Vampire's Embrace: A Vampire Queen Series Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  Whereas an InhServ didn’t get any days off. Her leisure time was entirely dependent on her Master’s whim.

  After she was done with Nero, she wandered the house. As she passed the study where Alistair was behind closed doors with Stan, she took a closer look at the room next to it. It was a small, cozy place with a comfortable, female-sized chair, a book case, a side table with a tea set and a window out to the garden. Winifred was just leaving it, duster and polish in hand.

  “Winifred, what’s this room?”

  “Old-fashioned notion. The retiring room for the lady of the house. She could keep tabs on her husband through the connecting door. Know when he was finishing up with them and they needed more tea and such.” She tossed Nina a derisive look. “Expect that would be useful for you, since you’re supposed to keep track of all the things he needs. Things women like me, Mrs. W and C don’t provide.”

  “And what would that be, Winifred?” Nina asked it pleasantly, but with an unmistakable injection of steel to her tone.

  Whatever Winifred saw in Nina’s expression had her eyes widening a bit, then narrowing like an alley cat’s. “I don’t know who—” she started, but Nina shook her head and cut across her words.

  “I’ve worked in a general hospital near the front, Winifred,” she said evenly. “Because I’ve dealt with things so beyond your limited, small view of the world, I won’t fetch you the slap against your ear you so richly deserve. I’m not much of a slapping kind of girl anyway. I’ll just punch you in your sullen mouth, or break that nose I’ll bet you’re quite proud of. I might even be able to set it for you, but I won’t be gentle about it. I know a lot about pain. Don’t push me. And I won’t push you. We understand one another?”

  One bated moment passed while the maid took her measure. Nina wasn’t worried. On top of everything else, she wasn’t going to endure one discontented maid’s spitefulness. She had her footing for this. She’d worked among women for nearly ten years of her life.

  “Yes, marm,” Winifred said at last.

  Nina shook her head. “Just Nina. I don’t need you to act the hypocrite. Keep your mouth shut and expressions polite when you’re around me if you have nothing useful to impart, and we’ll get on just fine. Go on with you now.”

  As Winifred fled, Nina moved into the retiring room, ran her fingertips over the pretty doily on the side table. An old-fashioned notion for certain, but the room was a welcoming nook. Something that could be hers. She liked to read and, during a time like this, she could curl up in the chair and expand her mind. Vampires expected their InhServs to be highly educated, intelligent and cultured. Alistair seemed to have a good library, and Nina had been told books, additional training and the like were entirely appropriate for an InhServ to request. It expanded their abilities to serve their vampire. But she could expand her mind and skills for herself, too.

  She was used to paying her own way, though. It rankled, being entirely dependent on his funds, but perhaps she should think of it as her salary, her InhServ status a form of employment.

  Or perhaps she was just playing games with her mind. Slaves weren’t given a wage. And if she was paid…well there was a whole other word for that profession, wasn’t there?

  Stop it. Not helping.

  Brow furrowing, she drew closer to the door between this room and that one. At eye level, there was a small square cut into the wood. One with a bronze knob. When she plucked at it, it swung open noiselessly, and she had a postage-stamp-sized peep hole into the room. Which answered the question of how the woman of the house could check on her husband without disrupting him.

  She was about to close it, not knowing if Alistair wanted her to avail herself of that avenue or not, but then she saw him. He was sitting in a chair, legs crossed, smoking a cigarette with easy elegance. However, his eyes were sharp as lightning.

  Shifting so both his feet were on the floor, he stubbed out the cigarette and leaned forward, his profile intent. "Why are you fucking looking at me?" he said with quiet menace.

  Her heart jumped in her chest before she realized he wasn’t talking to her. Shifting her view, she saw Stanley was in the opposite chair. The other man's dark eyes heated, but not with anger. He looked down, though he did it by deliberately letting his gaze course down Alistair's body, inch by inch. Alistair's lip curled and his gaze flashed. "So it's going to be like that."

