Elisa remembered that throaty rumble as the cat sat beside her on the precipice. She’d thought she’d merely merged her own fancy with the house cats she’d seen earlier, and maybe she had been, but apparently a cougar did purr.

He moved again, this time toward her. It was instinct to step back, to clutch the sheets tighter. She was in his bedroom, alone with him, a male far more powerful than her. And she’d been thinking unseemly things. He would have seen it.

“I didn’t mean it,” she burst out, trying to step around him. “I don’t . . . It doesn’t mean . . . I need to get back to Kohana, get these sheets to him.”

Mal shook his head, took the sheets from her arms, dropped them to the side. Putting his hands to her waist, he boosted her onto the high mattress. She clutched his forearms. She wouldn’t beg. She wouldn’t make a fool of herself.

“Stop your shaking,” he said quietly, a firm rebuke that perversely reassured her because of the familiar irritation in his voice. It was his form of growling, and apparently a regular feature of their conversations. Not really the sound of a man about to be overcome with a fit of lust. Or so she thought.

“The thought was mine, not yours, Elisa. I let it slide into your head. It was a picture too pretty not to share.” He gave her an absent smile that made the bottom of her world drop about two feet, her stomach with it. Lifting her left foot, the one she’d stubbed, he studied the toe, which had an extra pink tone from the agitated blood vessels. There was also a small cut in the cuticle, since the bedposts were unfinished wood.

He squatted onto his heels, which drew the fabric of his trousers taut along his haunches, and bent his head over her toes. His hair fell forward, teasing the top of her foot, and he flipped it back impatiently to see whatever it was he was trying to see.

She was going to protest, tell him it was fine and pull her foot away, but instead, maybe because the natural impulse that had taken her over in that dream was still with her, she leaned forward, folding her body over her knees, and reached toward his face. He stilled but didn’t glance up, and she wondered if he’d learned that from dealing with shy, uncertain animals. Appear as if what she was doing was unremarkable, so that she’d have the courage to follow through with it. It worked for her.

Gathering up his hair on both sides, she handed it off to her other hand so she could pull the majority of it to his left shoulder, her knuckles resting there as she held the shoulder-length locks out of his way. Like all vampires, his hair was a treasure of thick silk that made a woman want to bury her fingers in it, like those pelts. There was something fascinating in touching a wild creature so intimately, wasn’t there? Only this one still inhabited his skin. Of course, after her dream, she thought the ones on the bed did, too, a magical notion.

He looked up at her then. It increased tension on the strands, tightening them over her fingers. “So you can see what you’re doing,” she managed. Just being helpful, because that was what she did. It didn’t mean anything.

That regard continued for a long moment; then he bent his head again. This time he brought her foot to his mouth and she drew in a breath as the heat of his mouth closed over that smallest toe. His tongue swirled over the cut, tasting the tiny revelation of blood, and soothing the pain at once. Since the capacity of his mouth was far greater than her littlest toe, he was able to include the pad of her sole and the toes next to the injured one in that sensation of heat and moisture, though he kept his focus on the one that needed his attention.

Her fingers had curled inward, holding the hair tighter. She was also conscious of his hand supporting her ankle and heel, holding her fast. As he licked the cut and teased her flesh, his own grip increased, so that sensation rippled up her leg, toward the inner thigh and higher.

Just like the image of her on the bed, in nothing but one of those skins, now she saw him commanding her to lie back on her elbows, the skirt of her dress slipping back to her thighs because he would rise, lifting her leg higher, continuing to hold it. Only now his heated palm would move from her ankle to behind the knee, his fingers caressing that sensitive part. His gaze would travel down the length of the leg to the shadowed folds of the dress, pulled back enough to reveal her undergarments, the panel of her panties, which were . . . She swallowed. They were actually, truly damp, not just in her vision. He was doing this to her, with nothing but his mind, but she couldn’t tell if it was his imagination or hers.

“Does it matter?” He lifted his head at last. “You’re calmer now, aren’t you? Less afraid. There’s nothing to fear from pleasure, Elisa. Your body still responds to arousal, as it should.”

It made her stiffen. She let go of his hair so it fell back down over his shoulders. Slowly, she exerted pressure to bring her foot back into her own care. Sitting back on his heels again, he let her go. She didn’t look at him as she slid off the bed, somewhat awkwardly since she had to maneuver around him, and circled to gather up the sheets again.

