Taken by a Vampire (Vampire Queen) - By Joey W. Hill Page 0,43

one of those breaks, after all,” Niall commented.

“You had it coming.”

“That’s what all the wife-beaters say.”

She drew in a breath as Evan, ignoring him, bent to kiss her throat, nudging past the braid. His tongue traced her major artery as her blood pressure ramped up. Her fingers tightened on the brush. “All the lines around his eyes would be gone,” Evan continued, breath heated on her skin. “You’d leave or create ones that make him look serene and wise, handsome. We do the best with what we’ve been given, and the good thing about painting is you can take artistic license.”

She steadied, pulled from the storm by the calm, matter-of-fact explanation. When her gaze went back to Niall, the Scot crossed his eyes.

Her lips twitched. He saw it, his own curving, eyes warming to enhance all that character in his face. It told her everything was okay. She was allowed to feel whatever she was feeling.

She couldn’t trust such an unlikely message. The very fact the thought had crossed her mind was enough to knock the floor out of her world. Her feelings weren’t safe at all. That’s how she’d arrived at this point, wasn’t it?

“I don’t want to ruin what you’ve already started.” She recognized the desperate tone in her voice, struggled to dispel it.

“It’s just a practice canvas. Here, look.” Evan took the brush, made a smiley face in one corner, then turned it into a vampire cartoon face with slashed downward eyebrows and two points jutting from the curved mouth for fangs. Paint whatever you like. It doesn’t have to be Niall.

Shifting away from her, Evan picked up his other in-process canvas and started to work on it on the other easel, leaving her to her own devices. In the meantime, Niall sat up. Taking out a whittling knife, he began to shape a fallen branch. She blanched, realizing he was sharpening it into a wooden stake. As always, Evan seemed unconcerned. They really were an odd pair.

Testing the brush’s movement, she executed a smooth glide along the side of the canvas, below the smiley face. Evan had offered a second palette and a selection of tubed colors. She mixed some muted earth tones, experimented to come up with crimson and different shades of blue. Using a toothpick-sized brush, she dotted dark blue in the depths of the brown eyes Evan had created for Niall. Using her fingers and earth tones, she sketched out Niall’s reclining body, giving more definition to the braced arms, the long thighs.

Though he wore a T-shirt, she left that out, intrigued by the body beneath it that she’d not yet seen. If Evan had done a quick rendering of the body as he had the face, he would have known by touch and instinct how the broad back and shoulders curved, how the line of thigh connected to hip and buttock. But she could explore, based on her own eyesight, her own instincts, remembering the press of Niall’s body behind hers during the second marking.

She filled in a brown-tinted flesh tone, making him darker than he was, but scratching across it with nails and toothpick to create different textures, an abstract interpretation. When Evan touched Niall, did he imagine the smooth curves and ridges of muscles in paint?

She gave him longer hair, dark strands tangling down his back. She imagined him in kilt and hunting gear, traversing the craggy terrain of Scotland. He’d have scars from before he was a servant, but they might be faded by now.

Vampires might talk about things that had happened to them five hundred years ago, but an amenable servant would answer questions about that time period, providing fascinating specifics. She recalled making breakfast for a visiting Random one morning and learning about his life with his Mistress in Russia prior to the Bolshevik Revolution. Another time, she’d had the opportunity to talk to one who’d been in the industrial North with her Master during the American Civil War. Those discussions were a chance most human historians, unaware of vampires or their servants, would sell their souls to get.

As educated as many vampires were, most didn’t pursue scholarly endeavors. For example, Lord Brian’s scientific efforts had only been lauded in recent decades by the Vampire Council. As such, vampires didn’t maintain detailed histories. Was it because immortals didn’t feel the need to leave a record when they might be around forever, or at least far beyond when such a thing would matter to them?

Since Stephen had had