Of course, as soon as she had the thought, she wished she hadn’t, because a shadow crossed his gaze and he got more succinct again. She felt a pang, wondering if he thought it was all an act, that she was appearing interested only to secure her own goals, but of course he could read her mind and knew that wasn’t true. Right?
“Yes,” he said abruptly. “I know that, Elisa. But there are times you are like a dog on a chain. You might explore the area as much as that chain allows, but eventually you always go back to the anchor holding you, obsessing over what has you tethered, so you are incapable of truly focusing on anything else.”
She bit back her reply to that, because she knew there was no way she could pretend that everything in her wasn’t yearning toward that anchor. If he didn’t understand or approve of that, there was nothing that she could do to change it. Seeing all this, how it consumed his life, she wondered why he didn’t understand how she felt.
They’d reached the edge of the habitats, and now he brought her to a higher point, where she could look down at it. Seeing the winding lines of the silver fences, she remembered the lines of the island from her dream. Fishing for something to turn the conversation from the darker path, it seemed as good a choice as any.
“Kohana said someone helped you set all this up.”
“Mmm. Someone he didn’t like, I’ll bet.”
“I did get that impression,” she said cautiously. “And when we were driving earlier, when we got up to the top of the hill . . . I thought I could see lines. Bluish, glowing. I know it sounds . . . odd.”
He squared off with her, the dark eyes intent. “You can see the fault lines.”
“In your bed”—her cheeks heated at the words, at the flicker in his gaze—“I dreamed of them. It may be none of my business, but it seems that they mark the places the terrain changes. Is it . . . some kind of spell or boundary?”
He blinked at her. “Have much experience with magic in Western Australia, do you?”
“No.” She shook her head, feeling a bit foolish at his expression. “I guess, working for a vampire, I’ve learned not to consider certain things as impossible as I once did, and magic makes the most sense, doesn’t it? In my dream, the island looked nothing like it looked from the plane. From that knoll, it’s the same as the dream.”
“That’s true.” He considered something for a time, then spoke. “A lot of things went into the creation of this island, and the price was dear. For now that’s all you need to know.”
She gave an accepting nod. “Anything truly important like this comes at a dear cost. I expect whatever it cost, it was worth it.”
“Like the fledglings are worth everything you’ve sacrificed for them?” His thumb moved across her palm in a casual caress that felt anything but casual.
“Yes. They’re worth it.” They have to be.
He studied her an extra moment, then nodded. “Yes, I guess that’s true enough.”
She had an uneasy feeling he was responding to her thought, rather than her statement. “Where did all your cats come from?”
“Various places. Sideshow zoos, circuses, criminal seizures. Though we get most of them from people who got them as cubs, thinking they’d be good pets.”
“So I guess it’s not obvious to everyone they’re not house cats?”
His lips tugged, appreciating her dry humor. “Dogs and cats have thousands of years of domestication behind them. When these cats get into the one- to three-years-of-age range, they get territorial. Spraying, aggression, things that don’t make them suitable to human cohabitation. Like what I said about the tiger breaking a child’s neck.”
“So they give them to you?”
“Most of them.” He lifted a shoulder. “Depending on the circumstances, some of them I take, and leave a strong message that they won’t be purchasing any more, or they’ll wish they hadn’t.” He briefly showed fangs. “The advantage to being outside the range of human law.”
“You let them see you . . . as you are?”
“No. But I make it clear that their desire to have an exotic pet should be far outweighed by their fear of me.”
Elisa digested that. “Why does this matter to you?” At his look, she added hastily, “It’s just, most vampires seem concerned about things inside the vampire world. They don’t really get involved in the human world so much.”
“I’m a made vampire, so I was part of the human world. I know what it’s like to be treated like an exotic pet. You let yourself be locked in a cage, no matter what it’s made of, you become something that was never meant to be, and that goes against the natural order of things. The natural order of things matters to me. If I can no longer be part of it myself, then I can help make it happen for them.”
Dropping her hand, he walked with her on the path that would take them back to the Jeep. There was bitterness and pain in his voice, though it was subtle, a very old wound. The path had narrowed, so it seemed natural to put her hand on his forearm. “I don’t believe that. That you’re something that was never meant to be.”
“No?” He stopped, looked down at her. “Why not?”
