Nightfall (10 page)

“You’ve worked so hard for what you want, Quinn. I listen to
people, and I know they respect you, look to you as a leader in this community.
Your opinion counts, because you’ve earned it. But you have no woman, no family
close by. Don’t even seem to really have many close friends. Why is that,
Quinn? Why do you prefer your silent pastures to being around your own kind?
Keep your eyes closed. Tell me in the darkness. It’s easier that way.”

He wasn’t sure anything would make it easier, but he kept
his eyes closed. “Why do you need to know?” he asked, fighting the tense weight
in his chest trying to disrupt the moment.

Fortunately, she continued to stroke him. By keeping his
eyes closed he felt he was back in that erotic dream state from this morning,
her voice like a ribbon of silk weaving around him.

“You’re not a man who talks about his emotions. I like those
traditional qualities to you. You’re a man’s man, Quinn. But to do this right,
I need to know the emotional makeup below the surface. Why you do certain
things and how it will affect what goes on between us. So I’ll push to get to
the root of who you are.” Her voice took on an edgy purr. “I can be gentle
about that, or not-so-gentle. Because it’s to give us both pleasure. But I want
truth from you, always. Tell me.”

God help him, his mouth was already opening to let the words
spill out, as if the stroke of her hand was a sorceress’s compulsion.

“I’m not sure I can make you understand,” he began. “When I
was growing up we lived in the foreman’s house on the ranch where my dad
worked. Our home was the noisiest place in the world. At least it felt that way
to me. There were four of us, all boys, and I was the youngest. I was kind of
an accident, so my next oldest brother was about eight years older than me. We
never really connected as siblings. We barely even keep in touch with each
other.”

“I’m sorry. That must make you sad sometimes.” Her voice was
a calming caress.

“I got used to it. If someone wanted to be heard, shouting
was the only answer. Then there were the hands, just as wild and noisy as we
were. There was no place to get away from it. I think I was the only one in the
family who ever found it…jarring. Distressing. Privacy was nonexistent.
Everyone was in your business all the time.”

“I can understand that.” Her voice was edged with hidden
meaning.

“My dad was a hard man. He raised us the way he’d been
brought up, with a lot of shouting and a good strapping with a belt when we
misbehaved. It seemed a day hardly passed without one of us feeling the leather
on our backsides.” He shook his head as if to clear it. The ranch had always
been a maelstrom of sound, exploding around him with the force of a tornado. “I
felt, I don’t know, I guess you’d say I got lost in it all. And Dad and I just
never saw eye to eye on anything. We were always at each other’s throats when I
was a teen. It came to blows a couple times, made my mother cry over both of
us, because we couldn’t get along.”

“Oh Quinn.” But her tone stayed low, as if raising it beyond
a certain level would fracture his thoughts.

“I’m not sure how my mom ever stood it. She was an amazing
woman, and the only one who could keep order. Who could make my dad shake in
his boots.”

Selene’s lips curved in a knowing smile. “I think I would
have liked her.”

“Yes. You probably would.”

“But then you left home,” she prompted.

“Yeah, to try to be something more than part of a crowd.
Only being on the rodeo circuit wasn’t any different. The only thing that
changed was the geography. All that shouting and screaming. The noise of the
animals and the competitors just invaded your head and swelled in your brain.
The ever-present crowds. For a long time I never had the money to stay in a
motel so I slept in my truck. Let me tell you, that’s no place to get away from
the constant sounds of the rodeo.”

He paused and let out a slow breath. A muscle ticked just
beneath his left eye. “You say my kind. I don’t even know what my kind is. I
just know the silence of the land, even with the cattle, is the first peace
I’ve known in my life. It’s like being in a healing place.”

She stroked her slim fingers over his forehead. “Peace can
be found in many ways. Perhaps giving control to me, allowing me to lead this
dance, will be a kind of peace for you. A place where you don’t always have to
call the shots. Where you can just be. Will that work for you, Quinn?”

He shrugged, as if giving voice to the answer was a step he
couldn’t yet take, despite the admissions he’d already given to her.

“You seem a little isolated yourself,” he said instead,
opening his eyes and looking up at her. “You work a crowded room like the
friendliest person alive, but the reserve is there, keeping them all at arms’
length.”

“Vampires aren’t social,” she said. “Not even with each
other, at least not that way. When we get together it’s more politics than
potluck. Usually someone ends up dead or wishing they were.”

