by Opal Carew
She had everything to fear. He’d always left her heart and soul to herself, let her nurse the pains and disappointments there unmolested. Yet as his consciousness wound its way through those dark shadows and locked boxes, it entered them easily. He could see every emotion and need, every craving she couldn’t hide from him. How much she needed him, wanted him. How she couldn’t breathe without him.
She really couldn’t exist without him, even if he broke her heart a million times over. She did hate him sometimes, for what he’d done to her. But her hate wasn’t a drop in the bucket next to how much she loved and needed him.
Brian lifted his head, his countenance vibrant with emotions of his own. Shock… speculation. She couldn’t invade his mind, couldn’t know what he was thinking. Whereas she was stripped raw. Nowhere to hide.
Panicked, she struggled against the restraint on her wrists. He reversed their positions, putting her under him, freeing her hands with a swift movement so they weren’t uncomfortably beneath her. Since he still had her pinned with his body, she struck at him, the reaction of a cornered animal, not a rational woman, but he didn’t block her. He slid inside of her, invading her in a different, no less devastating way.
He was always a good fit, filling her deep and stretching her, but tasting his blood and touching him as she wished had obviously had an effect, making him even larger than usual. Her cunt clamped down on him in needy response, even as she kept shoving at him, afraid of her feelings.
“Debra, stop.” The quiet words were an unmistakable command, but she couldn’t. As quickly as she’d had that reaction, it reversed so she had her arms wrapped around him as tightly as she could, pulling him against her so her face was pressed into his neck, legs wrapped over his bare hips. Maybe if she held him so close, as if they were one person, she wouldn’t be so afraid.
“Ssshhh.” He stroked her hair, mixing it up with little tugs that sent searing jolts through her agitated body. At the same time he settled into an easy, rocking boat rhythm, hips lifting and lowering in smooth thrusts. “I’m here. Trust me. Just trust me for tonight. One step at a time.”
He was still at that subterranean level of her mind, at the same time he was physically deep inside her body, and now it was like he was dancing with her emotions, a smooth waltz, inviting her to twine and tangle with his thoughts.
Vampires weren’t inclined to reveal their deepest feelings, even to their servants, but he gave her a glimpse of what he felt for her. A flickering starlit sky where there were so many things to explore, three hundred years wouldn’t be enough.
She caught another sob in her throat, held him even tighter.
We will take the journey together, Debra. Just be patient with me. I’m learning, the same as you.
He tilted her head back, studied her with an edged look.
“But you’ll promise me one thing. You won’t take your life. Not ever. And if ever you’re thinking of it, you will come to me.” His mouth became a thin line. “Though you shouldn’t have to. I don’t plan to be that far from your thoughts ever again.”
Chapter Five
Lyssa had three planes at her disposal as Council Head, and she always generously allowed Brian to use one for his research trips, so he could make the most efficient use of his time. For vampires, travel had a limitation of dusk to dawn, though Lyssa had wisely equipped the planes with an emergency compartment shut off from all light and surrounded with a layer of earth on all sides but the small opening. While nothing above ground during daylight was comfortable for a young vampire like Brian, if needed he could survive a flight through daylight relatively unscathed. This trip was fortunately not one of those times, since the flight from Atlanta to Tennessee wouldn’t take that long.
Debra sat in the cushioned seat which she knew could be reclined for napping if needed. She resisted the urge to review her notes on their Texas subject. Caleb “Butch” Buford Dorn had been made by Diego Santos three hundred years ago, when the rules about making a vampire had been far looser. However, Diego had shown a responsible, common sense awareness of the principles that later became law. Debra had interviewed him in Barcelona prior to scheduling the meet with Butch. Diego had ensured he had Butch’s consent, but even before that, he’d determined the man had a strong physical constitution, matched with an equally strong will, likely to survive and eventually master the impulse problems and physical instability that plagued poorly chosen made vampires.
However, the reason Brian and Debra had such a keen interest in Butch was that he’d shown remarkable stability at a young age. He was turned at thirty-eight, so Brian had theorized that maturity might be a factor, since the percentages of made vampires ruled too unstable to be allowed to survive, or who were unable to overcome blood hunger and violent impulses in the expected timeframe, tended to be younger when they were turned.
Brian had been an exception like Butch, only on the born vampire side of the equation. Throughout their handful of years together, Debra had gleaned everything she could about her Master’s childhood and early years. He’d been capable of extraordinary self-control, managing the volatility that kept most vampires at their sire’s side for several decades. His father had deemed him ready to attend college on his own to get his first master’s degree when he was twenty-seven. She’d met his father once or twice on their visits to England, and found him an austere and entirely intimidating male, a powerful vampire who’d been considered for Council leadership but had turned it down, preferring his role as Region Master of the UK.
During that first visit, Brian’s father had brought her into his study by herself. He’d had her stand before him for forty-two minutes without saying anything. Even though her gaze remained lowered, she never felt his eyes leave her. Debra worked through equations in her head, went through the periodic table, named all the muscles and bones in the body, but she never flinched or shifted. After that time period, he’d spoken.
