Jessica swallowed. “Raithe forced me past all boundaries, my lady, into a world that haunts my dreams, as well as my waking moments. Even now, I fear being in your presence. Devlin seems a good man, but I could never trust him, for I have seen what a servant will do against others if it is his Mistress or Master’s will.” Lyssa glanced at her. “Time will ease those wounds.”

“They will become manageable,” Jessica responded. “They will never heal. They will never be gone. I’ve lived in the ugliest, darkest side of this world, and I know exactly how close it is to the light. It’s no further than the shadows in the corners, and in a heartbeat it can close in and shut out the light entirely, whether or not you’re vigilant against it, because too often it comes disguised as good intentions, or wishful thinking.”

She saw something in Lyssa’s face, a flicker she didn’t understand, but she pressed on. “You know what the vampire world requires. Eventually, despite how reclusive he is, he will need me to be a true servant, and what happens when I can’t? By vampire standards, I was handled like fragile glass last night. You think I don’t realize that?” She shook her head. “He can’t avoid more formal circumstances forever, because I know what he’s become among the Council and others since your absence. What happens if he demands something of me I can’t give in those circumstances? He’ll have to punish me, force me to obey against my will to maintain the appearance of strength. He knows that as well as I do. I would end up hating him, fearing him, for my mind will never be able to accept that. It will break, and I’ll be lost in Raithe’s dark world forever.

It’s best if he lets me go.”

Lyssa leaned her hip against the table, cocked her head. “Come here, child.” Jessica’s brow furrowed, but she obeyed. When she stopped a couple steps away, Lyssa gestured her forward again. Though the butterflies came back in force, she did it, and was nonplussed when Lyssa simply plucked a loose string off the collar of the T-shirt, snapping it with a quick flick of her wrist. Her knuckles brushed Mason’s silver collar.

“You are assuming you know best what he wants and needs. A common problem with human servants, when they think they can read their Master or Mistress’s thoughts. Regardless, that is not the true question that troubles you.” Her gaze pinned on Jess’s face, holding her there.

“Mason was the equivalent of your human street child among vampires after his parents died. Except a human child would have had the slim luxury of occasionally finding a friend, a soup kitchen haven for a night, or an adult who isn’t a complete monster. A teen vampire is in the company of killers, all more experienced than himself. To survive that, he had to cultivate his darkness and play terrifying games of chance beyond your comprehension, perhaps even beyond mine, at an age where he was prepared to do none of that. But he did it. He lost his soul doing it, several times, which is why I think he did what he did to Farida’s family. When he loses his moral compass, there is no more deadly and dangerous vampire than Lord Mason. And I include myself in that evaluation.”

Remembering the coldness she’d seen in his eyes when he spoke of Farida’s village, Jessica couldn’t think of a response to that.

But Lyssa was not finished. “It took some doing, but that savage wisdom became part of his strengths, honed ruthlessly with finer, nobler attributes. I’m not ashamed to say I was almost as brutal with him as those others, in order to see that happen.” She inclined her head. “But in the many years I’ve known him since then, I’ve only seen him lower his guard twice. Once with Farida, and now, with you. The question isn’t whether or not you can be the proper servant to him, Jessica Tyson. The question is whether you love him enough to risk everything you are to stand at his side. Give him your love, your heart and your trust, no matter how illogical and senseless it seems. Because that is what love does.”

Jessica pressed her lips together, her mind in confusion. Fortunately, Lyssa didn’t appear to be seeking a response. She sighed instead. “No matter how noble or foolish her actions, Farida loved him,” the queen acknowledged. “I do not disagree with that.

She loved him completely and senselessly, but she lacked the necessary understanding of darkness to love him wholly. The woman who can be his moral compass and hold his heart, that is the woman he needs.” Leaving the towel and comb behind, Lyssa moved to the kitchen doorway, paused. “What goes on between two hearts is far, far apart from the matter of whether you stand at his side as his wife, or three paces behind as a servant. That was something Farida did understand. Loving him was everything.”

30

WHEN sundown came that night, Jacob joined Lyssa at the boundaries of the temperate rain forest, the two intending to spend some time exploring the lush jungle of exotic plants and animals, and each other. Jessica sat on the verandah, watching them go, her bare feet through the railings, the gauzy skirt Dev had brought her hiked up to her knees. She’d showered and changed after the horses and put it back on, though instead of the T-shirt, she wore a light halter, one she knew Mason liked.

