Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
A fter Merc demolished four of the Scotch pies, and Ruth enjoyed a few bites herself, he asked her to take him to her favorite places on the sanctuary. He already knew about her tree in the savanna area, so she started with the mountain habitat. She and Adan had played in the creeks, scaled the trees. Run with the different cougars who’d inhabited it over the years.
She showed him the preserve’s most impressive view, which was located there. For the magic user or person with the proper permissions, the rock ledge offered even more; a panoramic view of the whole island, all the magical fault lines that connected the different habitats, and provided portal access to similar terrains in other countries. When she looked at that view, she felt even more connected to the island, knowing she belonged here. The magic told her she did.
“Is this where you come when you need to feel better or more balanced?”
It was an unexpected question, but he didn’t usually ask the expected things. “I love it, but no.”
“Take me there.”
It was back near the lions’ habitat, on a grassy slope that melted into a rolling plain. That plain met the blue line of the African portal, a mirror of what lay behind it, more grassy slopes, and beyond that, the sea. When it was opened to release a rehabilitated cat, she could smell the salt air, a different scent from the ocean surrounding their island.
The first time her father had found her here, she’d explained why she liked the spot, in mostly the same words she gave Merc now.
“What I felt here, it was a mix of my mother and someone else, a love so strong…it was comforting, a cocoon. When things were worrying me, I’d come here and know, no matter how bad things could get, it would be all right, because something was stronger than all of it. A place that says hold on and have faith.”
An indecipherable emotion had gripped Mal’s features. He’d assured her it was a safe place, and she wasn’t in trouble, but he’d waited until she was older to explain his expression.
“Did you continue to feel it as you got older?” Merc asked.
“It became more of an echo. Still comforting, but like a familiar childhood marker. Do you have any of those?”
“The first stability I had in my life was Marcellus.” He said it in such a matter-of-fact way, she wondered if Merc understood its significance.
“Have you told him that?”
“I expect he knows.”
“I’m sure he knows, but he might like hearing it. I think he cares and worries for you. Like my parents do for me.”
Merc seemed surprised by the comparison. A little discomfited. “Our relationship is different.”
Maybe less so than he was willing to admit, but she left it alone. Merc was like her father; neither easily explored or expressed deeper emotions. She was still reeling a little bit from how open Mal had been with her out by the field. Even as she knew she’d never forget what he’d said to her.
Proud of you…beyond the shadow of a doubt.
He said what he meant, which meant she’d earned it. She would keep earning it.
“I understand why you see yourself spending most of your life here,” Merc said. They sat side by side on the slope, his arm braced behind her back, his wing curved over that. He was warm against her side, and she had her hand resting on his thigh, drawing figure eights on denim. “Even as I can see you want to see more of the world first. Travel.”
“What about you? If you decide to serve the angels, I’m guessing your world will become much wider. Do you like being with the Circus?”
“I do. Particularly these past few days. My relationships with the others are changing shape. Thanks in large part I think to you. Or them seeing me with you.” A frown crossed his face. “But…what if they all want to be friendly? Desire company and endless conversation?”
His obvious horror had her grinning. “Trust me, the ogre vibes are still there.” She lifted a brow. “They were set a little high when you first met my parents.”
“I was unsettled,” he told her with dignity. “I haven’t ever been introduced to someone’s family. Not like that.”
He stretched out his wings, letting the wind move through the primaries as he tipped his head back to look into the night sky. When he yawned, it reminded her of someone stretching out their arms at the dinner table after a full meal.
“Mum is a serious feeder. Do you need a nap?”
“No. I can sleep, but don’t need to do so. However, if I ate at your mother’s table too often, that might change.”
He pulled her into his lap, so she was the center of his attention. She didn’t object, a fizzing of nerves happening at the look in his eyes. Lurking among all those emotions and thoughts behind his eyes, the incubus watched and waited. Seeing if the angel side of him would ever weaken enough for it to take control.
The eternal war between Id and the Super Ego, Merc the Ego holding the balance in between. Only for him, there was nothing theoretical about it. It was an actual battlefield, a war he’d had to decide how to fight, since Marcellus and Mikhael had found him.
