Wild and Free (The Three #3)(121)

The vampire listed five names.

“Did those cameras have feeds or were they static?” Abel asked.

“The tapes were to be collected by the humans who were on our payroll after the meeting was over. There were too many of the detail not on payroll to have time to establish a feed.”

“Well, at least there’s that,” I muttered.

“Lilah, would you please go and get Gregor?” Lucien asked, and my eyes went to him to see him looking at me. “Tell Gregor we need to gather immediately.”

“Abel is hungry,” I told him.

Lucien nodded and looked to Abel. “Put him in a trance. I’ll have him watched and gather the others. Half an hour?”

“That’ll work,” Abel murmured, looked to the vampire in the seat and I did too.

His face went slack.

Yeesh, my man so rocked.

“There’s another,” I shared with Lucien.

“We’ll handle him until Abel gets back,” Lucien replied.

I nodded and Abel moved to me, saying to Lucien as he did, “Half an hour.”

“Half an hour,” Lucien agreed.

Abel got close and slid an arm around my waist. “Hang on, bao bei.”

I curved my arms around his shoulders and then…whoosh…we were out of the room, up the stairs, and behind the closed door in our bedroom.

I caught my breath as Abel set me down and held me steady with both hands at my hips. When I had it together, I tipped my head back to catch his eyes.

“Word with your father, be smart about what he says to who and where,” Abel said gently.

I nodded, whispering, “He’s gonna feel shit he screwed the pooch.”

Abel shook his head. “He didn’t do wrong. He couldn’t know. None of us knew. And his vampire is true to the cause. He’s not responsible for the actions of *s.”

This was true.

I thought this as I caught the look on Abel’s face. A look I couldn’t get a lock on, but it was a look I felt like a shot to the heart.

“What?” I asked.

“I got skills,” he answered confusingly.

“Well…yeah,” I confirmed unnecessarily.

“No, Lilah.” His fingers dug into my hips. “I…got…skills. Skills that can help. Skills that are vital. Skills that help make you safe. Sonia, Leah, all of us.”

“Well…” I started. “Yeah,” I repeated to finish, still confused.

“I’m not a soldier.”

I shook my head. “Abel, I’m not following.”

“I’m powerful. I’m necessary.”

My heart clutched as what he was saying finally dawned on me.

I got close and shifted my hands to the sides of his neck. “Of course you are.”

“I’m not a freak,” he said like I didn’t speak. “What I can do is what we need.”

I leaned my weight into him and held on to his neck. “You were never a freak,” I said softly.

His eyes went unfocused, so I squeezed his neck until I got his attention.

“Never, baby,” I stressed. “You’ve always been necessary. But, just saying, even soldiers are necessary. Important and necessary.”

He shook his head as if not quite believing me and stated, “Three hours and we got them. Three hours and only I could get us what we needed.”

“Yeah,” I whispered on a grin. “You totally rock. Then again, you always did. You just didn’t know it.”

He stared at my face like he wasn’t seeing me, then suddenly, his eyes closed and he bent his neck so his forehead was resting on mine.

“I’ll take the craziness,” I kept whispering, and his eyes opened. “The danger. The uncertainty. I’ll take it all if this leads to you understanding how totally”—I squeezed his neck—“and completely”—I squeezed again—“awesome you are.”

Abel’s hands drifted up my sides and his eyes went from vague and incredulous to something I liked much better.

“Hungry,” he murmured, his hands stopping at the sides of my breasts, his thumbs gliding in.

“Hope you get Lilah champagne,” I told him. “The occasion merits it.”

“Don’t care what I get, just as long as it’s Lilah something, which, lucky me, is what it’s gonna be.”

Yeah, my man so rocked.

I smiled into his eyes.

His eyes smiled back.

Then his hands slid to under my arms and I was up.

Then I was down, on the bed, Abel on top of me, and seconds later, my man was feeding.

Minutes after that, Abel’s hand down my shorts, I was coming.

*

“Okay, this shit I do not like,” I declared irately the minute Abel closed the soundproofed door to our bedroom.

“Lilah.”

I turned to him and saw that was all he was going to say.

I, on the other hand, had a whole lot more to say.

It was late in the evening. Bjorn had been handled. The bad spy vampire, who was named Patricio, had been handled. The greedy, turncoat humans had been handled.

And due to Abel’s kickass ability, neither of the immortals remembered anything that had happened that day and Patricio was providing the report Abel gave him to give to the bad guys. That being, the excursion that morning was a training exercise for Abel, Xun, and Wei. Cosmo—Lucien’s friend and a vamp I met, who was tall, blond, hot (to the point he was at the “hottest” end of the scale), and nice—was still “in the wind” as far as the bad guys knew.