When Mal’s fingertips grazed her shoulder, she let him draw her away. Though her mind was still reeling with it, she had the presence of mind to leave the sketchbook on the sofa, exchanging a significant look with him.

As they gave the couple their privacy, Elisa knew the impression they’d made on her mind would linger for quite a while—the puzzle of vampires and servants, love and submission. Was three hundred years, the normal life span of a full servant, long enough to figure it all out? And was that what she wanted?

37

“ITHINK I could have simply sent you as an emissary and stayed home where I didn’t have to wear a damn suit.” Mal stretched like a lazy cat, comfortable again in his jeans and T-shirt.

To Elisa’s combined joy and anxiety, Lord Marshall had asked them to stay an extra couple days, and started talking about the logistics and timing for him and Nadia to visit William and Matthew at the island. If all went well there, they’d bring them to Florida for a trial period. Fortunately, those two days had not involved any other vampire visitors, and Lord Marshall had been content to keep their evening social engagements to simple, easy things. The four of them played cards, walked along the private waterway boardwalk, and viewed slide shows of Marshall and Nadia’s travels to Egypt and Greece. In an entirely vampirelike way, Elisa nevertheless felt like they’d discovered their first friends as a couple.

During one of their evenings together, Marshall had mentioned a pavilion on the beach that had carnival rides and other attractions. Picking up on Elisa’s excitement about it, Mal had decided he’d take her there for their last night in Florida. Marshall had an early evening engagement off premises and Nadia had surprised them all, asking if she could accompany him. For her part, Elisa was relieved that Mal had graciously declined when Marshall gave them the choice of coming along.

So here her Master was, driving her to the carnival. As he parked the car Marshall had loaned them, Mal enchanted her by opening her door for her and taking her hand, like any other young couple. Mal looked young, after all.

“I’m young for a vampire.”

“Well, to the rest of us, being over a hundred years old is a little long in the tooth.” Elisa slanted him a glance. “Truly.”

He grinned at her, giving a quick flash of those long fangs before he tucked them away. “So, Ferris wheel first?”

She looked up at the brightly colored lights, and wanted to go that way eventually, but knowing she was here at his indulgence, first she wanted to see the one thing that interested her the most. “How about the carousel? Willis was starting to teach me to ride a horse, so I can show you a few things.”

“The things I’d like you to show me would likely scandalize our audience,” he noted, watching the children running past, parents in tow.

“Well, the adults maybe. The children are too young. They’d just think adults are silly and disgusting and go about their business.” She gave him a smile as he paid for their tickets. Her skin tingled under his regard. She and Nadia had shopped yesterday and Nadia had insisted on buying her a pretty yellow sundress with a low bodice and slim straps on her otherwise bare shoulders. From the moment she put it on it was clear her vampire master liked it. She’d worn the canvas sneakers he’d decorated for her, those protective cougar eyes blinking at her. Other than that, she’d worn no other adornments. She had no jewelry, and in truth preferred to keep her neck bare, because even when he wasn’t hungry he had a delicious habit of sometimes brushing his lips over her nape, a provocative tease.

“Elisa, you can take your time here,” he told her, pocketing the tickets. “I’m not going to drag you back to the house the second I get bored. I like a carnival, too.”

She flushed a little. “This was just a really nice thing to do. It’s . . .”

“No one’s ever taken you somewhere just because you wanted to go.” He slid his knuckles along her cheek, his dark eyes searching her face. “Though I’m not pleased to hear that, I’m glad to be the first to do that for you. You can thank me by not worrying about the time, or whether we need to be doing something else. I am commanding you to have fun. That’s the only thing you’re allowed to do. In fact . . .”

He gestured to the left, at a tent hung with souvenirs and pretty trinkets, including a variety of shell bracelets and necklaces. “Before we go to the carousel, we need to get you some jewelry.”

“If you get me one, Kohana will want one, too. You know he gets terribly jealous about such things.”

Mal gave her a sidelong look, but picked one out, paid the vendor. She noted the man gave them a narrow appraisal before taking Mal’s money, but Mal met his gaze. Something in his expression was apparently unsettling enough that the vendor cleared his throat and became occupied with getting them change.

She realized that, between her time with Danny and on the island, it had completely slipped her mind how people would react to seeing an Indian man and a white woman together as a couple. Of course, vampires were very fair-minded, in a sense. They didn’t discriminate between black, white, yellow, red—they considered all humans inferior. Among their own kind, prejudice existed between made and born vampires, but power and strength were the main determinants of the respect a vampire was owed from his or her own kind. Of course, that wasn’t just the case with vampires. The vendor’s intimidated response proved that.

