Beloved Vampire (68 page)

“You know it’s different, Lyssa. How can she ever be safe in this world, with her past?”

“Because you will be her Master.”

“I was Farida’s Master.”

“And there, at last, is the crux of it.” Lyssa rose then, moving to the window to face him. “You think I don’t wake from nightmares, trembling in fear for what could happen to Kane? You think I don’t know how my many enemies would love to get their hands on him?”

Mason immediately straightened, a dangerous scowl on his face. “Let them try. Whoever you and Jacob don’t tear from limb to limb, I would finish off.”

“Exactly. You are willing to fight for my son’s right to live safely, embracing his full potential. Why are you not willing to fight for your right to Jessica? We are different from humans, Mason. When we possess a servant, truly, rightly,
not
like Raithe, we know, deep down, they belong to us.”

Her eyes glowed with sudden fierceness. “A vampire and servant’s relationship is never going to be on the same footing as two humans or two vampires. It is different, because the species are different. But in certain circumstances, those differences mesh in an undeniable way. There are plenty of servant relationships like yours with Amara and Enrique. Love, pleasure, service. Appropriate, clearly defined. An accepted sense of place. But there are some, like yours and Jessica’s, that go beyond that. It is the unspoken thing all of us know.

“Think of it this way as well. If you let her go as a purportedly selfless act, then you are denying not only yourself.” She nodded toward the gardens. “That woman survived the unthinkable with indomitable courage, an unmatched will to live. I suspect she is prepared to love the man who wins her heart just as courageously.” Her eyes softened on him, her hand going to his face. “Honor that courage.”

“But what if she chooses me, and regrets it?”

Lyssa stroked a finger down his jawline, then scraped him, none too gently, with one of her sharp nails, earning a narrow look from him. “Make sure she doesn’t have a reason to regret it. Idiot.”

Brushing a brief kiss over his mouth, she nodded to him, once, and then left him alone. Mason watched her go, nonplussed, then looked out the window again. The garden was empty. Searching his mind, he found her location, but even as he did, her mind reached for his.

My lord, I need you. Please come to me?

052

She was in his upper-level study. Interestingly, she was engaged in mundane work, stacking up some of his scattered files, setting them on the credenza, arranging a tiny spray of new Fey-conjured flowers beside his pen set. “You know, if you’d keep these things in some kind of order, you’d actually know what bills need to be paid.”

“I have my own system,” he defended, caught off guard when she glanced up with a soft smile. His throat thickened with an ache he couldn’t swallow.

“You, my lord, have no system at all. When it comes to paperwork, you are a master of chaos.”

He wanted to kiss that smile, but instead he moved into the room, taking a seat behind the desk. Purposefully, he kept himself out of her mind now. He knew her request wasn’t idle, as much as he realized with dread why she’d called him. “You’ve made your decision.”

“I have, my lord. I’m waiting for yours.”

Brow furrowing, he studied her. “I don’t understand your meaning.”

“What do
you
want, my lord? You’ve barely spoken to me, barely touched my mind since Trenton nearly killed us both.” She drew a breath. “And I find I need the intimate touch of your thoughts in my mind, even more than I need your hands on my body.

Though I would prefer both,” she added crossly.

Her words stirred him on every level, but he struggled to hold the reins. “A servant can’t make demands on her Master, Jessica.

You know that. There are times a servant cannot know her Master’s mind. That’s the way of it.” He would not cave. He wouldn’t try to coax or cajole, seduce or romance. Even though he knew how to make her knees weak, her heart pound. Knew what romantic gestures would soften her.

Damn it, she’d made her decision. As a matter of honor, he wouldn’t sway it.

“I see.” She pursed her lips, nodded and moved to the French doors. Pushing them open to get the night breeze, she drew in a deep, steadying breath. “You, my lord, are being . . .” Her voice drifted off, as if she were seeking the right words. Spreading her fingers, she laid them on the side table, on top of a bronze horse.

The rush of her temper was a blast of heat that alerted him. He leaped into her mind in instinctive self-preservation as she picked up the sculpture and hurled it at his head with all the strength her muscles possessed. Since she was a third-mark, that meant she could put it through the wall. Or his skull.

