7
AFTER he left, she went to the bathroom sink, washed out the basin and retrieved a new cloth. Niall was still sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her in a way that made her skin warm.
He was an extension of her Master. It wasn’t difficult to think of him that way, not when she was this stirred up. She already dropped her gaze when he spoke to her in certain ways, and the way he’d held her, spanked her . . . My servant has more than a touch of the sexual Dominant . . .
But had Evan meant . . . anything?
She thought of how it had felt, lying on her back beneath them, feeling Niall’s muscles flexing beneath the dragon tattoos as he serviced Evan, the jut of his unsatisfied cock between his thighs. The way that cock had felt, penetrating her hard and deep. Her fingers trembled anew as she knelt between his legs and closed her hand over it as she had Evan’s. While she washed the organ, he was still staring at her, and it was a little discomfiting. He was getting even harder. Should she offer, since Evan had said . . . whatever?
No. If she was to treat him like Evan, it was his place to tell her what he wanted. Otherwise it would be too easy to confuse her own wants with his, and she was already far too lost in that regard.
Finishing the cleaning, she patted him dry with a towel. When she was done, Niall rose, taking the basin from her to walk it into the bathroom, dump it.
“Go to bed,” he said shortly, nodding to his bed. “I’ll be back.”
Niall secured the bar over the front door, then went to the cellar. When Evan had left them with that unexpected directive, she’d missed Niall’s what-the-bloody-hell look, which he supposed was a good thing. It was also a good thing she didn’t have third-marked senses to overhear the upcoming conversation, though of course if he yelled, she’d hear him well enough. Her and the deer on the next mountaintop.
Evan was sitting on his cot, doing something to one of his cameras, something he’d probably mess up and Niall would need to fix. The male was an outstanding photographer, but he had as much mechanical aptitude as a wizard with a wand. He’d drawn on those cotton drawstring pants he often wore to sleep. As he sat on the edge of the cot now, one leg crooked under him, the other braced, Niall could see the upper curve of his buttocks, the precise curve of his spine. He knew the vampire had a particular liking for this mountain location, because the ancient earth covering the back bedroom and surrounding this cellar allowed him to stay up longer and get up earlier than he normally could. Even so, he was pushing it. His pale skin tended to look thin, his angular features more prominent, if he didn’t go under when he should.
Over the years, he’d studied the vampire a good deal, and yet Niall still couldn’t quite explain what made Evan so mesmerizing. At times he seemed almost too lean, and his movements could be as graceful and refined as a woman’s. But that predatory glance, the solid jawline, the broad shoulders and sheer intensity of him—all of that was purely male. That and his thought process. Deliberate, decisive, unapologetic. There wasn’t an ounce of give to him. No submission in his demeanor at all. Not that all women had that, but there was a give to women, a complementary softness to men’s hardness.
Centuries ago, before he met Evan, he’d convinced himself that was the way it was always meant to be, that any thoughts men had toward one another were the devil’s work, condemned and unnatural. Like the desire to lie or cheat, it was a sinful, base weakness that should be resisted.
As Evan had just noted in their exchange about kosher meat, vampires were outside the realm of religious structure, not because they were damned, but because they, like gods, saw a much bigger picture, one of the gifts of immortality. During their first years together, Niall surmised that faith mattered more to those with shortened life spans. But after spending three hundred years with the vampire, he knew Evan was one of the most spiritual and least religious men he’d ever met. At other times, one of the most profane. He still had a strong grasp of the faith of his childhood. Though he’d reconciled himself to being outside its requirements, there were odd, unexpected things he did that honored it. Three centuries, and there was still too much to pin down about the male. But for all that, Niall knew Evan like no one else. Which was why he had a bone to pick right now.
“What the bloody hell are you doing?”
Evan didn’t look up. “I told her to serve you as she serves me.”
“I dinnae want a bloody trained poodle.”
“You think that’s the kind of Master I am?” Evan held the lens up to the light, frowned at it. Swore. He’d obviously found a scratch.
“Ye know what I mean. One minute you want her thinking for herself, the next you tell her to treat me like she treats you. As if the whole bloody world revolves around my farts. It’s a total cock-up.”
“It’s a multipronged strategy. Different approaches, same goal. We’re trying to get her to be who she truly is. Serving us both will help.” Evan glanced at him. “Be who you’ve always been, Niall. That’s all that’s needed from your end of things.”
