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her. She was his to do with as he desired. He had every right to disregard her emotions and, in truth, Debra had always dealt with them herself, suggesting she didn’t need him to attend to that part of her. She was his self-sufficient, practical servant. Rational.
    And she was crying.
    Bending, he put his arms around her. She wasn’t sure what he was about, trying to accommodate, anticipate. “Be still,” he said gruffly, and she complied, uncertain and stiff as he gathered her up and took her to the bed. He didn’t carry her often, but she was so light. More than most, he was aware of how fragile a human’s bones were, even a third mark’s—especially if it was a vampire breaking them.
    That damn dream.
    Laying her down, he slid into the bed with her. She was facing him, and he traced the tears on her face, her cheeks, over her lips. She looked as if she might say something, explain them away, but he shook his head, bidding her stay silent. She subsided, lashes fanning her cheeks again, a sigh lifting her shoulders. His mouth tightened. He should let it be.
    Instead, he gathered her up against his chest, his thigh over hers, surrounding her. After a long, tense pause, her arms crept around his back and she let out another little sigh, going limp in his arms. Having been taken so close to subspace with that spanking, her mind was a chaotic soup, so he couldn’t make heads or tails of the tears unless he wanted to delve deeper. He wasn’t really used to doing that, so for now he stayed in this new territory, just holding her against him.
    He stroked her hair, feeling the fine silk of it. Thinking of the dream, where it had been lank and dirty, he increased his grip.
    “In the future,” he said, “You may accept hugs from Jacob, the occasional pat on the shoulder, but no more sitting in his lap. Or I will make sure your ass is far too sore to sit on a chair, let alone a man’s lap. Understood?”
    She nodded. “Yes, Master.”
    Her body twitched as if he’d injected a quick jerk of arousal through her nerves. He wanted to fuck her here and now, but something held him back. He touched her mind tentatively, not wanting to hear another sarcastic remark, but what he did hear was enough to leave him pondering.
    There is only one man I desire. Only one man I’ve ever desired like this. You.
    In this position, his unsatisfied cock was against her abdomen. He could feel her concern, her sense of responsibility to tend to his needs, but as he stroked her hair, said quiet, incoherent things to her, it eased. Then she did something remarkable. She fell asleep.
    Third marks had to reach an extraordinary level of stress or sleep deprivation to drop off like that. He wondered which it was. Perhaps both. Had he been pushing her too much? It frustrated him that sunlight made him too groggy to function between sunrise and dusk. Lady Lyssa called it the vampire “teenage years” because of the level of sleep vampires his age needed. Supposedly, it improved once a vampire hit his nineties, but like his impulse control, he’d hoped that part of him would mature more quickly.
    Debra had taken on more and more to make up for the lost hours, keeping the projects moving forward at a brisk pace. Despite that sullen thought about him never listening to her mind, she never complained.
    He thought of how it had startled her, to find he was listening. That bugged him. Thinking about a variety of things, he held her for an hour, despite the work load waiting for them. He ran his hands down her back, over the silky fabric of her shirt. He unzipped the skirt so he could slide his hand down over one bare buttock, stroke it. Her panties were still caught at her knees, and he found her sleeping in such dishabille unspeakably moving and erotic at once.
    Easing her to her back, he moved the panties to her ankles. He almost removed them, but when his gaze slid up the lengths of her long, slender legs to the shadowed juncture between her thighs,