The Vampire Queen's Servant (9 page)

That response grew even more
intense when she unbuttoned his jeans and opened them, reaching in to clasp his
hard cock and adjust it, bringing it out of the recesses of the pants. Moving
closer, she let go to run her hands back along the inside of the jeans to palm
his bare ass. Pushing her knuckles against the hold of the fabric as she
kneaded him, she rubbed the satin of her robe against his cock where it was
taut and erect, revealed by the open fly.

His hot flesh felt the bite of
the open teeth of the zipper, but it couldn't dampen the inferno of desire
raging through his blood like the sudden rise of lava in a smoking volcano.
When she tilted her head, her lips were so close he couldn't resist any longer.

"No," she murmured.

"Yes," he insisted.

When he closed the gap, he
stumbled forward at the lack of contact. She was no longer there, empty air the
only thing in front of him.

"Take off the rest of your
clothes, Jacob."

He spun awkwardly and saw a
flash of her, then she vanished like mist with that rapid speed vampires had.
His gaze went to the ceiling, knowing gravity didn't necessarily limit them,
but he found nowhere for her to perch.

"Clothes off. Lie across
the bed with your feet on the floor, your arms stretched over your head as far
as they can go. If I have to tell you to do it again, I'll
make
you do
it and crush your male ego." Her voice was a sensual caress, coming from
several places in the room, moving like a capricious wind, disorienting him.
"But even worse, I'll tie you down and leave you like that for several
days, until you realize what belonging to me truly means. Enough to regret
it."

Jacob lifted a lip, curled it in
a snarl. "Give it your best shot, my lady."

He couldn't say why he did it.
Maybe because he didn't want to capitulate so easily. Maybe because he had no
game plan for this other than his intuition and unwillingness to be controlled.

He didn't see her coming. A
shove knocked him to his knees and the shirt was ripped off his shoulders. When
he flipped to his back, it was floating down to the floor. The candles
flickered with the passage of her flight.

Rolling into a crouch, he didn't
bother removing the pants. They were a tactical disadvantage open and low on
his hips, but by the time he lifted a hand to remove them, she could be on him.
He waited for it, that sense of impending air movement. Guessing her next
direction based on her last strike, he ducked away, twisted back and grabbed,
managing to seize a portion of her robe and tumble her across his legs.

Anticipating the lightning move
of her hand, he reared back and dodged the grasp. He clamped down on her wrist,
a move he knew she could easily counter by breaking his arm. But he had to
believe the point of this impromptu match was not to injure. While he
understood she was trying to prove something to him, he was just as determined
to get his own message across.

He would be her servant. He wouldn't
be livestock. At least that was what his pride told him, drowning out the voice
of his psyche that said there might be darker issues involved in his
resistance.

She'd frozen in a half-standing
position, her slender forearm cuffed by his grip while she stared at him, two
feet between their faces, her foot planted between his knees. He'd pulled her
robe of her shoulder, exposing most of her right breast. Even as the pleasure
of seeing that milk white curve made his body respond, a sense of shame swept
him at this evidence of rough handling. Knowing how much stronger she was, he
nevertheless eased his grip at the feel of those fragile female bones. With his
other hand, he reached out and slid the satin back up on her shoulder, his
fingers whispering along the collarbone, itching to trail down her sternum to
cup one of those soft curves.

She straightened, drawing back
from him. Her gaze narrowed. "You've fought vampires before."

"Yes, my lady."

"In the limo, you were
wearing weapons. Several. I don't remember that Thomas had any particular skill
with weaponry. In fact, I worried about his fingers when he handled kitchen
knives."

"He told me of your
enemies, of your world. My brother is a vampire hunter. He taught me how to
fight them. But I quit. Thomas felt that was another reason I was qualified to
be your servant in a way he wasn't. His words, my lady. Not mine." He
added it quickly at her expression. "My brother and I… our paths separated
some time ago. I'd rather not speak of him."

He didn't want to think about
Gideon, who would be apoplectic if he knew what his younger brother was doing.

"You neglect to mention
your brother is a vampire killer, that you worked with him, and you're refusing
to tell me more than that? When I can crush your windpipe before you can
blink?"

"Killing me is your choice,
my lady. What I tell you of my life is mine."

She made a noise somewhere
between irritation and disgust, a Japanese curse that sounded as if she'd
compared him to an earthworm, if he'd gotten the translation right. Being
fluent in a handful of languages was another part of his resume he'd not yet
been able to cover, though he didn't think revealing that now would appease
her. She stepped back several more feet, her expression merciless, hard.

"A rather significant
omission, from both you
and
Thomas."

Now he was glad for the command
not to speak unless requested to do so. Nevertheless, he braced himself for the
uncomfortable questions. However, after several tense moments, one of those
pauses she seemed to favor, she simply said, "You're a fool to worry about
chivalry when it comes to a female vampire."

"I'll never raise a hand to
you, my lady. If you tell me my choice is to be bound on that bed or to strike
you, then I submit. There is no choice then."

"I won't make it that easy
for you. You may go lie on the bed. Or you may leave and never see me
again."

On that note, she was gone from
his sight again. Multidirectional, her voice filled the room. It was as if he
were in the inner sanctum of a goddess's temple, hearing her voice coming from
the elements, making him unsure if it emitted from the whisper of water in the
fountains, the mysterious rustling of the trees, the flicker of firelight in
the braziers, or the stones that came from the earth itself.

"If I forced you to go to
the bed after you fought me, whether by hiding behind your chivalry or my
physical force, you'd take some comfort in that. It's harder to do it
willingly, not knowing what to expect or what it will do to you, what I'll
expose. But you'll discover far greater pleasure in the torment if you go
willingly than if you fight."