Merc wouldn’t let that side of himself take control from him again. She knew it. Just as she knew he’d never reject his incubus blood, never abandon or leave it out in the cold, because he knew what that felt like.
“The third mark,” he said abruptly. “You’re concerned I don’t understand its meaning.”
“I understand you want to protect me. And I appreciate that. But it can’t be the only reason.”
She wasn’t entirely sure how to explain what reasons would be enough, but Merc stopped her from saying more. He cupped her throat, thumb moving over it.
“I’ve watched Yvette with Charlie and Gundar. Just through a second mark, her ability to speak in their minds, her way of knowing them, has a closeness to it I found intriguing. But I’ve also spent time around Adan and Catriona. It’s deeper. A soul connection, where the vampire can come inside, not just the mind of the servant, but their soul.”
“You’ve paid attention.” Her heart thumped a little harder.
“I’ve always paid attention, but lately the knowledge has more context.”
She couldn’t smile. “I don’t know how the mark will work with you. Angels are more powerful than vampires. Catriona is Fae, and High Fae are way more powerful than vampires, but she’s a lesser Fae, and the Light Guardian thing might have weighted it on his side. Or not. It doesn’t matter. Not really. They love each other.”
“Yes. They’ve found a home in one another.” His expression became thoughtful. “A different kind of home from this place, though it’s still home to him. I overheard Charlie speaking to a troupe member. His wife left him a couple years ago, and he’s still having difficulty. She said when a relationship dissolves, it’s like the home it created has been wrecked. Leaving one feeling homeless and adrift.”
“You think…the third mark is a form of home.” Her hand was resting on his chest, his heart thudding beneath it.
“Isn’t it?” Those dark eyes held her. “I heard the conversation you and your mother had, after dinner.”
“I like this.” Ruth stroked the wood’s texture. The family picture had been mounted in the living room for years, but as a thank you for letting her and her children visit the island, one of the Farida Sanctuary mothers who did woodworking had sent Elisa and Mal a new frame for it. Small rectangles of reclaimed antique wood in multiple earth hues had created it.
The painting had been done by Evan, a vampire artist sired by Lord Uthe, a former Council member. It had been his gift to Mal and Elisa, shortly after Adan and Ruth turned fifty. In the portrait, the four of them sat on the porch steps. Elisa’s gaze and hands were on her children, Mal’s on her shoulder and Adan’s. Ruth sat between Mal’s knees, her hand on the left one, closest to Adan. All of them linked.
Many born vampires didn’t make it to fifty, but if they did, their chances of doubling that life span or making it to full maturity increased considerably. It was considered the “take your first deep breath” point for most born vampire parents.
Elisa touched the frame, just below Mal’s braced foot in the picture. “Ruth, I want you and Adan to have your lives. I know you’ve told us you want to come back here, but your father and I want that to be your choice. Understand? Life is long. Especially for a vampire.”
“Of course, Etsi .”
Merc and Mal were discussing the history of the sanctuary, so she assumed her and her mother’s conversation was mostly private. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” But Elisa’s gaze was thoughtful when she looked upon her daughter. “A servant lives to be three hundred, if God is merciful. But Mal can live so much longer. My hope is that you and Adan, the families you build for yourself, will be part of his life, so when that happens, as it will,” the Irish increased in her voice, “he’ll never be alone. He’s a strong man, that he is. But his soul…his soul will need you, the both of you.”
“Mum.” Ruth put an arm around her. “Of course. Adan and I…we love you both so much. We’d never...”
“I know. And don’t fret. I’m not being morbid. I just want to say it, because loss is a part of life, and we don’t get to choose when loss happens, no matter our plans. Or how immortal we think we are.”
The gemstone blue eyes touched Ruth’s, held. “Whenever that end comes, for you or one you bind yourself to, the best you can do is hope that you didn't take anything for granted. You tried to be your best self, which means you gave far more than you took. And you loved with your whole heart.”
Elisa turned toward the men. Mal had put a sheet of paper on the coffee table. The top of the table was a horizontal slice from the trunk of a giant tree, fallen by a hurricane that had hit the island a decade ago. The golden stain and polish highlighted the age rings. Mal was sketching out a point about the fault lines to Merc.
