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He removed her hands, albeit with a gentle squeeze, and went back to the railing. Jessica stared after him. Of all the things she’d expected him to say, that had not been one of them. A human servant, no matter how closely bonded to a vampire, was always below the line of equality with the Master. Reconciling that basic fact of vampire existence with his astounding words took a moment to digest, but then she rallied.
“Mason, I need to know what it is you won’t tell me. More importantly, I think you need to tell me, too.” She stepped forward, narrowing the space between them. “You’ve grieved for her three hundred years. She took you down with her, and I know she’s the type of person who wouldn’t have done that, who would have wanted you to live, and love.” Mason looked out toward the ocean. When he spoke, his voice was distant, monotone. “Do you know why Raithe wanted to third-mark you so much?”
“Because he was a sadistic bastard who never wanted me to escape him?” Mason lifted a shoulder. “A given. But more than that, Jess, you’ve been second-marked. You know that gives me full access to your mind, and I can speak in your head, let you into my mind if I wish. So what’s different about being third-marked?”
“Greater strength, agility, the extended life span. And the link to the mortality of the vampire.”
“Deeper, Jess. Think deeper.” He turned and looked at her then, holding her gaze.
Suddenly, it was as though she was immersed in the sea’s warm waters and he was the current, carrying and surrounding her at once. He reached out to her. Not with his hands, not with his mind, but with the mark itself, so she felt its branding through her vital organs, in her bloodstream, in the circuitry of her nervous system, including her brain. His power flooded the darkest and lightest parts of her. When she physically tried to back away, it was as if he’d become an irresistible riptide in truth, holding her in the embrace of his will. Feelings, unconscious and subconscious, were stroked to life. Not only her nightmares and fears, but her deepest, most desperate yearnings as well.
Mason . . . stop.
She blinked, and it was gone. He was still sitting on the rail, she was still standing a few feet away. But she felt dizzy, as if she needed to sit down. With effort, she held her ground. “What was that?”
“That was a touch of what a vampire can do with the third mark. If I want to, I can feel everything you feel, Jessica. Everything.
Not just what you want to think about and feel, but what you don’t, unconsciously. I can drag every nightmare and fear to the forefront of your mind, lock it there so you would believe you were in Raithe’s hands again. I can also stir the meadows of your best memories to make you smile, to give you eternal laughter. Or I can immerse myself there without your knowledge, when I need those good memories to supplement my own.” He’d glanced back out at the ocean, giving her a moment to steady herself, and yet when he looked back, his eyes were far more expressive than she’d ever seen them before, full of something raw.
“If you close your eyes, Jess, you can feel me. You’ve begun to pick up on my moods, even my presence, before you can see me.
You have an aptitude for it, because I’ve let the bond grow between us. If I was being more honest with you than I should be, I’d say I don’t think I did it consciously.” When she took another step toward him, he shook his head, stilling her.
“If I keep letting that bond strengthen, it would become even deeper, until you would feel as if you rode inside the protection of my own soul. I’ve never allowed the bond with Amara and Enrique to progress to that stage. For one thing, it wouldn’t be fair. I want them to enjoy their love with one another, and while what I demand of them is certainly unconventional for a marriage, there are certain lines I respect. Because I remember what it was to have that utter sense of bonding.” And because he couldn’t bear to share that with another, ever again, she thought. The acknowledging flicker of his eyes was reflected in the pang that went through her heart.
“Now,” he continued in a voice that became chilling, prickling gooseflesh on her arms, “imagine Raithe with that power over you.
How he could intensify your tortures, your fears. He could have done it for the centuries of your life, because, short of steel driven through your heart, nothing would have killed you. Knowing that, it’s a miracle he held off giving you the third mark as long as he did. But I suspect watching your terror grow over the anticipation of it was giving him a sadistic fix he wanted to milk as long as possible.”
Jessica swallowed. “What does this have to do with Farida?” There was no moon tonight, she noted. As the night deepened, only the torchlight ringing the balcony gave light. The ocean had disappeared, only the rushing sound of it on the salt-laden breeze indicating its presence. But he could see it, she knew, because vampires could see many things humans didn’t see.
“Let’s go down to the garden,” Mason said abruptly. “I’d prefer to be there.” Rising, he gestured toward the stairs. When Jessica hesitated, his gaze flickered. “It doesn’t have to be tonight, Jess. If you’d rather not . . .”