“Oh, well, aye. Your vague and cryptic responses always solve the universe’s problems, for certain.”
Evan didn’t use sarcasm, such that when Niall did, he felt a bit mean-spirited. At least if Evan would respond in kind, Niall could put his head through a wall. Then Evan could break a limb or two to teach him a lesson. It would relieve the frustration that came with conversations like this.
Evan sighed. “My practical Scot. You remember when we met that federal agent, the one with the dog that could sniff out explosives?”
The vampire cycled around a point like a f*cking carousel. But it was the only way to get to it. “Aye. He looked appetizing to ye. The lad, not the dog.”
It didn’t happen often, but at times during their life together Evan had taken a blood meal from another throat, male or female. The agent looked fair interested in Evan, but Niall didn’t know if he buggered the poor bastard or not. Evan had cut Niall loose to enjoy the other offerings at the hotel.
It was just an overnight stay for the two of them, the agent and his dog part of some kind of law symposium at the hotel. Fortunately, there’d also been a wedding reception. Niall had crashed it, hooking up with a pretty bridesmaid. They’d danced, and he’d taken her back to her room for a quick tumble. He hadn’t even turned on the lights, her breath sweet and warm on his face as he took her against the wall, glad he was nowhere near the underground room and bed he would share later the same night with Evan.
He’d been a little rough about it, feeling somewhat out of sorts. Usually if sex was involved, Evan wanted to share his choice. Fortunately, the girl was one who liked it a bit rougher, more demanding, wanting her lover of the moment to hold all the reins.
“I enjoyed experiencing her through your mind. Her blood would have tasted better than the agent’s. The dog didn’t like me much.” Evan shrugged. “Anyhow, to the point.”
“Please God.”
Now it was Evan who gave him the narrow glance. “The dog was trained with food. He only ate when he sniffed out an explosive material. Hence, even on their days off, Rudolph had to divide the dog’s daily food portion into fifteen search exercises. Food is only associated with performance for the beast. If you threw a steak on the ground next to him, he wouldn’t eat it.”
Evan tossed the lens in the trash. “We have to figure out how to undo thirty years of training and help Alanna understand the benefit of her having a will other than ours.”
Ours. Evan didn’t use words casually. Rising, the vampire went to the wall where a half-finished painting was stretched on a large frame, as big as that side of the cellar. It was the moon, rising above a river. Its light made such a glowing, clear track through the water, the viewer felt beckoned into the picture. Within that light were hundreds of wee lanterns, an earthbound Milky Way. It was from a toro nagashi they’d attended in Japan, commemorating the dead on the last day of the Obon Festival. They’d sat on the bank together, shoulder to shoulder, watching all those lanterns head toward the moon, like gifts offered to the souls they remembered. Evan had explained the people believed that humans came from water, such that the lanterns represented their bodies returning to it.
“Humans are mostly made up of water, so the logic is sound. Vampires are creatures of blood, so I expect that’s why we turn to ash, returning to the earth.” Opening a jar, Evan used the pad of his index finger to dab out a bit of paint and add a swirl over one section of the water. Now it seemed the wind had touched that spot, or a fish had disturbed the surface. There were always details within details in Evan’s work, but none of his pieces ever seemed cluttered. It was like looking at a natural landscape, seeing something different each time the eye passed over it, but never being overwhelmed by it. Each feature was praised and distinct, unique and yet complementary to the whole.
Evan glanced back at him. “Thank you.”
Niall grunted. Shifted his feet. When Evan looked around for a cloth, Niall picked one up, stepping close enough to wrap it around the other man’s hand. As he massaged the paint off Evan’s finger, he realized he hadn’t been doing things like that lately. Never one given to lots of impulsive, affectionate gestures, he’d nevertheless done more of them in the past. For some reason, seeing Alanna, how she perceived things about vampires, he wanted to offer one now.
Evan met his gaze. A quick brush of his knuckles against Niall’s jaw suggested he was pleased, but then he took the cloth and his hand away, finishing the task himself. “You want more clarification.”
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but aye. I want to know where you’re heading with this.”
Evan lifted a shoulder. “When she sees me, she shuts down. Everything is ‘If it pleases my Master.’ You’re my agent, so she’ll obey you, as long as she sees it’s my will. That’s my part to handle. You’re a servant with a long history of serving me, but also a very different kind of servant from what she’s been. You keep her off-balance. Show her, help her. Touch her. Help her learn how to feel again.”
