“Rub that one over your nipple. I want my scent upon you there.”

She did, discovering the decadent pleasure in that, such that she cupped the curve before his avid gaze and became bolder, passing her fingers over the hardened tip.

As she watched him watching her, something in his gaze changed. “Sir?”

He passed his fingers over where hers were, making her quiver a bit under his touch, but then he rested them on top of her knuckles, holding them both there as she breathed, her heart pounding, matching the pulse in her sex where he was lodged so deeply.

Mal followed the pulse up to her throat, then to those large blue eyes, the fringe of lashes, the tightening of her mouth against her passion. Many of the female third-marked servants he’d met were polished creatures, who never would have had the slightly chapped pink lips or callused hands of someone who did manual labor. But Elisa suited him in that regard. His hands had never been without calluses, before he became a vampire. Over time, because a vampire with his regenerative abilities couldn’t reflect wear and tear on the body, the calluses had faded away. He missed them sometimes.

He wasn’t polished. His sire had taught him all manner of ways to exercise his sexual dominance, and so he knew all sorts of ways to give a woman pleasure. But he’d never unleashed his carnal nature like this. She wasn’t his third-marked servant, but he was acting the way he’d been told all vampires acted toward their first one. He, who understood animal behavior so well, had discarded tales of such unbridled sexual aggression as a generalization. Yet here he was, taking her over, commanding her to his will. Obsessed with owning her every reaction, every caught breath, the dazed light in her eyes, the trembling in her thighs.

“Ride me, Elisa. Do it now. Push yourself beyond what you know.”

He helped, letting his hands settle on her hips as she made the first move, sliding up his length, biting her lip as her attention turned inward, eyes widening and lips parting as she experienced the feeling, then down, a moaning sigh coming from her throat as his ridged head teased those tender tissues, pushing back into her pussy’s wet heat.

“Again. Harder. Faster.”

She obeyed, and that fired him as well, as much as her earlier disobedience when she gripped him had done. She’d been prepared to leave his bed, stay out of his way, not be a bother to him. He didn’t want her to leave his bed at all. Not this day, nor any in the foreseeable future.

Her tongue raked her teeth as she caught the rhythm, began to ride him like a dolphin riding storm waves, with pleasure and exuberance, embracing the wildness.

Tease your breasts with your fingers, Elisa. Pretend it’s my mouth suckling the nipples. After this first climax, it will be. I’m going to pin you under my body, and suckle them until you come around my cock once again.

She moaned once more, cupped her breasts and began pinching, stroking and pulling at herself. He watched, imagined his brown fingers overlaying her pale ones, doing it together as those points became more and more stiff, until her cunt gushed from the stimulation. He was so hard inside of her he knew he wouldn’t hold back much longer, but he wanted her to go over. He was fascinated watching her, the different expressions flying over her face, the way she was getting rougher with herself, with bruising pinches and hard squeezes of those pale curves.

He wondered how she’d respond to having clamps on her nipples like he’d seen in his more exotic travels. He’d make her wear them under her practical clothing while she cleaned and scrubbed, the chain feathering against her breasts, its movement tugging and keeping her nipples erect, pressing against a much thinner, sexier bra. He would get her something like that.

Let me hear you scream, Elisa.

He took over at last, driving into her with hard, fast strokes that took smoke to fire. She caught hold of him for balance as the orgasm rolled her, took her down deep inside herself and then flung her out into a silver moonlit sky, tumbling her over and over in the clouds as she shrieked out the pleasure of it. It took him with her, and he reared up, putting his mouth on the sensually abused right nipple, latching on to lash it fiercely as his cock spurted. She flung her arms around his shoulders and held on, her cries a sound he knew he’d want to hear again and again, long past the sun’s rising.

19

SHE couldn’t believe he’d agreed to let her have a schedule of daily visits, but in truth, she was glad, because her focus on that kept her away from making too much of the things he compelled her to do in the hours near dawn over the next couple weeks. It was how vampires were, she reminded herself. Again.

Before Danny had come, it wasn’t unusual for Lady Constance or Ian to enjoy various marked humans in such ways. It was no more to them than sitting down and enjoying a fine meal. There wasn’t even a contempt to it, for they valued the humans for that and other things. It was simply the way it was.

