Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last

grandmother’s eyes narrowed. “You been seeing him, Marisol? Why you no tell me?”
    At that point, everything flipped into Portuguese, their staccato speech overlapping, all kinds of I’m-not-dating-anyone interlacing with why-can’t-you-just-get-married. They’d had the argument so many times, they basically just reassumed their well-practiced parts in this overdone play.
    “Well, I liked him,” her grandmother announced as she got up from the table and banged the surface with her open palms. As the napkin caddy with its payload of
Vanity Fair
jumped, Sola wanted to curse. “And I think you should bring him here for a proper dinner.”
    I would, Grandmother, but I don’t know the guy—and would you feel this way if you knew he was a criminal? And a playboy?
    “Is he Catholic?” her grandmother asked on the way out.
    He’s a drug dealer—so if he is religious, he’s got incredible powers of reconciliation.
    “He looks like a good boy,” her vovó said over her shoulder. “A Catholic good boy.” And that was that—for now.
    As those slippers scuffed their way across to the stairs, undoubtedlythere were all kinds of making the sign of the cross going on. She could just picture it.
    With a curse, Sola dropped her head and closed her eyes. On some level, she couldn’t imagine that man being all warm and fuzzy just because a little old Brazilian woman opened the damn door. Catholic, her ass.
    “Damn it.”
    Then again, who was she to be sanctimonious? She was a criminal, too. Had been for years—and the fact that she’d had to provide for herself and her grandmother didn’t justify all the breaking and entering.
    Who did her mystery man support, she wondered as the next-door neighbor’s dog began to bark. Those twins? They’d looked
really
self-sufficient. Did he have kids? A wife?
    For some reason, that made her shudder.
    Crossing her arms over her chest, she stared at the you-could-eat-off-of-it floor that her grandmother cleaned every day.
    He had no right to come here, she thought.
    Then again, she had visited his place uninvited, hadn’t she—
    Sola frowned and lifted her eyes. The window that was framed by those ruffled pink half drapes was jet-black because she hadn’t turned any exterior lights on yet. But she knew someone was there.
    And she knew who it was.
    Breath going short, heart starting to beat fast, she put her hand up to the front of her throat for some reason.
    Turn away, she told herself. Run away.
    But…she did not.

    Assail had not meant to go to his burglar’s home. But the tracking device was still on her Audi, and when it had informed him that she’d returned to the address, he was incapable of not materializing there.
    He did not want to be seen, however, so he chose the backyard, and how fortuitous: When his burglar walked into the kitchen, he got a full view of her—as well as her housemate.
    The older human female was rather enchanting in an elderly kind of way, her hair in curlers, her robe bright as a spring day, her face beautiful in spite of her age. She was not happy, however, as she sat at the table and glared across at what Assail surmised had to be her grandaughter.
    Words were exchanged, and he smiled a little in the darkness. Much love between the pair of them—much annoyance, too. And wasn’t that the way with older relatives, whether you were human or vampire.
    Oh, how he was eased by knowing she did not live with a male.
    Unless, of course, that one she had met at the restaurant also stayed in the little house.
    As he growled softly in the dark, the dog in the house next door began to bark, warning his human owners of that of which they were unaware.
    A moment later, his burglar was left alone in the kitchen, her expression one of both resignation and frustration.
    As she stood there, crossing her arms, shaking her head, he told himself he should go. Instead, he did what he should not: He reached through the glass with his mind and let his need unleash.
    Instantly, she responded, that lithe body straightening from its lean against the counter, her eyes flipping to his through the window.
    “Come to me,” he said into the cold.
    And she did.
    The back door creaked as she opened it with her hip, forcing the bottom corner to carve a pie slice in the snow of the deck.
    Her scent was ambrosia to him. And as he closed the distance between them, his body surged with a predatory lust.
    Assail didn’t stop until he was mere inches from her. Up