by Opal Carew
“You remember what you told me that day in the library? About the limits of the vampire-servant relationship?”
“I was just thinking about that,” she said.
He nodded, his jaw moving against her temple. Vampires had no facial hair, so it was only with other servants she experienced the rasp of beard shadow. Since Jacob shaved daily, it gave her an indication of the late afternoon hour, though she really didn’t need it. From habit as well as an internal clock all third marks seemed to have, she knew when sundown was approaching. But Brian kept a small lab in his quarters. He might not appear until he needed the instruments in the main lab, was ready to check in with her on the day’s work, or if he needed blood.
She shivered, remembering that last feeding again. Sexual attraction never diminished between vampire and servant, remaining intense and far too easy to confuse with emotions. She knew all the rational, chemical reasons for that. She should be able to manage it.
“You told me the first time you assumed your relationship with Brian was more than it could be for vampire and servant, the bastard took a female vampire in front of you.”
“Jacob.” Her cheeks colored. Even after all this time, it was a painful memory. When he was done, Brian had fed his cock into her mouth, still smelling of the other woman’s cunt, and then he’d fucked Debra as well.
Yet long before that had happened, when she only had the first of the three marks necessary to become a vampire’s full servant, Brian had grilled her with brutal thoroughness, made sure she understood exactly what the relationship between vampire and servant was like. She’d told him she understood. When her Master was 100% focused, nothing got past him. If she’d had an ounce of uncertainty, Brian would have let her go.
Then, two years into their relationship, she’d proven she hadn’t learned the lesson well enough, and he’d reinforced it with that painful lesson. Though it had hurt like hell, she’d analyzed it, understood the message, and they’d moved on.
Even so, her body had stiffened. Jacob fished Emilie out of his hair and dumped her gently back on the counter. Then he moved to his stool and lowered Debra back into her chair to give her space, but he put his hand over hers, tangling fingers, his thumb moving over the top of her hand in an idle stroke.
“He needed to be horsewhipped for doing that. But the Lord Brian I’ve come to know these past few years isn’t cruel without purpose, is he?” When she shook her head, he leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Around that same time period, several servants were put to death in front of their vampires when it was ruled their Masters or Mistresses had become too attached to them. Brian’s very good at detachment when he feels it’s essential. It makes him capable of acts the rest of us might be too emotionally soft to pull off.”
“He’s a good man.” On a normal day, she meant it. But her thought process today made her sound too wooden. Why couldn’t facts affect her heart more than feelings?
“Yes, he is.” Jacob studied her. “You’ve got a lot of his qualities, Debra. Sometimes I think your heart has to overflow before you’ll let it have its say. Experiencing something like that—no matter his reasons for doing it—any woman would be afraid to let herself go back down that road again. However, Brian himself came to the conclusion, with your help, that a vampire-servant relationship can be more. Perhaps should be more.”
No. Even as she rejected it, her kneejerk reaction told her how right Jacob was. Her heart clamped shut at the mere idea. It was bad enough to have it lurking around in her own mind, but to hear it voiced gave it even more strength, made it more dangerously irresistible.
“I’m just feeling vulnerable right now. There’s nothing wrong with me and Brian. It’s something else. My grandfather isn’t well. He’s…dying.” She laid her palm on the desk, traced one of the burned sets of letters. The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. – Galileo
Her grandfather had such a quirky, wonderful sense of humor. She took a breath. “My mother still emails me. I need to bring an end to that. I mean, we’re going to outlive all of our family, aren’t we? Except perhaps you and Gideon.”
“As infuriating as Gideon is, that’s not a foregone conclusion,” Jacob said dryly. “Anwyn may put a railroad spike over his heart and let Daegan stomp it through his chest.”
A reminder that metal through the heart took a servant’s life. She wondered if that hurt less than heartache, but then forced the thought away, summoning a strained smile at Jacob’s humor.
He touched her hand again. “I’m so sorry about your grandfather.”
“He encouraged my love of science, helped me…be who I am.”
She didn’t like to cry. She’d cried the night Brian had taken the woman in front of her, but she’d done it later, alone. That night she’d been grateful for how little he visited her mind outside of work. Knowing he could hear her distress and yet hadn’t come to her would have made it all even more horrible.
It hadn’t really mattered, had it? No matter the tears or pain, at that point her binding to Brian was far more profound than even the marking. The human world wouldn’t understand that. They'd compare her to a battered spouse, deluding herself into thinking she’d asked for the punishment. Only it had been a lesson, not a punishment, and she was part of the vampire world. As Jacob had pointed out, every servant was all too aware of why the boundaries existed.
She’d made her choice, damn it. She ignored the vicious inner voice that wanted to know where the call of destiny ended and the embrace of self-destruction began. Instead, she returned to the subject of her dying family member, safer ground. “I’m still close enough to the age when I became a servant I could go visit Grandfather, but you know the rules. We’re supposed to wean ourselves off family relationships in whatever way we have to do it.”
“But you haven’t completely severed ties. You could still go see him.”
She shook her head. “They’re in Tennessee. Brian has no time in his schedule for that and he can’t spare me. We’re at a critical juncture on several projects.”
