She lifted hers and he took it, hefting her up, way up, surprising her into giving a quiet cry as he took her clean off her feet. She automatically swung her legs around his hips, her female parts pressed to the side of his hip, his hand leaving hers so that he could wrap his arm around her back and hold her close.

She curved her arms around his shoulders. He turned his head and looked down at her, seeing her eyes were wide.

“Hold on, bao bei,” he murmured.

She nodded.

He moved.

He heard her gasp as he went about taking her upstairs as fast as they could get there, including opening and closing the steel door and the back door to the restaurant.

All this took seconds.

As they came to a rocking halt in the kitchen, he smelled Jian-Li’s lunch.

He also smelled biker. Five of them.

He gave Delilah a slight shake and she unwrapped her legs from his hips. He put her to her feet and looked down at her.

Her hair was slightly tousled and her eyes were huge and bright.

“That…was…awesome,” she breathed.

He grinned.

She leaned deep into him, her hand hitting his stomach. Smiling up in his face, dazzling and gorgeous, she whispered, “Let’s meet the parents.”

Meet the parents.

He’d have that once. With her. Doing something natural for a human, something Abel couldn’t ever have until her, knowing he found the woman for him and adding humans to his life, his family, giving him more.

More family, which was the only real joy he had in his long life.

Or, at least that joy would last for a while.

Abel wanted to kiss her for that reason and others besides.

He didn’t. He shifted so she’d let him go, but he took her hand and led her into the restaurant.

When he did, he saw instantly that Jian-Li was in hostess mode, nodding, smiling, and greeting the bikers who were gathered inside. Xun, Wei, and Chen were close but off to the side, giving her space to do her thing.

He took in Delilah’s family and saw instantly they were hardcore.

They weren’t bikers.

They were live, breathe, eat, drink, fuck, bleed, and die for the life bikers.

And he knew the one to the front was Delilah’s father. He knew it because she had his hair and his eyes and he had a tinge of her scent. It was masculine, but the tang was underlying it. She got her pale roses-and-cream skin from somewhere else, but she got serious goodness from her father.

He was maybe five foot eleven. He was stocky with a hint of a gut. And he was in leathers— chaps over jeans, jacket, even a suede shirt.