“No. I’m simply reminding you of our reality. You’re absolutely right. The best thing is for her to no longer be here, no longer be part of you. Though vampires tend to be a little more concerned about what’s best for ourselves, particularly when it concerns our human servants.”

“Your opinion of our kind is almost as high as mine, my lady.” Leaning an arm against the glass, he stared down at the slim woman who’d now been joined by Amara. His servant’s wife slid an arm around the younger woman, support and encouragement.

Fondness.

He could feel her struggle, her confusion with her choice. Some part of him wanted to jump in, urge her to delay. Take more than a week. Take a month, a year . . . a hundred years to decide. The serum had no shelf life, after all. But how much more would he feel for her in a week, a month, those hundred years? He could barely contemplate her leaving now, her memory being erased. He knew he would stay close for however many years her mortality gave her, but if he passed her one night on the street, she might glance at him as she would any handsome stranger, but that was all. He’d no longer hear her thoughts, or be able to speak into hers.

He’d had that connection with Amara and Enrique for so many years. It was a comfort when he availed himself of it, but he’d forgotten what it was like when the human servant was a true bond, a link pierced into the soul, binding them together.

“Of course, it’s only the right decision if no other factors outweigh it.”

“What?” Irritated, he looked over his shoulder at her.

Lyssa raised a brow. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your brooding. Goddess, are you so determined to be miserable, Mason? Why not go after what you want? You want her to stay. Tell her.”

“But it’s best for her—”

“Is it? I’ve seen the way she reacts to you. Yes, she was treated horribly by Raithe. What if she’d never been part of our world?

What if, instead, she’d been kidnapped and brutalized by one of her own kind, her fiancé killed by human savagery? Would you say the best thing for her was to be cloistered away like a nun?”

“You know it’s different, Lyssa. How can she ever be safe in this world, with her past?”

“Because you will be her Master.”

“I was Farida’s Master.”

“And there, at last, is the crux of it.” Lyssa rose then, moving to the window to face him. “You think I don’t wake from nightmares, trembling in fear for what could happen to Kane? You think I don’t know how my many enemies would love to get their hands on him?”

Mason immediately straightened, a dangerous scowl on his face. “Let them try. Whoever you and Jacob don’t tear from limb to limb, I would finish off.”

“Exactly. You are willing to fight for my son’s right to live safely, embracing his full potential. Why are you not willing to fight for your right to Jessica? We are different from humans, Mason. When we possess a servant, truly, rightly, not like Raithe, we know, deep down, they belong to us.”

Her eyes glowed with sudden fierceness. “A vampire and servant’s relationship is never going to be on the same footing as two humans or two vampires. It is different, because the species are different. But in certain circumstances, those differences mesh in an undeniable way. There are plenty of servant relationships like yours with Amara and Enrique. Love, pleasure, service. Appropriate, clearly defined. An accepted sense of place. But there are some, like yours and Jessica’s, that go beyond that. It is the unspoken thing all of us know.

“Think of it this way as well. If you let her go as a purportedly selfless act, then you are denying not only yourself.” She nodded toward the gardens. “That woman survived the unthinkable with indomitable courage, an unmatched will to live. I suspect she is prepared to love the man who wins her heart just as courageously.” Her eyes softened on him, her hand going to his face. “Honor that courage.”

“But what if she chooses me, and regrets it?”

Lyssa stroked a finger down his jawline, then scraped him, none too gently, with one of her sharp nails, earning a narrow look from him. “Make sure she doesn’t have a reason to regret it. Idiot.”

Brushing a brief kiss over his mouth, she nodded to him, once, and then left him alone. Mason watched her go, nonplussed, then looked out the window again. The garden was empty. Searching his mind, he found her location, but even as he did, her mind reached for his.

My lord, I need you. Please come to me?

She was in his upper-level study. Interestingly, she was engaged in mundane work, stacking up some of his scattered files, setting them on the credenza, arranging a tiny spray of new Fey-conjured flowers beside his pen set. “You know, if you’d keep these things in some kind of order, you’d actually know what bills need to be paid.”

“I have my own system,” he defended, caught off guard when she glanced up with a soft smile. His throat thickened with an ache he couldn’t swallow.

