Mindful of his promise, she lowered her gaze back to the field. That was when she saw them. She drew in a breath. “Oh my,” she whispered.

12

THREE leopards, lying in the grass. They’d obviously been there all along. Yet she never would have seen them if he hadn’t told her to take full advantage of her eyes.

Sitting up, they can be seen as easily as a sunflower, but lying down, their pelts blend and make it hard for prey to see them.

“So they hunt by hiding until the last possible moment?”

“Only cheetahs hunt using their speed,” Mal agreed. “Most cats are pouncers, not runners.” The biggest leopard’s ears flickered, but she didn’t appear alarmed. It was as if the cats knew humans weren’t really a part of their world and, as such, were simply ignored.

Then Mal slid his hand down her back again. This time, when he explored the roundness of her buttock, cupping and weighing it in his hand, his fingers teased lower, at the inseam of the dungarees, in a way that had her breath drawing in again.

Elisa, part your legs for me.

The simple command shocked her, issued with an unruffled mind-voice that said he expected to be obeyed. Even more remarkably, her legs loosened instantly. Was it because she’d always obeyed such a command? Such a thing would make her cry if it was true, because she remembered Willis’s gentle rebuke. Value yourself more than that, girl.

But it wasn’t only that. Even if Malachi wasn’t in charge of her, she wasn’t sure if she could say no. Her body reached for his touch like a child for candy, ignoring the admonishments of her parental mind. She didn’t know what that said, but it made a mess of her feelings, for sure.

“Easy,” he murmured. “I won’t say I’m not getting pleasure from it, but this is for you, Elisa. To show you something else about your expanded senses. See what you can do with them, what gifts you can give to yourself, like finding those leopards.”

He stroked between her parted legs, finding the soft flesh even with the barrier of the denim fabric. The heel of his hand pressed against the base of her buttocks as he kneaded her, slow and easy, like she’d seen Dev fondling a dog’s nape. Only whereas the dog had half closed his eyes, lulled into a near doze, her body was doing something entirely different.

“These pants are so tight across your ass it makes a man want to do unspeakable things to it.”

She swallowed as he bent, pressed his mouth to her collarbone, his forehead brushing her cheek. When a fang grazed against her flesh, her stomach clenched. He nuzzled her, his touch now becoming less provocative, more reassuring, bracing her for his next question.

“He bit you, didn’t he? Victor.”

She shuddered, unable to stop herself, and he made a quiet noise. You’re safe here, Elisa. He’s far beyond where he can hurt you.

“Lady Danny . . .” She couldn’t speak in her mind, way too intimate with him already doing personal things she was having difficulty processing. “She was afraid he’d third-marked me, but said I would have remembered it, because if he’d done it all at once, it would have been like I was scalded, inside out. But . . . after, I couldn’t remember. At first it all hurt so terribly, and then . . . I went numb. Pain was all I was, so one was no different from the other. Willis . . . that was the worst pain of all. I kept holding his hand, even though he was gone, until Victor pulled me away. I’m glad he was already gone, so he didn’t have to see . . . so that there was someone holding his hand at the end.”

His hand had stilled, moved back to her buttock, resting there in a light caress. “Lady Danny, she did something to make sure that he hadn’t marked me, before she went and . . . ended it.”

“Wise Mistress.” He spoke after a long moment. “If he’d marked you three times, she would have killed you when she killed him.”

At the time, she’d wished for exactly that. She knew that was a terrible thing, a sin beyond God’s forgiveness. But for quite a while afterward, even during those days in the upper bedroom that had the most sunshine—and yet never felt warm or bright enough—during changes of clean sheets and people coming and going, she kept wanting to go into oblivion. Her body felt like rotted garbage, a huge suppurating wound, with a massive, aching hole in the center where Willis had been. The image of his murder played over and over in her mind until she wanted to scream with it.

What finally got her out of bed were the children. She’d overheard Tilda, one of the day maids. That young one, the one they called Jeremiah. He’s been going crazy since it happened, won’t hardly eat. Cal thought he actually heard the little fella say Elisa’s name through those long teeth of his.

When Victor had dragged her past Jeremiah’s cage, Jeremiah had tried to grab hold of him. Victor snarled, and Jeremiah responded with a wild, shrieking cry, like a banshee screaming anguish straight from the bowels of hell. Victor had ignored him, pulled her onward . . .