Niall considered that, turned toward the ladder.
“You don’t like the idea.”
He stopped, glanced back. “Nae much point in restraining my opinion if you’re reading it.”
“Not true. If you hold your tongue, I can decide which thoughts I want to deal with, and which to ignore. What’s bugging you so much about this, Niall?” Evan set the cloth aside, gave him a frown.
Niall blew out a breath. “Would it not be kinder tae let the girl just be what she is? She’s comfortable there. Another lass, being buggered by two total strangers would have terrified her. Instead, she’s hungry for touch, to serve. It’s all she knows.”
“While having our own female sex slave is lovely for us, I’ve more interest in what’s good for her.”
Niall bristled. “Or perhaps she’s a blank canvas, and ye want to see what kind of painting she could be. The fact that she’s not long for this life makes it more intriguing. She’s like a rainbow, or an eclipse. Too bloody ephemeral.”
Over near three centuries, he’d learned to either accept certain things about the vampire world, or go mad. But this . . . it made him exceptionally mad.
“Ephemeral? That well-educated mind you go to such effort to hide is showing.”
Niall made sure his next thought was a properly uneducated response. Evan’s lips thinned, telling Niall he was pushing it, but he returned his gaze to the canvas. Studied it. “Say you’ve always lived inside the walls of a prison, Niall, and you discover you only have one more day to live. Wouldn’t you want to step outside, see the sky, lie on the grass? Touch, taste, feel . . . everything.”
“She doesn’t know she’s in a prison.”
“Those tears earlier say her heart knows. We can be the key to open the door.”
“And if we do open it? What have we done to her, Evan? She’s not likely to survive this, and then she follows him into the afterlife, his slave for eternity.”
“I don’t believe that nonsense.”
“I didnae believe in vampires, either,” Niall fired back. “But how about this, then? Say by some miracle, they capture him alive and sever the link. She’ll be reassigned, because they only give InhServs to made vampires who are fancy overlords or ambitious bastards willing tae trample everything in their way.”
“I’m flattered you don’t put me in that category, even though I think you simply chose not to call me an aimless ne’er-do-well outright.”
“Since I’m using my big, impressive words, how do you feel about dilettante? It seems to fit.”
Okay, so maybe this conversation was starting to jab to life things best left undisturbed.
When Evan closed the distance between them, Niall held his ground, even as the vampire brought all that intensity up close and personal. There was a certain line he didn’t cross with Evan, not often. Unless pushed.
“If you have something poisonous in your gut, neshama, spit it out.” Evan’s gray eyes were locked on his like a hawk’s.
“You take a bird who’s always been in a cage and show her what it is to fly. Then ye put her back in the cage and say that’s the end o’ it. There’s nothing crueler than that. She’d be better off dead.”
“She likely is going to be dead, Niall. Very shortly.”
And that was the crux of it, wasn’t it? She didn’t deserve that fate. One would think he was past railing about what was fair in this world. Yet something old and deep stirred in his gut, something he didn’t want to rouse. The scope and depth of what a man could accept were amazing, but the ability was dependent on him burying certain things deep.
“Ah, hell with it. You’re the vampire. You’ll do what ye bloody want.” He turned away. It’s all a prison, anyway, isn’t it?
Evan was so close, he felt the brush of the vampire’s hand when he turned. Niall tensed for an attack, or even something different, but then the hand was gone.
A glance over his shoulder showed Evan in front of the painting again, staring at it. His back to Niall.
Bloody, f*cking hell. He hadn’t meant . . . Niall clenched his fist on the ladder. When it creaked in protest, he reined back his strength. He didn’t want to spend tomorrow rebuilding it. “I hate what’s been done to her. I hate how she was hurt. I hate how she thinks it’s her fault.”
You hate bloody vampires.
“No. Not all of them.” He paused, knowing he’d been dismissed, but still waiting for . . . he wasn’t sure what. Evan said nothing. After a muttered oath, Niall forced himself into motion, heading for the kitchen level.
F*ck, that was a bloody cock-up. After three hundred years, he f*cking knew better. Maybe he wasn’t so different from Alanna. Staying in the boundaries was safer, more comfortable. But whereas she’d been born in captivity, so to speak, he’d been a wild falcon, who’d willingly, for a debt of honor, let the jesses be tied onto his leg, allowed another man to become his Master. A man who could tear through his shields and knew too much about him. A man he sometimes hated almost as much as he . . . didn’t hate him.
