The Vampire Queen's Servant(34)

"Are you certain you're not using those pheromones, my lady? You're about to embarrass some of these lads in front of their dates. Get them in all sorts of trouble."

"Perhaps a little," she said, startling him. She removed the sunglasses, hooking them in her jeans pocket. When he raised his gaze, Jacob found her green eyes had the ability to mesmerize him like a snake, seducing him to self-destruction. "Perhaps I don't think you're besotted enough with me, Sir Vagabond."

Perhaps everything tonight was an act. She could be sitting deep inside the casually dressed body, behind the screen of her flirting, calculating her next test of his mettle. Or maybe she was being true.

All he could offer her was his honesty. He pressed closer. "I'm hard as a rock, my lady, and my heart is fair bursting with the heat of your smile. I'd worship every inch of you in whatever manner you wish if you'd give me the privilege." His voice lowered, and he let her hear the raw desire in his voice. "If you'd let me, I'd drag you off into a dark forest, spread you beneath me and fuck you until you screamed and raked my back with your beautiful nails. You'd have trouble walking afterwards, vampire recuperative powers or no."

On that note, he withdrew, taking the white unicorn next to her. Lyssa tipped her head back to watch the mirrors and baroque depictions of cherubs and goblins spin above as the carousel started. It gave her blood time to settle from the images his declaration evoked in her mind, far more dangerous than he could know. When she finally trusted herself to look at him, it didn't help.

From the snug pull of the denim over his crotch from the astride position, she could tell he wanted her. It made saliva gather under her tongue. She wondered what it would be like to see that powerful body synchronized with the motion of a flesh and blood horse. She suspected it was something worth seeing.

"You have a natural seat."

"Jouster, remember." He gave her a strained smile.

As she held the pommel to keep her balance, the curl of her fingers could not help but make Jacob think of her hand curled around him. It was a bitch to ride a horse with a confined erection.

"I'd like to have you show me your horsemanship sometime." She surprised him, reaching out and taking his hand, her grip sure and strong. She even smiled throughout the ride, amused but persistent as they had to let their hands slide from grip to a brush of fingertips and back to a grip again as their horses rose and fell counter to one another.

He decided it wasn't an act, simply because he didn't want it to be.

When the carousel stopped, he brought his leg back over and slid off his mount to give her a hand. Lyssa didn't need it of course, but she liked the courtesy, his hands on her waist, his eyes coursing over her breasts and throat, lingering on her face.

She was going to break her fast. She would take him to her bed tonight and feed on him. The intensity of his blue eyes, the brief tightening of his hands on her waist, told her he knew it as well. Somehow she'd resist giving him the second mark. She wanted him. He'd earned her attentions tonight, after all.

They strolled onward, not saying much now, but she allowed herself to slide her arm back around his waist as before, leaning into him as he resettled his arm over her shoulders. "The Ferris wheel, my lady?" he asked. "Or are there other things you want to see?"

"The tea shop. I want to try a couple of the new flavors I saw through the window. But… oh, look at that."

She stopped in front of the wishing pool that was the centerpiece of this leg of the mall. The fountain jetted out sprays of water in graceful arcs, splashing over the faces and bodies of a group of young women sculpted in ceramic. They held their skirts up, baring their thighs. Pushed wet hair from their faces. Some of the expressions were animated, as if they were calling out to their friends. Others were pensive, their eyes closed, heads tilted to the spray. In an act of whimsy, there was a dog, droplets of water cleverly emitting from him, enhancing the impression he was shaking the water off. The nearest sculpted woman held her hand out as if to Hock him, and she was laughing. The women's clothes clung to them without vulgar display, but it was sensuous, playful, reflecting the fantastical adult landscape the mall attempted to create. The lagoon the walled pool emulated backed up to a tall moss-covered rock. About ten feet up, water poured from an invisible source into the lagoon. A fog system at the base created misting clouds where the water dove into the main pool.

"I want to go in, Jacob." Lyssa turned to face him. "Carry me. I want to feel the waterfall on my body."

He displayed no self-consciousness, not even hesitation. Stepping over the wall into the pool, the water rising to his upper calves, he swung her up into his arms in the same movement.

