“You need to consider a new servant,” he said, taking a seat at the end of the couch so she had to look at him directly if she raised her gaze. She didn"t. “He"s been gone a month, Anwyn. Give yourself that gift. James is a prime candidate. He"s a widower, and he knows what you are. And he"s trained. At least a second mark, to start.”

“I didn"t do the right thing, Daegan.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn"t.” She surged off the sofa in a sudden movement, throwing the book aside. “I was so pissed off at him for rejecting me, rejecting us, keeping us at arm"s length. He was right. I forced him to choose before he was ready. God, he had no time to adjust to any of it, and I threw him out because of my own selfish hurt. I was just as bad as he was. He needed us.

I felt it in everything he did. That"s what he was fighting, and instead of giving him that time—

”

“Anwyn, goddamn it.” He rose as quickly as she did, forcing her to look at him despite the fact she bared her fangs in an aggressive, instinctive reaction. He held her by the shoulders, waiting until she got it under control. It tore at her, as it always did, the inescapable truth that part of her mind didn"t belong to her anymore, that it could make her do violent things she didn"t expect. Before she sent Gideon away, she"d been learning to accept that, not exacerbating it as she was now by keeping herself on too tensile a leash. With Gideon, she"d trusted herself more.

So while Daegan suffered for her, he couldn"t help being vampire, which meant tolerance wasn"t limitless for him. He gave her a quick shake, snapping her attention to him. “You"re doubting yourself because you"re hurting, but you thought about it for days before you gave him the choice, cher. Hell, from the very beginning you resisted making him your servant for those very reasons. Even if your emotions coated your decision, it wasn"t why you made the decision you did. You"re a Mistress before you"re anything else, even a vampire. You know that.”

She closed her eyes, but he refused her that, tipping her chin up roughly enough to bring her focus back to his face, the truth there.

“That skill told you he was ready to face the choice. Learning how to deal with the acceptance, and the acceptance itself, are two different things, and it was past time for him to face the latter. You knew it. You know better than most women what drives a man, what makes him break and run, what brings him to his knees.

“What makes you an incomparable Mistress in Atlantis is you"re like the damn Three Fates.

You always know the right timing. You know when a man needs that catalyst, to force him to let it all go and be the essence, the very best and worst, of who he is. To face it, accept it and walk out of the doors of Atlantis a more whole man than he walked in.

“You let him go, because in addition to being a Mistress, you"re a vampire. You could see deep into his mind, and knew if you kept him here, he would kill his soul and yours, trying to fight that edge in himself and „settle" for you as a vampire.” She shook her head. She"d put her hands on his chest to push against him, but now her fingers dug into his shirt, held him as an anchor. He relished the far-too-infrequent instance of a spontaneous touch even as he ached at the pain he felt behind it.

“As a Mistress, I relied more on intuition, what I „felt" from a man. As a vampire, with Gideon as my servant, I had the option of delving into his mind. Maybe I didn"t give him a choice. Maybe I took it. Because I saw the way he thought now, and believed that"s what he"d always think. I didn"t listen to what Brian told me. All of us, we"re always evolving in our opinions and beliefs, based on wants and needs that change and grow. It"s something fluid . . .

intuitive. I could know everything in Gideon"s, and still miss it. There"s a part of him he has to give to me willingly, or I"ll never understand it.”

A soft smile touched Daegan"s mouth then as he gazed into her suffering eyes. “Something I realized about you a long time ago, cher. It took me seven hundred years to learn what you have learned in less than a handful of weeks.” But as despair gripped her expression, he gave her another little shake.

“He hunted vampires for ten years. His first true love was killed by one. He will not lose that edge of anger, or come to terms with that overnight. You didn"t expect that, weren"t asking for that. However, if he truly wants to be with you, with us, he must start with acceptance. He didn"t have that. You respected his freedom to choose by cutting him loose, and exerted your will over him as Mistress by forcing him to face that. You were both Mistress and vampire.

You did what was right, Anwyn. Do you want to know why it"s really tearing you apart so much, why you"re losing your objectivity?”

“Because I failed.”

“No. Idiot.” That got a reaction, a flash of temper he didn"t mind needling. “You put a lot of energy into every man you took on personally inside Atlantis, but you didn"t give your heart to any of them. Gideon was different. You offered what he was too afraid to take, because of what he might do to it, with what and who he is. You gave him your faith, and it"s tearing you apart because you know he truly loves you.”

