Wild and Free (The Three #3)(124)

“Uh, ’night, Gregor.”

He tipped his head to the side, then walked to the door. “Good night, Abel.”

“Later,” Abel muttered.

Gregor’s gaze came to me once more before he walked through the door.

Abel closed it on him and turned to me. “You need the bathroom?”

I stared.

“Lilah?” Abel prompted.

“You have a brother,” I blurted.

“Yep,” he agreed, then started striding toward the bathroom.

I watched him do this. When he disappeared in it and I saw the light come on, but he didn’t close the door, I moved that way.

When I was in the door, I saw him bent over the sink, splashing water on his face.

“Baby, twenty years ago, he saved your life,” I said gently.

Abel turned off the taps and muttered, “Apparently.”

I watched him reach for the hand towel, nab it, and use it to dry his face.

“This is kinda huge news,” I pointed out.

He kept his eyes to the mirror as he said, “Kinda.”

“Okay, no,” I stated. “It’s not ‘kinda’ huge news, honey. You have a brother and he saved your life.” My voice had risen and it, or my words, finally got me his eyes.

“Went over that, Lilah. Now a coupla times.”

What was going on?

“You have no reaction?” I asked.

“What reaction do you want?” he asked back.

I threw out a hand. “I don’t know. Something.”

“He saved my life,” Abel declared.

“Yes, honey.”

“And they think he’s been lookin’ after me.”

“Yes,” I repeated.

Abel held my eyes and decreed, “He sucks at it.”

My head jerked. “I—”

Suddenly, he twisted his torso. Bunching up the hand towel, he threw it violently across the long vanity. It flew, opened, and fluttered, landing on the far edge of the other sink.

Just as suddenly, he twisted back to me and bit out, “All my life, thought I was a monster.”

There it was.

I started to move into the room.

Abel’s voice kept biting. “All my life, thought I was the only one, alone in who I was. Deviant. Abnormal. Wrong. Wondering where I came from. Wondering how I could even be.”

“Honey,” I whispered, getting close but stopping when his long legs took him a long step back.

“Watched people I love die. Not one. Not three. Generations of them. When I found the woman for me, didn’t know I could keep her alive.”

“Maybe your brother doesn’t know that either,” I suggested carefully.

“And maybe he does. At least if he’s lookin’ after me like they think, he saved my life, he knows what I am, what we both are, he knew he wasn’t alone.”

“Perhaps you should wait to be this angry after you hear what he has to say,” I offered, keeping up with my suggestions.

“And perhaps you know me enough to know that if I had a brother, I would not ever leave him hanging,” Abel shot back, and he was right. I knew him enough to know that for certain.

I lifted a hand toward him and said, “I don’t know what to say to make it better.”

“Bury my cock in your cunt. That’d work,” he clipped, and I didn’t like that, what he said or how he said it.

Therefore, I told him, “That part of what we have is not about you being angry and spewing * remarks.”

“Okay then, Lilah, how ’bout you give me a minute to wrap my head around that shit Gregor just shared without you up in my face about it,” he fired back instantly, his aim true and hurtful.

I took a step back. “You need a minute, you only have to ask.”

He stared at me before he inquired, “You got any siblings?”

“You know I don’t,” I answered.

“I didn’t either, until five minutes ago.”

“That isn’t true. You’ve had generations of them. I know it hasn’t occurred to you because you’re too busy being pissed, but do you think your brother, in looking out for you, maybe didn’t have even that?”

His jaw got hard.

He didn’t think of that.

“You can be pissed at him,” I stated. “You have a right because you’re correct. He left you hanging. He left you alone. He left you to come to the conclusion that you were a monster. And even if he doesn’t know much about who he is, at least you could have had each other. But as for me, he saved my man’s life. So I’m not going to be pissed at him. When they find him and bring him to us, I’m going to give him a big hug and thank him and maybe make him cookies. And you’re gonna have to put up with that and not go wolf on me, or, honestly, burying your cock in my cunt will only be a memory for you for at least a decade.”

His eyebrows shot up, and when they did, they did it scarily. “You’d deny me?”

I ignored his scary eyebrows.

“Fuck yes, if you don’t let me hug anyone who saves your life. And make them cookies. Though, just saying, I kinda hope your brother is the only one who gets that distinction. But with the way things are rolling for us, I might be handing hugs and cookies around to entire armies.”