by Sunny
The obviously masculine attire, the bigness of it, the inward cinching of a man’s belt tight across her waist… they only served to showcase the wonderfully feminine body beneath it; Goddess, woman, soft and spilling, warm and generous, lush and full, abundant. A body a man could sink into with bliss, and lose himself forever in.
Even the nails, which she was ever so conscious of. Those lethal nails that had sliced across the too-long sleeves and the thicker fabric of her pant legs with almost frightening ease … even that had only added to the dangerous allure of her potent sexuality. An innate quality that exuded from her always, drawing men to her like moths pulled to a flickering flame.
“No,” Nico agreed, “she does not know how she looks. How she appeals, dressed as she is.”
“Where do you think she goes?”
Stefan’s seemingly idle voice fooled Nico not for a second. “Where you think she goes. To feed.”
“From who?”
“Oh, probably the big and willing Captain Gilbert, who practically ate her up with his eyes.” Dryness prickled Nico’s words like a scratchy blanket.
Stefan straightened from the doorframe. Took a step out the door.
“Where are you going?” Nico asked.
“After her.” Stefan turned steely eyes to his fellow warrior. The man who had first been saved by Lucinda then, in turn, had saved her, bonded with her. And Stefan could no longer bear any resentment against the other rogue; it had faded beneath the gratitude of having Lucinda still here with them. But gratitude stretched only so far.
“Let her see to her needs,” Nico said quietly to his new brother in arms. And though his words were reasonable—wise, even—his eyes shone with the same malcontent that Stefan felt. But unhappy though he may be, he was willing to let their lady slack her thirst on another. A willingness Stefan did not share.
“I can see to her needs,” Stefan said.
“She does not want you to.”
“Only because she still thinks me weak and recovering from my wounds.”
“Which you are,” Nico said.
“My blood volume, though, is adequate.”
“And the healer?”
“Should she arrive while I am gone, see what she can do for Jonnie. If she cannot await my return, then so be it.” With those words, Stefan strode down the path after his lady love, his Princess. After his thirsty, wayward demon who had wandered off to sink those lovely sharp fangs into another.
Twenty-four
I headed in the direction of the stables. Toward that solitary heartbeat that awaited me. But it was the heartbeat that trailed after me that caused me to veer off my chosen path and blend into the nearby forest, woodland that grew abundant and rampant and untamed about the small pocket of civilization carved out among the wild. An appropriate metaphor for what High Court stood for. The one voice of reason and restraint, of rules and protocol. The only thing checking what would otherwise be the unlimited rule of the queens. Individual fiefdoms though they ruled, even queens had to bend their stiff knees and even stiffer wills to the High Council. For the Council had the one thing that all, even the most arrogant of queens, were afraid of—Halcyon, the High Prince of Hell. Ruler of a place they themselves might one day find themselves inhabiting. And before him, so long ago that many had forgotten, had been his father, Blaec. The High Lord of Hell.
Through the cover of leaves and branches I saw Stefan round the path, lithe and graceful, walking swiftly. Somehow I had known it would be he.
Lost amidst the dappling moonlight and autumn red leaves— the silence of my body—I watched him stop and pause. Felt him send out his power in a silent seeking wave, searching for me. And wondered if I should leave it as nature had intended: naught for him to find.
He called out my name, as if he knew that I watched him, hidden, unheard, unfelt.
“Lucinda.” Just my name, breathed like a soft prayer. And I found myself unable to resist. Found it impossible not to answer that call. That mix of question, plea, and demand all tumbled together in the low timbre of his voice.
“Here,” I whispered.
With that one word, that one sound, he turned and came unerringly toward me, finding me.
“Where do you go?” Stefan asked. Nothing in his voice but gentle question. But in his eyes … oh, his eyes … they betrayed him as his body did, with the hastened rhythm of his heart, the more forceful drumming beat. His eyes were a stormy mixture of thunder and sea, of lightning spilling down from the sky and striking the depths of the ocean. A flashing, thunderous turmoil were those eyes.
“Captain Gilbert awaits me,” I said.
A silence, a heartbeat.
“I am here now,” Stefan said quietly and reasonably, like a patient husband who had chased down an errant wife and was willing to forgive her. An image that would have brought a smile to my lips had it not panged me so.
“No,” I said. A gentle rejection.
“Yes,” he returned, the singular word spoken with deceptive mildness.
Perhaps it was the shock of it—the blatant opposition to my will—but it amused me and saddened me. Because it was what made Stefan—and Nico, also, that stubborn intractable rogue—so special to me. No others would dare talk to me so, without fear, with such sure presumption to their right to me. A right that I had granted them but had to withdraw now for their sake. Because I had come to realize that they were not really mine to claim. In a short while, if events unfolded as I hoped they would, I would give them to another far better equipped to provide them with what they needed—security, protection, constancy. Life-giving light.
And part of this … all of it .. . shaded my voice when I replied. A yearning for one more time; a last time to claim him as mine. “Very well. I will send the captain away. Wait for me here.”
I left him amidst the windblown leaves with their vibrant splash of color silvered under the hovering moon above, and made my way silently behind the stables.