His voice lowered, his gaze holding hers. “I know that feeling very well. You didn"t throw me out, but you refused to surrender to me, knowing that I didn"t deserve the gift yet. You did the same to Gideon, in a different way.”

“I sound like a real bitch, then.”

It startled a harsh chuckle out of him, but he couldn"t stand to see her tortured expression.

Loosening his grip, he stroked his fingers through her hair, pulling it down from its pins so it was tethered in his fingers. She shuddered, because she"d denied herself any type of physical comfort, stiffening beneath his touch so often that he"d almost stopped offering. He was good at reading a woman, at least this woman, and had known she needed some time. Just as he knew she was reaching the breaking point, where she needed his demand, his override of her refusal. Which was fortunate, because he was approaching a breaking point himself. To his knowledge, abstinent vampires didn"t exist in Nature.

“It"s the greatest irony, that it"s a slave"s submission that frees a Master or Mistress to offer their own hearts. It"s a delicate chicken-and-egg game, when love is involved. I chose to love a woman who was almost as Dominant as myself, and had no one but myself to blame for that. If you want a queen"s heart, you have to earn it by offering your own first. We played that game with one another so long, but when it came down to it, it was as simple as the second I saw you in that alley.”

He didn"t want to take her to that pain, but he thought he could give her something that would lay a soft curtain over it, change one part of its meaning. He reeled her back into him by those silken strands, patient but inexorable when she tested him by balking, her eyes glittering with the unspoken sexual tension instantly created with her resistance, his demand. But there was more in her eyes, too, things that gave the coil around his cock a deeper bite, higher up, closer to his heart.

“When I found you in the alley, none of it mattered. All I thought, all I felt, was that something sacred, vital and permanent to me had been harmed, something that mattered to me more than anything had ever mattered. It enraged me, not only that it had been done, but that it took a hideous, shameful act of violence against you for me to drop all pretenses and shields to offer you my heart. Whether or not you cut it up and threw it back to me, it couldn"t hurt more than thinking I"d never loved you fully before this terrible thing had happened, something that might hold your trust and love from me forever. You"ve forced Gideon into his own alley, and he has to seek that answer for himself now. What he values most.” When he saw her reluctant acceptance of the harsh truth, he swallowed and offered his heart to her again now, making himself vulnerable to her. “Have I lost your love and trust, Anwyn?

Did Gideon hold that for us as well? The longer he"s gone, the more you close yourself off.

You give your body to me as you"ve always done, but it"s an even more shallow pond than what we had before him. At least before, you gave me hints of your heart, but when he was here, I tasted it fully. I can demand nothing less from you now. You"re killing me with your omission.”

He"d rarely felt fear in his life, and yet in such a short time, he"d experienced it several times. In the alley, when he hadn"t known if he was too late to save her. In Xavier"s dungeon, when the arrows punched through Gideon"s far-too-fragile body. And now, in this moment, waiting for her answer.

He was breaking her open, the bastard, and he knew it. Or hoped for it. Anwyn closed her eyes, pressing her forehead into his shoulder. God, loving had so much pain and loss attached with it, the promise of great joy and utter desolation coming hand in hand. But he was right. It was so ludicrous to pretend it was anything else.

“I miss him,” she whispered. “I feel like a part of me has died, and so I"ve kept that closed off from you. I was afraid you"d think I didn"t love you as much. I couldn"t bear to lose you both, but by losing one, I am going to lose both, aren"t I?”

“Oh, Anwyn. Only if you don"t allow yourself to feel.” Daegan closed his arms around her, held her as if he"d never let her go. “I don"t care if you rage and storm, strike out at me and wish me into Hell a hundred times to deal with your missing him. Give me everything going on in your heart, cher. I will never leave your side. Not ever.” Tears burned beneath her lids as Daegan whispered the next words against her ear. “As I told you before, I was never jealous of Gideon Green. It was so clear, his meaning to us both.

You have seen the many ways that love and desire manifest, Mistress, yet you"re such a traditionalist. You can"t see how the three of us became whole together? Even though it was right in front of your face, every time he took off his shirt?” She stilled, her mind riveted by the memory of that mark. When she"d asked him about it, long ago, Daegan had said a vampire"s mark was a mysterious thing. No vampire really understands it, but there is almost always a meaning to it.