Corbin inclined his head. “You are most kind.”
The other vampire snarled. “Do not be so quick to count me kind, Corbin. You may have gotten what you want but I will be looking into your affairs next. I hope you will have something suitable for me to bring back as tribute.”
“I am preparing something as we speak,” Corbin said neutrally. He turned to Celeste. “The fledgling. Where is she?”
She crossed her arms over her flat chest sulkily. For someone who was facing a trial and possibly the vampire equivalent of the death sentence, I didn’t think she looked too concerned. “Danica will show you,” she said. A vampire with a single red star tattooed under her left eye nodded at Corbin and walked down a hallway toward the back of the house.
I hurried ahead of him, trailing right behind the one-star vamp who had long black hair and a perfect figure a lot like Taylor’s. Obviously Celeste had a type and this was it. We came to a bedroom door and Corbin reached over my head to push it open.
“Carefully,” he murmured, putting a restraining hand on my shoulder to hold me back when I would have gone rushing in. “Celeste is capable of great cunning. Let the one she sent to guide us go first.”
I thought he was being a bit too cautious but I slowed down reluctantly and let Danica enter the room ahead of us. Then, when Corbin nodded, I walked in behind her, looking for Taylor.
At first, all I saw was a vast expanse of black satin. A huge four poster bed with strangely carved posts dominated the room, drawing the eye immediately, and it was spread with satin sheets. Walking closer, I saw that the carvings on the posts were some kind of never-ending orgy. But not just any orgy—a vampire orgy. The carved figures all had fangs and they were displaying amazing levels of flexibility. I hadn’t even known some of the positions shown were possible and I supposed they weren’t—for humans, anyway.
Then I heard a soft whimper from the vast bed. It was Taylor, curled up in a corner near the far right post. She had the black satin sheet pulled up to her neck and her long dark hair was hiding her face.
“Taylor, it’s all right. I’m here for you. I’m going to get you out of here and you’ll never have to come back.” I climbed up the high side of the bed onto the slick satin sheets, almost slipping in my haste to get to her. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” I crooned, gathering her into my arms.
Taylor leaned her head against my shoulder and sobbed. I held her tight, not minding that the arm she wrapped around my waist was just about squeezing the life out of me. I wondered why she wasn’t squeezing me with the other arm too but when I looked up, I saw that she couldn’t. A thick metal cuff connected her slender wrist to the ornately carved post. There was a fine wisp of smoke rising from where the metal was touching her flesh, proving it was real silver, which burns vampires on contact.
“The keys. We need the keys to these cuffs.” I turned my head to look for Corbin. He was standing at the foot of the bed, watching us with a bemused expression on his face as though he wasn’t sure what to think of what he was seeing. “The keys!” I said again, which seemed to startle him into action.
He turned to Danica. “Does your mistress have the keys to these cuffs binding the fledgling to the bed?”
“Here they are.” Roderick was suddenly there, holding out a small iron key on a wire ring. Corbin took it and strode around the bed. While he was busy unlocking Taylor’s hand, I smoothed her hair back from her face. Her cheeks were streaked with blood and it had dripped down onto her chest. Obviously she’d been crying for hours.
“Hurts,” she whispered in a soft, broken voice.
I felt my heart squeeze in my chest. “I know, hon. We’re getting you out of the cuffs right now.”
“Not just that.” She nodded her head at the black satin sheet pooled in her lap. “There too.”
“What else did he do to you?” I cast a furious glance over my shoulder at Roderick who looked back at me blandly, as though he hadn’t just been torturing my best friend.
“Hurts,” Taylor moaned again, drawing my attention back to her problem.
Carefully I lifted the sheet and saw… “Crap—is that a chastity belt?”
“A silver one,” Taylor gasped as I touched the contraption that appeared to have hinges in the crotch and locks on either side of the waist. There were multiple plumes of smoke rising from her bare pelvis, everywhere the silver was touching her.
“We need the key for this too,” I said to Corbin who was staring at the silver chastity belt with an unreadable expression on his face.
“I recommend you leave that on her.” Celeste was suddenly there again, by the side of the bed. Taylor shrank away from her mistress, her eyes wide with fright. “It’s a valuable part of my collection and I’d be sorry to lose it,” the blonde vampire continued. “But it keeps little Taylor in line beautifully. She’s been wearing it every minute she’s in the house—except when Inquisitor Roderick takes it off to fuck her, of course.”
“The key, Celeste,” Corbin grated. “This is sadistic, even for you.”
She handed over the key, which was much more elaborate than the one for the cuffs, and shrugged. “I was just having a little fun.”
“Fun?” I looked at her in disbelief. “Handing Taylor over to be raped and tortured was what you consider fun? You sick bitch!”
Celeste hissed but Corbin was suddenly between us.
“Step back, Celeste. Let my consort tend to the fledgling.” He gave me the key, which felt oddly heavy in my hand, and shook his head slightly. I wasn’t sure if he was warning me not to fight with Celeste anymore or what but I was too upset to care. With trembling fingers, I unlocked the two sides of the belt and pulled it away from my best friend’s smoking flesh. There were burns on her lily-white skin that made me think of the marks from a barbeque grill. I had to fight my gag reflex as I helped her out of it and threw the hateful thing over the side of the bed with a clatter.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she whispered, casting a fearful glance over my shoulder to where Roderick watched us expressionlessly. “It’s not safe.”
