Forged: The World of Nightwalkers (9 page)

Isabella Russ rolled over in her sleep. Though barely conscious, she recognized the scent that filled her nostrils immediately.

Man. Her man. Her husband. She sniffed a little then took a long slow breath in because he smelled so divine, as usual. It was a nice distraction from the fact that she was still tired even though she had slept the day through.

“Are you sniffing me?” came the deep-throated rumble of amusement near her ear.

“You smell good,” she mumbled against his skin, snuggling up against him more tightly. It was chilly outside of the blankets and she had no interest in joining the cold waking world just yet.

And right on cue, the toddler cried.

“Ohhh nooo!” she ground out, ducking her head under the covers as if she could hide from the demands of her son. But unlike her daughter, her son had proved to be everything a demanding child could possibly be. Jason, for instance and much to her dismay, had refused to breast-feed. Bottle-feeding made twice as much work and she hadn’t quite got over her pique at not being able to feed him “from her heart.” Of course he was beyond breast-feeding by now anyway, but she still wasn’t quite
over it. And it was only one of the dozens of ways this particular child was determined to use to exhaust her.

For instance, waking up at the crack of dusk. The child had an internal clock that told him dusk was imminent, as did most of the Nightwalker breeds, but rarely was it so highly developed in one so young.

Bella was just lucky that way.

“I’ll get him,” her husband said with a low chuckle.

“No!” she said when he went to move all of his virile warmth out of the bed and from under the covers. “I want you to stay.”

“Well, one of us has to get him or he’ll start to scream,” Jacob pointed out to her needlessly.

“Let Leah do it,” she sighed.

“Leah is nine. She is a little young to be taking care of our rambunctious three-year-old.”

“Well, I know that!” She huffed and rolled onto her back. “Fine. Go. I’ll be up in a second.”

“Bella.” Jacob reached out with a long-fingered, strong hand and ringed her around her throat with it. “What is this all about? If you are tired, we will do fine without you while you nap further.” He reached to run his hand from her throat down the length of her body in a comforting caress. Comforting. Not sexy or sizzling or any of the things they had once felt every single morning right after setting eyes on each other. There was never any time for that now. Now there was just a toddler to tend to.

“More sleep won’t help,” she said, ejecting another sigh of frustration. “I’ll just have exhausting dreams.”

“Exhausting dreams?” he echoed. “What kind of exhausting dreams? Do you mean dreams or premonitions?”

Bella was a Druid, a half-breed of Nightwalker and human. Once upon a time she had been all human, or so it had seemed, until Jacob came along and touched her. His
Demon DNA had interacted with her Druid DNA and turned her “on” to her rapidly growing abilities. One of which had proven to be the ability to sense the coming future. Which could ultra-suck sometimes. Especially when she needed to sleep to compensate for her child’s demands on her.

One would think that becoming immortal and all would make it much easier to tend a child, what with their awesome immortal healing and replenishing abilities. But no, just like any other mother she was doomed to perpetual exhaustion. This in spite of the fact that Jacob was the best father in the known universe.

She sighed again. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m just whiny today.”

“You did not answer my question,” he pressed.

“Well, I don’t know which it is! I just keep dreaming of going on
vacation
. Vacation far away from here, like in the States. Somewhere snowy and cold and crisp with lots of hot chocolate and roaring fires.”

“We have fires and cocoa here,” he said with amusement. “I can always have Elijah whip up a nice snowstorm for you.”

“I don’t want a wind Demon snowstorm, I want a natural one.”

Jacob blinked. “But … it is natur—”

“Don’t ask me to be logical! I’m too tired!” she groused. Again, a contrite sigh. “And did I mention that this might be, you know,
alone time
?”

Jacob raised one dark brow and amusement was quirking at his lips again. “Alone time? We can be alone whenever you like …”

“But then I just fall asleep because I’m so wiped out. Never mind!” She tossed back the covers and got to her feet huffily, but one touch of bare feet on cold floor and she was jumping into her slippers.

“Bella, come back here and talk to me.”

“Screaming child, remember?” she tossed back at him over her shoulder. She marched herself into Jason’s bedroom, hitting the lights and making her way to the crib. An instant smile streaked over her lips the minute she saw Jason’s face, his eyes lighting up at her approach. His belligerence turned to babbles of delight and, as usual, he melted her cranky little heart.

“Come here, you,” she said, scooping him up into her arms. He kicked his feet and wriggled with excitement before wrapping around her like a monkey on a flagpole. Then he laughed. He had what he wanted and that was the end of that. “Spoiled little booger,” she said softly, kissing his forehead three or four times.

“Bella,” Jacob scolded her as he followed in her wake.

“Let’s just feed him,” she said, not meeting her husband’s questioning eyes as she went to push past him.

“Not until,” he said, a hand and arm in the doorframe blocking her path, “you tell me what you want. Just tell me and it is done.”

She looked up into his nearly black eyes and saw the determination in them. Immediately she was reminded of why she would love this man until the day she died … which, being immortal and all that … was a long way off. Hopefully. There were always dark forces out there that could risk their lives the same as anyone else’s. Immortal was not the same thing as invulnerable … or unkillable.

It was just that being a Nightwalker meant it was just harder to pull it off.

Thank God.

Or thank Destiny, as Jacob would say.

“I love my son,” she blurted out.

“I—” he frowned. “I know that, little flower. I have never said I doubted that—Bella! Why are you crying?”

Immediately he was enveloping her face between his elegant hands and tipping her head back so she was
looking up at him through the sudden wash of tears in her eyes. “B-because I’m hormonal!” she said, trying to pull away.

