didn’t deserve his brand of justice. Was this vampire Gideon had just described someone different? Someone Daegan didn’t know about?
Gideon’s gaze was still on her. At her thoughts, something flickered in his gaze, a realization that sent a shaft of alarm through his mind. Abruptly, his brain was flooded with the tabloid images from earlier in the day, random commercials, his interest in Gulfstreams, the fact he had an itch behind his knee . . . It was so instantaneous, she knew he’d been practicing it, ways to thwart her ability to read his mind, his own version of the curtain she practiced.
Daegan had said that, once fully marked, a servant couldn’t escape a vampire, not if she was determined to plumb his mind all the way to the soul. She remembered there was a caution involved in that, one of the reasons fledgings didn’t have servants, but her instinctive reaction didn’t care for such caveats. That cold withdrawal sparked something inside her. The woman Anwyn would be nursing hurt, the Mistress some anger, but the vampire reacted in a much more aggressive way. In a heartbeat, she wanted to shove through that debris he was throwing up in front of her, toss it out of the way and rip away any shielding to find whatever it was he was hiding from her. Her blood wanted to prove he had no right to raise his voice to her, show him how vulnerable his mind was to whatever she desired to know.
The force of it frightened her, because this was no seizure, no fit of bloodlust. This was something integrating with what she was, an evolution into something else she seemed powerless to stop. Opening the car door, she shoved out of it, even though she was still in her bare feet. She strode a few feet away, blindly, trying to get a handle on the anger, find her humanity amid that demand. It was a close reflection of her own burning desire, taking her instincts as a Mistress and twisting them, tying her intestines into knots.
Bring him to his knees. Strip his mind, turn him inside out. The pulsing power in her mind told her she could unleash the power to do just that.
He’d gotten out of the car, was coming around toward her. She managed to shriek at him, although it was only in her mind.
Stay back, Gideon. Don’t. I can’t control it. I’ll hurt you. Please . . . stay away. She didn’t know exactly how; she just knew she would. Turning someone’s mind inside out sounded high on the “not good” list. So focused on the physical danger she posed toward others, they really hadn’t paid any attention to this one. But this was the first time Gideon had so decidedly defied her, shown he’d taken measures to wall her off from him, and every instinct as a predator wanted to take him down for it.
She tried to turn her focus elsewhere. When she’d been human, during a stressful day she’d do meditation exercises. Relax her muscles, one group at a time. Her mind laughed with bitter incredulity, daisies thrown on a gas fire.
She was alone on this one. Gideon could help her manage her seizures, but he couldn’t help her manage this, her vampire instincts rising against her, trying to turn her into a monster. Not when those shadow voices were controlling the trigger and aim.
But I can.
Anwyn, he’s here. Gideon’s voice was a quiet echo in her mind as she turned toward that long-awaited voice. She was aware of the tinge of regret and pain in her servant’s thought. A brief overwhelming sadness, laced with that loneliness that tore at her heart. But she couldn’t respond to it right now. That fomenting blood held her attention, making her stay locked where she was. Until a pair of familiar hands closed on her arms, drew her from her kneeling position to her feet, up against his tall, strong body.
She’d wanted this homecoming to be perfect, not flavored by this, but Daegan didn’t soothe or treat her as if she were broken. His mouth came down on hers, hot, firm and demanding, and that lethal demand pivoted away from destructive instinct, leaped for what she’d missed so intensely for nearly a month.
His scent, his strength, the feel of him. He let her hands go so she could stretch up against him, slide them through his short hair, lean full into him, enveloped by that familiar duster. The