Vampire Mistress (39 page)

Gideon’s distress was reaching her, though. Several times she tried to pull back, but Daegan held her fast. The moment she’d taken enough of his blood, though, he yanked her up. Pulling her arm to his fangs, he punctured her wrist as she yelped, startled. Ignoring that, he put her arm in front of Gideon’s mouth. The man was barely conscious, despite the convulsions, so Daegan had to open his jaw, let the blood drop in. Rub his throat until he’d swallowed the requisite number of times. Thank God it didn’t take much of the vampire’s blood to complete the marking, because Fate chose that moment to bring another seizure upon Anwyn. Given the stress of the past few minutes, he was surprised it hadn’t come earlier.

Take him as yours. Feed on his blood.
The shadow voices swelled in her mind, matching her own desires.
Rip out his beating heart, just to prove you can.
Hearing her thoughts, he was ready for her response.

“No. Let me go,” she shrieked. She was being pulled down in the maelstrom. Howling at the haze coming over her vision only made the rush of bloodlust come in faster. Still, Daegan held her grimly in place until the blood was in Gideon, though her struggles became like those of a wild animal. Her awareness of Gideon’s plight deserted her, her eyes rolling and fangs bared as she spouted the invective that came from her sire’s broken mind. She even landed a few punches on Gideon’s immobilized body before he restrained her, pushing her down to a crouch over her knees until the urge passed.

Daegan had been up to his elbows in blood, witnessed the stink of fear, the horror of dying an unexpected, violent death at his own hands. Yet every time he’d killed, it had been an assignment, the target someone who’d reaped the consequences of illegal actions. What he’d just forced her to do felt like destroying an innocent life. No matter that Gideon had tentatively made the decision himself, that didn’t deceive Daegan. The man was nowhere near prepared or committed to being a vampire’s full servant, and it was very likely he never would be. The repercussions of taking a servant who wasn’t fully committed to belonging to a vampire were usually disastrous.

Gideon’s face flashed through his mind, the cocky attitude and grim half smile, the wary eyes. The way he looked at Anwyn, as if everything he could ever want resided within her slim frame. The life dying out of his eyes as he told Daegan to leave him and go help Anwyn. As if he were an afterthought, his body just garbage to be discarded. Anywn’s words:
He didn’t want this . . .

Damn it all to hell.
Daegan shut it out, everything out but what had to be done right now.

She continued her berserker efforts to break free, her mind encapsulated in pure, raw rage. He was fine with responding in kind. Though she was in the midst of a violent seizure, he knew what would bring her back to them. Taking hold of the thin, feminine fabric of her slacks, he tore the seam down the back, ripping through the silky panties. She stilled in a moment of shock, but Daegan brought her back onto the couch and slid his fingers between her legs, reminding her of his touch, his claim on her, which had burned inside him without outlet for the past few chaste days. A lifetime. She was still slippery from her earlier lust and now she shuddered, a whimper breaking from her.

No.

Freeing himself from the jeans he’d so hastily pulled on, he slammed into her, hard enough to rock her into Gideon’s body. Gideon’s eyes flickered open, his expression dazed, her blood staining his lips, but he was barely conscious. Daegan kept his focus on her.

Anwyn the human woman had been brutally raped, but he wasn’t worried about any comparison at this moment, because he was in her mind, immersed in her new but raging vampire instincts. He knew exactly how to respond to a vampire female in this state.

“If you truly wanted to deny me, your body wouldn’t respond. But your cunt is wet, hot and welcoming, Anwyn.”
You’ve told slaves that letting go of control is the greatest power they can embrace. You’re a hypocrite. But hypocrites can learn the same way a slave can. By having a Master force the issue.
Rotating his hips, he stroked with deadly accuracy, and her body shuddered again. Sliding his fingers around front, he found her clit, his knuckles braced against Gideon’s thigh. She cried out, part anger and part desire, as he started ruthlessly manipulating her.

