“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.

CHAPTER EIGHT

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.