Captain Gilbert glanced at me with rueful eyes.
“You heard,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not as much as I, Princess,” the big man said, regretfully. “I half suspected from your constraint, but still I hoped.” He pushed away from the barn wall and approached me. Put a gentle, cupping hand around my neck. “I will always be here if you should ever have need.” With a last brush of his thumb across my nape, he took his leave.
I pondered his words long after he had left. Examined the truth in them as I went soundlessly to where Stefan awaited me. He would always be here, Captain Gilbert, if patterns of the past held true for the future. The beauty of serving here at High Court, and why all Monère who were past their first century of life vied for positions here. Younger men thought of it as something they would strive for, afterward. After the first flush of their youth and virginity was romped away in their queen’s bed. After that same queen, once eager and ardent and affectionate, grew tired of them, or perhaps frightened of their growing power, and turned them from their arms and bodies. Then and only then did they cast their eyes toward High Court and yearn to serve the most ultimate of ladies— the Queen Mother. Not for a chance in her bed—she did not take lovers, at least not any that were known. No, they wanted to serve her because her powers were far greater than any other queens, and in equal measure, her tolerance higher for her men and their warrior power. No warrior had ever grown too strong for her, not even her Warrior Lord.
Serve her well and faithfully, which in turn meant serving the Court, and a warrior’s position here was secure for the rest of his days. Men who would have otherwise been rogues, found a rare berth of safety here among their highest ruler. A lucky few.
I pondered the other part of Captain Gilbert’s words that had struck me true. My constraint. How aptly put, and how different I must seem to him from my previous visit. That had been the real me. The me I would remind Stefan of once more. Deliberately I cast off those invisible ties binding
me … the uncharacteristic hesitance, the fear, the constraint. I shed them, let them slide from me. Let my body relax, so that I swayed gently with each gliding step I took closer toward him—my drink, my meal, my living fount of blood.
The arrogance, the cynicism, the utterly ruthless sexuality that was my greatest power and weapon unwound and flowed from me, seeped out from my pores, coating me truer than real skin.
He wished me to drink from him, and I would. I would take blood from him as I would from any other man, giving back pleasure in even exchange. I would let him see me as I truly was. And perhaps then, he would not mind so very much when I passed him to another.
She came to Stefan in silence. In the whisper of the night. An ethereal, glistening being. Shimmers of dusky brown and golden hues. A tawny goddess toppled down from the heavens, come to walk among man. Not an angel. No, far from that. For she moved with a lethal grace and dangerous beauty. With the promise of darkness rather than of light gleaming from her eyes. She came to him with lazy menace, with a liquid swaying grace, loose and free. Unrestrained.
A good word the captain had used … constraint. And Stefan damned him for knowing Lucinda that well. Better than he. For Stefan had never seen her like this. Like a cup not just full but overflowing. Brimming with dark passion and the promise of even darker delights.
Where she had been beautiful before, now she was breathtakingly sultry. Where she had stopped the heart, now she pounded it with a fierce primal rhythm, with a primitive beat, with a rolling hunger and blatant sexuality unleashed. Until the one gazing upon her felt the keenest of ache, and the desperate desire to satisfy that ache. To impale himself on the sharpness of her fangs, to feel his life blood flowing into her mouth. To experience the sharp dagger point of her nails sinking through his skin like sweet, painful bliss. Owning and possessing. Feeding and being fed.
Her eyes flashed dark and knowing, and a wanton smile teased and tantalized. Unsubtle delights were promised by those lips, not red but flushed dark mauve like vintage wine aged to perfection. Something that would satisfy the palette with a taste of the exotic and sublime. Something that would leave you thirsting and dying to taste her one more time long after she had left you, this ephemeral creature of passion unbridled, of lust unreined.
Stefan knew that it was otherwise. That she was more than the overflowing lushness of her body, of the breasts almost spilling from her shirt, of the fullness of her hips, and the tantalizing dip of that tiny waist that called for a man’s hands to try and span it. As if by holding her there, locked and secure, he could truly possess her.
No man could ever hope to possess her, a voice inside his head whispered. Stefan brushed it away like a buzzing gnat. Not own, not possess. But belong to—yes! … if she gave herself to you.
“Lucinda,” he said as she took him by the hand and led him deeper into the woods. When they came to a grassy meadow at the base of a knoll, he felt a shimmer of energy and sensed something encircle them, enclose them.
“What did you do?” Stefan asked.
“Ringed us in a shield of silence.” She released his hand and turned to face him, so small in stature but large in something else. Not presence, exactly. Nor was it a queen’s aphidy. No, what oozed from her pores, filled the air with her essence, was something even more potent—a raw and untamed sexuality that promised to unmoor and unhinge one’s very soul.
He pondered her words for a moment over the pounding of his heart, giving it a moment to calm—giving himself a moment to calm. “No one can hear us?”
She shook her head, eyes dark and slumberous with mystery and allure, answering with a siren’s dangerous smile that scraped his nerve endings like a cat’s sharp, playful swipe.
“You could scream and beg and plead,” she whispered, “and no one would hear you but me.”