Once she did, she faced him. He’d stood up, one hand high on the bedpost. “Mr. Malachi, sir, I don’t want you to play such games with me. That’s not why I’m here. What happened to me . . . that’s mine to deal with, and Lady Danny sent me here to be of use with the fledglings, and your household, when they aren’t occupying me.”

“I don’t need a house servant.”

“Kohana is a man with one leg. As capable as he is, there are things that are harder for him to do. You might as well let me be useful while I’m here. I can’t keep you out of my mind.” She spoke carefully now, staring a hole in his chest. “But I’m asking you, as a courtesy, not to do what you’ve been doing here.”

“It helped.”

“I’m not here to be helped.” She snapped it, ducking her chin into the sheets, hugging them to her body. “Don’t play with my mind, Mr. Malachi. I can’t handle that. I truly can’t.”

Darting forward, she ducked under his arm, giving the edge of the bed a straightening tug where the cougar skin had flipped back and wrinkled. Then she spun and headed for the door. Once she reached the upper level, reality and the dawn would clear this nonsense from her head.

“Elisa.”

She stopped. For just one second, she thought of pretending she hadn’t heard him, but of course that would be unwise and unlikely. She couldn’t turn and face him, though. She just waited, afraid of what he might say, her heart pounding in her ears. He didn’t have to listen to anything she wanted. She had no idea what hold Danny had on him, but for all she knew, he could do as he liked. She needed to talk to Thomas. And oh, God in Heaven, Thomas would be leaving after those three days.

He sighed, that impatient sound as if she were a bug he’d prefer to squash and dismiss from his existence. “Tomorrow night I’m going to handle your orientation of the preserve personally. You’ll learn what rules you need to observe if you go off the compound.”

Did that mean he was already considering letting her stay longer? Why would he teach her the rules for such a short time, otherwise?

“Whether you’re off the compound once or a hundred times, you still need to know the rules. And I told Danny I’d show you our setup, so you know what kind of place this is for the fledglings. Don’t read more into it than that.”

She nodded, swallowing her disappointment. “Will I see the chil—fledglings?”

“We’ll see how it goes. Be ready at dusk. I’ll have Kohana scare you up some trousers and boots. You can’t go out there in a dress.”

She nodded, dug her fingers into the sheets and fled with as much grace as she could muster. Her body was still throbbing and her mind a confused tangle from that dream, and though she’d been here a day, she felt mired in all the mysteries and puzzles of this place, the most dangerous of which was going to spend tomorrow evening with her.

9

THANK heavens, after she dropped the sheets in the laundry, Kohana seemed to have meal preparations in hand and had merely shooed her away, knowing she wanted to speak to the monk. Grateful, she’d headed toward Thomas’s room.

When she knocked, he bade her enter. He was in trousers only but drying his hair, apparently having taken advantage of one of the showers to wash off the night’s work with Malachi. Work she hadn’t been allowed to join. She tried to push down that resentment and instead focus on the item of greatest importance.

“How are they?”

Thomas set the towel aside and shrugged into a loose linen shirt. She was always surprised at how fit the lean monk was. She associated men of God with soft paleness. But of course, most monks hadn’t consigned themselves to the service of a vampire queen.

He nodded to the small sitting area in his guest room, a side table and two chairs that would allow tea to be taken in front of the windows. They overlooked the front of the compound and the green, rolling terrain beyond, visible during daylight hours. “Why don’t you take a seat? You look like you’ve been on your feet most of the night.” He glanced down at her bare toes, and she winced, curling them into the throw rug. “Without shoes, no less.”

Darn it, she’d left those in Malachi’s room. Well, she’d figure out how to go get them between now and dusk. That was a problem for another moment.

“I wish everyone would stop telling me to sit, sleep, eat or . . .” She had a flash of the images Malachi had put in her mind to “calm” her, and bit back the desire to scream. “I would be fine if everyone would stop treating me like I am some kind of pampered invalid.”

“We’re just concerned that’s where you’ll get, if you don’t take better care of yourself,” Thomas said with his quiet firmness. “Elisa, when a man is hurt at the station, he has to take time to recuperate.”

“But I’m not hurt. My injuries healed rather quickly and it was weeks ago. I can do a cartwheel to demonstrate, if everyone would like.”

“Probably not advisable in a dress.” Thomas’s mouth quirked.