“Meant he would have killed me, then and there.” At her surprised look, he nodded. “I picked up some things at that dinner. Male vampires don’t seem to like it when you sheilas get too fond of your male servants.” She nodded. “There are rules, and laws, but the Council is all too aware we have fairly base instincts. I am sorry, Dev. Please believe that no matter what you’ve seen, what choices I take away, that was one I never intended to take from you.” She could tell he was surprised by her candor, and in truth, she was surprised by how fervently she needed him to believe her.

“No worries, love. You were right. I wouldn’t have made it otherwise.” He feathered his knuckles over her cheek, surprising her further. “I realized it during my very first bout, with that boy beneath the tree. The way I could move, the strength I had. It wasn’t like anything I’d experienced before, and he still would have beaten me if I hadn’t lucked out and been a little smarter on my feet than he was, poor bastard.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry for that, too, Dev. I know it was awful.”

He had his attention on her hand, braced against the beach, and so now he scooped up some dry sand in his palm and let it pour over her knuckles. He kept doing it, a rhythmic, circular exercise, engaging both of their silent attentions for a few moments as he buried her hand to the wrist.

“You know the silver lining they always talk about?” He watched the grains fall. “Well, it’s damned odd, but after finding your wife and child murdered, you know there will never be anything as bad as that. Doesn’t matter what atrocities or horrors exist in the world—I mean, the whole damn planet could go up in flames. That’s the simple truth. So though I’ve seen some terrible, terrible things since then, for certain, and those kids rank right up there, it wasn’t something I couldn’t handle. Though I admit, Bob’s cistern did push me over the edge that day, the foul thing. I’m an even-tempered bloke, when all is said and done.” She cocked her head, looking down at him. “You are. That’s the truth. After the thirty-ninth, that was when it all hit you, didn’t it?

The war just delayed it awhile. That was when the Elder taught you about the stillness.” When he gave a slight nod, she hesitated, drawing his attention up to her face again. “What did he do to call you back from that edge?”

He met her eyes. “I know where you’re going with this, love. You’re not me.” Danny looked toward the ocean. “I . . . I’ve killed, of course. My annual kill. But I make that as pleasurable and quick as possible.

Try not to let the person even know it’s happening until it’s all over. And I’ve had some near misses with other vampires, but other vampires, more experienced ones, have handled the situation. Ian was the first I’d killed . . . that way.”

“Premeditated and with malice.”

She kept her eyes trained on the water. “I didn’t care for it, Dev. Made me feel tarnished. Wrong. Other vampires . . . we don’t talk about things like that. Killing, taking full servants, it’s all part of who we are. I wondered . . . No, my experience isn’t yours, but I wanted to know what the Elder said.”

When Dev’s hand touched her face, she resisted a moment, then looked down at him. He passed his thumb over her cheek, her lips. “You’re not a killer, love,” he said quietly. “And for who you are, that’s a bad thing.” She nodded. “I know.”

“All I wanted was to lie down and stop existing, like an old member of the tribe,” he said at last. “The Elder, he was a karadji of sorts, a medicine man, if you will. He told me I would make the spirits very angry if I wasted the life they’d given me. He told me I was moving further and further from my path, and whether I liked it or not, the spirits would send something to put me back on it.” He shrugged. “Don’t know if I believe all that or not, but there was something about you that night I couldn’t resist. And though you are irresistible,” he said with a light smile, “it was more than that.” Danny laid her hand over his on her face, then lifted her other one from the sand to tip up the hat to see his face. “So you think it was destined, you becoming my servant?”

“I think it was destined that you mark me three times, and I be with you for a while. Don’t know about the future, short or long term. I haven’t planned that way for a long time now, love. I just know things seem to happen sometimes.” Drawing up her knees, she pulled away to lock her hands around them. Wanting to eradicate the ridiculous sense of disappointment, she turned her mind to a few minutes before, when his arms had been around her, his whip holding her. In that position, she could have swayed against him as he rocked her side to side, a pleasant friction of motion as she let her belly slide across his groin, the head of his cock, which would become engorged by the motion of her body across it.

“God, you’re insatiable,” he said. “And you’re trying to distract me.”

“It’s your fault for distracting me. You brought the whip into it.” But she let the shadows go. “Too bad you didn’t bring your swag.