“Will you take care of my son, Debra?”
“I will, my lord.” Now she lifted her gaze, met his. “I do.”
He nodded. “You may return to your duties.”
Butch’s historical data indicated he’d overcome his bloodlust urges by sixty-two, only twenty-four years into being a vampire, such that Diego had felt comfortable giving him rein to pursue his life and accomplishments. By the first century mark, Butch had already made a fortune through various pursuits, and now he had an enormous cattle spread in Texas. He’d also been named overlord of that vast state. Made vampires rarely became overlords, and almost none made the Region Master level. Butch might well be the next to claim that distinction.
Debra glanced up as Brian’s foot brushed hers. It was an incidental contact, because he was scribbling furiously on a pad, crosschecking something on his laptop. As she watched, he shoved impatiently at the hair that fell over his forehead. He’d cut it short once, like a military cut. She hadn’t liked it that way, but she hadn’t said anything.
You didn’t need to. I could tell.
His gaze lifted to her briefly, then he went back to his figuring.
So he’d changed it. For her? She loved running her fingers through the strands, so she wasn’t complaining. She just couldn’t imagine that he’d done such a thing for his servant.
Your Master is a selfish bastard. He likes it when you touch his hair. It was entirely self-interest. Now go back to your work. You’re distracting him.
He didn’t look up, but the comment startled a small chuckle out of her, warmth curling low in her stomach.
Since the night on the south lawn, they’d worked together as they always did, but he was in her mind far more often, just as he’d promised. When he retired for the dawn, if she still had things to do in the lab, he spent about a half hour speaking in her mind before he fell asleep. They talked over data, yes, but they’d also…chat. He’d ask her what she was going to do with her day.
The first time he asked, she rattled off all the work she’d be doing, assuming he was c
hecking to see what her progress would be by the time he woke. When she was done, she felt the caress of his mind like a touch on her skin.
All right. But starting today and every day going forward, you’ll take a two hour break away from the lab. Spend time with other servants, read a book in the garden—something not about work. Take a walk. Go swim in the pool with John when he gets home from school. I want you to start taking two hours for yourself, and getting three hours of sleep each day. Five hours total.
He’d cleverly anticipated her overlapping them, the infuriating man.
And I’ll be asking what you did with your two hours each day when I wake.
She was going to protest, tell him she couldn’t possibly get everything done that he expected her to have done with five hours of down time.
Those are your expectations. Not mine. Before she could feel taken aback by that brusque statement, he added, You exceed mine with barely two-thirds of what you get done. So obey your Master. Two hour break, three hours of sleep.
The first time Jacob had come upon her and John having a splashing contest in the pool, she’d laughed at his look of shock, surprising herself at how good the spontaneous reaction felt. It had been a while since she’d done that.
Jacob had noted her pale skin was reddening in the sunlight. Her third mark healing abilities took care of that quickly after some mild discomfort, but Brian had read the memory from her mind and exhorted her not to go out without sunscreen in the future. Since he’d followed up the admonishment with a quick spanking that left her aroused and trembling, it had crossed her mind to forget more often to earn more punishment. A flash in his eyes and he’d pounced on her in retaliation. After tying her spread-eagle on his bed, he put his mouth between her legs, only allowing her to climax when she was begging, in tears and promising to put on the sunscreen as if she was making a sacred oath to protect the world.
“Lord Brian, we’re beginning our approach.” The pilot’s voice came over the intercom. “We should be on the ground in a few minutes.”
To cover the sudden tightness in her stomach, she began packing up her work. She hadn’t reached out and called her grandmother, told her they were coming. Though Brian had agreed to do this during the Council update, she’d expected something to come up he’d consider higher priority. She hadn’t wanted to raise Grandma’s expectations and then be a no-show.
“Thank you.” Brian released the button to respond. Usually he would work until the wheels were on the ground, so Debra was surprised to see him pack up the laptop and his notes before he turned his attention to her.
“Are you all right?”
It was an odd question for a vampire to ask, since he could see it well enough in her mind, but he’d done that more often this past week as well. The concern and attentiveness it demonstrated moved her more than was wise.
She nodded, even as she wondered if the real reason she hadn’t called her grandmother was to leave herself an out. Even as she longed to see him, some part of her wanted to remember Grandpa as she always had. She wanted to touch his big, callused hand, hear his gravelly voice. He’d been a smoker as long as she could remember, yet it wasn’t lung cancer that was getting him, but heart disease. A bitter irony, because he had one of the biggest hearts she knew.
She remembered him gesturing at her with one of his cigarettes before jamming it back in the corner of his mouth, holding it clamped there as they worked on a weather project for her science class. “The will is the most persistent and pernicious part of being human.” He snorted out a harsh laugh. “It’s why the whole Garden of Eden of story revolves around it. I know these things will kill me, but I’m going to smoke them, despite all that. There’s no understanding the will. Sometimes I expect it’s the part of us most like God. Hard to understand, but as inevitable as sunlight and rain.”