The concept of an invisible barrier of sound encircling them in complete and utter silence, in total privacy from acute Monère senses, was both tantalizing and frightening.
“Why are you doing this? Being like this?” Stefan asked.
Her eyes drifted down his neck, landing with an almost palpable caress upon where his pulse bounded in accelerated rhythm. She smiled, flashing the tips of her fangs.
“You wanted to be my food. This is how I treat my food,” she purred and stepped closer until her ripe breasts almost grazed his chest. Had she taken a breath, she would have touched him. But she did not take a breath. She did not breathe. And never was Stefan more aware of her total stillness, of her complete and utter difference from himself than now, when her silence was juxtaposed against his noise. So aware of his beatings of life, the constant pulsation, and her lack of it.
Then she touched him. Not with her hands or nails or mouth. But with an invisible caress. With phantom hands that floated over that beating pulse that she gazed upon so hungrily. She touched him with a soft and feathery stroke that pulled a sound from his lips of surprise and of pleasure. He bent down, his lips hovering over hers, his breath puffing softly across her lips.
“You don’t need to do this,” Stefan said, “to seduce me. I am already yours.” Because that was what she was doing: seducing him, with an alarming ease that raised the tiny hairs of his body up on end. Phantom hands stroked across his face, rifled through his hair, drew him even closer so that her mouth touched his.
“But that is what I do,” she murmured against his lips. “Seduce.” The word hissed sibilantly into his mouth. Arrowed down into him with a sudden dart of sensation that made him gasp. “I seduce you for a taste of your blood.”
Her voice licked across his skin, an incredible sensation, like the silky brush of fur against naked flesh, making goosebumps rise up all over his body … and something else down below. Then it was not her voice that touched him but her actual hands. A physical touch upon his swollen thickness, a touch far sweeter than the brush of any phantom hand could be. Feather lightly she touched him, and he broke from the sweetness of her lips so he could watch her hand trace over him, outlining his dimensions. So he could watch and feel the scrape of those dangerous nails over the head of him.
The sight and sensation was almost too much, making Stefan close his eyes, shudder and tremble against her, his breath stumbling and catching in his throat.
“Lucinda.” Her name was both a plea for mercy and a cry not to stop. He yearned for her, needed her, lusted after her … and was unsettled by her, by what she was telling him, showing him. That these wild emotions, these knee-weakening surges of pleasure were what she gave to all who let her drink of their blood.
“You don’t need to do this, my lady,” Stefan said, dropping to his knees, baring his neck to her, a silent pale offering before her.
“Oh, but I do.” She stroked with her hand just above his skin, along the ivory sweep of his throat stretched out before her as if his power, his male essence, was something tangible she could feel. “For it is not just blood I feed upon, you see.” She bent down, deliberately breathing deeply, taking in his scent, smelling his blood. “I also feed on your release … and your light. I take that, too, into me, and for a brief moment, it makes me feel almost alive again.”
“All that you need, all that you would have of me is yours.” Soft words, a quiet pledge of devotion still that brought not pleasure but a sting of tears to Lucinda’s eyes as she hovered over his tantalizing pulse.
He did not fear her yet. Not as he should.
She wrapped him suddenly tight in chains invisible, in bonds unbreakable. She felt him tremble beneath her phantom hands as she ran them down the swell of his chest, swept them over his wide shoulders, his muscled arms, both strong and weak and immobile beneath her mental touch.
“You do not know all that I need, all that I could take from you,” Lucinda said, her eyes suddenly flashing fierce. Her voice became dark and cutting, something that flayed the skin instead of caressing it. “What can please, can also hurt.”
Stefan could not help his involuntary flinch or the sudden spe
eding of his heart as he knelt frozen before her, utterly helpless beneath her power.
“I can feed from pain and suffering, too,” she whispered, each word lancing his skin like a scorpion’s sting, a throbbing tender ache for a moment before easing to just a tiny pain. “I do not have to coax the moon’s light from you in pleasure. I can rip it from you in painful ecstasy. Although the ecstasy would be more on my part, not yours.”
“Why are you doing this, Lucinda?” Every part of him was frozen but for his voice and his eyes. They looked at her with pleading, with confusion, with hurt. “Why do you want me to fear you?”
“Because you should,” she said, walking slowly around him in unnerving silence, softly flaying him with her words, each syllable a tiny pinching sting. “Because I am demon dead, and you are alive and living and something we feed upon: your blood, your pleasure, or your tears; your light that we no longer carry in us.” She laid the sharp point of a nail on the back of his shoulder, ran it in a dangerous scraping tease across to the opposite shoulder. Sank it through cloth to prick his skin, feel it quiver beneath her needle-sharp touch.
“Because if you understood the thirst that we carry with us always, not just to feed upon your blood, but to bathe in it, to wallow in it… then you would only just begin to comprehend the danger you foolishly dance with each moment you are with me. You do not truly know what the demon dead are capable of. And your ignorance does not make you safe.” She circled to the front of him in a silent slithering undulation, knelt before him and ran her sharp nails in a fabric-piercing dance across his chest, a lethal prickling tease.