by Opal Carew
When awake, his intellect gave his mouth and brow creases that emphasized his intimidating intellect and emotional maturity. But asleep, those lines smoothed. He would always look like a young thirty-something, as most born vampires did once they passed that age, but he had fine features. Pretty, some would say, especially combined with his sandy-colored hair and punch-right-to-a-woman’s-heart hazel eyes. She thought of the times she’d seen them rest on her with total absorption. It happened during sex, sometimes during feeding, or when their minds did that tangled DNA thing, coming to the same conclusion as if they were one soul. She cherished each of those moments, even though they were as addictive as a drug, leaving her wanting more.
When she had time, she collected data on other pending projects. One of those was servant suicide data. While she was smart enough to know not to dwell on that subject when her mood was already low, she couldn’t help but think of a journal entry one servant had left. When his Mistress had given Debra the stack of diaries, Debra had asked her if she’d read them. The woman had looked at her as if she’d accused her of reading children’s books for leisure, and shook her head. But Debra noticed her hand lingered on the top journal as if the vampire could still feel his life force there, and maybe she could.
I know what they say the relationship is supposed to be, but if that’s the case, why does it feel this way? When I first felt my Mistress’s touch upon my soul, I thought I’d never know what it was to be lonely again. Now I realize that to be given that feeling and then have it taken away, nothing more than a temporary feeling from their side of things, is far, far worse. You never get over having that and then not having it again. It leaves you feeling terminally lonely.
She trailed her fingers down the valley of Brian’s spine, to his lower back, the upper rise of his buttock. He was sleeping on his stomach, arms wrapped around the pillow. It made her reach for the curve of his biceps with the other hand, following that impressive rise. She was a woman who was attracted to a man’s mind first, not his body, but her Master had quite a body.
With a smile, she admitted he was probably right about what kind of body he’d have as a mortal, if he wasn’t as physically active as he was now. He had the eating habits of a teenager, a considerable sweet tooth and a craving for junk food. Though she’d seen him sit down to samplings of gourmet fare prepared by incredible chefs, typically he picked politely at such offerings. One night after such a dinner she’d come back to the lab to find him with a snack bag of Cheetos. He was savoring the two or three his vampire digestive track could absorb, and then he offered the rest to Maggie, one of Lyssa’s Irish wolfhounds. The elderly dog didn’t run with the pack so much anymore, instead reaping the benefits of tagging after a vampire carrying around too much food.
He’d even dropped one of the Cheetos into the top of her mice’s cage, to her amusement. He had opposed her having the mice, but hadn’t forbidden them as long as they didn’t cause hygiene issues in the research areas. Since then, she thought he’d actually gotten fond of them. One day she’d seen him looking up. He’d discovered them assembled just over his head, watching what he was doing as seriously as interns. He’d smiled, reached up with a pointer to tap the plastic tube, then went back to what he was doing.
She curved her fingers over his shoulder, slid over the biceps again. Where his other hand was wrapped around the pillow, she outlined his fingers, then rested the tops of hers on his. He kept his nails short and impeccably clean.
Curling her hand into a loose ball, she ran her knuckles down his side, over his rib cage, the layers of firm flesh. He was beautiful, and it made her heart hurt to look at him. She was so tired.
I love you, Master. I’m sorry. This would be so much easier if I didn’t feel that way, if I could figure out how to love you without wanting…more. If I could figure out the chemical composition of want and desire and remove it, I would. I just don’t know if I can do this for three hundred years. I always thought I could be a selfless, unconditional love kind of person, but I’m falling short in that area.
With a sigh, she curled up next to him, pillowing her cheek in the small of his back, her head cradled in that dip between chest and backside. She furrowed her hand up between the pillow and the clasp he had on it. When he instinctively changed his grip to her hand, she closed her eyes. Sweet heaven. Just to lie here and hear his heartbeat, feel his heat against her, hold his hand and imagine he was consciously holding it back.