“Corbin is helping,” I told her. “He’s got my back so don’t worry about it.”
She got a worried expression on her face. “What did you have to promise him?”
“Later for that. Do you have some clothes around here?”
“By the side of the bed. He…he made me strip them off before he…” She shook her head, unable to continue.
“You don’t have to say it.” I reached for the clothes but Corbin was already handing them to me. He stood with his back to us, considerately shielding Taylor from both Celeste and Roderick while I got her dressed. Thankfully her flesh was already healing so by the time I got her into her pale pink top she was able to slide on the tan linen skirt that went with it without too much pain.
“We can really leave?” She looked at me hopefully as I finished getting her dressed.
I nodded firmly. “We really can. We’re going to get you out of here.”
I tried to help her off the bed but she nearly fell. “Sorry,” she gasped, clutching her head. “Just a little weak. Light-headed.”
“How much blood have you lost? You need to feed.” I pushed up my sleeve automatically, offering her my wrist but suddenly Corbin was gripping my arm.
“No.” His silver-blue eyes were hard, possessive. I glared right back at him.
“Let me go. There’s nothing sexual about this—Taylor is weak after what that bastard did to her. She needs blood.”
“Well, she’ll get no more of yours.” Corbin swung Taylor into his arms and carried her around the side of the bed. I followed reluctantly, glaring at his back. Possessive asshole!
I noticed that Roderick and Celeste were whispering together but I was too angry to pay much attention to the way they were staring at me. Let them look and I didn’t give a damn if Roderick had heard me call him a bastard either. In fact, I hoped he had heard me. All I needed was a tiny excuse to pull the trigger
and it would be fine with me if he gave me one.
We marched out of the house and it wasn’t until we were in Corbin’s Mercedes with Taylor safely stowed in the backseat that Corbin said anything. He drove several blocks in complete silence and then he turned to me, his eyes blazing.
“Do you have any conception of what you’ve just done?”
“What do you mean? I didn’t do anything.”
“You most certainly did. I claimed you as my consort and then you offered to feed another vampire. You made this offer right in front of me as well as the Area Inquisitor and one of my inferiors.”
“Taylor’s hurt—she needs blood.” I crossed my arms over my chest defensively. “Look, I’m sorry but I wasn’t thinking about your precious ego—I was thinking about my friend’s wellbeing.”
Corbin gripped the steering wheel and swore fluently in a language I didn’t recognize, though the gist of what he was saying was pretty clear.
Finally he took a deep breath and looked at me again. “What you have done was tantamount to offering to commit adultery in front of high-ranking witnesses. In Roderick’s mind, I now wear the cuckold’s horns.”
“The what?” I asked but Corbin only shook his head and continued.
“Roderick will draw one of two conclusions. Either he will think that I am weak and unable to control my own consort or he will deduce that I was lying and claiming you falsely as my own. Either conclusion puts us in a very, very bad situation.” His voice so quiet I could barely hear it yet so filled with menace it made me shiver.
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“You must have had at least some idea. I told you when I was healing your scars.”
“You never specifically said—”
“Silence.” Corbin held up a hand and looked away from his driving to glare at me. “We will have to find a way to rectify this situation later. In the meantime, you are not to give Taylor any more of your blood.”
“How is she supposed to heal if I don’t?” I demanded, throwing a concerned glance over my shoulder. Taylor was huddled in on herself, a small ball of misery in the back seat. “You saw what he did to her,” I said to Corbin in a softer voice. “She needs me.”
He looked at Taylor in the rearview mirror. “She needs more than you can give her right now. She will be given bagged blood when we get back to the Fang.”
“But bagged blood won’t keep her alive for long,” I protested. For some reason unless blood is fresh from the vein, it doesn’t have the nutrients and life force vamps need to keep going. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had to play pincushion slash blood bank for my best friend for so long.
Corbin frowned. “It will suffice until I can find one who owes me enough to pay the Crimson Debt and let her feed from them without the use of glamour.”
“The Crimson Debt? What’s that?”
“It is none of your concern,” he growled. “You’re lucky I’m seeing to your friend at all. I should let her starve as part of your punishment but I am not like Celeste—I find no pleasure in cruelty.”
I was about to thank him, albeit reluctantly, when what he’d said really sank in. “Wait a minute—what punishment?”
Corbin glanced at me. “The one you have incurred by being disobedient and making the Area Inquisitor suspect our duplicity.”
“You’re delusional, Corbin—you can’t punish me!”
“Watch me,” he said evenly. “We made an agreement and though I have honored my end of it, you are failing miserably so far at yours. You have actually weakened my standing with the Inquisitor. Some very serious punishment is definitely in order.”
“What are you going to do? Put me over your knee?”
I was joking but Corbin appeared to actually consider the idea. Finally he shook his head. “I fear you’re too stubborn for corporal punishment although it would be well within my rights to spank your lush bottom until you cried tears of contrition.”
