“It had better be a very smooth branch,” she said, with a tiny sound that might have been a giggle. He smiled, pressed his face to her neck.

“I'm glad to hear your laughter, my lady. I worry about you. The moods you've been feeling tonight.” A sigh pressed them both more deeply into the earth. Lyssa embraced that cool cradle, with his welcome heat against her back, all around her.

“You're right. I've never resented my responsibilities.

I embrace them, because it's what I am born to be.

But when I saw the hate in her face, I felt so . . . tired.

Tonight, I crave something that will renew my spirit. I hunger for it. I am ashamed to say this to you, when your life is so young, and you have given me so much . . .”

He turned her. “My lady, I am in your mind, and you are in mine. You've no reason to apologize. I understand. I wish I'd been at your side all these years. Perhaps, if I had been, I wouldn't be so greedy for more.” His lips curved. “Though in fairness, I doubt I'd feel any differently if I'd been with you all thousand of those years. No amount of time with you will ever be enough. Let's walk. You know walking helps you.”

Recovering her dress, he helped her slide it over her head. As he did, he freed her hair, bent and kissed the hol ow of her throat. Lyssa tilted her cheek against his hand. Before her eyes closed, she saw a trio of griffins fly across the face of the moon.

As they strol ed onward, they found various Fae celebrations in the woods, tiny circles or larger ones, with copious amounts of singing, dancing and feasting. One of the smal est circles, where the participants looked no bigger than the tiny army men Jacob had possessed as a child, noticed them passing. A cadre of the smal Fae flew over to capture strands of Lyssa's hair, lifting them in the air to try and tug her over. They did the same to Jacob, though since his hair was shorter and he was wearing much less, he was pinched in a variety of improper places by impish female Fae.

“What does the lore say about going into a Fae circle?” she asked, laughing, as they moved toward the circle, which was the size of a manhole cover.

“It's a danger if you're in the mortal world. While you think no time is passing, it might be centuries. I think we can trust it on this side of things, however, given that you're already Fae. I assume you'l protect me.”

She offered an unreassuring snort at that. When they stopped at the boundary of the circle, the tiny Fae squeaked at them. “Come, come! Join our feast.”

Jacob clasped her hand, gave her a wink, and they both stepped one foot gingerly into the circle, trying not to put toes in the feast table.

Instantly, the table was before them. Lyssa saw all the tiny Fae were their size, surrounding them in the ongoing revels. They had a large clearing to dance, and a troupe of musicians were vigorously sawing out tunes on their instruments.

No, my lady. They didn't get larger. We are now the same size as them, as long as we're in their circle.

Their hands were seized, Lyssa by male Fae, Jacob by females, and they were pul ed into a chain of dancers. It twisted and turned, the required steps causing a change of partners that broke and came back together, swinging one another around. Jacob saw Lyssa laughing again, being passed from partner to partner, just as he did the same. It was a combination of mad whirling Irish jigs and contra dancing. The cal er, a long-faced Fae with fingers the length of breads ticks, perched high on a tree branch and cal ed out each change in a thunderous baritone over the cries and laughter.

The twisting and turning turned into a closed circle, one couple trapped in the center. When they tried to force their way out, they were good-naturedly contained as the circle moved forward and back, pushing them into each other. “A kiss, a kiss . . .” came the cry. “Make time stop with a kiss . . .” A shy look exchanged between the two suggested an attraction existed, but hadn't been acted upon before now. Apparently their friends were taking advantage of the night to force the issue.

The girl, a pretty creature with curly red hair, pointed ears and brown eyes, was the one who made the first move. With a smile of joyous abandon, she leaped upon the slender Fae male.

Wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips, she put her mouth to his, burying her hands in his long hair. He staggered back, to the roaring jeers of his friends, but then he quickly recovered, holding her tight and drawing out the kiss, making it deeper. As he did, and gained more confidence, he added a flare. He began to turn, continuing the steps of the dance to loud approval.

When she broke the kiss, she dropped her head and upper body back, trusting him to hold her in that position as they spun. Her friends reached out and brushed her outstretched fingertips, holding them briefly as she turned.

As he let her down on her feet, they continued the dance, moving into the flow once again, their cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling, absorbed in each other as the twisting and turning began anew.