We could find a secluded spot, and I could ride you until dawn.”

She liked the flash of heat that went through his gaze. “Well,” he drawled, “that’s just going back to the room and getting it. But there’s a float somebody’s left tied up over there.” He nodded toward a clump of vegetation flanking the dunes. “We could borrow it for some land-based uses. Or I could push you out into the water, so you can enjoy without sinking.”

“If I fall off, I will be extremely irritated.”

“Well, they haven’t had a good shark story to report around here for a day or so. Those poor noahs, if they tangle with the likes of you.”

Dodging her swat, he took her hand again, caressing her fingers, twining with them on the swirl of cool sand. She raised her gaze to him. “Dev, I don’t want to ruin a lovely moment, but I can’t act this way with you all the time. We can’t be this informal when we’re with other vampires. Like Lady Lyssa and Alistair.”

“You’ve made that clear from the first, my lady. And if there was any confusion, it was taken care of during that dinner with Ruskin and Ian. The whole standing behind your chair and ordering me onto my knees to lick your cunt etiquette.” A tinge of color stained her cheek at his crudeness, but she nodded. “Even for those I trust, like Alistair and Lyssa, there are things that vampires view as inappropriate, almost as an illness. Too much affection for a human is one of them.”

“Hmm. And do you feel inappropriately about me, my lady?”

Danny looked sharply at him. His mind was open to her, and she saw curiosity only. Concern as well, because he didn’t know how he’d react if she did admit to such a thing. That concern was a relief to her, though it came with another twinge of disappointment she chose to ignore. Instead, she gave him a smile. “No, Dev. I don’t. But I tend to be more informal with my staff, and you are my first third-marked servant. I just don’t want there to be any confusion between you and me.” Particularly since he made her feel confused enough inside without her projecting it to those who might understand it even less.

“There isn’t, my lady. Never fear.” But when he raised his gaze to her, she got a little lost in the hazel green of his eyes, the fan of brown lashes. “And I thank you for this, these few days . . . to just be.”

“The pleasure has been all mine,” she responded. He shook his head, increased his grip on her fingers.

“No, my lady. The pleasure has been ours.”

They spent some more time wandering the shore, because shell study was a favorite pursuit of hers. She told him their names, stories and legends about the shells, as they both kept an interested eye on the dwindling number of other vacationers sharing their beach.

Well past the midnight hour, when the few families at Surfer’s Paradise had gone to sleep, and the moon was turning the surf the color of foaming milk, they returned to that float. Danny straddled the muscled body of her bushman, his hands helping her slide the skirt in soft folds up to her hips so she could take him inside her. Pressing her hands down over his thundering heart, she watched him look at her face, her breasts, the cream color of her skin in their shared passion. After he tangled his hands in her hair, drawing her down to kiss her throughout a screaming, shuddering climax, she let herself be coiled on his chest, clasped tight in his arms, their bodies still joined, his cock a welcome, insistent pressure against the walls of her channel. Sand crusted on her feet as she dug her toes into the cool stuff outside his long calves.

“I’ll build you a sand castle,” he said at last, after they’d been quiet for quite a while.

She smiled against his chest, hearing the slow heartbeat, the sleepy note to his voice. “How many rooms will it have?”

“At least three or four hundred. You can have a different world in every room. There will be a library, a room with a huge fountain.

With a giant lizard sculpture,” he added. “Another room will be completely empty except for a tree growing up through the floor.

The pattern on the floor will be thousands of the most beautiful shells in the ocean. Starfish will decorate the tree’s branches. They’ll be alive, because everything will be possible inside the castle.”

“Everything, hmm?”

But she’d heard the slurring to his words and let him drift off, have his doze. She’d wake him again, another couple times before dawn, to feed on him, to bring him to release again as he serviced her needs as well.

I’d have a room in there for you, too, Dev. A room with your green Queensland station and your son and wife. You’d live there as long as you like, laughing with them. Telling your son stories, teaching him how to be a man like you . . .

She tried to be good, tried to imagine him with his wife, but she found she didn’t want to do that. She settled for having the well-meaning thought and then shut it down, preferring to listen to his heartbeat, and his breath stir her hair. The tide rushed in and rushed out, like the tide of her feelings. They’d get higher and higher, until she couldn’t hold off any longer and would rouse him to her once more.