to drive here,” she pointed out.
“Indeed, as it’s my car,” he replied.
“This car kicks butt,” she stated, swinging a hand out to the Jaguar he’d rented upon arrival in Dallas. “I wanna drive.”
Yuri looked to Aurora.
When he did, he saw that Aurora was having trouble not laughing. But even fighting her humor, she caught his hint.
“Mom, Yuri’s driving. It’s his car.”
“Aurora—” Barb began.
“But,” she said quickly, interrupting her mother, “maybe he’ll let you drive out to get us some Kentucky Fried Chicken when we get home.”
Suddenly, for the first time in nearly seven hundred years, he wanted someone to kill him.
“Kentucky Fried Chicken?” he asked, and Aurora turned bullshit, guileless, big blue eyes up to him.
“I’ve got a craving.”
Looking at her, he understood craving.
Also looking at her, he understood he was not only eating fast-food fried chicken that evening, he was letting her mother use his car to go and get it.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
“You have a vampire wrapped around your little pixie-dusted finger, is what you have,” Barb muttered over him, then shouted, “Shotgun!”
Yuri looked to the sky.
“No way! You get to drive to KFC!” Aurora shouted back.
Perhaps he was demented, having run across a witch he did not detect had spelled him insane, which meant he’d found an adorable, petite, but lushly beautiful witch attractive enough to put up with her annoying mother and her own frustrating, but effective, games.
“Battle it out amongst yourselves, but when the car is in gear, it’s moving. So whoever isn’t in it gets to spend the night with Sula,” Yuri declared as he moved around the hood of the car.
He was about to open his door when he heard one shut and looked across the roof.
Barb was gone, presumably in the front seat.
He presumed this because Aurora was standing at the door to the back, her eyes on him.
“You have a beautiful laugh,” she called softly.
What he had was the hope she liked getting a spanking.
Because she’d earned one.
And she was going to get one.
He didn’t share that.
Instead, he said, “Thank you, my sweet.”
She sent him a soft smile, then folded in the back of his car.
He folded in the front and reluctantly headed them toward what would eventually be a dinner of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Chapter Eighteen
I Got Skills
Delilah
“Everyone in the compound has been quarantined,” Gregor stated as all the members of The Three sat around the table in the conservatory, listening to him. “Stephanie has begun her interrogations with the human staff.” He turned his eyes to Lucien, then to Callum. “Rooms have been set up for the both of you, Ryon, Cosmo, Calder, and Caleb, so you all, as well, can start working to find the traitor, or traitors, as the case may be.”
“Uh,” I cut in hesitantly, having zero experience with interrogation tactics but still thinking they had a sure thing and should use him. “Wouldn’t it go a lot faster if Abel just mind-controlled everyone to spill their secrets until he found the bad guys, or gals, as, erm, the case may be?”
Gregor blinked at me.
“I mean,” I cautiously went on, “he could get them to ’fess up, then he could get them to keep doing their dastardly deeds, except we’d control what they’re doing and saying.”
“Seems a good plan to me,” Abel muttered.
I looked to him to see him grinning at the table, but I felt his hand come out and curl around mine.
“I apologize,” Gregor said, and I turned my eyes to him. “I’m unused to having someone with Abel’s extraordinary skills available for such tasks. You’re correct, Lilah, that would likely make things go a great deal faster, not to mention put us in an advantageous position.”
I smiled at Gregor and gave Abel’s hand a squeeze.
He squeezed mine back even as he looked to the vampire. “How about I get started now?”
“Capital idea,” Gregor murmured, his lips twitching as he pushed back his seat.
Everyone was on the move then, including Abel and me. But when I got to my feet, I tugged his hand.
When his gaze caught mine, I said, “I wanna watch your awesomeness in action.”
He gave me a grin that lit his eyes, the grin beginning to turn the blue one brown. “You got it, *cat.”
That was when I gave him a smile.
*
“You’re done,” Abel stated, then looked at me and said softly, “Next, Lilah.”
I nodded to him as I switched off the video camera on its tripod, which was pointed at a woman who was sitting in the lone chair in the room. She got up and started walking to the door. I opened it for her but stuck my torso out before she got to it and looked to Caleb, who was waiting in the hall.