Midnight Marked (Chicagoland Vampires, #12)(77)

“She was a thief, an assassin, and a general ne’er-do-well,” Lindsey said with a smile. “Accused of fourteen murders that the county was aware of. And she escaped from him four separate times.”

Four was definitely larger than three. If not by a lot.

“‘Escaped’ is a tough word,” Luc said. “I prefer to say she ‘evaded incarceration.’ But yeah, four times.”

“How’d you finally get her?”

He smiled. “With help from the dirt and dust and tumbleweeds. She rolled into Dodge City wanting, of all things, a hot bath. I caught her while she was performing her ablutions,” he said, eyebrows winging up.

“Is the moral of that story that it’s safest to avoid good hygiene?” Ethan asked.

“Har-har, Sire. Har-har. The moral of the story is to always keep going! Ever forward! Forward progress! You can do it! And all that other motivational shit.” Luc looked at me, a gleam in his eye. “And if you can catch ’em with their pants down, they tend to be a little more amenable.”

Words of wisdom.

? ? ?

Following Lindsey’s suggestion, I e-mailed Jonah, asked for a meeting with Noah the next evening at the RG headquarters to talk about the Rogue vampire.

When this evening drew to a close and we were secure in our Hyde Park tower, Ethan carefully removed my clothes, used hands and words to soothe and seduce.

This was about need as much as the library had been, but of a different variety. This was about partnership as much as touch. About tenderness as much as passion. And about comfort as much as satisfaction. Every movement was slow and languid, every word tender. His mouth was soft against mine, then against the rest of my body, and pleasure rose and crested in waves that cleared violence from my mind.

We rode those waves together, bodies linked and hearts finally reunited. Love wasn’t a battle, and it wasn’t a war. It was a partnership, with missteps and miracles and all the rest of it.

When we were both sated and languid, Ethan lay naked beside me, his head on my abdomen. I ran my fingers through his hair as he traced a fingertip across my still-heated skin.

“Do you remember, Sentinel, the first words you ever said to me?”

I grimaced. “No. But I bet they were rude.” I hadn’t been a fan of Ethan Sullivan the first time I walked into Cadogan House.

“Oh, it was.” His eyes glinted like shards of green glass. “Your life had changed, and you were furious at me. You said you hadn’t given me permission to change you.”

“Which, in fairness to me, was accurate.” I paused, remembering my seething dislike for the Master of my new House. “I didn’t like you very much.”

“No, you didn’t. But then you came to your senses, realized you were wrong.”

I tugged on a lock of his hair. “Don’t push your luck. It took some pretty good campaigning on your part.”

“Thank you for not calling it begging.”

I grinned. “I was going to, but changed my mind at the last minute.”

“Because it would have been cruel.”

“But a really good play on my part. I’d have gotten a lot of points for that.”

“Are we keeping score?”

“Yes. Redeemable for Mallocakes.” They were my favorite chocolate snack cake, although I hadn’t had one in a few weeks. Not since the Night of a Thousand Mallocakes. Which was why I was willing to give them to Ethan.

“I have no interest in your Mallocakes.”

“I’m going to hope that’s not a euphemism.”

“It isn’t, obviously.” He lowered his mouth to my stomach, nipped playfully.

“I remember the first words you ever said to me,” I said. “It was the night I was attacked. You had your arm around me, there on the grass, and you told me to be still.”

He rose onto his elbows and stared at me. I’d never told him that I’d remembered that much of it, of what had happened, and what he’d said. But those words—those two small and impossibly huge words—still had the same power.

“You remember that.”

I nodded. “I think that’s important, Ethan. I think that matters. I don’t remember anything he said or did, just the pain he caused, that he ran away like a coward.” Like he always seemed to do. “But I remember what you said to me. Those two words were, I guess, an incantation.”

He balanced his head on his curled fist, reached up to brush hair from my face. “I remember how pale you’d been, and how lovely. I was afraid we’d been too late. But we weren’t. And you grew angry, and then you grew to accept who you were.”

“And you grew to accept who I was. Except for those times you’re still overprotective.”

“I’ll never stop being overprotective. Not because I don’t believe in you, or trust you. But because that’s who I am. That’s what being a Master is all about.”

“And yet you named me Sentinel. The one person whose job is to argue with you.”

“Not just argue,” he said with a grin. “Although it often seems that way.”

Taking a ploy from Mallory, I thumped him on the ear.

“Ow,” he said with a laugh, and pulled his earlobe. “It’s about checks and balances, Merit. The point of all this is that we’ve changed. We’ve grown and evolved since the night I met you, and the night you met me.” He put a hand on my stomach. “And someday, we’ll have a child. A family. That won’t be easy—having a child, having a vampire child, and having the first vampire child. But we’ll manage it.”