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“If there’s any justice, what’s being done to him in Hell right now.” Mason shook his head, preventing further conversation on the topic. Jessica still had his hand in her teeth, but instead of a deep bite, it was more of a spasmodic gnawing, like a distressed tiger cub might do. Her body continued to twitch.
“Shhh . . .” Drawing her away from Amara, he gathered her into his lap, heedless of her soiled state. She was shivering now, her skin cold. “Habiba, easy. I’ve got you. Amara, a blanket, quickly.” When he wrapped her up, she calmed further. Though part of it might be because he’d given her warmth and made her less vulnerable by covering her nakedness, she’d slipped below conscious thought, her vulnerable mind protecting itself from her untenable reality. He noted, as he had at the caves, that the deep aversion she bore toward his kind ebbed when her mind left her body in charge of determining who was a threat. She responded to his touch, to his voice.
As he stroked back her hair, he watched the lips slacken from their frightening rictus. Remembering his earlier suspicion, Mason tested the waters further. “You are being silly, habiba,” he told her with gentle command. “You will stop this tantrum and listen.” Her tense expression eased another fraction. Slowly, her eyes opened to mere slits. She stared at him much as an infant might.
Processing what and who he might be, this stranger holding her. But when recognition started to return, the revulsion came with it, and what she couldn’t hide from him—soul-deep terror.
“Jessica.” He spoke in the same resolute tone, before she could slide into hysteria again. “I need you to hear me. I swear you will not be harmed. Not by me, not by anyone here. Never. I swear it on my love for Farida, which is the one thing you want to believe is real and true.”
Her fingers curled against her thighs, her wrists straining against the bindings. Off, off, off.
“Soon,” he said. He wanted them off as soon as possible as well. They were only adding to her panic, her sense of being trapped in yet another situation she couldn’t control. But in her swirl of emotions, he still saw the overriding demand for self-destruction. He willed her to listen, to understand.
“I gave you the third mark to save your life, nothing more. You will stay with me for your protection, but in time, as you regain your strength and your mind, you will be able to take advantage of your potential in whatever way I can help you achieve it. Do you understand? I will not hurt you.”
“You’re . . . lying.” Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. He caught them on his fingertips, brushed them against her temples.
She shuddered, tried to draw her head away, though she felt a warring reluctance to do so, which only confused her further.
“Why would I lie?” He drew her attention back to him, engaged her mind to distract her from her instincts. “I have the upper hand.
It serves no purpose.”
“To torment me. To make me trust your words, and then betray me. To make me hope, and then take hope away. That’s what you feed upon . . . despair.” Her head dropped back, like a baby whose neck was too weak to hold it up. He caught it in the cup of his hand, but she was laughing now. Allah, he hated that demented laugh, the way it twisted her lips in an ugly scar, how it deadened her eyes. He wished he’d never seen the picture of her before, a laughing face and spirit as innocent as a child’s recklessly bouncing ball.
Amara made another noise of shock, and Enrique’s hand tightened on her, reassurance and forbearance at once.
“You’re right,” Mason said steadily. “That’s what Raithe would do. But I’m not Raithe.”
“It’s not just Raithe. You all do it.” She stared up at the ceiling, blood smeared on her lips and nose, her mouth. “I’m bound to you forever.”
“Yes, you are. I can’t change that. But that doesn’t mean what it meant with Raithe. We are not all like him.”
“You put me in chains, like he did.”
Mason guided her chin back to him, allowing Amara to use a wet cloth on her face. When his servant drew back, he lowered his other hand to one of the wrist cuffs. He ignored Jess’s flinch as he closed his fingers on her flesh over the cool metal. The position brushed his knuckles against her bare thigh, but again he kept his face impassive, not reacting to her jerk of aversion. “I put you in manacles to protect you. You tried to kill yourself. I have lived a long, long time, Jessica. Long enough to know that the one thing that endures is the will to live. This desire to take your own life will pass.” Lifting his hand back to her face, he cradled it, sweeping a thumb over her cheek, despite the fact she remained as rigid as a corpse in his arms. “While people do not essentially change, their needs and desires do. Frequently. What you feel today won’t be what you feel tomorrow or the next day.” He allowed himself a slight smile. “In fact, given that you’re a woman, your desires change far more often than that.”
