“She’s very fortunate to have you.”

Jacob’s expression warmed and it looked as if he might respond, then he stilled, his head cocking. As if he’d received a message of sorts, he shifted his attention briefly to the gazebo, then came back to Jessica. “That’s kind of you, Jessica. And you fight very well.”

He moved toward her, relaxed, the smooth muscles of arm, chest and abdomen moving in that ripple of male power hard to ignore.

She started when Dev’s hands ran down her upper arms, though not to grip and hold. Simply to caress her skin, energize nerve endings.

“You have a choice, Jess,” Dev murmured. “According to our ladies, you may spar with us a different way, if you like.” As Jacob moved forward another few steps, those vibrant blue eyes holding hers, she backed farther into Dev, but her reaction wasn’t fear, not exactly. The Australian man’s powerful, compact body pressed into every curve of hers, but his hands remained as gentle as if he were holding Kane.

She couldn’t deny the grappling had gotten her blood up. Truth, since over the past two days there was barely a room where Mason hadn’t taken her body, she seemed to arouse at mere suggestion now. Maybe that was why she didn’t feel afraid. That, and Jacob was obviously being very careful not to spook her. They were giving her the choice.

Mason had told her they were different and they were. Jacob was a vampire . . . but acting like a servant, at the command of his lady? It was confusing, but she didn’t say stop when Jacob drew closer. Or when Devlin put clever lips to the juncture of her throat, a capable hand easing the strap of the suit down, giving Jacob the ability to simply lean forward and put his mouth over the bared breast.

Her body was loose and warm, receptive. They’d tested her abilities, built up gradually to a workout that had pushed her to the limit of her abilities, enough to tell her where her weaknesses were, where she needed improvement. This felt like more of the same, testing the waters, seeing how far she wanted to go, how much she wanted to stretch herself. But still, something was moving through her uneasily, a sense of absence. Was this her Master’s will?

I am here, habiba. The words came after a long silence in her mind. Give yourself pleasure. It’s making me desire you all the more. You only have to say stop.

She gasped as Jacob’s skillful lips suckled her nipple, his hands taking possession of her hips just over Dev’s. The Aussie was still working on her nape, the juncture of shoulder, the hard pressure of his intimidating organ pressing into the cleft of her backside.

I want you. I like this . . . but I want you.

Then you know where I am, habiba . Come to me.

As if the message was passed and received, Jacob straightened and Dev lifted his head. They knew how to keep a woman’s senses tingling, for they let their hands linger as she left them, and the appreciation in their eyes filled her with a sense of her own sensual powers. Her fingers slipped with some reluctance off Jacob’s broad shoulder. Dev brushed a fond kiss over her knuckles before he let her go.

Moving back across the sand, she saw Mason was back on the steps to the gazebo, watching her approach with those amber tiger eyes. She’d left the strap of the bathing suit down, knowing he’d want to see her walk toward him like that, her breast bare to his gaze.

What I want to see is all of you.

Her mind seemed to have clicked into a languid stasis, not questioning or fearing his commands, simply obeying. With only the hesitation necessary to remove the suit, she walked naked across the beach to him. While in some peripheral way she was aware she’d bared herself to the others, his eyes were what mattered.

When she reached him, he tilted his head the amount needed to meet her gaze. His expression wasn’t dispassionate in the least. An underlying strong emotion made his usually velvet-smooth voice rough. “On your knees, my love.” When she sank down before him, he cupped her face with his large hand in that way that was part gentling, part demand. “What is it my servant desires?”

She stared at him and swallowed. Slowly, she lowered her gaze, turned her face into his palm, touched her lips to it. “I want what will serve you, my lord. What will pleasure you.” Though if it was something that involved the Lady Lyssa, she knew it might break her heart.

His fingers dug into her scalp in a way that brought her eyes up to him again. “I want you never to touch another man, unless it’s at my express command.”

“An interesting sentiment, Lord Mason. One we share.”

Jessica looked up to see Jacob, now standing only several feet away. Danny had come out of the gazebo to meet Dev on the sand of their practice field, but Jessica saw her turn, picking up the undercurrent of trouble. Lyssa rose, still inside the gazebo. “Jacob.” Jacob lifted a hand, a quelling, commanding gesture that startled Jess, particularly when Lyssa heeded it, though her gaze sparked.

“Whatever once was, is no more,” he said, locking gazes with Mason, and the heat built with that connection. “Circumstances made me vampire, and I see things through the eyes of both now. The vampire who claims her, and the servant who serves her.

