by Joey W. Hill
You might only get this moment, she reminded herself for the last time. Make the best of it, damn it all.
Moving to the dresser, she removed the pins she’d used to keep her hair from getting wet. Picking up the brush, she began to stroke it through her golden-brown locks.
She believed in presenting herself well, but she’d never been the type of girl who primped and preened and thought about being the prettiest. Silly as it sounded, Sher had always been so astonishingly beautiful, Nina felt that need was covered in the family. A pleasant presentation helped her patients, made her more approachable to them, which was enough. Truth, beyond that, she didn’t give a lot of thought to her appearance most days.
Today was the exception.
Her hair might be more feathery than Sher’s thick locks, but it shone and had a lovely color under the light, one even Sher had said made her envious, because it made her think of sea sand, the sun, the sparkle of gold, all in one.
As Nina brushed and brushed, she did it the way she’d undressed. Getting slower, more deliberate in her motions, and then she stopped entirely, because he was right behind her, even though she couldn’t see him in the mirror. His hand came before her, took the brush and set it down. Then he coiled that hand in her hair, gathering it all together to twist it, tilt her head away from him, toward that grip. She turned her face to it, her lips inadvertently resting on his knuckles. She closed her eyes as he spoke.
“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life, Nina.”
He’d set the whisky down on the dresser and slid his hand down her other arm, to her wrist. Slowly turned it, with an intriguing pressure, slightly uncomfortable, as he pulled her hand behind her back to her buttocks. Her palm met a rigid heat beneath his slacks, a weight and size that filled her hand and considerably more. “This is what you do to me, just looking at you. Turn around.”
She obeyed as he released her and pivoted, her shoulder brushing his chest, he stood so close. He let her hair fall free through his fingers, the strands caressing her mostly bare shoulders. Rising on her toes, she slid her arms around his neck, putting her face against his throat, his shoulder, burying herself there as his arms tightened around her back and beneath her hips. He lifted her, hitching her up his body so she was looking down at him when she lifted her head.
His lips had a warm curve that matched his blue eyes. His expression was intent, his gaze so deep, the brows and lashes so dark. He had such a strong face, a firm chin and cheekbones. He was movie star hero handsome, and yet here he was, in a quiet room just with her. When he laid her down on the bed and leaned over her, his hair tumbling over his brow, she was trembling even more. Yet she reached up and captured a strand of his hair between her knuckles, letting it slide through.
“Do you fear me, love?” he said, his eyes darkening.
She shook her head. Nodded. Her hand dropped to his biceps, gripping. He studied her face a long moment, then lowered his own to kiss her. Like at the train station, only this time as it deepened, he went to his elbows, bringing the weight of his body onto her. Her legs opened at the unspoken insistence, cradling him, her hips lifting to the pressure of his. A little moan escaped her lips, and he answered with more teasing penetrations of his tongue. His hands slid over her face, her throat, her shoulders.
When at last he broke the kiss, he pushed himself up, but he cupped a breast through the soft folds of the nightgown, finding the nipple to tease it to a sharper point. Her hips jerked. His eyes got even darker, his mouth more set. She saw the flicker in his gaze. Her Master, liking her desperate need. She responded to that, wanting to show him just how desperate she could get. She wanted to please him, God help her.
“You do that merely by breathing. Don’t distress yourself. Stay here with me. This cottage is our world. Our only world tonight.”
He bent, put his mouth to her throat. Nina thought he might feed on her, wanted him to do so, but he denied her for now. Instead, he suckled on her flesh, nipped and played, moving down, his hands cupping both her breasts. She arched, crying out as he closed his mouth over one aching nipple through the thin fabric, his thumb flicking over the other, refusing to leave either one unattended. She writhed beneath him, shocked at how responsive her body was to him, so quickly. Again, not the training. This need stemmed from three years of imaginings, fantasizing.
Fantasizing, hmm? You’ll have to share some of those imaginings with me, sweet nurse. So I can spend time making them reality for you. His other hand dipped to stroke her knee, up her thigh.
