The Mark of the Vampire Queen (8 page)

“Yes, my lady.” He couldn't help the smile her impatient words almost coaxed from him. He did his best to control it, but from her narrow gaze he doubted he was successful.

A fleeting breeze and a quick impression were the only evidence she'd moved. She slammed Kyle to his knees with one hand, holding his skull to the filthy concrete wall at the back of the cell. With minimal pressure she could crush it. Jacob was sure Kyle was all too aware of that. He'd survive it, but he'd wake up in a hospital under human hands in the bright light of day.

“You
ever
touch what belongs to me again and there will be nowhere you can hide. So that you remember…”

Kyle let out a cry and held the side of his face, blood surging from between his fingers at his ear.

Lyssa flicked away the piece she'd taken, the diamond stud earring still in it. Thinking of it getting lost in the debris and trash that littered the floor of the cell, Jacob felt a bit nauseous. Dirt from shoes, gum…body parts. Some inmate would be willing to loosen the backing and filch the diamond stud for his own ear.

“My apologies, my lady,” Kyle said. Though she let go, he stayed bent over, trying to convey obsequiousness and hold on to his ear, protecting himself as best he could. “If I'd truly believed—”

A howl, and he was holding the other ear. A bigger piece tossed away this time. Jacob watched it roll and stop behind the Nike-covered heel of the mesmerized kid, Kyle's earlier meal.

“Don't lie,” Lyssa said. “Go home, Kyle. You've done enough for tonight. Don't let me catch you on my bad side again. You won't survive it.”

He nodded, backing away from her, bumping Jacob and splattering blood on his shoulder before he spun toward the door. The guard still held it open. Looking around the room, Jacob saw she held fifteen men in a hypnotic state with no visible effort at all, his brother included. He didn't care for the way the men looked at her, under her control or not, but he supposed Lady Lyssa couldn't help but mesmerize any man's senses, with or without persuasion.

“Now you go for the charm,” she responded to his thoughts. “Maybe you should have tried more of that on your brother. You wouldn't have landed up here.”

“I didn't have much time to use it. Even if I'd wanted to.”

She arched a brow. “Are you telling Mommy he started it?”

He shot her an annoyed look and this time she was the one who suppressed a smile, but it was a tight, controlled gesture. Drawing closer, she rested her hand on the joining point of his shoulder to his neck, ran a proprietary hand over his chest, the sore ribs. “You're in pain.”

“It's not bad, my lady. Nothing a couple aspirin won't cure.”

“Mmm.” Now she raised her attention to his face, took his chin and made him shift his face left and right, displaying the swelling and bruising. “I wasn't talking about your body. The third mark will have that healed by morning, if not sooner.” Her gaze shifted to Gideon. Something deadly in her expression warned Jacob. Quickly he twined his fingers with hers on the cuffed side, drawing her attention to him.

“He was trying to protect me, make decisions that are mine to make.”
Much as it was my decision to accept the third mark.

She withdrew her touch. “Release them both,” she ordered the entranced cop. “We're going home.”

“But bail—”

“The diner owner isn't pressing charges.” She looked between him and Gideon. “Since the two of you aren't charging one another for assault—I assume—there's nothing to hold you for. That's what the police will remember after we've left.”

“Why would the diner owner—”

“I paid him enough to convince him.”

The cop unlocked the cuff on his wrist, went over to Gideon and did the same. Jacob rubbed his arm, eyed her as she studied him.

Why didn't you just let me rot in here a day or so?

Perhaps I didn't care to spend the evening without my servant.

Before he could reply to that, she'd turned away. “Follow me.”

S
HE
kept Gideon under her compulsion, guiding him into the limo and ordering Mr. Ingram to take them home. Jacob didn't like it. He'd wanted her to lift it as soon as they'd left the cell. Gideon's capitulation disturbed him, the lackluster look in his eyes too close to a different version of what he'd displayed when he thought Kyle was going to kill them. But Lyssa had given Jacob a quelling look as soon as he had the thought. Since she was trying to control the minds of a building filled with armed police officers, he managed to suppress his reaction until they were safely in the limo and driving off.

