Vampire's Embrace: A Vampire Queen Series Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  He rose then, shifting her so she remained sitting on the sand as he stood, stepped back several paces from her. As she lifted her head to look at him, she found his attention had sharpened on her in that way that could hold her motionless, even if he wasn’t touching her.

  “Release the blanket,” he said.

  She loosened her grip on it, let it pool around her. When he shifted a step closer, she pressed her lips together, swallowed. He studied her, from her face, to her neck and lower, his gaze coursing over the tilt of her breasts, curve of hips, sex and thighs, all the way to her feet and back.

  “Come and kneel at my feet. Facing me.”

  She obeyed, shifting forward. He watched her, so closely it felt like his hands were upon her, guiding her.

  “Now down further.” His voice was low, caressing. “Put your hands flat on the ground, your cheek against my calf.”

  Hesitantly, she complied, placing her palms in the soft sand on either side of his foot, and then…

  He stepped back half a stride. “Continue. Leave your knees where they are.”

  She had to stretch out further to reach him, and when she did, it sloped her body downward. Her cheek and jaw were against his calf, clad in his slacks, but she could feel the muscle and heat of him beneath. His foot was bare, her thumb brushing the outside of it.

  “Good. Beautiful.” He bent enough to slide his fingertips along her spine, starting between her shoulder blades and then trailing upward toward her canted hips. “Be still and quiet. Quiet your mind. Feel my touch. What I feel, having you this way.”

  She wasn’t sure what he meant, and he had to admonish her a couple times to quiet her thoughts, still the cascade of emotions going through her mind. His fingers continued to glide up and down her back. He dropped to one knee, curved over her.

  The tide rushed in, rushed out. The seabirds cried, and the air slid over her bare body like his touch. Natural, easy, something that made sense. His heat, his scent, enveloped her with those things. She was weary, but there was more to this than that.

  A feeling unfolded within her. She wasn’t sure when it happened, but at a certain point she didn’t have her cheek pressed to his calf because he’d commanded it. It was there because she wanted to put it there. She turned her head, brushed her lips against it, wishing the slacks weren’t a barrier. The mindless act of devotion startled her, but that reaction occurred in some hazy part of her mind that didn’t disrupt it.

  He murmured in approval, but kept stroking her. Then he adjusted that hand to the back of her neck, adding pressure to hold her there, emphasizing the difference in their positions. Her breath shortened, her heart thumped an extra beat, and her thighs trembled. Her body eased and tightened as the desire to give herself fully to his attentions, to his utter attention on her, grew. His other hand slid up the slope of her back again, his palm cupping her buttock, fingers drifting over the lips of her sex, which were damp, responsive.

  “Does this feel good?” he asked, a rough note to his voice.

  “Yes,” she answered. Though she might not be able to say why, exactly.

  He paused. A long pause. It wasn’t so much that he was waiting, expecting the correction, as he was giving her an opportunity to find the path herself.

  “Yes, sir. Master.” The word set off countless other things inside her, so that her voice hitched over it. She curled her fingers into the sand as he rewarded her, stroking her some more. Between her legs, her upper thighs, up her spine again. She made a sound suspiciously like a yearning plea when his other hand tightened on the back of her neck.

  She rubbed her face against him again, pressed harder. What made the reaction terrifying and confusing was it wasn’t merely sexual. The sexual response was a manifestation. Heat from a fire, light coming off of a star that burned brightly because it existed. It was.

  It made her think of that new mark on her wrist, that had appeared itself independently of either of their desires. Or had it?

  “What does this give you?” she asked, a breathless whisper. It aroused him, she knew, but there was a deeper component to it for him, just as there was for her.

  Another long pause, then he spoke in her mind.

  Peace.

  She nodded against his leg, stayed quiet and still as he continued to stroke. There was peace in passion, in need and yearning. In pleasing and desiring him at the same moment.

