While Mason didn’t like her need to draw from their shared memories, only inside the pages of Farida’s book did Jess feel stirrings in her heart, something that made her physical desire her own, her own choice, as he’d intimated. Watching him now, walking slowly along the shore, she remembered Farida writing of a night she’d walked along the edge of an oasis lagoon, and Lord Mason held her hand. The two of them joined like children in the night, until he turned to her, and all thoughts of childhood fled under the demand of his embrace.

This was him. The man she’d loved so much. A vampire. Jess rubbed her temple. Maybe each day she’d understand it a little better, but there was no way she was going to be able to take it in all at once. He’d said to give it time, and she admitted that was not bad wisdom. Already, the past weeks had given her a steadiness that, while dangerously tenuous, was more than she’d expected.

The more you put it through, the more it glitters . . .

Until she’d felt his desire stir so hard and urgent against her belly, and her own response had frightened her off the horse, she’d had a stolen moment of peace. She’d learned a lot about breaking commandments. Steal, lie, kill. But perhaps that kind of stealing wasn’t so bad. Maybe Mason was telling her not to make herself the victim of her own crimes.

Oh, the hell with it. She quickened her pace, and then broke into a light-footed jog to catch up with him. As she reached him, he gave her another sidelong glance out of the vibrant eyes, his sensuous lips quirking at her expression. His hair rippled across his broad shoulders. What was it like for Farida, having that amber gaze settle on her with love and adoration? Just being looked at like this tied up her tongue.

After a moment, he reached out a hand. Like the journal. But as she began to reach out, he made a quiet noise and she paused, looking up at him.

“You take my hand as yourself, Jessica. Right now. Not three centuries ago.” Her fingers trembled. She shook her head, slowly pulled them back to her. Turning away without meeting his eyes, she broke into a run again, one that took her ahead of the horses.

Mason let her go, though he kept her in sight. While logically he knew he’d had only a couple weeks with her, and Raithe had had five years to undermine her confidence, he’d never been a patient man.

She’d internalized so much of Farida’s journal, at times it was as if she was following it like a map right into his soul, in the quest to find or run from her own. But he’d been telling her the truth. The strength he saw in her was entirely her own.

Unfortunately, he desired her, and not merely to help her rediscover her passion. When he touched her, he wanted to keep her.

The last time he’d wanted that had been . . . too much of a damn coincidence. He needed to haul back on his own reins. She didn’t want to be another vampire’s possession. At least that was what he told himself, even as he remembered the way she’d looked up at him, her gaze floating across his throat, as if wanting to taste him. She bore his mark on her inner thigh. She was his.

But not his to keep.

13

JESSICA followed Amara up the winding staircase. “I really don’t want to do this,” Jess said.

“So you’ve told me. Twelve times since we left your room. But you were the one who told me yesterday you’d changed your mind and did want to come this time.” Amara stopped, faced Jess. Since she was on the step above her, looking down, it made Jess feel somehow small and childlike when the servant laid her palms on her shoulders. “You made the decision, Jess,” she said gently. “No one is forcing you. I believe you do want to do this. You’re just frightened. No one is going to hurt you, or make you participate in any way.”

As Jessica stared at Amara’s midriff, covered with a silk robe, she was filled with misery. She couldn’t face the terror of going up or the disgrace of going back down. The woman’s brow creased in concern and she brushed knuckles against Jess’s jaw. “How about this? Stay at least fifteen minutes, once we start. If you still don’t feel comfortable about it, you can slip back down the stairs and go do as you wish. Can you do that?”

Jessica drew a deep breath, closed her eyes. When she’d washed off the day’s stable work in the opulent bathroom, she’d found a new jar of body cream on the counter. It had smoothed onto her skin like liquid silk and left a jasmine scent lingering on her skin, as if made with the flowers in Mason’s own garden. She wasn’t sure if inhaling the aroma helped, or made things worse.

It was like living in an enchanted castle in a fairy tale. Over the past several weeks, each time she returned to her room, she found certain things changed, reflecting her likes and dislikes, as if the staff could read her mind. Since she was all too aware who in the household could read her mind, she knew who was ordering those alterations. She wasn’t sure why he was doing it, but somehow the horseback ride together had changed things.