He held her gaze. “I don’t know what to believe when you
talk like that.”

“It doesn’t seem to bother you all that much. Which means
you have an exceptional tolerance for someone crazy running your bar or,” she
slid her finger down the side of his throat, tracing his pounding pulse there,
“something in you already knows the truth and is okay with it. Which both intrigues
me and tells me I should leave before bad things happen to you.”

He closed his hand over her wrist, a gentle hold. “No.
That’s not what I want.”

“Since when is anything about what you want?” But her
brittle smile wasn’t unkind, and he saw a trace of sadness in her eyes. That
flash impression of the many things moving at too deep a level inside her for
him to get a handle on it had his fingers tightening on her.

“Let me give you pleasure.”

She cocked her head, considered. “I notice your staff here
calls you ‘boss’. Is that what everyone who works for you calls you?”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

She nodded. “Will you call me Mistress, Quinn?” Withdrawing
her hand from his touch she stepped back, gloriously naked, her gaze sweeping
him. She answered before he could.

“Whether you will or not, that big cock of yours jumped at
the idea of it. You can’t imagine how amazing you look in only those chaps. I
want to eat you alive. Stretch out on the bed. I’m ready for a hard ride.”

Selene watched him comply, moving onto his heels and then
standing. In that position he towered over her, but she didn’t retreat. He
paused, his expression gripped by an amazement that caused her to lift a
quizzical brow. Setting his jaw, he put his hands to her waist, slowly lifted
her off her feet, biceps flexing in a very attractive manner as he raised her
over his head.

She was reminded of the
Dirty Dancing
scene when
Patrick Swayze lifted “Baby” over his head. Quinn’s expression was almost as
absorbed as “Johnny’s” and made butterflies jump in her stomach. She tried to
stay away from movies and TV, because Laurent had frowned on it, saying it was
never a good idea for vampires to get too involved in human culture, but she’d
watched that one in defiance, curled up in her crappy hotel room, in need of
some sense of controlling her own destiny…even if it was simply watching a
goddamn movie.

Quinn held her there. “There’s nothing to you,” he said in a
wondering voice. “You’re just this little girl, but you have the eyes of a
chupacabra.”

“What or who is that?”

“A creature of supernatural legend that kills its victims by
piercing their throats and draining their blood.”

She stared at him. “That’s what I remind you of?”

“Only the eyes,” he told her. “You have the same hungry look
in your eyes.”

“Maybe it’s you I’m hungry for,” she murmured.

Still holding her gaze, he lowered her back to the floor,
their bare bodies so close. “The bed, cowboy,” she said.

He released her waist but held onto her hand, so that when
he moved to comply, he drew her along with him. She stood at the side of the
bed as he stretched out, and when his fingers slipped from hers, she felt their
loss. “Arms over your head. Grip the rails, just like before. I don’t want
anything in the way of taking my pleasure.”

As he obeyed, she had to draw in a breath at the beauty of
his rugged male form. The mileage and scars just made him all the more
appealing to her. She traced every muscle of the six-pack abs, the crescents of
his pectorals, the bump of his nipples and the light layering of gleaming hair
across that terrain. She teased his navel with a fingernail and earned a
squirm, a half-snort, half-chuckle that made her smile. Then she curled her
fingers around the thick root of his penis, and his face got intent again. He
breathed her name as she tugged on him, dug her nails into his balls, made him
arch up with a hiss.

“Spread your legs out wider.”

The pleasure of his obedience speared her. He understood it,
deep down, and seeing it come to the surface of his consciousness was as great
a pleasure as the response of his cock. More. When he’d made that shift
earlier, from what he thought was expected of him to what he truly wanted,
she’d wanted to fuck him to oblivion right then and there. The willingness to
set aside his perceived greater strength and size, the capitulation of his
mind, handed to her with trust in where she would take him…it was all the best
parts of power and pleasure.

When she’d been turned into a vampire, she’d learned the
meaning of the word helplessness. It was only when she discovered that vampires
had a genetic disposition toward sexual Dominance, and even the weakest vampire
had the right to exercise that over humans of her or his choosing, that she
found an escape from how nightmarish her life became at times.

It also put her in touch with something about herself that
made her not regret so much the circumstances that had brought her to that
state. She just resented the assholes who had seemed to inundate her life since
then. She wasn’t running from what a vampire truly was—only what the vampire
world demanded she be. It was a shame Laurent and his ilk didn’t comprehend the
difference, and she was nowhere near high enough on the food chain to teach it
to them.

