beneath the cling of her shirt. She wished he’d reach out and touch her so she could give him pleasure, comfort for whatever was bothering him this morning. What would happen if she reached out and touched him?
Control. Discipline. If she was to serve Niall as she served Evan, that meant at their pleasure, not her own. The sharpness of her own mind-voice was enough to have her withdrawing, but Niall caught her wrist. “Where’s yours?”
“I’ll eat later, after you do.” Even when she cooked for the visiting servants, she tended to stand behind the counter while they ate. An exercise to reinforce her primary directive, a different form of service.
“You’ve had no breakfast yet, have ye?” His grip on her wrist eased but stayed there, fingers straightening to caress her palm.
“No.”
“Then fix yourself a plate.”
She hesitated. When his fingers pressed firmly into her flesh, drawing her eyes back to his face, he added, “That’s what I want, lass. Come eat with me.”
He dropped his hold, letting her retreat to the counter. While she made up her plate, he turned to preparing his own, buttering his biscuit and adding salt to his bacon before tasting it, telling her the man liked copious amounts of salt. Good thing he was a third mark; otherwise, at three hundred, he’d have a blood pressure problem bad enough to make him a medical case study.
After she filled her plate, she returned. Sinking to her knees next to his chair, she balanced it, putting the glass of juice to the side. When she looked up to see if he’d begun eating so she could do the same, he was staring at her.
A flush climbed into her cheeks. “Have I done something wrong?”
“Why are you nae sitting in a chair, like yesterday?”
“Evan told me to serve you as I would him. I’d never sit in a chair next to a vampire.”
Niall took a bite of his biscuit and chewed, his attention remaining upon her. Now she wasn’t sure if she should start eating, so she waited. If she had to, she’d ask him. Because he really wasn’t a vampire Master. He just had a way of looking at her like one.
“Let me have that.” Taking her plate from her, he set it next to his, then held out his hand for the juice and utensils. When he dropped them on the table in a casual disarray that made her wince, he held his hand out for hers. As he brought her up, he scraped his chair away from the table.
“Why don’t you come sit on my lap?”
His handclasp was warm, and she thought of his body lying behind hers on the bed. Warm and safe, protective. She couldn’t understand her hesitation now, except it was new to her, having an inordinate desire to obey that seemed out of proportion with the requirement of service. It was as if Evan had merely pushed a gate wider that was already unwisely ajar.
“Do you want to sit on my lap?”
Since he wasn’t her Master, “If that’s what my Master desires” didn’t fit. And “Yes, because Master said I should do it” sounded wrong.
“Do you want me to command you to sit on my lap?” Niall asked before she could respond.
An entirely different reaction flooded into her chest. He saw it in her face, a muscle flexing in his jaw that tempted her fingertips to trace it. “That’s it, isn’t it? Whether you want it or no, an order makes it your desire as well.”
“Yes.” She was relieved he understood. “It’s how I’m trained. I have no desires until you command it.”
His brow creased. “What if Stephen commanded you to sit on his lap? I know ’twould be different, because I’m a servant, but say Evan was commanding ye to do the same thing. Would it feel different?”
She didn’t like all these questions, but it wasn’t her place to like or dislike anything, right? “Yes, there’s a difference.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask her to explain.
“Different because of how he betrayed the Council, or even before, when he was your Master? Don’t think, just answer,” he added sharply.
“It’s not the same,” she blurted out. Her fingers closed into a tight ball, her wrist still in his grasp. Since she had an alarming desire to pull away, she went rigid.
She was an intelligent woman. It was one of the reasons she was so good at being an InhServ. From the outside, it might appear as mindless obedience, but anticipating the needs