Serve Niall as you serve me.
She’d fallen asleep puzzling over that. When she woke in the early afternoon, once again discomfited by how long she’d slept, it was to the sound of . . . well, she wasn’t sure what the sound was, until she rose and discovered Niall chopping wood on a stump in the narrow front yard. Apparently they needed more logs for the woodstove; she remembered him saying something about that on their plane ride, along with the assurance that it was a chore she wouldn’t be asked to do. She was sure she could learn to wield an axe, but then she remembered the blocker. While a human woman could chop wood, a third-marked male servant would make short work of it.
Thinking of the blocker reminded her it was time to take it. She grimaced through the burn of the injection, then showered and dressed. In the bathroom, she found Niall’s shaving gear, toothbrush, other toiletry items. Using a comb, she cleaned his hairbrush. The brown strands wound into the bristles looked like they’d been forming a nest there since the brush was bought. She also picked up the cloth he’d carelessly dropped on the floor and dried the water spots on the sink. After she straightened all the towels and cloths, she swept a critical eye over the bathroom and gave it a nod. Not too clean for two men, but tidy enough for a woman.
Returning to her room, she donned one of the long-sleeved shirts. Niall had opened the screened windows, letting in the cool air as well as the fresh smell of the forest. Though she suspected she might need hiking pants or jeans later, she went ahead and slipped on a thick cotton skirt that swirled around her ankles. Unless their vampire instructed them otherwise, female InhServs rarely wore pants. They were supposed to be accessible to the desires of their vampires at all times, and for women, pants were an obstacle to that. So the skirt felt more comfortable.
Serve him as you serve me . . .
As she went to the kitchen window, she saw Niall stripped down to jeans, each swing of the axe capable of making a female heart do an extra trip at the display of male strength and virility. She was accustomed to noticing sexual appeal, using it to stoke desire on command. But she was trained to notice far more details than that, and what she saw told her Niall was not in a good mood. He was chopping the wood as if he was cleaving an enemy, tossing the pieces into a pile with a bit more aggression than needed.
Given his habits, she was sure there’d be dishes in the sink if he’d had breakfast. So he hadn’t eaten. Pinning up her hair, she started on afternoon breakfast, planning enough if Evan wanted to sample her cooking later tonight or Niall wanted more later. So she started the coffee, found some eggs, a slab of bacon. A biscuit mix quickly became dough and the rolled pieces were put in the oven. A few raw vegetables still surviving in the crisper were chopped up for the omelettes.
The primary job of the chefs at the Council headquarters was preparing delicacies for the vampires. The servants might get the leavings, but for their own nourishment, the InhServs had a small kitchen area to prepare their food. She’d often cooked for the others, as well as visiting Randoms. Because of that, she’d learned one universal truth about men and well-cooked food.
As the biscuits browned in the oven and the coffee percolated, the axe bit into the wood at a slower cadence. A tiny smile touched her lips when the thudding stopped at last, and she heard the well pump. He’d probably don his shirt, making her regret not snatching one last glimpse out the window. She’d also like a closer look at those tattoos in the daylight, as well as what tattoos he might have on his back.
Was it wrong to indulge her own lust that way? She frowned. Acting on it without a vampire’s order was forbidden. But Evan had said . . . She suppressed a sigh. Since last night, she’d come up with so many interpretations of that one statement that all she’d done was confuse herself.
Art in every form is to be appreciated, Alanna. Ogle him as much as you wish. You might even make him blush.
Startled, she knocked the plate of bacon off the counter, barely saving it from the floor. Yesterday, she’d accepted Evan’s voice in her head. But after the break provided by a few hours sleep, her brain had rebooted. The only voice she’d been used to hearing in her head was Stephen’s, and for the past few months, Stephen’s voice brought pain, agony.
It wasn’t Stephen. She settled her heart down to a regular beat. It was Evan. Evan.
Yes. His voice was warm, but she caught something dangerous in his tone, unexpectedly effective. He has no hold on you here, Alanna. We’ll let no harm come to you.
Self-preservation was supposed to be the least of a servant’s concerns, but one didn’t argue with a vampire. Plus, it did make her feel better. Thank you, sir. Would you like me to bring you some breakfast?
Not right now. Still sleeping. Your incessant inner monologue woke me.
She would have blurted out an apology, but she picked up a wry note suggesting he was . . . teasing her?
