“Tulip, something truly must be wrong if you won’t eat a sundae,” Rayner said.
I sniffed it.
Jie was staring. “She’s never had it before.”
“Are you—what is it, now—intolerant something?” Thom asked.
“Lactose intolerant?” Silvus snorted. “She looks like she could be a sweet Scottish or Irish milkmaid with that lovely red hair. I refuse to acknowledge the idea that she could be ‘lactose intolerant’.”
Oh…wow.
I smiled. I couldn’t help but smile. I didn’t expect the sweet, light flavor to be so delicious, or the rich streak of warmth that came from the fudge.
“There it is,” Rayner said. “It might be cheating, but I can always win your little heart with sugar.”
“You haven’t won anything,” I said.
“Maybe not yet,” he said, without even a sliver of doubt in his cocky smile.
Ethereals help me. I had to spend my life with these men just to have a chance at rescuing my family.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Alissa
“Time for bed, dearest.”
That voice.
Silvus’ voice was a low whisper, and on the surface, it seemed gentle, but now I understood that he was no more gentle than the others. I had caught too many hints of his own hunger and now I realized that because he was the only warlock in the group, he didn’t need to assert himself over Rayner to be the greatest source of power in the clan.
Now I would be alone with him. All night.
It was made clear that Rayner would be the man to claim my virginity, so I knew Silvus would not do…that. I wasn’t entirely sure what ‘that’ even was.
I was filled with dread as I followed him up the stairs to one of the four bedrooms. They were all so close. They would all hear me if I screamed or cried or had a nightmare. But for now, the other three remained downstairs. I could hear them speaking in familiar tones, even chuckling occasionally, the way my mom and dad would speak to each other now and then after I went to bed. It was not much comfort now. I would not be tucked in to my little room with the flower wallpaper and a homemade quilt, left to sleep with nothing but a rag doll for company.
I would be sleeping beside…Silvus.
He opened the door of the room and nodded for me to go ahead. The room was much larger than the bedrooms in our house, with space for a bed and dresser but also for two chairs and a rug in front of a fireplace, befitting the stately Victorian mansion.
“I’ll start a fire,” he said. “It’s a little chilly tonight.”
I sat down in one of the chairs, although I was moving very slowly. I kept waiting for him to give an order. I was used to rules and lots of them. I noticed a plain linen nightdress on the bed, and I kept expecting him to tell me to put it on.
“Not yet,” he said, with a small but wicked smile as his eyes followed mine. “First, let’s make sure you are quite comfortable.”
It gave me a little shiver of wonder to watch him build the fire and know that he had been born into a world where the hearth was the only source of heat. He clearly was more comfortable in this world, where nothing modern intruded on the scene. His bedroom had one lamp, but he left it off. The desk had a candle dripping with wax and a typewriter. The furnishings were extremely simple, all wooden furniture, masculine but in a refined British way.
I didn’t pay that much attention to the room anyway.
Once he had the fire going, he started to unbutton the vest of his three-piece suit, and then his shirt. His jacket had already been left behind downstairs.
It was very hard not to look at him.
Oh, gods, I tried.
I didn’t want to feel anything for a wicked man. I had to stay strong. Maybe I would still get to go to Etherium when I died if I never let myself feel attraction or love for any of them. I just had to wait for the world to end. Maybe I would still die but at least I wouldn’t die a sinner.
Silvus dropped his shirt on the empty chair beside mine. He faced the fire, and his shoulders and back faced me. My eyes flicked up, taking in the sight of his skin lit golden by flame. I was right. He was more muscular than I expected. He seemed like a scholarly type, as warlocks usually were. Men from the 1600s could not be too soft, I supposed. Even a warlock would probably walk miles a day, forage for his own herbs, haul wood for fires, lift heavy kettles and jugs, and other things I probably couldn’t even think of.
Father Joshua’s lanky, pale body had repulsed me.