Daegan caught her wrist, guided her hand across Gideon’s waist and down to close over the man’s cock, even trapped behind denim. He wanted to remind her of what also belonged to her, what was worth living for. Anwyn swallowed against his hold as he pulled her head up with a hand collared on her throat.

“I don’t give a damn about who’s in your head. You’ll climax for me when I say. And you’ll surrender everything to me, the same as you demand of Gideon. It’s not only because it’s what a vampire is; it’s the only sure way to save a soul. You know it, but you don’t believe it. It’s time I make you believe it. You will climax
now
.”

One final pinch, one rotation of his hips, and it tore out of her, the climax shuddering through her as she took his thrusts, crying out with the brutal strength of each one. Finding Gideon’s mouth, she devoured it, kissing him mindlessly through the orgasm, breathing her whimpers into his mouth. Whether unconscious or not, the man was responding. It might be only in his dreams, but Gideon aroused to her in his darkness, his lips moving lethargically against hers. His biceps flexed under her tight grasp.

Even wounded, a third-mark’s response time was as predictable as a rutting stag’s—with the right stimulation, he could practically be ready to fuck on his deathbed. Daegan hoped to God that wasn’t what was happening now.

She was half-draped on the couch between Gideon’s now splayed thighs, one of his booted feet braced on the floor. Her soft ass pushing against Daegan, her pussy gripping him, was all it took. Daegan released then, spilling his seed inside of her, knocking her knees apart farther so she had to grip Gideon’s arms harder.

He didn’t spend time on a tender aftermath, even though he could tell he’d called her back from the savagery that had claimed her. Too much was swirling in the air between them, and he had a different purpose from tenderness. Bitting her sharply on the neck, he left a mark. She responded with a mewl like an angry, exhausted kitten. “You don’t shower until I tell you that you can. You keep his blood on your clothes, and my seed trickling down your legs, your pussy damp and musky, so you remember who you answer to.”

He lifted her, took her to the cross. She was frothing at the mouth, her crimson eyes spewing hate and betrayal in equal measure. When she landed a lucky strike to his groin that made his vision gray, he took it as his due. But he got her back in the manacles, left them loose enough she could move around, then slid the couch out of the cell, taking Gideon out of harm’s way in case she had another seizure.

As he closed the cell door, he made himself close his ears to the broken weeping that finally swept away the remnants of the savage attack. Closed his eyes to the way she fell limply to the floor at the base of the cross. He’d accomplished what he’d intended. The foundation that circumstances had laid in the past few days had come to fruition. Or maybe, he thought bleakly, it had been growing for far longer than that.

Her self-loathing, her sense of self-destruction, had been replaced by hatred for him.

He wanted to hold on to the combination of fury, frustration and soul-deep terror at how close she’d come to taking her own life. But even during the marking, as she struggled and screamed, fighting an enemy inside of her he couldn’t touch, he’d had a dangerous need to make exactly the same mistake Gideon had. To hold her, touch her, give her whatever reassurance he could that she could still be what she’d always been, in the hopes that some of it might reach her embattled spirit, give her strength. If he turned around now, he’d do just that. And she’d never become what she needed to be.

Her growing impatience with her situation that had prompted this ill-advised outing wasn’t going to abate, and now she’d faced the very real possibility that this wouldn’t get any better. He’d always known her so well. At the center of Anwyn’s soul, there was a tough, hard streak, one that understood the need for cruelty as well as mercy. She needed his cruelty to survive, Gideon’s love to live. He intended to deliver both to her. So he slid Gideon out of the dungeon area and into the sitting room, where he could keep an eye on him but not be tempted to go to her aid. Anwyn would want him to sit by her new servant, watch over him, until she’d regained her composure. That much, he could do for her.

