"My brother always said if you mark your body with a symbol, it means you stand by it forever. Only things branded on the soul can be branded on the body. So far I've found the only constant is that everything changes."
"You always have yourself."
He managed a half smile, even as his body tensed when she reached for him. "It seems you have me now."
"I do," she agreed. "This rod," her finger caressed it, "is no wider than your opening, actually a bit smaller, and it's going no further than the length of my smallest finger. There are ways to relax the opening if you focus, take deep breaths. Just let it slide in."
He nodded, but kept his eyes on her face. Her hands gripped him, a cool, slick feeling evoking a moment of panic he could do nothing about. She outlined the tiny slit at the tip of his cock with the rod. "Did you know this opening is called the meatus? Do you think that's why women think of men's penises as pieces of meat?"
He took a breath, then another.
"I won't hurt you, Jacob. Not past bearing. Trust me, Sir Vagabond. Let go."
He tried. It was startling, invasive and therefore uncomfortable, but she eased it in with gentle fingers. The metal bar was as smooth as the arms of the cross beneath his body. She used her thumb to position the cap on the head of his cock, like pushing in the head of a tack. Then she ran the chains along his outside length. The quiet snick of the broader cuff of the second loop made him jump as she fastened it snugly just behind the ridge of his head. When the third chain loop cinched around the base of his cock and scrotum, his balls drew up at the unusual feeling of restraint. Brushing against his thighs, the extra chain dangled down beneath them, adding weight to the sensation because of the beads added there for that purpose.
"Look down now," she commanded softly.
When he did, he saw her hands playing with his now well-lubricated cock. He'd lost some of his arousal to trepidation, but her touch and the intense look in her eyes, reflecting her great pleasure in adorning him, made it strain back against the chains, causing pinching. Not unbearably painful, but apprehensively close. She'd made it tight enough to hold him if he wasn't erect, so increasing the size increased the feeling of binding. The discomfort reminded him he was hers, as he was sure she intended.
The bronze disk with a pewter inlay was centered at the tip of his cock, anchored there by the slender rod inserted inside him. A pin-wheel of chains ran from it to the silver cuff she'd clasped behind the flare of his head. The longer chains running down his cock to the base and his scrotum were interspersed with uncut gems that dug into his shaft. He was going to pass a difficult day waiting for her to wake.
"You're beautiful." She said it softly, barely a breath of sound. She sank to her knees and considered him from eye level, coming close to run her tongue just under the cap, touching his invaded slit.
Jacob groaned, a primitive wave of response rolling through his body. He winced as the hold of the jewelry tightened further. But he couldn't stop himself. Oh, holy Jesus… she was lapping, nipping at him, her oiled hands stroking over him, squeezing his balls, fingering at his ass though he reflexively clenched there. Her oiled finger and the nail stabbed at him, wriggled, got past the tight muscles of his buttocks to play around the rim.
"Lady… Mercy." He had no idea what coming with that rod inside him would do, but he'd never been so aroused and uncomfortable at once. Over all of that, the greatest ache came from the coil of need in his lower belly, which made him want to bury himself in her willing cunt as he had earlier. If the past several hours were what daily life with her would be like, he suspected she'd kill him long before they ever got to the second mark, let alone the third.
"Do I strike you as a merciful creature, Jacob?" She nipped at him again, tugging on one of the chains and inciting a jolt of reaction he felt deep in his testicles. "Do you know you can get much longer rods? They can vibrate, even make musical tones when they vibrate against you, like the rims of wine glasses."
"Someone has too damn much time on their hands," he said desperately.
Rising with a glint in her gaze, she pushed on the cross. With the release of a lever, she reclined him back to a forty-five-degree angle. "So you can sleep," she explained the adjustment. "Perhaps join me in my dreams."
"You're going to leave me like this."
"Yes." She nodded. "As I said, it leaves you nothing but time to think." She bent over him, her hair falling so it brushed his bare chest. Reaching through the strands, she caressed him again, tapped on the top of the jeweled adornment for his cock. "But if you sleep, I may come to visit you in your dreams."
