The slap was surprising, but she’d had her fill of standing still while being hit. Jess caught the woman’s wrist before she made contact. Amara swept her legs, startling her with the speed of the movement. Jess landed hard, but fortunately on the bank of pillows behind her. She twisted and kicked, but in a maneuver she didn’t expect from the gentle Amara, she found herself rolled on her stomach, the woman’s knee pressed with convincing aggression against her spine, her arm held behind her back.

“I have told Lord Mason this is a women’s fight, and his interference is not needed,” Amara said between her teeth. “You have been badly treated, Jessica. I, like my Master, would do a great deal to undo what was done to you. You are testing us; I understand that. But the relationship I have with Lord Mason, and with my husband, is sacred to me. If you cannot see that after what you see tonight, then we will know a different approach is necessary to help you. But I will have your apology, or I will happily tie you down and shave your head.”

Jessica couldn’t shake Amara’s hold unless she wanted to make this struggle far more violent and bloody. However, at that threat, she stilled. “You’ll shave my head?”

“Yes. There is no greater threat to a woman than to her vanity. And you have lovely hair. It would make a beautiful weave to add to mine, when I wear it up. I’m sure Mason would enjoy rubbing your bald head for luck, if nothing else.”

“You bitch.”

“Exactly,” Amara said pleasantly. “Would you like to apologize now?”

“So, being tortured for five years is no excuse for rudeness.”

“There is no excuse for rudeness.”

Jessica couldn’t help it, she started to laugh. While harsh and grating to her own ears, it wasn’t the panicked hysteria she knew often accompanied her laughter. She actually felt some loosening of the tension in her belly. Amara’s touch eased and the woman drew back. Jess turned over, looking at her from her reclining position while the woman cocked her head. The stern look still lingered in her eyes, but there was a light smile on her face as well.

“Let me guess. You were a kindergarten teacher once.”

“Schooling the prince’s children was part of my responsibilities.” Amara’s dark eyes twinkled. “I did not know that wrestling technique when I cared for them, though. I wish I had.”

The older servant had gone to her knees to manage the offensive maneuver. The robe had fallen off her shoulder, leaving it bare except for a glittering strap of whatever costume she was wearing, and showing a hint of bosom. Remembering the night Amara sang to her, and following impulse, Jessica reached out, touched the bare shoulder. Beneath Amara’s robe there was an outfit meant to please Mason as she danced for him, raise his bloodlust, harden his cock. And maybe to arouse her husband as well, the man to whom she’d pledged her troth, a man who also belonged to Mason. Jess didn’t understand why the thought drew her nerves taut, in a not entirely unpleasant way.

No, that wasn’t true. Under a layer she wasn’t yet willing to lift and examine, she was afraid she completely understood it. Which might be the real reason she wanted to bolt.. . . you have the freedom here, and the safety, to explore that choice . . .

Amara’s expression had become quiet, watchful, as Jess’s fingers turned over. Her knuckles followed that line of exposed skin down to the ripe curve of lifted breast, the swell bared by the robe. Amara’s breath drew in, her wet lips parting. Her body, prepared for an evening of pleasure for her Master and husband, was likely already damp.

Jessica, while watching the two of you would be every man’s fantasy, what you are touching is mine. And you do not have my permission to enjoy her. That pleasure is mine tonight.

Her touch stilled. Jess raised her gaze to meet Amara’s. For that instant, it was as if their desire was linked, and it coiled tight in her belly, galvanized by his words, his control.

Perhaps later, if you ask, I will allow you to taste her, tease her to climax with your hands and mouth, as you are imagining.

She drew back, a tremor running through her hands, and shook her head. Though in denial of what, or who, she wasn’t sure. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Amara’s eyes softened. Leaning forward, she brushed a kiss over Jess’s open mouth, gave her a teasing taste of tongue. Pressing her forehead to Jess’s, her long-lashed dark eyes glittered with desire and challenge. “I think one day we should defy him. I doubt he would put great effort into stopping us. More likely he would decide to punish us . . . afterward.” With a wink, she rose, nodded toward the open blue curtains. “If you’re more comfortable, you can close those. They’ll form a small crack through which everything can be observed, without feeling as if you’re on display.” Then she was gone, slipping out from behind the tapestry, leaving an impression of silken hair and liquid eyes, myriad things to stroke the senses of touch, scent, sight and taste. Had Jess wanted to defy him as well? Take his servant and overwhelm her, because she was feeling overwhelmed? Amara would let her keep the control, and help her find satisfaction in a safe place. That sounded reasonable, not insane at all. Except Jess knew she was using it as a substitute for what her body truly craved, who it truly craved. And that was insane.

