The Vampire Queen's Servant(18)

Do you realize, mortal, I could rip you limb from limb…

With a curse, he turned away from his image in the mirror and opened the door. Fuck it. Gideon always said he was fatally impetuous. He might just prove him right.

She'd raised the cross upright again and was leaning against it, wearing a nightgown of sheer black lace, nothing under it from low neckline to midthigh. He saw her nipples, the folds of her sex, all of her curves and the slender shapes of her thighs denned in the provocative pose. As he watched, she threaded her hands through the adjustable cuffs and held onto them as if bound there.

When she slid her feet into the loosened ankle cuffs like slippers, she gripped the hand cuffs to raise and balance herself for the maneuver. As she held most of her weight that way, her legs spread and hip cocked at a defiant angle, he was dry mouthed just looking at her. Even contemplating what was ahead, his cock couldn't help but be semi-erect. At the sight of this it rose to full mast, flooded with immediate, gut-wrenching lust as she licked her lips, showing him tiny fangs. It made a throb of reaction go through his neck, just below where she'd bitten him, and heat sear straight to his groin. Her dark hair hung loose, reaching almost to her waist, blending with the black lace like a silk curtain over a teasing transparent panel.

"Come to me."

He knew all about the way a fly would blunder into the glistening strands of a spider's web. Though her position was one of self-restraint, the sensual splaying of her arms and legs and the way she watched him approach told him he was looking at a predator. No question on who was prey in this room.

Nevertheless, he came forward, the heat of her gaze twining around him like the sticky strands of a web in truth.

A man who doesn't test the mettle of his soul isn't much of a man…

His hunger rose even further as he reached her and she didn't free herself. Instead, as he leaned in, putting his hands on her hips, the flesh separated from him only by thin lace, she strained toward him as if bound in truth. "Touch me. Please. Tease me as you would if I were your prisoner, yours to torment."

He went on instinct. Sliding his arm around her waist, he splayed a hand between the wood and her body, gripping her ass to rub her against him, pushing her forward further against her restraints as he nudged her face to the side and used his teeth to mark her shoulder, right at the juncture of her throat. He clamped down much harder than he'd done it before.

She gasped, shuddered. In his peripheral vision he saw her eyes widen in shock. She strained against the bonds, pressing her breasts into his bare chest. He brought his other hand up to squeeze her there as he would if he were fulfilling his own desires only, using her body to slake his lust. The ripple of reaction got even more violent. When she dropped her head back on her shoulders, he moved from his bite to suckling her throat, tonguing the narrow valley at her collarbone while she quivered. Dropping one hand, he cupped her through the gown, found her hot and soaking.

"You're wet for me, my lady." He stared into her dark, fathomless eyes. The pupil had all but swallowed the green, so it was just a ring of glowing emerald. "Your pussy wants me again."

Her lips parted at the crude talk. He noticed she didn't take as much care to hide her fangs when she was aroused. That reddish tint was back in her eyes, and there was a tautness to her features hinting at some other face he'd yet to see. As if he were seeing brief glimpses of a different being, a metamorphosis, here and then gone.

"It makes you hard, having me this way, does it?" Her voice was a breathless whisper. When she moved her body urgently against him, he curled his fingers in the gown, holding her still with a touch on her spread thighs as he guided his tip to her to rub her clit with slow, small movements. She went still and trembling, as if feeling the intensity of it.

"Yes," he said low. "It makes me want to fuck you until you can't walk. I want to hear you scream my name, my lady."

"Then you understand the power of it," she said in that same whisper. "Having something you want so much as your willing captive." She closed her eyes and rocked against him. The feeling was too much. He backed off, intending to ruck up her skirt, find her beneath it and feel the sweet honey of her pussy run over his cock again, smell it in his nostrils.

Instead he was spun in a circle, a flash of black disorienting him as his body was bumped, turned so fast he stumbled and couldn't get his bearings. She was moving around him, gripping an arm, an elbow, his hip, making him dizzy like a child twirled to stagger after a piñata.

