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Snever view you as an equal Watch your back Serious " HE&039;LL plans in the works Guard your lady well " That was the note on the nightstand in an uneven scrahen Jacob woke His body hurt all over, and his brother was gone Reaching out with his h to let hiround bed- chaotten so she alent there when dawn ca the upper cha She&039;d also left him a note, on the opposite side of the bed "I made sure your brother took some breakfast with him He thanked me for my hospitality and said if I ever hurt you he&039;d stake ht and happily watch ood- bye until his toes curled and he couldn&039;t ithout e himself Maybe we should invite hio stick He laid his head back on the pillow and groaned This day was not going to go well

As if the gods were laughing at him, when she woke, she was in quite a mood She made him oil every curve of her body to moisturize her skin As a result, he had to handle every part of her inti damn sure when he finished she was as aroused as he was But rather than sate their desire, she announced she wanted to work in her rose garden She donned the dress she used for gardening and with se into a pair of jeans He was going to help her transplant rosebushes She didn&039;t let hiered on his chest, he saw in herhis nipple where she&039;d given him the second y fro the zipper up was an excruciating, cautious exercise Insatiable That was a word for vampire appetites So insatiable that even when they were sated, they made sure the object of their lust would be priy until it was explosive Because she&039;d taught him it orth the wait, he curbed the desire to try and leap on her like a dog As he slid into his shabby loafers to join her, a save a soft "whuff " that ot to the garden and started working on the rose- bushes, fortunately the lust settled to a slow si Lyssa trih Jacob unearthed the delicate plants under her supervi- sion, Lyssa knew he hardly needed it He courteously followed her lead as she put the bushes in alement she kneould have chosen She&039;d turned on music in the solar and opened the outside speak- ers so the soft, sultry tones of Jerri Ada about what her heart was telling her Thepearl In the corner of her eye, she saw Jacob light a couple of the tiki torches to add to their illumina- tion as she exa for blem- ishes or parasites He didn&039;t initiate conversation He teased her in ways she unexpectedly enjoyed, gave her conversation when she needed to hear another voice, companionable silence when she didn&039;t

There were people who could pick up when a person didn&039;t want to talk, but just ignored it, their inner need to express the He wasn&039;t one of thenitive, but that kind of sensitivity caaze sliding over her breasts, down to her abdoh his mind took her by surprise But he kept on hat he was doing, giving her the option of ignoring it if she chose Perhaps because of his proximity to her, the way she felt about him, maybe even Thomas&039;s damn nonsensical ideas about past lives, shadows rose in her subconscious She blocked them Not only did she not want Jacob privy to those memories, she didn&039;t want to visit them either "I suspect I&039;m barren, Jacob, " she said abruptly "I&039;ve been alive all these centuries and I&039;ve lain with both vampires and humans Very few vampire females are fertile That&039;s why born vampires are considered aristocracy If they&039;re conceived by two vampires, the rarest form of all, they&039;re treasured " "How are you considered,of a vampire mother and your father a Fey lord?" She trimmed off several leaves on one of the bushes and discov- ered a hybrid bloom, an unexpected combination of crimson and white Funny, when all the others on the sa the vampires, so I suppose they don&039;t knohat to consider me Since my mother was not only royalty, but one of the rare children spawned of two vampires, I&039;m treated as full- blooded aristocracy They si as it&039;s evident only in ways that don&039;t disturb their comfort zone " At his curious look, she raised a shoulder "My exceptional longevity, even for a vampire Some discreet evidence of powers I have that they don&039;t No one knows about ed Fey form, Jacob Only you Not even Rex or Thomas knew "

That surprised him, she could tell As uncomfortable as it was to discuss this, she found it easier than discussing her fertility She ht it was Whereas yesterday or even toht tell him tohistory of enmity The Fey consider vaery that has resulted inUnfortunate incidents Fey are also very pri- vate Rarely seen in this world anyazed at the roses "My parents were the classic story of the Mon- tagues and Capulets When the Fey High Court found out about their love, my father was transformed into a rosebush and planted in the desert to die So the story goes I never e with the vampires and they de- fended her when the Fey made several assassination attempts before I was born That&039;s why I chose vampires as my dominant species The vampires accepted her, probably because of her royal blood and the fact that she never spoke of my father, never denied or defended, probably to protect et, to pretend the relationship didn&039;t exist When a truce on the issue was finally declared, she took a shogun lord as her human servant and married him for appearances Thomas told you all of this, didn&039;t he?" "Some of it, my lady What would happen if the Council saw you in your shapeshifted form?" Jacob had found her Fey forray skinned, slierous She cupped the hybrid rose in her palm "It would disturb theht drive ht try to kill me " He blinked at her matter-of-fact tone She&039;d helped set up a "civi- lized" society for vampires and they&039;d prospered in ways they&039;d never enjoyed before Despite that, she accepted without ey could cause her own to turn against her It struck hiht be so important to his lady

