Turning on his heel, he left. Though his high-handed dismissal had annoyed her enough that he suspected he was going to be treated to a succession of deprecating thoughts for the next hour, thoughts that would include words like arrogant bastard and fucking vampire, he couldn’t summon a smile. He knew his departure for what it was. A scrambling, cowardly retreat from what this troubled woman roused in him. The same thing that made him decide not to partake of Amara after all. Instead, he sent her the message that he did not have need of her and descended to the underground tunnels for the remainder of the night, locked away from all of them.

17

My lord has known such loneliness. It took time to get him to speak of it. To my surprise, I discovered he was born a vampire, to a vampire mother and a human father. His father was his mother’s servant. Unfortunately, his mother was killed by vampire hunters when he was very young, ten years old. Of course, with his father being her servant, he died at the same time. My lord Mason had to grow up on his own, without mentor or sire. Though he speaks little of this, from what he has told me, I think this was extremely difficult. While vampire young are so rare they are prized by their parents, vampire males are very intolerant of adolescent males not their own, those unprotected by a father or other guardian. At best, such an adolescent would be treated as a slave or pawn to older vampires, or at worst, killed outright by them.

However, over five hundred years later, he has earned his place among their ranks. I suspect he is a vampire of no little standing, but whatever road he traveled there left him very contemptuous of his own kind. He shows little interest in bringing me into that world. Though I wonder about it, right now all I want is to be with him, every waking breath.

Sometimes I see him looking at me when I am brushing my hair, sewing or even cooking, and there is such a yearning in his eyes. He is not always an easy man to fathom, but I think I answer a need for him that no child ever outgrows, even when he is a man of over five hundred years. Belonging. As his wife, as well as his servant, I can give that to him. My father may think I have turned my back on all things, but I know what a good wife is.

I will accept him in all ways, his dark and his light. My lord is far more learned and well traveled than I am, but I alone can give him a home.

Jessica closed the journal, put it to the side. She’d read most of it the night Amara brought it to her, but like Farida’s other journal, the words kept calling her back to them. Now the reading had an enhanced significance.

She’d brought it here, to Mason’s upper-level study. Of all the indoor spaces, she’d found she liked this one best. It had shelves of books to read, comfortable deep chairs, a couch for napping. She told herself it merely reminded her of working at the college, the professors’ offices. It wasn’t because this was obviously his preferred room. Or that his scent lingered here, and the reading chair most broken in was the one she’d curled up in to read the journal and doze, more than once.

The room also offered her something else. She’d resisted it the first few times she’d been here, but today the research assistant in her could take it no more. His large desk was covered with papers. Scattered, but partially stacked as well, as if the documents had once been well-ordered and then a flock of pigeons had flown in and knocked them into disarray. More stacks were grouped like mushrooms around the legs of the desk and beneath it. In some cases, she suspected they’d been flung there in annoyance. She couldn’t help but start to shuffle through them.

He could check into her mind at any point, see what she was doing and tell her to stop. Since after an hour of working, she hadn’t heard any thunder of protest, she happily immersed herself in work she hadn’t done with such pleasure in years.

In one of the cabinets, she was amused to find brand-new boxes of untouched folders and empty hanging files. She labeled and organized, spreading out all the paperwork to group and categorize, developing a filing system for what was on the desk.

Correspondence, invoices and jotted notes with questions for follow-up. Not only did the paperwork relate to the house renovations, but she discovered he had myriad other business concerns. Several wineries, including one in Italy and one in California. He was a silent partner in a nightclub, and she wondered if it was the club Amara had briefly mentioned. He even owned a portion of a horse sanctuary in the American West.

She discovered he had a broker who handled investments for him. Jess suspected that broker was as slavishly devoted to Mason as any third-marked servant, based on the enormous quantities of wealth the vampire possessed. She’d apparently stumbled into the clutches of the Howard Hughes of the vampire world.

Finding his transfer book, she spread out the checks he needed to sign, based on the invoice due dates. After some initial hesitation, she even placed some phone calls, following up on those jotted questions. Of course, she introduced herself as his assistant, not revealing her identity. By the time she finished the fifth phone call, she was giddy. It was ridiculous, how doing such normal, productive things sent her into a euphoria.

Amara had peered in once. When Jessica raised her gaze, wondering if the woman would chase her out for doing what she’d not been asked to do, Amara instead gave her a nod and retreated without further discussion. Jess was glad for it, because she wasn’t sure what she’d say, which had nothing to do with the paperwork.