His knee-jerk reaction was that
she was trying to inflict some misguided lesson upon him. But perhaps
submitting also unlocked certain vulnerabilities in his lady. Would it give her
greater pleasure as well, to see him submit? In her voice he could detect her
urgent desire to see him go down by his own volition, though he had the
conflicting suspicion his resistance teased the sharp edge of her lust.

Trying not to think about it too
much, Jacob made his decision. Leaning his hips against the footboard to keep
his balance, he removed one boot, then the other. While he was aware of her
regard from somewhere in the room, he knew it would be pointless to seek her
out. Pushing off the jeans, he retrieved his shirt and laid both garments over
the arm of a chair, placing his boots in front of it.

As he stood completely nude,
deliberating his next move for several charged moments, he wondered what she
was thinking. He was throbbing, enormous. He hoped she took pleasure in that.
Life in a circus had helped him get past modesty about personal nakedness, but
he found himself somewhat self-conscious under the circumstances.

"You think you can commit
over three centuries to me, Sir Vagabond?"

"As long as you need
me."

"You say that, but you
resist me. Did Thomas tell you the oath to a vampire of my rank?"

"I am sworn to your
service. Compelled by absolute loyalty, I safeguard your well-being before my
own or any other ties of family or friendship. I swear it by the giving of my
blood to you and before all of Divinity, may my life be cursed and my soul be
damned if I speak false or ever betray the vow."

A pregnant silence filled the
room. "Thomas made you take the oath," she said at last.

"It was the last step in my
training. I stood vigil in the monastery chapel for three days and three nights
before he spilled my blood on the stones to consecrate the words."

Fifty lashes across his back.
Required when administered in conjunction with the oath, they were part of the
Ritual of Binding to a vampire queen. It was a ritual so ancient most vampires
under three hundred years old didn't know it. Lyssa moved through the shadows
outside of his vision, staring at those crisscrossing lines that would have turned
his back into a mass of blood when they'd occurred, causing enough pain to make
the strongest man sick, lose control of his bowels. Then the monks would have
made him scrub those stones clean on his hands and knees, naked, before they
would offer to tend his wounds. The Master always came first.

"Did Thomas use my
whip?"

"Yes, my lady. He said
you'd used it on him when you accepted him."

She closed her eyes. She'd given
it to Thomas as a gift years before. He'd apparently carefully preserved it.
Once a human became a servant, most wounds he'd received even previous to his
acceptance would not leave permanent scarring, unless his Mistress anointed the
weapon with a drop of her own blood first.

Without knowing if she would
accept him, Jacob had subjected himself to torture and permanent disfigurement.
An exceptional act of loyalty. It moved her far more than she wanted him to
know.

"I'd like you to put your
boots under the bed," she said at last.

Odd. From the tone of her voice,
Jacob could tell that had been a request, not a command. He suspected Lady
Lyssa never intimated words except exactly as she intended. She could likely
orchestrate any nuance she wanted in her speech.

"Under the bed. Just like
the country song?"

She didn't respond. He didn't
expect her to do so, but at least he didn't sense she was offended by him
forgetting himself and speaking out of turn. Putting the boots neatly just
under the bed, he eyed the expanse of mattress.

From the corner of his eye, he
realized she was behind him now, almost three feet back. Close, reminding him
of the temptations that might wait for him if he complied. Far enough back so
the decision was his, as she'd said. After that, his choices would be limited.

He turned around to face her.
Keeping his gaze on hers, he took a step back, then another. The anticipation
that rose in her expression resulted in a taut, indefinable anxiety in his gut
as he sat down on the bed. As tall as he was, he'd still have to flex his feet
to keep his toes grazing the floor if he slid back to where the crook of his
knees met the mattress as she wished. Lying back, he felt the soft quilting of
the cool bed linens give beneath, him.

She hadn't made the bed, so he
smelled her, felt the rumpled waves of the quilted blanket beneath him. He'd
undressed her for her comfort, trying not to take advantage of her unconscious
state to ogle, but now her scent taunted back to life the vision of smooth,
pale flesh and curves he'd briefly glimpsed, the bare folds of flesh between
her legs, for vampires only had hair above the neck. He raised his arms over
his head, his knuckles brushing the covers.

"See if you can reach the
opposite edge of the mattress."

He stretched out his arms as far
as he could and came within a few inches of reaching the other side if he
strained.

"Hold that position. I want
you to pretend your arms are already bound. In a moment, they actually will
be."

When he heard the clank of
metal, he wanted to roll away, leap up. With a force of will that took more
effort than he expected, he kept still. A
beautiful woman wants to tie you
up and have her way with you. You've played soft bondage before
. But only
as she'd described, where it would have been easy to get loose. Where the
emotional stakes were nowhere near as high as they would be here.

Now her robe brushed his leg.
There was the sound of metal touching metal again. Her hand slid around to his
calf, her fingers stroking the hair there before moving down to his ankle. She
took her time about it, turning her hand over as if it were the page of a book
to rub her knuckles along the same area. The electrical reaction ran up the
inside of his thigh, prodded his cock up another notch.

Apprehension had affected his
erection, but it was quickly being restored with the magic her fingers were creating.
He didn't want to admit lying still at her command might also be contributing.
He'd never considered it a sexual act, making himself helpless to a woman.

Thomas had told him there was no
end to the things she could teach him. The crafty son of a bitch hadn't gone
into these kinds of specifics, though. He wouldn't have bolted if he'd known.
Probably. But it would have been nice to be prepared, as much as a man could be
for something like this.