I felt an inner horror that the beautiful strength of Silvus’ broad shoulders and the way his back tapered to a slim waist, with magnificent posture in the perfect hollow of his spine, was having a very opposite effect. He held his hands to the fire and warmed them, and then he turned to me, and cupped my face in his hands. I was still looking up at him. Unable to pull away.
Caught in his hands. I forced my eyes shut. I didn’t dare meet his eyes or risk getting caught up in looking at the front of him. Fronts were more wicked than backs…weren’t they?
“Open your eyes, dearest. You have the most beautiful eyes. You always do.”
“I am not supposed to look at men.”
“You want to look. Don’t make me compel you to do something you are already compelled to do…”
“Compel me?” I looked up, overwhelmed by the intimacy of meeting eyes. I was sure I would never get used to it. “So that’s how you force me to mate with you.”
“No, pet, I swear to you this. We would never compel you. And certainly not to mate. Truthfully…you have never needed much convincing. How much will you test us this time? I ache to think of it. At least let me look at you.” He crouched so we were now on the same level. He studied my face like it was the most stunning painting in an art gallery. I kept trying to shy back and he would brush his fingers along my cheek or chin and gently force me back to face him.
“Rayner hasn’t kissed you yet,” he said.
“No!”
“You look like you wouldn’t mind if I kissed you now.”
“Well, I would!”
“You are as contrary as Bertie. It’s more fun this way. It is so satisfying when I finally have you.” He wet his lips, just a little, and stood. “Take off your day clothes.”
“Can I…please…have privacy?”
“I am not that patient. Or that nice,” he said briskly. “You will be very modest for bed. Don’t worry. I won’t touch you.”
We would share a bed, too.
“Do vampires sleep?” I asked, hoping that maybe he didn’t even use the bed.
“We all must dream,” he said.
I was starting to struggle to breathe as I made myself pull off the sweater. I could see Silvus’ front now. His hair, almost brushing his collarbone. His small, hard nipples. Human men might walk around without shirts, but not in the Order. Male nipples seemed more naughty to me than female ones, somehow. They had no purpose except to draw my eyes to the muscle beneath. His navel. And the v-shape that pointed down to…that horrid male appendage like Father Joshua had.
My body reacted so differently to the vampires. Once again, I felt an almost embarrassing burst of wet heat hit my panties. No matter how much I tried to think about how terrible they were, and how repulsive men could be, it kept happening. My heart beat faster, my skin warmed, and the folds between my legs felt swollen.
Silvus smiled in triumph and I whimpered in complete terror because I knew he could smell it.
“Come now,” he said. “Hasn’t it occurred to you yet that you are attracted to us because you are home?”
“This isn’t my home! My home is—“
“Your words are meaningless. Your soul knows your home. It’s with us. Anywhere in the world your soul roams, when you come back to us, you find the deepest peace. You know we won’t hurt you, dearest. Well, not in any way you haven’t asked for. You know what is to come, oh yes…”
He took my hand and tugged me to my feet, and slipped a hand around my waist,
holding me steady while he lifted the edge of my t-shirt.
“This feels right, doesn’t it?” he whispered. “Because you know I am not thinking of you like some prize, some girl I want to control while she weeps. I, too, am home. I have touched you countless times. I have done all of this before. I am hungry, but I am not titillated…I am relieved. I just want to look upon the woman I adore, after a century apart.”
He stripped the thin fabric off me and slid the back of his hands down my shoulders.
I should have fought him off. Or prayed. I should have done something.
Instead, I couldn’t deny the feeling that came over me. Frightened, but not in a way I had ever been frightened before. I seemed unable to move as my body tingled and…resonated. His gaze and touch were sneaking into the core of me and making me feel things I never knew I could feel. I didn’t know what they meant. I refused to consider that I wanted this.
