So this was what it was like to be a father.
Had his own father ever done this? Was there a time, ever, when his father had felt this protective instinct for him? He shook off the thought. He didn’t intend to be a father like his. He would be his own man, as he’d always been, and a better parent to Zoe.
As he made his way to his room, and Rose waiting in his bed, he hoped she’d give him the chance to experience what it was like to be a husband, too. Things between them were good at the moment, but she still didn’t trust him. And he wasn’t confident she’d even want him in her life after she faced the rest of his people.
He just had to prove to her he could keep her and Zoe protected and safe.
“What kept you?” Rose asked when Vlad came back, closing the door quietly behind him.
“I wanted to talk with Alexis, see what she’d set up for our trip, and what she’d found out about the reception we can expect.”
Rose narrowed her eyes and glanced over his body. “You’re still naked.”
He glanced down, as if he’d forgotten. “Yes. Zoe’s still asleep so there wasn’t a chance she’d catch me.”
“I wasn’t thinking about Zoe catching you. You sat out there talking with Alexis while you were naked.”
He chuckled. “I told you, we tigers don’t really pay much attention to nudity. I actually didn’t think about it.”
“Did Alexis?”
“Alexis is happily married and old enough to be my mother.”
Rose gaped. “She is? She looks maybe right on the edge of turning forty.”
“She’s almost fifty-two.” He paused. “Yeah, I guess she’s not quite old enough to be my mother. Close, though.”
“She couldn’t have had you at twenty-two?” To Rose, who’d gotten pregnant just before she turned twenty-four, Alexis sounded more than old enough to have a thirty year old son.
He crawled up beside her on the bed and pulled her into his arms. “Female tigers don’t go into estrous until around twenty-five.” His brows furrowed as he said it, as if he was leaving something out.
“What? What are you not telling me?”
He sighed and rubbed her arms. “It’s not a big deal, yet. But a few of our females have started coming into estrous…early. Really early for tigers.”
“What age?”
“Twenty. One even at nineteen. It’d be like nine and ten year old human girls getting their periods.”
“That does happen sometimes.”
“True, but it doesn’t happen in tigers. Females might come into estrous as early as twenty-four. But nineteen and twenty is really, really young.”
“Ah. The extinction thing?” She snuggled closer, savoring the warmth of his skin against hers.
“Likely. It’s being looked into.” He shook his head and kissed her. “Anyway, that’s not something we need to worry about.”
“For now. But Zoe will come to maturity someday.”
“I don’t even want to think about it.”
She chuckled. “You sound like a father.”
His expression softened and when he kissed her this time, it was a deep, deliciously heated kiss.
“Where’s Alexis now?” she asked when she came up for air. The idea that Alexis would hear them easily was a little embarrassing. Rose wasn’t quite that adventurous.
“She went for a run. A tiger run. For a few hours.” He nibbled the skin along her throat. “So we have some privacy. I checked, Zoe’s still asleep. It’s just the two of us.”
“Really?” She traced her fingers along his arm, angling her head so he could kiss his way along the other side of her neck. She shivered as the heat and need built again. “And what should we do with that privacy?”
“I think we should use that second condom.”
“You…up for that already?”
He took her hand and pressed her palm to his erection. “What do you think?”
She wrapped her fingers around his cock and stroked him. “I think you’ve got a lot of stamina.”
He spent the next two hours proving it.
Chapter Twelve
They spent the next three days teaching Zoe how to be a tiger and lining up their plans for the trip to West Virginia. Rose’s parents weren’t happy about the side trip, because she wouldn’t let them go with her. Since one of Vlad’s brothers had been to see them again, they were as worried as Rose. But a two-hour conversation on Vlad’s secure cellphone convinced them to remain behind.
Her dad did tell her who she could go to in West Virginia to borrow a gun or three, though.
“As many as you need,” he’d said.