The Vampire Queen's Servant (18 page)

The dampening effect of her
mockery and the serious turn of their conversation gave him little relief. The
purr of her voice rubbed like soft fur against his cock, which made that
contraption she'd put on him even more excruciating. As she lay on the bed not
ten feet away, the flickering candlelight reflected on her nipples, made the
cleft of her cunt shift behind the pattern of her nightgown like the shadow of
an elusive creature.

He'd never been forced to
submission by a woman, never gotten aroused by it as she'd made him respond. At
least to himself, he was forced to admit the thing imprisoning his cock made
him hard mainly because she'd wanted to put it on him. It made him think of how
she'd described the pleasure of slowly binding a servant, letting him feel his
gradual descent into helplessness. The clasp of the cock harness kept the image
of her hand's there. The fascinated desire in her eyes ran through his mind,
over and over.

She was a witch, sorceress,
Medusa, vampire. He suspected he'd seen only the surface layers of a woman with
more faces than the thoughts wrestling in his mind.

He'd never cared for feeling
trapped. He supposed no one did, but to keep the frissons of panic down, he
reminded himself this was his choice, that he wanted to be here.

Throughout his training with
Thomas, the servant had used the word
defenses. You must have no defenses
with her. You must lower all your defenses to be a servant
. Jacob thought
he'd understood. But he hadn't. Whatever his expectations of this past night
and the months of planning and preparation, it had far exceeded them. She'd
challenged him, infuriated him, roused him more than any woman, real or
imagined, ever had. She'd elicited protective feelings in him, erratic waves of
fierce loyalty. Jacob realized Thomas's grueling training had been the same as
that inflicted on a grunt in basic training. Grilled until he knew how to
respond to conditions the monk couldn't have anticipated. Like learning what it
meant to be a sex slave.

Uncomfortable with the thought,
he nevertheless made himself take a closer look at it. She was a master
politician, focused, deliberate. While he had no doubt she'd taken sexual
pleasure in dominating him, she said she was teaching him what it was to be a
human servant in her world. If she was really doing that, it meant there was a
real chance she intended to accept him, even if she hadn't admitted it fully to
herself yet.

He thought of her again in the
car, the way she'd looked up at him, that brief look out of those mesmerizing
green eyes.
He's mine
.

He was fucked. That was all. No
help for it. He discovered a strap between the open arms of the upper
X
that could cup the back of his head so he didn't have to sleep with his temple
propped awkwardly against the wood, straining the hell out of his neck.

He was exhausted and she
obviously felt they were safe here, in a chamber that didn't exist to prying
eyes. She would need his energy when she woke. Though God knows in what form
she'd demand it. A dozen new images went through his brain, most of which
brought him to full aching hardness again.

He could have closed his eyes,
but he didn't. He watched her make soft noises in her dreams, studied every
feature of her face, the fall of her hair, the curves of her body, letting his
eyes do what his body wanted to do so much. Now deep in her sleep, she turned
away from him, giving him another cock-teasing view of her body, her
heart-shaped ass. The hem of lace rode up, skimmed the base of it an inch or
two from where her pussy nestled between the press of her thighs. His thoughts
drifted, sensual motes in the air as his lids reluctantly drooped, capturing
and taking the vision of her into his dreams.

Hands molded over the muscular
curves of his ass, nails digging in as soft lips traveled a path up his spine.
The same fingers moved around his waist, playing with his navel and the flat of
his belly, teasing the line of silky hair, drifting upward to his nipples,
leaving his cock hungering for a touch.

The candle had burned down only
halfway. He hadn't been asleep that long. She appeared to be in as deep a
slumber as she'd been before he'd nodded off. Or was she?

He blinked. As she came into
focus, he saw her stretched on her back, her jade green eyes gone almost black
as the pupils dilated in the meager light.

He swallowed as her right hand
rose, plucking at the nightgown, inching it up her legs. Displaying pale
thighs, more and more of them until she reached the apex and touched herself,
rising into the contact, a shudder racking her.

The invisible hands were
descending. As her gaze followed their track he knew somehow she was doing it,
this velvet clasp over his cock that dug those chains and uncut gems into him,
making him grunt and jerk against his bindings. A skirt brushed against his
legs as if a woman knelt before him. A groan tore from his throat when a hot,
wet mouth closed over him, slid down his shaft, taking all of him.

On the bed, his lady's legs were
parted, her head tilted back, but her attention was still on him while she
manipulated her clit, dipped her fingers into her cunt to spread the slick
honey over her lips.

Hands gripped his buttocks
again, allowing the mouth to increase its suction on his dick and give a
ruthless steadiness to the strokes. He could imagine her here, suckling him,
serving him even as she lay a few feet away controlling it all, giving him a
male fantasy all on her own terms.

He writhed in the restraints as
the tongue on him teased his underside, sucked his testicles one at a time into
that illusory mouth, licked them, and then came back up to take his cock again.
Trembling against the cross, he realized he might find out how it felt to come
with that rod inside him, his cock chained to restrict the flow of the fluids.
As he watched her masturbate, the undulations of her body became more frenetic,
an agitated snake coiling and uncoiling, writhing, seeking a bearing. The
impressions of the lace on her skin, flickering in the candlelight, even
reminded him of the sinuous patterns of a serpent.

Feeling like the tide whipped by
the wind, he couldn't stop from pitting himself against it. "Spread your
legs for me," he whispered. "Let me see the sweetness, you won't let
me taste. Let me watch you come."