She wished she’d never wake. That she could fall asleep like this, and let it be the last feeling she carried with her into eternity.
As she drifted off, her breathing evening out, Brian slid his hand more securely around hers, held on. You don’t go to eternity without me, Debra. But she was already gone, and he couldn’t hold out another second. It had taken all the energy he had to be still under her touch, listen to the poignant meandering of her mind.
He followed her into sleep.
And came out of it with a sharp jerk and snarl. Thrashing, he flung himself out of bed, and only vampire reflexes landed him on his feet.
“My lord. Brian.”
He shook off the haze of sleep and nightmare, spinning on the ball of his foot to see her sitting up in the center of the bed, her hair disheveled, eyes wide in her elfin face. She had such fragile features. Another thing that made people underestimate her strength. He saw she looked better rested, and a glance at the clock said it was a couple hours past sundown. They’d both overslept.
“The Council update.” She realized it at exactly the same time he thought it in his mind, and she was out of the bed in a flash. She’d folded her short lab coat over the chair by the neat pile of her clothes and grabbed it now, shrugging it on against the early evening chill even as she hurried to pull clothes out of his closet for him. Because she used her third mark speed, she had them delivered to his side a second before she flashed into the bathroom, heating the sink water so he could do a quick face wash and hair brushing.
Watching her fly around in just the lab coat and nothing else reminded him of his earlier fantasy. His cock, already in full fledge “morning” mode, which was the same for vampire or human males, only at different waking times, got even harder. When she hurried by him this time, he proved he was faster, catching her around the waist and putting her up against the wall.
“My lord,” she gasped, her slim fingers landing on his shoulders. “You have to be in Council chambers in ten minutes.”
“This won’t take long.” He wrapped her hair in his fist, and put his mouth on hers, so fiercely his fangs scraped her. She made a sexy little mewl, her hips tilting to him, her arms banding around his shoulders, and then he probed her with the head of his cock. She reached down between them, stroking the fluid already gathering on her labia walls to the outer petals to lubricate his path. He slid into her, and she made a hum at his thick waking size, which had been significantly augmented by watching her run around in the coat, the tails flapping enough to show him the lower curves of her sweet ass, her breasts quivering in the shadows of the fabric tempting further exploration.
Ten minutes, she’d said. He didn’t care about coming. He just wanted to plow into her, mark her, stretch her. She held on, her moans torn between pleasure and discomfort. He held her between the point of possession and completion and kept himself there as well.
When she was writhing on him, hot and needy, and he was close to going himself, he stopped. “Look at me, Debra.”
She obeyed, her gaze glazed and wet lips parted. Seeing her here, alive, unharmed, made that damnable nightmare step back, though it didn’t lessen his need. “Hold onto me, tight as you can.”
She slid her arms around his shoulders, her legs crossing over his hips as he helped with that, hitching her close. He banded his own arms around her, a full embrace, heart to heart, body to body. Vampires didn’t need to breathe, but he wondered if he could have managed it regardless. She was here, she was all right.
“Master…” Her
whisper against his ear was laden with questions as much as arousal.
Holding them both against the wall, he began to rock against her, using that finite range of space to thrust, rub against her clit.
“Come for me, Debra. Or I’ll be late to Council meeting and it will be your fault.”
She gave a half sob, half snort at that, and it made him grin as well, despite their intensity. He reached between them to stroke and pinch and she came apart. As the climax squeezed down on him and she cried out against his ear, breath hot against his flesh, he came as well, thrusting hard to completion as she kept moaning her pleasure, holding onto him as if she’d never let him go. Her nails cut into his flesh during her aftershocks, and he relished those bites of pain.
He wanted to come down slow, drift back over to the bed, hold her in the curve of his body for another hour or so. But she was right. Now they were down to five minutes. He let her down with an extra squeeze, a swat on her delectable ass. “Get dressed. I can’t go before Council without your detailed brain with me. God only knows what I’d mess up.”