I didn’t like the way this conversation was going at all. “Look, when we agreed to work together I never said anything about letting you punish me if things went wrong.”
“You didn’t have to. You agreed to act as my consort and as such you tendered me the right to do whatever I wanted with your mind or body.”
“I did not! Or if I did, I didn’t know it,” I protested. Talk about not reading the fine print! But Corbin was shaking his head.
“Ignorance of the law is not excuse for breaking it. Make no mistake about it, Addison, you will take your punishment or I am taking your friend right back to Celeste to do with as she chooses.”
“You bastard!” I wanted to hit him but I knew I wasn’t strong enough to hurt him. “I can’t believe you’d blackmail me into letting you do whatever you want.”
“Then you do not know me very well, Addison.” We were pulling into the employee parking lot around the back entrance of Under the Fang and he stopped the Mercedes and turned to face me. “From the moment I saw you, I knew I would do anything to have you and I do not care how I achieve my goal. By fair means or foul, you will be mine.”
“But…but why?” I said desperately. “Look at you, Corbin—you’re rich, you’re powerful—hell, you can give multiple orgasms with your mind. You could have any woman you wanted. Why me?”
He smiled humorlessly. “Maybe someday I will tell you. For now all you need know is that you are my ideal and I mean to have you. And tonight I am going to punish you.”
So we were back to that again. “Look, I’m not going to let you—”
He put the key back in the ignition and started the car again.
“Wait, what are you doing?” I demanded.
“Taking Taylor back to Celeste. You obviously wish to renege on our deal.”
“No, I don’t! Anyway, you’re bluffing. I saw the way you looked at Celeste—you wouldn’t take Taylor back to her after what she did.”
He raised an eyebrow at me and put the car into drive. “You think I am bluffing? Would you care to call my bluff then?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “No. Damn you.”
Corbin frowned at me again. “You know, I could chain you up and do what I wanted as Roderick did to your friend. But as I said, I dislike such practices. Will you yield to me willingly or not?”
I took a deep breath. He wasn’t giving me a choice. “Fine. I’ll, uh, yield to you. But I think after this we need to spell out the terms of this contract between us. And also, you’re an asshole.”
Corbin smiled grimly and killed the engine. “I have been called worse. Now, come—the night is not getting any younger and I want plenty of time to savor your punishment before I have to think of a way to keep us both alive.”
Chapter Six
Corbin called some of his underlings to take care of Taylor. Then he escorted me to an underground chamber beneath his office I hadn’t even known was there. But when he opened what looked like a reinforced cellar door and made an “after you” gesture, I balked at going down the long stone staircase.
“Uh-uh—don’t think so. I’m really claustrophobic.”
“The passage opens up after a few hundred feet.” He gestured again at the dark, shadowy staircase leading down. I felt my heart leap into my throat.
“No, I’m not going down there.”
I suppose he could have grabbed my arm and forced me down the steps but instead he sighed and looked me in the eyes. “Why?”
“What do you mean, ‘why?’ Why do you think? Just look at that—it’s like a set for a horror movie. The kind where you keep wanting to shout at the clueless girl not to go down in the basement but she goes anyway.”
A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I know the movies you speak of. I find them most entertaining.”
“Well, I find them frightening and I’m not about to be the stupid airhead who goes down into the dark looking for the monster.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Is that what you think of me? That I am a monster?”
<
br /> “You’re about five hundred times stronger and faster than me and you live on blood. What do you think?”
“So again, you fear my strength. You fear that I will, what—lose control and hurt you?”
“Hurt me or kill me.” I shook my head. “If you only knew the things I’ve seen. Do you know what happens when a vampire tries to have sex with a human?”
Corbin got a sober expression on his face. “Indeed, I have seen such scenes as you describe. They are not pretty.”
“Right. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t want to end up looking like a pet puppy some careless toddler ‘loved’ to death.”
“Haven’t I explained that this is not a problem with older vampires who have learned control? The secret is all in keeping the urge for sex separate from the urge for blood.”
“Oh yeah? Well then, why did Roderick ask if you could…could fuck me without breaking me?” My cheeks were hot as I spoke the words.
He sighed again. “Therein lies the caveat. Roderick, in all his centuries, has never cared enough to learn to control himself with a fragile lover.”
“And you have?”
Corbin got a distant look in his silver-blue eyes. “There was one in my past. I will not speak of her now, but yes, I cared enough for her to learn control.”
I was interested despite myself. “And what happened to her?”
He looked away. “She died anyway.” I noticed he didn’t say how she died or if he or someone else had killed her but the expression on his face was such that I didn’t dare ask.
“I’m sorry,” I said awkwardly.
Corbin shook his head. “Don’t be. It was many lifetimes ago—your ancestors had not even been born when it happened.” He seemed to shake himself, throwing off the melancholy mood that had gripped him. “So you fear to go down to my resting place with me because you think I will want to make love to you and then lose control.”
“That about sums it up, yes.”
“But I have told you before that I am not interested in an unwilling bed partner. And you are most certainly still unwilling,” he pointed out. “What if I promised that I would not try to have sex with you tonight?”
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