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When he roled over and sat up beside me, my heart sank.
Tears suddenly bloomed at my lashes as I thought hope was lost.
"I haven't told you how Malik and I came to be on campus that night."
He meant that night he'd saved my life the first time and made me a vampire. My heart stuttered a bit, anticipating information that would either make me swoon - or make me furious. "No, you didn't," I carefuly said.
"After your father came to me and I refused him, Malik and I were nervous he might, shal we say, shop around."
He was quiet, watching me as I decided how to take his confession. Honestly, I wasn't realy sure how to take it. "You folowed me?"
"We weren't privy to your discussions with your father, but Malik thought it best to keep an eye on you, and I concurred."
He cleared his throat. "I'd decided you deserved the truth."
"You were going to tel me what he did?"
"We knew you were enroled at U of C, and we'd learned you were at school that night. We'd just gotten out of the car to find you when you were attacked."
Of al the nights for him to attempt to speak to me.
And I'd hated him - loathed him - when I'd first been changed. I'd been so angry to have been denied the choice to become a vampire, and I'd taken that out on him. Of course, he'd been terrificaly arrogant about it, and he hadn't exactly handled my withdrawal from school very wel. But stil - he'd saved my life. And not just because he'd randomly happened upon me that night on campus, but because he'd made a decision to enter my life that night, and for the right reasons.
My father had offered him thirty pieces of silver, and Ethan had declined, and he'd tried to rectify what my father had sought to do.
My eyes filed with tears, and I said a silent thank-you to the universe for sending him to me. "I told you that you saved my life."
He gave me no warning before his mouth sought mine, and he kissed me greedily, hungrily, and with obvious intention. His fingers puled at my hair, drawing me closer, his arousal leaving an indelible mark on my body.
His free hand found my breast, and I moaned against his kiss, passion igniting and leaving my body on fire.
After only a moment, when my chest was heaving and my body pliant and ready, he puled back.
"If you use the word 'halt,' I wil hit you."
"Not halt," he breathlessly said. "Upstairs. Now."
I thanked whatever strength he'd found to utter those words.
And I was not going to argue with him.
Chapter Nineteen
UNCHANGING
We barely made it back upstairs without ripping each other's clothes off. As it was, we probably left a trail of teltale energy through the House that made our mutual agenda clear to everyone.
When we made it to his apartments, he slammed and locked the door, then found my mouth again. His hands were possessive, insistent, knotting into my hair and drawing me closer, chalenging me to believe in who he was and what he'd promised.
"I missed you," I confessed, as he pressed me down into the bed.
"I wouldn't have it any other way," he murmured. For a moment, he hovered over me, his body scant centimeters away from mine...but stil far away.
"What is it?"
"It seems forever since we've done this."
"It's been at least two months," I said with a smal smile, then placed my hand over the scar above his heart.
His expression went serious, his eyes changing to the green of ancient Celt forests. "You are mine, Merit."
I smiled and put a hand on his face, running my thumb along the soft bow of his lips. "I am yours until you ban bacon, or otherwise as long as I can put up with you."
He grinned wickedly, but his eyes were on my body as he did it. "Let's see just how long you can put up with me."
I should have taken that for the warning it was.
His eyes were molten silver, and there was no mistaking his intent in his gaze. The desire in his gaze. I shivered from the ferocity of it.
"I thought you weren't afraid, Sentinel." His eyes and his body were an invitation...and I wasn't about to refuse.
"Never afraid," I promised, even as I squeezed my hands into fists in nervous anticipation. I'd watched him die, but here he was, lust in his eyes and wickedness in his smile.
He wasted no time stripping me of clothing, but each bit of fabric was slipped off and away with such slow and careful consideration my skin was on fire by the end of it.
And soon enough, as promised, I was wearing only my Cadogan medal and a smile.
Clad only in his pants, revealing those lines of muscle at his hips and the flat of his abdomen, his golden blond hair faling across his face, he stretched beside me and caressed the tips of his fingers across my stomach until my entire body was awash in goose bumps. His long fingers roamed my abdomen, barely touching, trickling across my skin, a promising hint of things to come, until my entire body was tinder, waiting for a spark.
With steady hands and deft fingers, he stripped me of my final barriers; I lay naked before him, a halo of dark hair around my head, my body adorned with the fading scars of battle.
"You are a universe," he reverentialy whispered, and then his game began. A game of pushing me to the brink, of building the anticipation...and leaving me stranded in the midst of it.
His mouth and hands found my br**sts, and he tortured me with nips and kisses and quicksilver eyes that never looked away.
I made a sound of pleasure but immediately remembered my surroundings. His fingers splayed and contracted in time with my heartbeat until my body was liquid, but he wouldn't stop...and he wouldn't move closer.
I made a sound of displeasure when he evaded my own searching hands. But he popped up an eyebrow. "You're putting up with me just fine, Sentinel."
I growled and decided I'd been teased enough.
I stood Sentinel of Cadogan House, by God. He was mine, and we knew it, and I would claim what was mine.
With a twist of my leg I reversed our positions, straddling his waist, the evidence of his own arousal undeniable beneath me.
"Satisfied?" he asked, masculine satisfaction in his expression.
"Getting there," I said. I stretched out along his body and kissed him, and switched the tenor of the game. From a duel to a mutual journey of pleasure. From lust to passion.
Ethan wrapped his arms around me and didn't resist when I stripped him of the rest of his clothes. And then we were both naked and bare of al pretentions - except for the Cadogan medals around our necks. Him, the blond Master, four hundred years old, and yet newly born. Me, the dark-haired Sentinel.
New to vampiredom although it felt like I'd aged years in the span of the last two months.