She gave him a look that he could only define as…happy. It was fleeting, but his own response bemused him. His heart swelled, ridiculously. It had been a long time since she’d looked like that, and he was glad to be the cause of it. Even as the knowledge that he was likely the cause of her not looking that way far more often gave him an entirely different set of things to think about.
Three minutes later they were headed down the hallway at a fast clip, Debra typing away on her tablet to call up the information they’d need for the short update. Then she caught the sleeve of his coat, tugging him to a halt. Putting the tablet under her arm and her stylus in her teeth, she straightened his tie, smoothed down his sweater vest. The pocket protector he kept in his shirt pocket made the left side lumpy, especially stuffed with pens and his handheld. He’d typically reach down the vee neck of the vest to retrieve anything he needed, but he saw her lips twitch as they often did when she touched that spot.
“You told me when we met that I dress like a nerd,” he said, curling a loose strand of her long blonde hair behind her ear. She’d caught the bulk of it back in a barrette, but she’d missed a piece.
Her cheeks turned pink. “You do, my lord. Or a college professor. I like how you dress.”
“Because it gives you the opportunity to make fun of me. I liked how you were dressed this morning.” He caressed her chin. “It gives me the chance to tease you a different way. Think I’ll have you dress that way again. Maybe for a future Council update. Then they won’t care if I get every blasted number wrong.”
She blushed even more prettily then. He’d forgotten how she showed everything on her face. Christ, had he really had his head that much up his ass, like Jacob said?
It wasn’t a full Council meet, thank God. That would have interfered with the whole day’s schedule. This was just Lyssa, Lord Mason and Lord Uthe who, as her right hands, were visiting on other matters and had requested a quick update on their active projects. It didn’t mean he could treat it with any less respect than a full Council meet, though. When they arrived, he was surprised to see another attendee he hadn’t expected. But then, this male didn’t usually announce his schedule. Beyond the Council members, most vampires who knew his identity didn’t live very long to tell anyone about it.
Daegan Rei was the Council’s assassin, charged with hunting and executing vampires who’d broken the vampire code to the point it endangered the species as a whole. Unfortunately, due to some unwise policy decisions from previous Councils, he’d been busy these past couple years, mostly dealing with the sires of made vampires who’d been turned without Council permission. Then there were the made vampires themselves, many too unstable to be allowed to survive.
Daegan was a dark-eyed, intense lean shadow of a vampire. Though he wasn’t as old as Lady Lyssa, their ages weren’t far apart. If ever Council made an enemy of him, he’d be a formidable one to overcome. It might take both Lyssa and Mason—the third oldest vampire— to take him down.
Fortunately, Daegan Rei was a strong supporter of Lady Lyssa. Plus, they were bound by familial relations, of a sort. Glancing left, Brian saw Gideon, Daegan’s servant as well as Jacob’s brother, leaning against the far wall, since servants weren’t typically invited to sit during formal vampire occasions. Though Gideon was full servant to two vampires, Anwyn wasn’t in the chamber. As a fledgling, she wasn’t part of Council sessions, even those where the servants of Council vampires were. Brian expected she knew all that went on in them regardless, since she was fully capable of scouring Gideon’s mind. Excluding her was more of a procedural issue.
He made a mental note to see how her seizure management was going while she was here. Though he didn’t have his mind open to her, he saw Debra making that note on her tablet. She was probably also making a note to check in on Jessica, his very next thought. Mason’s servant would have their daughter with them, explaining her absence from the meeting, and Debra knew Brian would want to review the health of both mother and child.
She anticipated his every need. Whereas he…ignored hers.
“Lord Daegan has a situation in Oregon,” Lyssa said, breaking into his thoughts. “A full servant that needs to be unmarked before he terminates her Master.”