He unclasped my bra, and still I felt paralyzed as he pushed the straps off my shoulders and revealed my breasts to his eyes. No man had seen me naked, not Father Joshua or Rayner…
Silvus’ hands now moved where I knew they would go. I made a little whimper, trying to summon some resistance, as he brushed his hands over my breasts and grazed the nipples with his thumbs. I twitched, clenching my thighs, as I felt another flood of wetness between my legs.
He lowered his hands to take my wrists, and lowered his face to my cheek, brushing a kiss there. Then, one on my lips, as he unfastened the button of my jeans.
There was a restraint to these gestures that made me feel strangely safe. He’s forcing himself on me, this monster, I thought, but another part of me knew that if I had pushed him away and told him not to touch me, he would have stopped.
At least, for tonight.
I wondered how much of this was negotiable.
I wondered why I couldn’t seem to fight. I’m just scared…and tired…
The tiniest moan escaped me as he slipped a hand down my underwear and stroked me right where the fire inside me burned, setting off fireworks of sensation.
Demons will lead you down a dark path. I could hear the words of countless sermons sear through my brain. Incubi and vampires have the power to possess you with the ecstasy of selfish gratification, a drug-like high from which you shall never escape. It will break you down, destroy the light of your sacred and pure being, and leave you a shell.
It was just as the sermons said. I found myself wanting…more.
I was so weak. Succumbing to him so readily…
“Your soul is with me,” Silvus said. “So close to the surface I can smell her. Oh, my Meg…”
He said that like it poured out of him and it felt more intimate than ‘pet’ or ‘dearest’. I felt the tiniest tension from him, a step back, like he didn’t mean to call me by this other name. Marguerite? She must have been his Meg…
He smiled. “I always enjoy these first days. You always seem to prefer me to Rayner in the beginning.” He drew his hand out of my jeans and licked the two fingers that had stroked me. I smelled the heady scent of my own sex.
“You are a little less…rough,” I admitted.
“But,” he said, “I won’t touch you yet. I respect him as my sire. And you will burn for him someday, even more than you burn for me, when you begin to feel the same anger he feels. You will come to hate the cruel fate that tears you apart, again and again. You will understand the feeling of desperation that claws at him as you realize how short life is. As a warlock, I can make some peace with the cycle of life and death. I must. Magic is quite difficult when you fight the laws of nature.”
“I’m a witch too,” I said. “I don’t want to feel…desperation.”
“Ah. Yes. Maybe things will be different for you this time. You may put on your nightgown, pet.”
I was left feeling cold and empty, my skin crawling with some unfamiliar need. I didn’t know what it was I needed.
Well, I wasn’t entirely unaware.
I just refused to believe I needed…Silvus.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Thom
I cracked open the yellowed pages of the first photo album.
There he was. My boy, preserved in sepia on the small, stiff carte de viste. Our first photo of him, taken in the Dakotas before we settled down. He was twenty-three years old, looking fiercely proud and defiant, a part of him still fighting like hell against the way he would change. To Rayner and Silvus, he was their thrall, their pet, their dearest.
I was only five years older than Bertie. We were similar, in a lot of ways. Independently minded, a little lonerish, lovers of the untamed west who secretly wished we’d been born into some native tribe untouched by the white man. We just wanted to ride free out there.
Of course, home and hearth has a way of catching up to a man, wrapping arms around you, dragging you down for better or worse. You won’t leave, even if you wanted to. Ain’t no substitute for the bonds of love and fellowship.
I had memories passed down to me from Rayner when he turned me, but memories that ain’t your own seem about as real as dreams or a thing you’ve seen in the movies. Sometimes they cross your mind, but they don’t have much substance.
Bertie was my Lisbeth. My companion, peer—and all right, my plaything now and then.
I had a few photographs of that nature too, but I kept them in an envelope in a safe back in San Francisco.
I was the only one who’d never known him as anything else.
“There isn’t a single thing about the Order on the internet,” Jie said, staring at the screen.
“You sure you know how to look?”