Her eyes widened at his
outburst, delivered in a low voice full of husky demand. Triumph surged through
him as the unexpected stimulus began to pull her over the edge. The mouth left
his cock. At first, he thought she couldn't maintain the magic this close to
losing control herself, but then the invisible fingers thrust between his lips
with the exotic scent of her cunt on them. He sucked the taste off them,
watching with burning eyes as she bucked on the bed, gasping, crying out, her
pussy contracting beneath her fingers as she tugged furiously on her clit hood.

He hadn't known if she would
flush or not, given a vampire's paleness, but there it was. A pink blush
sweeping her throat, her cheeks, the insides of her thighs, a heat that felt
like a furnace blast.

Pain seared through his cock as
the sight feeding his eyes made him bigger, thicker. As she came down and her
eyes rested on him, he knew he was going to be punished for taking the game
away from her. Fine. He could bear it. With this level of discomfort, his
erection should be cooling in no time.

He hadn't counted on those
hands. They slid beneath the cross-piece of the frame and two fingers dove deep
between his buttocks to milk him with slow movements guaranteed to keep him
hard while her fancy cock ring denied him a climax. But when pre-cum leaked
around the bronze disk on the head of his cock he felt panic, wondering if that
tiny rod would be like a finger stuck in a dam. Eventually the water pressure
would build up and explode through the minute spaces around the plug, creating
an excruciating flood of sensation. He could die from the agonizing pleasure of
it.

He'd never thought of using sex
as a weapon. His seducing her to climax with words had been more emotional than
calculated, an attempt to regain some control. But he'd gotten in a lucky shot
with a master swordswoman. The master now thought she was dealing with an
equally skilled opponent and would no longer hold back. She'd slice him to
ribbons.

Though she'd come down from
climax, she kept her legs spread, playing with herself where he could see the
glistening folds, the wet gleam of her knuckles, the post-climax dampness
trickling down the base of her ass. At a particularly deft squeeze deep in his
own, he let out a guttural snarl and cursed his own weakness.

"I told you I could be
crueler than anything you could imagine," she whispered. It resounded
through the chamber and inside his head. "You think about it, Jacob.
Think."

He blinked in darkness. The
candle had burned out, so the only illumination was the light on the clock and
those glowing stars on her ceiling. Almost five hours had passed. He could
barely make out her form, but it was in the same position, resting on her hip
and turned away from him, the way she'd been before he'd drifted off. Though
there were no hands touching him, his cock didn't care. The thin layer of flesh
stretched over his ironlike erection suffered in the tight clasp of the cock
rings and chains. His urethra burned from the invasion of the anchoring rod.

Think, Jacob.

He couldn't
think
. No
one who used his rational mind about this would stay. It didn't matter if his
brother, Mr. Ingram and even his lady thought he was fucking crazy. Maybe he
agreed with them, but again, that didn't matter. This was where he was supposed
to be.

Lyssa dreamed of storms. Wild
whipping winds beneath her leathery wings. Her eye was turned toward the ground
for prey, but in this type of storm everything had taken cover. She spun, the
wind whistling over and under her, the vibration of the thunder and electric
static of lightning skimming along her skin.

There. A duck paddled in a
marina, unconcerned by the storm because she lived in the shelter of Man's
harbor. While wild ducks often found such a port because so many of the wild
places were disappearing, this was a domesticated duck, released or lost from
somewhere. Living alone during the winter months because she was too weak and
less capable of migrating with her wild brethren. Nature weeded out. Nature provided.

Lyssa tucked in her wings and
dove with single-minded intent. The noise of the storm and the darkness
provided her cover. The reflection of lightning gleamed off her talons as she
unfurled them like landing gear, only she would use them to snatch dinner and
be aloft again, never touching the ground.

Thirty feet from her goal,
another movement caught her eye. She veered off sharply, somersaulted in a
controlled move and dropped in a hover.

The white duck, having seen her
now, had panicked. However, her mate, a brown and black wild duck and the
distraction Lyssa had seen, now shepherded his snowy female into the shadow of
the floating docks. She was not alone after all, and Lyssa would not kill one
of a mated pair. Nature weeded out. Nature provided. But Lyssa could choose
what offering to take.

A piercing scream split the air.
She spun to see the wiser, wild-born mate snatched by a hawk who'd apparently
been marking Lyssa's prey as well. The duck had been focused on Lyssa and
getting his mate to shelter. The hawk had been noticed too late.

The white duck squawked her
distress as the hawk pulled her mate into the air and broke his neck in an easy
movement, carrying him away.

Over in less than a breath. The
clouds boiled in the sky behind Lyssa. The white duck swam in circles out in
the open, lost, in anguish. Confused by what had just happened.

The hawk's approach had been
covered by the storm, just like her. Opportunists. The world of men was turning
birds of prey into opportunistic scavengers. As civilization often did, it
turned wild creatures into what they were never intended to be. Perhaps it did
the same thing to men.

She flipped, dropped and pulled
the white duck from the water, ending her life in the same economical movement.
You won't have to learn how to live without him
.

Lyssa opened her eyes to see
Jacob sitting cross-legged on her bed, watching her. Wearing a T-shirt and
clean pair of jeans, he'd apparently taken the time to shower and change.

On the unrumpled side of the bed
where he sat, he'd laid her satin robe and a pair of slippers. He balanced her
brush on his knee and had a basin of hot water with a facecloth sitting within
reach behind him.

As the time of her rising drew
near, if nothing set off the warning spells she had guarding the upper room,
the staircase would reopen. Apparently Jacob had made good use of that effect
when he'd managed to free himself again.

His blue eyes were steady, bluer
than the daytime sky she'd never seen, the analogy coming from the imitation of
it in picture books. But she sensed his were a reflection of the actual color,
perhaps pieces of the sky itself, they were so vivid and real.