Only she wasn't intending him to chase after anything. He was thrust backward against the St. Andrew's cross and his feet swept from beneath him as he and the cross were taken to a horizontal position. His wrists and ankles yanked apart, spread and cuffed. Not held loosely as she'd done it to herself. In no more than a few blinks, while his head was still off balance, she had his limbs buckled down tightly, no keys this time, adjusted so he was stretched out in the X-shape, fully extended as she'd done on the bed. Then she brought him upright again, the world tilting, his stomach dropping.

"It's even more pleasurable when that can be done slow. When a Mistress makes her slave stand still, watch her thread each strap, tighten it. Make him feel his loss of freedom an increment at a time, his lust growing and stirring her own. But for your first time we'll do it a bit differently."

He managed to focus on her, just in front of and below him. With that inscrutable gaze in place again and no further conversation, she sank down and put her mouth on his cock, letting her fangs scrape him.

He reacted violently, throwing back his head so it rapped against the wood hard, but he barely felt it.

Her location shot his mind to the thought of where she'd said she'd put the second mark. Each of the marks had a serious functional purpose. The first mark was a tracking mechanism, allowing her to know his whereabouts at any time. So while at the time he'd felt triumph at her decision to give the first mark, he now understood it was the least impulsive of the marks to give, because it safeguarded her against betrayal. The next mark would link their minds, allowing her to speak to him without words. Even more significantly, it allowed her to tap into his thoughts whether he wanted her to do so or not. From the past few hours, Jacob was beginning to think it was that mark he needed to be most apprehensive about, despite the ominous significance of the third. The final mark linked him to her immortality, prolonging his life three or four times its normal span. However, as with the other marks, it came with a darker side. Much darker. If she was killed, he died as well.

He'd asked if the first and second marks were two-way. Thomas's cryptic reply had been, "when she allows it." He'd told Jacob she could block his awareness of her whenever she chose to do so. In short, the marks tilted the scales all her way.

But perhaps there might come a time when he would know her mind, her heart, whether she willed it or not. When she would let her defenses down for him. The thought helped steady him.

Nothing else did. Her tongue teased the underside of his cock, licking as she nuzzled his balls. She didn't go fully down on it, though he ached to feel the sucking pressure of that petite, perfect mouth. She rose, her gaze heavy lidded, lips moist.

"You have a nice taste. You've no idea how it feels to me to see you restrained, going to bed knowing your cock will ache and leak for me, your dreams full of me…"

Turning away, she went to the armoire and opened it. Sliding open a narrow drawer, she trailed a finger through the contents. He heard clinking sounds like metal.

When she turned she had something in her hand that looked like the double-looped wire harness put on the neck of a bottle of wine to hold the cork securely. It had three circles in progressive sizes. The widest one was made of chain and threaded with pewter beads. The middle circle was a silver cuff, and the smallest of the loops had a decorative convex cap made of bronze. On the concave side of the cap there was a two-inch-long thin rod of surgical steel, slightly wider than pencil lead, except it flared to a bulb-shaped end similar to a Q-tip.

When she opened the door of a small cabinet in the armoire, a dim light activated within it, apparently to help her see the array of glass bottles. His lady seemed to have a penchant for stained glass in her home.

A home he assumed was still above them, unless she'd distorted space and time so they were in a bubble somewhere, floating in the universe beyond the range of help or anything he'd ever known. A man began to have some desperate and strange thoughts when bound so he couldn't move.



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Chapter Thirteen





Putting down the object she'd retrieved from the drawer, she picked up a bottle and poured a thick clear gel in her hand. When she used it on the small piece of jewelry, he began to understand, enough to be very concerned about that two-inch slender rod under the concave cap.

She came back to him then, her nipples dark smudges, her breasts quivering erotically with her movements under the stretched hold of the lace, her sex taunting him. As she moved, she unlatched the three loops, her fingers glistening with the oil.

"Your lack of piercings didn't surprise me, but the lack of tattoos did." She cocked her head. "It's rare to see a completely unmarked man your age. Why is that?"

He pulled his attention away from the thing she was treating as jewelry and he was viewing as a potential torture device. From the slight smile on her lips, he suspected she recognized his struggle to focus.