9
ALANNA was bewildered. Niall had retrieved her T-shirt and bra, pressed them into her hands as he set her aside. He’d told her he had some other things to do up the mountain, and that she was to spend the day as she liked.
She found him putting together a backpack in the kitchen. “I don’t understand. What should I do?”
Niall shrugged. “Ye have the books you bought. I’ll show you some easily marked trails that’ll take ye to pretty overlooks, but dinnae wander off them looking for plants or you’ll be lost. There’s plenty of food to make yourself something for lunch. I’ll nae be returning until early dinner.”
She trailed after him as he moved around the small cabin. When she would have helped him pack a sandwich or put water bottles in his pack, he firmly shouldered her aside. “I’ve been caring for myself for a while now,” he said. “No need for a woman’s help.”
“I wasn’t . . . I didn’t intend an insult.” She shouldn’t be hurt that he set her aside now, or even earlier. Perhaps the vampire had decided to sample her directly. But she didn’t like how this felt.
“I didnae take it as one. We do for ourselves, and when Evan has nothing for me, I pursue my own interests. You need to do the same. There’s no threat to him here, so no worries about leaving him on his own. He can call us if he needs us. Go exploring, read a book, bake yourself a cake and eat the whole thing yourself.” He flashed her a grin. “Soften up that pretty arse.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I am soft in all the proper ways.”
“A woman’s arse cannae ever be too soft. Makes it much nicer when skelping it. Or other activities.” Niall winked at her, shouldered the pack.
“I could help you do . . . whatever you’re doing.” She tried to keep the desperation from her voice.
“No. I’m checking some places Evan wants tae visit. I’ll be moving fast, so I can cover them by dusk. You can’t keep up. Enjoy your day, lass.”
Going to the doorway, she watched him take one of the deer trails, his long strides removing him from sight in a blink. The mountain view stretched out before her, magnificently indifferent to her dilemma. There was birdsong and insect life, a breeze, but also a complete stillness, an underlying lack of noise and activity she’d never experienced in her city life.
She sat down on the log bench, crossing her arms over her breasts. The contact immediately made her think of Niall touching her, two sets of eyes on her through his vivid gaze. She’d nearly lost herself in it, until she recalled her duty to be focused on their pleasure and desire. A moment later, things had changed. Cupping her breasts as Niall had, she closed her eyes, remembering his fingers rubbing over the nipples. She almost did it herself, but pulled herself up short. Self-pleasuring was forbidden.
It didn’t matter anyway. Her much smaller hands didn’t feel like his. The heat and solidity of him beneath her was missing, the pressure of his aroused cock between her thighs.
She rose, surveyed the yard. “No need for a woman’s help,” she mimicked. Well, he hadn’t turned down her breakfast, had he? She could cook up some more things, but making too much food would be wasteful. The cabin was clean and well-ordered, and of course the small outside area was well tended.
What do you want? Need? What can I do? Wandering back into the cabin, she moved to the trapdoor, squatted and laid her hand there. The vampires she knew didn’t sleep with their servants, and she supposed Evan was no different. She imagined him sleeping, though, wondered if he slept on his side or stomach. Niall sprawled out like a lazy bear, unafraid of anything. The few times she had to come into Stephen’s chamber during his sleep she found he kept his back to the wall, arms drawn up close as if protecting himself from attack.
She had an odd desire to simply lay down on the trapdoor, curl up there to be as close to her Master as was allowed. Like a pet shut out of the bedroom, knowing her proper place was at her Master’s feet, on his bed, where she could be near if he needed her. It was pathetic, she knew it was, but they hadn’t given her any boundaries, tasks, rules.
Fine. She’d meditate. That was what an InhServ did when she had no immediate responsibilities.
Taking a seat on the picnic table outside, she crossed her legs in the lotus position. Back straight, hands relaxed and open on the knees. Deep breaths in and out. Though her eyes closed, she still saw the beautiful view before her. She began to work through the chant that would cycle her brain into the right state.
Service, not self. There is no self. Desire, need, want. All for my Master. His needs, his desires, his wants. I am perfection because I am Service. Every thought, every act, every breath belongs to him. With my last breath, with the last beat of my heart, I exist only for his benefit. I am Slave, with no need for name.
