But it had to be a lie, all of it. Raithe had been right. Someone had taken a few scraps of historic fact and turned it into a dramatic diary about an impossible love. Farida wouldn’t have known how to write like that, just as Jess originally thought. No matter what she’d found out from the consulate, none of it made sense. Raithe had driven her to insanity. That was the beginning and end of it.

“Come now.” The slender woman, Amara, reminded Jessica of the enhanced strength of three marks when she slid her arms beneath Jessica’s back and knees and lifted her in her arms without effort, carrying her like a cradled child into the bathroom. The long dark hair beneath Jessica’s cheek smelled of gardenias. “We’ll get you cleaned up and then I’ll show you around the grounds.

We’ll put those ankle cuffs back on a chain so you can walk on your own two feet.” Because she knew enough about vampire’s servants, she told herself she wouldn’t beg Amara to free her, though she wanted to do so. Mason was also probably lurking around in her mind right now, hearing every thought. Just thinking of it brought forward the best weapon she’d developed against Raithe, the mind-numbing blankness, though it had not been fail proof. It had simply challenged him to seek extraordinary methods to crack it. Killing Jack before her eyes, for example. The threat of tracking down her family and killing them, if she didn’t participate with enthusiasm, was also often effective.

“Shhh . . . you’re shaking again. You poor love.” Amara had her in a wide tub and was running heated water into it, adding some calming scents. Scooping a handful of fresh flower petals from a basket, she dropped them with some bath beads into the water.

“Here we are.”

Jessica let her head be guided onto a bath pillow on the tub edge and stared off into space, tuning it all out, tuning everything out.

She couldn’t die, and they wouldn’t let her take her own life. She didn’t care anymore. There was nothing left to lose. Even if Mason used the same threat against her family to gain her compliance in whatever sick game he was playing, what did that matter?

In a world overrun by evil like this, wouldn’t they be better off dead? At strange, drifting times she’d even contemplated forcing Raithe’s hand, making him do it, to end the shadow of an axe over their heads.

The blankness into which she descended now created walls of oppressive silence, leading to a visualization of steel, impregnable walls. A chamber with no noise, light, sound, a living death. The only place the dark wasn’t frightening. She didn’t see why she couldn’t become catatonic and remain animated, no more than a puppet that Mason bent and moved as he wished, while her mind oscillated eternally in this dark, empty space.

But something was filtering in, an easy, knowledgeable touch, and the wisp of a song, drawing her attention reluctantly.

With Raithe, she’d been tense all the time, so her muscles cramped frequently. The sponge passing over her skin was followed by gentle, kneading fingers creaming soap over her flesh, bringing lavender to her nostrils. There were no lavender soaps or gentle touches in the steel room. Those things suggested a garden. A deserted garden of Eden, the best kind. There was stillness there, no animals, no humans, only her, amid bright tropical flowers. The trees were still, for there was no breeze. Movement attracted bad things.

So she stayed still in this unexpected garden, watching, listening, yearning to touch, move and feel, but far too afraid to do so. She knew that song, though. An Irish lullaby, a sleep song that hoped for angels to watch over her, keep her from all harm. If she’d been less weary, she would have drawn the blade of her cynicism, sneered at the words. Instead, she wanted to fall to her knees in the garden and weep. When the stanza repeated itself, she thought of Lord Mason in the tomb, his shirt covered with blood. He’d lifted her in his arms and held her close, against that evidence of his ability to savagely protect and defend what he considered his.

The breeze started to whisper through the garden, setting leaves and branches in motion, an elegant dance. A few birds joined the song. Preceded by rustling, a deer stepped out, staring at her with liquid brown eyes. She had a soft coat. Touch. She wanted to touch it, to connect.

Something was touching her. Jessica focused cautiously, and became aware of the tub, the heat of the water, though the garden stayed at the fringes of her consciousness. It unfurled behind Amara’s feet where she knelt. Jess blinked at the trees, the bright eyes of a squirrel who paused on a branch to consider them. The doe stepped through blue flowers.

Setting aside the sponge, still humming, Amara soaped both her hands and glided down Jessica’s shoulders, her arms, then back up to her neck. Over her sternum, over her breasts. As the woman’s hands molded the curves, her touch was a caress, the thumbs making a light pass over the slick nipples, and then she’d moved onward, to the convex plane of Jessica’s stomach and prominent ribs.

