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My servant won't look at me?
She didn't want the others see how overwhelmed she was. His fingers stroked her again, a gentle insistence. But Butch came to Brian's side then, giving her a moment's reprieve. The Texas overlord touched her cheek with a fingertip, a surprising acknowledgement, then he addressed Brian.
"Well, damn. I was going to have her suck me off too, and you've just ruined it. If he hears you let me have her and not him, he'll be pissing and moaning until Christmas."
Despite her unbalanced state, Debra's gaze flicked up in time to see the twinkle in the overlord's gaze. But there was a serious message under his tone, and Brian didn't miss it.
"I apologize, my lord," he said formally. "While I don't regret the act, I didn't mean to cause discord while under your hospitality."
Butch nodded, accepting the courtesy, but he shrugged. "He was the one being an ass. Come on, enough of this shit. You and your servant are free to enjoy the pool however you want. Let's relax and get some enjoyment out of one another's company before the dawn sends us to bed."
With that, the overlord moved off, already shedding his shirt. Conversations resumed, and then the servants were back in the pool, Dix recovering the volley ball despite Reed's best attempt to grab it. Butch paused at the pool's edge, addressing his three territory vampires in a low voice. They glanced toward Brian. Debra noted smiles at whatever Butch said. Tia looked openly relieved, the men more relaxed. Their looks held speculation, but the overall energy felt all right, especially when the other vampires shed their clothes and joined their overlord in the pool.
Only then did Brian's shoulders ease. Whatever immediate challenges might result from his actions had passed, and her Master could now relax as well. Sliding his hand from her bare shoulder to her elbow, he brought her to her feet, tipping up her chin with his finger.
"You will look at me now," he ordered quietly.
When she did, she found herself unable to say anything. Her mind and heart were torn between two possibilities. Tonight he'd made it clear which path was truth, but for so long, she'd had to believe in far less, accept that as the best she could hope to have from him.
Brian shook his head and drew her out to the patio. Sinking down in a chair, he pushed her onto the foot stool before him, stroking a hand through her hair. He didn't say anything for a bit, and the rhythmic motion, his thoughtful gaze, steadied her enough to be practical, to think of the more important issues that had been raised.
"My lord, what you said...do you think it was wise? I don't want your research to be jeopardized." Or your life.
He caught her hand, brushed his lips over her knuckles before squeezing them. "It's something I should have said and done a long time ago. A life half lived isn't worth living. You are my other half, Debra. A true partner in every way."
Her heart and soul simply stopped. She swayed and he dropped his touch to her hips, steadying her.
"Ssshh," he murmured. "It's all right. Don't faint on me."
Despite his grim humor, she gripped his elbows, stared into his face. "I don't understand...why...what happened?"
He sobered. "I had to face the possibility of losing you that night, with Gideon. It unlocked something inside me I've kept locked down for far too long. Tonight it came to a head."
He traced her cheek, her lips. "We've always had an unconventional vampire-servant relationship, because we work together. But I allowed that to blind me to my responsibilities as your vampire master."
His expression steeled in a way that had her straightening under his hands, a nervous flutter in her lower belly. "In the future," he said, "if you have a problem with a vampire like Graham, and if I am too caught up in my work to notice, you will bring it to my attention. I have great faith in your judgment, Debra. I trust you won't make the serious error of deciding it's not something I need to be bothered about. Else I will find a memorable way to correct that impression."
His even look made her toes curl. "And if I am not strong enough to protect you from whatever comes our way," he added, "I will take the time-honored geek tradition of availing myself of my far more physical friends. They owe me large favors, and, with the help of your exceptional mind, I intend that beneficial situation to continue to exist, far into our future together."
She was caught between a smile and much stronger emotions. Despite the fact he sat before her fully dressed and she was in nothing but a scrap of underwear, she felt cloaked in his love and protection, in need of no other covering. At the thought, his gaze became even more vibrant. But then it shadowed.
"I've never offered you the choice, Debra. It's been there, available to you for these past couple of years. You helped me create it, could have asked for it at any time."
