by Opal Carew
As she slipped off the low, practical heels, he detected a delicious quiver to her. Had she gotten wet when Jacob touched her? The vision put murderous thoughts in his head. “Pull your panties down to your thighs. Don’t take them off. Then hold your skirt up at your waist.”
Her eyes widened at that. He moved to switch on the lamp, and when he turned back, she’d complied. She was wearing white lace panties. She didn’t wear anything as racy as most of the servants who came through the Council headquarters did, but he’d never demanded that of her. Truth, her naked in a lab coat was enough to make him want to fuck her senseless. He’d never demanded that of her either. Maybe that was about to change.
He came back, sat down on the bed. Taking her arm, he guided her closer to him. When it became clear he was going to spank her like a child, he saw a confused tangle in her mind. He’d wanted the panties and skirt in that position because it offered an erotic humiliation. He wanted to punish her for making him fear for her life. He required her to stay safe.
All vampires had impulse control triggers. The younger the vampire, the harder it was to rein them back. He was a young vampire, yes, but not that young. His primal side might have hold of him, but he was letting it have full rein. Especially as he inhaled Jacob’s scent again.
He pushed her down over his thighs. At five-eight, she was made up of willowy limbs, slender fingers and lovely feet with high arches and soft heels, her toenails painted a simple frost color like her fingernails.
When she floundered, unsure of how to brace herself in that position, he held her. “Be still,” he said sharply. She went still, though he heard the erratic catch of her breath. “Part your thighs and lift your ass. I expect to feel all your muscles straining to bring it up as high as you can go. You won’t lower it, no matter how much it hurts.”
“No, Master.”
Master. She called him my lord most often, but the other springing to her tongue now made triumph surge through him.
She had a pale, heart-shaped ass, one that would flush with color as easily as her cheeks did when she was flustered. He wanted to leave it red and throbbing, wanted her to ask his permission to use a pillow to sit. Would she? Or would she suffer silently? He didn’t want that. He wanted her to ask him to see to her comfort.
He’d learned to suppress such thoughts, knew they were warning signs. Yet he didn’t this time.
Instead, he brought his palm down on one firm cheek and she jumped, her hands curling around his bare calf. He liked the touch of her hands, so he didn’t tell her to let go. He could feel the strain of her stomach muscles, and he cupped her pussy between her spread legs, probing the wetness.
“Why did you come in here already aroused? Was it Jacob?”
“No, my lord.” She sounded gratifyingly shocked at the idea. “I was thinking…of when you last fed. When you had me serve you on my knees.”
Now he was surprised. He enjoyed her submission intensely, but he hadn’t thought of her fantasizing about it when she wasn’t with him. She always seemed so focused on their work. He spanked her bottom again, with more force. She made a sound of pleasure, a plea for more. He gave her more, alternating between the cheeks and then hitting at their base, increasing the sensation as they wobbled in reaction. He began to stroke her clit as he eased his fingers into her, feeling the convulsive ripple through her cunt. She was gasping, her body quivering all the more.
“You’ll serve me on your knees again when I’m done here.”
“Yes, Master. Please.”
He returned to spanking her, and the more he did it, the more he wanted to do it. Lifting her as easily as he could lift a vase, he set her down on the floor on her elbows and knees, ass still raised in the air as he commanded. If there was anything more stimulating than seeing his servant in that position, her arms trembling, thighs open enough he could see her flushed and glistening pussy, the small pucker of her anus, the red blush on her buttocks, he didn’t know what it was. He knelt, dug his fingers into her hair, disrupting the neat coil. He massaged her scalp, his thumb passing over the occipital bone and the slender bones in the back of her neck. Then he twisted his fingers in the thick, shining strands, tight enough to pull on the scalp while still holding her head to the floor. That trembling turned into spasmodic quivers. She liked the combination of a Master’s demand, the threat of pain mixed with overwhelming pleasure.