Gideon was still breathing, but mercifully had subsided into full unconsciousness. The energy required to knit bones and recover from his near brush with death, process the changes the mark would make within him, would keep him out for a while. That was probably for the best. With the marks in place, Anwyn could now be inside his heart, soul or mind, but wouldn’t have any control of that connection during her seizures. If he was conscious, Gideon might think he’d died and gone to Hell, surrounded by the shrieking thoughts of some she-demon. Of course, the more sobering question was whether he would regain consciousness at all. As yet, Daegan saw no indication the wounds in his throat or his broken bones were knitting, though the brief span of convulsions might mean his spine was mending.

Now away from anyone’s scrutiny but the disapproving gods, Daegan sank down in a chair next to the man, briefly rubbing a hand over his face, distantly recognizing a slight tremor in his fingers.
Holy Mother of Christ, bless His name.
He felt sick, a rare occurrence for a vampire.

Years ago, he’d seen a dog run down by an SUV. The driver hadn’t stopped, and it had been late at night. Daegan had carried the poor creature out of the road, found a quiet hill to lay the dog down and sat by him. He’d known the wound was mortal, that the life would die out of his liquid brown eyes in a matter of moments. From the condition of the skinny, feral animal, he could tell he’d had few options in a cruel human world. Daegan had given him some of his blood, which the dog had lapped at for a few minutes and then subsided into semiconscious-ness. He’d died with Daegan stroking his coat, his head.

What did it say about him, that he recalled that moment as one of the few times he’d felt truly connected to another? Until he met Anwyn. All those years alone, then he’d met her. And what were the chances that, remarkably, within the same five years, he’d started tracking a hunter who always hunted alone . . .

Gideon muttered, his voice tinged with a fear he’d never heard when the man was conscious. They all had their nightmares.

He could give Gideon what he couldn’t give Anwyn right now. Laying a hand on Gideon’s brow, he murmured to him. “Easy, vampire hunter. You’re safe. And you’re all hers. Go to a good dream now. A good memory.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. From the sounds he detected in the next room, Anwyn’s tears had mercifully given way to a menacing series of hisses and threatening mutters, another seizure coming on the heels of the earlier one. Moving to the sofa arm and bracing a leg up near Gideon’s shoulder, his fingers still drifting across the man’s feverish brow, he let himself visit one of the best memories of his life. One he desperately needed right now.

The night he’d met Anwyn.

25

V
AMPIRES tended to like upscale BDSM clubs. They were open at night, and they catered to vampires’ unique sexual tastes, though it was rare a vampire indulged in an actual session. Most clubs didn’t allow bloodplay, and many vampires didn’t have the control to maintain the human façade in such a stimulating environment. Daegan was one who did, but he’d gone in only for a drink, liking the environment and the quality vodka. He’d had an assignment in the area, but had finished it up early. The following day he’d head for New Zealand.

He needed to start making some time for other things. He was getting too grim, too tightfisted on his emotions, so that they were growing hard and dull inside his heart. It was too easy for an assassin to become a cold-blooded killer. Though of course, only an assassin probably knew the difference. It was also too easy for a vampire to lose touch with his emotions. When he did, he could succumb to the dangerous apathy of the Ennui.

What would he do with more time, though? He didn’t consort with his own kind, and the human world had too many dangers. He could afford the occasional seductive evening with a pretty female he’d see only once, but in truth, he thought maybe he should return to Tibet for a while. Spend time in one of the monasteries. There they asked no questions, each man seeking his own answers and peace from the silence.

The fact he was here, though, suggested his carnal appetities were more urgent this evening than his meditative ones. He scanned the assortment of submissives available for play with a discerning eye, feeling like Goldilocks, not finding anything that was exactly right.

Then he saw her.

She was moving among the crowd of Friday night guests. She missed nothing, the aura of energy around her a silent but powerful force that drew every eye, yet warned even the Doms from speaking to her uninvited. The blue-green corset and tight black skirt with matching stilettos molded her figure, moving with the graceful sway of her body. Her hair had been piled on her head. Around her neck had been stenciled a complicated henna tattoo collar the color of old blood.

