Biting Cold: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (CHICAGOLAND VAMPIRES SERIES)

brink, of building the anticipation . . . and leaving me stranded in the midst of it.
    His mouth and hands found my breasts, and he tortured me with nips and kisses and quicksilver eyes that never looked away.
    I made a sound of pleasure but immediately remembered my surroundings. His fingers splayed and contracted in time with my heartbeat until my body was liquid, but he wouldn’t stop . . . and he wouldn’t move closer.
    I made a sound of displeasure when he evaded my own searching hands. But he popped up an eyebrow. “You’re putting up with me just fine, Sentinel.”
    I growled and decided I’d been teased enough.
    I stood Sentinel of Cadogan House, by God. He was mine, and we knew it, and I would claim what was mine.
    With a twist of my leg I reversed our positions, straddling his waist, the evidence of his own arousal undeniable beneath me.
    “Satisfied?” he asked, masculine satisfaction in his expression.
    “Getting there,” I said. I stretched out along his body and kissed him, and switched the tenor of the game. From a duel to a mutual journey of pleasure. From lust to passion.
    Ethan wrapped his arms around me and didn’t resist when I stripped him of the rest of his clothes. And then we were both naked and bare of all pretentions—except for the Cadogan medals around our necks. Him, the blond Master, four hundred years old, and yet newly born. Me, the dark-haired Sentinel. New to vampiredom although it felt like I’d aged years in the span of the last two months.
    He’d pushed me to the brink, but he wasn’t done. In a flash I was on my back again, and the weight of his body was finally atop mine. I gripped him fiercely, determined not to let him go again. Willing God that I wouldn’t have to let him go again, and tomorrow wouldn’t be the end of both of us.
    His long, nimble fingers found my core, and he took bare seconds before my body ignited. His name flew from my lips with abandon, as if my body were unable to contain its pleasure.
    But we weren’t alone in the House, and he muffled the sound with a sudden, fierce, and hungry kiss. I struggled for breath, shocked by the suddenness of my reaction, and—if possible—even needier than I’d been before.
    He smiled, eyes still closed, his expression changing to that thin line between pleasure and pain as I sought out his arousal. I let my hands explore his chest, his thighs, those diagonal muscles at the edges of his hips. I claimed him with hands and mouth, and watched his eyes flutter and body arch as he neared his own pleasure.
    But he suddenly stilled me with a hand.
    “It’s your turn,” he groaned, regret obvious in his voice.
    “My turn?” Admittedly, my brain was still fuzzy, but I was pretty sure I’d had my turn.
    “You have been bitten,” Ethan said. “But never like this.”
    “Does it matter?”
    “You are a vampire,” he growled out. “It matters as much as anything else, more than anything else.”
    Ethan climbed above me again, and I wrapped my legs around him, our bodies intertwined. He looked down at me, his eyes swirling silver, his needle-sharp fangs fully descended.
    His breath hot at my neck, my vampiric instincts kicking into overdrive. Images flashed through my mind. A harvest moon. Gleaming fangs. The beating of wings. Footsteps in the dense undergrowth of an ancient forest. An animal’s call.
    My instincts urged me forward, but this was still new territory, for me undiscovered. He’d bitten me before, but not like this. Would there be pain? Pleasure? Consequences? I was vampire, but still recently human, and I was afraid.
    “Ethan?”
    But he wouldn’t be swayed. He put a hand on my chest, across my heart. “This is for you,” he whispered, “as vampire, as woman, and for us, and for me.”
    With two simultaneous thrusts, he bit—and thrust his body into mine.
    I’m sure I screamed; I must have. The pain was immediate and intense, the sharp bite of needles piercing skin. But the pain was gone as quickly as it came, and then there was only pleasure. A euphoric spill unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. It burned like flame had been poured directly into my bloodstream, warming me from the inside out. Desire and heat raced through every artery and vein, forcing the sudden awareness of every molecule in my body.
    But he was also there. I was simultaneously aware of every inch of him, and I wondered if he’d had the same experience when I’d bitten him, and how he didn’t spend