She remembered the joy she’d experienced when she’d first learned the mantra. She’d gilded it with more devotionals, guided by her impulsive euphoria during the first days of her in-house training. They’d been required to recite it during the lessons that taught acceptance of pain and punishment. The trainers knew how to give out maximum doses of pain without marring pure flesh, a blank canvas intended only for the vampire’s marking. The pain didn’t matter. That mantra, spoken through every act of service others might consider torment, only increased her commitment. She could get lost in the words while a whip struck her naked flesh, wouldn’t flinch from flame brought so close to that same flesh it felt scorched. It wasn’t until after she was assigned to Stephen that she understood the true reason the training had reinforced that mantra.
Just as a child grew to adulthood, learning the difference between romance and love, she’d learned the difference between the idea of pure service and the reality of it. But there was a strength and depth to the reality the idea could never provide. So why was it she was back to that romantic yearning, as if that fantasy truly was out there, intertwined with the deeper reality to create the perfect meshing? Something she’d fallen just short of finding, because she hadn’t been a good enough servant to get there.
Meditation wasn’t going to work. Her throat was tight, her stomach hurting. Suppressing a sigh, she opened her eyes.
She found herself looking at a black bear, who’d apparently lumbered from the wood and was now no more than three feet away from her picnic table, wet nose stretched out to sniff the oddly still human.
She blinked. She could remain motionless before vampires like Lady Lyssa, who had reduced lesser vampires to cowering gelatin with a glance. She was not going to run shrieking into the cabin. But it was a big black bear. A bear that now rose on his hind legs and planted his taloned paws on the bench next to her. The rumbling noise that he made could be a harmless inquiry, or a pre-dinner growl. She knew several languages, but not one of them was bear.
The first thing a servant learned was that one didn’t run from a predator. It would transform her immediately into prey.
“You’re looking for food,” she said quietly. “And I smell like eggs and bacon. I’d get you some, to be neighborly, but I expect it’s not a good idea to encourage you to visit humans. The next one might have a gun and think you’re a threat. And I’m hoping . . . you’re not one?”
That rumbling noise came again. She tried not to move as he nosed her leg, snuffling, moving to her hands. If he opened his mouth, tried to eat her hand . . . The paws shifted on the table, those talons closer to her knee. This time she couldn’t help it. She flinched.
“Oy there, off with ye! Ye know better, black beastie.”
Niall had returned, thank the gods. She suppressed the embarrassing cry of relief as the bear turned his attention from her. He gave Niall a narrow consideration, but the man advanced steadily, calling out and gesturing his warning with calm purpose. While he wasn’t presenting an imminent threat, his advance indicated he could be one if needed. As he passed the well, the Scot reached down into it, pulled out a shotgun that apparently had been sheltered under the interior lip and cocked it. The noise made the bear flinch. When Niall brandished it, now close enough for the bear to make it out, the creature let out an irritable huff and lumbered across the yard, disappearing into the bushes.
“There now. I’m away for ten minutes, and already she’s entertaining strange men.”
Despite his teasing, she saw Niall was out of breath, sweat staining the front of his shirt. He’d come at a full run. As he approached her, his gaze shifted toward the cabin. Turning, she saw Evan nearly in the open doorway. He was holding to the shadows, but she heard the click of another gun being uncocked, saw him give a spare nod and turn. But there was something wrong . . .
She was off the picnic table immediately, brushing past Niall and reaching the cabin before another breath had passed.
“Master, let me help.” She didn’t wait for permission this time, sliding under his arm when he staggered. Through sheer determination, she kept him from falling toward the sunlight. Fortunately, Niall was right behind her and able to steady them both.
“Came right out o’ a sleep, no?”
“I realized the big furry thing nuzzling me wasn’t you,” Evan coughed. “And that I normally don’t feel terrified of it.”
“I’m sorry, Master,” Alanna said. “I should have controlled my reaction. I didn’t mean to disturb your sleep.”
Actually, no vampire she knew would have stirred themselves. Such a matter was a servant issue, and Niall had responded capably. But of course he’d been running through the woods when the bear had his paws on the table. If he’d decided to swipe at her . . .
“Yes. Next time please allow yourself to be mauled more quietly.”
The amusement was unmistakable, but his pallor startled her, the sweat on his face. “Are you all right, sir?”
