His hands relaxed, his gaze softened and grew warm, and his tone gentled when he said, “Make little girls who look like you, spoil ’em rotten.”

Oh God.

Wouldn’t that be awesome?

I melted into him. Abel felt it and twisted us so I was on my back, sideways on the bed, and Abel was covering me.

“You want that, don’t you?” he whispered.

“Yeah,” I whispered back.

“Off the Pill,” he ordered again, gentler this time.

“But—”

“Off. The. Pill,” he repeated, not quite as gentle, so I knew I had to proceed with caution.

“Okay, according to Sonia, werewolves are prolific,” I started quietly. “Vampires are not, but you have two halves to you. I see both traits in you. Anything can win out.”

“And…?” he pushed when I quit speaking.

“We make a deal,” I proposed. “I go off the Pill when we finish saving the world.”

“Lilah—” he started but stopped when I suddenly lifted both hands to the sides of his head and lifted mine off the bed so my face was closer to his.

“If something happened to you, I’d want that. I’d want that piece of you inside me, knowing I had a bit of you to hold with me for the rest of my life. But I have to think of him, or her, and what I think is, my man watched mother after mother die and I would not want that for my kid, not once, not ever.”

His expression softened, but I wasn’t done.

“I’m also thinking of you, baby. If this goes on for a while and you get me knocked up and something happens to me, you lose me and you lose that life we created. You’ve lost enough. I don’t want you to court losing more.”

His expression got a lot less soft.

“Nothing’s gonna happen to you,” he growled.

“Maybe not. But give me this, let’s prepare for the maybe, because if it did, I couldn’t bear knowing you endured more than you had to.”

“And what about you with me? What if you lose me?” he asked, and pain sliced through my insides, white-hot, boiling them until they felt liquefied.

“Don’t say that again,” I wheezed through the pain.

I watched his expression register understanding before he pressed his body into mine. “Right here, pussycat. All me, right here. Feel me and let the pain go.”

“Yeah.” I pushed out, feeling him, letting his weight bear into me, and also feeling the pain lessen.

Abel shoved a hand under me and up so he could stroke the side of my neck with his thumb.

He gave it time, then asked, “Better?”

I nodded.

“Wrapped around your finger,” he said bafflingly.

“Uh…what?”

“You want that, what you asked for? Wrapped around your finger. In other words, bao bei, you have a deal.”