The minor downside of a female servant, I suppose. Niall’s mind is exceptionally unobtrusive. Like an oak stump.
Niall came through the door then, filling the room and making the floor vibrate with his weight, underscoring Evan’s point so well, she had to bite back a smile.
There you are. I’m going back to sleep. Try to be less chatty in your own head.
She blinked, not sure how she was supposed to accomplish that, but she supposed not thinking about how to accomplish it would be a start. She’d move on to breakfast.
Good girl. You’re getting it. But Alanna? There’s only one way to interpret my command. Niall is your Master, as much as I am.
He was right. That was crystal clear. She didn’t know if it unsettled or relieved her, but the subject himself was providing a distraction. His presence considerably reduced her maneuvering room for cooking, especially when he loomed over her, peering into the skillet. “Omelette?”
“Yes. I put vegetables in it, but there’s also bacon. The biscuits are about to come out.”
“You cook.”
“Of course.” She blinked at him, surprised. “I have extensive culinary skills, to serve the various appetites of my Master and his or her guests, should they prefer not to have their own cooking staff. Or when traveling. That’s one of the reasons I bought the plant book. I thought I could add some local herbs to the food. An alternative to garlic.”
Since he had his arm propped by the stove, she was inside the shelter of his body. Giving him a shy glance, she ducked under his arm to retrieve the pot holder and backed him up with a gentle elbow to get the room to pull out the biscuits. “If you’d like to sit down, I’ve put out a setting for you. I can bring you your food as it’s ready. If you’d like that,” she repeated, in case she sounded like she was issuing orders.
“I’m underfoot,” he guessed.
“Of course not,” she lied staunchly, and now he smiled. Not as easy as his usual grin, but she took heart that she might be able to improve his mood. Saying nothing further, he went to the table and took a seat. Mindful of his reaction yesterday, she’d done nothing more than a simple fold of his napkin. She hadn’t set a place for Evan, knowing he wouldn’t be joining them here in daylight.
“The birds were pretty,” he said gruffly. “If ye want to keep doing that, you should.”
“No, you were right. My skills are better spent toward things that apply to your lifestyle.” She was more than pretty place settings and decorating herself for the pleasure of a vampire. Perhaps her origami skills were useless here, but her cooking wasn’t, if Niall’s appreciative yet impatient glance over his shoulder was any indication.
She brought him his plate, the omelette with melted Gouda cheese emitting a fragrant steam. The rescued bacon was crisp and glistening, and she could tell the basket of fluffy biscuits won his approval when he immediately reached for one of those. As she put a glass of juice next to his plate, she noticed his gaze wandering over her torso, particularly the way her breasts looked beneath the cling of her shirt. She wished he’d reach out and touch her so she could give him pleasure, comfort for whatever was bothering him this morning. What would happen if she reached out and touched him?
Control. Discipline. If she was to serve Niall as she served Evan, that meant at their pleasure, not her own. The sharpness of her own mind-voice was enough to have her withdrawing, but Niall caught her wrist. “Where’s yours?”
“I’ll eat later, after you do.” Even when she cooked for the visiting servants, she tended to stand behind the counter while they ate. An exercise to reinforce her primary directive, a different form of service.
“You’ve had no breakfast yet, have ye?” His grip on her wrist eased but stayed there, fingers straightening to caress her palm.
“No.”
“Then fix yourself a plate.”
She hesitated. When his fingers pressed firmly into her flesh, drawing her eyes back to his face, he added, “That’s what I want, lass. Come eat with me.”
He dropped his hold, letting her retreat to the counter. While she made up her plate, he turned to preparing his own, buttering his biscuit and adding salt to his bacon before tasting it, telling her the man liked copious amounts of salt. Good thing he was a third mark; otherwise, at three hundred, he’d have a blood pressure problem bad enough to make him a medical case study.
After she filled her plate, she returned. Sinking to her knees next to his chair, she balanced it, putting the glass of juice to the side. When she looked up to see if he’d begun eating so she could do the same, he was staring at her.
A flush climbed into her cheeks. “Have I done something wrong?”
“Why are you nae sitting in a chair, like yesterday?”
“Evan told me to serve you as I would him. I’d never sit in a chair next to a vampire.”
Niall took a bite of his biscuit and chewed, his attention remaining upon her. Now she wasn’t sure if she should start eating, so she waited. If she had to, she’d ask him. Because he really wasn’t a vampire Master. He just had a way of looking at her like one.
