Daegan swore softly, and returned to the dresser, emptying his pockets. The mirror’s reflection showed the bed behind him, a reminder of many things shared there. It was good to be home, but it wasn’t home until Anwyn truly welcomed him. He’d looked forward to that as well, but perhaps hadn’t counted on it the way Anwyn had, knowing what lay between them.
“You told me once that you weren’t used to relying on anyone, Gideon. I told you I was the same. I’ve never relied on anyone until her. It’s easy enough for me to get what I want from a woman, but the night we met, she met my gaze, saw what I was, didn’t flinch. Wasn’t even really interested in that. She didn’t have to give me anything, and I couldn’t have made her give me anything. She’s that kind of person. So when she did, it was her choice, her will, her desire. It made me trust her, believe in her and need her, in a way I’ve never needed anyone.”
In Gideon’s stillness, Daegan sensed his shock at the bald words, and wondered himself why he’d said them aloud. Spending long periods of time without any confidante, he thought he’d outgrown the need for one. But perhaps nothing had ever bothered him as much as this estrangement with the difficult woman he loved, what had happened to her, what he’d been powerless to stop.
He heard everything. It had amazed him to learn, early in his life, how little humans heard. Vampires heard more, but his hearing exceeded even theirs. If Anwyn let out a whispered sigh, even behind the closed door of her room, he could hear it. He heard the movement in the soundproofed playrooms above them. Knew there were insects and worms scratching and working their way along tunnels they’d made against the sunken foundation of this underground level.
So he heard Gideon move toward him. However, he was in for a surprise himself when the man’s hand closed on his shoulder. He went still under the quick passing of a thumb over his collarbone, a rough grip that denied the hint of a caress. Then Gideon pulled back abruptly, leaving it hard to decipher the brief gesture. However, for some reason, the touch loosened things up in Daegan’s chest. “Go see her. I’ll hang out somewhere. She’s in her room.”
“I’ve told you before not to give me orders, vampire hunter.”
“You don’t care whether I live or die, except that it concerns Anwyn. Well, same goes. She needs you. And since I’m in a nurturing mood, I’ll mention you look like you need blood. If you need to go coax a pint out of someone, we should be fine. She had her injection right before we came to get you, and she’s good for a couple of hours yet. Plus, I have the restraints, and with advance warning, she’ll put them on and I can handle her from there.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Mom.”
Gideon made a suitable hand gesture reflected in the mirror. Daegan glanced over his shoulder, flashed his fangs at him. The hunter gave him a sardonic grin in return, then left the room, leaving him to the unpacking and shower he’d planned.
Don’t tempt me . . .
The warning he’d issued to Gideon had several levels, but the hunter was as oblivious to them as he was to personal danger. Take Gideon Green to a Vampire Council meeting.
By the Holy Relics . . .
Of course, there would be some small pleasure in seeing the poker-faced Lord Uthe drop his jaw on the Council table. Shaking his head, Daegan started to move toward the showers, his hand on the hook to his trousers, but then he stopped. He really did need that shower. He’d executed one final vampire an hour before he’d gotten on the plane, and though he’d washed up in the sink, he still wanted the full cleansing effect. The vampire had been older and more aggressive, and had landed a lucky strike with a machete that had deprived Daegan of a quart of blood. He did need to feed, but he needed Anwyn more.
He’d told her he wouldn’t search her mind without valid cause, but that didn’t prevent him from using it as a direct communication link.
Anwyn, would you come take a shower with me?
The night he’d forced her to make Gideon her full servant, mere days before he left her, he’d been beyond cruel to her. He’d savagely fucked her to rouse the predator in her, made her discard despair for fury. Afterward, he’d wanted to take her into a bath, sponge the evidence of his barbaric behavior off her thighs himself, hold her close, stroke her hair. Instead, he’d been ruthless. This past month, he’d stayed away from her because it was best. But Gideon was right. Now he had the opportunity to show her the tenderness he’d had to withhold. Though, in truth, that might have to wait. He needed to take her roughly first, his body vibrating for her in a way that had almost spilled onto Gideon, when he’d come close enough to touch Daegan. Blood and physical needs were tied up in the emotional, all riding close to the surface.
