Stretching out alongside Cage, she held her arm over his mouth, but the blood dripped on his face. “Damn it.” She sat up, thinking. Idiot bird. Feed it to him. She swiped her left forefinger through the blood, gathering as much on her fingertip as she could, and slipped her finger between his lips. Again. Again. Again.
“Cage Reynolds, we are going to do this until Nik gets here, so you might as well get used to it.”
Robin made another cut, another swipe, another finger between his lips. Once more. She pulled her hand away, but quicker than any movement she could track, he had grasped her wrist. “Cage?”
His eyes remained closed, but his grip was forged in iron. She reached out with the knife and made another cut, this time in the arm he was holding.
Cage pulled it to him so frantically that Robin toppled over, and he bit hard. The fangs hurt like hell going in, but then she forgot all about it as every neuron in her brain’s pleasure center went on overload. She let herself sink to the ground next to him, letting each pull of his mouth take her deeper, so deep.
“Well, isn’t this cozy?”
Robin yelped and tried to sit up, but Cage had her arm imprisoned with both hands, still feeding. “Who are you?”
A young guy, early twenties at the oldest, had come from the woods on the other side of the hill from the wreck. He was blond, flashed a lot of dimples, and had eyes that had lightened to a tawny gold. Vampire. But whose side was he on?
“Good God, Will, leave me in the ditch next time why don’t you?” A red-haired woman walked up behind him and smacked him in the head.
It finally hit her, who they must be. “You’re Will and Randa?”
Will cocked his head. “Intros later, little shifter. Where’s Aidan?”
“I see him.” Randa ran past them and knelt next to him. “Oh my God. Will, I don’t know. You’ve gotten sicker the closer we’ve gotten to him, and I see why. We’ve got to get him to Penton.”
“Jesus.” Will knelt next to Aidan, and if vampires could cry, Will would be sobbing. His lip was trembling when he looked up. “Who did this? Who the hell did this?”
Will asked the question of Robin, but it was Cage who answered. “Your father.”
CHAPTER 36
Cage felt like hell. His legs hurt from where Nik had dug the bullets out —without anesthesia — just before daysleep the morning Will and Randa brought them home. He thought he might have cried, but he couldn’t remember for sure. The back of his head throbbed from what Nik said was probably a concussion.
He was the luckiest sonofabitch on earth. Two nights after he’d been sure death was imminent, he was lying here in his bed in the lieutenants’ quarters with his guardian angel beside him. He rolled over, trying not to groan aloud, and looked at her—really looked at Robin Ashton, without the mouth and the attitude that made her seem twice her size. Without those dark-brown eyes glaring or dancing or heating up, her long lashes were more delicate and sensuous. Her nose turned up slightly, and her impossible auburn hair stuck in every conceivable direction. It might be the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.
He had no right to be this content, and part of him wished they could stay like this forever. Here in their little cocoon, making love, making each other laugh, fighting. Because he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answers to the questions that were already bombarding his mind. About Aidan. Krys. Melissa. Mirren. All of them. What the future held for Penton.
Robin moaned and opened her eyes a crack, then all the way. “You’re awake. I mean really awake. The last couple of nights you were . . .”
“Pretty stupid, I imagine.” He leaned over and kissed her, then kissed her again. “I do remember some things quite well. I believe I fed from you.”
She grinned. “And I do believe you made me feed from you, sort of.”
He planted a kiss on her neck, where he’d definitely be feeding from her again at a near-future date. “And then I think we fucked, just before twilight.”
“Oh, we definitely did that. Twice, I think.”
He leaned over and took one small, perfect breast in his mouth, then the other. “You realize you’re stuck with me for good, right?”
She squinted at him, reached over and thumped him on the head. “Don’t think that gives you a free ride to be an asshat.”
He laughed and lay back.
“I need to tell you about my family.”
Cage rolled over and pulled her to him. “It doesn’t matter, unless you’ve got a husband stashed away somewhere.”
“I don’t have a husband.” Robin sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees. “You really don’t want to know?”