He's a grown man who has spent his life trying to make up for not saving the one woman he was supposed to protect. You fed into that, to trap him into something that's the antithesis of everything he is.
You bastard.”
Despite her weakness, she kicked off the covers, stumbled to her feet, holding on to the couch arm when she swayed. Daegan's face hardened, and she knew she was pushing it, but she could now, right?
She wasn't some inferior human in his vampire world. Even though she was newly made, she wasn't going to stand for this kind of crap in this new world any more than she would in the old. Her resentment and fury with him, a vague mass of betrayal and mistrust, laced with fear and uncertainty because she didn't know how much she could truly rely on him, surged forth, almost as strong as one of her violent seizures. She opened her mouth to cut his legs right out from under him.
“Anwyn.”
Apparently Daegan wasn't the only one who could command attention when the occasion called for it.
Gideon's tone was razor sharp, bringing her eyes back to him. He'd stood up as well. His eyes, when intensified with emotion, were like midnight blue slivers of sparkling sky, beautiful and almost as mesmerizing as Daegan's. “I'm not that gullible. Whatever his motives, I've been with you, and I can see it for myself. The transition process for humans turning to vampires is nearly identical. Yours isn't. I think it would be a hell of a lot easier if you had help staying in control. I can help you do that.”
“What kind of woman would I be if I accepted your help?” Anwyn shook her head. “You wouldnever leave a woman in distress if there was any sacrifice you could make to save her. That's not a decision, not a choice of your free will. Whoever she was, this woman for whom you're trying to make amends, I amnot her.”
Gideon's jaw clenched. “You don't like being second-guessed. Neither do I. Don't go there. I'm the one making this decision, and I'm making it foryou . And it's not that fucking dramatic. I'm not talking about the full marking.”
“Don't curse at me, Gideon Green,” she said, low.
“Don't go off the handle before I've told you what I have in mind, then.” She narrowed her eyes. Returning to the sofa with precise movements, she sat, perched on the end, her back stiff, and folded her hands with deceptive calm on her knees. “Fine. Tell me, then, since you two have this all worked out.”
She refused to look toward Daegan. The vampire hunter gave her an even look, but came back to the sofa. Interestingly, she noted he dropped to one knee beside her, rather than sitting next to her. He braced the points of a white-knuckled hand on the sofa, and his back was even straighter than hers, his jaw set. She wondered if he realized how she registered every nuance of his body language, looking for what that meant even more than his words. “I could let you give me one mark. It might not help as much as a full marking, but it might give you more stability, leave us both a little breathing room.” A shift in the kitchen made him look back at Daegan. The vampire leaned on the pass-through, watching them both like a still raptor. “One mark would have minimal impact. But twowould help, because that's a bond between your minds.”
As Gideon digested that, Anwyn's teeth ground together at the conflict evident in his gaze. Then it shuttered over. He nodded. “That makes sense.”
“It's a chain between us,” she said sharply. “Gideon, I'd be in your head. For always.”
“Yes and no.” He lifted a shoulder. “The range isn't limitless. When you stabilize enough to choose a real servant, all I'd have to do is travel out of that range, though I expect you'd learn how to shut it down.
Lyssa was able to do that with Jacob at one point. She still had the ability to activate it, but she didn't have to do so. And look at it this way. While a second-marked servant can still be killed in all the normal ways, they're more resilient to injury and heal faster. During the transition, you can have more freedom when it's just me around.”
“You would trust me that much? A vampire, the thing you hate most in the world?”
“I don't hate you.”
“You hate what I've become.” She fisted her fingers in his shirt collar, registered his tensing with a sharp nod. “See? You mistrust my movements, are prepared to fight me.”
“That's just good sense.”
“I told you I wouldn't tolerate you lying to me. Ever.”
“We're not in the Queen's Chamber. You also said the lies we tell ourselves outside of your dungeon doors help us be what we need to be.” Leaning forward, he met her eye to flashing eye. “If you don't want me as your servant, that's one thing. Hell, I wouldn't wish that on any woman. But the good news is I'm about as much servant material as he is”—he jerked his head at Daegan—“so it'll be easy to get rid of me when it's time.”
She straightened her fingers, one at a time, so the nails dug into the tender flesh at the base of his throat, probably the only soft spot on him. She stared at the flush of blood beneath the skin that gathered around those sharp edges. “This is jumping the gun. It makes no sense to make this commitment now.”