At last she responded.
If I can stake you in your sleep afterward.
It almost made him smile. So much for tenderness.
Would you like me to come get you?
No response to that, but there was a faint sense of acknowledgment, positive or negative he didn’t know. Leaving his room, he crossed over the shared living area, aware that Gideon was moving around the small reading room. Anwyn’s door was cracked. Stepping in, he rapped on the boards, a simple courtesy, and gazed to the right, expecting her in the bathroom. He reached out with his mind and—
Stars exploded in his vision from whatever blunt object hit his head. He ducked the next blow, caught her around the waist and yanked the bat out of her hands, tossing it toward the bed, swearing audibly. But it was her swearing he heard in his mind.
You son of a bitch.
She was vibrating with full, glorious rage. The pathetic, weeping creature she’d so often been before he left wasn’t anywhere to be seen, replaced by flashing eyes and a swirl of sable hair. She continued to swear at him in her mind, keeping the fight in silence. Obviously she didn’t want Gideon privy to it, though her emotions were stormy enough he’d be surprised if Gideon wasn’t picking up some of the fallout.
He shoved her up against the wall, keeping her arms pinned. Their bodies were intimately close, bare chest in his open shirt pressed to ripe breasts in lace, because she’d been changing. She was wearing a black demi-cup, one of his personal favorites with its propensity to be low enough to expose areola, particularly during this kind of struggle.
“Why the hell did you do that?” he demanded, low, overriding her mental diatribe. Blessed Virgin, he thought she might have cracked his skull, and wondered when she’d decided to keep a baseball bat in her room.
“Because I’m going to have to kill someone to live. Because I didn’t ask for this. Because I wouldn’t have changed anything about knowing you, even if I’d known this was going to happen, and I don’t know what kind of person that makes me. Mostly because I’m tired of learning about things by accident, or having them sprung on me, because one or both of you doesn’t think I’m ready to deal with it.”
“Then let me bring Gideon in so you can hit him in the head, too.”
She snarled at him, and the tiny needle points of her fangs glittered. Humor vanished, and he caught her chin. “I won’t hesitate to do anything I feel necessary to protect you, to help you deal with this. You aren’t invincible. You can’t handle it all at once, Anwyn. We’ve made the best judgments possible. I told you from the beginning, for this to work you were going to have to relinquish some control to us, trust us with that much.”
“What about the night you made me mark Gideon? The way you fucked me? You were pissed, and you were using your dick to make a point. That wasn’t about trust and judgment.”
“Yes, it was. You had no right to try to take your life. I had to break you out of your suicidal self-condemnation and deal with my anger at you at the same time. It suited both purposes.”
She stared up at him. They held that locked battle of wills for several minutes. Daegan was acutely aware of the way her body felt, only that bra and her thin skirt between them, her bare foot pressed tensely on top of his.
“I want you to answer a question, and I want it to be the truth,” she said between clenched teeth. “And don’t you dare tell me you always give me the truth, or I swear I’ll neuter you in your sleep.”
Daegan pressed his lips together. If he smiled, he expected she’d react the same way. “Ask your question.”
“We’ve been together five years, come this December. Do you remember back when you wanted me to be your servant, and I refused? You left me for six months.”
He remembered, as much as he didn’t want to recall that bleak period, or face the question he knew she was about to ask.
“When you came back,” she continued, her voice strained, “you didn’t ask me to be your servant anymore. You wouldn’t even let me volunteer to do it. You never told me what changed. I want to know.”
Bending his head, he pressed his nose into her hair, letting his eyes close briefly. She stayed still in his grasp, her body so close to his, her blood rushing through her veins, her scent in his nose. He could overpower her, seduce her into silence, take her to screaming orgasm, but the question would still be there, and her trust would be eroded further. He’d come home to something different between them. He could feel how much she wanted what he wanted, to touch her body, claim it anew, but only she could unlock her heart. To do that, he had to unlock his.