  She bit back a gasp when Alistair left the chair, almost faster than she could follow. He had Stanley out of his and shoved down to hands and knees before he could counter, though he made an admirable attempt. Alistair was just that much faster. And stronger.

  Alistair held Stanley by the back of the neck, straddling his hips. He shoved his pelvis against the curve of his visitor's back as he leaned over him, nuzzled his hair, took a deep inhale. His fangs lengthened with an ivory flash. Nina drew in another breath. Having felt them was not the same as seeing them like this. Sharp, curved, they looked capable of sinking into flesh and never letting go. Or tearing open someone’s body. He grazed the male's neck with them.

  "Who's in charge here?" Alistair said, in the same quiet voice.

  "You're having delusions of grandeur, mate." But a shudder ran through Stanley, his fists clenched, and he didn't fight Alistair's hold. Alistair must have tightened his grip, because Stanley made a pained noise and then strangled it out. “You. You’re in charge.”

  “Correct. You were very rude to my InhServ gift. You know how to behave like a gentleman. If she wasn’t human and a servant, I would force you to apologize. Maybe I will anyway. Until you can act like a better, you likely don’t deserve to be treated as one, do you?”

  Nina blinked at that. She knew vampires viewed humans as an inferior species, but hearing the implication come out of Alistair’s mouth so matter-of-factly was…dismaying.

  Alistair straightened, but as he began to step back, Stanley wrapped his arms around one leg, put his mouth on Alistair’s inner thigh. His fangs unsheathed but didn’t puncture. He simply rubbed them against Alistair’s slacks.

  The expression Stanley had on his face was far different from the sardonic aggression he’d shown Nina, or even the challenge he’d possessed before Alistair put him on the floor. There was aggression, yes, but purely sexual. Beneath that, so close to the surface it made the aggression a fragile veneer, was a desperation of sorts.

  While her mind couldn’t classify it, her body could. She’d been startled to feel that desperation over and over, when her roommates and the other members of the training center had roused her body and held it so close to the edge of release, forcing her to face the emotions goaded by such deprivation. Parts of her soul she hadn’t wanted to believe existed had been torn open.

  Any port in a storm, she’d told herself. Even a prisoner would bond with a brutal jailer, to have some form of emotional connection. But Stanley was a vampire. He was free to come and go. Yet when he looked up at Alistair with that expression, she felt an answering chord inside herself.

  The desire to serve. To belong to someone.

  To call someone Master.

  God, it was all bollocks. She told herself that, viciously. They’d planted all this manure in her head, brainwashed her with it. None of it was the truth.

  If Alistair had wanted to remind her right off the vampire-servant relationship was nothing like a husband and wife, he’d done it with ruthless promptness. So she shouldn’t be surprised at all that, her first night here, the male she was supposed to consider her Master might bugger a man in the next room before even giving her so much as a proper greeting.

  It’s good to see you again, sweet nurse. You look far better in that shirt than I ever did.

  Okay, mostly not a proper greeting.

  Alistair freed himself from Stanley’s grip on his leg. She noticed he was firm about it, but not brutal. He pushed the man back to the floor and Stanley stayed there, on all fours, staring at the wood beneath his flattened palms. Alistair stroked his hair, a brief caress. “Yo
u know how to prepare yourself for me,” he said shortly. “I’ll be back when I’m good and ready. None of my brandy better be missing when I return, or I’ll shove the bottle up your arse and break it off. You can pray I’ll do it in that order.”

  He strode from the room, closing the study door after him. She heard his footsteps as he went down the hall. Protocol suggested she should seek him out, see if he needed anything now that he’d emerged, but she found herself lingering at that view port, curious about Stanley’s reaction. And Alistair had said he’d summon her if needed.

  Stanley dropped his forehead to the carpet, staying that way for a long moment that had Nina’s brow furrowing. When he lifted his face, she saw a bleakness in his expression, a sort of hopelessness that twisted her heart, despite her earlier revulsion toward his behavior.

  At length, the male rose to his feet and stripped off his waistcoat, followed by his shirt.

