"You wouldn't serve me if I wasn't like this," she said suddenly, desperately. "You wouldn't want to be with me at all."
"I don't understand, my lady." His fingers stroked her hip bone. "What do you mean?"
"If I wasn't beautiful. Desirable to men."
He shook his head against her temple. "No, my lady. That's not the reason. There are many women far more beautiful. In fact, I'd say you're plain as a fence post. I've seen women with much nicer breasts. Bigger. Long legs. Fine, firm asses that make a man wish his hands were permanently glued—"
When he reached down with his other hand to apparently take advantage of his description, she shoved him under the water, held him down. Shrieked as he grabbed her legs and hips and took her under with him. She struggled, thrashed, and he brought them both up, tossing his head to get the hair out of his eyes, laughing.
"You are impossible," she accused, even as she let him hold her about the waist as he treaded backward.
"I've heard that all my life, my lady."
"No doubt." She couldn't keep up with him. His moods were like the gentle waves of the tide on a shoreline, each cycle rinsing away what was left from the last one, leaving no remains to mar the next new moment. Why was it was so easy for him to slip beneath her defenses in ways even Thomas hadn't been able to accomplish?
"What are you doing?"
"Taking you past where you can touch, my lady. You'll have to cling to me, depend on me for your life."
"I can walk on the bottom. I can't drown," she added.
"I can pretend I'm rescuing you."
Knowing the moment to make her point had passed, she let it go. Maybe she'd gotten it across, but he was refusing to accept it. Again, that wasn't unusual for a new servant. What was unusual was her reluctance to push the issue, knowing the time factors involved.
The dinner would be the true test. With others there, it would eliminate the trap of intimacy she kept stumbling into with him and remind her of her responsibilities. Even though she suspected it would tear something vital in herself, she had to give him the scars he would need to survive the strikes inflicted upon him in her world. She had to know how tough he truly was. But for now…
"I want my manicure, Sir Vagabond."
* * *
Chapter Seventeen
He set up his tools for her in the sunroom. She called it the moon room, since she only visited it on moonlit nights like this. The glassed area gave her a view of her rose garden and the statue in the middle, a fountain with water sprites cavorting around Pan.
"Doesn't he seem a little overendowed?" Jacob glanced toward the large appendage on the bronze statue.
Lyssa bit back a smile. "Are you envious, or worried you might suffer in comparison?"
Jacob snorted. "An elephant would suffer in comparison. I suspect most women would run screaming if they saw that."
"Some women are aroused by pain." She took a seat as he gestured her to it. "Some men as well. You found pleasure in the pain I inflicted on you, that first night."
She'd taken an hour alone to re-marshal her defenses while he prepared. When she walked away tonight she intended to have the upper hand. But he'd changed into the tight hose he'd worn at the Eldar. No shirt and bare feet, recreating everything as she could wish it. He'd set up an occasional chair for her comfort across the table from the stool he'd chosen for himself. The chair did not recline as the one at the Eldar did, but would provide her a more relaxed seat while he did her nails.
He'd risen the moment she'd come into the room, underscoring the fact he was hers. Stimulating her when she did not want to be stimulated. Gods, was she a teenager again?
"With respect, I think it was your pleasure that goaded my desire, my lady."
"Silver-tongued devil," she commented coldly. "Start my nails and tell me about your first conversation with Thomas. How you convinced him to train you."
Giving her a searching look, he picked up a file, apparently realizing it was best to start with filing her nails instead of the more intimate act of massaging her hands. "That first night I saw you, I wanted to speak to you, but Thomas prevented me from that. Quite smoothly, I might add. I ended up talking to him. He told me nothing of the truth of who he was, of course, but he must have seen something… different, in how I was drawn to you. You were occupied, so we shared a bottle of wine, an evening together. At the end of it, he gave me his card, told me to call him if I ever felt a compulsion to do so. About a year ago, I found that card in my dresser behind some other things. I called. He was in Madrid, and I joined him there."
