Хлоя Нейл: Hard Bitten

“Take the rest of the evening off,” he said, rising from the conference table without making eye contact. “Sleep this off, and we’ll regroup tomorrow and create a plan to get through the receivership.”

We nodded obediently, watching as he moved across the room and through the office door.

I’d done nothing more and nothing less than my job had required. But why did I feel so miserable?

I tried to find space. I joined Lindsey in her room for a round of mindless television. That helped fill the evening, but it didn’t calm the nerves in my stomach, or the flutter in my chest.

Two hours later, silently, I stood up, picked through the crowd of vampires who filled the floor, and went for the door.

“Going somewhere?” she asked, head tilted curiously.

“I’m going to find a boy,” I said.

I was nervous as I made the trip to his room, afraid that if I stepped inside—both of us emotionally drained—he’d be able to slip past defenses I should keep intact. And worse—that we’d never be the same for it. That the House would never be the same for it.

I stood outside his door for a full five minutes, clenching and unclenching my hands, trying to build up the nerve to knock.

Finally, when I couldn’t stand the anticipation any longer, I blew out a breath, pulled my fingers into a fist, and wrapped my knuckles against the door. The sound echoed through the hallway, oddly loud in the silence.

Ethan opened the door, his expression haggard. “I was just about to head to bed. Did you need something?”

It took me seconds to speak, to find courage to ask the question. “Can I stay with you?”

He was stunned by it, clearly. “Can you stay with me?”

“Tonight. Not anything physical. Just—” Ethan slid his hands into his pockets. “Just?”

I looked up at him, and let the fear, frustration, and exhaustion show in my eyes. I was too tired to argue, too tired to care what the request might mean tomorrow. Too tired to fight back against the GP and him.

I needed companionship, affection. I needed to trust and be trusted in return.

And I needed that from him.

“Come in, Merit.”

I stepped inside. He closed the doors to his apartments and turned off the lights, his bedside lamps glowing through the doors to his bedroom.

Without another word, he put his hands on my arms, and pressed his lips to my forehead.

“If ‘just’ is all you can give me now, then

‘just’ is what we’ll do.”

I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around him, and I let the tears flow.

“If he decides I’m his enemy?” I asked. “If he decides taking me out—or letting Celina take me out—is how he maintains control of the Houses?”

“You are a Cadogan vampire, by blood and bone. You have fought for this House, and you are mine to protect. My Sentinel, my Novitiate.

As long as I am here to do it, I will protect you.

As long as this House exists, you will have a home here.”

“And if Darius tries to tear it down because of something I’ve done?”

Ethan sighed. “Then Darius is blind, and the GP is not the organization it has set itself up to be. It is not the protector of vampires it imagines itself to be.”

I sniffed and turned my cheek into the coolness of his shirt. His cologne was clean and soapy, like fresh towels or warm linens. More comforting than it should have been, given the knot of fear still in my heart.

Ethan pulled away and moved to the bar on the other side of the room, then poured amber liquid from a crystal decanter into two chubby glasses. He put the top back on the decanter, then walked back and handed me a glass. I took a sip and flinched involuntarily. The liquor might have been good, but it tasted like gasoline and burned like dry fire.

“Keep drinking it,” Ethan said. “You’ll find it improves with each sip.”

I shook my head and handed the glass back to him. “So it finally tastes good when you’re completely drunk?”

“Something like that.” Ethan drained his glass and deposited both on the closest table.

He took my hand and laced our fingers together, then led me to the bedroom, where he closed the bedroom doors. Two sets of doors, of finely honed and paneled wood, between us and humans and shifters and the GP and drug-addled vampires.

For what felt like the first time in days, I exhaled.

Ethan pulled off his jacket and placed it across a side chair. I toed off my shoes and stood there for a moment, realizing that in my haste to find him I hadn’t bothered to think about clothing.

“Would you like a T-shirt?” he asked.

I smiled a little. “That would be great.”

Ethan smiled back, unbuttoning his shirt as he walked across the room to a tall bureau. He opened a drawer and rifled through it before pulling out a printed T-shirt and tossing it to me. I unfolded it, checked the design, and smiled.

“You shouldn’t have.”

It was a “Save Our Name” T-shirt, printed as part of a campaign to ensure Wrigley Field kept that name. It was also very much my style.

Ethan chuckled, then disappeared into his closet. I slipped out of my clothes and into the T-shirt, which fell nearly to my knees. I chucked decorative pillows from his massive bed, then slid into cool cotton and closed my eyes in relief.

It may have been minutes or hours before he returned to the room and turned out the lights. I was already in and out of sleep, only vaguely aware of the press of his body behind mine. His arm snaked around my waist and pulled me tight against him, his lips at my ear. “Be still, my Sentinel. And sleep well.”

He’d promised me that he’d be patient, that he’d wait for me, that he wouldn’t be the one to kiss me again.

He followed through on his promise.

I woke in the middle of the day, the metal shutters still banking any light from the windows, but unusually aware of his body beside me . . . and of the craving that nearness inspired.

We’d moved apart in sleep, but I curled into him again, vaguely expecting him to react to the sensation with a kiss. He traced a finger through my hair, the act more comforting than erotic.

And it wasn’t enough.

“Ethan,” I muttered, my heart suddenly racing even as the sun glared down from its cradle in the sky. But as much as I wanted him, I couldn’t take that next step. I couldn’t force myself to move, to kiss him. Some of the hesitation was born from exhaustion, by the fact that I should have been unconscious until the sun sank again. But the rest was pure, unmitigated fear. Fear that if I made a move, kissed him, I’d be offering up my heart again, risking heartbreak again.

Instincts warred, because equally as powerful was the urge to step forward, to take what I wanted, to make the most of the kiss even if it wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done.

As if he knew my struggle, he smoothed a hand over my hair. “Sleep, Sentinel. The time will come when you’re ready. Until then, be still and sleep.”

Idreamed it was the first day of high school and I was an awkwardly tall twenty-eight-year-old walking down a hallway with a new notebook and pen in hand. I’d somehow forgotten to register for classes, and even though I had two and a half college degrees, I’d also apparently forgotten to finish tenth grade.

I sat down at a desk too small for me and stared at a chalkboard filled with handwriting —quadratic equations too complicated for me to solve. When I looked around the room, everyone else was busily filling out the stapled pages of a test.

One by one, the other students looked up and at me and began pounding their fists on the desk.