“You, my lord, have no system at all. When it comes to paperwork, you are a master of chaos.” He wanted to kiss that smile, but instead he moved into the room, taking a seat behind the desk. Purposefully, he kept himself out of her mind now. He knew her request wasn’t idle, as much as he realized with dread why she’d called him. “You’ve made your decision.”

“I have, my lord. I’m waiting for yours.”

Brow furrowing, he studied her. “I don’t understand your meaning.”

“What do you want, my lord? You’ve barely spoken to me, barely touched my mind since Trenton nearly killed us both.” She drew a breath. “And I find I need the intimate touch of your thoughts in my mind, even more than I need your hands on my body.

Though I would prefer both,” she added crossly.

Her words stirred him on every level, but he struggled to hold the reins. “A servant can’t make demands on her Master, Jessica.

You know that. There are times a servant cannot know her Master’s mind. That’s the way of it.” He would not cave. He wouldn’t try to coax or cajole, seduce or romance. Even though he knew how to make her knees weak, her heart pound. Knew what romantic gestures would soften her.

Damn it, she’d made her decision. As a matter of honor, he wouldn’t sway it.

“I see.” She pursed her lips, nodded and moved to the French doors. Pushing them open to get the night breeze, she drew in a deep, steadying breath. “You, my lord, are being . . .” Her voice drifted off, as if she were seeking the right words. Spreading her fingers, she laid them on the side table, on top of a bronze horse.

The rush of her temper was a blast of heat that alerted him. He leaped into her mind in instinctive self-preservation as she picked up the sculpture and hurled it at his head with all the strength her muscles possessed. Since she was a third-mark, that meant she could put it through the wall. Or his skull.

He caught it in time to keep it from breaking, only to discover that had simply been a ruse, as she launched a much more replaceable but still rather costly vase on the same path. Despite his speed, he barely ducked it, and it hit the wall with a resounding shatter.

She was going for a torpedo sequence now, with pillar candles snatched out of the candelabra on the wall. He wouldn’t put it past her to rip the metal holder from the wall and try to pin him to the wall with the five sharp prongs. Fortunately, by that time, he’d put down the horse and flashed across the room, seizing her by the waist. Pinning her up against the wall with himself, he was immediately conquered by the lean strength and soft curves, the immediacy of her perfume, the softness of her snarling lips.

She bit him. He slammed her wrists to the wall on either side as he kept kissing her, forcing his way into her mouth until she yielded with a soft sigh, coiling her legs around him.

Jessica felt his desire surge over hers, like a dam swollen by storm, cooling the burning ache of her fears. She strained against him, rubbing his body in blatant invitation, but she wasn’t yet forgiven, her mouth still being plundered, her Master seeking her surrender.

Promise me forever, my lord, and I will be yours. I am yours.

He broke away then, pressing his forehead on hers. “Jessica, damn it, this isn’t the life you want. It doesn’t matter . . . I want you to feel the way you feel about me, but it serves no purpose. I want you,” he repeated and closed his eyes, unable to bear looking into her gray eyes, see what he couldn’t have. “If that is the torture you have devised for me to be left with, I accept it. I’ve never wanted anything more.”

She slid one hand free, threaded it through his hair, cupped the back of his skull, her thumb teasing the artery in his neck. “My lord, you didn’t admire the flowers I brought for your desk.”

Mason shook his head. “They’re lovely. But—”

Jessica snapped her teeth perilously close to his ear and he jerked back. Look at them.

Mason, impatient, shot a look across the room, then took another, closer look.

“I made my decision, my lord. That is my answer.”

She’d taken the rack of three vials containing the bright green liquid of Brian’s serum and poured it out. Filled them with clear water instead, to hydrate the flowers she’d cut from Lyssa’s garden.

Slowly, he let her down. Her hand stayed on his arm, though, as he turned in that direction. Jessica watched his usually so unreadable face. The emotions struggling there were so harsh, her heart ached. She’d thought he’d closed himself off to her, but she realized now it was only to shield her from the turmoil that was going on in his own mind, trying not to sway her decision. In this unguarded moment, all she had to do was look at his face to know the deepest shadows of his mind.

But perhaps she’d known them all along. The heart’s blood with which he’d nourished her, demanding that both live or neither, had fused them even more closely together. The possible need to separate herself from his world was nothing next to the pain of leaving him alone. Of hurting him. It was something she couldn’t bear, even if staying at his side was ultimately what destroyed her. Until it did, it would also be her salvation.