She’d like to see all those carvings, but wondered if she should assure him there was no need to take her places, entertain her. Instead, she answered his question. “I had siblings and biological parents, but when you enter into the InhServ program, they cease to exist. So I have no family. However, I expect they’re still living.”
“Biological parents?” Niall looked puzzled.
“Yes.” She was patient, knowing most servants knew little about InhServs. “I was not permitted to call my parents familiar names, like Mother or Father, or even John and Stella. They were sir or ma’am, Mistress or Master.”
Anticipating him, she reached the Rover first, opened her own door. “You don’t have to wait on me, Niall. I’m here to serve, not to be taken care of. It’s going to be dinnertime soon. Does Evan like to join us, or do we prepare food just for us?” While vampires couldn’t eat food in the same quantities as servants, most liked to sample for taste and texture, and she assumed Evan would be the same.
Niall shrugged. “I always make a little extra, but ye already saw it. If he gets caught up in what he’s doing, hours pass before he’ll notice anything.” He slid into the driver’s side. Fishing in the bag, he tossed the sunscreen in her lap. “Go ahead and put some of that on your face. I’ll be happy to put it anywhere you can’t reach.”
“I can handle it myself,” she said evenly. His flirting confused her, but it was an even trade, because she could tell her family situation had baffled him. Randoms didn’t understand. On Day One, InhServs were told they weren’t human. They didn’t have family, friends or human experiences. She was a vampire’s servant, the sum total of her identity.
It was an honor like no other.
She put her belongings away in the dresser of the guest room. Niall said he wouldn’t need her until the dinner preparations, so she curled up on the sofa in the living room to read the book about plants. After handling some tasks outside, he ended up at the kitchen table, repairing what appeared to be some type of small engine.
He’d said little throughout the rest of the afternoon, giving her room with her own thoughts. Silence with him was surprisingly comfortable. She’d enjoyed pausing in her reading to watch him work oil into the gears, troubleshoot the engine. He had his hair tied back on his shoulders, his tawny gaze steady on his task. He handled the small machine parts with capable grace.
When he’d noted her curiosity, he’d invited her to come over and learn how it was done. A good teacher, he explained what he was doing, letting her adjust one of the gears under his direction. When it worked as it should, she felt a welcome sense of accomplishment that made the lines around his eyes crinkle at her obvious pleasure.
Mechanical skills had not been required of her, since Stephen had an extensive household, but any new skill could be useful. Even if she wouldn’t be around long to use it.
Apparently, there was no way to silence that cynical, terrifying voice in the back of her head.
Fortunately, it was time to prepare for dinner. Midafternoon, he’d had her take a frozen venison stew out of the freezer to thaw. Now he rose to start cooking, putting his project and tools away in a crate and stowing them in a corner. He told her to set the table.
She started that immediately after wiping the grease, oil and dirt from the table. She suspected he had deduced she would if he didn’t. His wink at her confirmed it. Typical male.
Ignoring him, she put out three place settings, but she could feel his regard. When she took up an extra set of napkins and began folding them, his curiosity drew him back to the table.
He slid into a chair next to her, making it creak with his bulk. “What are you doing?”
“Origami. This is something I did when preparing Lord Stephen’s table. His guests seemed to enjoy it.”
As the bird of paradise took shape, a relatively simple design, she handed the next napkin to him. “If you like, you can fold with me, follow the pattern.”
He shook his head. Remembering his mechanical aptitude with the engine parts, she suspected he could pick up the skill quickly enough based on sight alone.When she finished, she placed the bird in the middle of Evan’s empty plate. “Do we have candles? A tablecloth?”
“Probably somewhere. It’s a rental cabin.”
She found a few stubby votives in the cabinets, a vinyl oval tablecloth in decent condition, printed with a pattern of cream-colored transparent leaves, and a silver plate. Bringing them back to the table, she removed the settings to the sideboard and put the cloth down, leaning over the table to smooth it. Her gaze was on her work, but she was well aware of Niall’s attention as she stretched across the table, her position emphasizing the roundness of hip and buttock.
Indulging such personal pleasures was not necessarily against the rules; she’d stolen more than one glance at him as well this afternoon. The open throat of his shirt, revealing the burnished curl of dark chest hair, the stretch of the cargo pants over haunch and thigh as he knelt to check something on the woodstove. The shrug of broad shoulders as he answered her questions. The way those tawny brown eyes watched her, trying to figure her out as much as she was him.