Jacob’s lips thinned as if he’d say something more, but she turned away. “Speaking of which, I better get back to this. He’ll be up soon and this report needs to be ready for him.”
A lie, because she was done with it. But she couldn’t pursue this conversation further. She waited, tense, until Jacob stood, kissed the top of her head. “Okay, geek. You know where I am if you need anything.”
“Thanks for the cookies.”
“Better eat them before those rodents attack,” he said as he headed for the door. “They’ll be bouncing off the walls on a sugar high.”
The three mice were sitting on top of the fragrant container Jacob had brought, and Emilie was already investigating the cracked lid. She slid the mice off into their cage and closed the door. “It’s time for me to do some serious work,” she told them. “Go play in your maze.”
Three clear, colorful tubes ran out of the cage, up along the wall and across the ceiling of the lab, coming back together to one cylinder to pass through the wall to more mazes and compartments in other rooms of the research wing. She’d bought a few pieces initially to build an arch over the cage, give them a more expansive habitat, but then John, the grandson of Lyssa’s majordomo, Elijah Ingram, had gotten involved. As Debra had noted, if John was involved, Lyssa’s son Kane was sure to be helping as well. The boys were near constant companions during weekend nights and John’s pre-bedtime hours on the weekdays, since he still attended school in town.
With a mind like a young civil engineer, John had designed the whole set up and he and Kane implemented it together, John showing the very young vampire how to help with assembly. Though Lyssa and Jacob didn’t overly indulge their son, money wasn’t a limitation when the project was deemed educational. Since Kane was old enough to start figuring out how things fit together, Jacob had ordered the man
y pieces needed. Debra had been delighted to see her three pets getting such freedom. On top of that, the boys took care of the mice when she traveled. John even handled the laborious process of cleaning out the tube sections when needed.
Just one example of the many lovely, remarkable things in her life. Her focus needed to be on that. Her Master was a good man, and time had made him kinder toward her. Plus, no matter what else he wasn’t, in those intense sessions during feeding or lovemaking, he was everything she could want in a Master.
Service to one’s vampire was what drove a servant. Though she might not feel it now, time would help her accept that, find complete fulfillment. She had the average servant’s three hundred year lifespan to figure it out. It should have been a comforting thought. Unfortunately, it increased the heavy weight over her heart, so she chose the only immediate solution for it.
She got back to work.
Chapter Two
Debra, stripped naked, cowered in the shadows. She was far too pale, because they’d fed on her too long. A shadow loomed over her, a ham-sized fist wrapping in her blond hair, the usually clean and shining strands lank and oily. She was food. Nothing more, nothing less.
When she was jerked to her feet, she fought despite her weakness, because she would. Most only saw a shy, socially awkward woman with a near constant frown of concentration on her face because of the rapid-fire workings of her brain, but Brian knew her courage never faltered.
He lunged forward, but he wasn’t close enough. In that cloudy shift that happened during dreams, he knew he wasn’t even in the room. He was watching events unfold as if he was inside her mind but in a remote location. She was suffering all this alone. Yet he could feel her clinging to his name in her mind. She was drawing strength from her connection to him, even though he couldn’t reach out to her. The loss of that connection was like death itself.
The massive vampire sank his fangs into her throat, over her windpipe, strangling her as he took the blood. He wanted to drink her dry then kill her, because he was done with her, in the mood for a new taste. He picked up a scalpel, intending to carve her heart out of her chest and dine on it, the blood alone not enough. He had to consume all of her.
No.
Brian jacked up in his bed, sheets fisted in his hands. He had a snarl on his lips, his fangs fully unsheathed. Yet he confronted a dark room where there was nothing but himself and the echo of his fury.
Damn it. Ever since the night Debra had left the facility to help Gideon and Anwyn recover Daegan Rei from rogue vampires, he’d been plagued by these dreams. Because he’d tended the handful of traumatized human women who’d been kept in cells for months by those rogues, he couldn’t forget their sallow faces, hopeless eyes and trembling fear. Debra hadn’t been one of them, but irrationally, he kept imposing her face on theirs in his dreams.
As yet more evidence of his illogical state, he kept having to resist the temptation to order Debra to stay with him during his sleeping hours, so she’d be close enough for him to protect. Even though he was least capable of protecting her when stuck in his daylight coma. She’d be far more likely to sacrifice herself for him in such a vulnerable state.
He was behaving like an idiot.
If he told her to stay with him during daylight hours, and if she wasn’t so respectful, she’d tell him he’d lost his mind. She was as much of a workaholic as he was, and such an indulgence would cut into the time they needed to manage their ongoing projects. The workload had blossomed, so demanding she was handling half the projects herself. He checked her notes and received a daily status update, but that was to satisfy his curiosity and enjoy what strides she’d made or brainstorm about new directions, not to check her work. Though she was several decades behind him in study, she was every bit as capable a scientist as himself.
But she was his.
The feeling that thought brought had no rational basis either, but ever since that harrowing night, such primitive feelings had been surfacing more and more. Along with those dreams. It irritated him. He had no time for such things, and neither did she. Science was their focus.