She placed her forehead down on folded hands, the grass tickling her nose. The longer strands fluttered around her head, like a curious crowd studying something unexpected that had fallen in their midst. She thought of Dorothy’s house, all its black-and-white darkness dropping out of the sky into the colorful beauty of Oz. That was what she was.

His chest was pressed even farther over her left shoulder blade, his hand braced to the grass on the other side of her, forming a shelter. For just a moment, purely out of necessity, she put aside that he was a vampire with no particular liking for her. “What would the leopards do if I stayed here like this, for hours and hours?”

“Eventually they’d come sniff you, roll you over, maybe take a nibble to see if you’re good eating.” There was a tightness to his voice, as if the attempt at humor was a trifle strained. Probably tired of nursemaiding her, just as he’d said. But she still couldn’t move yet, and so was shameful but glad when he continued to speak.

“Of course, it might take them a while to find you. Cats see by motion. That’s why a gazelle teaches her fawn to sit very still. A cat might walk within a few feet of the little fellow, and if he manages not to move a muscle, they’ll likely miss him altogether. But often, when they get that close, he panics and bolts.”

She knew about that. Sometimes she tried to stay so still inside her heart that the memories might pass by without noticing her, without latching on like vultures on a half-dead carcass. Sometimes they got so close, though, she had to twitch, to bolt. Then they had her.

Malachi turned her over so she was looking up into his face. In the darkness, many of the features were shadowed, but his hair fell on her knuckles as she rested them on his shoulder. She turned her fingers into it, twisting. With her words out there in the air, a dark gift to him, it felt natural. All she had right now was honesty.

“Do you feel like bolting from me, Irish flower?”

The way he said it in that low voice unfurled warmth in her belly. “I wish I could be afraid of you touching me,” she admitted. “Men don’t scare me all that much, because Victor was something altogether different. When you get . . . intense, I see his intensity. But you don’t scare me that way. I wish you would. I don’t want to like the things you’re doing.”

Because I’ve been with a man when it really meant something, and I don’t think I can go back to lying still and letting a man do that because I’m supposed to let him, rather than because he loves me.

He paused, his dark eyes flickering on her face. “That’s not about Victor. That’s about the others.”

It was difficult to say it, with his face so close. “If the master of the house comes around at night and he’s not too cruel or slobbery about it, you let him in. It’s like having to make lye soap. It might be your least favorite chore, because it can burn and be hot and tedious, but in the end, it’s just a chore like any other.”

That hand on her face changed its shape. Instead of cupping her jaw, the fingers spread out, followed one another along her cheek, under the crescent of her eye, then trailed down the bridge of her nose. Her mouth trembled a bare second before he reached it, traced the bottom curve. “Is that what this feels like?”

If she was braver, if it didn’t feel so good, if his touch didn’t seem to hold her so still inside herself, she might have bitten him. His eyes gleamed, registering it, but she sighed. “You know it doesn’t. Please don’t taunt me.”

“I’m not.” His mouth tightened then. “Don’t assume you know everything about me, girl. I know what being subject to another’s whim is like.” His thumb resumed its tease across her mouth, dipping in to spread moisture across her bottom lip and making the sensitive inner flesh tingle. “But your pleasure can belong to you. It’s an escape all its own. Not just from your body’s response but from your mind. You respond to me, because you’re on the cusp of discovering that. And you sure as hell need it.”

He bent, pressed his mouth to the corner of hers. Her body quivered, her hand closing over his forearm despite herself. “It was already high in your mind, not only because of your relationship with Willis, but because of the things you’ve seen between Danny and her servant. When your mind is idle, or you sleep, what you’ve seen them do laps at your mind. You imagine how it might have been with Willis, if his mouth had been between your legs, making you cry out in pleasure. If he’d taken you to the same place that Dev took Danny that night by the fire, where you get completely lost in your own pleasure, rather than worrying about the pleasure you’re giving another.”

Get lost in your pleasure, rather than worrying about the pleasure of others. Such a thing was beyond her comprehension.

Mal shook his head. “When it comes to a woman’s pleasure, a wise man knows it’s one and the same.” He dipped his head, inhaling her flesh. “Watching a woman get aroused, smelling it, gets a man hard. When she feels it, knows what it might be able to do for her, there’s an answering response between her legs, a contraction, as if she’s already squeezing him there, taking him in and rippling along his cock, encouraging him in every way to sink deep and thrust, take them to that place they’ll both be mindless.”