He raised his glass in return and smiled. “To brotherhood.”
* * *
“All set, love?” Dorian asked as Charlotte finally returned from escorting her sister outside with Aiden. Colin, Gabriel, Isabelle, Cole, and some of Rogozin’s demons were staying behind to finish cleaning up and interrogating the witches, but Dorian was more than ready to get the hell out of there.
He wanted a shower.
He wanted a nap.
He wanted to make love to his woman—in the shower and after a nap.
Charlotte nodded. “Sasha asked to ride back to Ravenswood with Aiden.”
Gabriel let out a low chuckle. “I’ll bet she did.”
“Hey!” She laughed and smacked his shoulder. “That’s my sister you’re talking about, dickhead.”
“Andmybrother,” he added.
Dorian arched an eyebrow. “Youdorealize she’s talking about Aiden, right?”
Gabriel shrugged. “I think he’s earned it, don’t you?”
“Nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, yes.”
“Better late than never.”
“Indeed.” Dorian rose from the barstool and pulled his woman in for another kiss, breathing in her sweet scent, deeply buried beneath the blood and grime.
The shower would be long and epic.
His cock was already hard just thinking about it.
“You two are bloody disgusting,” Gabriel grumbled, grabbing the last of the scotch and stalking off to find somewhere else to brood.
Charlotte finally pulled back, her eyes shining with emotion as she took Dorian’s face between her hands.
Her touch, as always, steadied him.
“We did it,” she whispered. “We got her back.”
“We got youbothback.”
She stretched up for one more kiss, then whispered, “Take me home, vampire king.”
Home.
Passing from her lips, the word was a balm on his broken heart, and he scooped her into his arms and carried her out of those bloodied ruins, out onto St. Mark’s Place and into the bright hope of a brand new day.
Chapter Thirty-Four
One Month Later
As the daughter of a professional art thief, Charley had experienced her share of endings. Broken promises. Shattered families. Deaths.
Every last one of her old endings had been abrupt and devastating, leaving her to pick up the pieces and move on as best she could.
But now, as she bubble-wrapped the last coffee mug from her kitchen cabinets and set it into the box with the others, Charley was experiencing a new kind of ending. One that set the butterflies inside her to flight, whispering in her ear about new beginnings. Possibilities. Promises.