He started swatting her anew. As he started to put more force behind it, he shifted his hold to her nape, holding her in place. He knew when it started to genuinely hurt, from the choked sound of her cries, the vibrations in her mind, apprehension and desire both. She wanted him to stop but she didn’t want him to stop, needing the pain because it unlocked things buried inside herself. Hurtful things.
He paused at that. She wasn’t expecting it, such that she wasn’t able to suppress the sound in time. A sob. It was a different sound from a pleasured gasp, more like the sharp catch that came from a sudden knife thrust inside flesh.
Yes, servants cried at times. He’d seen it happen frequently at vampire dinners, a normal reaction to unlocking the pain-pleasure connection to a submissive’s emotional needs, but Debra didn’t succumb to it that often.
Her buttocks were flaming red from his punishment. When he bent to kiss one cheek, nuzzling her, her fingers curled into the rug, forehead still down. She was holding back any noise now, crying silent tears, but he felt them as if they were falling inside himself.
Gripping her shoulders, he brought her up to her heels. She ducked her head, trying to hide her face from him, but he caught her chin in a firm hold, studying the tear tracks. He’d told her she’d be sucking him off after he finished spanking her. Her eyes had lowered, were already focused there. Her breathing was still erratic from her distress, but from arousal, too. He felt her anticipation. She wanted the act fiercely, wanted to immerse herself in the physical pleasure so she wouldn’t feel so…empty.
He stared at her. She was his to do with as he desired. He had every right to disregard her emotions and, in truth, Debra had always dealt with them herself, suggesting she didn’t need him to attend to that part of her. She was his self-sufficient, practical servant. Rational.
And she was crying.
Bending, he put his arms around her. She wasn’t sure what he was about, trying to accommodate, anticipate. “Be still,” he said gruffly, and she complied, uncertain and stiff as he gathered her up and took her to the bed. He didn’t carry her often, but she was so light. More than most, he was aware of how fragile a human’s bones were, even a third mark’s—especially if it was a vampire breaking them.
That damn dream.
Laying her down, he slid into the bed with her. She was facing him, and he traced the tears on her face, her cheeks, over her lips. She looked as if she might say something, explain them away, but he shook his head, bidding her stay silent. She subsided, lashes fanning her cheeks again, a sigh lifting her shoulders. His mouth tightened. He should let it be.
Instead, he gathered her up against his chest, his thigh over hers, surrounding her. After a long, tense pause, her arms crept around his back and she let out another little sigh, going limp in his arms. Having been taken so close to subspace with that spanking, her mind was a chaotic soup, so he couldn’t make heads or tails of the tears unless he wanted to delve deeper. He wasn’t really used to doing that, so for now he stayed in this new territory, just holding her against him.
He stroked her hair, feeling the fine silk of it. Thinking of the dream, where it had been lank and dirty, he increased his grip.
“In the future,” he said, “You may accept hugs from Jacob, the occasional pat on the shoulder, but no more sitting in his lap. Or I will make sure your ass is far too sore to sit on a chair, let alone a man’s lap. Understood?”
She nodded. “Yes, Master.”
Her body twitched as if he’d injected a quick jerk of arousal through her nerves. He wanted to fuck her here and now, but something held him back.
He touched her mind tentatively, not wanting to hear another sarcastic remark, but what he did hear was enough to leave him pondering.
There is only one man I desire. Only one man I’ve ever desired like this. You.
In this position, his unsatisfied cock was against her abdomen. He could feel her concern, her sense of responsibility to tend to his needs, but as he stroked her hair, said quiet, incoherent things to her, it eased. Then she did something remarkable. She fell asleep.
Third marks had to reach an extraordinary level of stress or sleep deprivation to drop off like that. He wondered which it was. Perhaps both. Had he been pushing her too much? It frustrated him that sunlight made him too groggy to function between sunrise and dusk. Lady Lyssa called it the vampire “teenage years” because of the level of sleep vampires his age needed. Supposedly, it improved once a vampire hit his nineties, but like his impulse control, he’d hoped that part of him would mature more quickly.
