Ethan grinned and crooked a finger at me.
"I don't perform on command," I reminded him.
He unsnapped the top button on his jeans.
My eyes widened. "Sneaky bastard."
I gnawed my lip in pleasure, watching the past, present, and future Master of Cadogan House in a state of utter abandon: shirt on the floor, jeans unbuttoned, his arousal obvious.
Without bashfulness, he took my hand and guided it to his erection. With rhythmic motions, he moved my hand back and forth across denim-clad steel, eyes closed as he tilted his head back, teeth clenched, breath hitching. His hips canted against my hand.
I watched him for a moment, utterly entranced, his expression wrenched with the sensation, the sensuality. And then his eyes opened, his lips curled, and he watched my face as I moved him, rocked him, brought him close to the edge of his passion.
When he decided he'd had enough, he found my mouth again, then wrapped my legs around his waist and maneuvered me backward until my thighs hit the back of his desk, and I was perched on the edge, my legs wrapped around his hips.
"You want me," he said.
"I don't stop wanting you. Not since the moment I walked into this House all those months ago."
He momentarily stilled - maybe shocked by the admission - but his eyes flattened again.
"Take off your shirt," he said.
But I hadn't won Ethan Sullivan - and he hadn't won me - by my playing the wilting lily to his alpha predator. I lifted my head. "I am not your possession."
"Aren't you?"
At my refusal, he moved forward and gripped the hem of my shirt. With fingers trailing over my skin, he pushed it upward, farther and farther, until he'd revealed my bra. Then shirt and undergarment disappeared, and he trained his eyes on my bare br**sts.
He used mouth and teeth and tongue to incite me, and when I was aflame, stripped me of the rest of my clothing. His hands aroused my body, a ship at his command. There wasn't a bit of me that wasn't on fire for him, and when I silently called his name - Ethan, please - he reacted.
He didn't waste time on preliminaries - not that I needed any. A thrust of his hips and he was inside me, pushing a bare whisper of sound from my lips and the very breath from my body.
"Look at me," he said. But when I buried my head in his shoulder, he took my chin in hand and turned it toward him. "Merit. Look at me, goddamn it."
His irises, already silver, spun with mercurial motion. He held my gaze as he moved faster, as our bodies and hearts collided, and I watched with awe and shock and utter arousal as his pupils contracted and his lips trembled . . . and he reached his pleasure.
I watched the delicious agony of release cross his face, and I thought I'd never seen anything so memorable, that burrowed so deeply into my soul, as the expression on his face.
But to every story, there is another chapter.
* * *
Two hours later, we'd found our way upstairs and were still lying languorous and naked across the bed we'd reclaimed together, with love.
I lay on my stomach; Ethan lay beside me, his fingers trailing up and down my back as dawn approached again.
"So, are we good?"
"I'm definitely good."
I swatted his shoulder. "You know what I mean."
"We're good," he confirmed. "And if he so much as lays a hand on you, he won't live to regret it."
"Egotistical much?"
He smiled that leonine smile, utterly masculine, utterly arrogant, utterly proud. "It's not egotistical if it's well earned. Shall we see, Sentinel, how well earned it is?"
Far be it from me to argue.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
NEVER GONNA GIVE
I woke drowsy to find Ethan on the other side of the bed, tying his hair back with a bit of leather cord. He was shirtless, but wore martial arts pants.
"Going somewhere?"
"Workout," he said. "The tension of the last few days has built up. I need to work through it."
I propped myself up on my side, grinning at him. "And last night wasn't workout enough?"
"Less so for me than for you, although I bless the day you decided to train as a ballerina and work on your flexibility."
I could feel the blush to my feet.
Ethan headed toward the window. I pulled the sheet around my body, then padded to the window, a train of Egyptian cotton behind me.
Outside, the night was overcast and still, like the precursor to a winter storm.
"Snow later tonight," Ethan said.
"It feels like it." I looked back at him. "What are you doing after your workout?"
"Working with Michael regarding our security protocols. Since an RG member was able to enter and exit the premises in fairly quick order, we've obviously got holes to fill."
"Good call," I said, although I wasn't sure anything other than alarms on the bedroom doors and interior cameras would have solved that particular problem.
"I presume you're heading to the Ops Room when you're up and around?"
"That's my plan. Luc was looking at the Navarre vamps, so I'm hoping something popped up there. I also want to call Jeff to see if he's found anything new. And I visited my father," I added.
Ethan looked at me, obviously startled. "When?"
"During our escalation of tensions."
"What did he have to say?"
"He apologized for the vampire thing, in his way. I asked him to get information about the owner of the building where Oliver and Eve were killed. Jeff didn't find anything, and maybe it's a throwaway fact, but I thought it was worth asking."
"It's a good thought, Sentinel. Perhaps you'll get your clue. I'll see you later."
He kissed my cheek and headed for the door, feet padding across the hardwood floors. With one crisis down, but one substantial crisis yet to go, I dropped the sheet and dived into the shower, where I dunked myself under steaming hot water, thanking God I was still in Cadogan House and not at a hotel across town, living from a suitcase as I contemplated my vampiric future.
When I reached the Ops Room, everyone was engaged in a task of some kind, but Luc was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the Ops Room was virtually empty except for Lindsey and a few of the temps.
"Where is everyone?" I wondered.
"I believe you'll want to go next door," Lindsey said. "Ethan and Jonah are sparring."
"Oh, you cannot be serious," I said, positive she was joking.
But she definitely, definitely was not.
They stood in the middle of the mats, both shirtless, Jonah also wearing martial arts pants. The air was thick with magic and the smells of sweat and blood.