"Lord above, he's not an easy man, but who of them are?” A small smile played on Elisa’s lips, then she nudged Ruth. “And who wants easy? We all know the difficult ones make up for it in other ways."
As Ruth rolled her eyes, Elisa’s narrowed. “Those are a little close to the fire,” she murmured, and casually moved in that direction to close the fire screen. As she did, she used the toe of one of her canvas sneakers to nudge Merc’s wing tip a few inches further from the range of sparks.
Merc’s lips twitched, showing he was aware of the movement, though he didn’t fluster her mother by turning his head toward her to draw attention to it.
In that moment, Ruth realized the greatest danger she’d risked in bringing Merc home to meet the family. Seeing him with her parents, her ability to think sensibly about him, resist the desire to bind herself to him in every possible way, had only moved farther out of her grasp.
Merc touched her lips. “If the third mark is a home, it’s one I want to share with you. I’ve made my choice, as a ‘servant’ must before a vampire takes that step.” He drew them both to their feet and put his hands on her shoulders. His expression held her still.
“I won’t be ruled by your mark, Ruth. But I’ll serve you with it. Protect you, care for you. Learn how to build a home with it.” He paused. “I’m not sure what love is, but if it’s required to build a home that lasts, I’ll learn how to do that as well.”
She managed a half smile, impressive considering how his words overwhelmed her. “Just another skill. Like riding a bike or using a power saw.”
“Exactly,” he said, with conviction. “Though I don’t know how to do either of those things.”
She chuckled, pressing her forehead to his chest. Thinking.
The two of them faced one another, the sea and worlds beyond this one laid out around them. The home she’d always known, counted on. While he offered her another one.
“Tell me more about how it works. It will help you to stop shaking.” Drawing back to take her hand, he pulled them into a walk. Just a stroll through the sanctuary on a moonlit night, as they contemplated an eternal bond with one another.
“First mark is a geographical locater.” She cleared her throat. “The second allows mind-to-mind communication. We usually do them one at a time, with a little break in between. All at once tends to burn through the servant like acid, so I’m told. But even if that wasn’t true, I’d want to take it one step at a time. See the effect. If the first one doesn’t take, none of them will.”
If it didn’t, she’d struggle with the absurd feeling that it was an omen, for how long their relationship would last. Total nonsense. It would simply mean angel blood was too powerful for a vampire to bind it.
“If that’s the case, it doesn’t matter. I’ll bind you to me in my own way, Ruth. Be your Master however you need. As long as you desire me to.” His lips curled, showing a hint of fang. “Or as long as I desire it. Whichever is longer.”
She attempted another smile, but stronger feelings were pushing forward. Merc turned the subject in a seemingly different direction. “You said your father eventually explained to you why you felt as you did, on the slope overlooking the lion habitat.”
“Yes. My mother had to say good-bye to a child she loved here. A made vampire, turned far too young. He chose to end his life, and she held him in his last few moments.”
Which was terrible, but the two messages that had remained in that spot, impressing themselves upon her well before she knew what had happened there, weren’t.
Love survives everything, and there were worse things than death. Like living a life she didn’t choose.
I choose him. I choose you.
She didn’t say it, but she didn’t have to do so. He’d said he could “feel” things from her. His hand on hers tightened, and the silver in his eyes glittered. He turned to face her.
It might be a stupid impulse that merely felt like Fate, but she was doing it. “I think we should go back to my room to do this. If you’re all right with that. Dawn’s not too far off.”
“Agreed. Would you like to fly or walk?”
“Will that be a perk of our vampire-servant bond? A permanent flight option?”
He gave her an imperious look. “Didn’t we just discuss that I won’t be a traditional servant?”
“You did say you’ll care for me in the ways I need.”
“The desire to fly isn’t a need.”
“How would you feel if you couldn’t do it?”
His answer was a grunt. Elisa might be right about the expression being contagious. But Merc did step closer, encouraging her to put her arms around him before he lifted her in cradle fashion. The trip wasn’t long, and he didn’t go fast. During the easy glide, he held her close, her arms around his shoulders, the two of them gazing down as she told him different things about the sanctuary. As he dipped his head closer, she brushed her lips over his ear, nuzzling it. His hair feathered across her cheek and brow.