“Let me have that.” Taking her plate from her, he set it next to his, then held out his hand for the juice and utensils. When he dropped them on the table in a casual disarray that made her wince, he held his hand out for hers. As he brought her up, he scraped his chair away from the table.
“Why don’t you come sit on my lap?”
His handclasp was warm, and she thought of his body lying behind hers on the bed. Warm and safe, protective. She couldn’t understand her hesitation now, except it was new to her, having an inordinate desire to obey that seemed out of proportion with the requirement of service. It was as if Evan had merely pushed a gate wider that was already unwisely ajar.
“Do you want to sit on my lap?”
Since he wasn’t her Master, “If that’s what my Master desires” didn’t fit. And “Yes, because Master said I should do it” sounded wrong.
“Do you want me to command you to sit on my lap?” Niall asked before she could respond.
An entirely different reaction flooded into her chest. He saw it in her face, a muscle flexing in his jaw that tempted her fingertips to trace it. “That’s it, isn’t it? Whether you want it or no, an order makes it your desire as well.”
“Yes.” She was relieved he understood. “It’s how I’m trained. I have no desires until you command it.”
His brow creased. “What if Stephen commanded you to sit on his lap? I know ’twould be different, because I’m a servant, but say Evan was commanding ye to do the same thing. Would it feel different?”
She didn’t like all these questions, but it wasn’t her place to like or dislike anything, right? “Yes, there’s a difference.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask her to explain.
“Different because of how he betrayed the Council, or even before, when he was your Master? Don’t think, just answer,” he added sharply.
“It’s not the same,” she blurted out. Her fingers closed into a tight ball, her wrist still in his grasp. Since she had an alarming desire to pull away, she went rigid.
She was an intelligent woman. It was one of the reasons she was so good at being an InhServ. From the outside, it might appear as mindless obedience, but anticipating the needs of another, always putting those needs first, learning myriad ways to be genuinely responsive and enthusiastic, no matter what was demanded . . . it took tremendous psychological skills and an in-depth understanding of one’s strengths and weaknesses. It also required a brutal understanding of who and what her Master was, what he most desired from her.
Stephen’s priority was obedience; she was a service given to him by privilege. If he loaned her to another vampire, he expected her to obey that vampire no differently than she obeyed him. But Niall and Evan wanted her to obey their commands specifically. To respond to them specifically. To want them specifically.
Beyond that, their expectations had nothing to do with the code of being a servant. They wanted her . . . to want to please them. She’d been trained that it was one and the same, but they understood there was a difference. And they were right. Otherwise, why had she automatically responded that it was different, the same command issued by Stephen and Evan?
This whole line of thinking set her feet on a dangerous road, where her own desires became a separate entity from those of her Master. No, it was not a road at all, but a forest as wild and mysterious as that which surrounded their cabin. But she had no choice, for Niall was waiting for an honest answer. She thought of that first moment after Evan second-marked her, when she could hear both him and Niall in her mind. It had felt different from Stephen’s second mark, too.
“I want to be commanded to sit in your lap. I want you to want me to sit in your lap.”
He squeezed her wrist, an unfathomable look in his golden brown eyes. Last night, she’d given more of her heart to them than she’d offered to Stephen in all thirteen years of her service. Because her heart was the last thing he’d wanted. What’s more, with Niall and Evan, it felt like what a servant should be offering. Unconditionally.
“I want you,” she whispered, walking a frayed tightrope over land mines.
Evan’s voice slid into her head. Teasing.
Only him?
It flustered her again. She shook her head, but Niall spoke for her. “She’s nodding emphatically, Evan. Sorry, old boy.”
“I am not,” she exclaimed. “Master, he is making up things.”
Niall grinned then, merely locking his grip when she tried to pull away. With a quick yank, he pulled her into his lap. She caught his shoulder so she didn’t fall, but he already had her securely by the waist, steadying her. He nodded to her utensils, pulling her plate closer to his. “Eat.”
She picked up her fork, bemused by her perch, his fingers splayed over her hip bone. His thigh muscles shifted under her, a pleasant sensation with her legs straddling his, her buttocks pushed back against his hip and abdomen. He held her with one arm and ate with the other. As she cut her egg, she watched him shovel in the breakfast. His table manners weren’t bad; he just had a healthy appetite, one that made her glad that she’d cooked plenty.