“Whisky and cream is one of my favorite combinations,” he murmured, and he slid his fingers between her legs, teasing, spreading her wetness over the lips, moving with her convulsions. He worked her into a rhythm against his hands like she was performing a sensual dance. She moaned and whimpered with every new shot of sensation his clever fingers sent through her. Every sound made his eyes spark and his expression become more intense, capturing her, making her even more willing to surrender, to keep that look on his face. Pleasing him.
He didn’t merely focus on those parts of her that men wanted. It was as if he wanted every single inch of her flesh and what lay beneath it, and he took his time, exploring, caressing, kissing, making noises of approval that had her losing every part of herself to him. Willingly. Gladly.
“Sweet nurse. Beautiful girl. Lovely woman. A treasure. Do you know why you stayed in my mind, Nina? Why this tears you apart so?”
She had no spare brain cells to consider the complexity of the first question and didn’t want to shred her heart further by examining the second. But he didn’t require her to answer either.
“You remember how I told you to handle the demons of the past? Did you do that?”
Heat filled her cheeks, but he framed her face with his hand when she would have averted her gaze. “You didn’t answer me last time I asked. You’ll answer me now, Nina.”
“I did.”
“How often?” The husky demand made her shiver.
He might as well have asked her how often she thought of him, for the demons came more often than not, every night. She’d chased them away with thoughts of him, her hand slipping between her legs as she imagined him there instead.
“That must be why I woke hard and aching for you so much. Even without the second mark, I could feel your need for me. But I’m here now. Real and alive. That night, I implied that you didn’t belong to me. Do you remember?”
She remembered everything about that night. About him. Over time, she’d suspected she’d exaggerated some details to give her fantasies even more power. But with him upon her, so close, his heat and scent and sheer energy surrounding her, she knew she’d actually fallen short.
Undeniable male satisfaction surged at her thoughts, but there was no smugness. Just more fierce approval.
“Minutes after I left your side, I knew what I said was total bollocks.” He spoke against her lips, even as his hips pressed harder against her core, wresting another whimper from her. “You do belong to me, and I am your Master. The InhServ bullshit, it doesn’t mean anything. This is you and me. The way you look at me, how you say my name, tells me that you know it.”
She shook her head, wanted to deny it, but couldn’t get anything to come to her lips as he looked back at her. Her heart tried to pound out of her chest.
She remembered that moment in the boarding house when she’d thought about giving into his will, because he’d proven it was stronger than hers. That she could commit herself to his care and it would be all right. That she could trust him with her deepest worries, the questions whose answers she feared.
I want to belong to you, but I want to belong to me, too. Do I have to lose me to have you?
A muscle flexed in his jaw. Rather than answering, he lowered his head again. She sucked in a breath, her eyes closing as he pushed aside the fabric, framed her now bared breasts with it, a contrast of silk and heated male skin as his mouth began to torment and worship, stroke and bite, driving thou
ght and worry away. Her legs lifted, clamped over his hips, her body rising and lifting in an instinctive way that rubbed her damp center against his slacks, against his ready cock straining beneath it.
He wouldn’t be rushed, though. He spent so much time on her breasts she was afraid she was about to release, her body struggling against his, the friction taking her so very close. But when her body was vibrating on that very cusp, he moved down, his mouth on her sternum, then lower, to put a lingering kiss on her navel through the sheer garment.
He stood up on his knees, unbuckled his belt, pulled it free and set it aside, then unfastened his slacks. He slid off the end of the bed to rid himself of the rest. She was glad for it, wanting to see all of him. He stripped off the cotton singlet with a careless flex of rippling muscles and broad shoulders. Then he pushed off the trousers and the boxers under them.
Her gaze dwelled upon the lean flanks and smoothly muscled thighs, the hint of tight arse and the high, thick cock. The tip was glistening with fluid as he put his knee on the bed and leaned over her. His gaze coursed over her, from parted lips and feverish eyes to taut-peaked breasts and trembling limbs. Her legs were open for him and, under the demand of his gaze, she couldn’t even think of modesty or denying him the view he so obviously demanded.
