She nodded. “Lord Charles resents the fact he’s been stalled as Region Master here, but the Council is smart enough to recognize a vampire that doesn’t need a more powerful position. They feel like he’s contained here. He and Ian became fast friends, because Ian is also ambitious and of course, Lord Charles is the most powerful vampire in this Region. I suspect Ian feels, when Lord Charles finally gets his coveted post back in Europe, that he might recommend him to take over in his stead. Unlike Charles, Ian has no problem being the large fish in a small pond.”

“So you think it’s Ian who sent the attack against you? I don’t understand. Isn’t he the overlord? Why would you be a threat to him?”

“My mother was the overlord,” she reiterated. “Ian was her consort. A few months ago, my mother died. She chose to meet the sun. And no, I don’t want to talk about that,” she added, shifting her glance back out into the night. “Vampire Council rules dictate that when a vampire dies, his or her property and position pass first to the oldest child, if there is one, reinforcing the importance of being a born vampire. In my absence, or the event of my death, it can then go to whoever is willing to fight for it, and that of course would be Ian, who likely has his backside comfortably entrenched there.”

“And there are no repercussions for him trying to kill you?”

“Not exactly.” She gave up on the comb and instead ran her fingers through the mop on her head, trying to dispel the unbidden image of the times her mother had helped her dress it. Playing with different styles, woven in ribbons she knew Dev would like . . .

Let me do that.

Surprised, she looked toward him. Heavens, he was a fast learner. Rather than saying it, he’d spoken in her mind, taking her mind from her disquieting thoughts.

While she could have made him come to her, he was sitting on a rock, so it made more sense for her to rise and settle between his knees with easy grace, though he gave her a hand to lower herself. As she leaned against his leg, curling her fingers around his knee, she gave a snort.

“You just couldn’t help that image, could you?”

“Well, love, when a woman kneels down in front of a man, his mind’s going to go to certain things, no help for it.”

“Hmmm.” She returned his comb to him. “Prove your usefulness, then, and I’ll overlook it.”

“Here I was thinking I’d already done that,” he said.

“That was then, this is now.” She shrugged, but smiled as he gave her hair a sharp tug before starting to work it with the comb.

“Where was I?”

“No one’s going to drag this Ian off for trying to cop you on the back roads.”

“No, because it wasn’t entirely motivated by a desire to see me dead. If it had ended up that way, he would have been fine with it.

I don’t mean that, but it’s also about impressing me. Vampires form alliances based on strength and sexual attraction.”

“Hold up.” Tilting her head back, he gazed down at her, those green eyes remarkably close. “You’re saying he’s as happy to bugger you as to kill you?”

“When it comes to women, most men feel that way.” Her lips curved. “You’ve already had both thoughts. And that’s in the short time since I’ve been able to read your mind.” Because she couldn’t help herself, she put her fingers against those firm lips before forcing herself to remove her touch and resolutely gaze toward the fire again, waiting for him to start.

Instead, he slid his hand along her jaw, compelling her head to twist up toward him again, only to meet his mouth as he leaned forward, pressing against her back, a different heat from the fire before her. He took his time, keeping his fingers along her cheek, making light tracings on her skin along her nose, her jaw, close to where their lips were joined. She got lost in it, a swirl of taste and scent.

She’d thought it frustrating at first, having someone who could switch off his thoughts, but in a sense, it was restful, too. As if that stillness wrapped itself around her so she could let go, float in his mind, such that when he raised his head, she found herself in a similar place, where nothing seemed to matter but this very moment.

“I think it’s a little bit different, him and me,” he murmured.

She was fully pressed against his inner thigh now, her other hand gripping the opposite one, the posture of a woman immersed in the sensual attentions of a man. As her fog cleared, she gave him a bemused look. “Felt you had to prove something?” Shrugging, he sat back and studiously repositioned her to start combing her hair. Tina’s hair had caressed the top of her buttocks, like Danny’s when she was naked. To him, it made a woman’s arse appear even more soft and vulnerable, a fragile, tempting part of her, like the nape of the neck, the small of the back.

She suppressed a shiver. “God, Dev. You could at least try to guard your thoughts.”

“You wanted in. No sense in me concealing anything now, is there?”

