“Don’t tempt me to drown you.” Though she was glad to hear him exercising his normal wit rather than mumbling about death, see clarity in his eyes rather than the shadows of hell called up from deep in his soul. Laying a hand on his shoulder, Danny bent over him as Elisa discreetly withdrew. As she surveyed his body, she had to admit she liked that fine as well. Had from the beginning.

Now, though, she felt a rush of anger when she saw the healing scars of a half dozen wounds that would have been serious and possibly even fatal on an unmarked human. Yes, he needed her blood. Now.

“I’ll take over his bath.” She didn’t care what her staff thought, but neither one showed a reaction.

“There’s extra towels right there, my lady,” Elisa said. “Ring that bell if you need anything, or any help getting him upstairs when you’re done.” An unspoken message that they would have privacy. Both women affected a curtsy, then were gone on quiet feet.

You’re right, Mother. I do like her. Danny shook her head. Typical. A small gift from a mother who’d left her so many other problems of nearly unmanageable proportions.

For now, though, she turned her attention to Dev, who had his chin on his shoulder, as if he’d slipped off again. Kneeling by his side, she put her hand on his temple, stroking through the wet hair. He had a strong neck, like a bull. In fact, he was built like that.

Such broad shoulders, a burliness that hinted at the pugnacious nature beneath his good-natured exterior. Not overly tall, though a bit taller than herself.

Come on, then, bushman. Before I can let you dream, you have to eat.

But she hesitated at the wrist, thinking about what he’d asked. She should just feed him from the arm, a functional act, but he’d asked so little for all that he’d given her. Unbuttoning the first several buttons of the blouse she’d been wearing, she unhooked the bra in back, pulled it down so that he’d have clear access to the inviting curve of breast. When she turned her attention back to him, she found his eyes had opened again, though he appeared to be fighting sleep as fiercely as he’d fought Ruskin’s men.

“Should have known the sound of a woman’s clothes coming off would be enough to wake you.”

“In a couple ways.” His gaze drifted down his body, and she saw, remarkably, he was getting aroused in the warm water.

“Maybe you don’t need my blood. Not if you can fill that huge thing.”

“Taking blood . . . from my brain. Don’t need a lot there.” His eyes glinted. “Weak . . . as a baby. Do what you want . . . with it.”

“Oh, Dev.” She passed a thumb over his lips, but felt a warm shiver at the responsive flex of them under her pad, the attention of his eyes on her bare flesh. The mindless hunger there. “It’s a survival response. You can’t possibly finish. You’ll probably pass out before you’re all the way hard.”

“Not about finishing. About . . . being inside. Please, my lady.” She saw it then, in his mind, a desperate need to find something real and immediate to ground him back in the present and not the blood of the past few days.

That took away any resistance she had. Rising, she removed her clothes. His eyes followed her, and even as worn-out as he was, she saw his powers of observation had not been dulled enough. He lighted on the tear in her shirt, moved from there to the bruises she knew would be fading.

“You and the Pom have a disagreement?”

“A mild one. Your arrival broke it up, or I might have got the best of him, then and there.” Dev’s gaze rose, held hers. “No,” he said at last. “Not this time.”

Despite her protest, he lifted himself with a grunt, so he was sitting up straighter in the tub, reached out to her with a wet hand.

Biting back a sigh of impatience with his stubbornness, she let him touch her face, but the penetrating knowledge in his eyes was unexpected and unsettling. She would have drawn back, but his fingers tangled in her hair.

“He did more than knock you around a bit. He . . .” His eyes narrowed, his hand tightening.

“No.” She closed her hand on his wrist, held his gaze. “Only if I were dead, Dev. That’s the only way he’d get that. It was a way of threatening me,” she added, when his green eyes didn’t waver, a hint of savagery suggesting what his opponents had been facing these past several days. “He was trying to unbalance me. He succeeded a little bit, but he won’t be alive long enough to savor it, believe me.”

“Yeah, I do. But together, remember?”

She bit back another sigh. There was no way Dev could help her take out a vampire more than five hundred years old. But he was too much of a man to hear such logic, even on a good day. Instead, she let her hand slide to his shoulder, gently began to push him back. “What do I have to do to get you to shut up and eat?”

“The airplane, coming in for a landing?” At her startled look, he made the motion of a held spoon turning in the air, zooming for an infant’s hopeful mouth. “Of course, I was thinking of something a little different.”

“I should drown you,” she decided.

