Sitting at Mal’s knee, looking up at his face, trusting him fully in that one moment as he took her and all of them on a journey with words, she’d had a hint of what surrendering to him, even just once, might mean. He’d pointed out she was all too aware of that element between Danny and Dev. Lord, Dev was a man’s man, and no woman’s fool, but there was something he gave Danny that resonated in a matching chord in Elisa. She’d called it something different with Willis, imagining all the ways she’d be a good wife and make him happy. Mal touched on darker aspects of it, aspects that had to do with what Elisa sensed in herself, a wild, untamed thing that could scare her with its ferocity when she felt it.

She slid into her bed, shaking her head at herself. Mal had told her to go to bed despite the “early hour,” but maybe she should have helped Kohana with chores, worked herself into exhaustion. She was going off in odd directions tonight. What she was feeling now was hardly what that priest had envisioned, she was sure. The pulse between her legs was beating hard, such that when she laid her fingers over it she drew in a breath. Her flesh inside contracted, just as Mal had said. She wondered, and her fingers passed over those petals, the tight bud of flesh at the top. A shudder went through her lower belly, tightening her thighs, even though she’d only touched herself through the thin night rail.

Trying not to think, at least not like a rational human being, she slid off her very practical underwear, deciding she liked the way the cotton of the gown felt, whispering over her indecently bare flesh beneath.

She realized then she was trembling. Victor had brutalized her. Mr. Collins and Mr. Pearlmutton . . . they had stolen from her. They had. She wouldn’t have known that without Willis. He’d persuaded her to offer her body, wooed her with a firm, pleasurable insistence. Mal . . . He was a whole different animal, but one that seemed to understand the dark, violent need that she carried over her heart. When he touched her, he took that firm insistence to a different level.

Danny had always touched her in passing, a flirtation, an indulgence. When Mal touched her, his attention was fully riveted on her, and to be the center of a vampire’s sensual intentions . . . It was a dangerous magic, wasn’t it?

Remember, you back away from a predator slowly . . . If you run, I will take you down.

Pushing back the covers, she put her bare feet to the floor, ran her hands through her hair so the tie on it loosened. The strands fell past her shoulders in brown curls, brushing her neck, the exposed part of her collarbone, like Mal’s fingers. She remembered how his hand had gripped her there before, that collared hold, keeping her still, making her breathing constrict, and not because he was compressing her airway.

She’d always been given to romantic notions, but she had lived in a very real world that kept the wishful child and the grown-up servant separate. Daydreaming was fine as long as it wasn’t slowing down your work or making you inattentive to your mistress or master. She swallowed, and then in the quiet of her room, where no one could hear, she spoke it aloud, though as a whisper.

“Master.”

When they’d had visitors at the station, she’d heard female servants address their male vampires that way. He’d heard Dev call Danny Mistress a few times, and when he did, there was always a certain light in his eye, a tone to his voice that sparked an answering fire in Danny’s expression. As if he taunted her with it, only it was the kind of taunting that stirred a woman’s blood. A woman like Danny.

Was Mal the kind of vampire to be stirred by a woman calling him Master, and all it implied? And did she have a good grasp on what it truly meant? Of course not, which was why she was playing such silly games in the dark where it was safe and did no harm.

It was odd, to have a room all to herself like this. Since she’d been with Danny, she’d shared a room with an older woman. Danny had intended it that way, to keep her out of trouble. But here, Elisa was the only human guest. She was the only one on this hallway that would receive the sun in the morning, a few hours hence. In a new place, being so isolated from the rest of the household might have made her nervous, yet he’d given her that second mark. Though she didn’t know when he was or wasn’t in her mind, she sensed that if she was in true distress, she could call out and he would come and help.

He would come because she was Danny’s servant, his guest. Don’t be daft, thinking romantic nonsense. She needed a glass of milk to settle herself, make her go to sleep. Rising from the bed, she moved to the door and slipped into the hallway. There’d be no staff in the house at this hour. They rotated shifts, some working through the night hours with Mal, some working in daylight, but at this time the nightworkers were still out or at the bunkhouses. Kohana had gone with Chumani to help her with a construction project at the habitats. Mal had likely gone back out after dropping her off. Kohana had said he would take blood at dinner, but then he’d head to the open preserve and usually didn’t come in until just before dawn. She made a face. He’d probably grumble about how “babysitting” her had put him behind.

