Though she tensed, prepared for attack, he ignored Jess. Lunging to the side of the tub, he lifted Amara out of the water, pushing her hair back from her face. It gave Jess a moment to study him. He was a complement to Amara’s dark beauty, of course. Black hair, though cropped short, and a fine aquiline face and green eyes. Not quite as tall or broad as Mason, but he had a lean, elegant strength, like a ballet dancer, or an expert fencer. He displayed it now as he lifted his wife in his arms and bore her out of the room without a glance in Jess’s direction.

She shivered a little from the damp cold. So what now? She hic cupped on a giggle. When there was nothing to lose, painting herself into impossible corners meant nothing. Then she glanced up, and he was standing in the doorway.

Despite the ferocity that had goaded her attack, a trickle of fear returned. Yet she forced herself to remain still while his gaze covered her, as if marking each bead of water rolling down her body, the thrust of breasts and point of sex. His look reminded her that Amara’s kiss and her own imaginings had aroused her, mixing the cool wetness on her thighs with a warm and viscous reaction.

When his eyes returned to rest on her mouth, she recalled the voice again.

Come for me, Jessica.

It had been his voice. Jesus Christ and shit.

“My intention is to have Amara tend to your needs until you are safe to release from your bonds. Bathe you, feed you, care for your more intimate requirements. You are in danger of having that option replaced by something you will like far less.” His hands on her, bathing her, feeding her. Touching her all the time, never a moment’s peace. But there was no safety, no peace.

Though her heart rate accelerated, she curled back a lip. “If you’re going to fuck with my head and my body, do your own dirty work. Wipe my ass yourself.”

Then he took a step into the room, filling it with his larger-than-life presence, his powerful body. The fury that had carried her through her attack on Amara drained away. No, it didn’t drain away. She’d just reached the bottom of the barrel and hadn’t realized it.

She’d learned to deal with Raithe, responding as he needed her to respond, holding that tiny kernel of herself somewhere else, but now that fortitude was . . . gone. Swirling away, like the water disappearing from the tub, because Enrique had opened the stopper when he recovered Amara.

She couldn’t stop herself from flinching back against the wall, though she was glad it was there, else she would have fallen on her ass with her hobbled legs. Self-loathing flooded her. As he advanced, picking up a towel, she hated the fear that made her speak.

“Please, don’t.”

“Easy, habiba. Easy.” He didn’t choose the cautious approach used on unpredictable animals, which would have made her more nervous. Instead he simply walked up to her. She couldn’t strike out at him, but as she tried to twist away, he began drying her.

Her hair, her shoulders and breasts, abdomen and stomach, down to her sex. When she made a whimper, he slid the towel in the narrow area between her legs, absorbing the moisture. His touch was familiar, recalling her imaginings when Amara was touching her.

Of course the bastard would have seen those visions, and had some way of making her feel his touch through his mind. Raithe thankfully hadn’t been able to do that. His drying rhythm slowed, became something different, the terry cloth caressing her labia, her still-sensitive clit. Her body contracted, betraying her, but it meant nothing. Vampires knew how to make this dark part of her come forward, the part that would do anything to please him. She’d have it surgically removed if she could, and since she couldn’t, all she wanted was death. Freedom from the shame of herself.

“Please don’t touch me,” she burst out. Her muscles spasmed, an involuntary resistance to the restraints. “If you mean it, about not hurting me, then don’t touch me. It’s agony.”

He paused, considering her, that large body and distracting scent so close. Inclining his head a fraction, he wrapped the towel around her, tucked it over her breasts so she was covered, though she couldn’t help how gooseflesh raised on the upper swells as his knuckles brushed her there.

“All right. Are you going to let Amara take care of you?”

She nodded, staring at his chest. Go away go away go away. Putting a fingertip under her chin, he made her lift it. “You will not try to hurt her again? Promise me this one thing, Jessica.”

She closed her eyes. “Look at me,” he commanded, with a sharpness she couldn’t refuse. She stared up into those amber depths.

He was a vampire. Vampire. Even his scent should repel her, and yet she’d relished the heat of his hands through the towel, and couldn’t take her eyes off his mouth, the planes of his face. The man Farida had believed she loved.

She wondered if the brain could simply explode from the inability to reconcile nightmares and dreams come true. She felt like one of those supercomputers in a movie, given a problem it couldn’t solve, therefore losing all ability to function. Only she wouldn’t be that lucky.

“Jessica.”

