V had to smile a little. But then he shook his head. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us. And actually, I hate that I just felt the need to say that.”

“Compatibility is the issue. If one of us wanted them and the other didn’t? Then that’s a problem.”

Jane came over to him and put her hands on his shoulders. And it was funny: Ordinarily he couldn’t stand people getting very close to him. Not because of some kind of horrific abuse—although his father’s partial castration of him hadn’t been a party, granted—but because tons of contact and closeness was just too much sensation for his brain to process.

With Jane, though, he never felt crowded.

Same with Butch.

Maybe because the two of them seemed to understand the overload thing with him.

“You look worried,” she said as she brushed his hair back and traced the tattoos at his temple with her forefinger.

“I don’t want anything to come between us. Ever.”

“That’s up to you and me, though, right? So why be anxious?”

“Rhage and Mary have been going through a time.”

“Over having babies? Are they okay now?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Good.” She leaned her head to one side. “And as for you and me? We can’t predict the future. No one can. So we talk and we sort things out and we keep going. Together. I can’t fathom, right now, a scenario where all of a sudden some biological clock starts ringing and I have a compelling need to do the parent thing. I guess, for me, I don’t feel like anything is missing in my life. There are no hollow spaces that require filling. I have you, I have my work, and I reject the notion entirely that all women are destined to be mothers. Some of us are and some of us aren’t, and the awesome thing is, we get to choose. Same goes for men. So yeah, we just keep talking and everything is going to work out—no matter what the outcome happens to look like.”

Vishous stared down from his greater height, and somehow felt smaller than she was. “You always make sense.”

“I don’t know about that. But I do try to look at everything from all angles and be logical as much as I can—”

“I don’t think I can be a father, Jane.”

His mate shook her head. “I know where you’re going with that. Your parents are not you—and besides, that’s the wrong way to put it. The question is, Do you want to be a father?”

He tried to imagine being weighed down as Wrath and Z were, constantly worrying about some little creature and whether it was killing itself. Yeah, sure, there were good parts to the experience; the joy on his brothers’ faces was very real. But, God, the work.

Was he using that as an excuse, though?

Whatever. “Definitely not right now. No, I do not want to be a father right now.”

“So that’s what we go with. And if it changes, we address it. Same for me.”

“I would never want anything on this planet to hate me as much as I hate my parents.”

There. He said it.

“Lot of reasons to support that position,” Jane whispered as she stroked his face. “And I am so very sorry.”

“Don’t tell me I should go talk to Mary about it, okay? I’m not interested in that shit, true?”

“You know where she is if you need her. And I don’t have to tell you that she would be available to you anytime if you asked.” Jane brushed his hair back. “And I have to say this. As awful as your mother can be . . . without her? You and I wouldn’t be together.”

He frowned, thinking of when he’d found Jane in that crumpled Audi at the side of the road. None of his life-support measures had done a goddamn thing. She had remained unmoving as he had tried to bring her back.

For some reason, the image of his mother up on that bedding platform resurfaced and wouldn’t be stuffed back down underground. The shit lingered . . . like it was a message of some sort.

“I really trust you,” he heard himself say to his shellan.

“And I love you, too, Vishous.”

FORTY

“Okay, I might have thought you were joking about this.”

As his Mary sank down into a Jacuzzi full of bubbles, Rhage reached out through the warm, frothy swirl and ohhhhh, yeaaaaaah, there it was, his mate’s body all slippery and smooth, from the curve of her waist to the flare of her hips—and so many other things.

“Gimme, gimme, gimme.”

Leaning back against the wall of the tub, he pulled her to him, splitting her thighs and settling her right on top of his bobbing, bright-idea cock. He didn’t enter her, though. There was time for that later.

“How long have you been waiting for me?” she asked as she put her arms around his neck.

“Hours and hours.”

Her breasts were obscured and revealed, obscured and revealed, as the level in the tub recalibrated itself to her presence, and Rhage licked his lips at the sight of her glistening nipples and the bands of suds that remained on her skin.

It reminded him of a bikini top that had failed in the most miraculous of ways.

“I thought you went downtown to fight after ice cream?” she said.

“Oh, I did.” He shifted his palms around and cupped her breasts, moving them together while he thumbed those nipples, wiping them free. “Yup.”

Mary moaned in the back of her throat, and she seemed to struggle to collect her thoughts—especially as he lifted her up to his mouth and sucked one of her tips in, flicking it with his tongue. Under the surface, his erection kicked like a bull and his hips surged.