“I know how to use the internet. It isn’t that hard,” Jie said, a little stubbornly.
“Yeah, right. You know twice as much as the rest of us put together and it still ain’t nothing. The internet never tells you anything worth knowing.”
“That is a complete lie,” Jie said. “The rest of you could really stand to try instead of leaving everything to me. I had to figure it out just like anyone. You’re younger than I am! You used a telegraph or something when you were still a human, right?”
“I’m just a country boy,” I said. “Just leave it alone. It makes you crosser than a rabid dog whenever you use them things. Look at this. Remember that?”
“Was that us at the Panama-Pacific Exposition?”
“Yep.”
“Bertie was getting old there. I don’t like thinking about it,” Jie said. “Time goes too fucking fast.” But he looked over my shoulder as I browsed the album.
“Hell, he was still handsome,” I said. “Just that people thought we were his sons. Never got used to that. Boy, I was ready to punch out everybody who ever said that.”
“Yes, and that I was your servant,” Jie said dryly.
“I remember that. Gave you an excuse to drink some fresh blood, didn’t it?”
“The blood of a bigot is surprisingly sweet,” Jie said. “Those were sure the good old days, when people could ‘disappear’ and no one gave a damn.” He sat down on the bed next to me and drew out the locket he wore around his neck, with one of the two photos ever taken of Li Mei. My clan had her photographed twice, once in English dress for Rayner and Silvus, once in Chinese clothing for Jie. The picture was taken the same year she died. She was thirty, still as pretty as a slender spring bud as far as the picture could tell, but that was tuberculosis for you, sort of a “heroin chic” for the Victorian era. Li Mei looked as small and fragile as Bertie looked tanned and healthy.
I got to the last photo of Bertie and I felt a vice clamp around my heart.
Shit, I guess Rayner and Silvus had been through this a number of times, but I didn’t expect to feel this way when we found her.
“Hey, Thom.” Jie looked at me in that way he had, where I suddenly remembered he was a lot older than me.
I shook my head. “I reckon a part of me expected to see him again, even if my mind knew better.”
Jie nodded. “I
remember feeling that same thing. Exactly. These two couldn’t have been more different on the surface, either. I guess you don’t remember that I was upset. That’s good. I was trying to hide it. But for the first few weeks, I was actually angry at Bertie because he wasn’t her. I wanted her back and I tricked myself into thinking you can come back from the dead. She’s the same, but she’s different. You don’t get them back when they’re gone.”
“I know.” Almost one hundred and fifty years on and I could still remember the defiant, boyish grin, the thick brown hair without a single strand of gray. I could remember the first time I tied him to a chair while he tried to fight me, like wrestling a pig, and then I sucked his cock and the fight went out of him. I used to love breaking horses more than anything. I’d had a lot of practice. “Bertie was sure the best steed I ever rode,” I said with a laugh.
Jie chuckled too. “It was one of the happiest times we’d ever had, and you know Rayner and Silvus would agree with that. Much better than the time with my Plum. Rayner was always tense and angry because London would never be her home. But she was mine like Bertie was yours and Marguerite was Silvus’. Alissa would have belonged to Montague, hm?”
Rayner had recently turned another young warlock to add another member to our clan. He had hoped a young man who understood computers and phones nowadays could find her when we failed. But Montague went his own way. He fell in love with a different girl. So it was just the four of us, as it had been since I came along in 1870.
“Well, I’m glad of that,” I said. “Four’s enough to be sharing a thrall. So Alissa will be all of ours. And don’t get me wrong—she’s as pretty as anything I’ve ever seen. When it’s our turn, we’ll really show her something.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jie agreed. “Don’t worry, Thom. You’ll never forget Bertie, and you wouldn’t want to. But Alissa is going to be quite an exquisite treat.”
“We might be waiting a while. Rayner needs to lay down the law.”
Take Me Slowly (Forever in Their Thrall Book 1) Page 16