Not right now, though. Dominance, sexual and otherwise, was a part of vampire nature that couldn’t be denied. Discovering the depth of her submissive nature when they’d met had therefore been a pleasure, but lately he found himself fighting a growing desire to explore it even deeper, underscore it further than he’d allowed himself since the earliest days of their relationship.
It was dangerous, a desire so strong it was an obvious craving, one he had in full color right now, much like his way-too-vivid dream. He tried to push it away, tamp it down as he usually did, knowing such urges were unwise. But that animalistic side snarled at the cool rational one, sending it cowering like the Debra in his dream. And seeing that image again decided him.
Reaching out to her in his mind, he found her at her desk in the lab, a corner office she’d created to stay accessible to the staff and run tests while handling the endless emails and data review.
Debra, come to my room. Right now.
Yes, my lord. On my way.
Her mellifluous voice was a mix of everything she was. The honed syllables emphasized her intelligence, the accurate information she provided never vague or exaggerated. The breathless quality suggested experiences that would take her breath away. And then there was that tagged purr, hinting at the sensuality that he could transform to pleading desire, a treasure that put gold to shame. He thought of the moistness of her lips, the honey between her thighs, the rapid pulse in her throat, her body arching up to him. And that helpless, wide-eyed sweet disbelief she experienced, every time she surrendered to him with such need and passion.
Usually when he summoned her, he’d pull out of her mind after she responded, turn to whatever task was waiting in his private lab. He might surface a half hour later to find her sitting in a chair in his chambers, pursuing her own work until he was ready to address her. The perfect servant. He didn’t do that this time, waiting impatiently, sitting on the edge of the bed, every muscle tense.
When she slipped into the room, he saw she was dressed for work as usual. Being located at the Council headquarters, she was conscious of the potential for frequent interface with higher-ranking vampires, as well as the image she needed to present to the staff. Her tailored fawn-colored skirt stopped just above the knee, and the silk shot knit shirt with a wide scoop neck bared her collar bones. Neat and clean, the outfit unwittingly complimented all her curves, her delicate neck and fine facial features.
Most servants also dressed with their vampire’s blood needs in mind. Seeing the scoop collar, the vulnerability of her slim throat, her blond-brown hair pinned up on her head, made his fangs want to extend again.
They could both see in the dark, though his night vision was sharper. He saw her surprise that he hadn’t turned on a lamp, wasn’t already at work. But she moved toward him. “My lord? What do you need?”
As she drew closer, he inhaled her scent. He detected her mice, sunflower seeds, cookies and pencil lead. She often liked to figure organically, despite her tablet being her constant companion. She set it aside as she approached him.
That was when he detected another odor clinging to her, one that provoked an unexpected reaction he didn’t resist. Catching her wrist, he had her down on her back on the bed in a blink. He drove the breath out of her as he put himself on top of her, and not just because of his solid weight. He was wearing nothing but brief shorts and an aching hard-on that insinuated itself through the thin fabric of her skirt. His gaze latched on the swell of her breasts, accentuated by her arched position and the scooped collar.
“Why was Jacob this close to you?”
Her pulse jumped in her throat, trepidation mixed with arousal. It was the type of reaction one saw in a submissive who craved a Master’s touch…his discipline. He didn’t offer that very often to Debra. Feeling her mind swirling between anxiety and arousal at his harsh demand, he wondered why he didn’t indulge that
pleasure more often. Their permutations of Dominance and submission usually focused on her compliance to his sexual desires. Not his desire to test the limits of her submission in more creative ways. Ways that were goading his bloodlust now.
“Answer me.”
“I…he comes to the lab daily. He’s my friend. He hugged me.” Her cheeks colored as he continued to glower at her. “Servants…are very affectionate, my lord. You know this.”
“Don’t tell me what I know and don’t know. He did more than hug you.”
“He kissed the top of my head. Sat me…I sat on his lap. Just affection, my lord.” Her gaze darkened. “I am yours and he belongs fully to Lady Lyssa. It’s simply how servants can be.”
Which you would know if you took the time to look into my mind more often.
He didn’t usually, not outside of the work they did in the lab, but he did at that key moment. When he growled, she started as if he’d goaded her with a cattle prod.
“I apologize, my lord,” she said, though the set of her chin made him wonder if she was truly sorry. He’d find out. “I wasn’t trying to be impertinent.”
“Yet you still managed it brilliantly.”
Color stained her cheeks, but she said nothing further. She was obviously uncertain of this mood, but what filled his mind was she’d had that same set to her chin when she fought the enemy in his dreams. He’d let her leave that night, let her go near danger without him. Yes, he’d been needed at the Berlin castle for vital reasons related to that rescue attempt, but that wasn’t the point.
He rose, bidding her with a short movement of his hand to stay in her sprawled position, legs open as much as the skirt allowed. As he studied her, her eyes lowered. But he saw how she took advantage of the demure act. Her attention lingered on his shoulders and chest, the track of his abdomen, leaving a trail of heat on his skin. Then she focused on his testicles and cock, forming a very noticeable mound under the cloth. Her aroused scent increased like that of a crushed gardenia, making him rein back a multitude of savage desires. “Stand up and take off your shoes.”