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.