There might have been a hundred feet between them, filled with more than two hundred people in the crowded bar and dance floor area, yet she stopped, turned and met his gaze squarely, dead on target.

Things moved faster for vampires. He didn’t need time to vacillate or contemplate. The minute she made that extraordinary connection, responding to his energy even through the crowd, he was on his feet and moving. People instinctively shifted out of his way. She watched him, every step, until he reached her.

When he stopped, his feet were planted so close they were practically on the outsides of her slender heels. His coat slid against her forearm as he stared into her eyes. He moved from them to the curve of her lips, the pale skin and bone structure of her face. He’d seen beauty before, countless versions of it, but this . . .

Less than an hour before, someone had begged him for her life. A female vampire. He’d closed his ears to it, because he had to do so, because her crimes required her death. Most begged for life at the end, because fear of the unknown, of saying good-bye to everything they’d ever known, was the greatest fear of all. Just as finding the place that felt truly like your own, your home, what you were bound and connected to, was the greatest need.

“I want you,” he said.

No compulsion, nothing but the driving beat in his cock, his heart, his soul. When she reached up to touch his face, he closed his hand on her wrist, a warning that he was not to be touched without permission. But she pushed against his hold, her smile telling him she knew she couldn’t battle his strength, but that she would have her way regardless. Remarkably, he let her win, let that delicate forearm he could snap slide through the closed circle of his fingers so she touched his hair, her silky skin grazing his temple. Then she drifted down his cheek, the line of his jaw.

A large man had stepped up behind her. This was her security, come to make sure she was in control of the situation. He had to block an absurd desire to bare his fangs and snarl, send him skittering back. Instead, she made a motion with her other hand, a subtle signal, and the man nodded, moving off, though he kept a wary eye on Daegan.

“I have a feeling that what you want may be more than I have to give,” she murmured. “Can you accept that?”

“No.” He bent and touched his lips to the tender underside of her forearm, grazing his fang over her wrist, letting her feel the sharp prick. A shudder ran through her.

“Well, just so we understand one another. Come with me.”

She walked him back down a quiet hallway full of plush carpet and dim lighting, taking him into a private playroom that was all mirrors. Floor, ceiling and all four walls, and she wouldn’t see his reflection in any of them. The only thing in the small room was a vase of red roses, sitting on a pedestal in the middle. A few petals had fallen, scattered on the mirrored floor like drops of blood.

He didn’t wait. When the door closed, he turned and tore the side of that snug skirt, all the way up to her thigh. She wore nothing under it. Lifting her up, he pressed her back against the smooth surface of the closest mirror. Her arms and legs wound around him as he gripped her hair, pulled her head to the side and sank his fangs into her neck.

He’d planned none of it. Looking back, it had been an astounding series of events, because she hadn’t known him, and he’d made no effort to prepare her in any way for what he was. He’d just seen her and known, from her lack of fear, from what she was and he was, that the moment could and would happen.

He’d never told her he loved her. He’d never told her he couldn’t live without her in his world. She was human and he was something so odd, even to his own species, that he couldn’t break that rule, make himself that vulnerable.

In return, she gave all herself to him, and yet nothing at once. It had always been that way. Though he desired her to be his servant with an urgency that bemused him, she had never been willing. She gave him everything else he demanded instead, responding to the inexplicable bond that had drawn them together from the first.

With every year he’d spent with her, he’d become more certain that, if ever he lost her, everything would end for him. He would walk into the sun and see if it could kill him, when nothing else seemed to do so.

Even if the sun couldn’t destroy him, her howls of pain and agony might. She went from the aftermath of the second seizure directly into another. As he’d suspected, the terrible stress of the past hour had unbalanced her. She needed more of the sire’s blood and he gave it to her, steeling himself to be firmly brutal, rather than prolonging it with an attempt at gentleness. Her enraged cries vibrated off the walls, off every alert nerve and inside every cell of his heart.

If there was such a thing as Hell, he was sure this was it.