She’d wait for him to initiate the next kiss, since she’d done it for the first one. It was as he’d said. This wasn’t going to be a typical vampire-servant bond. He wouldn’t be hers to demand what she wanted from him.
But she thought he would be hers. And that worked.
They landed in front of the house. Elisa and Mal were out doing the final checks before Mal came in for dawn. Usually Elisa joined him for a little while in their room. Once he was fully asleep, she’d rise and do the things she handled during daylight, but she’d go back to him a couple hours before sundown to take her ease beside him and be there for what he desired from her when he woke. Blood, or other things.
Servants didn’t need much sleep. Their vampire’s blood kept them running like a train.
Even if her blood didn’t feed Merc the way her sexual energy did, she hoped he’d still take it from her, beyond the requirements of the marking. The intimacy to it was a different form of nourishment, for them both.
The house was empty, except for the current pair of housecats who were always on the porch, lounging on the dining table, or sleeping in Mal’s office, sprawled over his desk paperwork or on the worn couch cushions. She stroked the head of one on the kitchen counter before guiding Merc down the steps to the underground sleeping quarters.
Her bedroom was the furthest and deepest. The most protected. She hadn’t recognized the significance of that until she was in her teens, perhaps because Adan’s was next to hers. Her parents kept them in the best place to protect them from encroaching enemies and the sun. When Farida and Kane came, their guestrooms would be the ones right across the hall from Ruth’s, for the same reason.
As Merc entered her room with her, he took in his surroundings. While it had an adult décor, she’d kept a few nostalgic vestiges of her youth on the shelves. Like Adan’s grass bunny, now brown and dry, but kept intact under a glass shade so the house cats couldn’t shred it.
There was also a beaded bracelet, woven from her twin’s hair. Before he’d gone to the Underworld, she’d cut his hair and made four of them. One for herself, Mal, Elisa, and even Catriona, though at the time Ruth had had far more ambivalent feelings about the Fae who’d captured her brother’s heart. Ruth had worn the bracelet until Adan’s return, though she’d touched it so often, it was a wonder it hadn’t fallen apart before she carefully placed it there to preserve it.
“No mirrors,” Merc commented. “A tell, for vampires.”
“If the vampire’s not worried about anyone noticing the lack of reflection, you’ll still see them, because they make a space look bigger, and we’re as susceptible to decorating trends as anyone.”
She shot him a smile. “Vampires who live among unsuspecting humans usually have them where visitors would expect, like a bathroom, to blend better. They have to stay conscious of not getting caught in front of one, but most humans aren’t that observant, or they don’t acknowledge what that subconscious part of them doesn’t want to know.”
Paintings of the cats were on her walls. The canopy over her bed was strung with beads, feathers and bits of fur. It hummed with the energy of the protective spell that intensified when she was in the room. As her fingers trailed over one of the strands, her heart tightened over the loss of the medicine bag again. But it was all right. Kohana lived inside her, and in her home here.
So did his kin. Kohana’s grandson, Hanska, was Mal’s right hand on the staff. Showing the shamanic aptitude Kohana always claimed was in his ancestry, he assisted Mal on maintaining the magical protections, another apprentice.
Merc touched the bed post, absorbing the energy, and turned toward her. Ruth wasn’t a shy person, but what they’d come here to do had her at a loss. She’d second marked human staff members growing up, those who assisted Mal and Elisa with her care. Yes, she’d thought of them as extended family, but unapologetically also subordinates.
“Have you ever given anyone the marks?”
He’d tapped into the direction of her thoughts again. “I’ve done a couple second marks. A lot of born female vampires wait until close to their first century mark to do a third mark. My father…a few years ago he suggested I bind one of the men here. I never reached a decision.”
“Did I meet him tonight?”
“Maybe at the rehab center. Hanska. He’s like Kohana, his grandfather. Unexpectedly tall for an Indian. That’s what Hanska means. One of the meanings. Tall.”
She pressed her lips together, and thought of other things to say. Before she could, Merc shook his head. Keeping his eyes upon her, he removed his shirt, folding his wings back to slide it free of the openings cut for them. He hadn’t changed out of the security shirt before coming here.
“I thought it would be good to show your father I’m employed.”
