I looked up at him, palms flat on the table. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’d have finished your dissertation, secured a professorship at some East Coast liberal arts college, and then what? You’d buy yourself a cottage and update that box on wheels you call a car, and you’d spend most of your time in your tiny office nitpicking antiquated literary conceits.”
I stood straight, crossed my arms over my chest, and had to take a moment in order to keep from snapping back at him. And I only did that because he was my boss.
Still, my tone was frosty. “Nitpicking antiquated literary conceits?”
His arched brows challenged me to respond.
“Ethan, it would have been a quiet life, I know that. But it would have been fulfilling.” I looked down at my katana. “Maybe a little less adventurous, but fulfilling.”
“A
little
less?”
His voice was so sarcastic it was nearly flabbergasting. I took it to be vampire arrogance that he couldn’t believe the ordinary lives of human beings were in any way rewarding.
“Exciting things can happen in archives.”
“Such as?”
Think, Merit, think
. “I could unravel a literary mystery. Find a missing manuscript. Or, the archive could be haunted,” I suggested, trying to think of something a little more in his area of expertise.
“That’s quite a list, Sentinel.”
“We can’t all be soldiers turned Master vampires, Ethan.” And thank God for that. One of him was plenty enough.
Ethan sat forward, linked his fingers on the table, and gazed at me. “My point, Sentinel, is this: Compared to this world, your new life, your human life would have been cloistered. It would have been a small life.”
“It would have been a life of my choosing.” Hoping to end that particular line of conversation, I closed the book I’d pretended to stare at. I picked it up, along with a couple of its companions, and walked them back to their shelves.
“It would have been a waste of you.”
Thankfully, I was facing the bookshelf when he offered that little nugget, as I don’t think he’d have appreciated the eye roll or mimicry. “You can stop plying me with compliments,” I told him. “I’ve already gotten you in to see my father and the mayor.”
“If you believe that sums up our interactions over the last week, you’ve missed the point.”
When I heard the slide of his chair, I paused, hand on the spine of a book about French drinking customs. I pushed the book back in line with its comrades and said lightly, “And you’ve insulted me again, which means we’re back on track.”
I gathered up the next book in my stack, my eyes scanning the Dewey Decimal numbers on the shelves to locate its home.
In other words, I was trying very, very hard not to think about the sound of footsteps behind me, or the fact that they were moving closer.
Interesting that I hadn’t yet moved out of his path.
“My point, Sentinel, is that you are more than a woman who hides in a library.”
“Hmm,” I nonchalantly said, sliding the final book into its home. I knew what was coming. I could hear it in his voice—the low, thick hum of it. I didn’t know why he was trying, given his apparently conflicted feelings about me, but this was the prelude to seduction.
Footsteps, and then he was next to me, his body behind mine, his lips at the spot of skin just below my ear. I could feel the warmth of his breath against my neck. The smell of him—clean, soapy, almost discomfortingly familiar. As much as the want of it disturbed me, I wanted to sink back against him, let him envelop me.
Part of that, I knew, was vampire genetics, the fact that he’d changed me, some kind of evolutionary connection between Master and vampire.
But part of it was much, much simpler.
“Merit.”
Part of it was boy and girl.
I shook my head. “No, thank you.”
“Don’t deny it. I want this. You want this.”
He said the words, but the cant of them was wrong. Irritated. Not words of desire, but an accusation. As if we’d fought the attraction and hadn’t been strong enough to resist it, and we were worse off for it.
But if Ethan fought it, he didn’t resist. He leaned in, a hand at my waist, his body behind mine, and grazed his teeth along the sensitive skin of my neck. The breath shuddered out of me, my eyes rolling back, the vampire inside me thrilled by the innate dominance of the act. I tried to fight my way to the surface of the rising lust, and made the mistake of turning around, facing him. I’d been intent on giving him what-for, on sending him away, but he took full advantage of my shift in position.
Ethan pressed closer, one hand on each side of me, fingers gripping the shelves, framing my body with his, and stared down at me, eyes as green as cut emeralds. He raised a hand to my face, stroked my lip with his thumb. His eyes became quicksilver, a sure sign of his hunger. Of his arousal.
