She arched up to him, her fingers clutching hard, a cry breaking from her throat. He cupped her skull, held her there, fought his own reaction. He should have expected it, for something primal tended to rise in a vampire when he claimed a human fully, but the strong surge of desire to possess startled him. Sliding his other arm behind her, he supported her waist, holding her to him as the serum raced through her bloodstream. He licked at her throat, closing the wound, letting it do what it was supposed to do. It wrenched him, the pain it caused, for she was crying, tears bathing the side of his face. While he continued to whisper to her in her mind, he kept his face pressed against her temple, for he couldn’t bear to watch this woman suffer. It brought one particular woman’s suffering back to him, as if it had happened yesterday.

I am here. It will pass, and all will be well. Hold on, habiba , hold on. I will not let darkness take you. You are safe, now and always.

Drawing a knife from his belt, still holding her, he nicked his artery and gently brought his wrist to her mouth, brushing her lips.

Thank Allah her delirium let her respond on instinct, else he expected he would have had to force it down her throat.

Her esophagus worked, and when the blood pattered onto her lips, she closed the gap and drank. Not in thirsty gulps, but furtive, weak swallows, as if her body were tiptoeing around like a guilty child behind a strict parent, doing something of which the mind would heartily disapprove.

Trying to ease that tension, he spoke more soothing words to her. While he did, the brittle hair beneath his palm started to become softer, shinier, curling around his fingers. Loose, dry skin firmed, getting texture and moisture, creating a tantalizing smoothness where his thumb grazed her jaw.

He watched, amazed, as his third mark moved through Jessica Tyson, recalling her from death, from Raithe’s poisonous mark.

Flaccid breasts became rounder, still small but now high and firm, with delicate pink nipples. The belly transformed from a shallow pit beneath prominent ribs into a satin slope, drawing his eyes down to an appealing bare sex, telling him she must have had the hair there lasered away before she met Raithe, for it was an alteration his mark did not affect. The veins that had stood out in gnarled knots on her hands melted back, revealing slim, capable fingers and lovely wrists.

Because she was still too gaunt, something else the third mark couldn’t remedy, he wasn’t seeing the full force of the beauty displayed in her picture. But the potential was there, waiting to be nourished to full bloom again. Her dove-wing eyes had ebony lashes that fanned the slash of her cheekbones. Her touchable pink mouth drew a vampire’s gaze to the graceful throat.

As delicate as she looked, she’d killed a vampire, fought through sickness and lived the life of a fugitive to come and die here. He’d made the same mistake with Farida, assuming she was fragile. She’d even teased him about his protectiveness.

Then, such tender games over forever, she’d ridden into the camp that day, her back straight and chin up, surely knowing what awaited her. But by Allah, she wasn’t going to be without him, no matter who tried to tear them apart. He’d met few with that kind of courage, men or women. Ruefully, he acknowledged it hadn’t made him less protective. If anything, it had reminded him, painfully, of the frailty of her mortal life.

Something about the information he’d received on Raithe and Jessica Tyson had bothered him, and the puzzle returned now, as he looked at her. Yes, she had some extraordinary qualities, but determination and a fierce resistance were typically not assets in a servant. So why had Raithe wanted her, badly enough to take her by force? Raithe had kept six second-marks in his household, all beautiful women, all willing.

As Jessica reached the proper dosage of blood, the power of the binding that came with the third mark rushed through him. It shimmered in his blood, caused an acceleration of his vital organs as they accommodated the meshing of souls. He closed his eyes, his hand sliding down to rest on the sweet curve between shoulder and neck, his thumb teasing the base of her throat, an instinctive proprietary response. The third mark would put her under his protection for the duration of her life.

Surprised at his strong reaction to the thought, struggling through the physical transition, he reminded himself she was going to present quite a challenge, what with the whole vampire world looking to kill her. But once he got that resolved, he would figure out a way to set her up in a situation where she could reclaim as much of the life she’d wanted for herself as possible. He didn’t intend to keep her, after all.

He had a pair of third-marked servants who served him well. They were husband and wife, so they fulfilled each other, while his emotions were kept out of the equation. That was best, when it came to humans. If no other lesson had proven that to him, Farida’s death had. He owed it to her, to honor her that way.

But those rational thoughts faltered when the third mark appeared, high on her inner thigh. After a third mark completed, there was always a visible reflection of it on the servant’s body, something that looked like a cross between a scar and a tattoo. It was a mystical thing, for the vampire had no control over it. To date, none of them knew why it occurred. The husband and wife’s marks had been a pair of mated wolves, appropriate to their relationship with their Master.