Debra had taken on more and more to make up for the lost hours, keeping the projects moving forward at a brisk pace. Despite that sullen thought about him never listening to her mind, she never complained.
He thought of how it had startled her, to find he was listening. That bugged him. Thinking about a variety of things, he held her for an hour, despite the work load waiting for them. He ran his hands down her back, over the silky fabric of her shirt. He unzipped the skirt so he could slide his hand down over one bare buttock, stroke it. Her panties were still caught at her knees, and he found her sleeping in such dishabille unspeakably moving and erotic at once.
Easing her to her back, he moved the panties to her ankles. He almost removed them, but when his gaze slid up the lengths of her long, slender legs to the shadowed juncture between her thighs, barely hidden by the bunched state of the skirt, he changed his mind. He tied the panties at her ankles, holding her legs together, then slid the skirt off of her. He shed his shorts and leaned over her. Tracing the gentle swells of her breasts over the top of the shirt, he bent to lay a kiss between them. Her lashes fanned her cheeks, her pale pink lips parted, so he lifted his head to kiss them as well, tasting the soft, moist inside of her mouth with his tongue. She mumbled sleepily, her breath sweet on his face.
He had to be inside her, and he saw that desire in her mind as well, even in her somnolent haze. She loved how they lost themselves together when they were joined. That drifting thought gave him pause, but not enough to deny himself.
Shifting over her, he straddled her closed legs, then guided his cock into the narrow channel between them. He rubbed it over the petals of her sex, enjoying the pleasure of her earlier arousal coating him there. He took his time with it, at last settling down upon her, bracing his elbows on either side of her head to hold his weight, thumbs stroking her cheeks, her forehead as he pressed into her. It was an excruciatingly pleasurable position for them both, the head of his cock pushed toward the top of her channel, stroking her there in a way that would take her far longer to come, but would also make her crazy with sensation.
He knew her body so well, like no male ever had, nor ever would again. He lifted his hips to draw out slow, then pushed back in again. He stepped inside her mind, feeling her arousal grow and bring her in a pleasurable slide out of sleep, such that she was making sexy little pleas in her throat. Capturing her wrists, he stretched out her arms, holding them to the bed as he worked himself over her, his gaze delving into the depths of her brown eyes, watching her moisten her lips.
“My lord…”
“Call me the other.”
“Master.” Her gaze flared at that, because he’d never made that demand of her. She wanted to come, he knew she did, but something different came to her lips. “Please let me watch you come, Master. I love to see you come. Feel it happen inside of me.”
“You first,” he commanded quietly. “You’ll come first.”
Because he didn’t regularly attend vampire social events or avail himself of his servant as frequently in public venues, he knew there were those who thought he wasn’t as driven by his libido as a “normal” vampire, but that wasn’t the case at all. When he could focus on his servant like this, he enjoyed nothing better than tormenting her to the point she was trembling like a leaf, her every moan and sigh an entreaty for release. He held her on that cusp until she was panting, gasping, wailing. His cock had thickened inside her, and he was moving even slower, feeling how her nerve endings had caught fire, her clit swollen and needy, throbbing.
“Please.” She couldn’t go over until he changed the angle, so he kept her on the edge, mindless, begging, calling his name. Asking to do anything for him.
“Now.” He changed the thrust, and sent her catapulting. Usually she’d bite down, try not to be too loud unless he commanded otherwise, but this time he’d taken her so far on that edge she lost control and screamed out her pleasure. Desire surged in him, sending him over that same cliff, spilling his seed inside her.
