The Mark of the Vampire Queen (9 page)

He couldn't know what Gideon was thinking. Jacob wasn't sure if that was a place he wanted to go anyhow. Something hard to define was pumping through his own blood. This was the woman he loved, that he considered his, even though he knew his possessiveness amused or irritated her by turns. Over the past few weeks, she'd offered his body to others. Commanded him to submit. Taught him that pleasure could be found in surrendering to her will. During those times, he'd found he needed her touch, her command, as a compass to find that pleasure. So now the tables were turned. She intended to seduce his brother, perhaps only for the reasons she'd stated. But to immerse them all in the flood, she needed Jacob's ability to arouse her. That admission, so simply offered with those words—
Come to me, Jacob. I need to feel your touch
—had him torn between an intense, emotional reaction to the revelation, and a close-to-the-edge, violent response at the thought she intended him to share her with another man. His own brother.

Occupied as they were, both men still noticed when she lowered her hands and began inching up her skirt. Up, up, showing the lace stockings, the garters, the point of her bare sex. No panties.

I want you inside me, Jacob. In me from behind, before your brother fucks me. I want you there.

Jacob dropped his hand down, moved over her thigh. He pressed his leg behind hers to hold her trapped between him there and Gideon's hip. When he pushed his fingers into her pussy, into a wetness that sucked him in, he saw Gideon's eyes glitter with lust. She writhed, drawing in an uneven breath, her fangs baring.

“Beg me, my lady.” He could have thought it, but instead demanded it in a rough voice. He didn't know if his need to punish her for this was her influence, his own or the synergy of the moment. It didn't matter.

Gideon's attention flickered to him, then back to the woman between them. As if Jacob's demand had released any last inhibitions, he surrendered to his own desires with the snarl of a rabid animal. Seizing both breasts, Gideon pulled them up higher, arching her almost impossibly as he descended on the nipple again, his suckling ferocious as he brought teeth as well as tongue into it.

She turned her head into Jacob's throat, pricked him with her fangs, rubbing her delectable ass harder against his cock. As her eyes lifted to his, she raised an arm and looped it around his neck, her palm flat between his shoulder blades. Using the leverage, she raised her legs. Gideon, picking up his cue, slid his hands under her, wrapped her around him, his cock trapped between their bodies, close to the point of decision.

You'll let your brother fuck me without staking your claim first?

You're playing with me, my lady.

I'm commanding you. Begging you. I need you.

He caught the hem of her skirt.

I won't be gentle, my lady. You've pissed me off too much.

I know. That makes you even harder.

With a muttered curse, he opened his jeans, bunched the fabric of her garment in his fist against her lower back and drove into her. She'd apparently lubricated herself before this, for there was a slickness between her buttocks that took him in fast and deep. She cried out, part pain, part something else as Gideon drove into her in front. They were both big men, and their sizeable cocks filled her to the point that Jacob could feel the pressure of his brother in the channel of her pussy as he fucked her ass.

Raw, visceral need. Nothing soft and feminine about this moment. She was letting them be the base male animals they were. Encouraging it. Desiring it, even as Jacob sensed her genuine intent to give Gideon a female port in the storm he'd created of his life. It hadn't been a lie, he knew. She did understand his pain and sorrow, even if Gideon didn't believe she did. Whether it was a woman's intuition, her many years of life, her own experiences in losing her husband or whatever combination of vampire and Fey magic that made her what she was, she had that gift. She'd brought out responses and emotions in Jacob he hadn't even known he had. He couldn't deny that, whether she was still compelling this moment or not.

As she bucked up, the paleness of her throat was displayed, the bumps of her sternum, the slope of her breast over her heart. Though he knew her to be more than capable of defending herself, the melting of her body in his grasp and the vulnerable offering of her throat to both an active and a former vampire hunter told him she trusted him to keep her safe, to protect her.

Her orgasm built like the strum of piano keys, playing along his length. It drew out the notes of his own response, making everything tighten until he was sure when he exploded it would rip him apart. Gideon's shoulders were bunched into rolls of hard muscle, his fingers gripping her hips with bruising force. His forearms brushed Jacob's, his thrusts knocking her ass harder onto his cock, her buttocks pressed against the top of Jacob's thighs. Gideon's eyes fastened on her throat, and he worked his way up her sternum, his lips curling back.