She padded down the hallway, her footfalls silent in the plush of the runner, then moved down the stairs. There might be a little bit of that bread Kohana had made, and perhaps she’d have that with some butter and the milk. Even as she had the practical thought, she was way too aware she hadn’t put her underwear back on or even donned a wrap over the thin gown, her mind entirely too absorbed in the way it felt. The feathery glide of the gown over her bare arse, the way her thighs brushed together with no panties to muffle the way those folds between her legs touched, tiny kisses against moistening secret flesh.

She clutched a handful of fabric in one hand, the banister in the other. Alone in the house or not, she needed to keep her head on straight, and these were decidedly not wise thoughts. It wasn’t entirely her fault, of course. Serving in a vampire’s household, carnal thoughts were barely a breath away, since they didn’t bother to restrain themselves when they had such desires. Mal . . . Mr. Malachi—she firmly made herself return to the formal use, suspecting it was safer that way—had certainly not curbed himself when he was lying in the grass with her, watching the leopards. Or when he’d kissed her. Or touched her collarbone with the fledglings.

When she got to the bottom of the stairs, she intended to turn toward the kitchen, but a light to the left drew her attention. She paused, her heart accelerating. Those senses he’d had her open wide today told her she wasn’t alone. Mal was decidedly not at the open preserve.

The French doors across the hall from his study were open, letting in the sounds of the night. Using those same enhanced senses, she heard the distant grunts and snuffles, and realized the lion pride had come closer to the house tonight. She imagined one sauntering through that open door and giving her a curious once-over, wondering if she was dinner or something to be dismissed.

She wasn’t thinking of the four-legged kind of cat, and she knew it. Particularly when her feet turned toward the library, not the kitchen. She moved silently, though he could easily hear her, scent her, plumb her mind. She wondered what he would find there, because she wasn’t quite sure herself. Barely two days. She’d been here barely two days. What was she thinking?

But she’d spent the past months mired in fear, grief, guilt, longing. During her orientation, he’d said that animals didn’t do that. They lived in the moment, because every moment was about survival, an instinct even domestic animals didn’t seem to completely lose. They made the most out of that nap in the sun, a good meal, play with siblings. They didn’t know what would come after, and whatever had happened before was done and gone.

Done and gone. If she believed in such a heathenish thing as coming back and being something else, like the people from India did, she’d want to be one of those sleek female cheetahs. So fast and strong, and living in the moment. Everything in the past done and gone. She wasn’t sure she could do that thing with the baby impala, though.

The hallway grew shadowed as she moved away from the living area and the stairwell. She stopped at that dividing line between darkness and the block of light thrown out from the study area. She could almost sense his head lifting from whatever he was doing, knew that he was waiting, seeing what she would do. That only sharpened the feeling arrowing down her sternum, spreading out across her flesh in goose bumps. Could she trust him, this vampire she barely knew? Yes. Because she remembered that first moment, when he held her against his chest in front of Leonidas. Somehow she knew the more important question was whether she could trust herself. She should back away, pivot and go back to the kitchen, but she didn’t want to do so. This was a place for wild animals, and wild animals did as their instincts told them.

She stepped into the light.

He was at his desk and, as she anticipated, he had his attention on the door. He had a pen caught between two fingers, yet he was idly tapping it back and forth against the desk, like a slow seesaw, or the ticking of a clock. And, glory be, he’d shrugged off the T-shirt against the evening’s heat, the cool brush of air from the open doors touching that bronzed skin.

She’d been aware he had a tattoo on one arm, but this was the first time she’d had the opportunity to take a good look at it. It had a ridged appearance, because it had to be scarred with his own blood to make it indelible. Otherwise she expected a vampire’s regenerative ability would simply swallow it. A barbed-wire design circled his biceps, white and blue feathers printed through the dark ink and in a twisting pattern below. A sinuous female lion batted a large paw at the feathers, golden eyes narrowed, her tail wrapped around the bend of his elbow and ending where his forearm began.

His hair was loose, brushing the broad shoulders. Tas, his large striped tom, had fallen asleep with one paw stretched out toward the pen, as if he’d been playing with its movement before he got bored and went into nap mode.

Elisa merely stood there and stared at him for long moments. He let her do so, not saying anything, either, a decision that made the strands of need tighten between them. When she met his dark gaze, she wondered what he saw, and realized, with her being in the thin night rail, he might be seeing a great deal.