Oh, I get it. You’re doing the girlfriend – what’s her name? Megan?” “Merit,” answered the girl at the table. “And it’s a pretty good costume.” I opened my mouth to object, to proclaim that I wasn’t doing Ethan’s girlfriend, I was Ethan’s girlfriend, and I was doing Ethan.

You undo me, Merit. Wholly and completely. You don’t take me at my word. You challenge me at every opportunity. And that means when I’m with you, I am less than the head of this House... and I am more than the head of this House. I am a man.” He stroked my cheeks with his thumbs. “In my very, very long life, I need you more than I have ever needed anything.

Only a four-hundred-year-old vampire would wonder if a grad student could understand procrastination.

I also used to think only he could trigger the connection between us. Apparently, he’d just been ignoring me.

Life was a smorgasbord!

He was smiling – a kind of honest, humbled, sweet smile. “Maybe I’m getting better at this?” he asked. “Better at wooing you in the manner in which you should be wooed?

Ethan chuckled. “It hasn’t escaped my attention, Sentinel, that you cringe every time I mention our future.” “I don’t cringe. I only cringe when you pretend-propose.” He had a penchant for going down on bended knee – and straightening a hem or helping me with a shoe. “Nobody finds that amusing.” “I find it excessively amusing. You do realize, don’t you, that the proposal won’t always be fake?

Sweet and geeky Jeff, lover of games, knew how to move.

My spreadsheets bring all the girls to the yard. Hi, Merit.

Get to the Point: Vampire Contributions in Western Architecture. Fangs and Balances: Vampire Politicians in History. To Drink or Not to Drink: A Vampire Dialectic. Blood Sausage, Blood Stew, Blood Orange: Food for All Seasons. And the awfully named Plasmatlas, which contained maps of important vampire locales.