“Yeah, it does. If the madness grows, even with the sire's blood, the sooner you can use me to help corral it, the better.” Gideon sighed, reached up to grip her wrist.
Instead, her other hand closed on his, stilling the movement so he couldn't alter where her fingers were.
She let him feel the strength in her hand, which she already knew was growing to the point she occasionally could match him. Soon she would consistently surpass him. Lifting her gaze to his, she held the blue eyes. “Gideon, it won't work.”
His fingers flexed slightly under hers, telling her he didn't care for the grip, but his voice remained calm.
Too calm. A cauldron of emotion boiled beneath the surface. If she did as he suggested, she would know every thought, every emotion, going through him, a temptation that had the shadow voices in her head practically frothing at the mouth.He would be hers . . . unable to hide anything from her.
“No.” She surged up from the couch, removing herself from him. “Gideon, you've already said it. I heard you. You know what vampires are, what I'll become. What do you think will happen, if you make yourself that vulnerable to me?”
“I expect that depends on how he views being vulnerable to you. And how sure he is of the small amount of trust that has already grown between you.”
She snapped her attention to Daegan, still standing in that damned statuelike pose in the opening to the kitchen. “A tidbit of trust is nothing more than bait for a trap.” A muscle flexed in Daegan's jaw. Vampires didn't tolerate defiance for long from anyone lower on the feeding chain, even someone with whom they had a strong emotional bond. Gideon expected Anwyn knew that, though. Or was upset enough that she didn't care anymore, which might explain Daegan's restraint.
He rose. “Before you two go crazy with the passive-aggressive innuendoes about your own relationship, can we get back on point here?”
He might have been grimly amused by the matching dangerous expressions that swung his way, if not for his own feelings about the topic.
“There are plenty of things in my life that I wanted more time to consider,” he said, meeting Anwyn's gaze. “But my gut tells me if we give this more time, I'm just delaying the inevitable. And my gut's always right.”
The forbidding countenance slipped, and he saw the woman beneath, the one afraid to take what he was offering, for as many reasons as his own brain could check off.
Ironically, it made his mind up. As he stepped up to her, he noted Daegan was cutting his wrist vein with a switchblade, mixing his blood with Barnabus's. Her nostrils flared, detecting it, even as her eyes never left Gideon's face. He stopped with a foot between them, a barrier he'd let her decide whether or not to cross. “Let me do this, Anwyn. I want to take care of you. I think that's why I was brought here, though I can't explain my feelings beyond that. We're just going to have to muddle through.” She studied him a long moment; then she reached up, touched his mouth. “Be still,” she said, when he would have reached for her wrist, or moved his lips against her. He capitulated as she traced his lips, passed her thumb over his jaw.
“You want to take care of me,” she said slowly, “but do you want to belong to me? Because that's what this is about. I know it from watching him.” She nodded at Daegan. “From what he asks and demands of me. I also feel it growing inside of me. Maybe because of what I already am, it's growing faster, or maybe it immediately happens, like the craving for blood.” She dropped her hand. “Gideon, what's in my head now . . . It's not the usual thing; I'm sure of it. I am afraid of being out of control. But the way my mind reacts to your willingness to be marked . . .” She swallowed. “It's the way a pedophile feels when he sees a child walking alone. Evil, dirty and unable to resist.”
He heard it in her voice, a confident woman being destroyed by terror of herself. It wrenched his heart out of his chest. He was cognizant of Daegan drawing near, the vampire also responding to her distress.
She was holding the reins on it so tightly they could practically hear the blood pumping desperately under her constricted soul.
Reaching out, Gideon closed his hand on hers. “Your fear only confirms I'm doing the right thing. If you lose your grip on your conscience during all this, the second mark will connect us. I can hold on to it for you until you've got a good grasp on it again.”
“What if I refuse to let you go, after I mark you?”
“You'll let me go.” His eyes shadowed. “Because we both know I'm not the right person for this. I'm just the best person right now.”
Daegan stepped forward then. “Perhaps it would be best if you go ahead and drink this,cher . If the sire's blood stabilizes you more than we expect, it is a decision you might not have to make right away.” Gideon tilted his head toward the couch. “Why don't we go sit down there? The first time will be the worst, right?”
