Therefore, within half a second, he was one step below her. As she gasped at his sudden proximity, he laid his hands gentle on her cheeks and pulled her to him. He bent and kissed one glistening eye, then moved and kissed the next.

He kept hold of her face as he urged, “I’ll comfort you when we’ve finished our mission. Now, you must go. Help your sisters.”

She held his eyes, hers brimming with tears, before she nodded, pulled free, turned, and continued to walk up the stairs.

Yuri watched until she disappeared.

Then he again pulled out the phone he’d put back into his pocket, engaged it, moved his thumb across the screen, and put it to his ear.

* * * * *

Her body jolted against his and Yuri opened his eyes to the dark.

He folded her closer.

“Sleep, button,” he murmured.

“Mom,” she breathed.

“Your mother is safe in the other room.”

And this she was, slumbering in the other bedroom attached to his suite, with Ruby and the other two in another suite on that floor. In the hall stood a guard of vampire soldiers, complements of The Vampire Council.

Aurora, however, was in his bed with him. Somewhere she’d gone without demur (not a surprise) and somewhere her mother had allowed her to go without a fight (a definite surprise).

Another surprise was that she’d slid between the sheets—her little frame enveloped in one of his shirts—and promptly passed out.

“I’m dreaming that feeling,” she whispered.

He knew what she meant and wished he could wash it away from her.

He couldn’t.

All he could do was remind her, saying, “Your mother is safe in the other room.”

She pressed closer. “Jane. Marianne. Jordana—”

Yuri cupped her cheek with his hand, pressing it to his chest as he tightened his other arm around her, and murmured, “Shh, sweet. It’s done and there’s no undoing it. You have work ahead of you, and what little I knew of those women, forging in to face what they knew they might face, they’d want you to rest so you can focus on that and quickly get to where your memories of them are comforting, not solemn.”

“Yeah,” she mumbled. “They would.”

“So close your eyes, Aurora.” He slid his hand into her hair and through it, then back. “Sleep,” he finished, continuing to run his fingers through her long, silken hair.

She pressed closer, winding an arm around his middle, before she relaxed into him.

Yuri continued to run his fingers soothingly through her hair.

“You feel good.” Her voice was muffled against his chest, sounding mostly asleep. “All warm and hard and soft and nice.”

Yuri kept his gaze to the ceiling, continuing his ministrations with her glorious hair, and fought getting hard in the way she was not describing.

Her weight pressed into him as sleep claimed her.

Only then did he succeed.

Chapter Twenty