  He seemed to be mulling something over, something causing him to be in his head. She tried to be patient, wait him out. Brushing her mouth against him again, she closed her eyes. She could feel his attention on her bowed head. It wasn’t an uncomfortable pose for either of them, no matter how unsettling the thought was.

  “Tell me what you want to say to me,” he said at last. “I want to hear the words.”

  This was a different side to him, but she also felt closer to the man she remembered. She needed to remember both sides, just as he was acknowledging both sides of her. Even the side that she wasn’t as uncomfortable acknowledging, for either of them. But it didn’t make it less true.

  Master and submissive.

  She heard his approving growl and her stomach leaped a little, emphasizing the truth of it. “You can sit up,” he said quietly. “Speak while looking at me.”

  She complied, but found it too hard to look in his face quite yet. “I believe you’re trying to deal fairly with me,” she said slowly. “As fairly as your world allows. I truly…if I am going to have to have a vampire master, then you’re…”

  “The devil you know?”

  Her lips curved, a little sad, but truth was truth. She left that sensitive topic alone and forged toward another one. “Is there any room to have something for myself?”

  “The nursing.”

  She nodded, and continued, despite the slight tension in his jaw she saw as she finally found the courage to look at his face. “It’s what I always wanted to do with my life, Alistair. It’s who I am. I understand that I must be what you, as a Region Master, need from an InhServ. But if there is even a little room in that, for me to spend a few hours of daylight being a nurse, helping at the hospital, it would go a long way to helping me accept who I need to be for you.”

  He sighed, rubbed a hand over his face, and then gazed at her, frowning. Reaching out, he extended his hand. She put hers into it. “I know how much it means to you, Nina. It’s part of why I’ve been reluctant. I’m not sure either role is something to which you can only give half of yourself. Sometimes it’s worse to have a taste of what you can never have your fill of, than to not have the temptation at all.”

  His fingers tightened on hers. “Which is why there’ve been times I’ve thought about taking you back to The Mistress before those thirty days are up,” he said, low.

  She wasn’t entirely sure of his meaning, but his expression made her feel that surge of unstable emotions again, so many things warring within her. What she wanted, needed. Hoped. What she could have.

  “Can we at least try?” she persisted, pushing those feelings away.

  He studied her a long moment. “Perhaps. I will think on it. Can you trust me enough to believe I will?”

  “Yes.” She let out a breath, and a light smile touched his grim mouth. But even as she let out the relieved sigh, it felt somewhat as if he’d stepped further away from her. Or she had, away from him. There was a reserve to him again, but it wasn’t unfriendly.

  He stood, holding out a hand. “Come back to the cottage with me, Nina.”

  She hesitated, looking up at him. She was on her knees at his feet, her hand resting lightly on his knee, and the position, the expression on his face as he gazed down at her, made her swallow. She didn’t want that distance between them.

  “When I came off the boat in Singapore,” she said slowly, “I thought I knew how to be a nurse. When the war reached us and suddenly we had so many casualties, that first day I must have thrown up three times. I bandaged lads while swiping the tears out of my eyes, and I felt so overw
helmed I wanted to scream at everything and everyone to stop. I was like a spinning top, with everyone bumping me and shoving me this way and that, keeping me out of the way or pushing me where I needed to be. I thought, I’m not ready for this. I’m not. I keep trying to see this in that way, thinking I’ll work it out.”

  He reached down to trail his fingertips along her face again, brush through the wisps of hair dancing along the curve of her cheek. “I know you will. You’re the most capable woman I’ve ever met. Except for a certain vampire queen I know, and she has about a thousand years of experience on you.”

  “She would have been a good one to have around during those history quizzes I was so bad at,” she said.

  He smiled then, and the gesture made her feel better, too. She put her hand in his grasp.

  When he brought her to her feet, they were close. He held her, tipping up her chin. He kept the two of them there, silent, motionless. There were things in his expression that she didn’t understand, but some part of her knew they needed her attention. Maybe needed her. Familiar, in a way she couldn’t pinpoint, and then it was lost as he broke that contact, stepped back, though he retained her hand.

