“Victor.” She crossed over and placed her hand on his shoulder. “She’s fine.”
The purr deepened, not quite Hyde but not quite human either. Something in between that had become Victor’s natural state around Angel.
Protective, devoted, and completely besotted.
“I just want to make sure?—”
“I know.” She squeezed his shoulder. “But you need sleep too.”
“Hyde doesn’t need much sleep.”
“Victor does.”
Green eyes met hers again, so full of love it made her breath catch.
“I can’t help it,” he said. “She’s so small. So fragile. So?—”
“Ours,” she finished. “I know. I feel it too.”
She did. The overwhelming need to watch over this tiny person they’d created. But she’d learned to set Angel down and walk away, to trust that the monitor would alert them if anything was wrong.
Victor was still learning that part. Well, Victor was. Hyde absolutely was not.
“Just five more minutes,” he said.
She bit back a smile. “That’s what you said an hour ago.”
“This time I mean it.”
“Mm-hmm.”
But she didn’t push. Just settled her hand on his shoulder and let him have it for a little while longer. Their daughter, safe and warm and perfect.
The deep rhythmic purr continued and Angel’s breathing matched it, in and out in perfect synchronization. The two of them had bonded the moment Angel was born. The moment the midwife had placed the baby on her chest and Victor had touched her tiny hand.
His eyes had flashed green and his hands had grown larger, larger enough to surround the baby with a protective shield. And Hyde had rumbled one word.Ours.
“She smiled at me earlier,” he said. “A real smile. Not gas.”
“She smiles at you all the time.”
“This was different. She saw me. Knew me.”
“Of course she knows you. You’re her father.”
“Both of me,” he said softly. “She wasn’t afraid when Hyde was close to the surface. She just smiled.”
Her throat tightened. “She loves you. All of you.”
“I don’t deserve?—”
“Stop.” She crouched beside the chair and looked up at him. At the man who’d spent years convinced he was too dangerous to have a family and who now spent every free moment with that family.
“You deserve this,” she said firmly. “You deserve her. You deserve all of it.”
He wrapped his free hand around hers. “I never thought?—”
“I know.”
