to take a political stand in a very political time, people respected him. In short, he had stature, despite the meanness of his lot. It told me a great deal about him.”
“I think you don’t want to let him go now, any more than you did then. I think you love him, too, Master.”
She stiffened, appalled at herself. Lulled by Evan’s images and story, she hadn’t thought to censor her tongue. Vampires didn’t love their servants. They might value them, have affection for them, but love was never a possibility. Servants might whisper about it, crave the impossible dream, but it was dismissed as a fanciful side effect of giving one’s heart fully to a Master or Mistress. In the vampire world, such an unlikely love would be condemned. If the vampire was female, it could even endanger her life and freedom. Lady Lyssa was the only exception, and that exception existed only because she was at the top of their food chain. The queen was likely keenly aware of that.
Love for a vampire, if it existed, was always one-sided. All servants accepted that truth, because if there was any one thing forbidden in the vampire world, it was a vampire being in love with a servant.
“My apologies, Master. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Evan merely tightened his arms around her, dropped a kiss on her head. “Go to him. He’s probably eating something out of a can with a spoon, looking pitiful.”
She smiled against him, relieved. “Should I make something for you?”
“No. I’ve fed well from your lovely throat. I’m going to spend some time on my own tonight, up in the mountains.” Lifting her off him, he rose to his feet, but recaptured her attention with a firm hand on her chin. “But after you feed him, I expect you in that chair, as I ordered. I’ll let you know when you can get up. I don’t want you to forget the lesson you learned tonight.”
“Yes, sir.” She never would, but she’d do anything he asked of her.
Giving her a searching look, he ran his hands down over her hips, dropping one last kiss on her shoulder, a prick of fang against her throat. Despite the protection of his second mark and her attempt to mask it, she had started to shiver from the cold night air. Removing his own shirt, he slid it over her shoulders, buttoned a couple of buttons down the front, then teased the cleft between her breasts with a brush of his knuckle. “You’re lucky it’s not summer. I would have made you sit out here and let the mosquitoes and gnats chew on your pretty pale flesh. It’s not a good place to be bare-arsed, as Niall might say. Keep that in mind.”
Then he was gone, leaving her standing alone in the night. Yet she wasn’t alone. She felt a thread, a connection between the vampire artist traveling through the night with his own thoughts, and the servant brooding inside the cabin. Even after three centuries together, there was obviously a final step to be made between them. That they were bound to each other was beyond question; one responded to the movements of the other like a mirror image. Recalling their sensual expertise was knee-weakening vivid proof of it. They were brothers-in-arms, but also adversaries. Would they reconcile it before Niall was gone forever?
Death was a part of life. Every living being knew that, even vampires. Most didn’t live to the great age of Lady Lyssa, who was reputedly over a thousand. Various factors could bring their lives to an end, though at an age much greater than humans. Despite Niall’s three centuries of life, the thought of his death made her throat ache. As the warm light of the kitchen spilled out into the yard, she compared the strong, powerfully built male against the thin, fierce fighter Evan had shown her in his mind.
We all grow up, sister, but few of us learn to be adults. Not until we know what love truly means. Duty and honor are part of it, but when duty and honor transcend, become devotion and unconditional commitment, it is an entirely different realm of possibilities.
Adam had told her that, in a letter he wrote to her. A letter she now wished she’d kept, though that line had stayed in her head.
Since her betrayal of Stephen, she wasn’t sure who or what she was from day to day. But tonight, thinking how she’d lost herself in Evan