The Mark of the Vampire Queen (41 page)

She launched herself from the tree, taking flight, moving to the next clearing on the other side of the stream. And found him waiting for her there, crouched just below the branch she was on. He sprang and she took off again, but he anticipated her, caught her ankle.

She turned on him, hissing, and they spun through the air. While she was able to dislodge herself and soar free again, he managed to right himself and land on his feet half-crouched, as sinuous as a cat.

 

It was an impressive move, and Lyssa's heart stuttered in her chest confusingly. She leaped away again.

But with each jump, things that had been nonspecific swirls of images were becoming clearer. Words and thoughts exploded in her mind, hurting her head because she'd denied herself thought. She hadn't wanted to think anymore, didn't want to be anything more than a creature of the forest, living by reaction and defense from day to day.

The first day she'd allowed herself to get close enough to see him, not just feel him, she'd sat in the trees and yearned.

A handsome man as a mortal, that handsomeness was now enhanced by his otherworldly quality, the comfortable power of a man who'd fully embraced all the things he was, all the energy that was his to command. When he spoke out loud as he often had these past few days, sensing her near, his voice had been smooth, melodious. Words caressed her body as if they were kisses from his mouth, intimate touches of his tongue.

It perhaps had been a sin beyond measure to turn him into a vampire. He'd already been devastating to female senses as a mortal.

In the end, she didn't know if she was really trying to escape him, or make him prove himself to her. She led him on the chase for several miles, and he wasn't even winded. From tree to tree, path to path. Over water, up steep grades.

As she evaded and he followed, the more he stayed with her, the more the wordless desire burning in her heart expanded through her body, kindling hot and steady in her loins until it almost became too difficult to maneuver, the rubbing of her thighs too much of a distraction because of the way they compressed swollen tissue.

When she came face-to-face with him on the next embankment, she perched precariously on the edge. He studied her from the other side of a dry gully.

He could close the distance at any time. He'd proven it. He was letting her run, letting her know he was chasing only as an indulgence, knowing he would have her in the end. He somehow knew letting that thought sink in slowly and sinuously, like a lover's tongue teasing her folds, would affect her this way.

But he apparently realized she was ready for a change in the game. Or perhaps he was intending to change it regardless. Opening the shirt without care for the buttons, he yanked off the hiking shoes and stripped off his jeans to face her gloriously naked, one of the most potent weapons he could use against her. She couldn't take her eyes from him. All the rippling muscle, the hard and long cock stretching up toward his belly, the firm sac of his testicles. While she missed the thatch of hair that had been on his chest, the ability to touch the hard, smooth curves of him was tempting her fingertips. As her thighs trembled, his eyes registered it. He knew everything that was going through her mind, every reaction of her body.

He sprang, making it across the wide gully without a running leap. Just as his foot landed on the opposite side, she took flight again.

When she landed in the crotch of a live oak, she shrieked to find he'd used the mind link to anticipate where she would land. He was right above her. He dropped and seized her from behind, pinioning her wings against her, holding his wrist with a closed fist across her breasts, an effective lock. She could struggle but not gain a purchase with her taloned elbows.

His vampire strength was fully developed, and she might as well have been a child struggling against a parent. Or a human against a vampire…The sly whisper inserted itself in her mind.

You must have hated me, the way I reminded you of this, all the time.

“No, my lady. Sssh…calm down. Hush.”

Her breath was sobbing in her throat, or perhaps she was just sobbing, weeping at the way it felt to have his arms around her. His warm bare body pressed behind her, his erection against her buttocks, fitting aggressively into the channel, making her want to rub herself up and down his length.

Brushing his knuckles along the firm gray skin of her cheek, he traced the outline of her prominent brow, the bone of the eye socket and curve of the pointed ear. She twisted her head. “I know how much you love my touch, my lady. Need it. Don't deny yourself the pleasure I can give you.”

“You're not my servant anymore.”

“I am always your servant. Your lover. Your mate. I want no other.”

Trust me, my lady. Please don't run. I've wanted to touch you for so long as well. God, you don't know how much…I hated you for leaving me, but I would forgive you anything. Don't you know that?

She wanted to clutch at his wrists, but she would hurt him.

Do it. I've missed the way you like to draw my blood. The way you like to watch me react to the pain you inflict. Feel how hard I am, just from remembering it.

She gasped as he pressed against her back, lowering his hand to her abdomen, holding her there to feel his erection. She got wetter, her body slippery, begging for him. She couldn't hide her thoughts, any more than he'd been able to do when she'd given him the second mark. Every desire was his to tease and pluck, like the petals of a flower. His fingers descended, finding her. She arched up against him, crying out, the soft birdsong she made when aroused or distressed in this form.

“How I've dreamed of your cunt. I've had dreams that are all about it. Me fucking it, tasting it, putting my fingers deep into it, watching you do this…”

His voice was rich music in her ears as her body bucked. He held her so easily. Almost violently, he yanked her around, easily balancing them both on the oak's thick limb. Pulling her legs around him, latching his hands on her hips and staring into her eyes, he thrust into her, hard and deep, no foreplay, nothing but a rough, pleasurable claiming. A reconnection that had a cry wrenching from her throat. His eyes were priceless gems, mesmerizing, capturing her.

Her pussy spasmed on him as she wrapped her tail around one of his legs, the barbed tip digging into his thigh. She had her arms around him, spearing him with her hooked talons. She felt the raised abrasion of his third mark beneath her palms.

It didn't go away.

“No, my lady,” he said hoarsely. “The powers that put it there know I am always yours, no matter what I am.
I told you the only safe thing to tattoo on the outside of a body is what's branded on the soul. This is branded on my soul and will never change. I am marked as yours forever.
“Mark me some more.”

