Wild and Free by Kristen Ashley
“Special delivery,” Wei said as greeting.
“We’re gonna hang tight outside, give Lilah some privacy,” Abel returned, and I heard the door close, knowing from the silence they were on the other side of it and feeling that settle in my belly. There was a door to the toilet but no ceiling, and even though I didn’t have a ton of hang-ups, taking care of business while two guys could hear it wasn’t something I was hankering to do.
I got it done and left the bathroom, calling, “All clear,” knowing at least Abel would hear me through the steel and cement (which meant he could probably hear the other parts, but…whatever).
The door opened.
I had a loaded toothbrush in my hand when it did and I moved back, shoving it in my mouth and lifting a hand to wave to Wei.
“Yo, Lilah,” Wei greeted.
I waved harder and smiled through building foam.
The men walked in, both carrying coolers. I went to the sink but did it turned, watching them move to the kitchen.
Also listening.
“All’s clear on the home front,” Wei reported as he put his cooler on the floor. Abel went to the fridge and opened it, setting his cooler on the floor also, but he kept bent and slid the lid open.
He then commenced loading bags of blood into the fridge as I felt my eyes widen.
“Good,” Abel replied.
“You think they got a load of us, then turned tail and ran, thinkin’ whatever beef they have isn’t worth it?” Wei suggested with what I figured was more hope than realism.
“I’m thinkin’ they got a load of us and they’re off for reinforcements and a strategy session,” Abel replied, his eyes sliding to me.
I shrugged to show him that I wasn’t freaked about his likely correct assessment of the situation and turned back to the sink.
“We need a get together, without Jian- Li. Can you call that?” Abel stated, and I turned back to them, surprised.
“Without Ma?” Wei also seemed surprised.
“Yeah,” Abel said, moving the cooler out of the way with his foot just as Wei shoved the other one toward him with his.
“How do you think you’re gonna get anything past Ma?”
“Have it at lunch when the restaurant is in full swing and she’s too busy to come,” Abel told him.
“Ma’s a part of this, Abel,” Wei said quietly.
“Yeah, and what I gotta talk to the men about I’ll talk to her about, but privately.”
I saw Wei’s body tense, and due to it being imperative considering the amount of foam in my mouth, as well as to give them a hint of privacy, I turned back to the sink, spit, and turned on the faucet to rinse.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Wei replied.
“Thanks, brother,” Abel muttered, now loading the blood bags from the other cooler into the fridge.
He finished this, snapped both coolers closed, and handed them to Wei, all while I watched through the mirror, rinsing the wash from my face.
“Later, Lilah,” Wei called as he headed back to the door.
“Later, Wei,” I called back as I dried my face with a towel.
Wei disappeared behind the door and I turned to Abel to see the microwave whirring, a bag of blood inside, but he was making coffee.
I tossed the towel to the sink, walked that way, and got close.
The microwave dinged.
“You know,” I said softly, leaning my hip against the counter, “I liked it when you drew from me.”
Abel’s eyes, now back to brown and blue, making me wonder which way I liked them better, came to me. “Got that, pussycat,” he replied quietly, turning to open the door on the microwave.
“So you can, you know, do it again,” I told him.
He turned back to me, bag of blood in hand. “Want that, ’preciate you offering, and will take it, baby, if you ask for it. But you only got so much blood. I can enjoy it, get my fill, but gotta give it time for you to replenish it.”
Of course.
“Right,” I muttered.
“Have a look to see what you want for breakfast while I do this,” he ordered, jerking his head to the fridge.
“Do what?” I asked.
“Drink,” he answered.
I felt my brows draw together, thinking this was a little strange, as I replied slowly, “Oh…kay.”
I moved to the fridge. Head in it, I called, “Well, in here, our choices are eggs and bacon or bacon and eggs.”
“Got pancake mix,” he replied. “Bread, milk, and eggs for French toast. Other shit on the shelves.”
I looked beyond the door of the fridge to see him sucking back the last of the blood and toeing open the blue trash can.
“You could have told me that without my head in the fridge,” I stated, and his eyes turned to me as he quickly finished with the bag and tossed it in the bin in a way that looked almost ashamed.
What the fuck?
“You pick, or I can ask one of the boys to go out and get donuts or some other shit you want,” he said, dropping the lid on the bin and moving my way.
“What was that?” I asked.
“What was what?”
“The thing you just did.”
He stopped and focused on me, eyes blank.
Carefully blank.
“Drink blood, Delilah.”
“I know, Abel.”
“Have to do it, but I’ll do it quick so you don’t have to watch.”
I closed the fridge and faced off with him. “Honey, you’ve drawn from me.”
“I know, I was there,” he returned, his tone threaded with a sudden stiffness.
“And you left our beer and bullshitting fest upstairs yesterday to have your real lunch,” I reminded him.
“Your point?” he asked.
“My point is you’re you. That’s what you do. What you need. Why would it matter if I saw you doing it or not?”
“It’s not something humans do,” he told me as if I didn’t know.
