Sliding his arm around her waist, he closed his hand around one of hers, but left it on his chest, warming it between those two parts of him as he moved her into an easy three-step rhythm, mindful of the dimensions of her room. It had been a while since he’d done it, but it was easy with her moving with him, her body close from the cinch of his arm.

“Do you know the waltz was thought scandalous when it was invented, because it allowed men and women to stand close to one another, and required the man to put a hand on the woman’s waist?” Elisa tilted her head, an innocently coquettish gesture. “When I was younger, I remember riding the train from Perth. There was this young boy and young girl, teenagers, on the train. I don’t think their parents knew they were sweethearts, but I could tell. They were sitting in the seats behind their parents and I was across the aisle. I remember he put his hand on the dividing armrest and she put hers next to it, and for so many miles, as the train clacked along, they kept their hands like that, no more than a half inch between them. You could feel the heat between them, and not touching made it even more powerful. There was all that yearning in the air, and it just got heavier and heavier. At last, when I think they could bear no more, he moved his hand, so slightly. For just the barest second, he put his smallest finger over hers. The look on her face . . . it was as if he’d kissed her soundly and . . .”

Her cheeks flushed then, but he saw it in her mind and finished it. “And made love to her, with that one gesture.”

She nodded. “Sometimes, when I’m with you, it feels that way. You give me one look, or you touch my back when you head out for your evening’s work, and the heat lingers inside of me, unfolds there.”

“Elisa—”

“I’m being foolish.” She gave a quick smile, her hand flexing on his shoulder. “It’s that song, so romantic and . . . full. Don’t pay any attention to me. So when do you want to do the third mark? Right now?”

27

HE stopped, dropping her hand so he could put both at her waist, his fingers flexing. During the dancing, she’d become as appealing and romantic as a pink rose. Now, though, she was practical, flatly reasonable.

“Would that work for you?” he asked curtly. “Get it off the to-do list, and then you can go beat rugs with Kohana, or cook eggs?”

She blinked. “Since you came to tell me, I assumed you wanted to go ahead and get it done.”

He did, damn it. Then he caught a stray thought from her mind, and it helped, made him understand. Lowering his brow to hers, he gave her unexpected tenderness. As a result, her blue eyes flitted up to his, uncertainty replacing that veneer of efficiency. “I do. But I want you to feel, Elisa. I want you to feel all of it. Even if you choose to go home afterwards, I’ve bound you to me the way no other vampire ever will. In the eyes of the vampire world, you will be mine. It’s significant.”

“I know.” Petulance gave her tone a snap. She closed her eyes. “I want you to just do it. I don’t want to feel, because it’s not real, you know. I belong to you, but you’ll never belong to me.”

It made something tighten in his gut, even though she wasn’t saying anything he hadn’t already known about her, about what she truly wanted. “But someone will. I told you, there will be other men at your station with gentle hands—”

“I don’t want another Willis. There was only one of him, and he’s here, in my heart. I don’t need another man like that. I don’t need—” She drew a breath, tried to back away, but he held on to her arms. Began to back her into a wall. He could feel her struggle, see it, but he saw what was beneath it as well. When he saw her answer, his vampire senses sharpened like a blade, his bloodlust stirring to take, claim. The protests on her lips froze, then dissolved altogether as she became all wide blue eyes and parted mouth, her heart pounding up into her throat. When her back hit the wall, he lifted her up against it, sliding an arm around her waist and cupping her buttock so her legs naturally curled high on his thighs to hold on.

“Elisa, do you want to be my third-marked servant, bound to me forever, subject to my will for you, whatever that may be? If you answer no, it will change nothing about what I will or won’t do for you and your fledglings. This is your choice. Is it what you want, or not?”

“I need . . . time.”

“No, you don’t. It’s just a matter of whether you accept it or not.”

“Is it what you want?” She stared at him. “You’ve never had a third-mark servant. Why do you want me?”

He should have known she’d have the courage to think about that side of it, make it about more than her decision. She never forgot others in her calculations. In fact, the decision to keep the record player to herself, even for a mere night, was the first time he’d ever seen her take something for her own.

“I take things for myself all the time,” she whispered. “When I wake up early to see the sunrise. When I pick wildflowers. When I read in your study, just so I can smell you, see the way you look against the lamplight, watch your hands as you stroke your cats and wish it was me . . .”