He was four hundred years old. Yes, he’d come above ground, but he hadn’t stood in sunlight. It was only vampires under a hundred years who reacted this badly to being above ground during daylight, even inside the shelter of a building.
“I’m fine,” he said shortly. Squeezing her shoulder, he nodded to Niall as he opened the trapdoor. “I can get down the ladder.”
“Sure you can.” But she noticed his servant watched until he managed it, a certain tension to him until it was done, and then Niall replaced the trapdoor.
“Is he all right? Does he need anything?”
Niall shook his head, after that brief internal look that said he had checked on the same thing. “No. He says to leave him be.” Reaching out, he tugged her braid, distracting her. “Black bears are mostly herbivores, until people start feeding them, then they become scavengers. That one’s probably spent too much time picking up scraps on the trail. You’re fine, then?”
When he closed his hand on hers, she realized she was shaking. “My first encounter with a bear.” She tried a shrug. “It was silly of me to get alarmed. I’m sorry . . .”
“If you’d done the wrong thing, lass, he might ha’ attacked. Any wild animal can get testy or aggressive if he thinks he’s threatened or thwarted. Ye haven’t any experience with that situation.”
“No?”
“Well, nae with that kind o’ beast.” Niall paused. “That was almost a smile, girl. The first time I see a real one on your face, I’m going to kiss ye senseless. Do me a favor then,” he continued before she could respond to that remarkable statement. “While I’m gone, it might do to stay in the cabin or close to the door. At least ’til you and I can go hiking and I can show ye a few wee precautions for being up here.”
“You could show me now.”
When he passed a hand over her hair, he was extraordinarily gentle about it. Even pulled her close to brush a kiss across her forehead, hold her against his body. She wondered what she’d done to cause such a response, but then he stepped away.
“No. Not today.”
So off he went again, once again leaving her to her own devices. She read her plant book, sat on the bench right by the front door. Went to the well to see how Niall had replaced the gun in a mounting below that lip.
If only Stephen had realized giving her nothing to do would drive her to suicide far faster than grinding pain and the twisting of her every thought into a nightmare. He could have saved himself a great deal of effort.
Closing her eyes against those memories, she let them shudder off her skin like rain. Resolutely, she went back inside, looked at the selection of books. While she should make herself study the Scottish history or one of the cookbooks, instead she picked up a tattered romance apparently left by previous renters. The virile male hero was standing on a grassy hill, a woman in a lavender dress on her knees before him. Her hands were on his thigh, his waist, her whole body longing toward him as he bent over her, his hand cupping her face. She had his total attention, his posture suggesting he was going to take her over in a devouring kiss.
The picture brought back the arousal spiked by Niall’s skillful touch, but she knew how to suppress arousal not commanded by her Master. She did.
Stephen hadn’t been interested in driving his servants’ pleasure into extreme realms where they lost complete control. In fact, he didn’t seem very interested in her responses. If it wasn’t for political purpose and show, he’d rather her pleasure him. Often he left her wanting, with no permission to take care of herself, an indifferent sadism. So she dealt with it, without dealing with it. She’d channeled the energy elsewhere.
Thirteen years of such control and discipline, yet earlier she’d nearly caressed her breasts without thought.
Had Niall set her aside because of what Evan had suggested, their desire that she want what they were doing for herself as much as for her service for them? It was an alien idea to her. The tight frustration in her lower belly became a tiny ripple of rebellion. If they wouldn’t give her any direction, and she wanted to pleasure herself, that was a desire, right?
She waited for Evan to correct her, then was ashamed of herself. He was trying to sleep, had risked himself to honor his charge to Lady Lyssa to protect her. She puzzled over his weakness above ground, out of proportion for his age. She might ask Niall about it.
Nowhere else to go with that, so her mind boomeranged back to her body’s humming needs. Bringing herself to climax would definitely disturb Evan’s rest. But if she disturbed his sleep often enough, maybe he’d learn to give her a to-do list.
It was a nasty idea, one that appalled her. Her thoughts were like children pinned up in a schoolroom too long, their energy and wildness out of control.
Shoving it all out of her head, she slipped off her shoes, plunked down on the couch, curling her feet beneath her. She’d set the romance on top of the plant book. Considering both, she lifted the romance novel. Well, she wanted to give the story a try. There. She was acting on one of her own wishes, small though it was. Hooray for free will, something she’d never desired but Evan seemed to be forcing upon her.