But she no longer entertained any comparison of this with past human employers. If there had been, she was pretty certain she might have been willing to do all manner of unspeakable things to stay in Perth instead of going with Lady Constance.

There was a disquieting element to this, however. She’d once worked in a laundry, and there’d been a widow there who’d had an ongoing assignation with the baker’s assistant down the street. The widow told her that a woman who’d lost her man welcomed the right man’s touch as a comfort, and it need be nothing more than that. That might be true enough, but the fact was how she responded to Mal had nothing to do with Willis. There were times Mal touched her that she couldn’t even see Willis’s face in her mind. She didn’t like what that might say about her.

When she’d had such a thought around Mal, he’d said it made her human and left it at that. Given that vampires didn’t always think so highly of humans, she wasn’t sure that was a compliment. It all confused her, particularly the grin he’d given her for that parting thought.

All in all, it didn’t matter. For now it was what it was. Since she couldn’t really make heads or tails of how she felt about all of it, she set it aside and settled into a routine. Upon rising, she would run through the chores with Kohana, and then she’d collect the things she wanted to bring to the fledglings. Their blood allotment, of course, as well as a bite-sized variety of foods from the kitchen. She’d also pack things she’d found on her short walks in approved areas, and a couple books from Mal’s library to read to them. Promptly at nine p.m., she’d be on the porch, expectantly waiting for Chumani to arrive from her first round of duties at the preserve.

She enjoyed her drives with the Indian woman. Chumani not only gave her more anecdotes about the island’s residents, two- and four-legged, but she also had an uncanny way of determining Elisa’s state of mind and helping her to arrive at the fledgling’s area in the proper frame. Tonight was a prime example of that.

“Mal’s right,” the woman told her as they navigated the curves of the barely there dirt road. “Animals pick up on agitation or fear in a heartbeat, and it makes them look around for trouble or—worse—consider you the cause of it. Those little ones of yours, they’re more dangerous than that. They use it to catch you off guard, take advantage. So what’s got you worked up tonight? You came out of the house with that nervous energy sparking off you like fireflies gone berserk.”

Elisa gave her a wry smile. “Nothing. Just . . . Mr. Malachi, he sometimes makes me unsettled.” He’d been doing some work in the study when she left, had come in the kitchen for his blood. He’d told her he’d take it from the reserves Kohana kept for him. She’d absurdly felt a bit disappointed by that, even though she knew he wasn’t using her as his sole blood source. But she was the only one from whom he was getting it fresh.

She’d fixed him a glass from the refrigerator stores, the same as she’d fix a meal for any of them. But when he came to the counter for it, he trapped her with an arm on either side of her, then dipped his finger in the blood and painted it on her bare wrist, lifting that taste to his mouth and suckling there. “Just warm enough,” he’d said after a moment. “Thank you, Elisa.” Then he’d picked up the glass and off he went, leaving her torn between the desire to put a foot up his backside or simply stand there and tremble with the feeling. The practically edible smile he tossed over his shoulder only made it worse.

“Mal can do that.” Chumani snorted. “Lately he seems to have you in his sights.”

“Have you . . . ever been in his sights?”

Though she told herself not to react like a child, she felt a sharp pain at Chumani’s nod. “When he wants his blood fresh from the vein, he prefers a woman for that. I was willing to donate, and as you know, that can lead to the other things. I didn’t mind it. It wasn’t like he made me. Mal doesn’t do that. If you don’t want him, he doesn’t pull that vampire routine on you. He just shrugs it off and goes on. But a woman has needs as strong as a man’s, and he’s more than equipped to take care of them.” Chumani tossed her a grin. “Though most of the time he takes his blood from a glass. Doesn’t seem to get the itch as much as most vampires, or maybe he just channels it into all this. Like that monk who brought you here, channeling energy to God.”

Elisa thought Mal must have decided to split off from his usual channel, because she’d been getting her fair share of that rush of energy. In fact, his sexual intensity bathed her like a steam bath when he merely stepped into a room.

As if reading her mind, Chumani gave her a small smile. “With you he’s a little different. You’re all innocent and earnest, yet you’re not innocent. From what I’ve put together, it should have been beaten out of you, but it hasn’t been. There’s a foolhardy strength to you that stands up to anything. It interests him. Here.” She pressed a brief palm over her heart. “As much as his kind feels things that way, of course. I’m thinking that something about you may remind him of his life before.”

“Before?”