I shivered and moved on.
Having walked through the corpus of the House, Luc took me back to and through the first floor. Just off the cafeteria, which was stocked with wooden tables and chairs, was a set of wide glass doors that led to an expansive patio.
“Wow,” I said when we emerged into the torch-lit back yard. Before us was a formal hedged garden, with a huge brick barbecue to the right, and a kidney-shaped pool to the left. The entire area was ringed by a tall shrubbery that obscured the wrought-iron fence and the street beyond.
“Nice, huh?” Luc asked as we stood on the patio and surveyed the area.
“It’s beautiful.”
Luc led the way to the parterre, the border of which was made up of vibrantly green hedge interspersed with a purple-leafed plant I couldn’t name. In the middle of the garden was a bubbling fountain. Black metal benches surrounded it.
“Formal garden,” Luc said, “in the French style.”
“So I see.” I dipped fingers into the fountain, then flicked cool water from my fingers.
“Not a bad place to spend some off-duty time,” he said, then led me through the path that split the garden into quadrants and through the other side to the pool. “We can’t sunbathe, obviously, but the pool’s nice in the heat. We’ll have parties, barbecues, that kind of thing.”
A copse of trees stood at one edge of the pool, and Luc pointed through them to the path that wound around the edge of the property, illuminated by tiny inground lights.
“Running path. Gives us a chance to get in a little outdoor exercise without leaving the grounds. It’s heated from beneath, so you can even run in the winter, if that’s your gig.”
“It isn’t, not in Chicago, but it’ll be nice in the summer,” I said.
But it wasn’t summer yet, and the April night was still chilly, so Luc skipped the stone-by-stone tour of the grounds, and settled for a summary of the parts we hadn’t seen. That done, we headed back into the building, this time through a side door that opened into a narrow hallway on the first floor. Luc then led me back down to the Ops Room and planted me in front of a computer.
“You know the password?”
I nodded, loaded a Web browser, and found the Cadogan log-in page, then typed it in. He patted my shoulder. “Learn the protocols,” he advised, then moved to his desk, and began pouring through a foot-high stack of files.
Hours passed. Although security and warfare had never been my gig, vampire security was highly contextual and thus incredibly interesting. There were links to history (Vampires were screwed over yesterday!) and politics (House X screwed us over yesterday!), philosophy (Why do you think they screwed us over yesterday?) and ethics (If we didn’t bite, would they have screwed us over yesterday?), and, of course, strategy (How did they screw us over? How can we keep them from screwing us over again or, better yet, screw them over first?).
While I didn’t know a thing about elemental strategy beyond what I’d learned in Catcher’s swordsmanship lectures, I understood history. I understood philosophy. I knew how to read a first-person account of warfare, of loss, how to glean information from it. That was, after all, how I’d researched my dissertation. So, when quitting time came, I felt pretty satisfied with my lot. Confident that I could learn enough to supplement my physical strength, to make good decisions for Cadogan House, to protect those vampires I’d sworn two oaths to serve.
Luc dismissed us, and I followed the off-duty vampires back up the stairs, then said goodbye to Lindsey, intending to meet with Ethan as he’d requested earlier. His office was open, but empty. And while I was momentarily tempted to take the chance, to scrounge through his books and papers and discover what secrets the antiques might have to offer, that would be a breach of privacy I wasn’t equipped to take on. So I paused inside the doorway, apparently just long enough to raise someone’s eyebrows.
“Excuse me.”
I turned, found a brunette behind me. The vamp was dressed like a secretary in a noir-era detective serial, her body perched cattily in the doorway, one hand on the jamb.
“You’re in Ethan’s office.” Her voice was haughty.
I nodded. “He asked me to stop by. Do you know where he is?”
She crossed her arms, short, black nails tapping against the trim cuffs of her shirt, and looked me over. “I’m Gabrielle. A friend of Amber’s.”
Not an answer to the question I’d asked, but informative all the same. Gabrielle thought I was poaching, maybe preparing to steal the Master of the House from beneath the Consort’s nose. If she only knew.
But I had no interest in telling her, or anyone else, what he’d offered me. I hadn’t even told Lindsey. Instead, I smiled politely, played nice.
“It’s lovely to meet you, Gabrielle. Ethan asked me to meet him about some security issues. Do you know where he is?”
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 12
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 breasts, 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 buttocks 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.