Beloved Vampire (69 page)

He was after her in a thrice, she dodging him. Snatching a pair of nunchakus from the wall, she tried to fend him off, but she was laughing too hard. He ducked under her swing, caught her arm and spun her back against him. When he divested her of the weapon and held it against her throat, the chain pressing above the silver collar he’d given her, she turned the tables on him, rotating her hips across his groin, bringing her hands back to scrape her nails up his thighs. While it appeared as if she was his prisoner, he felt like a wild beast in a cage. He’d take her on her stomach, bent over his desk, all those unprocessed bills crackling beneath her, so the vendors would wonder why their invoice stubs were so wrinkled.

The vixen.
Those had been her imaginings, her thoughts.

Even as his blood stirred at her teasing, he let the nunchakus drop to the floor, his heart swelling with a different emotion. While her own heart pounded under his palm, he nudged her neck until she’d tilted her head fully, put it on his shoulder. He pierced her slow, deep, and the shuddering breath that left her was akin to a climax. Only it went from mind to heart, and even deeper.

He’d had the grace to be loved by two remarkable women, somehow combined in Jessica. She would survive Raithe’s aftermath, or whatever the world threw at them. He’d make sure of it, while he had breath to protect and love her. Serve her in all ways.

Give her no regrets about her decision
. She was his servant, but as he saw the love glowing in her eyes, he accepted what Lyssa had said, and what he’d always known. Some vampire-servant relationships were far more complicated.

He shifted to her mouth, covering her lips. They parted, accepting him, surrendering to his desires, his needs. So overwhelming, he anticipated that they might lead to great, pleasurable excess indeed, because he had a feeling they would never ebb.

Her arms held him closer.
Let me be your home, as you are mine.

Jessica knew her thought echoed inside of him, from the way his kiss intensified, his grip on her body growing even tighter. Her greatest fear for the future would be his loss, her only lasting regret not having more time with him, no matter how many years she was granted to live.

He lifted his head then, locked with her gaze, even as his fingers caressed her mouth, a promise.

Then, like the Sahara, may we live forever,
habiba.

T
HE sands whispered over the desert dunes as the sky lightened, anticipating dawn. A camel made a comfortable grunt, settling herself. Mason stood at the entrance to his cave, sensing the sunrise coming. He’d laid her body down on a bed of flower petals and palm fronds, fifty feet away from the cave entrance. Fresh flowers also lay upon her, and she wore her wedding dress.

“Do you want me to go out and be with her?”

Jessica’s soft question. He glanced down at her. She was growing her hair out, and it was already a silky mass past her shoulders.

It waved around her petite features, as she lifted her face to meet his gaze.

He nodded. “I do . . .” His throat felt tight. “Jessica.”

She squeezed his arm, shook her head. “You don’t have to explain, my lord. You don’t want her to be alone. It would be my honor. After all,” she added softly, “it was her love for you that brought us together.”

With that simple statement, his servant, his love, his soul, walked out of the cave, down the slope. She wore a full robe, though she’d pushed off the head wrap. He knew every curve of the body beneath the garment, all of her scars as well as the tiger mark and tattoo, both evidence that she belonged to him. When she turned at the bottom of the slope, she sent a thought to him.

I would like to say something to Farida, my lord, but I would like it to be private.

He nodded, winning that soft smile again. She had become so much more comfortable, her confidence growing every day with their love. It thickened his throat anew, made the ache in his chest increase.

Turning away, she proceeded until she knelt by Farida’s enchanted body, laying her hand on the woman’s shoulder. He saw her lips move, but respected her privacy, feeling that coil in his heart tilt as she touched her lips to Farida’s brow.

Right after sunset in the desert had always been his favorite time, for the heat of the sun lingered for a short time in the sand. And of course sunset heralded the freedom of the night, a new beginning.

Sunrise brought the need to sleep, endings. But now he was reminded an ending had its own peace and value. As the first ray of dawn speared over the horizon, he murmured the words that would lift the charm, that would allow Farida to become part of her beloved desert. He made himself watch, though it was difficult to see the flesh gray and wither, turn to ash, slowly disintegrating.

But then she began to float away, on a wind that rose as if called by the release of the magic that had kept her preserved for three hundred years. His heart. His love. His soul. She’d sent them all back to him, in the form of the woman who lifted her face, closing her eyes and letting that ash swirl around her like a desert spirit. She spread her hands and lifted them, a devotion, and he almost imagined Farida there, caressing this woman, giving her a blessing before she became part of the desert world in the way that nature had intended.

Once it was done, Jessica rose with a look of quiet reflection and came back to him. Willingly she stepped out of the sun’s embrace and into his, her arms circling his waist and back, cheek pressed to his chest as if she thought his heart was there, rather than beating inside of hers.

He didn’t need to worry about sunrises or sunsets. His endings and beginnings were a circle.

This circle; her arms.

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Copyright © 2009 by Joey W. Hill.

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PRINTING HISTORY

Heat trade paperback edition / August 2009

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

eISBN : 978-1-101-10185-8

1. Vampires.—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3608.I4343B45 2009

813’.6—dc22

2009001066

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