Putting down her fork, she plucked several wood chips from his hair, smoothed the strands over his temple. In response, he pressed a kiss to her collarbone, his hair brushing her cheek, and left the scent of bacon and coffee on her skin. She didn’t mind.
Evan had gone quiet after his teasing, so she assumed he’d returned to sleep. The earlier rain was long gone, the sun’s heat penetrating the windows, despite the fall chill. “Does Evan sell his work? Is that how he makes a living?”
Evan’s world was a curious one for her, since the vampires in the upper circles were already wealthy, through centuries of investment and business interests. She knew vampires who worked regular jobs like humans existed; she’d just never met any.
Niall shrugged, sitting back with his coffee, still balancing her on his knee. “It’s how he makes his living now. In the beginning, he had a sponsor, and that and portrait commissions took him through lean times. Before electricity, there were few night jobs. But when he did find one, he didnae mind doing it. The lad’s not afraid of hard work.” The approval in Niall’s voice was clear.
“In fact, he liked doing them. Before he was turned, he wasnae a very healthy human.” Niall picked up another biscuit. Since the butter was closer to her, she took it from him, added the same amount she’d seen him slather on the other and handed it back. Niall grunted his thanks.
“He said the work added to the experiences he brought to his art. Even now, he’ll take the occasional job to see what it’s about. He’s done security, helped build a skyscraper, flew private planes, worked as an apprentice gardener at a big estate for near a year. Even joined a paving crew.”
She couldn’t conceal her amazement. “He’s done manual labor? With humans?”
“Has some great pictures from them as well. The night shots o’ the crew, the lighting over the job, the headlights of cars looking like shooting stars.” Niall chewed, considering. “He never forgets the important details. The faces o’ the lads, sweating, intent on their work, or their eyes wandering, distant, thinking about what they’ll be doin’ when the shift is over . . .”
Despite his dismissal of her origami, Niall was far more aware of aesthetic nuances than he’d first revealed. It was obvious he admired Evan’s work, was intrigued and involved in it. Did he realize how Evan studied him the same way? Last night, she’d seen how the vampire responded to every movement, every gasped word from his servant. They were linked and interwoven, a tapestry three hundred years in the making. It made her heart hurt . . . and long for the same.
Niall moved onto his third helping of bacon. “Interaction with the human world is more common among working-class vampires like Evan. He has a New York art dealer who handles the sales o’ his work, but Evan still stays hands-on with the managing o’ his coin. He has a hell of a sense for knowing when to save, when to spend, and what’s worth the price tag. Though he’ll still get that price knocked down if he can manage it. He’s your lad for the bazaars in Marrakesh.” He winked. “Most of it he sinks into assets and costs—camera equipment, rentals like this, transportation—but he always manages a comfortable nest egg.” He smiled at her. “We might not be rich, but we willnae ever starve.”
He adjusted her over both his thighs then, which snugged her backside right into the heat of his groin. His fingers slipped over her thigh, a casual stroke that risked her choking on her eggs. She put down her fork. “Why did he choose you as a servant?”
While the circumstances of the choosing had seemed to be an off-limits topic, she hoped the why would be safe.
“Not real obvious, is it?” His interested cock stirred, increasing the pressure into the tender pocket between her thighs. His touch moved to her hip, the crease between it and her leg. “You’re not wearing panties, are ye?”
“No, sir.” Her mouth had gone dry, her heart starting to pound faster, especially when he didn’t correct her address.
“Lean back against me, lass, if you’re done with your breakfast.”
As she did, his hand slid between her thighs. When she spread them, he brushed her sex through the skirt. Even as she shuddered in response, he continued on in that same conversational tone, though his cock was getting harder and thicker.
“Not obvious, is it? He does a lot for himself. Doesnae need someone to wipe his arse or . . .” He cut himself off before he said anything else, making her think he was about to say something about what he considered her more purposeless skill sets. It didn’t matter, since she was fighting an unacceptable urge to turn around, straddle him. Curling her fingers over his arm on his waist, she dug into his flesh.
“Aye, ye like sitting spread like that for me. I can smell your sweet honey, lass.” His voice had a husky note, but he kept on, making her more insane. “Even beyond blood and buggering, it seemed he mostly wanted a pack mule, like he said. Nane o’ what he wanted was obvious, though. Not in the beginning.” Niall took a breath.
“When I met Evan, I was married.”