“And?” I prompted.
“And, I saw your reaction the first time I did it. So I’ll save you from bein’ disgusted by it by not doin’ it in front of you, or if I have to, doin’ it quick.”
Oh my God.
“Honey, I’m not disgusted by it,” I said gently.
“Saw your reaction, Delilah,” he returned, no thread now, his tone was full-on stiff.
I threw out a hand. “Well, you know, it was my first time. Cut me some slack for that. But now, things are different.”
“How are they different?” he shot back. “I still drink blood.”
“It’s different because I know you better.”
“Again, that makes it different how?” he asked.
“I don’t know, it just does. It’s a part of you. And I’m a part of you,” I returned. “You’ve kissed me. You’ve held me. You’ve fucked me. You’ve made love to me. You’ve met my dad. You’ve met members of my family. You’ve slept beside me. You’ve come inside me, repeatedly. We’re connected.”
“Maybe we should quit talking about this,” he suggested, and I did not like that.
I didn’t because he clearly had some issue with this, an issue with something that might not be natural to me, but was not only natural but essential to him, he’d told me he thought he was a monster, and there was no way the things I was saying shouldn’t be getting in.
Unless he’d built a wall to letting them in.
“Abel—”
“We’re movin’,” he declared.
“No, we need to talk about—”
“What I mean is, we’re movin’. From Serpentine Bay. Just you and me. Not my family. Yours can escort us, act as guard close to wherever I find for us to settle that’s out of the way and safe, but we’re goin’. And I’m sorry, Lilah, but that means you gotta leave your life behind and you need to start doin’ that while I look into finding us a place that’s safe.”
I stared at him, my throat getting tight.
It got tighter when
“What are you talking about?” I asked on a horrified whisper.
“This shit that’s goin’ down, it isn’t a surprise,” he explained. “I’ve had decades of premonitions that something like this was gonna happen. Now it’s happening. And the target isn’t my family. It’s you and it’s me. As much as I love them, as much as I owe them, as much as they’re a part of me, somethin’ in me knows I got one priority. You. I gotta focus on keepin’ you safe. I cannot focus on keepin’ everyone safe. But I gotta find a way to make them safe, and turn my focus solely to you, which means getting them out of danger. And that means us out of their lives.”
I couldn’t believe this.
“But that…that…” I shook my head. “That will destroy them.”
All of them. Jian-Li and my father especially.
His jaw got tight even as he replied, “Yeah, I know. Didn’t say I liked it, but it has to happen. They may be destroyed, but they’ll be it breathin’.”
“Abel, I don’t think—”
“Need you at my back with this, Lilah.”
I threw out both hands. “But I’m not sure I agree with you.”
“They’ll be back,” he whispered, his voice nearly a hiss, the sound crawling up my spine. “Not four of them. Not six. More. A lot more. My brothers, they can take care of themselves one-on-one. Two-on-one, that’ll get dicey. More? No fuckin’ way. These fuckers have power and speed, but they also got skill. I want my brothers to find women. I want them to make babies. I want them to live lives where they aren’t movin’ around every few years, protectin’ me so no one will notice them age, but me not. I want them settled. I want them happy. I want them alive.”
Oh God, I got him.
I so got him.
And what I got broke my heart because he was right.
We had to go to keep the people we loved safe.
“Okay, baby,” I said quietly.
“You’ll have my back?” he asked tersely.
I nodded.
“With your dad?”
I swallowed through the lump in my throat.
God, Daddy.
He’d hate it. He was going to lose it when it was suggested.
But he’d give into it. He’d give me anything.
I nodded again.
“I fuckin’ hate this for us,” Abel said low, his voice vibrating with the depth of that hate.
“Me too,” I agreed, my voice shaking with the depth of my emotions, all of them.
“Found you, knew in my gut this is what we’d face. But wish like fuck I could give you somethin’ else. Family. Laughter. Happiness. Peace. Us just settling in, gettin’ to know each other, building a life together with your dad and all that comes with you, with my family and all that comes with me. But we can’t have that unless I know the threat is gone.”
“Okay,” I agreed again.
Abel came to me and pulled me tight into his arms.
“I hate this for us,” he murmured into the top of my hair.
I wrapped my arms around him and repeated, “Me too.”
He held me close.
I did the same.
I felt him take in a deep breath before he muttered, “French toast.”
I closed my eyes hard, opened them, forced lightness in my voice, suddenly not hungry in a way I didn’t think I’d want to eat again for the rest of my life, and replied, “Works for me.”
* * * * *
“That shit is not gonna happen,” Xun declared fiercely.
In fact, his fierceness was clogging the room.
I curled my fingers tighter around Abel’s thigh.
He’d just told his brothers, my father, and his boys what was going to happen. That being, Abel was going to search out a house somewhere far away and remote, Dad and his crew were going to take us almost there, then peel off, leaving us behind and leaving all of them without anyone knowing where we were.
“We’ll come back when this shit gets sorted, Xun,” Abel assured. “We’ll find you.” His eyes swept the round table in the private room in Jian-Li’s restaurant where we were all having lunch, before he finished, “All of you when it’s done.”