While he was back to staying at a distance, somehow he’d taken a couple steps closer. As the days passed, she admitted, to herself at least, if everything going on around her was a ruse, it was the most elaborately planned ruse she’d ever witnessed, with a large cast of consummate actors. But her life had been uncertain for so long, only unpredictability had become predictable. To give herself permission to expect something to remain a consistent truth was like stepping out onto a decaying bridge and believing it wouldn’t crumble under her feet. In her life, the crumbling had been inevitable. It was just a matter of when it would happen.

But time had also given her more courage. She hadn’t survived this long by sticking her head in the sand. Maybe that was why, when she overheard Amara and Enrique discussing her next “dance” for Mason, she’d had a moment of blind courage—or utter foolishness—and told Amara she at last wanted to come and watch. It would be evidence that she could handle herself, manage her own fears.

“Jessica?” Amara prodded her.

“Fifteen minutes. I can do that,” Jess admitted grudgingly. Amara smiled, recaptured her hand and tugged her upward again.

Jess wore a modest island dress she’d found in the closet. This one stopped above her knees, the top a halter style that showed a discreet amount of cleavage. With the pretty lavender and gray color, it was something she would have bought for herself.

However, the delicate silver ribbon choker on the same hanger had given her pause. With amethysts and quartz crystals dangling from it on threads, it teased her throat at every movement.

Amara had said it was a wonderful compliment to the dress when she saw it, and Jess couldn’t disagree. But from the day she’d been enslaved, Raithe had made her wear a heavy steel collar with links for various tethers. She’d had it cut off as soon as she’d run far enough, but it had taken a long time to wake in the mornings and not feel naked without it.

Putting on the ribbon choker she knew the master of the house had selected for her, she had that same feeling at first, as if she might not be fully clothed without it. For that reason she almost ripped it off, but looking at it in the mirror, her nervous fingers stroking the delicate strands, awakening the skin beneath with the caress, she didn’t. Instead, she was distracted by a fantasy of Mason behind her, clipping the fragile choker in place. Putting his large hands over it, reinforcing the hold, its meaning.

It could be pulled free with one tug, and yet, when accepted willingly, it could symbolize something so much more binding.

God, now she was thinking like him. Or maybe that was him. Sometimes she didn’t know, but she knew she had no experience in willing subjugation. That was why she was here, right? To see it.

She tuned back in as Amara pushed back a tapestry on the right side of the corridor. Jess found herself in a cozy nook containing only a wide, low couch scattered with comfortable pillows. A tray holding her dinner had been left on a side table with a carafe of wine. Music, a mysterious woodwind composition, wafted up from somewhere beyond the plush velvet blue wall hangings on the other side of the nook.

Amara pulled them back, showing that there was no wall, only a wrought-iron rail through which Jessica could see the ballroom below. Jess drew in a breath, for it was one room she hadn’t yet visited. Like so much of this place, it was a fantasy. More of the tall beveled-glass windows, their gold dividing lights gleaming from the candles grouped beneath them. The walls in between were hung with panels of blue silk shot with gold, and the chandelier reminded her somewhat of her choker, individual diamond pendants of light that hung free like stars against the ceiling, which was a basilica. The dome had a starburst pattern of glass to show the night sky, and the glass was interspersed with panels of marbleized blue and gold. The floor was acres of polished wood.

“Seems like a lot of room for dinner.”

“My lord Mason likes the dancing done in this room. Otherwise he takes his dinner in his private quarters or the dining room for guests.”

Jessica swallowed, feeling herself pale, despite her valiant attempt not to react. Amara bit her lip, but Jess drew back, evading her touch. “I’m fine,” she said testily. “Go do your thing.”

“Jessica, Lord Mason has very few guests. And when he does—”

“Didn’t we cover this before?” Jess snapped. “There’s nothing you can say I’ll really believe, so it’s kind of wasted breath, isn’t it?” She hadn’t meant to snap, but despite the calmness with which she’d made her decision to watch this, the actuality of it was stretching her nerves out tight, fraying them. Amara’s reminder of how vampires socialized only exacerbated it.

Amara pressed her lips together. “Lord Raithe did terrible things to you, Jessica, so I can understand your fear. But you choose to be rude. No one here has been anything but civil to you. It is not too much to ask the same in return.”

“Yeah, actually it is. Because I didn’t ask to be here, did I?”

Habiba , behave, or I will address your behavior personally. Not hurting my staff includes not hurting their feelings.

Oh, Jesus Christ. She glared at Amara. “Fine, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m not being all civilized for your ‘dinner’ where he’ll suck your blood and fuck you in front of your husband.”