So it was time to focus on the here and now. “What do you
want, Quinn?” she asked, putting her hands on the bed and sliding onto it on
all fours over him like the dominant predator she was. She bent her elbows,
blew lightly on his testicles and all up along his shaft.

“To fuck you.”

“Hmm. The right intent, but not quite the right answer. Try
again. Here’s a hint. Who am I?”

Those dark eyes fastened on her face. She saw him struggle
with it. Was it too soon? Or had it been locked away in him for so long, in
this moment clogged by lust and intensity, it would shove past his reservations
and logic, all vestiges of caution?

He swallowed, and she realized she’d gone preternaturally
still, something she tried to stay aware of and avoid, but in a highly charged
physical or emotional state, her youth as a vampire showed. She was holding
breath she didn’t have to take.

“My Mistress.”

Fire swept her, and she knew he saw it in her eyes, because
his cock did that eager jerk again, his balls drawing up as she scraped her
fangs along them. In their normal state, her fangs looked like sharpened
canines, but for feeding they gained a quarter inch, giving her a deeper
penetration. His eyes widened as she lifted her head and he saw them.

“Again.” She realized her voice sounded like a growl, and
his breath rasped in his throat.

“My Mistress. Mine. Please…fuck me. Let me give you the ride
of your fucking life.”

Her cowboy, being possessive. It twisted him even deeper
into her heart. She slid up his body, dragging her breasts over his cock,
cupping them around his shaft, using his pre-cum to lubricate the movement. He
thrust in instinctive reaction and she chuckled.

“No movement unless I say,” she chided. She made him keep
his ass glued to the bed as she worked his cock between her breasts, fingering
her nipples as he watched with glazed fascination. His whole body was one
quivering cord of male power, waiting to be unleashed.

Rising onto her knees, she took hold of his cock. He was
right about the differences in their sizes. Her fingers barely wrapped around
his base, and when she straddled him, she felt the pleasurable strain as she
spread her thighs over him. He was a big man and she loved that about him. A
big, rough man who worked with his hands, whose ambition was a successful ranch
and the ability to enjoy quiet, open spaces. His idea of a romantic night would
be lying in his truck bed, staring up at a star-filled sky, sharing a six-pack
and talking until dawn came. She couldn’t imagine anything more simply perfect
than that. Even if she couldn’t stay until the rising of the sun. Even if she
could never be the woman in that truck with him, planning a life of babies and
what to make for dinner.

Selene, shut up and fuck him.

She lowered herself onto him, letting pure lust-filled bliss
take over as that meaty cock stretched and filled her.

“I want to touch you.” He sounded as fierce as she had a
moment before, that same growl in his voice.

“No,” she said, soft as a whispered breeze, her eyes locking
with his. It was part of the pleasure, seeing a man obey, not from barked
orders or because his hands were tied, but because he hungered for the
restraint of his Mistress’ will. “Stay still.”

She rose and fell while he shuddered beneath her, grunts
escaping his lips at the effort it took. For her part, she thoroughly enjoyed
every solid inch of him, every reaction on his face. He was clenching the
headboard rails so hard, they would bite into his hands, leave lasting
imprints.

“This is how you’re going to come,” she said. “You’ll wait
until I come, and then I’ll keep moving on you until you climax. But you don’t
get to thrust until you start to come. Tell me you understand. Tell me in the
way you know I want to hear.”

“Yes, Mistress. Fuck…”

“Don’t close your eyes,” she said, pinching his nipple sharp
enough that his gaze sprang open as he flinched. “You watch me.”

Rise and fall. Up and down. The friction of his corona on
her opening, the hard stroke of impact against her clit as her movements became
fiercer, built the climax in her like a storm. Seeing a reflection of it gather
in his eyes, in his body, just egged it on. When she went over, she cried out
her pleasure, but she still heard his raw voice.

“Yeah…that’s it, baby. Come for me. Come…you’re
fucking…beautiful…Mistress. My Mistress.”

He kept saying that. As she savored her aftershocks, she
sensed his climax, his face getting that tight look, the eyes starting to glaze
over.

“Now, Quinn. Go over for me. You can thrust.”

His hips bucked up, thrusting his cock so deep into her it
hit her cervix, not necessarily a pleasurable thing for most women, but for
vampires there was a translation point from pain to pleasure that made them
understand sadism in a way most humans never could. Except for a vampire’s full
human servant. Servants learned the way of it…if they were meant for that life.