“Ethan,” I said, a hesitation, but he shook his head, gaze dropping to my lips, then drifting shut. He leaned closer, his lips just touching mine. Teasing, hinting, but not quite kissing. My lids fell, and his hands were at my cheeks, fingers at my jaw, his breath staccato and rushed as his lips traced a trail, pressed kisses, against my closed eyes, my cheeks, everywhere but my lips.
“You are so much more than that.”
It was the words that did me in, that sealed my fate. My core went liquid, body humming, limbs languid as he worked to arouse me, to incite me.
I opened my eyes and looked up at him as he pulled back, his eyes wide and intense and insanely green. He was so beautiful, his eyes on me, the desire clear, golden hair around his face, ridiculous cheekbones, mouth that would tempt a saint.
“
Merit
,” he roughly said, then leaned his forehead against mine, asking for my consent, my permission.
I wasn’t a saint.
My eyes wide, decision made and the repercussions be damned, I nodded.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CRYING WOLF
His first move was the deadliest, a smile of boyish pleasure that transformed into the sexiest, most congratulatory grin I’d ever seen. It was a look of sheer predatory satisfaction, the look of a hunter who’d planned, schemed, and won his prize, who had the prey in his grasp.
How apropos, I thought.
“Be still,” he whispered, then leaned in again, lids falling as he angled his head. I thought he’d kiss me, but this was just to tease, a prelude to whatever slate of activity he had in mind. He pressed a kiss to my jawline, then my chin, then nipped at my bottom lip, tugging it with his teeth.
When he released me, he stared at me again, rubbed his thumb across my cheekbone. He studied me, looked at me. This time, when his lashes fell, he kissed me fully, dipping his tongue into the cavern of my mouth.
He fisted his hands in the hair at the nape of my neck, teasing my tongue with his, willing me to engage, to fight back, to do anything but simply acquiesce.
I fisted my hands in the lapels of his coat, pulling him toward
me, bringing the warmth of him, the smell of him, the taste of him, closer.
There was a moment of consideration before I decided I wasn’t appalled enough by my actions to let him go.
Ethan
.
It wasn’t even a whisper, just the mental calling of his name, but he groaned triumphantly, sucked my tongue into his mouth, and tortured it with friction and the heat of his mouth.
I kissed him, let him kiss me, let him clutch my hips, curl his fingers into the fabric of my shirt, slide his hands around my waist and splay them against my back, pull me infinitesimally closer. He made a sound, a growl or purr, some predatory noise that rumbled in his throat, then said my name. And this time, it wasn’t a question but a sound of victory, a claim on his prize.
He pressed in closer, fingers splayed and moving slowly upward. As he pressed against me, I felt the rise of his erection, the solidity of it against my stomach.
I cupped his face in my hands as we kissed in long, sensuous pulls and teasing bites, the thick golden silk of his hair falling around my fingers.
Until the knock at the library door.
Ethan shot away, one hand on his hip, one at his mouth, wiping away the evidence.
“Yes?” His voice was loud, a cannon shot in the otherwise empty room.
I brushed the back of my hand across my mouth.
The door opened, a body silhouetted in the doorway, and then Malik stepped inside. “They’re here,” he said, eyes on me, some shred of unspoken compassion there, then looked at Ethan. “Front parlor.”
Ethan nodded. “Put them in my office. We’ll be there in a moment.” Without even so much as a second glance, Malik nodded
and walked out again, the door closing with a heavy, slow
thush
.
I moved back to the table and kept my gaze on the notebooks and texts I began to gather up. My heart raced, the guilt I’d thrown back at Morgan now flooding my chest.
What had I done? What had I,
we
, been about to do?
“Merit.”
“Don’t.” I finished stacking the notebooks, picked them up, grabbed my scabbarded katana, and held them to my chest like a shield. “Don’t. That shouldn’t have happened.”
Ethan didn’t respond until I began to move toward the door. He stopped me with a firm hand at my elbow. Even then, a single arched eyebrow was the only question I got.
“You gave me to him.”
