Page 117 of Vampire's Choice
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.