He’d let her into his mind unintentionally. He was preparing her for a connection that would link them that way, so perhaps that was why he’d dropped his guard. Maybe in this moment he wanted her more deeply in his mind than he’d ever wanted anyone there. Maybe she’d find wildflowers and sunshine he’d missed or, more likely, she’d bring those things with her.

She gave an unexpected giggle, a nervous sound. “Now I’m picturing wildflowers sprouting out your ears, and sunshine bursting from your arse.”

“This is a serious moment,” he informed her, though his lips quivered against a smile. “You’re supposed to be awed at the possibilities and yet compliant to my wishes.”

She arranged her face in a semblance of sobriety, though the laughter did fade out of her eyes. “I am. That’s what terrifies me. Both for myself and for you. I don’t know if I would be any good as a third-marked servant, at the types of things you might need from me, even if it’s just for a little while. And what if I want to keep being one, but you want to send me home? I’d feel like I failed you.”

“If that happens, it will be because I’m such an ogre you’ll be glad to go home.”

She frowned, a tiny pucker between her brows. “I don’t think I have that in me. To admit I can’t be what you need me to be.”

He knew that. It made her so irresistible to his vampire blood, he had to bite back a need to rush this moment. There was a painful, dangerous reality to this. The third mark could damage her soul in the long run. It could even destroy it. That mattered to him, even as instinct pushed him forward, an irresistible tide. Nature was cruel, but inexorable. It would override good sense and caution and, though the result might be tragedy or loss, it knew things the rational mind couldn’t. He believed in it, but he’d also seen his cats obey instinct to fight things that would be for their own benefit. The question was, which situation was this?

She moistened her lips. “I think we have to take the chance, don’t we? It’s just the way it has to be, like a baby taking his first steps. He may be walking toward a life of hardship, but God intends him to walk, so he walks.”

He’d closed his mind to her after the wildflower observation. Not because he didn’t appreciate her humor, but because he sincerely didn’t want to influence her. The fact she’d picked up on his thought process regardless and given it her own unique stamp was unsettling. But it also sealed her fate.

With her body so close, her soul quivering in his grasp, as near as the pulse pounding in her throat, he wasn’t going to argue with his own nature any longer. He’d embraced it long ago, after all, letting go of what he’d been before, a shipwreck that he’d lost in the current of his life too quickly to mourn its loss. That had come far later.

Maybe this drive now was all vampire, or maybe being a vampire simply tapped into the dark places that always existed in the male mind. A need to give and receive pleasure through conquering. Not all women responded to it, but almost all of them recognized it in some way.

He turned her from the wall, effortlessly hitching her up his body. She fell forward against him, curling her arms around his shoulders, dropping her head against his so he carried her almost as a man might carry his child, her body going loose and fluid against him, trusting, compliant.

He laid her down on her bed, and, following his own desires, he slid off the skirt. She wore the sneakers he’d decorated for her, and he put those to the side, taking off the short white socks. Then came the practical panties. Before they visited the mainland, he’d be buying her some very different ones, including bras that would lovingly cradle that eyecatching bosom of hers rather than strangling it. She’d wear them under her neat, practical outfits, distracting him with the knowledge she was wearing them to please him.

Her lower body was completely bare now. He opened her shirt, holding that one straining button for last, then flicked it open. Sliding an arm beneath her, he freed the bra, then scooped her forward, let her lean against him, his one knee planted between her thighs to keep them spread as he pulled the shirt down her arms to the elbows. He let the bra follow, taking the cups over her head and behind her, so the straps and the sleeves of her shirt kept her partially restrained in movement.

When he laid her back down, he kept his arm under her so her breasts tilted up invitingly toward him, those large pink nipples already tightening before his gaze, wanting his mouth. She loved it when he suckled her. Sometimes, when she went to sleep here, when he couldn’t be with her, she passed her fingertips over them before she fell into dreams, thinking of his mouth there, and other places. She was fascinated with the cleverness of his mouth.

Hearing the drift of such thoughts in her mind was not helping him show restraint, but he wanted her wet and begging, beyond thoughts of fledglings or floor scrubbings, all his in every way, knowing she was entirely focused on him when he did this. He might be superstitious, but he wanted it that way, so there was nothing to taint it. He might not be the first who’d ever had her body or even her heart, but he would be the first who’d taken her like this. He’d also been the first to take her how she wanted to be taken, and that was a key difference.