“Your hair,” he said softly. “Take down your hair, love. Thought about your hair. Dreamed about it.” For today, she’d overlook the fact it came out of his mouth almost like an order. There was no way he could make her do it, after all. As she stepped into the tub, she removed Chiyoko’s sticks, let it spread out on her shoulders. She straddled his body, working her feet in on either side of his thighs. When he ran his wet hands up the sides of them, closing on her flesh, she let herself be drawn down, feeling the tremor in his arms.

His body was such a mess, but beneath the cuts, bruises and half-healed wounds, she saw his muscles, straining. From his mind, she knew he was right. Wounded he was, but what he most needed now was this. Truth, she was already somewhat slick for him, merely from the intensity of his gaze, his need for her. As she lowered herself, his hands moved up to her buttocks, cupped them. A wry smile crossed his face, though. “I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to do much for your pleasure, love. I’m so tired, but want you so badly, I’m sure to be the typical bastard. Go off like a geyser the minute your sweet cunt closes on me, and then fall right to sleep.”

“We’ll see,” she murmured, and began to sink down on him. As his attention went to that joining place, his breath drawing in, she picked up the razor Elisa had left on the stack of towels and flipped it open, drawing his startled attention. When his cock had pressed several inches into her slick, welcoming channel, she drew the blade across her breast, making a bright vermilion streak of blood well up.

“Drink first,” she ordered, cupping his head. “It will help restore your strength, heal your body completely.” She leaned forward, half impaled on him, her body already quivering, but it was a delicious sensation, holding still there while that broad head waited, insisted.

Beats the hell out of the airplane method, doesn’t it?

His fingers dug into her hips, but she refused to budge until he complied. Drink, Dev. Let me help heal you.

His tongue touched her skin, took the first tentative lick of her flesh, her nourishing blood. A drop fell into the water with a soft plop, spreading out, a crimson flower with spidery petals. With a mental sigh, he closed his mouth over the wound, began to pull at her. The reaction from her own body was electric, spasms rippling up through her womb such that she felt the reactive flex of his hands on her, the surge of lust in his own mind, as he realized the effect it had on her.

She could hold both their bodies still with effort, but it also required pressing down, and she found herself drawing out that torment, one millimeter at a time, feeling him stretch her, demand more of her body, as she demanded more of it as well. She maintained the creeping pace, because every millimeter brought a convulsion of pleasure almost as strong as a climax. Also, she knew it was a gentler way to handle his battered torso, though he likely wouldn’t care for her tenderness.

Down, down, as his mouth suckled the blood from her breast, her hand now cupped on the back of his neck, the other sliding slowly down his chest, over the raven mark, until she was seated to the hilt on him. The position straightened her arm, and he let go of one of her hips to stroke his fingers along it.

She didn’t want to draw back, but she knew she needed to do so, for too much of her blood would make him sick, like a far too rich dessert. To ease the transition for them both, she arched up, lithe, and slowly drew his mouth down to her nipple, letting him latch on there instead. When she tightened her grip on him, she began to move, like the ripple of sand, the stroke of the wind, changing the face of things, the way their bodies looked together, so there was a compilation of images that began to build in her mind. Going down, seeing his lashes flicker up, his beautiful green eyes roving over her breasts, her throat, up to her face. It created an intimacy so intense she tilted her own head back, closing her eyes.

He was shaking so hard now it was making the water vibrate. Too weak for this, she knew, but this was what he’d wanted, and she wouldn’t let him be cheated by his mortal strength. Searching, past the curve of her buttock, she found his muscular thigh beneath the water’s surface, stroked up it to find the sensitive strip between scrotum and anus, and began to tease him there. The way it arched her body gave him a display of white flesh from her throat to the hint of the split lips of her sex, him thrust between them. Her quivering breasts, slope of abdomen and other sights all in between.

You, first . . . love. Please, let me see you go.

Not this time. You’ve ordered me about enough. This is all about you. Give me your seed, Dev. Come for me now.

His cock pulsed inside her, and his involuntary oath made her muscles contract on him in satisfaction. The water sloshed over the side as he bucked up into her, driving harder, once, twice, his breath rasping even from that bare effort. The hot flood of him seared the sides of her womb, bathed her inside with a feeling so strong it unleashed the band she’d held around other emotions for the past three days. On pure impulse, she leaned forward, grasped his jaw with both hands to wrench his head up and ruthlessly seize his mouth, kissing him with all the need, worry, anger and desire she had to give. His arms banded around her waist and hips.