“I won’t.” Though in truth, she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t seem to control her reaction to him, part fear, part revolting need. The fury had taken her over, making it impossible for her not to hurt Amara. For the five years she’d been with Raithe, and the months on the run, she’d held herself on a tight leash, but she’d had a focus then. With Raithe, it had been to survive to protect her family.

When she escaped, it was to find Farida. Now she had no focus, no understanding of this situation. No idea what she could hope to have here, only her certainty that hoping was futile around vampires.

“Good.” His tone gentled. “She’ll come back in a moment. I think you should consider an apology. She’s not as placid as she appears. She may decide to hold your head under the water for a bit, and I won’t come to your aid.” Closing his hands on her shoulders, he lifted her off her feet and rotated her, pushing her down into a vanity chair. He arranged the towel to cover her thighs again when the movement parted the terry cloth to reveal her lower body almost to the juncture of her thighs. He did it all swiftly, but it didn’t stop her from going rigid beneath his hands, and staying that way even after he withdrew. Her mind vacillated between Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me and Just close down, just close down. She wanted to cry and rage. And she wanted the fucking restraints off.

“In time.” He went to one knee next to her, curled a lock of hair around her ear, even as she tried to draw her head away from him.

Vampires usually prohibited their servants from looking them in the eye, but he’d specifically asked her to look at him, a couple times now. However, right now, she stared at the terry cloth, not wanting to see his handsome face, feel the pull in her lower abdomen at the slope of jaw, high cheekbones, the firm lips and steady eyes.

“I meant what I said, Jessica. No harm will come to you here, but you cannot cause harm to others, either. Do something like that again, and I will keep you with me at all times.” She noted from beneath her lashes that his glance strayed over her throat, then down to the tenuously tucked towel. “You know enough about vampires to realize that if I’m around you too much, I will not deny myself a taste of you, in several different ways.”

“You said . . . I’d be safe.” She swallowed as his brow lifted.

“You would be quite safe, Jessica. As safe as you were in Amara’s arms. Keep that in mind before you decide to take out your anger on an innocent again. You need to fight with someone”—his gaze sparked in a way that inspired fear and yet heat again, low in her belly—“you call on me.”

9

HER mixed reaction to that threat plagued her for the rest of the afternoon. Raithe had been able to get her body to respond to him, but her mind had always been repelled. Lord Mason seemed to have an additional weapon in his arsenal. He’d restored her health by binding her to him. He claimed when he deemed her ready, she would have options to live her life as she chose. Raithe certainly had never offered that. And since the whole vampire world was seeking her, Mason was risking some retribution by hiding her.

But more likely, it was all a ruse, exactly as she thought.

Thinking about it, flipping between confusion and suspicion, depleted her anew. Even a third-mark’s strength couldn’t compete with emotional exhaustion. When Amara returned, she had a swelling bruise on her forehead that matched Jess’s, though both would likely heal within the hour. Jessica didn’t feel inclined to apologize, but she did, stiffly. Amara acted as if nothing untoward had happened. As if she were caring for a child or a psych ward patient who couldn’t be expected to behave any better. Then she proceeded to comb out Jess’s hair, commenting on the way it naturally curled around her face.

It irritated Jess, but there was very little about the situation that didn’t. God, she wanted free of these manacles. She’d hoped for a brief respite, because she assumed they would have to be removed to put on clothes. However, Amara produced a silver-and-brown-patterned two-piece sarong. The upper, scarflike piece wrapped around her torso, the excess rolled into silken ropes that crisscrossed her breasts and then tied around her throat, the tails trailing down her bare back. The skirt unhooked to allow Amara to place it around Jess’s waist above the manacled wrists. A slit from knee to waistband let the fabric fall on either side of where her wrists were bound to her thighs. The garment draped and covered Jess’s backside and front, but of course would ripple when she walked, so the shadowed hint of both would be visible. Accessible.

Yeah, she was supposed to think he was different. Vampires often had their servants wear such provocative outfits, because a primary, heady part of the vampire-servant connection was sex. Vampires had libidos like rabbits. Mason himself had noted that excessive exposure to him would be a risk. He’d stated it as the matter-of-fact truth he knew she understood. Regardless, it amounted to a threat in her mind.

“I also have several pairs of pantaloons slit like this. I use them for dancing. They’ll be perfect while you wear the manacles.” Amara affixed the chain between the two ankle cuffs and then released the clasp holding the two locked together. It gave Jess some degree of freedom, so welcome that she almost felt compelled to thank her. She didn’t, instead adjusting her legs apart, barely resisting the urge to take them out as far as possible, like a dog straining on the end of her tether.

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