Brian tuned in to the discussion, admonishing himself to concentrate. Regardless, he found himself staying particularly aware of Debra, the lingering musk of her arousal, a combination of her climax and his she hadn’t had time to clean from between her legs. Every male in the chamber would know he’d taken her recently, and he didn’t mind the feeling at all. Maybe he was going through some type of hormonal surge for young male vampires. Or maybe he was just suddenly noticing what was his and reacting to that.
Fortunately he was a very good at multitasking. He recommended that Daegan bring the marked servant to the research facility. That way he could ensure the proper dosage and compound would be administered to reverse the marking effects and erase the human’s memory. At Lyssa’s nod, closing the matter, he proceeded from there into an update about the fertility research, as well as current Delilah virus victims.
Unfortunately the cure still required the death of the servant to heal the vampire, something he and Debra were working to change, though so far without much success. In every case but one, the servant had willingly taken the death sentence to protect the Master or Mistress, but the loss of such a dedicated servant was something everyone agreed the vampire in question would welcome the chance to avoid.
Yet they all refused to address the layers of meaning to such selfless devotion.
When he deferred a follow-up question to Debra, he watched her respond in her usual calm manner. Noting the Council’s attentiveness, he realized they had as much confidence in her answers as they did his. She’d earned that, tenfold. But if she had to die to save his life, she would, wouldn’t she? There was no other logical solution. If the vampire died of the virus, the servant died as well, so the servant being the channel for the serum meant only one life was lost. And there were only about 5000 vampires in a world overrun by humans.
But could life really be quantified that way? There might be billions of humans, but there was only one Debra. As he skimmed the faces in the chamber, he knew every vampire in here but one met the indicators of his fertility study regarding an exceptional relationship with their servant. For Lyssa, Daegan and Mason, there was only one Jacob, Gideon or Jessica. Uthe was fond of his female servant, but he had the more traditional relationship with her.
“Very good.” Lyssa nodded. “Mason, Uthe, if you have nothing further…?”
They shook their heads and she addressed Brian. “You’ll be traveling to Texas at the end of the week, won’t you, Lord Brian?”
“Yes, my lady. There’s a made vampire there over three hundred years old. He’s agreed to let me interview him and take tissue samples, since he’s a prime example of a stable turning. I expect it will only take a couple
days.”
At her nod and indication that he could take his leave, he gave a slight bow and motioned to Debra. Then, on second thought, he put out a hand, stopping her. “My lady, unless you or the rest of the Council objects, I will depart a couple days early to make a stop in Tennessee.”
“Further research?”
“No, my lady.” Brian met Lyssa’s gaze. “Debra’s grandfather is terminally ill, and I would like to give her the chance to spend some time with him. If circumstances require her to stay a longer time, I will continue on to Texas and pick her up on the way back. Or pay for her airfare to come back when she is ready. By your leave.”
Lyssa lifted a shoulder, the light from the room sconces sliding down the wing of her ebony hair. “By your own admission, Debra is as much responsible as yourself for the steps that saved my life not too long ago. You’ve also indicated she identified the breakthrough variable on the fertility study, a study that may put our birthrate on a more positive track.” Lyssa inclined her head. “If she requires a plane ticket to return, and an extended stay with her grandfather, I approve both the expenditure of money and time, and I expect neither Lord Mason nor Uthe will disagree with me.”
Uthe made a noncommittal grunt, but Mason straightened from a relaxed panther sprawl in the oversized chair that fit his broad shoulders. The vampire had long auburn hair that framed a strong, arresting face. It meshed with his serious countenance now. “If you feel your presence is required, stay with your servant, Lord Brian,” he said. “It sounds like you are well on top of your current efforts.”
Brian met Mason’s amber eyes. Vampires who achieved the age of those at the Council table had more trouble blending among humans. Not just because of their beauty or the different hue of their eyes, but their exceptional focus and preternatural stillness were harder to mask. Their thoughts and emotions were almost impossible to read, faces often as smooth as a blank slate. Which meant when their expressions were readable, it was deliberate. He saw a clear missive from Mason’s.