“I know you are dealing with exhaustion—”

“No! Not
that
hormonal! I mean … 
h-o-r-n-y
hormonal,” she said bluntly, a little stomp of her slippered foot accompanying it. “And you haven’t touched me in four months! Not once! Well … I mean you touch me all the time and you’re very loving, but you’re just all gentle and sweet and nice. Of course I am very grateful that you are gentle and sweet and nice—don’t get me wrong. I know how lucky I am. It’s just that we used to have s-e-x. I mean, of course we had s-e-x. We have two children,” she rambled on, so fast her husband was having difficulty keeping up with her shifting topics, “but I don’t think you find me sexy anymore and I can’t even find out because I’m so tired all the time or the minute we have two seconds alone the baby cries or Leah jumps into bed with us or we have to save the world or something!”

And somewhere in all of that, Jacob finally got the gist of the problem.

“Ohhh,”
he said, light dawning, “you want to go on
vacation
.”

“I could swear I said that. You’re a little slow on the uptake tonight.” She went to walk past him again but he wasn’t ready to let her go just yet. He swiped a thumb through the track of a tear that had fallen when she’d blinked.

“Vacation. Childless. United States. Cold. Cocoa. Fires. Skiing. Consider it done,” he said. “We shall leave tonight.”

“B-but the b-baby and Leah and—”

“We leave tonight,” he pressed onto her. “Noah will watch Leah and the baby. Or we can give the baby to Elijah and Sienna.”

That made Bella laugh. “You’re evil,” she said. Sienna was renowned for being completely stumped by children of any sort. They made her incredibly nervous. Even more so since she’d found out she was expecting her own. She was fairly large and uncomfortable and desperately afraid of what was going to happen next.

Elijah’s answer had been immersion therapy. He’d offered to watch any child in a thousand-mile radius, exposing Sienna to all shapes, sizes, ages, and sexes in the hope that it would calm her worries.

So far, not so much. Bella had tried to tell him that the only thing that would make her calm down would be birth. The ultimate immersion therapy. Elijah had not been convinced, much to Sienna’s dismay.

“My point is, we know Lycanthropes, Demons, Mistrals, Shadowdwellers, Druids, and Vampires. Out of those six Nightwalker breeds we are going to find someone trustworthy to watch our children, and you and I are going to go away.”

Then he leaned in, ignoring the wriggly bundle that was their son and pinning her to the spot with dark, famished eyes. “And I’ve been waiting for you to get h-o-r-n-y for three months now,” he said hotly. “Had I known you were already there, I would have done something about it immediately.”

“Ha! Some telepathic connection we have,” she snorted. “I thought for sure you knew and that I was too chubby with baby weight and that you didn’t want me …” And suddenly it sounded ridiculous to her own ears.

“And I thought for sure you knew I wanted you, will
always
want you. I was just … toning it way down because I did not want you to feel like you had to. I know how tired you have been.”

“Well, okay then,” she said with another little sniff. “Vacation.”

“Great,” he said, smiling wide and a little bit lecherously. “Where? The Catskills? Vale?”

“Stone Gorge, Washington.”

Jacob blinked. “Where the hell is that?”

“Stone Gorge, Washington, duh,” she said dryly.

Jacob rolled his eyes. “I know that. I meant to say, why there? I know a great place in Vale. It’d cost a small fortune and rightly so. Plush cabins, night skiing …”

“Stone Gorge, Washington.”

“I’m having a bad feeling about this,” Jacob said hesitantly.

“Have all the bad feelings you want. We’re going.”

End of story. She didn’t say it, but Jacob knew she didn’t have to, and so did she.

Oh yeah, he was definitely having a bad feeling.

And yet, with copious amounts of scorching sex on the horizon, those bad feelings were easily pushed aside.

He was snoring.

Not your average rumbly little snore, but a fricken freight train that rattled her rafters.

Great. How was she supposed to get any sleep between that and the fact that he was in her bed? Oh yes, there was another bed upstairs, but it wasn’t
her
bed, and she didn’t want to go too far out of earshot. God only knew what he was going to do this time and it usually ended up with her trying to pick his enormous bulk up off the floor. And honestly, her legs had truly had it. So had her arms. And her back.

God, she was getting old.

Thirty years old and
old
. Retired. Decrepit.

And, apparently, not that dried up. Not if her constant review of his blistering kiss was any indication. She kept finding herself rubbing absent fingertips over her slightly parted lips and in the middle of remembering the feel of his mouth against hers.

No. Forget it!
she kept telling herself every time. And every time she was just as unsuccessful as the time before. She was sitting in the chair in the corner of her bedroom, one foot tucked under her and the other pushing rhythmically against the floor so she was rocking and gliding gently. She had a cup of coffee perched
on her raised knee, and she blew on it intermittently because it was still too hot.

He’d been asleep for about three hours and in that time she’d checked on him more than half a dozen times, doing things like checking his pulse and his bandages. Never once had he stirred and never once had he stopped snoring.

After hours of the sound it was beginning to have a lulling effect. She found herself drifting off more than once and that was when she had decided on yet another pot of coffee. By this time of day she was usually drinking tea instead of coffee …

Hell, by now she was usually asleep.

She had gone out into the living room about ten minutes ago and cautiously peeked outside. It was so dark out for daylight hours that she did something she very rarely did.

She left her house and walked out into it. Karma was utterly delighted, although a half-hour ago she’d been looking at her with consternation wondering why they were still awake and why she wasn’t the only big thing lying in her bed. The snow had not lightened in the least, but the driving ice part of the storm was in a lull, it seemed. Karma bounded through the snow, six fresh inches already added to what had already been there. It had been a heavy winter thus far, and there were huge icy piles of previously plowed snow on all sides of her driveway. Fortunately the gully on the one side made an excellent receptacle for snow. And the icy piles made Karma feel like the king of the mountain when she climbed atop them, so she would bark, great white clouds of breath fanning into the air.