Take the gown off, Alanna. You may keep the blanket. Keep your back against Niall when you’re naked, but you can turn your head to watch if you desire.

When she obeyed, lifting her upper body to free the garment, such that the blanket fell to her waist, Evan’s fingertips traced her spine, the tender skin between her shoulder blades, making her tremble under his caress. When she lay back down, she left the blanket where it was, riding the edge of her hip.

His hands were back on his servant, his knuckles brushing her hair as he moved down Niall’s chest. When he paused, fingers shifting, she expected he was toying with a flat nipple. Turning her head, she saw the vampire propped on one elbow, leaning over Niall’s shoulder. As he scraped his nails over the man’s nipple, Evan nudged the Scot’s loose dark brown hair out of his way. He put his other hand on Niall’s throat, collaring him as he pierced the artery.

It was mesmerizing, since Evan had been so . . . not unvampirelike, that wasn’t the right word. But this display of power, of dominance, the glow in his eyes, the flash of fangs, reminded her that he had a side she could understand. This part of things she knew. His free hand pushed beneath Niall’s arm, lingering on his hip bone. Then Evan tunneled beneath the cloth, found and gripped the cock that was fast coming to life, pushing against her soft buttocks. She started to shift to make more room for her Master.

“Stay where you are, Alanna,” Evan breathed against his servant’s skin. Niall’s eyes had opened to half slits, as if he was caught between dream and wake, but she suspected he was quite aware, or getting there very quickly. “He likes pushing himself against a soft female ass while I’m fucking him.”

She’d been in the room when a vampire was coupling with another male, but she’d never been this close and intimate with it, in this dark room where Niall’s breath was quickening against her shoulders. Her own breath was escalating, Evan’s energy cloaking them both, holding them under his dominion. Niall jerked against the hold on his throat, but Evan’s grip only tightened.

“Going to fight me tonight, my servant?” His fingers constricted elsewhere as well, and Niall let out a groan, his lips drawing back from his teeth in a near snarl as Alanna felt Evan skillfully stroking up and down the hard cock, cupping his balls, squeezing them. Evan’s arm flexed, the muscles smoothly rippling as he handled the big Scot. “You won’t fight me too hard. Not with a beautiful, fragile girl pressed up against you.”

“Cheat.”

“Yes. Like you cheated earlier. You owe me for that.”

She wasn’t sure what that meant, but she understood what Evan wanted now. She undulated her hips, rubbing herself against Niall’s engorged member. He let out a muttered curse as Evan pinched her in approval, stroked the curve of her buttocks. Though he shifted his attention back to Niall, the approbation warmed her. If she could focus on serving his needs, she wouldn’t fall apart. Not like earlier. She didn’t know what had happened then, but she knew this type of situation much better. At least she thought she did.

“Fuck . . .” Niall rumbled again. The hand he’d had on Alanna’s waist had flattened on her stomach as his arm coiled over her. Now his fingers flexed, quivering as if they wanted to turn, cup a breast. She wanted that, too, her nipples tight and eager.

“No. You don’t have my leave to touch her. She’s mine, just as you are mine. You keep your hands right where they are, or I’ll have her bind your arms to the rails of this bed.”

“You’d try.”

“Not me. Her.” Evan’s lip curled back, showing a bloodied fang. “He will fight me tooth and nail, Alanna, but in your hands he’s a tamed beast. Law of the Innocents. He’s peculiar about women and children, my old-fashioned servant.”

“Before my time. I’m not that old.”

“That’s like saying you don’t follow the Bible because you weren’t around when it was written.”

“Ye want to debate theology, now?” Niall’s breath huffed out on a half laugh, half groan again as Evan’s fingers did something else to him. “Jesus.”

As far as Niall not being willing to raise a hand to a woman, her ass begged to differ. Flashing her a feral grin, Evan bent to his meal again.

There’s hurting a woman, then there’s using pain to arouse her. My servant has more than a touch of sexual Dominant in him, and it’s my pleasure to exploit it. He loved spanking your lovely ass.

Air whistled out between Niall’s teeth as Evan’s hand left his cock, sliding over his hip and out of view, where the vampire put those same fingers to a more in-depth purpose. Niall thrust his hips against Alanna. As she made several more provocative circles against him, she stroked the seam of her buttocks up his length and back down. Pressing her damp cunt against the solid mass of his testicles, she could feel the wet spot against her ass where his seed had dampened his shorts. She was wet now herself, wanting to feel flesh against flesh, and Evan granted her wish.

“Take him out, Alanna. Put him between your thighs. No penetration. I just want you to get him slick using your cunt.”