The bald fact was she hated that Mason had gone to Amara to slake his lust, if not his blood needs. There was no way any male, let alone one with the enhanced carnal needs of a vampire, would have just gone off to bed without taking care of his arousal.

Amara must have done her job well, because Mason had barely sent her a thought since.

She had no right or reason to feel the way she did about that. It was more of her poor mind’s war with its own sanity. But the fit of the silver bracelets and collar were a constant reminder of him, their heat on her skin. And that reminded her of what he’d said about the chastity belt, stirring a far more intimate region of her body.

“ ‘You don’t know what you want,’ ” she mimicked under her breath. “Well, that’s for me to say, isn’t it? Not you. I don’t need a father.”

She scrubbed her hands over her face, propping her elbows on the desk, then a smile twisted her lips as she thought of another passage in Farida’s second journal.

There are times he is so . . . old. Like he knows best about all things and I am nothing more than a child. Perhaps that is so, but I have found that when I bathe, and take more care than usual with the cloth, cleaning those tender regions of my body he enjoys so much, he comes to me, and I feel the hunger in him. Not only for my flesh, either. I hold his heart inside of me, and we are both ageless then.

If she could cloak herself in Farida’s thoughts, a woman completely, deeply immersed in her love of one man . . . Lord Mason has a wonderful laugh. I must seek ways to coax it from him, for he tends to be too somber at times.

“Jessica?”

She started up from the chair, hitting her knee with a painful clunk, her eyes springing open. Something flickered through the metal at her throat and wrists, a warning that was almost . . . arousing.

“Easy.” Jess struggled to focus past that and saw Enrique at the study door. He held up his hand in reassurance, though he didn’t come into the room. “I knocked on the door panel, but I thought you might have gone to sleep sitting up.” His glance swept the much cleaner desk. “Mason’s paperwork has been known to have a narco leptic effect on the most hardy.”

“No, I was just thinking.” Jess put a hand over the circlet at her throat, her fingertips testing it. Just cool metal. She hadn’t thought to ask exactly how the restraints would prevent her from hurting herself. She was starting to get an apprehensive—or anticipatory—idea of it.

“Amara requested you come to the back balcony. There is someone here to see you.” Jessica frowned, dropped her hand. “To see me?”

“Someone Lord Mason had brought here to see you.”

“Oh.”

Enrique nodded. “I’ll leave you, then.” And he was gone, just like that. But the uneasiness spawned by how he’d come up on her like that, unawares, made her go to the French doors and push them wide-open, enabling two exit points from the room.

It was ridiculous. Enrique meant her no harm; she knew it. Still, as she drew in the sea air, the memory gripped her anyway. Raithe suspending her by a chain, and allowing . . . commanding the human household staff to gang-rape her. One man after another, from a young, frightened-looking boy who could barely maintain an erection, to a grizzled maintenance man with hard, cruel hands.

She’d been able to handle the evening gatherings in Mason’s house because there were as many female house staff there as male, and no vampire directing things. But this one moment, with her and Enrique alone in the room together, brought the fear back, unexpectedly.

She dug into the wood of the frame, a splinter piercing her forefinger. Warmth licked across her wrists, her throat, that sensual admonishment again, only stronger this time, breaking her out of the memory. The inhibiting magic, intended to keep her from going down that self-destructive slide of thoughts, was amazingly like Mason’s touch, his presence. Though she didn’t want to acknowledge it, it did ease the paralytic grip of the remembrance, the fear and revulsion. It also made her want to hurt herself again.

Sick. She was sick.

“Jessica?”

The French doors led out to the wide back verandah and the stairs down to the gardens. Amara had come seeking her, with a slender, elegant man. Jessica noted black silk hair tied back in a long ponytail and jewel-toned green and golden eyes. His white linen shirt and well-cut slacks made him look as if he’d escaped from a fashion magazine, his face sculpted like a young Valentino.

“This is Robert,” Amara said, pronouncing it in the French fashion.

Jessica slid a glance from the man to Amara, then back. “It’s nice to meet you, Robert.”

“A pleasure.” Stepping forward, he took her tense hand. Jessica noticed he had a series of intricate tattoos across his fingers that made it appear as if he were wearing rings. There was a similar Celtic design around his neck, inked in black, with a dark cross in the hollow of his throat. When he brushed a kiss across her fingers, it was startling, but not threatening, not with Amara here. Still, Jessica retrieved her hand, pushing down the lingering uneasy feeling. He arched a brow. “May I see the area in question?” At Jessica’s blank look, Amara cleared her throat. “I don’t believe Lord Mason had an opportunity to inform her. You are early, Robert.”