Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last

exaggerated show of extracting a gold pen and holding it up. Then he took one of the napkins she’d just fiddled with and wrote down a seven-digit phone number.
    “You will call me if he comes again.” He slid the flat square across the table, but kept his forefinger right by the numerals. “And I shall take care of it.”
    Sola got up too fast, her chair squeaking. Instantly, she froze and looked to the ceiling. When there were no sounds from above, she reminded herself to keep it down.
    She paced over to the stove quietly. Came back again. Paid a visit to the back door onto the porch. Came back again. “Look, I don’t need your help. I appreciate it—”
    As she turned around to take the route to the stove again, he was right in front of her. Gasping, she jumped—she hadn’t even heard him move—
    His chair was in the same position it had been when he’d sat in it.
    Not like hers, pushed aside.
    “What…” She fell silent, her mind spinning. Surely, she was not about to ask him
what
he was—
    As he reached out and cupped her face, she knew she would have had trouble saying no to anything he suggested.
    “You will call me,” he commanded, “and I shall come to you.”
    The words were so low they nearly warped, his voice deep…so very deep.
    Pride formed a protest in her brain, but her mouth refused to speak it. “All right,” she said.
    Now he smiled, his lips curling upward. God, his canines were sharp, and longer than she remembered.
    “Marisol,” he purred. “A beautiful name.”
    As he started to lean in to her, subtle pressure on her jaw lifted her chin. Oh, no, hell, no, she should not be doing this. Not in this house. Not with a man like him…
    Screw it. With a sigh of surrender, she closed her eyes and lifted her mouth to accept his—
    “Sola! Sola, what you doing down there!”
    They both froze—and instantly, Sola regressed to the age of thirteen.
    “Nothing!” she called out.
    “Who is with you?”
    “No one—it’s the television!”
    Three…two…one…“That does not sound like no TV!”
    “Go,” she whispered as she pushed against his broad chest. “You have to leave now.”
    Assail’s lids dropped low. “I think I want to meet her.”
    “You don’t.”
    “I do—”
    “Sola! I’m coming down!”
    “Go,” she hissed. “
Please.
”
    Assail drew his thumb across her lower lip and leaned into her, speaking directly into her ear. “I have plans to pick this up where we’ve been interrupted. Just so that you know.”
    Turning away, he moved with frustrating leisure to the door. And even as her grandmother’s slippers closed in down the stairs, he took the time to glance across his shoulder while he opened the way out.
    His glowing eyes raked over her body. “This is not over between you and me.”
    And then he was gone, thank the good Lord.
    Her grandmother rounded the corner a split second after the exterior screen door clicked into place. “Well?” she said.
    Sola glanced over to the window by the table, reassuring herself that it was still dark as the inside of a hat out there. Yup. Good.
    “See?” she said, sweeping her arms around the otherwise empty kitchen. “No one’s here.”
    “The television is not on.”
    Why, oh, why couldn’t her grandmother have the grace to get soft in the head like so many other geriatrics?
    “I turned it off because it was disturbing you.”
    “Oh.” Suspicious eyes roamed about….
    Shit. There was melting snow on the linoleum from where they’d tracked it in.
    “Come on,” Sola said as she steered the woman into an about-face. “Enough upset for tonight. We go to bed now.”
    “I’m watching you, Sola.”
    “I know, vovó.”
    As they headed up the stairs together, part of her was wondering exactly who the hell had come looking for her here and why. And the other half? Well, that part was still in the kitchen, on the verge of kissing that man.
    Probably better that they had been interrupted.
    She had the unmistakable impression that her protector…was also a predator.

    The phone call Xcor had been waiting for came at a most opportune time. He had just finished stalking and killing a lone slayer under the bridges downtown, and was cleaning his lady love, the black blood on the blade of the scythe coming off easily as he ran a chamois cloth up and down.
    He put his female away on his back first, and only then took out his phone. As he answered, he looked over at his fighters as they gathered together