Damn it. She closed her eyes. She’d kneel on rice for an hour for that one, but Niall had made it clear Evan had to order any punishment.
Just stop thinking and read. She opened the book.
In her current state of mind, she wasn’t expecting much, but after struggling through a chapter or two, she found her focus. The characters were engaging, the historical setting well drawn. As the chapters progressed, she was absorbed more deeply into their romance . . . as well as the overload of sexual tension between them.
She was a swift reader, but on certain passages, she slowed down. A lot. Her mind started returning to the moment Evan and Niall had trapped her against the ladder to give her that first mark, two sets of male hands on her. Niall, fondling her breasts as they lay on the ground together, the wind rippling her hair across his forearm.
She stroked her cheek, her chin, down her throat, like this hero was doing to the heroine. Like Evan had done to her before he gave her that mark. Stephen rarely touched her face or neck, and now she did it again, feeling with some amazement how it roused nerve endings far below the range of that touch. The intensity of Evan’s gaze had captivated her, the way he watched her every reaction like it mattered. Mattered for reasons that had nothing to do with how other vampires perceived his power over her.
Sliding her hand down to her breast, she curved her fingers around it. That bare contact brought the nipple to an aching fullness, enhanced as she thought of Niall suckling it with the strong, heated pull of his mouth. Evan, holding her arms, biting into her throat as her hips rose in a plea to be filled by them both, shameless begging.
She’d been taught to masturbate to prepare her body for penetration if the vampire had no desire to arouse her himself. She’d also learned how to do it for the viewing pleasure of others. This was more than that, a desire to make Evan and Niall hard, to please them, to please herself, but not in a way that felt self-serving. It was something she’d never considered, let alone experienced. Yet it felt so familiar.
Even though she knew she should put the book away, she turned back to it. She wanted to finish it.
Whenever you think “I want,” immediately do something else.
The number one InhServ rule snapped into her head so fast, it was as if the training Mistress was right in front of her. The book fell onto the floor, facedown, crumpling the pages. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath to steady herself, she bent, retrieved it. Smoothing the paper, she mulled it over for several moments. She needed to follow the rules she’d followed all her life. Faced with a path back to them or toward uncertainty, the right choice was obvious. The rules couldn’t be wrong.
Rising, she replaced the novel on the shelf. She stood there for a while, though, her fingers on the spine, thinking of that picture on the front. The heroine on her knees, the hero bent over her. She could imagine his hand sliding down from her face to collar her, hold her still as he sipped from her mouth, teased her tongue, bade her to be so still. Every nerve ending focused on what he was doing to her. Overwhelming her so it felt like he held her heart in his hand.
Backing away from the bookshelf, she forced herself to return to the chair and sit down. Feet flat on the floor, back straight, buttocks on the edge. Since her Master had no tasks for her to perform, and she couldn’t meditate, then she’d simply sit here, waiting as if commanded to do so. Like at a vampire dinner, where she’d stood behind Stephen’s chair, motionless for hours until called to perform for the entertainment of his guests.
As a result of that thought, an even better idea struck her. She rose and went to the kitchen. Positioning herself on the wall behind the chair where Niall had sat, she assumed that silent, waiting posture. To help her remain still, she imagined she was back in Berlin, in the opulent dining room with two dozen place settings and chandelier lights. The room full of Council members and their servants, ready to do and be whatever their Masters desired.
When Niall returned several hours later, she was still standing there. She’d left the door open to allow fresh air in the cabin, and the sounds of the mountain—birds, bugs, the wind—had been a quiet symphony playing in the white noise of her head. They couldn’t suppress the anxious tendrils of feeling, but they’d helped her manage them. Even so, she felt an almost dizzying flood of relief when the screen door creaked.
Taking a step away from the wall, she found her joints were stiff. As a third mark, she hadn’t had that issue with prolonged periods of immobility. In the future, she would stretch every once in a while to maintain flexibility.
Niall looked at her as he entered, then his gaze covered the rest of the cabin. His expression suggested he’d expected to see evidence of something that wasn’t there. She suppressed the desire to ask him what.