She laughed. Then her attention slid down his chest, to the hip bones revealed by his jeans as he stretched upward for the movement. The gleaming layer of dark chest hair that narrowed over his navel and disappeared under the waistband drew her gaze to what was below it.
Merc took off his shoes and socks, then unbuttoned the jeans and opened the zipper with a casual pull on the tab. When he removed the pants, he revealed dark shorts beneath. His cock was a smooth, tempting curve beneath their stretched hold.
Staying in place, he extended a hand, making her come to him, which helped steady her. When she reached him, he grasped the hem of her shirt. She lifted her arms as he took it off, then turned her, releasing the clasp of her bra and sliding that off her arms. He trailed his fingertips down her back, over her shoulder blades and spine, exploring the small of her back. He slipped a finger in the waistband of her jeans.
“Take them off. And what is beneath them.”
When she did, leaving her naked before him, he turned her back around and tipped up her chin. “You do this with no barriers.”
“Clothes aren’t a barrier.”
“They’re a symbol of deeper, more significant barriers.”
He put a hand on her shoulder. Just a slight pressure, but she knelt, resting her palm on his knee. Then, following her instincts, she put her forehead against his thigh. She could hear the rush of blood from his femoral artery. Her fangs started to lengthen, saliva gathering in her mouth.
His hand was in her hair, stroking her scalp, slow, but not easy. The weight to his touch promised he was about to be demanding. She waited on it, glad to recognize it.
He gathered her hair in his fist in that way that made her mind stumble over its own thoughts. As Merc twisted it around his knuckles, his fingertips caressed her nape. “Where can you give this mark?”
“Anywhere really, though major arteries tend to be the best. Carotid, femoral…”
His grip shifted enough so she could move her head, gaze up at him. “Use the femoral for the first mark,” he said. “I like looking at you like this.”
A wave of his incubus energy enveloped her. When she leaned forward, she had to pull against his hold, a tug on her scalp. “You can use one hand to steady yourself, but put the other on the floor, next to my foot.”
When she complied, he shifted, holding her fingers there with the pressure of his toes. She molded her other hand around his calf. Pinning her hand to the floor, gripping her hair, were the needed reminders of who was in control. She was moving toward a dangerous bliss, a tumultuous sea of things to come, things she wouldn’t be able to control at all. She wouldn’t let fear of that control her.
He was the only one she’d give the right to control her.
She put her mouth on his thigh and found the artery. Her lips and tongue caressed his flesh, savoring the moment, and he allowed that, too. The evidence of his arousal was increasing, just as hers was, anticipating the bond between them.
When she bit, his grip constricted, but it wasn’t a flinch. It was approval. She tasted his blood, that unique incubus-angel-Merc flavor. Mindful perhaps of what Adan and Yvette had said, about how third marking was supposed to be a sacred act, he didn’t order her to get to it. Or maybe that was because he was experiencing it as well. She’d expected him to respect the significance of this step for her. Allowing himself to feel it as well was less expected...and increased the power of it.
She released the first serum from behind her fangs.
If it worked, no matter where he was, she could find him. As long as he was within range. But she wondered if, as an angel, his range would be even greater than hers, such that he could find her anywhere. In any part of the world. Or the universe. They had a lot to explore and discover.
“Don’t withdraw. I don’t care about the pain.” His voice was rough. “I want the second mark now.”
She wanted that, too. The second serum came quickly. She swayed, because it had been a really long time since that last second mark to a staff member, and she’d forgotten the disorienting rush as channels opened between two minds.
Lord Brian, the vampire who headed up the various research centers that delved into vampire biology, had pinpointed a lot of the chemical reactions associated with marking. But there was still a significant area he acknowledged fell under “unknown” or “magical and spiritual properties.” In their world, those influences carried equal weight in Brian’s research, no matter their resistance to scientific methods and measurements.
She didn’t want to think about practical things like that, but they helped her find an anchor to pause and think about Merc. This was a servant marking, but he was a male she was accepting as her Master, her job to serve him. When she drew back, closing the wounds with the coagulants in her tongue, she noted his hand had left her hair and moved to her shoulder.
Looking up, she saw his fascinated internal focus on a jumble of thoughts that weren’t his own, and what they revealed as they sorted themselves out.