The game was repeated with several more couples. Each time they were maneuvered inside the temporary prison, Jacob noted the demands became more bawdy. One husband was required to give his wife a smart spanking with the flat of his hand for her reputed sharp tongue, and then fol ow that up with an apologetic kiss on the offended part of her anatomy. For the next couple, they required the male to unlace the female's corset with his teeth, his hands held behind his back. When it loosened enough that it dropped lower on her waist, revealing pert nipples beneath a thin shift, he was rewarded with a kiss in the tender cleft, the girl holding his head there with a broad smile as they began to spin together again.

In the turning and twisting, hands were becoming far more familiar, particularly toward whomever each Fae regarded as his or her intended for the evening.

Fun and frivolity were turning to greater acts of lust and desire as the night deepened. Then Jacob made a misstep and found himself in the circle, Lyssa thrust in on the other side.

One woman tossed a tree branch into the center of the ring, a thick stick perhaps three inches in diameter. Jacob didn't want to even consider the purpose, alarmed by what Lyssa had mentioned about smooth bark. But then a stout matron hol ered out the terms.

“Gotta get him as thick as that, lovey. Won't get out of there until you do!”

“And if he's got a smal 'un, guess you'l just have to use the stick to beat on it until it's swol en up from bruises.” That came from a ruddy-faced faun, but the stout woman retorted, quick enough.

“We can see him well enough in those hose.

Unless he's got himself a loaf of bread in there, he'l do.”

More laughter. When Jacob tried a mock escape, there were shrieks and giggles, a lot of very intimate groping that sent him scampering without a great deal of dignity back to the center. Lyssa was considering him, a very unsettling smile on her face.

Whatever else it was accomplishing, it was getting her mind off her earlier shadows, or at least pushing them to the back.

“Take the hose down, Jacob,” she said, meeting his gaze. “I want to watch your cock respond to me without it in the way.”

That brought a pause to the watching group.

Though there was an escalating sexual dynamic, these were country Fae, so to speak. While Rhoswen knew the subtleties of a relationship like theirs, it wasn't so much a formal practice, even at the high-court level. So this was a show they weren't used to seeing. With that one command, she managed to inject the clearing with that sexual tension she'd always done so well. A tension that had his cock answering, no matter what the rest of him thought, being ogled by so many females, perilously close.

Meeting her gaze, a rueful smile on his lips, he hooked the hose, skinned them down his legs, took them off with his boots and put it all aside, bracing his feet to stand before her completely bare of everything except the cross brand, the lashes on his back, and that third servant mark. He knew it always did something to her, seeing him stripped of everything but those three things. Her servant. Her slave. Her lover, bound to her for eternity.

It made him hard, too, seeing the way it affected her. There were prurient titters, and a wash of good-natured heckling as it was clear he was already getting aroused. He'd attended vampire dinners ful of malevolence, the intent to degrade and humiliate while sending a servant into an orgasm with blackout intensity. This was different. This night was about pleasure and remembrance, a loss of inhibitions, letting everything go. Their audience was aroused, delighted, wanting to see what would happen next.

When he was a teenager, this was the bacchanalia he and Gideon had read about as they pored surreptitiously through their mother's books. Pan coming to the circle with his aroused member and his pipe to inspire dancing, coupling. He himself would couple with woman after woman, ensuring fertility, celebrating pleasure and life.

Lyssa began to dance, in a way he'd never seen her dance before. Her hips lifted, fel , moved in a figure eight like an exotic bel y dancer as she turned.

As part of the dance movement, she removed her dress entirely, so now he could see exactly how she was moving, the way her naked hips did the maneuver, how her back arched and her arms reached, tilting her breasts up toward him.

He couldn't help a possessive glance toward the males in the audience. Finding them all riveted, he pushed down his desire to snatch the nearest cloak and cover her. His old-fashioned ideas always asserted themselves at the most inconvenient circumstance. Stil , he wished she was doing this for him in her bedroom back in Atlanta.

Focus on me, Jacob. This is all for you, and your cock.

He doubted he could make himself look away again, anyway. She undulated into a back bend, bringing her feet over her head in a slow, sensual flow of motion, winning an ooh from the audience, who usual y accomplished such a movement with wings. Then she was reaching toward him as if in supplication, swaying on her knees like a flower on its stem, her hair fal ing down her bare back, her hand and arm motions a twisting bal et. Everything her body was doing suggested how it would writhe under or over his. As she spun to her feet, her pace quickening, her buttocks quivering with the motion of her hips, she took her hands down her torso, cupping her breasts and then sliding lower. When some of the flowers were tossed to her, she caught them, crushed the petals over her breasts, slid the silken feathers of them down to her sex.