Cold. She could tell the water was vibrantly cold, possibly with just a trickle of heat from the lights beneath the water's surface that spotlighted the sculptures and made the water glitter. She shivered as he moved through the sculptures, turning her as needed to keep her feet from hitting them. When she stretched out an arm to feel the water on her palm, he moved her directly under the fall as she'd requested, drenching her cotton shirt. As she clamped her hand around his neck, he spun her in a circle, knowing that was what she wanted. Her precognitive servant who didn't know he was precognitive, who hadn't even stopped to consider his answer when she'd asked what horse she wanted to ride.

Water was everywhere, a flood of sound and diamond crystal, blinding her with the pleasure of it.

It was foolish, she knew it was. But she didn't let that stop her. Trusting him to hold her, she spread out both arms, letting the magic gather and flow from her fingertips. It reached out like the water, only the marble wall couldn't contain it. It wrapped around and embraced the young people pointing and laughing at them, pressing up closer to the barrier. They were already bolstered by Jacob and Lyssa's audacity. They wanted to follow, teetering on the edge of the decision. It even reached out to older adults who had slowed to watch, who were unsure how to react. Disapprove? Or wish they had the courage to be like the younger ones?

One additional push, barely a blink of effort, and suddenly they were not alone. A cadre of teenagers splashed in, shouting, sending sheets of water at one another. Some of the boys even scooped up their girlfriends as Jacob had done to hold them in front of the small shoots of water striking the sculptures, eliciting shrieks and giggles, giving them the excuse to hold onto the girls even more tightly. Even one mother with a little girl came in. As her mother held her on her hip, the child tried to pet the dog, shielding her face with one tiny hand from the spray of droplets.

The sheer life of it washed over Lyssa. A moment like this had the nourishing strength of blood. A magic springing from the source of all magic, like life from a womb. Such a memory was strong enough to last a decade, making everything horrible seem not so terrible. Not against the power of this.

Reaching up, she stroked Jacob's hair from his forehead, enjoying the sleek copper highlights of it, the wet strands in her fingers, the strong broadness of his forehead, the slope of cheekbone to jaw. Her fingers slipped down, gripping the neckline of his shirt. A breath later, she tore it like paper, giving her fingers access to the pectoral, the nipple drawn hard and tight from the cold. As the water splashed down on them, he moved them so they were behind the curtain of the fall, a small area just big enough for the two of them standing close together, the heavy sheet of water making them disappear from view of the others, closing them into their own world. He let her go so her body slid down his, though he still held her fast about the waist with his other hand. When she dipped her head, he caught her chin.

"No pheromones. Or anything you release to make it more pleasurable."

"You're already wet, my knight. You think anyone will notice the stain of your seed?"

Color stained his cheeks, but he slid his fingers beneath the wig at the nape, into the nest of her pinned hair. "It's not that, my lady. I want you to know my responses are true ones." His eyes searched her face, his words stilling everything in her mind. The roar of the water and the wavering curtain of it behind his shoulders put them in a place in the universe where there wasn't room for anything else to intrude. "I want to feel the pain as well as the pleasure of belonging to you."

Gods, but what the man's words could do to her. She caught her hand in the tattered neck of the shirt and completely ripped the front of it, raking him with her nails as she did. In one movement she turned, slamming him up against the stone behind the fountain. She was aware of laughter and shrieking behind the wall of water, telling her that even more people had plunged into the fountain. The residual tendrils of her magic still spun her web, creating a screen of humanity, a buffer as effective as the water to keep them from discovery.

She sank her teeth into the left nipple, deep into the areola, knowing the pain there for a man was excruciating. He stiffened and arched into her, a hoarse cry coming from his lips as his hand became a hard fist in her dark locks, tearing the wig away and bringing her hair tumbling down as he held her locked to him. His other hand hooked in her back waistband, his thumb pressed against the tattoo she couldn't see but which seemed to intrigue him so much. His other fingers dug into her buttock, holding her tight against him as she suckled the hot source of his life, his heart thundering so close, separated from her by nothing but her own restraint and a fragile network of ribs.