afraid, Sentinel.” His eyes and his body were an invitation…and I wasn’t about to refuse.
“Never afraid,” I promised, even as I squeezed my hands into fists in nervous anticipation. I’d watched him die, but here he was, lust in his eyes and wickedness in his smile.
He wasted no time stripping me of clothing, but each bit of fabric was slipped off and away with such slow and careful consideration my skin was on fire by the end of it.
And soon enough, as promised, I was wearing only my Cadogan medal and a smile.
Clad only in his pants, revealing those lines of muscle at his hips and the flat of his abdomen, his golden blond hair falling across his face, he stretched beside me and caressed the tips of his fingers across my stomach until my entire body was awash in goose bumps. His long fingers roamed my abdomen, barely touching, trickling across my skin, a promising hint of things to come, until my entire body was tinder, waiting for a spark.
With steady hands and deft fingers, he stripped me of my final barriers; I lay naked before him, a halo of dark hair around my head, my body adorned with the fading scars of battle.
“You are a universe,” he reverentially whispered, and then his game began. A game of pushing me to the brink, of building the anticipation…and leaving me stranded in the midst of it.
His mouth and hands found my breasts, and he tortured me with nips and kisses and quicksilver eyes that never looked away.
I made a sound of pleasure but immediately remembered my surroundings. His fingers splayed and contracted in time with my heartbeat until my body was liquid, but he wouldn’t stop…and he wouldn’t move closer.
I made a sound of displeasure when he evaded my own searching hands. But he popped up an eyebrow. “You’re putting up with me just fine, Sentinel.”
I growled and decided I’d been teased enough.
I stood Sentinel of Cadogan House, by God. He was mine, and we knew it, and I would claim what was mine.
With a twist of my leg I reversed our positions, straddling his waist, the evidence of his own arousal undeniable beneath me.
“Satisfied?” he asked, masculine satisfaction in his expression.
“Getting there,” I said. I stretched out along his body and kissed him, and switched the tenor of the game. From a duel to a mutual journey of pleasure. From lust to passion.
Ethan wrapped his arms around me and didn’t resist when I stripped him of the rest of his clothes. And then we were both naked and bare of all pretentions—except for the Cadogan medals around our necks. Him, the blond Master, four hundred years old, and yet newly born. Me, the dark-haired Sentinel. New to vampiredom although it felt like I’d aged years in the span of the last two months.
He’d pushed me to the brink, but he wasn’t done. In a flash I was on my back again, and the weight of his body was finally atop mine. I gripped him fiercely, determined not to let him go again. Willing God that I wouldn’t have to let him go again, and tomorrow wouldn’t be the end of both of us.
His long, nimble fingers found my core, and he took bare seconds before my body ignited. His name flew from my lips with abandon, as if my body were unable to contain its pleasure.
But we weren’t alone in the House, and he muffled the sound with a sudden, fierce, and hungry kiss. I struggled for breath, shocked by the suddenness of my reaction, and—if possible—even needier than I’d been before.
He smiled, eyes still closed, his expression changing to that thin line between pleasure and pain as I sought out his arousal. I let my hands explore his chest, his thighs, those diagonal muscles at the edges of his hips. I claimed him with hands and mouth, and watched his eyes flutter and body arch as he neared his own pleasure.
But he suddenly stilled me with a hand.
“It’s your turn,” he groaned, regret obvious in his voice.
“My turn?” Admittedly, my brain was still fuzzy, but I was pretty sure I’d had my turn.
“You have been bitten,” Ethan said. “But never like this.”
“Does it matter?”
“You are a vampire,” he growled out. “It matters as much as anything else, more than anything else.”
Ethan climbed above me again, and I wrapped my legs around him, our bodies intertwined. He looked down at me, his eyes swirling silver, his needle-sharp fangs fully