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He gave a sheepish shrug. “Will you consider it at least?”

“Does Garrett know you’re planning to tell her?”

“He does, and I’m not asking him for permission.”

“Wow. I guess you really do like her.” Traditionally, no one not born and raised in the Striker household was ever told about the family’s clandestine operations.

“She will be my future. The mother of my kids. I owe her the truth.”

“Who are you, and what have you done with the bastard who was hell-bent on keeping me oblivious?”

“Cass—”

Cassidy held up a hand. “It’s okay, Jackson. If not for you being such an ass, I would have never met Dominique. And he is my life now,” she added with a pointed look and watched his eyes dart to the sapphire and diamond ring on her finger. It was a gift from Dominique and the only piece of jewelry she wore, as close to a wedding ring as she ever wanted to get. “I really am happy for you, Jack. I mean it. This Ollie sounds like a girl I’d like to meet and—yes—talk to.”

“Thank you, Cassidy.” He splayed a hand over his sternum. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I have all kinds of dirt on you I might want to share.”

The look of mock-innocence made her laugh. “So, when do you want to do this?”

Jackson had a plan. He always did. They discussed the details at length and had finalized their plot to shepherd one Olivia Henning-Toliver into their supernatural reality when a decidedly supernatural sensation stole over Cassidy. Every night it started like this, with a sense of an expanding awareness, like doors opening in her mind. Like quiet energy surging from a deep well. She closed her eyes and welcomed it with a sigh.

“Sunset?” Jackson wondered.

“Sunset,” she confirmed.

Right on cue, a small, furious growl sounded. Brinkley crept into position behind a cabinet corner, his green eyes narrowed on the gate to the wine cellar/storm shelter/vampire lair. The cat considered the vampires invading predators, and he wasn’t having it, no matter how hard Dominique tried to persuade him otherwise.

Cassidy picked up Brinkley by the rising scruff and turned to the kitchen door. “None of that tonight.”

By the time she deposited the unhappy cat in the side yard, Dominique had become fully conscious. With their bond renewed only the night before, their minds functioned like two adjoining puzzle pieces clicking into place. He contemplated the last hour of her memories. The mysterious gift Jackson brought intrigued him. But what really captured his interest was the news of Jackson’s impending fatherhood.

They had never discussed it. There was no point. Offspring between a vampire and a mortal was impossible. While Cassidy accepted this with little sentiment in either direction, Dominique ranked his inability to have a family high on the list of immortality’s shortcomings. He never said so. He never even thought about it, not consciously anyway, but Cassidy sensed it just the same.

The vault door in the vestibule unsealed. A vampire appeared and stood with his arms draped over the decorative gate, his unshaven face split by a lecherous grin that made Jackson rise from his chair in alarm.

“Cassidy.” Serge’s baritone voice purred with appreciation. “You ordered takeout.” Unlike his lord and master, who still digested the events of Cassidy’s day, Serge didn’t know what the human was doing there.

“Be nice,” she said. “He comes bearing gifts.”

“Oh, yes, he does.” Serge unlatched the gate and sauntered across the kitchen, barefoot and rumpled, his curly caramel hair sticking out in every direction, the vampire equivalent of a man in search of coffee.

Jackson glared at him. “Sleeping with the boss now? You’ve come up in the world.”

“Sleeping? No. Not I.” Serge puffed out his barrel chest with pride. “I stand guard over my lord.”

His lordship materialized beside Serge and delivered a brotherly slap to the back of his head. “More like lie guard flat on your back,” he said in his lyrical French accent.

Serge growled, much as the cat had earlier. “But I am always with you.”

“I know,” Dominique concurred with a dramatic sigh. “There is no getting rid of you.”

“And you are glad for it, blood-child. Admit it.”

Cassidy smiled at their antics. Tall, lean and grace incarnate, Dominique was the polar opposite of both the stocky Serge and muscle-bound Jackson. Even dressed in his usual exercise pants and T-shirt, both black, few would mistake him for the ordinary man of twenty-seven he had been when he was turned into a blood-drinker. Carved cheekbones and a knife-blade nose dominated his profile, and his expressive mouth could instill terror as easily as convey gentle humor—not to mention bestow mind-blowing kisses.

But it was the eyes that were the most striking thing about him. Their quiet depths missed nothing and could flash from warm and beguiling to full black and disturbing in the space of a heartbeat. Gold flecks danced in the hazel irises as he looked at her.