“I give you permission to call me by the name we both want to hear,” he said. “No matter your doubts and worries of where it will take you. I want it from your lips. Need it. It will rip something inside me to hear you say it. Something I want destroyed.”
His voice was rough, and those crimson sparks in his eyes, the slight lengthening of his fangs, let her see him as the otherworldly creature he was, crouched over her, waiting, vibrating with power, all muscles taut and defined along his shoulders and sides.
It would rip something apart in her to say it, too, but he was leaving her no choice. She had to face it. Accept that one truth in order to go any further. Wherever it took them.
Master.
“Aloud,” he demanded, and it came to her lips, along with tears in the corners of her eyes.
“Master.”
He slid the sheer fabric of the night gown up to her waist and lowered himself to his elbows. Her inner thighs pressed intimately against his bare hips, and his cock rested against her lower abdomen. The smooth, heated weight of his testicles rubbed the lips of her sex, making her quiver harder.
Her kissed her again, gentle, soothing, taking away the tears. He kissed her the way a lover would, making her hold onto his shoulders, press her face to his neck again. “Love me, Alistair,” she whispered. “Please love me…”
He stilled against her. She couldn’t take it back. Couldn’t hide her deepest wish from him, could she? It was what it was, but if he withdrew from her now, she would shatter.
She let out a shuddering breath as he let his lips drift across her cheek, things resuming once more. His fingers were between them, stroking her sex, opening her, finding the slippery evidence of her arousal before he guided the head of his cock there.
Hold onto me, sweet love.
Clasping his shoulders, she pressed her mouth to his collarbone. At the same time, he gripped her hair, holding her head tilted away from him again, telling her what he intended. Whenever he tightened his hand in her hair like that, things stilled, inside and out, her mind a whirling point. It took away any trepidation.
Then he pressed forward, sliding into her in one smooth, strong motion. As that barrier broke, he sank his fangs into her throat.
The pain was there, a sharp stab between her legs that made her suck in her breath, but the arousal was still there too, fighting with the pain, and it was stronger. Getting stronger by the second. She embraced the pain, tightened her legs around him, arousal thickening her tissues and making her body strain up to him, take him impossibly deeper.
She remembered the night behind the tent, when he said he could inject something into her bloodstream that would lessen the pain of the bite by increasing the arousal. It was a spike that felt like being catapulted up a hill, the stomach bobbing and the whole body tightening in anticipation.
She had the odd thought that she really didn’t want him to make a habit of doing that, of changing the experience with something chemical, but she had to admit her gratitude in this instance so the pain of losing her virginity couldn’t override other feelings and sensations he was giving her.
I might permit you the full experience for future feedings or punishments, but tonight, I will not allow you to feel any pain I can prevent. And there’s more to it tonight…
It was a feeling like being in a whirlpool, a slow, dizzying spin that got tighter and tighter. She constricted her arms around his back. He had such broad shoulders, such smooth firm skin and musculature. And he was a furnace, heating her within and out. Filling her. Her mind was whirling in that same spin, and she registered it was different, something more. As if beneath that whirlpool was a deep cave, and she was sinking, sinking, even as she tightened her grip on him, ensuring that he was with her, holding her fast. He was. In her mind, her heart and soul. And it wasn’t merely romantic imaginings.
As she tried to grasp what was happening, he withdrew slightly, then pushed back in, a slow glide that had her sore channel recuperating, contracting on him. She let that breath out, a shaky thing, and he caught it when he put his mouth over hers again, tangling with her tongue, nipping at her lips, delving deep. He cupped her skull, fingers tightening. He could crush bone, which made his gentleness even more compelling. She felt held, protected.
Loved. There it was again, that word that had to be an illusion, but if her reality was going to be devoid of any dreams of her own, she would take the illusions and make what she could of them. Whatever he’d done made her vulnerable, open beyond anything she’d ever felt, but he was doing things to shelter her, keep her from panicking.