But Jessica’s gave Mason pause, for it was a silhouette he knew far too well. It was a small replica of the decorative scarring that had been carved into his back, using his own blood, centuries ago. The mythical desert tiger. Only one servant had ever carried it for him. Farida, in exactly the same place.

He almost dropped her, recalling himself just in time to keep holding her. He supposed, as old as he was, perhaps the marks recycled themselves. He was not given to mystical fancy, and he was not going to imagine that the woman he’d lost three hundred years ago was sending him a message through this woman’s flesh.

Fortunately, when he shifted Jess, something else caught his attention. Frowning, he drew her up to his chest, leaning her against his shoulder to see what his hand had touched on her back.

His mark would take away the sickness that Raithe’s death had inflicted on her, and the gunshot damage. Wounds on a third-marked servant disappeared within days, hours or minutes, depending on the age of the servant, the severity of the wound and if the blood of the Master was available to the servant. A servant would heal from most everything except a heart staking with metal. But a third-marked servant would scar, if the wound was touched with the Master’s own blood. Some vampires branded their servants, holding the brand with that blood. He knew Lady Lyssa had done that to Jacob, just above his hip bone.

What he was looking at took him a moment to digest, and then when he did, Jess stirred restlessly in his arms, probably feeling the wave of fury from him, even in her deep, unconscious state. Eleven scars, running from her shoulders to the rise of her buttocks, like the evenly spaced bars of a prison. Raithe had skinned her, and marked each strip with his blood to hold them there.

The number of scars broke something else loose in his memory. The background data on her said she’d run away from Raithe, unsuccessfully, eleven times. She stirred again, emitting a cry, and jerked. “Enough, habiba,” he said, firm but gentle, and she settled.

Immediately. Her body became almost pliant. On top of the shock of the tiger mark, and the scars, something else clicked into place. He rolled the lingering taste of her blood in his mouth, thought about her attachment to Farida’s memories. Her delusional mur murings. The way a woman wants to be possessed.

Oh, Allah. What if she’d been a natural submissive, but innocent to it when Raithe took her, the bastard? It was the kind of virgin that was almost irresistible to a vampire, a woman who intuitively sought to serve a man’s love with her own, willing to trust the touch of the right Master. Seeing the abrupt, relaxed ease of her face, the idea even stirred his imaginings. He could see her sweetly on her knees, her total surrender tempting a male to never let her out of his sight.

It would explain why Raithe had to have her, though a wiser vampire would have exercised impulse control. Son of a bitch.

Whether true or not, Mason wished he could reach through the veil of death, jerk Raithe through it and devise ways to make him scream.

Ah, hell. He needed to learn to control his emotions. “Easy,” he whispered as she made a fearful whimper in her oblivion. He adjusted her, cradling her in his lap as she slept on. The press of her soft backside against his thighs hardened his restive cock, awakened by his unbidden thoughts. Good thing she wasn’t awake.

If it was true, it was useful only as a key to getting her back on her feet again. If it wasn’t true, it was all the same to him. The point was to help her.

He turned his mind to more practical matters. Usually a third mark invigorated a servant, but he expected she would be in restorative sleep for the next day or so as her body readjusted. He was glad for it, because it would give him time to get her away from here.

He would take her to his home in South America, a place where he would be better equipped to deal with her. Regardless of her sexual nature, when she woke and discovered she’d killed one Master only to be bound by another, her reaction was likely to be far from sweet or submissive.

7

FOR so many months, Jess had fought her way out of sleep. When it took her down, it tried to keep her there, help her follow the natural order and slip into the waiting hands of Death. Though she recognized it as the one friend she had, she treated it as an enemy. She’d fall into the arms of forever slumber as soon as she slept by Farida’s tomb.

Now, though, something was different. She was floating out of sleep, light, easy, becoming aware of sunlight on her face, a warmth that made her press her lips together as if holding the heat of a lover’s mouth there. As she turned over on the soft mattress, her flexible limbs held her weight, shifted her, twined around pillows without protest. Her palm flattened, fingers spreading out.

No pain. She didn’t hurt anywhere. She could be dead. Or it could all have been a dream. A horrible, horrible nightmare, and she’d open her eyes and be in her one-bedroom flat in Rome. On her way to the bathroom, she’d stumble over one of the stacks of books she kept piled up around her bed, watched by the mysterious yellow eyes of the many stray cats that she fed. They tended to wander in through open windows to perch themselves on the larger, heavier reference materials. She’d pull on her running clothes and head out for a quick five miles before getting ready for her workday at the university, dreaming of the day when she would go with the professors on the digs.