With effort, she pulled herself back into her own head, to give him room to adjust to the connection, follow the paths to her without her thoughts cluttering those passageways.
When he stepped back, she was concerned, but he wasn’t leaving her. He lifted her to her feet and moved them to the bed, where he sat down on the edge, guiding her between his spread knees. She put a hand on his shoulder as he met her gaze. When he spoke, she let out a little gasp. Because his lips didn’t move.
There is a great deal going on in here.
It made her laugh, and also choked her up some. He touched her cheek, coming away with moisture. She held his hand, pressed her face against it, and answered him.
Human servants can’t prevent a vampire from reading their minds.
“But vampires can prevent the servant from reading theirs, when they don’t wish to share.”
He’d heard her. She nodded. “I don’t know how it will work with us, but I won’t read your mind unless I have your permission.”
It was why she’d withdrawn, resisting that temptation. She wanted to honor what they were to one another, what he was supposed to be to her, even more than she desired to do that. Which she guessed was irrefutable confirmation of what she was.
Come inside my mind, Ruth.
Joy filled her as she obeyed, letting herself be swept back inside his mind. Nonverbal communication was a big part of actual communication, and that held true for communication in the mind. So many feelings and hints of deeper things.
I want her. She’s beautiful. Simple, basic need thoughts. It made sense those came through as words. But what lay behind those was a cave with endless twists and turns. It could narrow down, squeeze in on her, make her breathless. Or widen out and pitch her forward to tumble into open space, populated with thought, currents of sensation, emotion, images. It held her, carried her along, all parts of his language.
She had her hands resting on his chest. Her head dropped forward, too. He put his hand on her nape, his palm large enough to cover the base of her skull. Slow strokes as their minds met, explored. And this was just the second mark.
Do you need a moment before you do the third?
That was usually the vampire’s line. She lifted her head and found his gaze upon her. Watching. Energy sparked off of him, telling her he wasn’t calm, but he was in control. And he wanted that mark. If anything, the first two had made him even more intent upon it.
“With the third mark, you can look through my eyes, see what I see,” she said.
“Not with the second mark?”
“Yes…if I work at it. It’s easier for older vampires.” Stronger vampires. She didn’t feel like saying that, though. Instead she thought of her father, showing her Merc in the kitchen with her mother, and the negative feeling eased.
“You’re strong enough for me, Ruth,” Merc’s gaze sharpened on her. “That makes you very strong. You haven’t answered my question.”
“Yes, I’m ready.” In his head, where feeling was far more powerful than thought, there was only one answer. “You need to take some of my blood for the third mark.”
He grasped her forearm, lifting it so her wrist was brought to his mouth. Her fingers quivered, then rested against his cheek and jaw. “Did I give you permission to touch me?” he said.
His mood had shifted, and her fingers pulled back like a startled bird. His gaze glittered at her through their frame, her arm still held in his grasp.
I would like to. Please.
You will wait on my command. Yes?
Yes. She swallowed. Whispered it. “Yes. Merc…”
This was new and strange, even for them. The natural way he was taking over, as if he knew just how much she wanted to be pushed this way. Had fantasized about it. Feared it. Feared where it would take her.
Maybe he’d been able to explore those corners of her mind far faster than a human servant could. But she’d seen how fast he could fly, with her as a passenger. Maybe it was the same in their minds.
“Do you fear me?”
She lifted a lip to show a fang, her automatic defiant response. “Do you want me to?”
His challenge helped steady and reassure her. Had he intended that?
“Would I be disappointed if the answer is yes?” he asked with deceptive mildness.
“Probably.”
The intensity of his gaze didn’t lessen. He put his mouth over her rushing pulse, and she saw the tips of his fangs. He could cloak them the way he did his wings, and often did so during the performances. When he let them show, like now, they were intimidating and large, like a leopard’s.
When she was younger, Adan had told her that hers were the size of a house cat’s. When she’d bitten him hard enough to make him snarl, she’d smugly noted that size didn’t matter. It was the pointiness. And how much time a person had to twist that pointiness around and rip flesh.
Don’t bite your brother. She remembered Kohana’s admonishment from the kitchen, the threatening wave of a wooden spoon.