“Gideon's not weak. He's got a strong will. He's got to be fighting you like a son of a bitch.”

“Compulsion imposed by a vampire of my strength does not allow that level of consciousness, Jacob.” She curled her legs up under her in the seat facing the two of them. She wore a simple, short black dress that clung to her curves and stopped at midthigh. Sexy, classy. Even though she'd pulled her hair in a quick twist and hadn't put on any makeup or jewelry as she'd informed him, she didn't need any. It reminded him, however, how quickly she'd come to their aid, and diluted some of his irritation.

She wasn't likely in the mood to be pushed. Which might or might not make him hold his tongue, depending on the mood he himself was in.

“It's like anesthesia,” she continued, even as her eyes challenged him, acknowledging his thought. “You start counting down from a hundred and have just enough time for the worry, ‘What if I don't go to sleep before they start cutting?' and then you're waking up in your hospital bed, the procedure done.” Her gaze shifted between him and Gideon again, lingering, comparing them in a way that disturbed Jacob. It made him wonder what she was thinking. What she was up to. “You're right, though,” she added quietly. “He does have a very strong will. He's just very, very tired right now. Sick to his soul. Let him have the rest. It's not painful, I promise. It's like he's asleep, in a dream.”

“He'll hate knowing you did it to him. The longer you hold it, the worse it will be. Please, my lady. I know him.”

She sighed, gave him a searing look. However, as she turned her eyes to the window, Jacob sensed a change in the charged air in the limo.

Gideon blinked. Straightened. His gaze darted to Jacob, then back to Lyssa. “How—” His eyes narrowed, pinned on Jacob with ominous intent. “You let her put her frigging mind control on me. You—”

“And I will do it again if you two start pummeling one another like you're in the back of your parents' station wagon. Jacob didn't
let
me do anything, Gideon. He's my servant. I am not his.”

Gideon glared at her. “You can let me off at the next corner.”

“I could, but I won't.” Straightening out her legs, she crossed them, folded her hands over her lap and stared back at him. “You need a shower.” Her delicate nose wrinkled. “Food. A good night's sleep. I'd offer the same to a stray dog. While the dog would be far more deserving and definitely more grateful, you also need some time with your brother.”

“I have no brother.”

She laughed, startling them both because the sound of it was so easy and relaxed. It rippled through the tension in the car, disrupting and confusing it. “Of course you have a brother. Your anger doesn't change that. Had Kyle done anything to Jacob, you'd have broken all the bones of your hand to slip the handcuffs and try to kill him. I've lived a long time, Gideon. Families have fights; they go their separate ways, sometimes for years. But you and Jacob are bonded. You love him. Your bafflement at the choices he's made, feeling betrayed and angered, perhaps even jealous, doesn't change the fact.”

“I'm not jealous—”

“Not of his choice. Of how he feels about me. The commitment he's made to me, instead of to you.”

The knife of the truth twisted inside of Jacob. She was right. In Gideon's mind, he'd not only left his brother to fight his adversaries alone, but had made the choice to join the other side.

Sometimes a person goes down the wrong path and the only way to help him back to the right one is to leave him alone to find it.

While he appreciated his lady offering virtually the same thought he'd had right before their fight, it didn't help the aching sense of guilt. He looked at Gideon, at the haggard lines of his face. Felt the anger and hatred emanating from him as he stubbornly crossed his arms and refused to say anything further.

You didn't leave Rex,
Jacob thought.

No. I killed him. He might have been better off if I
had
left him.

Though she didn't say it, he heard it echo in the pregnant silence that followed the thought.
Thomas certainly would have been.