As they stopped at the forest’s edge, Jacob drew Lyssa to him, caressed her face. He spoke and she smiled, then his hands were on her shoulders, pushing her light dress off her shoulders. It pooled around her feet. As he bent to touch her neck with his lips, a flash of fang catching the dying sun, she twisted away. In that blink, she’d transformed, her amazing winged self performing a teasing loop above his head and then disappearing into the trees. Jacob picked up the dress, tucked it into the duffel he was carrying and vanished into the shadows of the trees as swiftly as the hunter he’d become, the beginning of an obvious game of cat and mouse. Though Jessica couldn’t imagine Lyssa as something as gentle as a mouse.

Danny and Dev had volunteered for babysitting and, last she’d seen them, they were tucked away in the library, playing games with baby Kane, surrounded with a variety of his toys. She’d leaned in the doorway there for a bit, watching Danny on the floor, laughing, those deceptively Disney-like blue eyes dancing as she held him above her on straightened arms and swung him back and forth as if he was a tiny superhero. Dev had been stretched out on a lounger near her, so her bare feet twined with his as he read, her toes caressing his ankles under the cuffs of his pants, a casually intimate pose.

She might have been looking at a domestic scene in any human home, like her cousin with her baby and husband. But it was a lie.

Wasn’t it? Leaning her forehead against the rail, she sighed. Regardless of what Lyssa said, or her own heart, she wasn’t sure of any of it.

“You know I cannot bear your sadness, habiba.” Mason touched her shoulders as he sat down behind her, sliding his legs through the railings on either side of hers, wrapping his arms around her chest. She hooked her hands over them, feeling his solid strength all around her, even as he had her effectively trapped in this one position. “You were not there when I woke. I was displeased.” She smiled despite herself as he nipped her shoulder. Tilting her head to the left, she dropped it on his shoulder as he marked her skin. He was shirtless and wearing a pair of jeans, apparently having decided to match the casual garb of his male guests. It was a far too appealing look for him, the rough denim and hard muscle squeezing her hips, his groin pressed up against her lower back and upper rise of her buttocks. When she leaned back into his grasp, she lifted her arms to link around his neck, automatically giving him access to slide under her brief halter and fondle her breasts, stroke her nipples to aching hardness with little effort. Did a servant ever tire of wanting a Master? Did the third mark come with a compensatory elevation in sexual drive to keep her from being exhausted by her vampire’s carnal appetites?

“I would say yes, but I much prefer the ego-boosting idea that I keep you in a state of wanting me.” His hand descended now, gathering the skirt, and the breeze touched her bare skin as he found his way under it, found her. Jessica arched, when, with little preliminaries, he simply eased his fingers into her, slow, finding her gathering wetness. “Mason . . .”

“This is what I want right now, my servant. I want to make you come, helpless in my arms. Drive your worries away.” Caressing her clit with devilish knowledge, he used his other hand to knead one breast and then the other. His mouth burned a path down her throat again, tongue flicking the pounding artery, the cord at her neck. She bucked and writhed as he took her up swiftly, more swiftly than he ever had before, making her wonder if his ego-boosting idea was right on target. All the things she’d been mulling in her head were gone, wiped away by his demand that she surrender to him.

This is what I desire, above everything, habiba . Not your willingness to play games with others at my pleasure, but that at my very touch you surrender your will, trusting me to carry you to ecstasy, letting me satisfy my need to own you, body, heart and soul.

Her breath sobbed in her throat as his words and the climax pitched her into abandon. Her cry was as wild as any that might come from the thick, dark forest where mysterious creatures such as Lyssa roamed, connecting to instinct and need, not thought and intellect.

She spasmed against his fingers, and his fangs scraped her neck, not biting, just a reminder of another way she served him, as the waves of the orgasm rose and fell in her. She couldn’t fight his strength, and the diabolical vampire knew exactly where to hold her still, where to let her move so that she strained, whimpered and capitulated all at once. When at last she was limp in his arms, another part of her still ached to be filled by him in other ways.

However, after that heated greeting, he seemed content to hold her cradled against him for a while, his lips brushing her brow.

Occasionally, he murmured to her in Arabic, and though she didn’t know what he was saying, it didn’t matter. He was thick and hard against her back, but when she thought to concern herself with that, he simply bid her to be still with a flex of his arms.

Turning her cheek to his chest as the night darkened, she gave him pictures of her day, her favorite things about it. Sometimes he liked her to speak the words, but now she let the thoughts drift between them like clouds. Lights flickered on the ocean, local fishermen she’d seen out there before. Tonight they appeared to be casting in closer, though they had a bit of a struggle, since the wind was blowing them off the shore.