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I don’t speak again until his body stills and his breathing returns to normal. Then I ask the burning question on my tongue. "Liam, where's the other baby now? Where's your daughter?"

"She's somewhere safe," he says, pulling back from me to wipe his eyes and compose himself. “Somewhere Dracula won’t find her. She is being cared for well. Better than I ever could." His face hardens, and he looks at me. "If Dracula ever finds out about her, he’ll kill her."

I swallow, believing him. "We will keep her safe.” I say, knowing it’s presumptuous to assume he wants or needs my help in this matter. But also knowing it’s the right thing to say. The necessary and true thing to say. However it happened, whatever it might mean, the Night family has become my family. I will not abandon them to the darkness that lurks so closely at their heels.

“Liam,” I say with all the tenderness in my heart, “you must know you were not a coward. No man should ever be put in the position you were in, and yet you delivered your daughter, you saved her and kept her safe. You did what Mary would have wanted. You were brave. You were your daughter’s hero.”

He flinches at my words. "I am a danger to her. She's better off without me." He moves to turn away from me, but I stop him.

"She's not," I say. "I promise you, she's not. You have so much to offer her. To teach her. To give her. Starting with your love. She needs her father. Trust me. This comes from a girl who would give anything to have her own father back, even for a day.”

This softens him, but it's not enough. I know I need to show him the truth of himself. “You're so deeply enmeshed in your own self-hatred you can't see past it. But you're only seeing the shadows, not the light. There is light in you, Liam. In all four of you. And yes, there is darkness, too. But that's true of everyone. We all carry within us the entirety of existence. The light and the dark. The noble and the ignoble. Sometimes we have to walk in the shadows, but we must always strive to come back to the other side. Your daughter needs you to find your way back. Your brothers need you.” I pause, hesitating, assessing my own feelings, and then I speak, knowing it is the truth. “AndIneed you.”

Our faces are inches apart. My right hand is in his, my left hand now resting on his chest. Our fingers are intertwined and I'm suddenly keenly aware of the contact, of flesh on flesh, of his breath mingling with mine, of all my senses responding to his.

"What are you, Eve Oliver?" he asks, sliding a finger down my cheek.

"I don't know," I say honestly. "I just know that everyone deserves a fair trial and a strong defense. So I’m fighting for you and Sebastian and Derek and Elijah. Even if you won’t fight for yourselves.”

The mood in the room has shifted. The tension between us is visceral.

Every nerve in my body is on fire as he moves closer to me, his head bending down, his lips brushing against mine.

The kiss starts softly, gently, a teasing only. When I move in closer, I surprise us both.

My arms wind back around his neck and he pulls me against him, his hard chest pressed to my breasts, his nails digging into my back as his lips claim mine again, this time with all the heat and power of a Druid turned vampire.

He tastes of warmth and honey and my body responds to his with all the desire that's been pent up in me since starting this job.

I moan into his mouth as I feel his body further harden against me, in clear evidence of his excitement.

My mind clouds with passion and I know where this is leading. And still, I don’t pull away. I have fought against my own desires for so long, out of fear. Fear of being hurt. Fear of losing another person I love. Fear of getting too close.

I can’t live in fear any longer.

Liam gazes deeply into my eyes. “You look oceans away,” he says softly, his lips so close to mine I can feel them moving, our foreheads pressed together.

“I was just thinking about the nature of love,” I say, and then I kiss him again.

Our passion moves us across the room, where he presses me against the wall and moves his mouth down my neck, his teeth gliding against my pulsing vein, my pains and aches forgotten for the moment.

My breath hitches, and I can’t tell if what I’m feeling is fear or excitement as pleasure wars with past memories of a violent Liam tearing into my neck.

He pauses, lips brushing against the flesh of my ear. “Is this okay?” He asks breathlessly. “Tell me to stop.”

“Don’t. Stop,” I say.

And he wouldn’t have, had Matilda not come to the door at that precise moment.

Chapter 19: The Oath

We can easily forgivea child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. ~ Plato

Liamand I pull away from each other like guilty teenagers caught making out in the basement.

Matilda gives us both knowing looks and smiles. "It's good to see you two getting along with one another at last,” she says in the understatement of the year.

Liam coughs and I hide a smile, my body still buzzing with need for him. It's almost painful to not be touching him right now.