He was beginning to be more insistent in that rhythm, more aggressive, and she embraced his aggression. Her nails dug into his shoulders as the response between her legs built to her lower abdomen and chest, making everything urgent. God, he filled her so deeply, stretched her, and she wanted that, wanted him.
“You like my cock inside you, hmm? The feeling is fucking mutual, sweet nurse. I don’t want to ever let you up. I may keep you tied to this bed, legs spread, so I can do this to you whenever I wish, as long as we’re here. Your pleasure is mine to command, and I plan to be a very demanding Master.”
She shuddered at his words, uttered in that deep, husky voice. She was the center of his attention, an incredible, terrifying, exhilarating place to be, for she felt his need, and it was endless. As the climax started to take her, he gripped her wrists and pulled them up above her head with one powerful hand, the other settling on her throat, tipping up her chin so she was captured by the look in his eyes. “Not until I say so, Nina,” he said. “You release when I give you permission. Fight it for me. Make it build to please your Master.”
His voice was hoarse. From the ripple through his shoulders and jerk of his body between her legs, she knew he wasn’t far from his own release. But somewhere in her dazed state, she understood commanding her at the edge of his own completion made it more intense, for them both. Things quivered deep inside her, things breaking, changing, as she gave in to his will and denied her own. For them both.
He pushed in further, withdrew, stroked in a maddening way, his expression becoming savage as hers became more desperate, her lips parting, body quivering violently, fingers clutching over his grip on her wrists.
“Alistair…please.”
“Just a moment more. Love the feel of your cunt squeezing me, holding me. So tight.”
She strained against him, her arms, her body, and reveled in his strength, how he compensated, the male animal in him rousing even more as he registered she was actively fighting him to distract herself, hold back on her release.
He released her wrists, caressed her face, a quick movement before he brought his own wrist to his
mouth and pierced it, drawing blood to the surface. Then he was cupping her cheek, bringing the wrist to her lips.
At the hospital, she’d dulled her senses to the smell of blood, the detachment necessary. Another layer of horror buried where it couldn’t interfere with her duties. If she’d ever been told then she’d find the smell of blood appetizing, she would have told the person they’d turned the corner. Let all the kangaroos loose in their top paddock.
Yet his blood had the compelling sweetness of the best wine, the comfort of hot cider in winter or refreshing restoration of lemonade in summer. Her lips parted, tasted, and then she was feeding at his wrist, suckling, her body bucking with the need to let go even as her throat worked, swallowing him down.
My sweet nurse. My beautiful strong girl.
She’d lowered her gaze as she drank, but now her eyes widened, snapping back up to him. The whirling sensation became a full roller coaster spin. Her body bowed up, every muscle tensing, and she clutched his shoulders once more, holding on. That sinking feeling became a free fall, everything spinning even as his hands remained sure and hard upon her. His cock, buried inside her, was an anchor point that assured her she wasn’t alone in whatever was happening.
Deep, deeper. He sank deep inside her, deep as he was in her body and more, through the shadows and nightmares, hopes and dreams, and he saw them all.
He’d given her the third mark. She realized it at the same moment he started to move inside her again, insisting, his eyes so close, mouth so taut. Her own lips parted, her breath on his lips. “Please…”
She didn’t know what her plea was for this time, but he gave her an answer. “Come for me, sweet nurse. Be mine and come for me.”
She wasn’t sure what to do, but her body was. The climax seized her, threw her off the edge, even as her heart and soul fell even further, right into his waiting palms.
Chapter Sixteen
Quiet. She was still beneath him, but curled, her head dipped so her forehead was against the base of his throat. He cupped her skull again, as her hands fisted against his chest between them, her breath shallow. Managing the third mark connection was different from the second mark. One was a voice, and a sharing of some feelings, some thoughts without words. This was an awareness that whatever feeling, stray thought or even unconscious compulsion she had was within his grasp to realize and examine. A full invasion of self, no privacy of her own, ever again. Nowhere to retreat, to shield herself.