“Sssh…” She caught his chin, even as her breath rasped out of her. “No…Gideon. No biting.”

The smile was in her voice, but Jacob also heard the strain, for she was so close. He gave another powerful thrust, taking himself deep. Gideon's face contorted as he did the same in perfect sync, and Lyssa's orgasm shattered her. She convulsed against their powerful grips, her cries elevating to a scream. They held on, Jacob stretching her, feeling the tight clench of her muscles, the rhythmic movements. He had to hold her tightly, for Gideon was thrusting into her just as hard, neither of them granting her any mercy, only wanting to feel the same type of mind-altering pleasure.

Jacob closed his eyes and rode the release. Jetting hard, he bathed her inside with his seed as he heard his brother bellow in the grasp of a climax just as intense. Over all that, he reveled in Lyssa's cries, the rake of her nails that marked his neck. Her legs were wrapped around Gideon, Jacob buried so deeply into her that his feet were almost on top of his brother's. Air moved over his own balls each time his brother's testicles slapped the base of her cunt.

When they finally came to a stumbling halt and he opened his eyes, he saw she had marked Gideon's shoulder with the nails of her other hand. Gideon's forehead had fallen to her shoulder, his own shoulders rising and falling fast, his hands still clutched on her hips. As if they were melded on every level, Jacob lifted his own hand as Lyssa reached up. Their hands overlapped to rest on Gideon's head, giving reassurance and comfort, encouraging him to take slow breaths, for his breathing was too deep and shuddering to be only from physical exertion.

In the midst of the maelstrom of response, this moment was quiet, separate. The eye of the storm. Jacob wanted to reach back through the years to touch his brother as he did now, to give him peace, to let him know he'd done well, help him heal. To let him know that he loved him, no matter what. None of the rest mattered.

Jacob took some deep breaths of his own, feeling his lady's shoulder blades pressed into his chest, her hair soft against his jaw. When he touched her chin, needing her, she obliged, lifting her face for a meeting of mouths, the taste of her tongue, the scrape of a fang. He was still learning how to kiss her without damage to his own mouth.

Practice makes perfect, Sir Vagabond.

Smiling against her lips despite the intensity of the past few moments, he drew it out, exploring her mouth even further, tightening his grip on her throat. Through the third mark as well as lover's intuition, he felt her simmering and knew he would want her again soon, too. He was still hard. From the squeezing pressure he was experiencing in her ass, he suspected Gideon was also. He ruffled his brother's hair, tugged on it, not to make him raise his head, but to continue that sense of comfort. Nearness. As he thought about the words Gideon had said to him at the diner, words that had cut so carelessly and brutally, he knew they meant nothing. Hadn't Lyssa proven as much when she'd laughed at Gideon for saying he didn't have a brother?

While he might want to have a heart-to-heart with her about her methods, Lyssa had shown him the depths of his brother's despair and anger in a way separate from his own ego. So it was the most natural thing to say the words that came to his lips now.

“You took good care of me, Gid,” he murmured. “You always did. And because you did such a good job, I don't need you to do it anymore. Do something for yourself for once. Give yourself happiness again so you can remember what's worth fighting for and what's not.”

Gideon slowly raised his head. Lyssa's fingers were still tangled in his hair, and as he moved, her palm slid down his face to his neck, to a bare shoulder. As he blinked at her, Jacob could see the emotions warring in his face.

“You made me do that,” Gideon said at last.

“I could lie to you and say yes,” Lyssa responded, “but the only compulsion I used on you, either of you, was in the first five minutes. When I took your towel, it was your free will that let it go.”

Gideon withdrew from her, though he did it with courtesy. Even so, Jacob's hands tightened on her protectively, uncertain of Gideon's mood now. As Jacob eased out of her, letting her feet touch the floor, his brother apparently caught the wariness of his stance, for a muscle ticked in his jaw.

“She's safe with me, Jacob. I…” He broke off, arched a brow. “Am I your guest or your prisoner, Lady Lyssa?”