Lifting a shoulder, he moved to the next finger, filing in one direction as was proper, brushing away the dust with a thumb that caressed her knuckle. She watched his lashes fan his cheeks, thickened by the shadowing of the moon, drawing her attention to the slope of his cheekbones, the sensuality of his mouth. "Once we established trust, he started telling me about you. At a certain point, he accepted I'd be here when he couldn't any longer."
Again, his gaze rose, lingered on her face. Not for the first time, she thought he didn't look at her the way a human servant looked at his Mistress. He looked at her the way a lover would, one who knew things about her needs, her fears.
He was a human. She should tell him to lower his gaze. But would she be doing so to teach him a lesson, or because of the way that look was making her feel?
She frowned. "You had no woman?"
"Of course not, my lady. I wouldn't come to you attached."
But he'd had women before. That was obvious. She found she wasn't interested in hearing about them, however. She didn't particularly care for the fact he'd had them, no matter how skilled it made him now.
His fingers were larger than hers, deceptively stronger-looking, and she was hyperaware of every place they touched her hand, how they held it. "Do you still prefer oval tips, my lady?"
"A little sharper than that." She tilted her head, let her voice lower into a purr. "I like being able to scratch a man's back, leave scars there when I drive my fangs into his throat, when his cock spurts into my body."
She was spitefully delighted to see the flash of lust in his eyes, a flare of jealousy at the implication of other lovers. When he bent his head back over his task, she continued lashing at him, unable to stop herself. Unable to push down the desire her own words were stoking in herself. "I also like to restrain a man when I feed or take any other sort of pleasure with him. Spread his arms and legs wide, leave him no defense against me. Did Thomas tell you that amid all his many pearls of wisdom? Were you prepared for how I treated you that first night, Sir Vagabond? The way I may treat you every night if I so choose?"
"He told me some of your preferences, my lady. Is that sharp enough?"
She moved her glance down, but before she could study the shape of the nail, he lifted her hand. Gripping her wrist, he brought her fingertip to his throat, pressing down so it punctured the skin, welled blood. Keeping his gaze on hers, he lifted his chin higher.
Jacob knew when he was being taunted. Defiance wasn't the best strategy when it came to vampires, but instinct as well as a good deal of male ego drove him to stand up to her now.
Because his experience had been that vampires were very ritualized and formal in their own interactions, he'd envisioned his first days with Lady Lyssa as a transition period, like a knight swearing allegiance to a chosen lady. Awe and reverence. A certain amount of formal detachment between them, not too messily intimate or personal.
So much for that idea. His cock was going to explode if she kept masturbating it with nothing more than her sultry voice and provocative words. She'd brought him to climax less than a few hours before, in another almost equally uncomfortable situation.
A trickle of blood itched along his throat. She'd gone so still that Jacob blinked to make sure she was still real. He couldn't tell if he'd offended her or if he'd done… something different. The way those jeweled eyes centered on him now, unmoving, unblinking, made him vote for something different. He tried to ignore the sly voice that suggested his aggressive response was to ignore his reaction to her words. The way hot lust licked up his cock, tightening his balls as he imagined the picture her words painted. Accessible to her touch whenever she willed it, his legs restrained. His blood pounded hard under the touch of her fingers.
"You do get aroused by pain, Sir Vagabond." The same question was delivered as a statement, uttered in that temptress's voice. Her green eyes were like a predator's, waiting for the right answer before she moved in for the kill.
"No, my lady. Except when you're the one administering it." Tightening his hand on her wrist, he leaned in. "When Thomas flogged me, he told me to imagine it was your hand wielding the whip. Damn if I didn't get as hard as the stones beneath my bare feet, even as I felt the blood get slick under my heels. The night you put that cock ring on me, it burned like fire, but all I could think about was how wet your cunt was getting while you watched my discomfort. You could have rammed a railroad spike up my ass and if it got you off, I'd still be hard as a rock, mesmerized by your nipples stiffening, your legs spreading so you could taunt me with your soaked pussy. No other woman has ever done that to me. It's you. Whatever you choose to do to me."