“I cut up some of the meat for sandwiches. Would you like me to make you one?”
“Ye can make me two or three. I’ve covered twenty miles of this bloody mountain. A couple beers would be bonny as well.”
The band around her chest loosened, telling her how much she’d dreaded the crushing weight of his refusal to let her do anything for him. As he put away the items he’d taken with him, she moved to put together his dinner.
By the time she had the plate ready, he was at the table with two large plastic cases he’d brought from the back bedroom. As she put his meal in front of him with the cold beer, he nodded toward the containers. “Evan keeps a lot o’ slides, but these are a shambles. He wants them organized into some useful system.”
“I’d be happy to do that.” In fact, she would be delighted to seize them and get working on them immediately, but instead Niall gestured to the kitchen.
“You look peely-wally, lass. Make yourself a sandwich as well and come eat with me. In the chair next to me,” he added. “Nice as ye feel on my lap, I’m sweaty as a winded horse. I’ll shower off outside after something’s between my gut and backbone.”
He was right. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast. After preparing a sandwich, she came and sat next to him as ordered. The kitchen table wasn’t large, and his legs were long. When she would have eaten sideways in her chair, so as not to encroach on his space, he grunted and reached beneath the table. Curving his fingers around her nearer thigh, he directed her to put her feet on his boot. She was barefoot, so her toes curled into the animal hide and laces. In that state of casual intimacy, they ate their lunch.
Mindful of Evan’s order to treat Niall as she treated him, she wouldn’t speak until Niall asked her to do so, but she wished he would talk. She’d been in her head for too long. No matter how much she tried to keep clear of it, Stephen’s torment, how much her life had altered, the fact that she could die at any moment . . . they closed in on her when things became too silent, too still.
“Tell me about your first kiss.”
She looked up, startled. The Scot’s brown eyes twinkled at her. “Was he a scrawny seven-year-old, besotted with your red hair?”
“Would you tell me about the first time Master kissed you?”
Niall looked surprised by the question, and she was surprised she’d asked it. But she was thinking about the book she’d been reading, the way the heroine had yearned for that very first kiss. Alanna had been kissed by servants when they were entertaining vampires, but it was usually a perfunctory stop before their mouths were put to good use elsewhere. In the romance, that amazing first kiss had taken two and a half pages to write. And it was only the first of many kisses the hero had given the heroine.
“No,” Niall said. “But I’ll tell you about my first kiss. If ye tell me yours.”
He gave her one of his wicked looks, but she thought it was a distraction. Why wouldn’t he want to talk about the first time Evan had kissed him? Surely almost dying on the battlefield would have been a more painful memory, yet he’d told her about that. “Will you at least tell me when he first kissed you?”
He gave her an exaggerated sigh, a mock frown. “Women. About two decades or so after we met.”
She blinked, not sure if he was serious, but it appeared he was. It also appeared he was waiting for her answer.
“My first kiss, outside of training practice, came from Lord Stephen.”
“Oh.” She’d given him a handful of thick, kettle-cooked potato chips, and he pushed several onto her plate. “You practiced kissing in training?”
“Yes. Though I came to Stephen pure, we were required to have extensive training in sexual practices.”
“So did you kiss a lot of other girls in training? Or only lads?”
“Both.” She arched a brow. “Would you rather hear about my experiences kissing the other girls?”
“As often and in as great detail as ye wish,” he assured her.
She bit back a smile, shook her head. “You said you’d tell me about your first kiss.”
“Eat those potato chips first.”
She gave him a look. “You’re just trying to make me softer.”
“You’ve not eaten since I left.” Picking up another chip from his plate, he extended it. “Open up.”
When she did, he brushed his fingers along her lips, making her think about tasting the salt and grease on his lips with her own.
“A bonny lass named Ainsley,” he said. “She was eleven and I was twelve, fancying myself quite a man. Until she had me behind her croft. When she put her wee hands on my shoulders and pressed her lips against mine, I near fainted. I lost my balance, grabbed her waist, and toppled us both in the mud, which is where her two older brothers found us. They thrashed me within an inch o’ my life and sent me home with my tail between my legs. But Ainsley smiled at me behind their backs. She always kept a sweet spot for me, since I was her first kiss as well.”
She looked down, hiding her smile again. “I can’t imagine anyone thrashing you.”