The ejaculation made him feel she was even more his, like a third marking all over again. It was an emotional reaction, not a rational one. He’d learned not to give it too much credence beyond the heat of the moment, but this time as he saw her come down, the want and need in her gaze was something he couldn’t resist. He lowered himself on her, pressed his mouth to hers and held there. She made a questing noise against him, her palms sliding over his shoulders. He liked the way her fingers slid up into his hair, stroking. Her thighs quivered beneath the clamp of his own. Rising up, he got rid of the panties and then lay back down, guiding her legs up over his hips so he could slide back in to the hilt. She let out a keening cry, arching up to him.
“That’s my servant,” he murmured, kissing her jaw. He worked his way down from there, and her fingers tightened in his hair as he bit, taking a pull on that vein in her throat. He wanted her to feel the rush of lightheadedness, the reminder that her life was in his hands. Her pussy clutched him, a ripple of response, telling him the knowledge only made her want him to thrust deeper, drink harder.
I would give you anything, my lord. My life is yours.
Did she know he was in her mind? He didn’t say anything, wanting to know if she would say anything further. She didn’t, but he felt that sadness again.
Finished, he closed the bite mark before propping himself on one arm to look down at her. She gave him a smile, touched his mouth, running her thumb over the residual blood there. She usually kept her hands to herself until he commanded otherwise, and he always discouraged intimate little touches like that in the aftermath. Had he let this go too far? He was about to say something to take them off this too-intimate track, but she spoke first.
“I have the Helsinki figures processed,” she said. “Once you’re ready, my lord, we can go over them.”
“All right,” he said. “Go back to the lab. I’ll get dressed and join you there.”
He rolled off her reluctantly, watched her put her feet down on the opposite side of the bed. The curve of her back under her thin shirt was a vulnerable curve. She found her panties and skirt, slipped them back on, tucked in the shirt as well. She was talking, more information about the Helsinki data, but for once he wasn’t picking up on any of that. Just watching her body language. Stiff, unsure, the language of someone holding a great deal inside.
Picking up her shoes, she nodded. “See you shortly, then.”
“All right.” He watched her cross the room and leave him, closing the door behind her. He listened to her pad down the hallway in her bare feet, head up the stairs. There was a pause there, as if she put on the shoes, but when he put out a questing tendril in her mind, he found she’d stopped for other reasons. She had her temple against the wall halfway up the stairs, her hand gripped tight on the railing. He felt that squeezing ache inside her, then she shoved it down, continued up the steps.
They’d gone through this in the first couple years, her adapting to the necessary reality of their relationship. He knew it had been painful for her, a difficult transiti
on. So it was best to let it be, not re-open that can of worms. Human servants went through emotional ups and downs through the first fifty years or so of their service. All vampires knew this.
But in his extensive demographic data collection on servants, he’d discovered something less widely known. There was a greater mortality rate for full servants in those first fifty years than in any other time of their 300 year lifespan. Nearly forty percent of servants never made it past the half-century mark in a vampire’s service.
A little over eighteen percent were executed by their Master or Mistress. While being fully marked was a human’s choice, unfortunately the understanding of what carrying three marks meant often didn’t become clear until the deed was done. Because the vampire world operated in the shadows of the human world, and secrecy was of utmost importance, a fully marked servant couldn’t simply be released from service when they proved unsuitable. Such executions were done as humanely as possible, a cold comfort to the human, he was sure.
He’d at least come up with a way to deal with that, a mark remover combined with a mind eraser that was fairly effective. It was tremendously disorienting for the human, but the secret of vampire existence was protected, and the servant’s life could be spared. Like most of his research, that had been driven by vampire benefit. Very few vampires relished having to execute their servant. And when a servant died, that sharp truncation of connection between vampire and servant was disorienting, emotionally and physically.
For that reason, another ten percent of new servants were lost to fights, because battles between vampires often involved taking out a servant for the same reasons warriors of old would take out a cavalry horse, hoping the momentary disorientation would help them take the head of the rider.
Then there was the last twelve percent, the group of servants whose early demise was rarely discussed.