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.