It was a limited existence, but he"d warned her it would be a long while before they had enough of a handle on it that she could trust herself to manage fluctuations in her stress and not have the convulsions. Brian was continuing to work on an improved injection, but that was in the future. He and Debra had stopped by for several days on a research trip to Texas. Daegan had left her for two days then, indicating he had to finish up a small bit of Council business.

But other than that, he hadn"t left her at all. She knew that couldn"t go on forever.

Though they"d had more than one struggle of wills over it, Daegan encouraging her to mark James, she refusing, she knew she"d eventually have to choose a new third-mark servant and get a grip on the stress. If for no other reason than it wasn"t fair to Daegan. He needed to have the freedom to resume whatever role he wished for the Council, though he pointed out that was an expectation she was setting, not him. He"d indicated he had no interest in lengthy assignments that took him away from her.

She had no intention of turning into a long-term burden, though, even if he refused to view it that way. When she finally forced herself to think over her choices, she knew he was right, that James was the likely candidate. Still she hedged, until that sense of Gideon told her that he was

getting farther away again, headed toward New England. Then she broke down and did it.

Partially. She gave James the first and second marks.

Right afterward, she"d had to flee to their quarters, running straight to the cell, knowing that the jagged pain in her chest was going to explode in her head, the gremlins tearing her apart from the inside out. She"d locked herself in, refusing Daegan"s help, and fallen to the cell floor, hated tears flooding anew as she writhed and screamed.

It was giving up, the first, definitive step to truly letting Gideon go. Accepting that he wasn"t coming back anytime soon.

Daegan had explained, unnecessarily, that she didn"t have to worry that James could cause her the same pain as Gideon. Most vampire-servant relationships, while physically intimate, were not the emotional bond she"d formed with Gideon. It was just a different level of employee/ employer relationship.

She"d managed a dry, humorless laugh at that idea. As Daegan had said, James was willing to serve her. When they"d initially talked about it, the staid and quiet male had shocked her—

not an easy feat—by saying he thought he could handle the demands of a servant in vampire society, if ever she wanted to give him that third mark and she and Daegan needed to travel or entertain vampire company.

She wasn"t sure if he knew what he was saying, but at least on its face, he was appropriate on all levels, right? He was her security chief after all. While his insight into her shifts of moods wouldn"t be as good as Gideon"s precognitive sense, with the marks he could anticipate the seizures well enough, and he had the training and dispassion needed to put the restraints on her. She had Daegan for love, and in the vampire world, the strength of her feelings for Gideon, a human, weren"t appropriate, even if he wasn"t an infamous vampire hunter.

But she still couldn"t bring herself to give James that third mark.

Despite Daegan"s pressure in that area, she sensed he was more reluctant about it than he wanted her to know. When they were intimate, curled up in his bed together, hands interlaced, his body moving on hers, eyes clasped in hers, mind open, she knew he felt the emptiness around them in the shape of a person that should be there, as she did. They didn"t want anyone else. They both wanted Gideon.

She wondered if the powder keg that represented her feelings about Gideon would eventually explode her brain, so she wouldn"t have to face the aching truth. Needing him wasn"t a choice. She didn"t know how or why he"d become so vital, but she wasn"t sure if she would survive without the balance of his presence beside her. On those days, she knew if she could go back in time, she would have kept him on whatever terms or lies were necessary.

They would have ended up hating each other.

That said, she wasn"t sure if what she felt was joy or murderous fury when she woke early one evening, emerging from her daytime slumber, and sensed Gideon sitting in their living room, waiting for them both to wake.

She didn"t raise that curtain between their minds. It had been down long enough that it was weighted with her emotions, rusty and inflexible. She wasn"t ready to talk to him yet. In the late-afternoon hours, she"d risen from Daegan"s bed, come back to her own as she often did, to

lay and stare at her ceiling in a lethargic drift of thoughts, needing that time to collect herself for the day ahead. It took so much energy to handle those voices. Sometimes she wanted Daegan to cut off her head so she wouldn"t have to listen to their damn noise anymore.

Now they were quiet. Waiting, like Gideon was. As she always did, she went to her shower, let the water wake her up fully. Brushed her teeth and hair. Slid a silken wrap over her shoulders and then turned her feet toward her doorway. She stood there for several moments, wondering what she would have done if he"d left while she was pulling herself together to face him. Probably run him down like a one-woman pack of wolves, even naked and dripping wet.