  He was bony but muscular. Nina’s attention went to a horrific scar that ran from his left hip bone to his right shoulder. The scar had the shape of a meandering river, plenty of curves. As if someone had carved upon him, rather than laying him open with one sweep of the blade. No one could lie still during the entirety of that cut, unless they were bound.

  He’d been tortured with the intent to kill.

  Since scars inflicted on a vampire healed and vanished, it had happened when he was human. She had no idea how a human would have survived such a wound, unless there was a surgical team in immediate attendance. His transition might have lightened the scar’s appearance, which made the implication of what had been done to him even more harrowing.

  Nina bit her lip. An indecipherable mix of emotions were suddenly churning in her chest and stomach.

  “So you like to watch, sweet nurse?”

  Alistair’s voice was at her ear, his heat behind her.

  Vampires could move noiselessly. She knew that. She just hadn’t expected him to employ the skill to creep up on her. But she knew he hadn’t been there long, because his proximity was as tangible to her as a rush of heat from a fire.

  Would it be easier or harder to handle all this if she didn’t react to him so strongly? Three years, and his voice, his touch, could still affect her. She could rationalize it, say it was the circumstances that had brought them together that made his presence in an unbearable situation bearable, but she wasn’t sure. After her time with The Mistress, she wasn’t sure of much anymore. Except she needed to escape all this before she lost herself entirely. It was the only thought that consistently made sense, so she clung to it, returned to it as often as the moment allowed it.

  This was not going to be one of those moments.

  Alistair closed his hands on her shoulders. His lips found her throat, teased there. Her heart accelerated, and he acknowledged it, his grip tightening further.

  After he nudged the peephole closed, he turned her toward him. A step forward put her back against the door. As he had in the hall, he dropped to a knee, laying his hands on her thighs. He slid his touch beneath the hem of the skirt, raising it to study the state of her sore knee.

  “You cleaned and tended it. Good.” He gave the wound a chaste kiss, bemusing her. Rising to his feet, he clasped her hand. “Come with me. We can leave Stanley to his own devices for a while.”

  “He looks unhappy.”

  “Well, he should have behaved better.” He drew her out of the study, led her down the hallway toward the lower level stairwell. “But he’s got a nasty, bottomless need to be punished. It will keep.”

  She had no idea what Alistair had planned, but his bedroom was downstairs. The ball of tension in her belly coiled tighter. She didn’t think she could bear the loss of her virginity in a slap-dash fashion. She was even less mentally prepared for the second and third marks that would irrevocably bind her to him.

  “I don’t mind waiting on…” She colored and chose a different path. “I don’t want to interfere with your time with your guest.”

  Alistair came to a halt. He did it so abruptly she had to place a hand on his chest to avoid stumbling into him. He tipped up her chin, holding her face in a firm hand.

  “How polite of you. To be willing to wait while I bugger that poor sod. Will you wash my dick when I’m done? Dry it with your hair? Have they trained you so well in a month?”

  The vindictiveness took her aback. Her eyes snapped up and this time she didn’t lower them as she was supposed to do. He’d raked his hands through his hair somewhere between leaving the study and arriving behind her. He hadn’t aged, wouldn’t have, but there was something older about his eyes, the set of his mouth, that she didn’t particularly like at this moment. It reminded her of the house, she realized. Empty of personality, though all the right polish to make it pretty.

  Her thoughts of finding an ally in him faltered once more, her hopes taking another hard hit. But The Mistress had devoted considerable effort into driving in the harsh truth, hadn’t she? She’d considered making Nina face that reality a gift, and now Nina understood why. At the gateway to Hell, one last glass of ice water wasn’t a kindness. It merely increased the craving for what one would never have again. The true gift was the ability to endure constant thirst.

  She let her expression go flat. “If my Master wishes me to clean him that way, he merely needs to command it,” she said. “My hair isn’t long, but shoulder-length is amply sufficient to dry the desired area. More than needed, I suspect.”

  Alistair stared at her, then blinked once. His lips curved, a dangerous smile. “There she is. The woman I remembered was a submissive, but not timid in the least. Goading me, sweet nurse?”

