Hard Bitten - Chloe Neill [123]
“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.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHERCHEZ LA FEMME
I dreamed 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.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
A girl with long blond hair looked over at me. “Open the door,” she said.
“What?”
“I said, open the—”
I jolted awake, sitting straight up in bed, just in time to see Ethan disappear from the room.
I rubbed my hands across my face until I was in his room again—not a helpless sophomore out of place in a high school I was too old to attend.
I heard his door open and shut. I tried to smooth down what I’m sure was a pretty severe case of bed hair, and then threw back the covers and padded into the other room.
“What is it?”
Ethan held out a cordless landline telephone. “It’s Jeff for you. Apparently, it’s urgent.”
Frowning, I took the phone from him. “Jeff? What’s up?”
“Sorry to interrupt you, but I was able to dig up some more information about Paulie Cermak and his criminal history.”
I frowned. “You know Celina’s already been arrested, right?”
“And that a warrant’s been issued for Mr. Cermak after her little confession last night. Oh—and I hear Ethan’s warrant was torn up, so congrats on that. But that’s not the issue.”
“So, what did you learn?”
“I found the original