*   *   *

Ethan Sullivan had many fine qualities. He was honorable. Intelligent. Funny. Sexy as hell. Sarcastic at all the appropriate times. And when the need arose, the very alpha Master of Cadogan House cared for his Sentinel very, very well.

“Stay there,” Ethan said, pulling on jeans that slung low on his hips. While I lay among pillows and quilts, he opened the apartment’s door, brought in the tray Margot had left outside. I watched with amusement as he arranged and simplified the contents, then carried it to me. Blood, bacon, a still-warm croissant.

I looked up at him. “Are you wooing me?”

“I’ve been wooing you since the moment our eyes locked on the first floor of this House.”

I gave him a flat look. “No, that’s when you accused me of being spoiled.”

“Details,” he said lightly, mouth drawn into a crooked grin. “Helen is helping move the Navarre vampires, and Morgan won’t be here until that process is done. We’re allowed to take a few minutes to ourselves before we rush out the door to solve others’ problems. Let me tend you, Sentinel.”

I could hardly have argued with that, so I nodded, watched him rise and disappear into the bathroom. A moment later, the water in the bath began to run.

I ate the croissant slowly, tried to put aside lingering nerves, the fact that the House—or vampires, anyway—currently faced trouble from two directions—the Circle’s issues with Navarre, and Balthasar’s reemergence into Chicago, into Ethan’s life, our lives together. It would have been glorious if we could have locked the door, kept the world on the other side, and simply lived there in peace and quiet for just a little while.

With Margot occasionally leaving trays outside, of course.

When I looked up, Ethan was in the doorway, hand outstretched, green eyes fairly glowing. “Your bath awaits.”

I smiled, thinking of a movie scene. “Are you going to paint my nails, too?”

His eyebrow popped up. “No. Should I?”

“No,” I said on a laugh, then put aside the tray and walked to him, looked up at him. He was beautiful enough to still take my breath away, and I knew I hadn’t been the first—and wouldn’t be the last—vampire to think so.

Understanding dawned.

Once upon a time, Ethan had used women. He and Balthasar had both done so, seeing women as merely a different kind of pleasure that, like blood, was theirs for the taking. Persephone, in particular, had died from Balthasar’s mistreatment. Ethan hadn’t been able to comfort or soothe her. But he could comfort and soothe me now.

“I don’t see you in him, you know.”

He looked up at me, green eyes fire bright and very startled. “What?”

“When you look at me. When he looked at me, even when he looked at me through your eyes—or what he imagined were your eyes—it was different. You have a depth that he doesn’t. And you don’t look at me like I’m a thing to be acquired.”

When Ethan arched an eyebrow, I couldn’t help laughing.

“All right, you do have an unusually strong interest in acquiring me.”

“You’re mine,” he said simply, again.

*   *   *

Ethan dressed first and headed downstairs to check on Morgan and Navarre. I was dressed in my leathers and nearly out the door when my phone rang.

I frowned when I read the screen, but lifted it to my ear. “This is Merit.”

“I’m calling on behalf of Adrien Reed,” my father said. “He’d like an update regarding the investigation, the vampires’ punishment.”

“He should talk to the Ombuds’ office about that.”

“Don’t be difficult.”

“I’m not being difficult, I’m directing you to the appropriate parties. If you want to know what the CPD is doing, you’ll have to talk to the CPD. The vampires weren’t from Cadogan, so I don’t know what their punishment was.”

“So you could find out as easily as me, but you won’t.” He didn’t seem to grasp the fact that I didn’t want the particular answers he was looking for.

“That’s not the issue at all, but all right.” There seemed little point in arguing with him.

“You should watch yourself. You’ve already put yourself into the middle of the vampires’ battle.”

Said the man who’d offered to pay Ethan to make me a vampire. He said he’d done it for the immortality, to ensure that I’d live longer than the daughter my parents had lost before I was born. Unfortunately, he hadn’t asked my opinion before making the move.

“I am a vampire.”

“You know what I mean. Reed is a powerful man, with a lot of friends. It would behoove you to tread carefully where his interests are concerned.”

Having offered his advice, he hung up the phone.

*   *   *

Ten minutes later, I was at the table in the Ops Room, fuming at my father as I sipped a bottle of water and flipped through an image search of antique notebooks, four-poster beds, candelabras, simple desks, still looking for something that would lead us to Balthasar.

I had absolutely nothing to show for it.

There were pictures of all those things. But nothing that connected to Balthasar, at least as far as I could tell, and nothing that connected that particular room—the layout or the furnishings—to anything else. It seemed to be just a random room he’d picked or invented in order to attempt his seduction. Because that, I thought, was what he’d believed it would be. He’d worn a romance novel rake’s clothing, put me in a lush bed dotted with candlelight, and had been holding a book when I woke up. When he’d failed to woo me on his own, he’d determined to look like Ethan, hoped that would work. It didn’t. Wouldn’t have. But he’d seemed to believe it would . . . He’d thought he’d be able to seduce me with his charm and his glamour and the scene he’d believed he could set.