His eyes widened, instantaneously. He was surprised, then, that it mattered, that it mattered that Ethan had wanted me, for whatever his reasons, in spite of his doubts, and had still given me away. To Morgan. Who was waiting one floor below us.
I pulled my arm away and walked to the door. When I reached it, I stopped, turned, and looked back, seeing that stunned expression still on his face. “You made the decision,” I told him. “You get to live with it.”
After a moment of obvious shock, he shook his head. “We have visitors.” His tone was steely. “Let’s go.”
Scabbard and paper in hand, I followed him out.
They were in the office when we arrived downstairs—Morgan, Scott Grey, and Noah Beck, all in chairs around Ethan’s conference table. I hadn’t seen Scott or Noah since the night I’d protected Ethan against a would-be sucker punch thrown by my future ex-boyfriend, one night before Celina attempted to kill Ethan. It seemed appropriate that we were meeting again under equally dramatic circumstances.
Scott was tall with dark brown hair, dressed in jeans and a Cubs T-shirt. He was a sports fan, so sportswear usually made up the uniform of Grey House, such as it was. Instead of the medals vampires from Navarre and Cadogan wore, Grey House vamps had jerseys.
Noah wore black cargo pants and a black thermal shirt, the only clothes I’d ever seen him in. Noah was shorter than Scott, which didn’t say much given that Scott probably reached six foot four, but Noah was broader-shouldered. Noah clearly spent a lot of time in the weight room. And where Scott had a kind of frat-boy attractiveness, now sporting a little soul patch below his bottom lip, Noah was ruggedly handsome. His look was equally vampire rugged—brown hair around big blue eyes, sensuous lips, a few days’ worth of stubble along his strong jaw.
Morgan was still in his jeans and T-shirt. He’d also kept the flat, pissed-off stare, which he leveled at me as soon I walked into the room.
I blushed, guilt riding high and warm on my cheekbones. Guilt, and a little fear. I’d done the very thing he’d dreaded. I’d given in to the temptation he’d predicted. Feared. And I’d bet money that I still carried the lingering scent of Ethan’s cologne.
Luc and Malik stood point at either end of the table, both in Cadogan black. Ethan strode toward the table and took the seat at the head of it, Luc standing behind him.
I moved to the other end of the table, offering nods to Noah and Scott along the way. When Malik took his seat, I stood behind him.
“Gentlemen,” Ethan said, “as I briefly mentioned earlier, we have a problem. We need a solution. And we need it quickly.”
He laid out Nick’s threat, the twenty-four-hour demand, and the research being conducted by Jeff. And then he got personal.
“We’ve been able to get this much information,” he said,
“because Merit agreed to return to her father’s house, to revisit her family’s circle of acquaintances on our behalf.” He said the words to the group, but his gaze was on Morgan.
I closed my eyes, suddenly exhausted by Ethan Sullivan.
It was exoneration. He was trying, even after what had just transpired in the library, to give me an excuse to take to Morgan. To explain to Morgan that what seemed like impropriety—my appearing on Ethan’s arm at a social function—was actually a duty he’d required of me, and a completely platonic one.
Arguably, it was a thoughtful thing to do—an attempt to mend the tear he’d rent by requiring me to accompany him to my father’s.
On the other hand, it reeked of cowardice. He wanted me, that much was obvious, and this wasn’t the first time he’d demonstrated it. But he kept passing me back to Morgan. He kept putting the effort into keeping Morgan and me together. That hinted at an abyss of emotional issues I knew I shouldn’t dare to explore.
But I’d kissed him. I’d seen the look in his eyes—the desire, the triumph—of having accomplished me. Maybe Linds was right, that there was more beneath the surface of cool, calm, collected vampire. But what a risk . . .
I’d drifted into my thoughts, so when the sound of my name jolted me from them, I realized I was halfway to lifting fingers to my lips, touching the place where we’d connected. Covering, I tapped a finger against my chin, hoping it looked intellectual.
“Yes?” I asked Ethan, found all eyes on me. Morgan, in particular, looked to have lost a little fire, although he still looked suspicious.
“Do you have anything to add to my retelling?” Ethan asked. “Perhaps about the threat contained in the e-mail?”