Vae to exist in the human world They needed nimble minds to handle the vicious politics of their own kind But she&039;d had to conceal far more than most Particularly in the past couple of years "I never told Thouarded the knowledge of it for so long it never even occurred to me that he needed to know He didn&039;t, not really It&039;s a form I can consciously take or not, as I wish I just do it sometimes in the woods to reme to die for her For us " Jacob reached out a hand, brushed his fingers along her skirt, tugged "I thank my lady for that trust " For her love Even if she&039;s not co it that Lyssa saw in his blue eyes how much her wordsher how s in life always seemed to boil down to just two--love and sacrifice He&039;d sat back on his heels There was a slittered in the cinna the bushes and setting posts to keep the dogs out of the area "Don&039;t be stupid, " she said abruptly "Don&039;t do anything to get yourself killed It would upsethe&039;d bound the candle of his life to the di flame of hers But unlike him, she would live if he was killed She wasn&039;t sure if she&039;d have the strength to continue if that occurred For good or bad, for the first tith of another to get her through She didn&039;t kno much of that escaped the net of her mind to him, but as he studied her, he passed his forearet ed at her lips , just above the anklet she wore "That&039;s one rule of yours I&039;ll try to obey,the sa her out of her ers along the line of his spine, the abraded feel of the serpentine third htened after a ti "We should talk about your annual kill The one you&039;ve gone well over a year without " "That&039;scoether Like the third then your resistance to the disease " "Giving you that third et through the Council Gathering The sacrifice you&039;vethe third mark, should help th would help " He sat back on his heels again and looked up at her, his gaze troubled "Believe ree that it&039;s not needed But I can feel the doubt in your h to" She tossed an annoyed look at him "Have you ever killed a man in cold blood, Jacob? A ood and kind? I cannot take a human whose blood is in- fected with evil, so I will beme Be sure what you ask or demand " "You&039;ve already picked hio He&039;s likely h his jaas set, she could feel what he was blocking fro himself toa cure Every extra day you give yourself to fight this disease ive you time--" "Have you ever wondered at the way hu a disease&039;? It&039;s a force of nature, not a nored the prick of a thorn He pressed on "You&039;ve told uess Her on this? Perhaps it&039;s not your tinificant thanyou realize very quickly is how insignificant you really are "

She didn&039;t like where this was go- ing, and she turned away, conveying her dismissal of the subject But of course he refused to let it lie "Illness skews your perspective Maybe that&039;s Nature&039;s way of o when it&039;s tio there, Jacob " You lost your husband tobrutality, which ended in a savage act of betrayal Rex murdered your huh she&039;d closed her eyes, his fingers closed over hers with a gentle power she was helpless to resist "I&039;ness to accept your own death uilt you carry In tiain If you have the chance to do so I&039;ive yourself that chance " She pressed her lips together "You won&039;t make me cry, Jacob Green I don&039;t want to think about these things I shouldn&039;t be allow- ing you to speak this way to ht vampires don&039;t cry " He rose, turned her and took the tears away on his fingertips "You knohat I&039;ical It makes sense " It made sense Perhaps it did still lay so heavily on her she pre- ferred death to the struggle to get past it But what lay at the heart of her resistance to the annual kill was not that It was her fear of what such a thing would do to Jacob To the pure essence of hi to need for her own sanity, to cleanse her own dark shad- ohen they rose in her "You honor hts, her than I look And I look pretty da to coax froant queen "My lady" She suppressed a sigh "Set it up But I&039;ll handle it alone You won&039;t go with me I don&039;t need your help "

"With respect, you said you would That it was optimal to have the help of both a driver and a servant You don&039;t have a driver for this, so I&039;ll be both " He brushed his knuckles against her cheek, gave a half smile that didn&039;t reach his eyes I&039;m your human servant