  “Though it’s very inadvisable, we’ll stay here until dusk tomorrow.”

  He didn’t explain that, but instead bent and lifted her, letting her clutch the blanket to bring it with them, and carried her back to the cottage. Up the stairs, into the house, with strength and the surefootedness of a night creature. He closed the door behind them with a push of his foot. The lamp light threw shadows on the wall as he navigated through the kitchen. He’d opened a couple of the windows earlier so the breeze rippled the curtains like whispering angels as they passed.

  He carried her to the bedroom, laid her down. He leaned over her a long moment, gazing down at her. She didn’t feel a need to say anything. When her fingers grazed his mouth, he kissed them, squeezed her wrist lightly.

  Then he straightened and removed his slacks. She watched him as he had her, and he stood by the side of the bed where she could reach out, trail her fingers down his thigh. Giving her a tenderly reproving look, he climbed into the bed and slid in behind her, nudging her to her side to bring her hips into the cradle of his. She shuddered as he pressed an erection against her lower back that told her he would have her again. Now. Her body’s trembling response welcomed the idea.

  He placed his palm low on her abdomen, an anchor point, as he guided himself carefully into her channel at that angle. The third mark’s healing ability had erased the soreness of losing her virginity. He sank deep, rocking against her, his fingertips playing over her clit as she made little noises, biting the pillow as the response built and he kept teasing her, higher, higher.

  “Squeeze down on me, love. Fuck, like that. Just like that.” He cupped her breast, moving his hand from her clit, toying with her nipples and stroking.

  This time, it wasn’t the poetic dance it was before, but she felt his need, his desire to claim, and it was a different kind of magic. Rougher. Faster. Yet when he came inside her, she was already close to begging for her own climax.

  Actual begging works. As he slowed, he planted himself deeply in her, holding her tight against him. Her lips parted on a rasping breath.

  “Please…Master.”

  “What do you want, Nina?”

  “I need…I need to climax. I want…I want to please you.”

  “You think that will please me?”

  She nodded desperately.

  “Why?” he asked conversationally, though she could still hear the hoarseness in his voice from the power of his own release.

  “Because my pleasure serves yours…it’s for you, Master.”

  “And that,” he murmured, his hand falling to stroke between her legs again, “Is something that can’t be taught. Come for me, Nina.”

  She screamed her way through it, his clever fingers knowing how to take her up and up, her arse pressing hard into the cradle of his pelvis. Unbelievably, he hadn’t softened. She couldn’t imagine how many more times he would do this before dawn came. Even if her body tired, she expected he had the power to bring it back to life to meet his demands.

  Not my power, Nina. Yours. Your endless desire to submit and meet my demands. I will take all you have to offer and treasure the gift, even as I demand more.

  He did. Several more times. When dawn came and she was drifting in a haze, he finally bade her rest, pressing a kiss to her neck. He left his mouth there, his nose burrowed in her hair.

  “I’m not sure I could let you go back into the InhServ program,” he said. “I don’t think I could bear seeing you give that gift to another. I’d rather maintain the pathetic illusion it’s a response to me alone.”

  He spoke the rest in her mind, rough, demanding, with a touch of darker feelings to it. I am impossibly cruel. And selfish. I can’t let you go, because when I’m with you, I feel…

  He didn’t finish it. But then, as sleep pulled her down, she realized he had.

  When I’m with you…I feel.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I feel less alone.

  I feel real.

  I feel hope isn’t an illusion.

  He hadn’t articulated those things, but Alistair suspected they were blanks that she could fill in, if turning that same mirror on herself. Maybe that was what made their relationship so very fraught with peril. They made one another feel those things, even as he had the power to shred her, on so many levels.