“Well, I was scrawny as Evan then. Hadn’t hit my growth spurt.”
“Do you remember it so vividly? The things that happened long ago?”
“Aye. Of late.” Her head rose at the briefness of the answer. He was staring into space. “It’s odd, how that goes. The far past becomes more vivid, whereas the recent things become less remarkable, no matter how remarkable they truly were. Until Evan, I had little knowledge of anything beyond my own small world, but reading about the history you’ve lived, a lot of it is pure bollocks. Kings and politics. The things a man truly remembers and history forgets are home and family. That first kiss.” A faint smile touched his lips.
When he was done with his meal, Niall went to wash off with the outside spigot while Alanna considered the task he’d left her. She intended to attack the slides right after doing the dishes, but the spigot was outside the window, the distraction of it slowing her task at the sink. Niall had stripped off his shirt to splash water along his chest. He dunked his head in a bucket, straightening to toss his hair out of his eyes, smooth it back with his hands. Realizing he hadn’t taken a towel, she went back to his bedroom and found one. When she came outside with it, he met her at the door.
“You’re a handy thing to have around,” he admitted. “Or were ye just worrit I’d drip on the floor looking for one?”
As he flashed a grin at her, he took the towel and stepped back in the yard. When he covered his head with it, vigorously rubbing, she was caught by the beautiful play of muscle on his upper body. She wanted to reach out, touch, so instead she hurried back inside. How many times today was she going to be reminded how her control was slipping, how low she was sinking in the InhServ standards? Perhaps Stephen was just the catalyst for a weakness that had been there all along.
The rest of the day, she worked on the slides. Niall stacked wood, repaired a few other things around the house, settled in to read newspapers he’d bought from Henry. When the trapdoor opened right after sunset, Alanna felt a loosening in her chest, anticipation at seeing their Master.
As she turned toward the vampire, there was no sign of the earlier lethargy. In fact, he had a rather determined spark in his eye, a set to his jaw that Alanna wasn’t sure how to interpret. Niall rose, so she looked to him for cues, but he had an inscrutable expression, giving her nothing.
“Good evening, Master. Can I—”
She bit back a startled noise as Evan caught her chin, jerking it up so that he brought her to her feet. “Alanna, what did I expressly tell you not to do?”
“Not to . . . devalue myself.”
“What have you done today, except find yourself lacking?”
Her flesh warmed under his hand. “I apologize, Master. I will do better.”
“Yes, you will. A punishment will help your memory. Niall?”
Evan didn’t even glance at his servant. He strode past Niall and picked up the canvas, easel and paint supplies the Scot had set by the door. As he left the cabin, Alanna looked toward Niall, who was considering Evan’s back, but then he moved across the cabin, gripped her wrist.
“Come with me, lass. Best get it over with.”
Niall swung her up on his shoulder, clamping a hand on her backside as he moved toward the door with strides as purposeful as Evan’s. “I can walk,” she protested. “I don’t plan on avoiding punishment, Niall.”
“Better if ye dinnae see this one coming.”
He crossed the front yard. She had a brief glimpse of Evan, setting up his canvas, his back to them both. What did he want Niall to do—
A moment later she was airborne. Though she managed not to shriek during that part, it was impossible not to do it when she landed with a resounding splash in the creek. A frigid mountain creek that drove the breath from her like a thousand daggers through the flesh, especially since she dropped below the waterline like a cannonball before she floundered up, gasping.
“Over here, lass. I’ll give ye a hand out.”
She paddled that way, the chill making it hard to coordinate her movements. She was desperately glad for the warmth of his hand, wished she could curl up inside it. Her hair was dripping, clothes clinging to her in a most unpleasant manner.
“You’re lucky it’s a first offense,” Niall observed. “For a second or third, he’ll make ye stay in there for about fifteen minutes. Turns your balls blue.”
He hauled her out. Once he had her on her feet, he kept her wrist manacled in his, and guided her back up the hill. Evan was at the picnic table, sketchbook before him. Because she was so disoriented, Niall put out a hand to make her stop a few feet away, so she wouldn’t drip on it.
“I’m s-sorry, M-master. What more can I d-do t-to p-p-please you?”
“Nothing.” His tone was indifferent, almost bored. “I require nothing from someone like you.”