“We’ll get you some food next. Small amounts at first, so you don’t get sick, but you need nourishment, child.” Jess turned her blank gaze up to Amara’s face, really looking at her for the first time. Along with the dark hair and eyes, she had unblemished olive skin, a remarkable, delicate beauty appropriate in the midst of Eden. She wore a wedding ring, another unexpected element. That hand passed over the flare of Jess’s hip, and then her thighs. Coming up the narrow channel allowed by the ankle cuffs, Amara submerged the soapy sponge to rub between them. Clean her. Easy and gentle, just the two of them.

Jess swallowed. The garden started teeming with cautious life, things peering out of foliage, and her body wanted to move like the trees in the wind. Her gaze became full of Amara’s intent eyes, her distracting mouth. She wore simple, elegant clothes, a halter over a pair of slacks, but her breasts, loose and unbound, drew the eye to the deep cleft, the tempting roundness of them beneath the cotton.

She was surprised by the direction of her thoughts, but she supposed she shouldn’t be. It had been so many months since she’d been touched by anyone. Men frightened her, and her sickly appearance repelled everyone else. Amara emanated gentle kindness and sensual beauty. While the woman was a vampire’s slave, and therefore not to be trusted, Jessica thought she could be trusted for this, even if she was doing it for Mason’s mental entertainment. Only it didn’t feel like that. Amara’s cosseting was easy, keeping the garden growing with life, not startling anyone back into the forest. The unfurling of desire, the needful response of a young, healthy woman’s body, startled her, though. Her mind warred with her reaction, knowing how her arousal had been twisted, distorted in the past, by roads paved with good intentions.

Raithe had been good at this, too. When he didn’t want her pain, he knew how to make his touch gentle, stirring, the way every woman wanted to be touched. Even against her will, he’d get her on the knife edge of climax, and then he’d bring the knife into it.

He’d taken her over into orgasm with her mouth around the cock of a servant who’d been ordered to rub his genitalia with manure in order to suitably reinforce her degradation. She’d gagged, even as she’d screamed out her climax.

You’re my little cunt, aren’t you? Doesn’t matter what’s done to you; deep inside you want to please. It’s awe inspiring.

During the aftershocks of that particular orgasm, he’d replaced his fingers with a sharp kitchen utensil, and her cries became screams of pain. He’d made her bleed and refused to let her clean herself afterward, even prohibited her from brushing her teeth for several days. Then he punished her for being a filthy slut. While he was flogging her, he clamped a vibrator on her untouched clitoris so she came again and again, until she was reduced to tears, begging just for a bath.

A bath like this . . .

“No,” she whimpered. The garden was drying up, blackening, and the animals were dead, rotting. She needed to withdraw, to go back into her steel room. Where was it? She turned, but her way was blocked. The angel that guarded the door to Eden with his multidirectional sword? You’re too filthy, too ruined to come back here. The angel looked like Lord Mason, and she backpedaled, trying to run.

“Jessica.”

Her name was being called, by a woman. Jessica blinked, and the bathroom swam into her consciousness. She looked down, wasn’t surprised to see the blood, for he’d cut her, hadn’t he? The water was swirling crimson. Then she saw her fingernails had dug into her thighs. Because she hadn’t trimmed her nails in so long, they were rough and ugly. Amara’s hand was cradling Jess’s face. “Jessica,” she repeated. “I would like you to kiss me. Will you kiss me?” The wetness on her face wasn’t all from the sponge. Awaiting her answer, Amara leaned forward and placed her lips on Jess’s cheek, over the tear rolling down it, arresting its forward motion. So easy, so stimulating. Soft, sensual lips. Amara moved up the track, kissed Jess’s eye as the lid closed, then moved over to the other. Up to her forehead, resting her lips on the place in the center above her brows, which seemed to bring a wary flood of peace. Jess’s fingers curled again, only this time against her own palms.

She wanted to touch the woman. Male bodies, hard, unyielding—there was fear there, pain. But this . . . Raithe didn’t allow the female humans in his household to touch. Jessica had been relatively innocent, but even she knew it was unusual for a heterosexual male not to want two women touching. Maybe he’d inadvertently given her a gift, one thing his presence hadn’t soiled. She’d never been attracted to women, but this wasn’t about sexual preference. It was a sudden need to touch a beautiful body, have it respond to her. God, how long had it been since she’d been touched like this, been invited to touch back, without pain or fear?

“Will you kiss me?” Amara lifted her head, asked again. “Please, Jess. I really want you to kiss my mouth. But it’s your choice. It’s all your choice.”

Doesn’t matter what’s done to you; deep inside you want to please. It’s awe inspiring . . .

Mason cursed and pivoted away from the wooden dummy, swiping the towel across his face. There were times he hated being right. This was one of them. Yes, it was a key to helping the girl. But thanks to Raithe, it was a key equally capable of destroying what was left of her mind, if it hadn’t already.