He couldn't find words to answer that, not with the desire hot in her eyes, filling him with the unfamiliar desire to beg for something. Her mercy… her cruelty. Maybe just her. But he bit it back. When he said nothing, she turned away with a bemused look. Extinguishing all but one of the candles in the far corner of the room provided enough light that when she walked toward the bed, the snug grip of the lace on her hips showed him the movement of her ass, the shadow of the cleft in between. Putting a hand to the heavy carved bedpost, she used it to lift herself onto the high bed. For one agonizing moment, she was on all fours, her knees wide enough to show him the lips of her pussy beneath the pattern. Turning on one hip, she stretched out, fanning her hair across her left shoulder as she lay down on her right side. When she flipped it back, it created a shining wave on the creamy linen expanse of the pillow.
"I think I'll sleep on top of the covers." Her gaze lingered on him like a cat enjoying her dinner. "I expect my dreams will keep me warm enough."
Balancing accounts, memorizing household duties… Thomas should have drowned him in all the forbidden pleasures of a Spanish bordello so she couldn't so effectively destroy his concentration with things he'd never experienced before. Somehow, however, he doubted that would have helped. What affected his body when it came to her was far more than physical, and she seemed to exploit that at every turn. On how many men had she honed the skill?
She tucked her hands under her cheek like an innocent child preparing to take her repose, unfettered by sins. When her eyes immediately began to droop, the siren's mask slipped, the shadows etching out an exhaustion too startling to be false.
Thomas said she could stay up even to the midmorning hours as long as she wasn't in direct sunlight, and it was barely past dawn. Maybe there was a reason she'd used distraction more than physical exertion to get him onto the cross. It managed to drive back his frustrated lust and tangled emotions enough to realize she'd actually been as tired as she'd said.
She turned on her back, giving him a different view of her body in that scrap of lingerie.
"Tell me who Jacob is." Her voice, sleepy, surprised him. "I like bedtime stories."
"Should Arabian Nights come to mind?"
She smiled. "Only if you tell me a bad story."
He chuckled, but Lyssa heard the strain in the tone. His current condition was weighing heavily on his mind. She wanted him thinking, particularly while his connection to her was still limited to one mark. No matter what happened, she didn't mind giving him the one that would let her know where he was, that he was alive. She'd like to keep track of him.
It was another of the many things being alive so long had taught her. A person could make a lasting impression in less than a moment. She cultivated those impressions as if they were physical relationships, visiting with them in her mind when she wanted company, imagining words they might have said intertwined with what they did say during their brief interaction with her.
"Tell me about you, Jacob. I want to see the pictures in my head. Who were your parents?"
"My parents are dead, my lady."
"Will you tell me how? You don't have to, if it's too painful."
"I can refuse you nothing, my lady. When you ask."
She acknowledged the barb, but waited, cognizant of his hesitation.
"It was a lightning strike on the water while we were all at the beach. My brother knew CPR, worked on Dad and talked me through doing it on Mom, because I was eight and didn't know how. It didn't matter, they were both gone within a few minutes."
She studied the darkness, the way it closed around her but still gave her the sense of him, just to the right of her bed. For Christmas one year, Thomas had given her a set of plastic stars that glowed in the dark. He'd put them on her ceiling for her. She watched them glow above her now. "I asked you who they were, and you told me how they died. You don't like to talk about them, then."
"When you're eight, your parents are the center of your universe. It's a shitty age to learn the universe can be turned into a donut with nothing more than a thunderstorm."
"So it was you and your brother. The vampire hunter."
"Gideon."
"He's a story for another night. But start the story for me, so I can look forward to it another time."
"How much time passes before you trust someone, my lady? Before I can sleep next to you, hold you in my arms to keep you safe as you slumber?"
His voice had the rough quality of anger, the edge of panic that overcame a strong man when he realized he was completely helpless.