He was quiet out there, too. All through her shower, his mind touched her, a caressing knock she refused to answer. It was as if he were leaning against the door, stroking the wood, flattening his palm against it. Waiting her out. She didn"t give herself to fear, but he was the match to that powder keg, perilously close. She trembled in the grip of it when she put her hand on the door, forced herself to stop and take a breath.

Willing submission. That means willing dominance as well. If he’s offering himself, I take him back because I want him, desire him, not because I think I have no other choice. I refuse to be that weak, that person who needs another so desperately I would beg to keep him.

He rose from the couch when she opened the door. Daegan was already there, though from his damp hair and his open shirt, he had only recently emerged as well. She hadn"t heard voices, and she understood, just from looking at them, that nothing had been resolved between them.

Daegan had a particular code on this matter. Gideon was her servant. It was her right to confront him first. She suspected the men had done little more than exchange nods. Now Daegan gave her a searching, reassuring glance, and took a seat in her desk chair. Stretching out his long legs, he watched them both.

“Mistress.” Gideon cleared his throat.

He looked tired, was her first thought. He"d often looked tired when she"d seen him, never an easy sleeper with the many internal struggles he couldn"t seem to resolve, but there was a difference. The struggle going on with him right now was somehow very much in the present, as if his worries and apprehensions centered right here, not on the past. It gave her a cautious hope, but she held her tongue and her expression. She"d basically told him to get the hell out of her club until he could get his shit together and accept what he was being offered. It wouldn"t do for him to see that she doubted she"d have the strength to let him leave her side again, even if she had to employ chains to keep him there.

Daegan"s brow quirked, his lips twitching at the provocative mental image. She was too involved in the moment to send him the searing glance he deserved.

Gideon shifted. “Guess it would be cowardly to ask you to read my mind to know what"s there, rather than me saying it aloud.”

“Yes,” she said coolly. “It would.”

He nodded, his jaw tightening. He almost slid his thumbs into his pockets. She"d missed that defensive, sexy hip-cocked stance that said he wasn"t to be fucked with, but it was also an emotional defense. One he recognized because he caught himself, leaving his hands at his sides, staying open to her. She imagined her feet glued to the ground, a steel bar up her spine, to make herself hold position, unbending.

“Being near you two . . . it"s like being near magnets. We feel right, drawn together, and when we"re apart, there"s a pull to bring us back together. The three of us.” That was the rehearsed part. She could tell preparing to say that much had been difficult for him. Still, she raised a brow, not giving an inch. But she sent out some tendrils of her own, enough to find he was agonizing over her frosty exterior, knowing everything he wanted was beneath it, hoping she would willingly give all of that to him if he did the right things, offered all of himself to her. She knew it was the hardest thing anyone could ask of him. But that was why he was here. He was resolved to do it, just . . .

“Fuck, I don"t know how to ask,” he burst out, his fists clenching. “All the way here, I thought of how to say it . . . I know what I want, what I want to give you. But I don"t know how to do it, Mistress. I don"t know the right fucking combination of words to tell you that I feel like a fucking empty husk away from both of you, and I"m so completely fucked-up about that. I know I want to be with you, whatever the hell that takes or means. I know I want to be your servant. The idea of not being around when you need me, when I can help take care of you, love you, worship at your fucking feet if that"s what you need, it"s torment.

“I thought about ending it, you know.” He gave a bitter half chuckle, missing the slip in her mask, the fear and anguish when she read it true in his mind, but Daegan saw it, coming to his feet to catch her gaze in reassurance.

I would never have let him do it, cher .

“But you know what happened?” As if the two men she loved were synchronized, Gideon glanced toward Daegan. “He came and said I couldn"t go after anyone, because he knew that was what I was thinking about. Hell, any other time, I would have done it as a big fuck-you to him, just to be contrary. But . . .”

Gideon gave that strangled laugh again. Anwyn knew it was a near sob, and it pulled her a step closer to him. He seemed oblivious to them both now, though, his fists still clenched, fighting himself and his words so hard.

“All I could think was you hadn"t given me permission to kill myself. That you"d be really pissed. And he probably would be, too. I started thinking about why that was, and all of a sudden I was more scared than I"d ever been in my whole life.” He was now staring at the floor, but everything in him was focused on her, on Daegan, longing for them both. She could feel it like a dense energy field between their three bodies.