He caught it in time to keep it from breaking, only to discover that had simply been a ruse, as she launched a much more replaceable but still rather costly vase on the same path. Despite his speed, he barely ducked it, and it hit the wall with a resounding shatter.

She was going for a torpedo sequence now, with pillar candles snatched out of the candelabra on the wall. He wouldn’t put it past her to rip the metal holder from the wall and try to pin him to the wall with the five sharp prongs. Fortunately, by that time, he’d put down the horse and flashed across the room, seizing her by the waist. Pinning her up against the wall with himself, he was immediately conquered by the lean strength and soft curves, the immediacy of her perfume, the softness of her snarling lips.

She bit him. He slammed her wrists to the wall on either side as he kept kissing her, forcing his way into her mouth until she yielded with a soft sigh, coiling her legs around him.

Jessica felt his desire surge over hers, like a dam swollen by storm, cooling the burning ache of her fears. She strained against him, rubbing his body in blatant invitation, but she wasn’t yet forgiven, her mouth still being plundered, her Master seeking her surrender.

Promise me forever, my lord, and I will be yours. I
am
yours.

He broke away then, pressing his forehead on hers. “Jessica, damn it, this isn’t the life you want. It doesn’t matter . . . I
want
you to feel the way you feel about me, but it serves no purpose. I want you,” he repeated and closed his eyes, unable to bear looking into her gray eyes, see what he couldn’t have. “If that is the torture you have devised for me to be left with, I accept it. I’ve never wanted anything more.”

She slid one hand free, threaded it through his hair, cupped the back of his skull, her thumb teasing the artery in his neck. “My lord, you didn’t admire the flowers I brought for your desk.”

Mason shook his head. “They’re lovely. But—”

Jessica snapped her teeth perilously close to his ear and he jerked back.
Look at them
.

Mason, impatient, shot a look across the room, then took another, closer look.

“I made my decision, my lord. That is my answer.”

She’d taken the rack of three vials containing the bright green liquid of Brian’s serum and poured it out. Filled them with clear water instead, to hydrate the flowers she’d cut from Lyssa’s garden.

Slowly, he let her down. Her hand stayed on his arm, though, as he turned in that direction. Jessica watched his usually so unreadable face. The emotions struggling there were so harsh, her heart ached. She’d thought he’d closed himself off to her, but she realized now it was only to shield her from the turmoil that was going on in his own mind, trying not to sway her decision. In this unguarded moment, all she had to do was look at his face to know the deepest shadows of his mind.

But perhaps she’d known them all along. The heart’s blood with which he’d nourished her, demanding that both live or neither, had fused them even more closely together. The possible need to separate herself from his world was nothing next to the pain of leaving him alone. Of hurting him. It was something she couldn’t bear, even if staying at his side was ultimately what destroyed her. Until it did, it would also be her salvation.

He turned toward her then, and she saw he heard her thoughts. She could also tell he was trying to determine if he could honorably accept her decision. Her old-fashioned vampire. Tears threatened, but for the first time in a long time, they were the good kind.

“You’ve shushed me for the past few days,” she said quietly. “But hear my words now, my lord. Please.”

When at last he nodded, she moved into him, folded her hands on his chest. A faint tremor ran through his body, and she saw his hands close into fists as he struggled not to touch her. She raised her attention to his face. “I fought for so long, Mason, so hard. At a certain point, I knew it was hopeless. Training myself to fight, continuing to resist him, it all meant nothing. I gave up on God then, because Raithe even took away the choice of death.

“But I kept resisting, because it became about me, who I am. So after he was gone, there was this void of nothingness. I’d made it all about that fight, and I’d cannibalized every last bit of myself to keep one last spark. But you . . . you stepped into that void.

Maybe in some perfect world, or according to nine out of ten therapists”—a soft smile touched her face—“it would make sense for me to go out into the big wide world and reclaim myself. But I’m not that Jessica anymore. She’s gone. And despite all these horrible things that happened to me, I look at you, and I don’t regret what I endured. Nothing but Jack. It’s in the past.”

She held his gaze, let him see it, go as deep as he wished to be sure. “I don’t need to reclaim the Jessica I was, because the Jessica I am now wants you. And she worked too hard, fought too long, sacrificed too much of herself, for me to deny her that prize because of regrets and wishes, for what could have been.”

