Midnight Rising (Midnight Breed 4)

She didn't hear him move, but she felt the stir in the air as he drew up to her back and his strong, warm hands came to rest softly on her shoulders. "I don't want to do that, Dylan. For your sake - maybe for my own too - I should erase myself from your memory, but I don't want that. I don't think I could."

Dylan shut her eyes, holding the tender words close. "Then...where do we go from here?"

Slowly, he turned her around to face him. He kissed her sweetly, then rested his forehead against hers. "I don't know. I only know that I'm not ready to say good-bye to you right now."

"Your friends are going to be here soon."

"Yes."

"Don't go with them."

He tilted his chin down and pressed his lips to the top of her head. "I have to."

In her heart, even before he said it, Dylan knew he had to go back. His world was with the Order. And regardless of the birthmark that granted her a special place among the Breed, Dylan had to remain with her mom.

She burrowed her cheek into Rio's chest, listening to the solid beat of his heart. She wasn't sure she could let go of him, now that she had her arms wrapped around him. "Will you come with me, back to the hospital? I want to check in on her one more time tonight."

"Of course," Rio said, disengaging from her and taking her hand in his.>Making love with Dylan tonight had been perhaps as big a mistake as drinking from her: now that he'd tasted her passion, he only wanted more. He was selfish and greedy, and he'd already proven to himself that he couldn't count on honor to keep his wants at bay.

He focused instead on her - shallow breaths, careful silence...a heaviness within her that had nothing to do with the myriad mistakes that had transpired between them.

She was mourning privately.

"How bad off is she...your mother?"

Dylan swallowed, her hair sifting over his chest as she gave a vague shake of her head. "It's not good. She keeps getting weaker." Dylan's voice trailed off. "I don't know how much longer she can fight it. To tell you the truth, I don't know how much longer she will try."

"I'm sorry," Rio said, caressing her back and knowing that he could only offer feeble words.

He didn't want Dylan to hurt, and he knew that she was weathering a deep pain. It didn't take a blood bond to tell him that. And he was ten kinds of bastard for doing what he did with her here tonight.

"We can't stay here," he said, not meaning it to come out like a snarl. "We need to get moving."

He shifted beneath her uncomfortably, groaning when he only succeeded in making their position even more awkward. He muttered a curse in Spanish.

"Are you okay?" Dylan asked. She lifted her head and looked up at him, frowning with concern. "Is the pain coming back now? How do you feel?"

Frustration rose up in his throat on a scoff, but he bit it back. Instead reached out to stroke her cheek. "Have you always tried to take care of everyone around you before yourself?"

Her frown deepened. "I don't need taking care of. I haven't needed that in a very long time."

"How long, Dylan?"

"Ever."

As she said it, her chin went up a bit, and Rio found it easy to picture Dylan as a freckle-faced little girl stubbornly refusing any and all help, regardless of how badly she might need it. As a woman, she was much the same. Defiant, proud. So afraid to be hurt.

He knew that kind of fear personally as well. He'd walked a similar path from the time he was a child. It was a lonely one; he'd almost not survived it himself. But Dylan was stronger than him in so many ways. He was only now coming to realize just how strong she really was.

And how alone as well.

He recalled that she had passingly mentioned having brothers - a pair of them, both named for rock stars - but he'd never heard her speak of her father. In fact, the only family she seemed to have in her life at all was the woman currently residing in the cancer wing of the hospital down the street. The family she was likely going to lose before long.

"Has it been just the two of you for a while now?" he asked.

She nodded. "My dad left when I was twelve - abandoned us, actually. They porced soon afterward, and Mom never remarried. Not for lack of interest." Dylan laughed, but it was a sad kind of humor. "My mom has always been a bit of a free spirit, always falling in love with a new man and swearing to me that she's finally found The One. I think she's in love with the state of being in love. Right now, she's crushing on the man who owns the runaway center where she works. God, for her to have so much love left to give even when the cancer is taking so much away from her..."

Rio smoothed his fingers down Dylan's arm as she fought the sudden hitch in her voice. "What about your father? Have you been in touch with him about what's going on?"