Abandon The Night Read Online Free PDF

replied and half sat up, dragging a hand through his still-damp hair. It tended to curl up when it became wet and then dried on its own, leaving him resembling a messy teen needing a haircut.
    This wasn’t the first time Zoë had mentioned the fact that he pulled out just before—or, hell, in this case, right as—he came.
Bugger it.
Quent wasn’t sure how to explain to a woman who lived in a time when the human race had been so destroyed that it was considered almost criminal not to procreate as much as possible, that
he
came from a time when a responsible man didn’t have unprotected sex with a woman he wasn’t married to…and even then, it was fodder for discussion.
    And, quite frankly, it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about now.
    “Are you going to keep doing that?” she persisted.
    Quent felt a strange discomfort trickle through him, leeching away the remnants of his pleasure and satiation. “Probably.” He really fucking didn’t want to talk about this.
    But then the memory of their previous conversation about this very subject, and how he was trying to keep her from getting pregnant, flooded his mind. She’d said something along the lines of,
Oh, I never thought about that the other times.
    The other times.
    What fucking other times?
Before she started making these night-time visits…or since?
    Angry all over again, he added, “At least if you get pregnant, you’d know it wasn’t me.”
Probably, anyway.
    “Yeah,” she said after a moment, as if she’d had to think about it.
    Quent’s belly tightened. Time to change the bloody subject. Back to something he could handle.
    But before he could, she beat him to it. “You never thanked me for helping you find your friend who was kidnapped. The Corrigan woman.” She looked at him sidewise, eyes slanted meaningfully.
    Quent released a short laugh on a gust of breath. “Right, then, what the hell do you think
that
was?” he said, spreading his hand to encompass the twisted sheets and clothes strewn over the floor.
    She smiled back at him, sending another pang of lust twining down past his belly. “I thought you were just hot-damn happy to see me.”
    That too.
But he was damned if he’d say it.
    I never thought about that the other times.
    The other times.
    Right. He was a nice little shag when she was in Envy, and that was just fine with him. A little cork pop, keeping the tubes lubed, and he was fine with that. Keep it simple and easy. And when she left to go wherever the hell it was she went when she disappeared, he could care less what she did.
    “Shame on me for not thanking you properly,” he told her with a sly smile, “for helping us to find Sage.”
    If Zoë hadn’t seen Sage being abducted from Envy a week ago by a bounty hunter who worked for the Strangers, they might not have found her as quickly and easily. That was, in fact, how Quent had come to be in possession of Zoë’s latest arrow. The one that now lay on the floor, hopefully forgotten.
    He reached over and stroked the pad of his thumb over her nipple. It hardened and the dark rose areola gathered up prettily beneath his touch, tempting him to taste her again. She arched slightly toward him, and he leaned forward to kiss the side of her neck. How could she taste like cinnamon all the time? Spicy and sweet and a little salty…
    She moaned softly, and he felt the lift of her pulse beneath his lips.
Yes, indeed.
Then, reluctantly, he pulled away. His mouth anyway; he kept his hand in place, gently cupping the weight of her breast. There were other things to talk about.
    “We did find Sage,” he told her, wondering if they would actually have a bloody conversation. “In Redlow.”
    “Yeah, I saw that she was back. She’s getting some from the smokin’ guy with the ponytail, isn’t she?”
    The smokin’ guy with the ponytail was Simon, of course. Even Quent could admit that Simon resembled a Hollywood actor, with his sculpted features and the long hair that some