She gritted her teeth, bracing when he hit a snarl, but relaxed when he carefully parted it, worked it out with his fingers, not causing her a moment of discomfort. Even so, she added uncharitably, “You’re determined to make me sorry for doing it. I did apologize for it.”

“So you did. Your chagrin was overwhelming,” he said dryly. “But we’re back to my original question. How many more men and weapons will you need to storm your castle, take it back?”

“None.” She stared forward. “He’s made his attempt. He’s shown his hand, and he’s done now. He’ll wait to see how I respond. I have a plan in mind. It would be useful to have you stick around a bit, watch my back against whatever human vermin he’s got hanging about.”

He kept combing. She wouldn’t beg or ask twice. Since he seemed to have a tendency to think things through before he spoke, she’d give him time to sort. And she wouldn’t pry into that part of his head while he did so. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his thoughts on the matter, anyway. Instead, her mind went back to the firefight, the way he’d handled himself, and wondered if he’d handle himself as well at the station, against greater numbers.

“You were in the war,” she said.

Given his age, it would have been odd for him not to have fought, unless he’d had an exemption for running his station to meet the war’s supply needs. But she’d also seen scars on him other than the self-inflicted ones. Possibly bullets, or shrapnel, scattered over his torso and limbs. One rather harrowing mark, high on his thigh.

“Don’t want to talk about that.” His short comment had the same warning note as hers about her mother. She respected that.

However, as she anticipated, it dredged up thoughts that slipped under his shielding.

Had she said there was a stillness in him? As the tranquil cloud at the surface of his mind shifted, she dropped beneath it and found herself in a maelstrom, a swamping, choking sea of emotion, riddled with blood and screams, gunfire and bombs. Images of soldiers and battles that had been savage struggles for every yard of ground. Tedium was a horror all its own. Waiting and waiting, nerves snapped to the breaking point, looking for the enemy in the jungle shadows. Constant guerrilla fighting, muddy trails where the boots sank in to the ankles.

He’d done the most dangerous scout work, taken some of his opponents out with his bare hands and a rage in his soul to kill, kill, kill. Every confrontation fueled by the last images he had of his son and wife. So much blood, his wife naked and torn. That beautiful sable hair he’d brushed had been used to choke the life from her, probably as they’d raped and beaten her to death.

The stark image was so desolate. It was the fear of every living thing, to end life helpless and terrorized, in horrible pain . . . He hadn’t been there. He was the husband, the father, the head of the house. It had been his responsibility to protect them or die trying. Instead he’d been the one to dig their graves, a punishment straight from hell. Clean and arrange their bodies, see every mark of violence, every violation.

It was all connected, one memory flowing to another in rapid succession, just a flash through his brain she saw all at once, like a mud slide into her consciousness. But after their deaths and before the war, there’d been one more prong to add to the barbed wire cinched around his heart. The murder of the men who’d done it.

He’d tracked them, nearly been killed taking them down, three to one. Jesus, he was barely more than a kid then, but apparently the rage of angels had fueled him, guarded his back. The scar high on his thigh had come from that fight, not the war. He hadn’t killed them slow, the way he’d dreamed of doing, but he’d cut their lifeless bodies apart with the hatchet he still carried in his pack.

When he was done, he’d been drenched. It had been night, and dingoes had gathered, a circle of shining eyes in the darkness, called by the blood. But as he walked off, passed through their ranks as if they weren’t there, they shied away from him. Though he’d been covered in blood, their animal instinct knew he was the most dangerous predator in the bush that night.

Oh, God, Dev. Perhaps the architects of human justice would say he had no right to go after his family’s murderers, but seeing the image of the two people he’d loved so much, what had been done to them, she knew no male of any moral substance would have done differently.

As she moved out of those images, she realized that, while he resented her taking the choice from him, he didn’t really care about her being in his mind. To him, what he kept behind the gate of that stillness was a barren field. The history lingered there, but he had no expectation that it would again hold treasures or secrets worth keeping.

“I’ll get you to your station, stay around a bit,” he said, breaking into her thoughts. Danny realized her fingers had tightened on his knee, and he’d put his hand down on it, apparently thinking she was goading him for an answer. “It’ll be your choice on whether or not we share a bed, but once you start sharing it with another, I’ll be off.” She looked up into his resolute face as he continued. “I know you’ll say I have no claim on you, and maybe that’s true, but I don’t share a woman.”