That thought, which she should banish far, far away, was
obliterated by her cowboy, whose animal nature had taken over. He interpreted
“Go over” in his own way, releasing the headboard and seizing her hips to flip
them, so he was between her legs and plowing her like a field of moist earth.
He came, his breath hot against her ear, his ass flexing under the lock of her
legs. As she raked his back with her nails, she relished his guttural noises.
She flipped them again, seeing the surprise in his gaze when she did it so
easily, shoving him back down with a hand locked around his throat. She worked
herself on him, squeezing and circling her hips, grinding down on him, milking
the last bit of climax out of him as he held on to her hips with bruising
fingers.

When she at last slowed down, she knew she’d acquired the
last drop. That surfeit slid down her vaginal walls, where it would make a
lovely, heated, sticky pool between cock and cunt. Even as she loosened her
grip, she knew she wanted to feed on him again, which concerned her, because
she
wanted
to feed on him. Didn’t need to do so. She shouldn’t need to
feed again for another day or so and when she did, she needed to take it from
elsewhere. Food was always easy for a vampire bartender. One of those last call
customers could be asked to stay a little longer to help the cute little
barkeep move a couple heavy boxes. The next day, he’d have a pleasantly hazy
hangover, where details were missing, such as the quick pint she’d taken from
his throat.

The idea had no appeal to her at all, not with Quinn right
here. So available, and learning to respond to her in so many irresistible
ways.

Which was exactly why she needed to resist.

She slid off him, picked up her clothes. Coiling up the
whip, she tossed it on the bed next to him. “You’re right. You give a mighty
nice ride, cowboy. Now it’s time for this girl to get some sleep.”

She saw the
what the fuck
look at her transition,
knew she’d been too abrupt. But he wanted to stay with her, she could see it. That
was the danger of Quinn Pedraza. A whole bar full of men wanting one-night
stands, and the one who’d caught her eye was the forty-two-year-old with deep
brown eyes, a heart of gold and a need for love and family. She was self-aware
enough to know that was part of what appealed to her. Maybe she had become far
more of a vampire than she realized, that she couldn’t bring herself to care
enough to stop this. But at least she could avoid the things that encouraged
the wrong kind of intimacy. Like sleepovers.

“Did you see the reports I left you?” she said casually.
“Everything look good on those?”

He blinked, sitting up, putting his feet on the floor.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “Yeah, looked good.”

“Good.” She was dressed now. “That’s separate from this. All
professional. This is your place, so if you have any concerns, you talk to me
about them. Don’t hold back.”

He stood, stripped the chaps as if wearing them now and
nothing else made him uncomfortable. His gaze was studying her, measuring.
Caught between confusion and calculation of her intent. He was a smart man.
He’d understand the boundaries she was setting. She just didn’t know if he’d
pay attention to them. Because he had that side to him as well, the alpha male
she found far too irresistible.

She moved to the doorway, looking back over her shoulder as
he pulled on the jeans, threaded his arms into his shirt, shrugged it on,
leaving it unbuttoned. He hadn’t yet buttoned the jeans, and all of it made her
ache.
No. No more candy tonight. It will spoil your dinner.

“Remember what I said, Quinn. You want to come before you
see me again, you call me. That’s an order. I can make that single tail hurt a
lot worse.” She gave him a deliberate look, lingering on his cock. “As much as
that thought might turn you on, I can promise you there’s a difference between
punishment for disobeying your Mistress and punishment for pleasure.”

The look in his eyes, an echo of the way he’d reacted to the
lash, begging her for more with every twitch of body language, told her she was
in trouble. Because he’d crave it either way, for pleasure or punishment. As a
result, she had no idea if he would obey her…or not.

She turned and left him.

* * * * *

She hadn’t said anything about when they’d get together
again. Tomorrow night, every night, only when he was available…

It had been a couple days since he’d seen her, because he
had some major issues at the ranch that kept him working well past dark. Much
as his cock railed against him, he was just too worn out to go to After Hours
when the day was done. Maybe that was good. The way she’d drawn back from him
had left him a little ticked. Well, fine. He could prove he could control his
urges just as much. He’d seen enough to know the bar was in good hands, and if
she did a one-eighty on him, it’d get back to him, because at least one or more
of his hands went there every day or two.