Her body was trembling. She couldn’t stop it. She could smell her own urine, and she hated that as well. She wanted the power to kill every fucking one of them, even if the conflagration took her down with them. She was tired and frightened, and tired of being frightened. She’d been so close to some kind of peace, even if it was just dust.
She’d always believed that being crazy meant not knowing one was crazy. Then she’d learned that she could know she was insane, and yet not be able to do a damn thing to change it. Now, as she wanted to hate his hand upon her, and she told herself she did, some twisted psychosis inside her wanted to lean into it, wanted to hope he wouldn’t hurt her too badly, if she was good. If she pleased him.
His eyes darkened, and she saw a swirl of emotions there, torn between anger and tenderness. “You break my heart, habiba. If I could go to Hell and find him, I’d make him suffer for everything he did to you. You are a rare bloom, and Raithe’s only desire was to tear apart the petals. He thought the prize was conquering and destroying something unique, rather than winning over your heart and cherishing it. But he didn’t destroy it. You’re still here.”
She didn’t want him saying these things to her, things someone who cared about her would say. She couldn’t handle having her mind fucked with again.
“So now you can finish what he started.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You stood inside Farida’s tomb and told two men who physically outmatched you that you would die defending her. You will not be harmed here.”
She was too drained to think of a response to that. Physical exhaustion reduced her to a dull stare as he drew her attention to the two others, the woman kneeling at her feet, and the man who stood behind her. “These are my third-marked servants, Enrique and his wife, Amara.”
Startling her then, he dropped a casual kiss on her shoulder, bared by the blanket. His lips were unexpectedly warm, not invasive, a passing brush. But his fingers whispered over the manacles, making her jerk with unease again. “These stay on, habiba,” he said quietly. “You have too much rage and pain inside of you, and your mind is in a very fragile state right now. I won’t allow you to harm yourself. When I sense that need is gone in you, and you are no longer a threat to your well-being, you will be released. Until then, Amara will watch over you.”
She wanted to argue, but he could read her mind, couldn’t he? He knew better than she did what she was feeling right now, and could use all of it against her. It was time to wrap her mind around her situation, determine what, if any, options she had. A vampire with two third-marked servants? Well, three, if she wanted to count herself, but he had a husband and wife? It confused her further, but then she noted Enrique’s gaze on her bare shoulder.
It reminded her again she was naked beneath the blanket, and restrained. As if Mason had heard her thoughts, and of course he had, Enrique backed away and slipped from the room. Probably to give her a false sense of security. Of the two males, Mason was the one she should want gone, far, far away. But even now, her body was pulled between the desire to be held by him, without feeling fear, and a screaming need to get away.
Mason’s amber gaze flickered, his mouth set. “I will be as near as your thoughts, Jessica. If you need me, call. Otherwise, Amara will let me know of your needs.”
8
WHAT would it be like, to be born with no imagination? No ability to conceptualize beyond the reality right in front of her, behind her? She couldn’t contemplate a future. She’d done that, and she’d rather die than do it again.
Twenty-four years old. She’d been twenty-four when Lord Raithe took her. Jack was a sailor who’d left college to take a job cruising a large sailboat around the world for a wealthy man. He’d never gone back, and when he and Jessica met in Rome, he’d been thirty, and owned a modest sloop himself. For all their travels, both were straightforward people when it came to love. They let themselves be swept up in the joy of it and each other. They planned to travel the world together, taking odd jobs in ports while she continued her studies. Simple, imperfect dreams.
She didn’t know her joy had been noted by someone else. Jack told her she was beautiful, and while she’d never given much thought to it, she didn’t know that a woman in love had a special radiance that could attract the interest of a predator.
Jack had to go on a short run to Turkey. When he returned, three weeks later, she’d been reported killed in a fiery car crash, the ultimate cliché. She wished to God he’d left Rome in his grief and been at sea somewhere, impossible to find.
When she learned Farida’s story, Jess had foolishly believed she knew how Lord Mason had felt after they’d captured him. There he was, thinking things couldn’t get worse, and then Farida had ridden into her father’s camp. Fear for oneself was a terrible, frightened animal, but seeing the one you loved most of all, riding into the jaws of unspeakable horror, with no way to warn them or convince them to turn back . . . that was worse than any other torment Raithe had devised.
She’d killed Jack, as surely as if she’d done it herself. She’d wondered if Mason’s grief had been wrapped in guilt, and that guilt had expanded into a feral creature’s rage when he found out how they’d killed Farida.