This was a very different moment, but when Merc’s gaze glinted with momentary humor, she knew he’d heard the details of the memory and caught flashes of it.
With the third mark, such a recollection would be much clearer, like watching movies in her head. Would he show her the same about his life, his memories? She hoped so. The good and the bad. She wanted to know him. All of him.
He leaned forward, putting off the decisive moment. “Part your lips and stay still.”
When she did, he scraped his fangs over hers, his lips and tongue tracing their shape, making her feel the difference in size. As he caressed them, other feelings swirled among the unsettling ones.
“I want you to fear me in the right ways, Ruth. Do you? I like your defiance, but this isn’t the moment for it. Only truth, if your own heart will reveal it to you.”
“Yes. I do.” Her breath was erratic against his skin. His grip tightened on her arm. The soul could hide things, things too difficult for the heart and mind to process. It was the guardian of both, the last defense, taking the blows to keep the others from being crushed. Because they were far more fragile.
She had no doubt the third mark would put Merc inside her soul.
He drew back, positioning his mouth over her wrist again. His lashes lowered, and she watched his fangs sink into her flesh. She shuddered, caught between pain and ecstasy at the powerfully intimate act between vampire and servant. Or in her case…Master.
He tasted her, tongue against her flesh, collecting the blood.
Please, please let me touch you.
He picked up on her inexplicable urgency, and was merciful. Yes.
Her hand flew to his throat, to put her fingers there so she felt his very first swallow. And stayed, as he did it three times.
That should be enough to accomplish the first part of the binding. It wasn’t a directive. She wouldn’t tell him what to do. Only give him the information to make the decision.
Merc lifted his head, sliding his thumb over the punctures to hold pressure on them. He brought her close to him, flush against his body, arm around her waist, and let her taste herself on his mouth, his tongue. With a satisfied sound, he deepened the kiss, rediscovering the pleasure of it all over again. She got lost in it, barely aware as he stretched them out on the bed. He spread out his wings as he turned onto his back. He put her between his spread thighs, his straining cock against her stomach, her upper body on his chest.
Use my neck for the third mark.
His grasp returned to her hair, holding her fast as she put her mouth against his corded throat. Urgency and a desire to savor the moment fought for the upper hand, and her Master told her which he wanted.
Do it now. I want your soul, Ruth. I want all of you.
She bit. Not like the adult vampire she considered herself, but with the hunger of a fledgling willing to tear through any barrier to get what she wanted. She was letting herself be out of control, because she could be. Merc’s strength held her fast, keeping her bite controlled. He was in charge.
She released the third mark, a yearning sound coming from her as she crossed a barrier to an unknown world, no turning back. She might have other third marks in her life, depending on how long Merc would be willing to share this path with her, but it would likely never again be with a Master. It would be someone she’d have to take on to protect herself, to give the illusion of what she would never be.
She told herself to stop thinking about what lay ahead. This was not that moment.
A rush of male approval followed the thought, a reinforcement flavored with admonishment. He knew the value of staying in the present, too.
A heartbeat later, there was no room for anything but what happened next.
Every vampire saw third marked relationships around them. Every vampire was told there was nothing that fully explained the marking experience itself.
Elisa’s words were in her head. I was never alone again. But it’s terrifying, Ruth, because with the wrong Master, loneliness can take on a depth and pain even Hell cannot match.
“Tell me how it normally works.” As she finished the mark, savoring the blood she’d taken as part of it, he spoke aloud. Perhaps because he was struggling with what was going on inside of him like she was.
“The vampire can move through the mind, into the heart, past the heart. Into the soul. If the human…the servant, is open to that, it’s a startling feeling, but not painful.”
“And if he’s not open to that?”
“If he’s human, the vampire can push in anyway. Take over. They can…destroy the human from the soul outward if they so desire.”
“Would you wish me to try to resist your entry? See if I can keep you out? You like a fight.”
“Not for this. No. Please.” Her hands were on his biceps, as she pushed up enough to look at him. The black blood red in his eyes had gotten notably larger, only a small amount of silver and white visible. When she told him, he looked surprised, then thoughtful, but the energy vibrating off his taut muscles said that was one of many things he was processing.
