For my trouble, I got another slow perusal. Territorial, was Gabrielle. Finally, she lifted her gaze, one dark, carefully plucked brow higher than the other. "Oh, he's . . . inside."
I nodded. "I know he's in the House. I saw him earlier, and he told me to stop by. Do you know where he is specifically?"
She pursed her lips as if holding a grin, and kind of bobbled her head presumptuously. "He's inside," she repeated. "And I doubt he'll be happy to see you." But she was smiling when she said it. I knew I was missing a joke, but couldn't for the life of me fathom the punch line.
I had to clench my fingers to keep from lashing out in sheer frustration. "He asked me to find him," I explained, "to talk about business?"
She delicately lifted a shoulder. "I'm really not interested. But if you're so keen to see him, then by all means . . . go see him. It'd probably do you some good. He's in his apartments."
"Thanks." She waited at the doorway until I left the office; then she closed the door behind us. I started back for the main staircase and heard her chuckle evilly as I moved down the hallway.
I took the stairs to the second floor, rounded the landing, and headed up toward the third. Tucked here and there into nooks that bore sofas and chairs, vampires were reading books or magazines or chatting together. The house quieted as I moved upward, the third floor nearly silent. I followed the long hallway back to Ethan's apartments, stopped outside the closed double doors.
I knocked and, when I got no response, put an ear to the door. I heard nothing, so I slipped the doorknob on the right-side door and pushed it slowly open.
It was a sitting room. Well-appointed, tastefully decorated. Oak paneling rose to chair rail height, and an onyx fireplace dominated one wall. The room housed a couple of conversation areas, the furniture tailored and undoubtedly expensive. Side tables bore vases of flowers, and a Bach cello sonata rang softly through the air. On the opposite wall, just beside a small desk, was another set of double doors. One was closed; the second was slightly ajar.
"Ethan?" I called his name, but the word was a whisper, completely incapable of rousing attention. I walked to the doors, put the flat of my palm on the closed one, and peeked inside the gap.
I realized, then, why Gabrielle had so deliberately pointed out that he was inside.
Ethan was inside - inside the House. Inside his apartments.
And inside Amber.
CHAPTER TWELVE
YOU CAN'T TRUST A MAN WHO
EATS A HOT DOG WITH A FORK.
I clasped a hand over my mouth, stifling the gasp that rose in my throat.
But after glancing surreptitiously around the sitting room, I leaned in again and took another peek.
I saw him in profile. He was completely naked, blond hair tucked behind his ears. Amber was in front of him, crouched on her knees on his giant four-poster bed, her back to his front. Even in profile, it was easy to see that she was ecstatic - the part of her lips, her half-closed lids, the clench of her fingers told the story. Her hands were fisted in the khaki bedclothes, and but for the joggle of her br**sts, she was otherwise still, apparently content to let Ethan do the work.
And work, he did. His legs were braced slightly more than shoulder length apart, the dimpled hollows at the sides of his bu**ocks clenching as he swiveled and pumped his hips against her body. His skin was golden, his body long, lean, and sculpted. I noted a script tattoo on the back of his right calf, but the rest of his form was pristine, his smooth golden skin gleaming with perspiration. One of his hands was at her right hip, the other splayed across her damp lower back, his gaze - intense, carnal, needy - on the rhythmic union of their bodies. He smoothed a hand along the valley at the small of her back, his tongue peeking out to wet his bottom lip as he moved.
I stared at the pair of them, completely enthralled by the sight. I felt the wisp of arousal spark in my abdomen, a sensation as unwelcome as it was familiar.
He was magnificent.
Absently, I raised fingers to my lips, then froze at the realization that I was hiding in his sitting room, peeking through an open door, watching a man that a week ago I'd decided was my mortal enemy have sex. I was completely disturbed.
And I would have left, would have walked away with nothing more than a little mortification, had Ethan not chosen that moment to lean forward, to lower his body to hers, and to bite.
His teeth grazed the spot between her neck and shoulder, then pierced. His throat began to move convulsively, his hips still pumping - more fiercely, if that was possible - now that he'd breached her throat. Two lines of red, of her blood, traced down the pale column of her neck.
Instinctively, I lifted a hand, touching the spot where I'd been bitten, the place where scars should have marred my throat. I'd experienced the bite, the self-interested violence of it, but this was different. This was vampire, being vampire. Truly vampire. The sex notwithstanding, this was feeding the way it was meant to be. Him and her, sharing the act, not just sipping from the plastic of a medical bag. I knew that, understood it on a genetic level. And that knowledge, witnessing the act of it, scenting it, so close - even when I wasn't hungry, certainly not for Amber's blood - woke the vampire. I quickly drew in breath, tried to force her down again, to keep myself calm.
But not fast enough.
Ethan suddenly raised his eyes, our gazes locking through the three-inch gap in the doors. His breath caught, his eyes flashing silver.
He must have seen the look of mortification that crossed my face, and his irises faded to green fast enough. But he didn't look away. Instead, he steadied himself with a hand at her hip and drank, his eyes on me.
I jumped away, put my back to the wall, but the move was pointless. He'd already seen me, and in that second before the silver faded, I'd seen the look in his eyes. There was a kind of hope there, that I'd had a different reason for appearing at his door, that I'd come to offer myself to him the way Amber had. But he hadn't seen offering in my eyes. And he hadn't planned on my embarrassment.
That was when his eyes had turned back to green, his hope replaced by something far, far colder. Tempered humiliation maybe, because I'd said no to him two days ago, because I hadn't sought him out tonight. Because I'd rejected a four-hundred-year-old Master vampire to whom most bowed, cowed, acquiesced. If he was disgruntled about wanting me in the first place, he was downright pissed about being rejected. That was what had flattened his eyes, pulled his pupils into tiny angry pricks of black. Who was I to say no to Ethan Sullivan?
Before I could comprise an answer to my own question, my head began to spin, and I was swamped with the sensation of being hurled down a tunnel. Then he was in my head.