“Because it’s like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. God could have just made caterpillars and butterflies. Why’d he make one become the other? When someone makes someone else into a vampire, that’s an ability God gave vampires, right? Like anything else we do, maybe the power isn’t always used the way it should be, but that doesn’t mean the person who became a vampire isn’t something just as right as a born vampire.”
“Do you really have that kind of faith?”
From the sudden dispassion in his tone, she was sure he was thinking she was a simpleton again. Why did she feel it necessary to babble on like this sometimes? Mrs. Rupert had always said it was charming; Mrs. Pritchett said it was a recipe for trouble. Under the scrutiny of her current vampire guardian, she was ready to believe Mrs. Pritchett. Still, she closed her hands into balls. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
Of course, the real answer was she needed the children as much as they needed her. But it was more than that. “I haven’t been able to go to church much in my life, and my mother wasn’t much for practicing it, but I was born Catholic. And I’ve seen things that tell me that something bigger than ourselves is out there, even if we don’t always understand it.”
She could still see the enclosures through the trees. Shira was prowling, playing with a cardboard box. “You believe in something, or you wouldn’t be doing this. You’d think they were better off dead. You probably sometimes do think that, but seeing him like that helps, doesn’t it? I don’t have your connection to him, but I can feel his contentment.” She made a frustrated sound, gripping the loose tails of her cotton shirt and yanking them down just to give her hands something to do. “It makes me cry to think of what was done to turn him from what he was meant to be. But here he is, still something beautiful and amazing in his very own way, and sharing that with us. That matters.”
He didn’t follow her direction, didn’t look toward the cat. Instead, he gazed at her as if she were an entirely new species he hadn’t seen before. It made her cheeks color, but she stood firm, waiting for whatever caustic thing he was going to say.
Instead, he dipped his head, and kissed her.
The settling of his lips over hers was like the landing of a butterfly, such a light creature, but at the gift of that touch, suddenly it was a palpable, significant weight, holding her still and awestruck. The animal and earth scents he carried on him surrounded her, so that when his arms circled her body, pulling her in closer, it felt natural, like sun and sky itself. He’d done things to taunt her mind, mildly arouse her body, but this was far more devastating. His hand cupped her jaw and throat, tipping her head back so he could insinuate himself more deeply into her senses and her mouth. His tongue made a teasing caress on the bridge of her teeth, then against her own tongue, which shyly quivered beneath it.
Her employers had not been interested in kissing, and once she met Willis she’d been grateful for that, because it was something she could keep for herself. Kissing Willis was one of the favorite things she relived about him in her mind. But this was not Willis.
In fact, she was having a hard time holding on to her memory, because it was replaced by the very immediate, real-life impression of Mal, the way his tall, lean body curved over her. She was folded tight in his arms as he took her on a winding journey through a hazy, pleasurable fog. His mouth seduced hers into welcoming submission, and she knew she’d surrender to his desire to kiss her as long as he wanted.
When he raised his head, she was leaning on him because she couldn’t stand.
“Why’d you do that?” Her voice was a throaty whisper.
“Because you deserved it.” With the return of his irascible tone, he made it sound like an accusation. Nudging her upright, he jerked his head. “Come on. It’s time to show you the open preserve.”
Damn it, damn it, damn it. Mrs. Pritchett was right. It was best not to be noticed by vampires. If they made a move like Mal had just done, it wasn’t courting. It was sampling, a thought as unsettling as her own melting response had been. She had to figure out how to make him listen, so he’d know, despite how her body responded, she really didn’t want that. And hope to Heaven Thomas was right, that Mal wouldn’t push the issue. Even trickier, she had to do it in a way that wouldn’t ruffle vampire or male pride, both sizeable things.
Maybe he’d read all this from her mind and save her the trouble of a fumbling explanation. Of course, he was back to being broody and uncommunicative, so the one time she might have wanted him to scour her mind, he’d turned into a badger, shut up in his hole.
Because her mind was churning, she wasn’t immediately delighted with the open preserve. However, as Mal brought the Jeep to a stop in an open field, she saw a female cheetah carrying an impala fawn across the field. Elisa was enchanted by the sleek beauty of the female, her large amber eyes, but then the impala twitched violently beneath the cheetah’s grip on her throat. Elisa sucked in a breath. “The baby’s still alive.”