“No. I asked, and you’re willing to tell me. If I don’t do it now, you’ll likely change your mind again and never tell me.” She forced a smile. “And if I agree to Lord Brian’s serum, I won’t remember whatever awful thing you’re about to tell me anyway, right?”
“Correct.”
She hated that flat tone, the way his face could go so blank. But she preceded him down the stairs, noting he stayed close enough to provide her a steadying arm in the darkness, but otherwise didn’t touch her. An ominous tension was gathering around him.
He took her to one of her favorite places, the fountain with the horse sculpture. After he seated her on the wall, inside a cloud of cooling mist, he moved to a bench, sitting alone. When he said nothing for several moments, Jessica warred between waiting him out and giving him a gentle prod. “I noticed you don’t have any pictures of her.” Mason shook his head. “Images of living beings were a sin against her faith. I honored that, and I never needed them, anyway. She is in my mind, always.” Abruptly, he stood, paced away and leaned against a tree, staring out into the darkness. “She was pure, delicate. I never should have been overwhelmed that way. I felt responsible, just for loving her, but I was helpless not to. I thought I could resist, until the day when she washed my feet.” A muscle flexed in his jaw.
“I know you’re still coming to terms with it in yourself and in others, Jess, but a vampire is irresistibly drawn to willing, loving submission. She was as innocent as a jasmine bloom, but some part of her knew the things that would lower my guard. When she knelt at my feet that night, I was tempted to spirit her away then and say to hell with any of it.”
“You made her your servant, but you married her.” Knowing vampires as she did, it still amazed Jessica to say it aloud, to see him acknowledge it.
“She wanted to be bound to me as closely as was possible, and once she found out about third servants, she pretty much demanded that.” He lifted a shoulder. “As with most things concerning her, I capitulated. I was weak. But it never crossed my mind not to marry her.”
He looked toward her. “In many different cultures, even yours historically, the bond between husband and wife was not so very different. The wife was asked to honor and obey, the man to honor and cherish. She belonged to him and served his needs, but she also could rely on him for care and protection of hers. And this was three hundred years ago, in a highly patriarchal culture, habiba.
Marrying her was not necessarily antithetical to the relationship between vampire and servants.” His voice softened, his eyes distant. “I knew if I didn’t marry her, it would fester in her mind, a wound suggesting she was what her father labeled her. I wouldn’t tolerate that.”
“You weren’t weak. What the two of you had wasn’t weak.” Jessica drew his attention from what he was seeing in the dark.
“Farida recorded your love in her journals. That endured, all these years. Whatever my life will become, whatever it is you’re going to tell me, her writings, your love together, gave me the strength to reach this moment.” She felt it, fiercely. Mason studied her face, his jaw held in that tight set that told her she’d moved something within him. But then he took a seat on the bench again, leaning forward with hands loosely locked between his splayed knees. “If Allah is far more merciful than I deserve, you will feel the same way when I’m done, habiba.” The deadly stillness that settled over him skittered coldness up her spine. The unwavering focus of his preternatural eyes brought to the forefront of her mind the stories about Farida’s village, her family. The decapitated first son, dragged back home behind his camel.
“Prince Haytham betrayed me,” Mason began. “He alone knew where Farida and I were living in the desert. While he was forced by politics and his father to reveal our whereabouts, I could not forgive him, for surely he knew what would happen to her. In my kinder moments, I have thought, perhaps because he knew what I was, he thought that I could elude them. But that is hindsight.”
“You never saw him again? Never spoke to him?”
He didn’t shift. Not even a facial muscle twitched, reminding her forcibly that the male she faced was not human. “I killed him, habiba. I killed everyone involved with her death. Prince Haytham, his father. Farida’s father, her brothers. I left no man in the camp alive. Even the women . . . those who spit on her, threw things at her, cursed her dishonor, I killed them as well.” Jessica’s breath caught in her throat, her fingers closing into tense balls on her knees. There was no emotion in his voice. Just complete detachment. “But it was a male-dominated culture. Even if they didn’t want her to die, they likely had to pretend—”
“I didn’t care. Still don’t. We all make our choices.” His tone made it clear there would be no further discussion on that, cutting off whatever else she might have said. The man who’d held her with such gentle demand had used his hands, all that power, to take female life. Repeatedly, and without remorse. Rationally, she knew a human male was as fragile against a vampire. Yet the core morality of the Mason that Farida had described, that Jessica knew existed, would have been shattered by committing such an atrocity against a female.
