House Rules - Chloe Neill Page 0,17

I could have counted as another room. The floor was covered in thick carpet, and the walls were shelved in cherrywood. Clothes were divided into sections—jackets, pants, shoes, ties, and coats, and long, flat drawers for folded items. Ethan had graciously offered room in each of those sections to me, although my simple wardrobe didn’t take up much space.

The middle of the closet held a storage unit that looked like an expensive piece of European furniture, and a leather bench for changing clothes or putting on shoes. Mirrors filled empty bays, and track lighting illuminated the whole room like a perfectly prepped Vogue set.

Ethan wore a suit nearly every night, and the closet was filled with well-fitting black jackets and pants. But even the value of the fabric and tailoring was second to the artifact that hung in an alcove on the opposite end of the closet: In an ornate gilded frame was a moody painting by Van Gogh. It was a landscape at dusk, a golden field of wheat topped by a dark indigo sky, Van Gogh’s telltale swirls of clouds hovering above it.

I leaned against the doorway and crossed my arms as I admired it. It was a simple painting, and a small one, only a few inches across. But there was depth in the scene that appealed to me . . . not unlike the vampire disrobing a few feet away from it.

Ethan wore only boxer briefs, his long and lean body exposed to my salacious glance. It was easy to appreciate him in a purely aesthetic way—his body was like a perfectly honed sculpture: curves and flat planes of muscle, golden skin that should have given way to vampiric paleness some time ago. And on the back of one calf, a mysterious tattoo he wouldn’t explain, even to me.

Thank God he had no idea how much control was required of me just to be near him. Although given the knowing glance he offered when our eyes met, maybe he did.

I closed my eyes to reset the visual. As intriguing as he was, we had more pressing issues.

“Oliver and Eve,” I said. “What do you think?”

“There are too many possibilities for us to even theorize at this point. This could be a simple miscommunication. Or perhaps Oliver and Eve were reacting to a slight and chose not to contact Noah and the others for a time.”

“Maybe Oliver and Eve fought with others about the fact that they decided to register. That couldn’t have thrilled everyone.”

“And Eve’s phone in the alley?” Ethan asked.

“Maybe she threw it in anger? Like an ‘I’m furious they’re furious at me for no reason’”—I mimicked hurling something at him—“kind of reaction.”

Ethan flipped off the closet light and walked toward me, an eyebrow arched. “I certainly hope that’s not your best pitch. Because it was pathetic.”

I smiled at his attempt at humor, at ending our night on something other than a note of fear and despair. The sun was rising and there was nothing we could do for Oliver and Eve while it was up. But we could be ourselves, and for those few moments of peace and solitude in the home we’d made together, we could find joy.

“You wouldn’t know a good pitch from a hole in the ground. And my athletic prowess is unsurpassed,” I asserted.

Ethan stopped, that eyebrow still irritatingly cocked, and put a hand against the doorjamb, leaning over me.

“Your athletic prowess?”

“Just so,” I said, using one of his favorite phrases. “I have all the right moves.”

With a look hot enough to melt me into a puddle of girl, he caught my hand, then whipped my body against his.

“Okay, you have all the right moves,” I said, my lids dropping as the sun began to rise . . . and as he moved his hands to the small of my back and pressed me tighter into his body.

“You gave in so quickly, Sentinel,” he murmured. He maneuvered me backward toward the bed, which left little doubt about the reason for those moves. He was a predator in full alpha mode . . . and he was ready for action.

With his hands at my hips, his mouth found mine. His kiss was intense, nearly brutal in its force. It was a show of arousal and an expression of something. His feelings for me, certainly. His frustrations at the world, possibly.

The back of my legs hit the edge of the bed. Unbalanced, I tottered, but he kept me upright. “I have the