AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But he said nothing. Defending Ethan would only make it worse.
Her grin spread as if she could read his thoughts. “Maybe after you move, I’ll see if your lovely Ethan Cline needs a new job.”
Her wild laughter followed her out of the house and into the raging storm. The door slammed shut and Marcus’s legs gave out, leaving him sitting on the stairs. Oh, hell no. Meryl was not getting anywhere close to Ethan.
But she had the advantage. He couldn’t leave his house for at least another two hours, while she could use that time to try to track Ethan’s temporary residence down. He had to warn Ethan. To protect him.
And then he needed to talk to his brothers about Meryl’s threat against Julianna.
Chapter Eight
“Having doubts is normal,” Carl said with a wide, reassuring grin.
Ethan placed a glass of ice water on the coffee table in front of Carl and forced a quick smile that he really didn’t feel.
If he felt anything, it was a tangled mess. There was a little voice in his head screaming that he should never have left Marcus on his own with those two people.
No, two vampires.
Well, at least the woman. There was something about her that made his skin crawl. She had to be a vampire. The silent black man who towered over all of them like some kind of mobile mountain could have been one, but Ethan wasn’t completely sure.
Fuck, both of them felt more vampirish than Marcus did.
Leaving Marcus’s house when he did had put a sick queasiness in the pit of his stomach. The people who appeared on the doorstep just before the rain started were not welcome guests, but intruders. But for some reason, Marcus couldn’t turn them away.
And even with the danger tingling in the air, Ethan was stunned by how Marcus attempted to protect him. He could see it in the way he positioned his body between Ethan and the two intruders, and the way he’d tried to distract them from Ethan.
His new posh apartment might only be a quick ten-minute walk from Marcus’s town house, but he was thoroughly drenched when he squeaked his way through the marble entrance to the elevator. The walk and cooling rain didn’t help him clear his head when it came to Marcus.
When he’d agreed to the assignment, his instructions were relatively simple. Gather any and all information on Marcus Varik and any vampires he associated with. They needed addresses, habits, favorite haunts, anything. Considering the way Marcus reacted to the woman, Ethan felt confident she was a vampire, but he had nothing more than a name and a physical description to give about her.
The job didn’t require Ethan to try and be friends with Marcus.
But he found himself wanting to be, and he’d been sure that such a thing would never be possible.
This was a mess. He closed his eyes and conjured up the memory of that night. The screams and cries of his family. The smell of the blood. The laughter and the voices of the vampires who slaughtered his family.
He tried to imagine Marcus as one of them, walking through his house. But where Marcus should have been laughing and blood-drenched, he saw only a horrified look on Marcus’s handsome face. He could more easily imagine Marcus gathering up young Ethan and tucking him against his chest, carrying him to safety from that nightmare, promising to take care of him.
A fucking mess. This was a fucking mess.
He hadn’t thought too much about Marcus during the first few days of the job. On his first day of work, Marcus had been stiff and incredibly reserved as if he didn’t quite know what to say or how to act around Ethan. When Ethan didn’t see him again over the next few days, he’d been sure such a thing would become the norm. Any information would have to be gained through snooping through his personal belongings. Luckily, it was his job to pack up those items.
But that text from Rafe changed everything. He never expected to be looking at what was essentially porn with his boss. It was only worse because his boss’s brother was in the pic. Of course, Ethan had to make the moment more awkward by opening his mouth.
It wasn’t like he’d fantasized about the hotness of his boss. Of course, Marcus was a freaking wet dream. Given that his brother looked that mouthwatering, Ethan could only imagine the stunning body hiding under Marcus’s suits.
As painfully awkward as it was, that picture broke the ice between them. They’d talked for more than an hour, and Ethan had enjoyed every moment of it except for when he was reminded of his murdered family.
What kind of a person was he to keep forgetting about his family every time Marcus flashed that unsure smile in his direction?
