"Serious enough." Ethan frowned and rubbed his temples.
"Are you okay?"
He smiled a little. "Just a bit of a headache. It wil pass."
The atmosphere in the room had changed, from unfulfiled desire to political and magical anticipation. The sun chose that moment to breach the horizon; I couldn't see it through the draperies, but the sudden weight on my eyelids was teling enough.
"It seems certain things are not meant to be," Ethan said.
I nodded, unable to do much more. Vampires slept during the day, not just because direct exposure to sunlight would kil us, but because the rising of the sun puled us into unconsciousness.
We could fight the exhaustion, but it was a hard and losing battle.
We'd succumb eventualy.
He seemed to understand my hesitation.
"We both have other things, other people, on our minds," he said. "There wil be plenty of time for the remainder when we have addressed this particular crisis."
"And if we can't?"
"We wil," he said. "Because I wil goddamned see you naked under much more auspicious circumstances before the year is up."
I couldn't help but laugh at that.
Ethan took his turn to freshen up, then emerged from the bathroom in pajama bottoms that didn't leave much of his body to the imagination. His Cadogan medal hung just above the scar that puckered his chest—the mark he bore from taking Celina's stake.
Too soon for my preference, he flipped off the light, and we climbed onto the hard, creaky mattress. Ethan wasted no time in puling my body against his.
I relished the feeling, the glory, of having him there. Of his warmth, his scent, his energy, his everything.
"We can do nothing to stop the rising of the sun," he said. "So let us rest, and we wil fight the good fight tomorrow." He pressed me back tighter against him, and his arm snaked around my waist.
Reflexively, I shivered.
"Are you cold?"
"It's a habit. I used to have trouble faling asleep."
"Before the sun?"
"Before the sun," I agreed. "I'd be exhausted, but my mind would race with al the things I needed to do, papers I needed to grade, other nonsense. And so, I developed a little trick."
"Shivering?"
"Imagining. I would hunker down into my blankets and close my eyes, and I would imagine it was wintertime and a storm was raging outside. Freezing temperatures. Chiling wind. Howling blizzard."
"Not exactly a comforting scenario."
"It wasn't the blizzard that was comforting. It was the idea of being safe and warm inside."
"And it worked?"
"I always fel asleep eventualy."
Ethan chuckled. "Then tel me your story, Sentinel. Lul me to sleep."
I smiled and closed my eyes. "We're off the coast of Alaska, on a freighter in the Bering Sea. It's late summer, and the air is turning colder. The seas are calm, but there's a brisk wind."