It was normal for servants to measure each other, getting familiar with what they might be required to touch in ways far more intimate. Evan hadn’t indicated whether he would enjoy performances by his two servants, the way it happened at vampire gatherings, but a servant must always be prepared. The idea made her feel unusually flustered. Perhaps it was the different surroundings, the situation. Plus, Niall’s regard could be . . . intense.
She made herself ignore it, creating a centerpiece with the silver plate and the stubby votives. When Niall went back to the stew, she slipped out the cabin door to hunt up some of the wildflowers she’d seen there. Retrieving a short blade from her pants pocket, since she’d changed into the clothes Niall said would be most suitable for hiking tonight, she flicked it open, cut the stems cleanly. She brought them in and arranged them in a couple of water glasses among the votives. It made an appropriate and attractive centerpiece for their mountain surroundings.
Finding matches, she lit the candles. As she did, Niall came to retrieve the cups. He moved back so she could pass between him and the table to reach the votives on the other side, but when she did, he put his hands lightly on her hips. She tensed, not sure of his intent, but it was a simple caress as he moved past.
The heat of his hands went right through her clothes. It made her think of that impending second mark, and how aroused the two men had been earlier in the evening. Her mind and body were anticipating, which she expected, but the butterflies were a surprise. Not unpleasant, but somewhat disconcerting.
Niall poured two cups of water, a glass of wine for her. “When I started out with him, I wasnae sure what he wanted, either. Beyond the obvious: blood and sex.”
It was as if he’d read her mind, but she took it in stride. “Blood and sex are primitive, essential needs,” she agreed, “but they’re the least important and easiest things we give to our Master. Vampires desire much more than that. A sense of the servant’s soul, resting fully in their hand, to do with as they will. The servant’s complete submission to that idea. Their unconditional devotion to the vampire’s care. That is what they seek.”
Niall raised a brow. “All that, then? Not every vampire is alike.”
“Not in the ways they approach it, perhaps. But that desire is what makes them vampire, and what draws us to them as servants. Weren’t you drawn to your Master?”
“It wasnae really like that for us. It was necessity. A debt owed.” He brought the wine and water to the table. While she’d been working on the wildflowers, she saw he’d made an attempt at the origami. As she lifted the mangled napkin, he snorted. “I’ve better luck with engines.”
“It’s like any new skill. Once you figure out the way of it, practice, it becomes easy. Or easier,” she amended, examining the results of his efforts. “If you sit down, I can show you how to do it again and guide your hands. It’s easier to learn that way.”
When he complied, she leaned over him with a new paper napkin, pressing close to guide his hands. However, his shoulders were too broad and arms too long for her to capably guide him. So she came around to his front, perched on his knee with a very practical air that made him smile, especially when she guided his arms around her and then aligned her own on the outside of them. “It starts with a skinny rectangle, then it’s just all about shapes and creases. And freeing the wings.”
Niall was sure she was right, that it was easy, but it was difficult to pay close attention with her sitting on his thigh. She’d already made it clear that everything she did was at Evan’s behest. However, her comfort with being so physically intimate with another servant—and so detached about it—was distracting. Especially when combined with how responsive she was to sexual stimulation. Whether a trained reaction or not, she became aroused at his and Evan’s touches as if she was meant to be theirs. It made him feel like a bear with a honeycomb held just out of reach.
However, even if he pushed that tree over to get the honey, she wasn’t his or anybody else’s to use, no matter that she seemed to think she was. Her attitude toward her family still had him reeling.
“Was it hard for your mother and father, to treat their wee bairn as a servant?”
Finished with the origami, she rose to retrieve the plates. When she brought them back to the table, she correctly put the one with far more stew poured over rice in front of him. She lifted a delicate shoulder. The T-shirt she was wearing was snug enough to create nice creases between her breasts, coaxing a male to trace them.
“They were prepared for it, long before I was born. It was far more difficult for my mother when Adam, my twin, decided to go with me and the InhServ accepted his petition.” She put her napkin in her lap, unfolded it. “The day we left, she held on to Adam so hard my father had to pry her fingers from the car door, keep her away from it as we drove off.”