She surveyed him with a leisurely bold approval that brought a flush to his cheeks and made his cock jump, such that he turned away and picked up the towel. Jacob felt a ripple of amusement go through her at his muttered curse.

“While I do like the connotations of the word
prisoner
when it refers to a handsome and powerful male, you are in fact my invited guest, Gideon.”

Wrapping the towel around his waist, Gideon sat down on the edge of the bed, maintaining an upright stance with visible effort. “Then you have my word.” His attention went back to his brother. “While I'm her guest, I won't do or try anything to cause her harm.”

As if he could.

Yes, my lady. He could. Please, for my own peace of mind, don't underestimate Gideon.

There was a robe hanging on the armoire, one she'd apparently left in here when she brought the towels. Jacob retrieved it at her unspoken command as she shrugged out of her disheveled dress and undergarments. When she put her arms back, he slid it onto her shoulders, satin onto silk, while Gideon watched. She didn't belt the robe. Rolling off the sheer stockings, she stepped out of the heels she'd kept on during their violent encounter. It made Jacob wonder if Gideon had stiletto marks on his ass.

Despite that, as she padded away from him and toward his brother, with her hair down and feet now bare, he thought she looked like an innocent girl. However, Jacob knew the view Gideon was getting was much different. Not just the sensual beauty of her naked body, shadowed temptingly under the movement of the folds of fabric, but her jade green eyes that held all the mystery of Woman since the beginning of time. He'd been pinned by that gaze often enough to know.

When she reached his brother, for a couple of breaths, she simply stood, looking at him. Jacob couldn't see Gideon's face, but whatever she saw in it pained her, for a sympathetic response rippled through her. When she reached out, his hand shot up, caught her wrist.

Jacob started forward, but Lyssa's sharp mental command stopped him. She was in control of the situation. She lifted the other hand. When Gideon caught that one, she used her body, pressing forward, one step, two steps, until she stood between his knees, him holding her hands so the robe fluttered out to either side like wings.

Abruptly, he let her go, dropping his head so his hair brushed her bare breasts. A tremor ran through his broad, scarred back. He whispered something Jacob didn't quite catch. Lyssa repeated it for him.

Just go away.

She wrapped her arms around him, laying her head over his. “I think you've had far too much of that in your life. Those who've left you, and those you've driven away. Now it's time to sleep,” she said softly. “Just sleep. Because soon I'm going to want you. I'll use you again and again tonight, Gideon. I can't draw all the poison out, but I can draw out enough to help you remember what it was like to be whole.”

“I can't. I don't want this.”

Jacob silently left them to clean himself up in the bathroom. When he came back, she was turning down the bed, easing Gideon into it on his side, then herself behind him. When she reached a hand back, Jacob slid in behind her, spooning around her body.

“Jacob will protect us while we sleep. He'll protect us both.”

“Who'll protect him…from you?” Gideon muttered sleepily. Her hand paused, but then she resumed her stroking of his brother's dark hair, spreading it on his shoulders.

“Sssh…just sleep.”

 

Jacob, I'm hungry.

Gideon's breath was even. Lyssa passed her hand over his bare flesh, drawing the covers up over him. Then she turned and nestled into Jacob's arms, her nose nuzzling, seeking his throat like a kitten.

Thank God the third mark gave him stamina far exceeding that of a regular man, for she'd lived up to her promise, or threat, depending on how a man looked at it. Gideon was sleeping deeply, the sleep of a man who'd been brought to orgasm multiple times in just the past hour and a half.

The last time, she'd laid her robe over Gideon's face to form a loose blindfold. She'd tangled his wrists in the sash without tying it, giving him the illusion but not the reality of restraint. Then she'd moved down his body and put her mouth over him, causing him to fist his hands in the iron bars of the bed and yank hard as he thrust himself into her mouth. She'd been on her knees, her hips high in the air, and Jacob had stood on his knees behind her, thrusting into her wet pussy this time, feeling as if he was coming home, pumping her slowly, stroking her the way she liked until he was rewarded by her cry of release against the flesh of his brother's erection, the heat of her breath pushing Gideon over as well. Just the recollection of her slick folds rippling over him was enough to get him hard again. Apparently the third mark conveyed some of the vampire's sexual appetite with it. Or maybe it was just her effect on him.