  He moved in closer, and she took a step back, her shoulders meeting the wall. His eyes bored into hers, pinning her body in place. “Why are you looking at me?” he said, with that sensual menace she’d heard with Stanley.

  A quiver ran through her. He was telling her she was supposed to look down. But she had to speak the truth.

  “I can’t look away.”

  His expression didn’t change, but the energy between them did. Maybe a minute passed, maybe ten. She wasn’t sure. He leaned in, bracing a hand by her shoulder, the other grasping her by the throat, squeezing just enough to make her lift her chin. Her hands opened and closed at her sides as her body tightened. A shot of need and fear, anticipation and dread, hit her vitals. They weren’t on the beach anymore, but the feelings he could rouse in her were all there, only the circumstances were so different. Far more terrifying. Because he wasn’t her savior here, but the lynch pin of her prison.

  “I gave you the first mark three years ago.” The brandy he’d sampled was sweet on his breath. “It’s brought me comfort, knowing where you are. But I’ve thought so often about what you were thinking. Wanting to know what was going through your head.”

  “Please…don’t…” She couldn’t help whispering it. She wasn’t ready. If marking her was just one more thing on his to-do list, surely it could be put off another day or two.

  His thumb swept her pulse, a distracting caress. “Can you deny me, Nina?”

  Was he asking her to remember the rules of being an InhServ, or about her ability to think straight when he was this close? Did vampires have a chemical effect on a human?

  Sher had been this besotted with him before even meeting him, and yet had seemed so certain she’d stay that way after being in his service.

  Where her own will failed her, Sher’s memory didn’t. It was a cold-water reminder that he hadn’t come to her funeral. He’d also told Stanley he didn’t have to apologize to Nina because she was human. And a servant.

  If she had longer hair, she could knot it around his bloody cock and cut off the blood flow to it.

  Nina lowered her gaze, though she couldn’t stop the tightening of her jaw. “No, my lord. I submit to your will as you desire.”

  “But it’s your desire that intrigues me.” He dropped to his knees again, laid his hands on her thighs. As he looked up at her, she th
ought of Stanley. How Alistair had stroked a hand through his hair. But whereas Stanley’s expression had fit with his desire to be on his knees, there was no relinquishment of power when Alistair knelt. His touch was strong, holding her in place, his gaze alone commanding her stillness. He pressed her legs open so she was flatter against the walls as he slid his touch up under the skirt, his wrists pushing up the fabric.

  “You’re angry with me,” he said.

  “I’m angry with the whole fucked-up world.”

  His gaze flickered. “Words I’m sure the InhServ school didn’t teach you to use with your Master.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that, but since he didn’t seem to need a reply, and he was sliding her skirt to her waist, she didn’t have to summon one. She closed her eyes, willing herself to relax, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t…

  His mouth touched her inner thigh as he caressed her legs, her hips. When his fingertips slid under the elastic of the knickers, she trembled. He drew back enough to study the columns of her thighs, the point of her sex clad in the gauzy silk. He made a soothing noise in his throat, even as she saw by the flash in his blue eyes that her reluctant and uncertain submission fueled his own arousal. His reaction increased her own, which made her hate herself a little.

  “So sweet,” he muttered, as he brought his mouth back to her flesh. She drew in a breath as he found her sex, flicked his tongue over the mesh covering it. It created a friction that had her hips rising to meet his mouth. A little sighing breath escaped her.

  That breath became a gasp as he tore the knickers away with one jerk.

  The force and suddenness startled her. In a blink, his grace and confidence had been replaced with animal need. Her hands landed on his shoulders, then moved to his hair as he buried his face in her core. “Oh…” The guttural moan tore from her throat.

  She’d expected the stimulation to be too much, too soon, even with her training, but her sex was eager to let him sate his hunger upon her. The wet noises between his heated tongue and lips and her cunt provoked an even more intense arousal. Her legs widened, quivered. She needed him to be deeper. To force his way inside, to fill the emptiness.