And Jacob never would have gotten to be this close to her, because she wouldn't have needed a new human servant. Right or wrong, the thought was in his mind. From the shadowing of her expression, he could tell she heard it.

When they reached the house, Jacob expected Gideon to balk at going in, but his brother had apparently decided to go along with Lady Lyssa's intent. He got out of the car without comment and stared at the fortresslike structure while Lyssa spoke to Mr. Ingram.

He thinks he can scope out your home for attack advantage, my lady. I wouldn't advise letting him in like this.

I know, Jacob. Don't worry about it.

 

Jacob set a record for a fast shower, pulled on just a pair of jeans and was somewhat mollified to find Bran lying outside Gideon's door, along with a stack of extra towels. The wolfhound padded away happily as Jacob relieved him of his post and picked up the towels, giving only a cursory knock before he entered.

Gideon had apparently found a small towel in the bathroom. He held it around his hips, water still dotting his body as he surveyed the room with careful precision.

“Looking for vulnerabilities?” Jacob asked. “Ways to come in and stake her in her sleep? You might as well sign your own death warrant. She knows when a new squirrel enters her property.”

“Vampires aren't always on guard, little brother.” Gideon turned, held out his hand to take the towel that Jacob offered.

“No, they aren't. That's why they have human servants to pick up the slack.” Jacob watched him swap out the smaller swatch of terry cloth for the larger one, tucking it in at his hip. At some point, a blade had left an impressive crescent-shaped scar over his kidney area. He wouldn't have been surprised if the intent of the attacker had been to cut out the vital organ. “But if you try to take her on her own ground, on any ground, she'll cut you down before you even glance her way. You've never dealt with a vampire with her kind of power.”

“Is that what gets you going? All that power in that fuck-me-eight-ways-to-Sunday body?”

While Jacob refused to let his temper be tripped by such an obvious ploy, he did experience a strong urge to ram his brother's hard head into the dresser. It was good, sturdy oak. It might withstand the blow.

“I'm here by my own choice, Gideon. For my own reasons.”

Gideon rubbed his hands over his face, the massive muscles in his arms bunching, turning scars into pale silver snakes rippling over his skin. “Just please don't tell me you're with her because you think she loves you.”

“No.” Jacob put down the rest of the towels. “I'm with her because I know I love
her
.”

Gideon made a derisive hissing between his teeth.

“Boys.”

The two men turned. Normally Jacob sensed when his lady was near, a feather brush of something insubstantial along his neck like a light kiss, but this time she'd disguised her approach.

She'd taken down her hair and brushed it out, the task she usually preferred him to do. The long strands wove down the smooth cream skin of her arms. Her lips had been touched by red. The dress she wore now was a black formfitting satin, her breasts high and clefted deep from whatever creative underwear she wore beneath it. As she leaned against the wall next to the open door, her hands were folded behind her back, the position tilting her breasts upward. As she watched them, she rocked one foot back and forth on a stiletto heel, riding the skirt up, showing a hint of garter.

Pure sex. Any man would have been stirred by the sight.

Don't do this.
But it was a weak whisper against the desire being conjured in him against his will. For once, she was using compulsion on him to override his defiance. His cock could care less about right and wrong. In fact, wrong was looking damn appealing.

“What are you—” Gideon had backed up a couple of steps, was shaking his head, trying to shake off the magic. Lyssa moved forward. When she did, her approach was like a wave of heat.

Gideon planted his feet, his expression defiant. She kept coming. Closing her fingers over the towel, she tugged it away and let it drop as her eyes lowered with blatant appreciation. He was already powerfully aroused. When her fingers closed around him, her nails teasing his testicles, he closed his eyes, a growl emitting from between his lips.

“So full of anger and pain,” she whispered. “Your body is starved for a woman's touch. But you don't trust yourself anymore. You're afraid you'll want her so much, you'll hurt her.”

Gideon's hands had closed into fists, his muscles taut, resisting whatever it was she was stirring to life inside him.

