I sat in one of the stiff wing chairs and rubbed my eyes. “That’s a good personal motto. Another good one would be ‘don’t work for vampires.’”

He straightened and turned to face me. His dark eyes glittered in the firelight, and I thought it might be humor I saw in them. “For future reference, most ‘people’ don’t talk to the help. Just imagine that I’m invisible.”

“Sorry. I’m new here.”

The secret passageway opened, and Cyrus entered without knocking. I stood as though he were royalty. I’m not sure why.

He wore a silk dressing gown tied loosely enough to make me acutely uncomfortable. His torso was hard and well-defined. A perfect body, with the exception of the thick scar that ran from his collarbone to his stomach.

An injury like that would have been deadly six hundred years ago, so he must have been human at the time to keep a scar. A vampire would have healed. I touched the scar on my neck. Cyrus must have incurred the injury before he’d completely changed into a vampire.

He yawned and stretched like someone who’d had the luxury of too much sleep, and his unbound hair brushed the floor with the motion. “Rested and ready for the night?”

I shook my head. “Someone was creeping around my room all day.”

“Clarence, I hope you apologized for waking Carrie,” Cyrus admonished the butler.

“I don’t think it was Clarence who woke me.”

Like some kind of reverse genie, Clarence disappeared at the mention of his name. I heard the parlor door click softly shut.

“I did come in to check on you.” Cyrus slipped behind me and stole my chair, pulling me into his lap as he did so. I yelped in surprise as I felt his ice-cold skin through my robe and tried to rearrange the fabric over my bare legs. Sprawled as I was over him, it was hard to maintain a ladylike appearance. He took advantage of the position and slipped his hand between the slightly parted fabric. “I felt your distress at the scene in the garden. And your excitement.”

I swallowed as his fingers teased my inner thigh. “You saw that?”

“It was spectacular, wasn’t it?” He inched his fingers up the hem of my T-shirt. “They’re such vulgar creatures, but I love the way they feed, the pack mentality of it.”

“Yeah, it’s a regular nature special.” I pushed his hand away and stood, whirling around to face him. “Did you tell them to do that? So I could see?”

Standing had been the wrong move. My wriggling had dislodged the tie of his robe completely, and he made no move to cover himself. I tried to look anywhere but where carnal curiosity forced me to. Not that I wanted to look at his immensely pleased face, either. He seemed delighted by my embarrassment. “Oh, I’m sorry, am I making you uncomfortable?”

“You forget, I’m a doctor. Or was,” I added with a surprising twinge of guilt. “I’ve seen plenty of naked bodies before. They all sort of look the same after a while.”