finding the warm flow of his blood waiting, to make the marking complete.
Stephen’s third mark had almost been like a girl’s first sex—built up into so much in her mind, yet the actuality of it had been like getting off the roller coaster before the best part of the ride happened. A sense that there was much, much more, just beyond her grasp. Learning through Evan’s third mark that there was a thrilling drop and rushing ascent into a state of pure euphoria didn’t make her any less greedy for the same sensation with Niall.
She’s an insatiable lass, Evan. ’Tis a guid thing there’ll be two of us to tend to her.
Niall could follow her thoughts like Evan. The delight of it coursed through her as well. But as she swallowed the richness of his blood, she closed her eyes, felt the differences of the two males’ marks, the same intriguing contrasts she’d noted in so many other things about them. Niall, the solid earth . . . Evan, the wind swirling through the pines . . . Her, the element that connected them both.
Evan pressed against her back, hands gripping her hips. Niall’s hand slid over her buttock, gripped Evan’s fingers. The Scot’s strength steadied them all as Evan thrust, Niall pushed deeper, and she tightened on both of them, each trying to give as much as they were taking.
The climax rolled up like that roller coaster on a straight line to the sky. “Masters . . . ”she gasped, and they gave her permission in one voice.
Come for us, Alanna.
As she catapulted over that edge, she dug her fingers into Niall’s shoulders, pressed her body up into the curve of Evan’s, reveled in the way Evan locked his arm around her waist, hand cupping her breast, Niall with his hand tangled in her hair, his other hand holding onto Evan, his strength pushing Evan and himself farther into her.
She screamed, shoved into another intense orgasm, as Evan bit back into her shoulder. The flow of marks swirled through her blood like a sacred text. She reveled in the press of both fangs, their heated mouths on her flesh, the scent of blood given and taken. When both men climaxed inside her at last, she cried out her pleasure to the night, showing them her desire, her yearning, to give and give and give.
A desire that would never end.
It took them all a long while to come down. When at last they were sprawled together on the soft earth, she couldn’t imagine being more content. Evan sheltered her body, coiled around her back and hips, while she lay, exhausted, on Niall’s chest. When her fingers slipped over the dragon tattoo, she felt a little pang of sadness. It was smooth, only the tattoo there now, the chai mark gone.
’Tis in my heart, lass. It will always be there.
“Will the tattoos go away?” she asked, clearing her throat. Evan’s third mark had helped heal her vocal cords, but she was still getting accustomed to that “sultry rasp,” as Niall called it.
“Not if I mark them with his own blood. But that’s his decision,” Evan said against her hair.
Niall reached over her, gripping Evan’s thigh before his fingers slipped back to her. “Aye. I want to keep them. You have a new mark of your own, lass.”
She raised her head to look down her body. In the shade of the tree of life, a new symbol had appeared. This one she knew, and the significance of it filled her, thickened her throat. She slipped her fingers over Niall’s where he was caressing it.
“A triquetra. A Gaelic symbol for trinity,” Evan said quietly. “Very fitting.”
“Master . . . ” She smiled, glad she didn’t have to tell them which one she meant, though, since their minds were open to her at the moment, she saw the brief sorting as they figured out she was talking to Evan. He grunted in acknowledgment, giving her a light squeeze.
“I was thinking about what you said, that night in the gazebo, about your art.” She looked up at the stars, comfortably held between the two men. “About doing something because something in you says that’s how it must be done . . . a flow of pure energy.”
She lifted her head, looked down at Niall. “I didn’t know how to explain it to you, but you can see it, feel it, inside me now, can’t you?”
The Scot held her gaze. She could see a lot shifting behind his tawny eyes. He was adjusting to the increased sharpness of his senses, the shape of his blood hunger, temporarily sated. It changed him dramatically, but in another way, it didn’t change him at all. It was just another part of the same remarkable man.
In sifting through all those slides, she’d seen so many pictures of Niall, or ideas inspired by Evan’s love for him. In a sense, each slide had given her a glimpse of both men, their many different facets, their interests and needs, intertwined so closely. Niall picked up on that thought. His mouth tightened, and she slid her fingers over his lips, caressing them. She closed her eyes as Evan laid a kiss on the back of her shoulder.
From the beginning, when I thought about serving a vampire, there was this feeling that, if I did it right, I would be lost in it. Like swimming in a sea I never wanted to leave, because I would be immersed in this one true, perfect thing. But the truth, and the perfection, is that nothing is one thing.
She turned her attention to Evan now, a tilt of her head that won her an additional brush of his lips over her temple.
“You showed me that. We’re as many things as we desire to be. And I’ve never really seen myself that way. Or realized how much better a servant I could be if I embraced that.”
“Ye have a whole lifetime ahead tae be all that ye desire, a ghrá,” Niall murmured, stroking her hair back from her face.
“So do you,” she whispered. “I like that. A ghrá. What does it mean?”
“Love,” Evan said, his mouth continuing to tease her flesh. He’d pushed her hair over her shoulder, was laying more tender kisses along the exposed track, and Niall was wrapping his fingers in the loose tendrils, the two of them weaving an erotic spell around her anew.
She gave herself to it, to the pleasure of their hands wandering over her, their breath touching her skin, their love surrounding her. Before dawn, they’d head for the cottage. After that, on to Ireland and almost three hundred years of memories. She’d follow her vampires wherever they’d take her.
As a servant, she’d never wanted anything more than that.
Table of Contents
Praise for Joey W. Hill
Also by Joey W. Hill
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25