“You must feed from her regularly, Abel, starting once a day for several days. Then twice a day for perhaps another week. Then you can likely feed from her whenever you wish, doing her great good while you do,” Gregor said.

He heard it. He understood it.

He still didn’t move or speak.

She will never die.

“Honey,” Delilah called.

She will never die.

“Baby,” Delilah called again.

He felt her leaning into him, her hand on his neck, squeezing.

She will never die.

“Abel, baby, this is good,” she whispered into his ear.

That was when he moved. In a blur, he had her in his arms, and in seconds, he was tossing her on the bed in their bedroom.

She bounced, blinked, and looked up to him.

“You’ll never die.”

She stared at him before her face went soft, her eyes shining bright and her lips started curving.

“Told you you were awesome,” she whispered.

Fuck, she was right.

She was fucking right.

He was awesome.

Because he could keep his Delilah alive.

Forever.

He lunged.

He’d had a bag of blood brought up while she was doing her hair, thinking the other vampires in residence were probably doing the same thing.

But he still drew from her as he fucked her, hard, fast, rough, quick, making her cry out when she came, his cock driving deep, her blood flooding his mouth.

She will never die.

He’d have that, all of it (or countless varieties of it, they had centuries to get creative), for a lifetime.

His lifetime.

She will never die.

Fucking finally.

* * * * *

Abel lay on his back, naked, Delilah on top of him, also naked, with his cock still inside her since he rolled her there after he rode her.

Her head and shoulders were up. She was looking down at him, the fingertips of one hand stroking lazy on his chest, his hands were curled on her ass.

“What’s in that awesome head of yours?” she asked softly.

“Coulda saved Hui,” he told the ceiling.

“Abel—”

“Mei.”

“Honey—”

“Sying.”

She slid her hand to his neck. “Baby, stop.”

He tipped just his eyes to her. “Coulda saved ’em all.”

“That wasn’t meant to be,” she told him gently.

“Obviously not,” he replied caustically.

“Okay, I’m trying to go easy here, so cut me some slack, but I’ll point out that feeding is sexual.”

He looked back to the ceiling, his gut roiling at the idea of drawing from any of them.

Obviously, in the beginning, when he was a kid, feeding was feeding.

But she was right. When his body started changing and the world became all about his dick and how he could get off, he’d never drawn from anything but a human female, giving it to her as he took.

Doing that to Hui, Mei, Sying—it would be like having sex with your sister. Or your mother.