The room fell silent.
“So does that mean you’re more witch than vampire and you’ll consider taking a second consort in a millennium?” Ajax asked, wiggling his brows.
“Fuck off, all of you,” Jocelyn muttered, loading her fork with mashed potatoes.
Everyone laughed, the atmosphere of tension lifting from the room for scant, precious seconds.
I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed the back, as Talon started ribbing Dagon about one of the aristocrat females across the courtyard.
This was exactly how it was supposed to be—Jocelyn at my side and my brothers laughing at repast. Sure, our existence always carried a certain weight with it given that we were all in the Order, but these brief moments of levity were becoming far too scarce. And with the attack we had planned for tomorrow night?
Who knew if we would all sit at this table again?
I had the hood up on the H1 three hours later when Jocelyn found me in the garage.
“There you are. I swear I thought the bond was lying when it pointed me in this direction.”
“Here I am.” I wiped any remaining oil from my hands and tossed the towel on a nearby workbench.
“Shouldn’t you be in the war room or something?” Her brow puckered as she came closer, the skirt of her dress swishing just above her knees as if it had been personally designed to tempt me.
Everything about her tempted me. She smiled, and I got hard. She walked by, and my fangs descended at the slightest hint of her scent. She was a walking, talking temptation that I’d somehow been lucky enough to mate—to love. But for how long?
I sent her a smile and shut the hood. “You were with me during the last of the planning meetings. There’s not much else to do tonight besides wait for tomorrow to pass.”
“Hmmm.” She leaned back against the workbench. “Something has to be bothering you if you’re in here tinkering with cars.”
I moved toward her with predatory grace, caging her in against the sturdy, metal bench that housed some of my tools. “Working on cars keeps my mind quiet.”
She slid her hands up my chest. “I have other ways of keeping you preoccupied.”
My muscles tightened and my dick swelled, but sex wasn’t going to solve the mess in my head. “If I asked you to sit out tomorrow night, would you?”
“What?” Her head jerked back and she looked up at me with incredulity.
I wrapped one arm around her waist and tugged her against me. “If I asked you to sit out tomorrow night, to stay here where it’s safe, would you?”
“No.”
A stone sank in my stomach, but I nodded. “I figured, but I had to ask.”
“You go in there without me and you’re all dead.” Her hands rose to cradle my face. “Benedict, I’m the best weapon you have.”
“You were your mother’s weapon. Not mine,” I growled. “I’ve never thought of you that way.”
Her lips lifted in a smile. “And I love you for that. But I don’t mind being your anything, and I mean that. Besides, it’s not just you that has a score to settle with my mother. I’m the one she tried to kill, remember?” She brushed her thumbs over my cheek.
“Don’t remind me.” I’d always prided myself on having a level temper, but the memory of her lying near death in that field brought my rage bubbling to the surface.
“I know you want to keep me safe, but it goes both ways.” She rose on her toes and brushed her lips over mine. “I’m the only chance you have at coming out alive, and trust me, I didn’t just find you only to turn around and lose you.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about.” My hands bracketed her hips.
She laced her fingers behind my neck. “I know it’s not within your nature to put your women—your females—at risk, but Benedict, this is exactly what I was born for. What I was bred for.” She kissed me again, soft and sweet. “It might even be why fate brought us together and made me what I am now. We’re going to be okay.”
“I will never forgive myself if something happens to you,” I whispered, my grip tightening.
“Right back at you,” she said against my lips before kissing me hungrily. “Now, are you going to tinker with your cars all night? Or are you going to put these hands to better use?”
I growled and kissed her breathless, lifting her to the surface of the bench and spreading her thighs in the next heartbeat. She wasn’t a flimsy, delicate witch anymore. I no longer had to measure my touches or hold anything back. She was strong enough to take it all.
I gave it to her, chasing away the anxiety of tomorrow’s impending attack with every stroke of my hips and lick of my tongue as I took her hard and fast on that bench, then slow and tender, using my body to tell her just how much I loved her.