She hadn't talked in over six months, and so thinking was easier than speaking, but she wanted something from his lips.

“Please…call me…”

“Lyssa. My lady. Mine.”

When he tightened his arms around her, held her close, she clung this time, just absorbing his scent, his strength. Her warrior, her knight. Her lover. Her servant. The man she loved.

In her Fey form, a climax could take minutes to be over, a pleasurable torment beyond description that took all control beyond the reach of the senses. As it swept over her with just the first few strokes of his cock inside her, she arched back, screaming, her talons ripping upward, tearing his flesh, muscle. She'd feared taking him in this form for just that reason. But she wasn't taking him. He was taking her.

He held on, his cock getting even harder inside her, thrusting, his arms pounding her down on him, over and over, making the climax even more intense. His head dipped, his mouth capturing her nipple. He bit, drawing her blood from that excruciatingly sensitive area as she'd once bitten him to give him the second mark. The thought as well as the sensation pushed her even higher. No matter how she fought him in the throes of ecstasy, he held her easily, his face fierce with his own desire, his cock spurting inside her, claiming her again.

I'm here, my lady. You're mine, as I'm yours. I don't want you ever to forget it. My Mistress. My slave. My lover. My mate. My lady. Mine.

With a sudden fierceness, he lifted her off him and turned her again, only this time he thrust his cock hard into her ass, collaring her, bringing her back against him and holding her still, making her suffer the ecstatic torment of shooting up the roller coaster again, taking as long as it needed, his hand coming forward to sink three fingers into her pussy as her heels hooked the outside of his knees, keeping herself open, wanting to take him deep.

And when we're done with this, I will come in your mouth, my lady. You will take me in every orifice, so I feel I've come home to you…marked you in every possible way. And I will eat your cunt until you come, and fuck you all over again, until you know you can never leave me, not for any reason…

He was still her knight, her samurai warrior, her vagabond. But now he was also vampire. The natural dominance, combined with the alpha nature he'd always carried, had blended in a way that made her feel helpless to resist him…and she didn't want to resist. She wanted to trust, to not worry, to believe she could love him and not have to give him up…that he could be hers, and she could be his…

Everything she'd wanted from Rex, but he'd been unable to give her. Jacob could now give her all of it.

Believe it, my lady. You are a queen, but for once, believe that you can have someone for your own…forever.

She came again, the sensation almost too much to bear as he spurted again as well, shifting his grip to hold her breasts in his palms, the nipples hard against his touch. He went for a while, thrusting even past the point when she was lying against him, exhausted. He pressed a hand to the side of her face, a gentle lover's touch. It should have seemed at odds with the fierceness of the past few moments, but it was all part of the same.

The emptiness was starting to fill. The hopeless wandering of the past few months, where she'd thought of nothing and didn't allow herself to want anything, proved itself a lie. She'd just numbed herself against the pain of being without him in the only way she knew how, short of dying.
Jacob. Jacob.

He turned her face slowly, inexorably, away from him, pressing her cheekbone into the firm muscle of his shoulder. She went completely still as his thumb swept her delicate jaw.

When Jacob brought his lips down to her throat, the whirl of thoughts she was having were not intelligible, but her emotions were like a storm building in force. Loneliness, wonder, need, all keeping her still as if she knew he had in his touch the answer to all of those things.

Her thoughts made him close his eyes, overwhelmed. He sank his fangs into her bared throat, holding her. When he released the serums needed to give her all three marks, it was heaven. Heaven to feel her shudder with the knowledge of his claiming. There were no words for the feeling, this taking and marking of the woman he considered his heart, his life, his…and at the same time, giving her back herself.

Lyssa heard his thoughts, knowing they were interwoven with her own reaction as she allowed herself simply to be immersed in feeling, giving up thought with no regrets, no worries. Jacob was here. She knew something was wrong with it, that she should be sending him away to protect him, but here in this minute it felt as if she were the protected one…and she didn't have the strength to let that feeling go.

Jacob had placed the false fang back behind his real one as Brian had instructed. He'd done it on one of the last jumps, right before he'd caught her. Now as he pressed down, it sent the elixir Brian had crafted from the remains of her vial of blood into her system with the marking serum.

He had his face pressed against her throat, so he felt her stiffen, convulse in his arms. He held on, hoping Brian was as brilliant as Lyssa had believed him to be. The sharp bite of talons receded and abruptly there was the press of a woman's fingertips, the brush of her hair along his cheek. Reminding him of his first night with her when she'd curtained him with her hair.

No…no…

He had just a second to realize he should have warned her, prepared her for the transformation. The wildness that had been with her so many months took over, panic and animal flight reaction shutting down rational thought. The jumble of her thoughts gave him some startling images, which he had no time to digest as she shoved away from him and tumbled from the tree, rolling and getting to her feet to run naked across the forest floor, a primal thing reacting to him as if he were a threat.

Her disorientation boiled something up from the deepest level of her subconscious where she'd managed to bury the most important thing of all. The revelation stunned him, such that she managed to make it twenty steps before he caught her.

He held her when she struggled, but he didn't know what to say as he bore her to the forest floor and lay upon her. His body between her thighs, arms hard around her, face buried in her neck. His heart was fair choking him.

When he thought he couldn't bear her fighting him any longer, she broke into tears.
Afraid…missed you…needed you…love you.

The words were magic, a chant in her mind. Her tears wouldn't stop even as he tried to catch every one of them with his lips.

I missed you so much…
Her voice, so soft, no longer holding any defenses against him.
I died inside…I wanted to die, to just fade away. But you wouldn't let me.

She laid her head back on the earth, and managed to move one of his hands between them, rest his palm on the slight round of her belly. Her eyes closed, and he felt the searing sweetness of her reaction reverberate through him. “You wouldn't let me.”