Since she was then at the age when youth questioned everything, she’d told him a scientific person couldn’t truly believe in God. He’d given her an indulgent look. “Consider this, little thinker. You can learn everything about painting that Vincent Van Gogh knew. Break it down to brush strokes and paint composition, and you still can’t paint like him. You could program a computer to do an exact replica, but you’re still copying what he created from something inside him no one can explain.” He pointed a finger at her chest, her heart. “The world is four parts science and one part God. As you live and grow, you figure out that one part makes all the rest possible.”
He’d given her intellect and faith. Both had kept her at Brian’s side, through the good and the bad. As a result, she now understood her grandfather’s last comment that day all the more.
More important, that one part is what makes everything else worth living and enduring.
He sounds like someone I would admire.
She looked up, saw Brian studying her again. Rising, he came to sit by her, offering her the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket.
“Oh. Sorry.” Mortified, she mopped at the tears.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” he said gently. He slid an arm around her, even as she tried to recover her composure.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your work,” she said. “You had a good fifteen minutes left.” He could do more in fifteen minutes than most could in three days, his mind as quick as his vampire speed.
“I’m at a good stopping place. You should have let your grandmother know you’re coming.”
“I know.” She fiddled with the handkerchief. “Sometimes it’s easier not to give them time to think, prepare questions.”
“And she might have called your parents.”
Debra nodded. She couldn’t bear to say good-bye to them again. She hadn’t been as close to them as she was to her grandfather, but they were her parents, and they loved her. She wrote regularly, did video chats with them, but she’d weaned them off to less and less. Seeing the confused disappointment in her mother’s eyes when Debra made this and that excuse for not visiting, even on holidays, had become excruciating.
“I guess it’s time to do it. In another few years it’s going to be obvious I’m not aging. Maybe we’ll do it after…Grandpa.” Fake my death.
She couldn’t handle voicing it, any more than she could say aloud the reality her grandfather faced now.
Brian sat silently, letting her struggle with her thoughts, even though he stayed close to them, making sure his mind touch was strong enough for her to feel him there. She leaned into it as a comfort, the same way she leaned against his side.
Vampires understood that servants turned away from an identity of their own to bond with their Master or Mistress. No career achievements, no job except for caring for their vampire. Vampires also knew the problems of dealing with living family members of those servants, and had protocols in place to address it, to protect the vampire world and to sever those ties more cleanly. Faking a death was the most common practice, since vampires didn’t live very public lives for the most part.
Yet a vampire typically possessed a certain detachment about the impact of all that on their servant. He wondered if it was similar to the insensitivity that young adults demonstrated when taking the steps toward severing their childhood dependence on their parents, a necessary trait to ensure the future generation was capable of caring for themselves and the species as a whole. But the parents still grieved an empty nest, the child lost to adulthood.
Until recently, most of the vampires with whom Brian brushed shoulders had servants as much as a century old, where those issues had been addressed and were well in the past. The distance that had grown between him and Debra over the past few years had detached him even further from it, but now he saw it under a glaring spotlight. She’d given up her family, her career, to work at his side, to serve him. Who did that? If she’d stayed in the human world, she’d likely be the head of her own facility, perhaps even researching how to slow down diseases like what was taking her grandfather’s life now.
Because he was incapable of
not tangling up his personal ruminations with professional ones, he latched onto it as further evidence that chemical makeup determined which humans gravitated toward vampire bonding. Perhaps, when the right circumstances arose “activating” that makeup, it was no more a choice for the human in question than sexual orientation. Vampires were so sexual that gay and straight weren’t really relevant classifications for them, but he had to say he definitely preferred women overall. Debra in particular.
He inhaled her scent now, pleased with the mix of fragrances from her soap and shampoo, the touch of rosemary and lavender. Her clean smell made him think of fresh laundry hung out on the line, touched by the sun and wind. When he went with his impulse and nuzzled her hair, he caught her surprised, shy smile. She kept her head ducked down, though, tucking away notes in her computer bag.
Debra didn’t fit the profile they’d been building about which humans were predisposed toward becoming vampire servants. Gideon Green was a former vampire hunter who’d reached a crisis point. Jacob had been a drifter of sorts, working with his brother before operating as a Renaissance Faire player. Jessica had been forced to serve another vampire, and was then rescued by Lord Mason. Their circumstances had already divorced them from strong family ties. While they were just a sampling, he wondered how many servants had initially followed career paths with the potential for limelight.
Debra’s breakthroughs could easily have brought her widespread recognition, in her field and beyond it. Yet her scientific ambitions were purely service-oriented, also unusual. Ego usually was a key driving factor for one so accomplished in scientific endeavor. He had no doubt his ego and yes, a healthy dose of arrogance, were an essential part of his. But Debra was an extreme submissive, capable of shutting down ego or wellbeing to fulfill her personal markers for service.
Debra had cited the typical servant party line several times, that it wasn’t his job to pay attention to her wellbeing. He was the one being served, not the servant. But that was bullshit, wasn’t it? There was far more reciprocity to it, as Jacob had stated baldly. If Lady Lyssa, head of the Vampire Council, had figured it out, showing it in ways large and small…