Lifting his head, he met her eyes. Over the past five years, he’d learned to give more of himself to her than he’d ever given to anyone, but there were places into which he still didn’t invite her. He needed to start learning to handle that differently, not just because that was what she would ultimately demand, but it was what she needed. And he wasn’t sure he could refuse her anything she truly needed.
“When I left, I had to come to grips with who and what you were at that time. Human, yes, but with a will very distinct from my own. Most vampires are attracted to humans who have an element of submission to them,
cher
. We sniff it out like bloodhounds, much the way nature brings together compatible creatures for mating. On the surface, and even in the deeper layers, you aren’t that. When I touch you, you submit to me, but you don’t do it as a natural submissive. You fight me; you challenge me; you do it on your own terms, as a Mistress. Much like your unique servant, there is something in you that allows your nature to surrender and submit, but only under specific circumstances, with one person. It makes you a very different animal. However, unlike Gideon, you could never have been my servant. Anwyn Inara Naime is a female Dominant. You would never view three marks as anything but a prison.”
Sliding his other arm around her waist, he kept her pinned between the wall and his body. His cock was hard and insistent against the juncture of her thighs, making her lips part, but her fingers clutched his biceps, her eyes waiting, watching.
“There are things about each of us we can’t change, things that no one can or should ask us to change.” He spread his fingers over her right buttock, began to gather the skirt up, inch by inch, letting it climb her thighs. “That is what I realized. I realized that I would destroy what I loved about you by asking you to be what you couldn’t be.”
When her fingers dug into his biceps, as if to stop him, he shook his head, his dark eyes staying on hers as the skirt went up farther, exposing her to the cool air. “I will not be refused,
cher
. I’ve wanted you for too long, and you are mine, even if you try to deny it.”
Her jaw firmed, and those nails pierced his flesh anyway. Glancing down, he saw his blood well up beneath her thumb, trickle over the curve of the muscle. “Brian told you that you could wear the razors under your nails again.”
“Just the thumbs for now.” Her eyes sparked. “I want you to promise me that you will tell me everything. Everything that’s going to happen, everything that’s happening now. Everything you know that will affect me. If you don’t, I’ll start scouring Gideon’s mind like bakeware and you . . .”
His brow rose, waiting, and her lips firmed. “You’re not impervious. I’ll figure out some way to torment you, make your life hell.”
“Oh,
cher
.” Letting his touch ease on her buttock, becoming a fondling motion, he twined his other fingers in her loosened hair. She’d worn it down, because she knew he liked it loose. She’d worn his favorite lingerie, and her skin had a fragrant scent of lavender, also his favorite. “To do that, you only have to withhold your forgiveness from me.” He slid a thumb over her cheek, acutely aware of how her lips trembled before she firmed them. “Do you have plans to forgive me for everything that still lies between us?”
“I’ve penciled in something for a couple of decades from now.”
He’d been respecting her attempts to maintain a shield between them, weak and thin though it was right now, but he got a flash of mixed emotions, her desire for what he could give her now warring with pride and fear. She needed him too much for the former, was too brave to let the other hold sway.
Millimeter by millimeter, however, the tension eased from her, and then he was just holding her against the wall, her legs wound around his thighs. “Yes. I will shower with you,” she said.
“Good.” Taking a moment, he put his forehead against hers again. Tentatively, her fingers came up, outlined his jaw, the slope of his cheeks.
“Daegan.” She spoke his name softly, and his eyes closed. In a quick movement, he lifted her in his arms, and carried her back through the main room. Gideon had stretched out in front of the TV. Feeling his gaze following them, Daegan headed for his spacious multi-jet shower. He wasn’t a man who needed many comforts. However, having been bathed in blood so often, he was fond of a device that could wash away blood from so many angles, even the invisible blood of past struggles.