She drew a breath. “You told me there is a difference between forced servitude and willing submission. I willingly submit to you. I want to belong to you.”

In the fateful, weighted seconds that ticked between them then, she remembered watching him cross the courtyard to come to the study, responding to her call. Everything, from the way the light shirt blew against his body, to the stretch of his riding breeches on his thighs, and the long boots, the severe line of his aristocratic face, the perfect silk of his tied-back hair, had stirred her. But what held her mesmerized was more than the beautiful body and face.

As she’d watched him from the shield of the window’s curtain, she’d spoken the words aloud. “I’ll take care of him,” she whispered. A message to the woman who’d loved him so well, so long ago, as if they were touching hands over the centuries, a tactile oath. “I’ll make sure he has that home.”

Whether she’d been sent by Farida or it was all her own desire, it didn’t matter. A soul could be many different individuals, as she’d become many different versions of herself to be the Jessica Tyson she was now. She loved him. That love was so new, with so many things to learn and discover. There’d be so many challenges to face in their conflicting worlds, she was sure she would be afraid and anxious, often. But she’d also feel eagerness, passion and love. Those emotions would grow and deepen, and help supplant the others. The roots were already anchored.

As his handsome, beloved face continued to reflect his internal war between honor and trust, love and need, she curled her hand around his forearm and dropped to her knees, pressing her forehead against his thigh. “I am yours, my lord. Your third-marked servant, by choice and desire.”

Mason, overcome, turned his gaze away to those vials of flowers. Fey flowers, enchanted so they likely wouldn’t die, not as long as Lyssa lived. A reminder of this moment, of what Jessica had chosen for herself. For him.

He raised her to her feet, tipping up her chin with a hand that had an unmanly tremor, but seeing the love in her face, the curve of her lips, he knew she wouldn’t point it out. “I don’t know if I should accept.” He cleared his throat. “An obedient servant wouldn’t pelt her Master with expensive statuary.”

“I will stay whether or not you accept, my lord. Just to teach you that I am more stubborn than your will.” Jessica’s eyes sparkled, her lips parting as his grip on her body tightened, belying his words. “Admit it, my lord. If you made me leave, you’d end up going back to the desert to brood. And without someone to defy you, your arrogance would grow as rapidly as Lady Lyssa’s forest.”

“Hmm. I can see that I will need to spend a great deal of time training you. Perhaps even resign my advisory position on Council.”

Her eyes darkened. “When you must serve the Council, I will go with you. I belong at your side, and I’ll learn to be the servant you need.” Before he could speak, she shook her head. “I trust you to take care of me. You were right. It’s not serving your pleasure, in whatever manner you demand, that created terror inside of me. It was how Raithe twisted my desire to serve a Master. I’ll learn to trust you, my lord, if you help me.”

By Allah, what have I done to deserve her?
“Jessica.” Mason realized he was incapable of more than her name, but that encapsulated everything he was feeling. He repeated it, a murmur, and her lips parted, though her eyes remained determined, her chin firm.

“If someone like you had been on Council, maybe Raithe couldn’t have gotten away with what he did. Excesses must be controlled, my lord, and you have a fairly heavy and intimidating hand.” That sparkle again, the hint of a taunt that stirred his heart as much as his groin. Particularly when, her patience with words at an end, she slipped one hand down and boldly cupped him, teasing him, though her lashes fanned her cheeks, his sweet submissive.

“
Some
excesses must be controlled,” he amended with a wicked smile, catching her wrist and squeezing it, a sensual warning. Then he sighed. “It doesn’t matter, anyhow. As one of the conditions for your pardon, I agreed to serve as a full Council member for the next twenty-five years. If Trenton
had
managed to kill me, Belizar would have been sure I forced his hand, merely to escape the horror of it.”

Her gaze snapped up to him, face suffusing in shock. Then, her fair brow lifted, her face captured by a full, mischievous grin, more unguarded than any he’d ever seen on her face. “You should have told me that a long time ago, my lord. It would have saved me a great deal of soul-searching. How could I doubt such an enormous sacrifice? Raithe’s torments were
nothing
next to that.”