Your friendship and love are valued beyond measure, but there is a line. You cross it again, and things will become far less friendly between us.”

Mason rose then, pressing his hand on Jess’s shoulder briefly, an unspoken command of his own, indicating he wanted her to stay on her knees. She glanced toward Lyssa, saw the vampire queen watching the scenario with a now unreadable expression. But Mason was nine hundred years old. Jacob had only recently become vampire, by Mason’s telling, though Jacob emanated a power that was oddly a match for the vampire who stood over her, so close his thigh brushed the back of her shoulder.

“You are right,” Mason said at last, his voice cool but even, releasing some of the tension holding them in the tight triangle. “My apologies, Jacob. It was not my intention to take uninvited liberties with your lady.” Jacob nodded. His jaw eased fractionally. “Good.” Then his glance moved down over Jessica, a swift, easy passage that she felt shiver over her skin, remembering his sensual treatment on the shore. “You’re fortunate in your choice of servant, Lord Mason.

She’s beautiful and strong. I hope your usual winning personality doesn’t drive her away. She brings out better things in you.” Then he turned, the moment broken. As Jessica drew in a breath, Jacob moved past them, onto the gazebo. Lyssa stood silently, watching him. Jessica couldn’t tell what passed between them, but Jacob first bent to his son, passing a gentle hand over his brow, and then straightened. Putting his hand on her nape, beneath her hair, he drew her to him and captured her lips, a slow but thorough, heated gesture, one that had Lyssa reaching up toward his face, but Jacob captured one wrist, held it in a grip that suggested a less than mild rebuke, a reminder of their bond. Lyssa’s answering growl, in the back of her throat, sent chills up Jess’s spine. It was clear the creatures with whom she kept company tonight could be as primal as Hasna and Coman, quick to lay back their ears, bite and savagely kick if cornered, or if they felt something that belonged to them was being threatened.

Trouble now past, though, Danny and Dev were walking closer to shore. She watched, bemused, as they gravitated to each other, Danny reaching out a hand and Dev taking it, so they walked hand in hand in the moonlight.

Mason was sitting behind her again. She leaned against the inside of his thigh and he stroked her hair as she watched the two, yet her head tilted into his touch. Her lips grazed his palm.

You are all right, habiba ? You are not frightened?

Not much.

Good. Putting his hand beneath her chin, he tipped her head straight back, holding it at that awkward angle for his kiss. With the lazy and typically unexpected moves of a tiger, he turned her, strong hands coming under her armpits to lift her up to straddle his lap, cinching her in hard on his cock with two possessive hands on her bare ass. Remembering his earlier words, she recalled how she had desired the fantasy, but feared the reality. Now, with the warm touch of the tropical breeze, and the moon’s light on the planes of his handsome face, she wanted him, and she didn’t care how. Or who was watching.

When she moved her hands between them to open his shirt, he caught her wrists. “Please,” she said softly.

He nodded then, let her open the shirt all the way, find the fastening of his trousers. She had to scoot off to get them out of her way, with his shoes, and when she did, she sank to her knees on the sand and took him into her mouth.

Mason saw her intention right before she did it. The flash of overwhelming lust took him over as the wet heat of her mouth enclosed him, sliding down his shaft, all the way to the root, her throat relaxing with devil-blessed skill to take all of him. Ten feet away, Jacob and Lyssa’s turbulent kiss had become something more. Though he didn’t look in their direction, he could hear the rock of the swing. Lyssa was straddling Jacob’s lap with that catlike grace of hers, Jacob’s response muffled as he brought his mouth to her sternum. Even as pleasure would suffuse Lyssa’s body under Jacob’s skillful touch, and his beneath hers, the message was blatant.

Mine.

Could he say he felt any different about the woman on her knees before him now? Jess was making it hard as hell to think of it any other way, servicing him with her mouth, her slim body naked as her Master had every right to demand she be, even in the presence of his guests. If this had been a normal vampire gathering, he might have commanded her to let Dev and Jacob take her even higher, all the way to climax, get her good and slippery for his final claiming. If he were a normal vampire. But merely seeing their hands and mouths on her, knowing Lyssa and Danny had been teasing him, seeing what his limits on Jessica were, hadn’t altered the burn of jealousy. Or the need to pull her away from them, make it clear to her, as soon as she gave him an appropriate opening, what he expected of her.

As they’d stimulated her, she’d thought of him, as if they were no more than sexual toys he’d given her to use while she fantasized about him. That had helped manage that burn, saved him from embarrassing himself. Allah, what an egotistical, insecure son of a bitch he was.