“And what if it gets done in a way that there’s no you to find us ’cause you got no one takin’ your back?” Snake asked. “How will we know what happened to Lilah?”
“Sorry to say, man,” Abel replied gently, his tone stating he was sorry, “you won’t.”
“That doesn’t work for me, seein’ as she’s Lilah. A woman now, but she used to be a little girl I held in my arms and gave a bottle,” Snake shot back.
My heart twisted.
“Then you need to make it work for you,” Abel returned, “seein’ as you fall in order to keep her alive, she’s gotta live that life knowin’ you did that shit for her.”
“And she’ll feel it. I know it,” Snake retorted. “Then she’ll settle in the knowledge she had that kind of love.”
My heart twisted further and my lips whispered, “Snake.”
He looked to me. “You are not takin’ off.”
“Please understand,” I begged.
“Not gonna happen,” he bit off.
I drew in breath then looked to my dad. “Daddy?”
Dad looked whipped and my heart endured another vicious twist.
“Always knew,” he began, “one day I would no longer be the one whose job it was to shelter you from the storm. Hated havin’ that knowledge, knowin’ I’d have to give that over to the guy who’d claim you. Best job a man can have, bein’ a father, lookin’ after his little girl. Just had to hope like fuck the man that turned out to be was worthy.” He looked to Abel, then back to me. “Don’t know him all that well. I still feel in my gut that he is.”
Gratitude and bitterness mingled in my soul at what I thought he was saying.
“But no way, little girl,” Dad continued, “that storm turns into a fuckin’ hurricane, I’m turnin’ my back on you. Either of you.”
“Dad—”
“It won’t happen,” he stated inflexibly, surprising me. “You leave, we follow. We gotta fight, we fall, shit happens. But I will not live the rest of my years knowin’ my little girl lives a threat day to day and I didn’t do what I could to keep her safe.”
“It’s important to us to know you’re safe,” I replied and threw out a hand to the table. “All of you.”
“You known me your whole life?” Dad asked.
Shit.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Then you know this shit you’re sayin’ is not gonna happen.”
Abel growled.
I squeezed his thigh and tried again.
“Please, Dad, see it from our perspective.”
“I do,” he stated. “But I’m seein’ you don’t see it from ours.”
“Dad—”
“Lilah.” He cut me off. “Give you anything, give you the world. I know you know that. But I will not give you this.”
I clamped my mouth shut.
Chen, sitting beside me, stood, and when he did, I tilted my head back to look at him, seeing his gaze on Abel and his face twisted with anger.
“I did not start training when I was six years old to face a threat only to retreat when that threat came real,” he declared. “Xun didn’t. Wei didn’t. Ma, knowin’ this shit could go down for sixty-six years, fucking didn’t. We’re prepared. They can bring it on. We’ll be here to face it.”
“A smart warrior knows his opponent, when he can face him and when he should not,” Abel replied.
“A brave warrior knows when it’s worth it to face a lethal opponent anyway, even if the odds do not favor him,” Chen fired back.
“Fuck,”
“Do not say this shit to Ma,” Wei ordered, also rising. “Do not break her heart like this. Do not even mention this shit to her.”
“It’s her I’m lookin’ after. She’ll get it,” Abel returned.
“It’s her who will not survive a broken heart that never mended, which, if you do this, you’ll shatter,” Wei retorted. “And you fuckin’ know that shit, brother. You fuckin’ know it. She barely could live without Dad. You think she can end her days without you?”
“Wei—” Abel began.
Wei leaned across the table to his brother. “Every woman in our line for five generations has been born to you and has died with you. You can’t take that away from Ma. She’s lived knowin’ one thing in this life is true—that she’ll have you from the first breath she took to her last.”
Oh…my…God.
I felt Abel’s emotion roiling off him, but Wei wasn’t done.
“This family gave you everything. You don’t get to decide to take it away.”
I felt Abel’s emotion now beating into me and I leaned closer to him.
“You demand to have your dungeon close to Ma everywhere we go thinkin’ it’s you that needs to be near her so you can protect her. But you’re wrong, Abel,” Wei went on. “She does that shit. She finds these places so you can live close because she needs to protect you. Like her mother did. Like her grandmother did. I can go on and you know it. You’re ours. Centuries of you in this family made you blood, even if we don’t share it, and you don’t turn your back on blood. We know that. We’ve lived it. Generations of our women have given that to you. Don’t take that away.”
On that, Wei did not wait for a reply, he stalked out.
Chen followed him.
Xun scraped his chair back and did the same.
Snake, Moose, and Jabber followed suit.
When they were gone, Dad turned his eyes from the door and looked to Abel. “Think on this, son, and do not make any rash decisions. I’ll say it true…you take off anyway, I’ll follow you. And from what I heard at this table, I will not be alone.”
After delivering this, he pushed his chair back and walked out.
“Well, that didn’t go real great,” I muttered.
Abel growled again.