Fortunately, she had time to collect herself. She ate the dinner, studied the empty ballroom and obsessed over what she was going to see below. Whenever her breath started to shorten, a warning of anxiety, she reminded herself that very little of her experience with Lord Mason had matched the unpredictable cruel menace of Raithe.

That didn’t stop her throat from closing up, her mouth drying and stomach lurching, when the staff finally began to set up the dining area. She drew the curtains as Amara suggested, watching through the crack as the ballroom lights were dimmed, leaving illumination to the window candles and sconces placed upon short pillars set up in a circle in the center of the large room. A divan was carried in, cushions were scattered about and several statues placed at different points of the circle. Erotic, elegant sculptures, life-sized artwork. As the stage was set, she was reminded how much vampires enjoyed presentation. Her heart accelerated.

Fifteen minutes, once it started. She’d said she’d stay fifteen minutes. She could do this for fifteen minutes. She’d done far worse, for far longer. And she was way up here, and they’d said she didn’t have to participate. She didn’t even have to wait fifteen minutes. She could go now.

No. She would do this. Because it wasn’t about complying with her agreement with Amara. It was about her facing her fears, not letting them run her life.

Incense was lit and a staff member used a fan to disseminate the aroma in the room. Jessica inhaled vanilla and sandalwood.

Several screens were brought in, draped with transparent fabric, and arranged on three quarters of the circle, so it was as if Jessica were gazing into a sheikh’s tent.

Was he purposely creating a scene from her imaginings, and if so, was it to help ease some of her fears or draw her deeper into a dangerous fantasy? He’d seemed opposed to her immersion in Farida’s memoirs, but had he changed his mind, decided it could work to his advantage?

Leaving that disturbing thought, made more disturbing because she wasn’t repelled by either idea, she studied the people who came and went. Human servants were intriguing, of course, for their willingness to bind themselves to monsters, but neutral staff held a mystery of their own. Most, like Mason’s, carried one or two marks for security purposes, but typically they were not called to serve a vampire’s more intimate demands for nourishment. They simply worked for a supernatural being as they would a human employer, collecting their paychecks. She knew some of Mason’s staff had families, children.

The ideas vanished, swallowed in a black hole of uncertainty in her mind as Amara entered the ballroom. She opened a panel in the far wall, revealing the sound system, and made an adjustment to the track, slowing it down, making the exotic selection even more seductive. When she came to the center of the room, she sent an absent smile up toward Jess’s corner, despite the curtain being pulled. Sliding off the wrap at last, Amara tucked it discreetly under the pillows, then began her stretches, rolling her head and shoulders.

The tingle in Jess’s fingertips returned as she remembered touching Amara’s perfumed, silken skin. The brief bra top she wore was the coin style, lifting and displaying her breasts prominently. A matching coin belt, low on her hips, overlaid the slitted transparent skirt that showed the cleft between her buttocks and the hint of her sex. The anklets she wore were also laden with delicate coin chips and an interesting accessory, a slender chain that ran between the two, a subtle manacle that allowed her only a certain range of stride, almost like what was put on Jessica for her own protection.

Jessica shifted her glance at a movement at the French doors, and Enrique slid in, joining his wife. Her eyes widened as she realized he was also in a form of dance costume. The harem pants and arm braces made of metal showed to good advantage the rippling, muscular physique, the tanned, smooth skin. While Amara didn’t look toward him, Jessica sensed her awareness as she stretched, practicing spins, shimmies, loosening up. When he came up behind her and slid his palms over her hips, she undulated against him in a graceful move, creating a musical sound of silver coins as she looped an arm around his neck and they turned together.

Jessica noted then that their third marks were the same, the tattoo-scar outline of a wolf. Enrique’s was on his upper abdomen, to the left over the rib cage, and Amara’s was on her back, so that as their bodies came together the marks were pressed to each other. A mated pair. A quiver ran through Jess as she thought of the tiger mark on the inside of her own thigh, and the one high on Mason’s shoulder.

When Enrique at last let Amara go, it was with obvious reluctance. He sat then, taking an unobtrusive place on the cushions next to one of the screens.

Jess was glad for her curtains. As she gazed out the narrow opening, the music and incense drifting over her, the tightness in her belly waffled between desire and fear, taking her on a merry-go-round of anxiety. He’d set this up perfectly. The right amount of privacy and titillation to tempt her to her own destruction. But she couldn’t look away, couldn’t think of leaving now.