  Ennui was an indifference malaise that attacked many vampires as they closed in on five hundred, apparently the far more dangerous equivalent of the mid-life crisis. But it could happen much younger, on occasion. It hadn’t been lost on him that his intensity toward becoming Region Master smacked of trying to make something out of nothing. Each step he’d achieved had been met, not with celebration or reflection, but feverish planning for the next step.

  Maybe that was why he was taking more seriously her request to work at the hospital. Humans could despair as well, when they felt their lives had no value. But he wondered if his hesitation had to do with him, rather than a bending of the rules. Her passion for being a nurse made him feel a little lonely, which he knew was pathetically stupid. Faith, he was no better than Luigi, a momma’s boy, needing a female to put him at the center of her world.

  He stood at the entrance to the cottage bedroom. During daylight, he’d gone to ground in the cellar that Hal had enlarged for him. A little damp and in need of some repair now, but it had served the purpose. He’d let Nina enjoy her day above ground, and had seen her walk along the dune line, testing her ability to see the ocean beyond as she’d seen it once before, instead of as a trigger for her nightmares. He’d stayed with her in her mind during the walk, and she’d done well, but he’d told her not to test it when the sun grew higher in the sky and he had to sleep more deeply.

  So she’d passed her day reading some of the books in the cottage, and taken a walk along the beach road to a bakery. She’d brought back some pastries for them to enjoy when he woke. And fallen asleep in the bed, her nose pressed to the pillow where he’d laid his head the night before.

  Now another night had come, and it was past time for them to be on their way. But she was still sleeping deeply. She had nightmares a lot. He already knew that. He also found out when he slept curled protectively around her, she didn’t.

  Most vampires slept separately from their servants. For one thing, the third marks handled a variety of tasks during the day while their vampires slept. But when he could rest with her, he would. He had a whole houseful of staff to do for him. She could align her sleep schedule with his. Except when she worked at the hospital.

  He realized he’d been standing there for some time, watching her. And while he’d been doing that, his mind hadn’t drifted toward the dark corners where bloody, broken bodies waited. He’d done standing what she was doing sleeping. Taken a break. He sighed. Time to wake her.

  Sweet nurse. Come back to me.r />
  His lips twitched as she murmured something and burrowed deeper, a frown crossing her brow. Cranky. He contemplated a few ways of waking her, and decided to start with her pretty feet, working his way up her ankles and calves with his mouth. As he did so, his intent became far less playful, and he eased her thighs apart, stretching over her, gazing up at the changes in expression, her dawning awareness as his demands penetrated her sleep.

  She shifted restlessly, opened to him, her hand falling upon his head, fingers tangling in his hair. He rubbed his nose in her cunt, undeniable satisfaction surging through him at the scent of himself there, and began to tease her with tongue and lips. Mine. All fucking mine.

  She sighed, a whisper of sound. A name. “Rick…”

  Alistair’s head jerked up. Whatever she saw in his face caused her aroused eyes to widen, but not before he caught the sparkle in their brown depths, the arrested twitch of her lips.

  She was teasing him. Astonishingly. Unwisely.

  “Casablanca. Humphrey Bogart’s character. You did say you wanted me to share my fantasies,” she reminded him, albeit breathlessly. “You just assumed they were about you. And it’s your own fault. You have a Buick Phaeton in your garage at home, just like he drove. It planted the thought.”

  When he didn’t say anything right away, her smile became more tentative, uncertain of his response. He was still trying to manage it himself. But one imperative wouldn’t be denied. Lifting her out of the bed, he put her against the bedroom wall, himself against her. Her eyes widened anew at the size of his reaction, and then her lips parted as he sheathed himself in wetness.

  “That better be all for me,” he growled. Her flush spread along her lovely jaw. When she parted her lips to speak, he captured her mouth and thrust even deeper, holding her pinned against the wall. His body pressed her thighs wide so he was hitting her clit with a repetitive impact that would drive up her arousal but give her no relief.