“You don't want her to give you her body. You want to take it. Feel her surrender to you, open her heart, but you're terrified of what you'll do to that fragile thing…

“And so tired,” she murmured even more softly, now so close her leg brushed his, the hem of the snug dress touching his bare thigh, her stiletto planted between his braced feet. “You can't hurt me, Gideon. I know the kind of loss you're feeling. Like you, it has made me into the creature I am now.”

“What if…I want it to hurt?”

“I can make it hurt.” Her lips curved, wet sin, as she twisted his meaning. But Jacob wasn't sure she hadn't answered his brother exactly the way he needed her to. “I can give you a night of true rest. The kind of rest a man gets after he's fucked a woman past the point of thought. When the body is so exhausted he has no energy left to hold on to anything.”

“No…no biting.” He opened his eyes, triumphant with the effort of making the demand. Darker things dwelled in his gaze. He almost looked demonic, a handsome, ravaged man willing to do whatever things Heaven or Hell demanded of him just to have something to distract him from his own emptiness.

“No biting.” She nodded. “You're safe from that. You're safe from everything here tonight. I'm going to take care of you. So is Jacob.”

Come to me, Jacob. I need to feel your touch.

He wanted to turn her over his knee and spank her, but he moved forward, a whirl of thoughts in his mind. He noted Gideon's body, hard and lean, crisscrossed with scars, a man who could never be mistaken for anything but a warrior. A man who'd been fighting all his adult life. A man who'd been trying to get himself killed since he was barely grown because he wasn't the one who'd died in an alley, like the girl he'd loved. Or on a beach, like the parents he'd needed.

Angry. Resentful of always having to fight. Protect.

Jacob paused.
He resents me.

Of course.
Her thought was matter-of-fact, almost a sigh of impatience.
The older brother, required by his honor to protect you. Of course he was angry that they left him. That he alone was charged with worrying about you. That he found love, something of his own, and it was taken away. That he was left by the brother to whom he'd given so much. None of that has to be here tonight, though. Not between any of us. There is only need.

Despite his resistance, his anger at her manipulation of the situation, he was now standing just behind her. Leaning in, he buried his nose in her hair. The ache in his gut from looking at his brother's suffering lessened. With her free hand, she found his arm, guided it so his hand gripped her hip. Which inspired him to do the same with the other hand, sliding them both around her waist. It brought his body against hers, his hardening cock pressing against the cleft of her ass, so accessible in the soft satin. She rubbed against him, a slow, sinuous circle, even as her hand turned, her knuckles feathering up Gideon's hard belly, his broad chest. Her other hand was still wrapped around his brother's thick cock, her thumb teasing the head so he was already shuddering.

Jacob brought his hands under her breasts, lifting them, squeezing, drawing his brother's gaze there as she arched in aroused response. Savage male instinct compelled Jacob to do what he did next.

Seizing the neckline of the dress in both hands, he tore it open, baring her breasts to Gideon, holding the fabric in tight fists so she was pinned against Jacob's chest, her body fully leaning against him, head settling into the curve between his shoulder and throat.

Gideon's gaze lingered on the ripe curves, held up so temptingly in the satin demi-cup bra. His brother had always been a breast man. While small, Lyssa's were superbly shaped, firm, full. Jacob slid his hand down the satin, over the hint of hard nipple. Catching the slender strap between the cups, he yanked the bra up, freeing her breasts with a rough wobble of motion that added intensity to his brother's dark blue eyes. Jacob pressed the heel of his hand against her throat, his thumb teasing her there, eliciting a soft mewl of desire as her breasts quivered. Gideon's hands came forward now, his fingers dusting the tops as Jacob gripped one beneath with his free hand and offered it up. Gideon hesitated, then bent and closed his mouth over the nipple. His other hand captured the free breast, taking possession. She undulated beneath their hands, her head arching back even farther as Gideon suckled, squeezed.