He knew she blamed him for all of it. In time, her logic and intelligence would reasonably accept that it had been unavoidable fate, that he’d not intended it. It wouldn’t make the relationship any less over. Some things were never overcome, the feelings severed like a limb, blackened and withered by the fire of one significant event. How could he fight for her, fight against it, when he didn’t think she was wrong? It
had
been his fault. He’d wanted her, needed her, had allowed her to be part of his life without giving her any protection. All because he’d capitulated to the human concept of free will, which had no place in his world.

What would have been best was leaving her alone from the beginning, letting her walk across the club and back out of his life without their eyes ever having met. Yet she’d turned toward him as if drawn . . .

It didn’t matter. If she could do it over now, she probably would have blinded herself before making that turn, meeting his gaze in the crowd.

He couldn’t do anything about that. So, as he had with that dog, he waited with Gideon. The vampire hunter muttered in his unconscious state, his brow furrowing in pain, stress deepening those lines from whatever haunted his dreams now. When Daegan reached out, he was startled to see his hand was trembling anew. Forcing it to still before he laid it on Gideon’s brow, he grazed the hot skin with his knuckles. With bemusement he noted the hunter had some silver strands. By the Blessed Virgin, the man couldn’t be more than thirty.

While he hadn’t been certain if his touch would make the dreams worse or better, Gideon seemed to settle down, so Daegan kept stroking.

No matter what the future brought, no matter how she felt about him, Anwyn was his. Now that Gideon was hers, that made them both Daegan’s. He would take care of them, no matter how much they despised him. He prayed for her attack to pass before her pain drove him mad, prayed like hell for Gideon to survive.

If he didn’t, Daegan knew that disposing of the body and telling Anwyn he’d bolted after he healed wouldn’t work. For one thing, Gideon wouldn’t back away from a situation because he couldn’t handle it. He’d rather it destroy than defeat him. And Anwyn, with that gift she had for seeing the truth, no matter how deeply it was buried inside a male, would know it. If Gideon died, Daegan couldn’t protect her from the truth that she’d killed him.

That would destroy her soul in a way Barnabus hadn’t been able to do. Or even Daegan.

Gideon woke with a hell of a headache. He wasn’t entirely sure of his surroundings, so he played possum for a few minutes. Had he been taken captive by another vampire stupid enough to try and torture him, rather than kill him outright? It felt as if he was in a different place, almost a different dimension. Everything seemed . . . skewed, somehow.

His head was in someone’s lap, though, and it wasn’t a bad place to be. Female fingers were whispering over his face, tracing his lips, his brow, the broken line of his nose. Her knuckles slid down his neck, hesitated, and then kept on, but he’d felt the soreness there, the sense of a wound. When she passed over it again, he knew what it was. A bite wound.

It’s all right. Don’t be alarmed. I’m so sorry, Gideon. It’s all right.

He shook his head like the confused, disoriented animal he was. He made it to his feet, seeking balance blindly. He stumbled into a wall. No, not a wall; another body. A man who turned him with firm but not ungentle hands. Now he was leaning back into him, a man who clasped his biceps.

“Let go of me.”

“No. Reach for your third-mark energy, Gideon. Let it steady you. Let it focus the picture, help you get a handle on it.”

Daegan. Daegan Rei. Whom Gideon should be shoving away because he was a vampire, and an arrogant asshole, besides. However, as Gideon reached out with his senses, he found it, a field of steadying energy, available because . . . third mark?

“Jesus Christ, tell me you didn’t mark me.”

“She did. At my insistence, to save your life.”

Gideon’s senses seemed to be on hyperdrive. He hadn’t thought to open his eyes yet, not because of the headache, but because of all the input his other senses were handling. He could smell every distinct odor around him. Their clothes, the lingering scent of blood, the individual shampoo, soaps, fabrics and cleaners that attended a body and its home surroundings. There was an air conditioner running, a refrigerator. The faint hum of a computer somewhere. The air felt weighted with sound vibrations.