He was talking about the Cleves serum, which removed a vampire's marks. Her stomach tilted, suddenly knowing where he was going with this. She started to draw back, stand, but he caught her hands, held her firmly in place.
"In the human world, you'd be at the top of your field. Here, no matter what advances we make, you will always be considered first and foremost a vampire's servant." He touched her chin. "I could delve to the bottom of your soul and never unravel the mystery of why you made that choice. Why you continue to make it. I only know I am grateful for it like nothing else in my life."
Tears pricked her eyes. But he wasn't done.
"That gratitude will never change," he said. "However, from now until the end of your life, I'm giving you the choice all servants are told they don't have, once they decide to serve. The choice of changing your mind."
That serum also came with a memory-eraser, a charged potion that had blended science and magic, thanks to the help of a human sorcerer, a Guardian of the Light known to Lord Mason. But to not remember Brian, any of this...
He shook his head. "Lyssa and the Council would agree to let me do it without the memory removal. You have earned our trust many times over, plus the foundation of knowledge you carry might be of use to the vampire world in the future. I know your heart. I know you would help us if there was need. I will let you go, Debra, if that's what you want."
The sincerity in his gaze, the earnest intensity...this was the male who'd offered to make her his servant, who'd urgently wanted her to make that choice. Now that his heart was in his eyes, she saw she hadn't been wrong about him. Or her choice.
That truth filled her, so that for a moment she couldn't even speak. She put her head down on his shoulder, clung to his shoulders, just breathed. Tried to breathe. He pressed his lips to her temple, her bare shoulder. Stroked her back. "Debra."
She lifted her head, touched his face. "Don't you remember what I said when I was talking to my grandfather about meeting you? You were everything I'd ever wanted. Someone who challenged my mind. Who made my knees weak, who made me want you with every breath."
"That's a gift that goes both ways." He brushed his lips over hers, stayed so close his eyes dominated her vision. "Before I made you my servant, I saw my more primal vampire urges as...not an embarrassment exactly, but not something I'd explored." His eyes glinted. "By making you mine, I discovered that side of myself. I suppressed it, out of some mistaken belief that I was giving in to my impulses too much, endangering my
plans for a facility...endangering you, if I made the mistake of allowing myself to get too besotted with you. I saw such passionate feelings as a growing pain, a young vampire's mistake, instead of what it truly was. Letting myself fall in love."
Her heart rate accelerated at the forbidden words, even as his fingers circled her wrist, stroked that rapid pulse, steadied it.
"But," he added, with emphasis, "I don't want you to think of my feelings, but your own. This is not the career or relationship you envisioned having."
No. That was certainly true. She met his gaze, saw it darken with the pain of her thought. "Do you remember Lord Theo?" she asked. "When he contracted the Delilah virus, he chose to die with his servant, rather than taking the cure, letting her sacrifice her life for him. The ironic thing is he opposed Lyssa's stance on giving servants more protection and rights. But when it came to his own servant...he refused to relinquish his connection to her. She told him she would take the serum, allow him to live. He told her he was worried if their connection was severed by death, he wouldn't find her in the afterlife, and he refused to let her go."
When his brow creased, she shook her head. "What I'm trying to say is it's very hard to understand what love is, my lord. And focusing on what I might accomplish for myself, the recognition I receive, is not the same as the deed itself, the results of it. I may not have envisioned you as the male of my dreams, or this as my career, but before you, I imagined love according to the experiences of the human world. You opened me up to far deeper things that I wanted, that weren't part of that world. I didn't make the wrong choice. I have never regretted it."
Now he was the one who looked surprised. She felt him probing her mind for the truth of it, and saw the change in his face as he realized she meant it. She trembled at that look.
"I have simply longed for more," she whispered. "That was the source of my unhappiness, thinking I could never have all of you that I desired. I could not possibly leave you, my lord." She reached up, framed his face with her hands again. "You are my Master, my heart and soul. Just fill them with yourself and your desires, and I will never regret anything but not having all eternity to be with you."