Turning to her knees, she moved down the bed to get the shorts off Niall’s hips. The job was already half done, since Evan had his hand and wrist well below the waistband in the back. Niall’s jaw was tight, his eyes glittering on hers in the darkness. It made her look back down at her task. Yes, he was another servant, but his expression was fierce . . . overpowering. Sliding his boxers off, she left him naked for his Master. She wanted to touch the thick organ she’d freed. He had a handsome cock, clear fluid at the tip tempting taste. Her pussy throbbed as she imagined taking its width and breadth in her mouth, between her legs.

Sexual service was a part of a servant’s duties. With the flow of visitors in Stephen’s household, that service had often been creative. Seeing servants lose control, be pushed far beyond where they thought they could go and climax, was a vampire specialty. It was entertainment, politics, and the primitive expression of the vampire nature. Predator, dominant, top of the food chain.

Yet thinking of those demanding vampire gatherings, the political machinations that had driven many of them, Stephen’s watchful gaze, his distant nod or faint smile when he was pleased with her performance . . . in comparison to this, those moments felt sterile. Physically pleasurable, yes, but there was something here she hadn’t experienced then.

Intimacy. This wasn’t a performance before other Council members, coupling her with other servants to show off her flexibility or exotic InhServ skills. Evan’s focus was on Niall, and he was bringing her into that focus, making her a partner in taking the Scot somewhere unexpected.

“Face him, Alanna. Straddle his cock.”

She slid up Niall’s body, bringing her bare skin against that hard, furred terrain of muscle. Just that contact made her quiver, hard, especially when the Scot put his large hand on her lower back, digging his fingers into the top of her buttock to gather her to him. He nuzzled her cheek, her temple, his eyes still half closed.

Her Master had given her an order, but she was caught staring at the strong planes of Niall’s face, the intensity of his brown eyes, the set of his mouth. The strands of hair sliding over his temples. Her fingers quivered.

You may touch him as you desire, Alanna.

She lifted her fingers toward his face, but just before she made contact, she hesitated, meeting Niall’s gaze.

Niall gave her a nod of permission as well, his jaw flexing. She touched his temple first, the thick strands of hair there. As her knuckles drifted down his face, Evan turned his head to press his lips against her hand. She stilled, holding her breath at the touch of the heated, damp mouth. When he put his mouth on his servant’s shoulder again, she watched the fangs lengthen, puncture the flesh again. A trickle of blood escaped, sliding over the fingers she now had resting on Niall’s chest. Though it was too dark to discern the details, he had a tattoo there, something that covered most of one pectoral and his upper abdomen, because she felt the faint ridges of the scarring necessary to anchor a tattoo in a third mark’s flesh.

Spreading out the fingers of her other hand, she followed the bridge of Niall’s broken nose, moved over his lashes. Down the cheek to the jaw, to his mouth.

It was as if time had stopped, something significant and potent happening because of her touch. He relaxed in his Master’s arms, she felt it, though he drew her even closer with that powerful arm around her waist, turning them into one sensual creature, moving in a twined pattern on the quilts, inside this earthen womb.

You said you were trained to dance, Alanna. Give him a dance that will make him fight not to come.

Evan was having to remind her to do as he’d commanded, but he didn’t sound impatient with her distraction. She recalled herself to the assigned task, though she regretted drawing back from whatever this moment was. Locking both arms around Niall’s shoulders again, she arched her body fully against his.

“This is called a serpent dance,” she whispered. She gazed at his cheekbone, that intense stare too much for her. As she imagined the provocative dance, she relaxed and dropped her shoulders, putting her upper body into a sinuous roll, forward, then lateral, so her breasts dragged in an oblong shape across his chest and back, her nipples sliding over his. The motion carried to her rib cage. She was a serpent, moving through grass, over the curves of a stone. Over the curves of a rock-hard body.

Niall’s hand flexed on her lower back, his breath sharp and hot on her face. His cock grew thicker, longer, so when she brought her hips into it, he was a hard bar against her mons. The tip brushed over her navel, leaving that moisture. She wanted to gather it on her fingers, taste him.

“Do it,” Evan rumbled. “And look at our faces as you do it.”

Sliding her fingertips over her stomach, she collected Niall’s semen and brought it to her mouth. As she did, she lifted her gaze. The tissues between her legs became even more swollen, glazed with her own honey at the twin gazes lasered on what she was doing. Two male bodies this close to her, demanding and wanting a tangled variety of things. Strangers, and yet somehow far more familiar to her than the many others she’d coupled with regularly before the Council.