“Does it work in the other direction? Can I come into your soul?”
Only a heartbeat ago, she’d felt that was a very real possibility. “I don’t know.”
Merc held her gaze. She felt him there inside her mind, as she was in his. Together, of one accord, they started to descend, on parallel tracks. Their bodies responded to the mental effort, pushing against one another, sinking into a closer embrace.
She saw so many images in his head. As she reached the heart level, she saw flashes of the child he’d been, the dark, cold world where he’d been abandoned. Then the adult male he was now, the journeys of heart and mind, the lessons learned, tragedies felt…
His discovery of a world that wasn’t about fighting, killing, surviving. Flashes of Marcellus, the angelic Legion. An amazing glimpse of a sky full of winged warriors, the silver spires of a place beyond them.
Machanon. Where the Prime Legion gathers for leisure.
When he’d first seen Machanon, some part of him had recognized it as a place he belonged. He’d rejected that. Angrily, fiercely. He’d spent his life walling himself off from rejection, hurt, refusing to deceive himself.
Then she saw the recent memory, Marcellus speaking to him, giving him a different view of it, a place where he would be accepted.
Such thoughts weren’t like flashbacks. They were experiences that had made such a strong impression they were in his heart. Having someone believe in him…he’d never had that. Never acknowledged it.
A tear touched her lips as she wondered at the things he was feeling in her own heart, finding his way within her, two beings twining into one. She could focus on his journey, find out, but it was too much. She stayed where she was, inside him.
His hands were on her hips. He’d removed the shorts, and was easing her down upon his cock, adding another explosion of sensation to what was happening to them both. Bringing them as close physically as they could possibly be.
She’d reached the soul level, but when she leaned into it, it didn’t let her through the way his heart had. Guided by embedded instinct, she exerted more pressure.
He stiffened, and she jerked back, but it was too late for defense. An urgency seized him. She gasped as he gripped her under the arms, fingers spreading over her rib cage, bringing her up closer to his face so he could latch onto one breast, suckle her hard. His cock drove up into her. It was an abrupt contrast, but it didn’t disrupt the connection. It widened the universe of possibilities inside themselves into a raw, rougher world. A scarier one.
The power he could wield as an incubus wrapped around her, a full body cocoon. The first climax hit with the brutal impact of a car crash. It took away every choice she had, planting a seed of fear, even as she drowned in the pleasure, two climaxes, three climaxes…
“Merc…”
She couldn’t capture what was going on outside their bodies, except for a brief glimpse of his dark gaze. He was pulling in her sexual energy, and this time he’d roped her life force to it. He was intending to kill her.
No, not Merc. The incubus inside him, the demon. It had taken her attempt to enter his soul as an invasion. A threat to be eradicated. Merc was right. She was about to discover another way a vampire could die.
She tried to fight it, to fight him, crying out in his mind, because her throat was strangled with passionate cries, begging for more. She was experiencing what his victims had, their fear, their realization they were about to die. He’d told her all of that with flat dispassion, though she’d sensed far more beneath it.
But she wasn’t them. She wasn’t human. She was a vampire. This conflict was merely a different version of one she’d dealt with all her life. The conflict between what she wanted and what she had to be. The strengths that didn’t seem to outweigh the weaknesses.
But they did. Even in moments when it didn’t seem like that was true.
That form of submission has honor to it. It’s a choice, made from a position of strength that most who are Dominant may never truly understand. But I do. You’re as much a warrior as your brother.
Merc had asked her if the third mark was two-way, and if she trusted him that much. Trust had to be earned, but sometimes it also had to be taken on faith. If she chose wrongly…
If she chose wrongly, Mal would do his best to kill him. He’d fail. But it wouldn’t matter. And then Adan would go after Merc. Or a Dark Guardian would be sent to execute him, with Marcellus.
With her mind inundated by the storm of responses, she let go of everything but what she needed.
Merc, I’m afraid. I’m alone. Help me.
Then she had no strength left to hold onto her own mind. Like everything else, it was pulled away, something he could take, leaving her lost in a passionate storm, her body rigid, caught in an endless, excruciating climax, funneling a gluttonous feast to him as she weakened, and weakened further.
She dropped through a trapdoor, right into his soul.