It will be fine, Elisa. Unfortunately, most Indians that these humans know look poor and disheveled. And they’re usually drunk. I’m confusing enough that they’ll think I’m some exotic race from overseas, and you’re a pretty servant girl temporarily taken with my foreign ways.

She knew that would help. It might be far different if he were a colored man out with a white woman of wealth or breeding.

The world is full of nonsense. Don’t worry about it. It will not interfere with your enjoyment of the fair, atsilusgi. I promise you that. At the dangerous glint of his gaze, a hint of fang, she believed him.

“Turn around,” he said.

Obeying, she held her hair off her neck. He’d wanted her to wear it down, so she’d only tied a wide yellow ribbon around it to keep it out of her face. He brought the string of pale white shells down in front of her eyes. It had a pendant of blue glass, worn to smoothness by the ocean waves. A blue that matches your eyes. When he brought it to her throat, she realized it was a choker. As he hooked the fastener, it pulled snugly against her throat.

Everything in her went still and expectant, her body, mind and other, deeper parts of herself recognizing the significance of him choosing that type of adornment, even if just a trinket. An additional hold upon her, overlaying that flower and fang mark on the side of her neck. Her mind immediately went to Gustav, that collar on his throat, the way it ran down to his . . .

I don’t think my servant needs quite as much restraint as all that. But I do like the way this looks on her. When he turned her around, his tone stayed light, but the look in his gaze told her, thrillingly, that she wasn’t mistaken. “Now, while you wear this, you are only allowed to think about what you want to do here, whatever will make you happy.”

Being with him. Every minute.

She didn’t let herself look away, giving the thought free rein to be out there between them, because she couldn’t hide it anyway. She wouldn’t even try. He held her gaze an extra moment, his fingers strong and sure on hers. “Let’s go to that carousel,” he said at last.

She knew exactly which horse she wanted, the minute they got close enough to see them. After Mal handed over their tickets, she went right to a galloping black charger who looked like hellfire could come out of his nostrils. He was far taller than herself. The one next to it was a white pony with pink ribbons and blue flowers. Considering it sourly, Mal sighed and lifted her onto the charger. He caressed the line of her panties through the skirt, a discreet stroke through the silky garment he’d decided to let her to wear today. Then he threw his leg over the pommel of the white pony, seating himself and wiggling his arse in a prissy, princess kind of way. It made the children nearby laugh. It made her laugh, too.

It was a different side of him, for sure, but one she liked immensely. She’d seen him playful with his cats, but there was a seriousness to that, for of course cub play was also learning hunting skills. She wondered sometimes if humans were the only ones who could afford to play for the sheer, foolish joy of it, no skills involved. But apparently, her vampire remembered some of the way of it.

“If only vampires could be photographed. I’ll have to draw a picture for Kohana and the rest.”

“It will be hard to do that with your hands bound around your back from now until forever,” he threatened, but with a heated glance that reminded her just what he liked to do to her when her hands were bound behind her back.

Then the carousel started. As her horse started to go way, way up, she gave a happy little shriek, much like the other children. Mal’s went up only a foot or so, such that his long legs stayed well-grounded through the heels of his boots. Watching him with laughter in her heart, Elisa realized something else. She’d remembered Willis teaching her to ride the horse without thinking about what had happened to him, the first time she’d ever done that.

Perhaps it wasn’t only Nadia taking steps back toward what life could be, new possibilities, rather than what she’d dreamed she’d always wanted.

Mal watched her cling to the charger’s reins, giving herself to the same joy as the children. Despite how hard life often could be for cats in the wild, when a good meal was taken, or an optimal spot of shade found, all was well with them. There was time to play with cubs, groom, doze in that boneless cat way. They embraced those good moments because in Nature, to dwell on the bad was to waste them.

He’d never seen a human pull it off. Human or vampire, they all seemed to get caught in the psychology of their memories, those terrible events that had happened to them. Some would say animals lacked sufficient depth of intelligence to appreciate how terrible the world could be. Some would say the same of Elisa, seeing only a domestic’s limited vision, her apparent obliviousness to what her world could have been if all these terrible things hadn’t happened to her, or if she hadn’t been born in the circumstances she had.