After a moment, he rolled onto his side and adjusted her so they were facing each other, bathed in the warm glow of the fire. He touched her face, his thumb brushing over her cheekbone in lazy, soothing strokes. “Did I hurt you?”
“Not even close.”
Possessive eyes focused on her. “Work for me.”
Whoa. Okay. Not words she’d expected to hear. “What? You mean like, at Thirst?”
“It’s mine now. That was the deal with Fade. Thirst, Gladius, it’s all mine.”
An anvil dropped onto her chest. “Gladius.”
He smiled. “Dismantling it will be the first thing I do. But I’ve put a lot of work into the club. It’s a decent place, and I want you there. I want you in charge of the medic station.”
She couldn’t deny that the offer was tempting. To have autonomy . . . something for herself . . . it was what she’d always wanted. But she owed Underworld General so much, and with the way the underworld was spinning out of control, they couldn’t afford to lose her.
“I have a job already,” she sighed.
“You don’t have to choose. Work at UG, but oversee the medic station and personnel at Thirst. You can hire your colleagues at the hospital to fill in or moonlight. You can use Thirst for training. I don’t care. It would be yours to do what you want with it.”
Closing her eyes, she thanked whoever was listening that she’d found this male. The canine instincts she hadn’t even known she possessed had somehow sensed that behind his hard outer shell there’d been a caring, loving vampire in there even when he was being a jerk. And now she understood the reason he’d been such a bastard at times.
But that didn’t mean she was going to let him walk all over her.
“Well?” He swept his lips tenderly over hers. “What do you say?”
She opened her eyes. “I’ll do it, but on one condition.”
He cocked a black eyebrow. “And that would be?”
“I don’t work for you. I work with you. The medic stuff will be entirely mine.”
“Woman,” he said, pressing a series of kisses along her jaw, “you can have anything you want. I owe you.”
“For what?” She tilted her head to give him better access, because that felt so . . . damned . . . good.
“For saving my life.” His voice lowered to a husky, mesmerizing purr, and against her hip, she felt his shaft stir. “For giving me life. I was dead before. You brought me back, Nurse Lena.”
She shifted so she could nuzzle his ear. “You did the same for me. So where do we go from here?”
“If you’ll have me, all the way.”
“To the end?”
He pushed up on his elbows and rolled to mount her. As she accepted him into her body, he locked gazes with her, his eyes glittering with passion and promise. “To the end.”