Vampire's Embrace: A Vampire Queen Series Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  She desperately wanted Alistair to say something, anything, in her head. But she felt him there, felt that connection, and touched it in her mind, closing mental fingers on it like a rope. He was here. He wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her.

  Or would he? As she reviewed all the things that had happened at the InhServ school, as well as the things she’d been told by her roommates would happen in the company of other vampires, she realized she was being naïve. Had it taken so little time for her to forget?

  Alistair and she weren’t building a relationship with the expectations of a human man and woman. He was her Master, she was his servant. His property. His earlier possessiveness had warmed her, because her mind had treated it as evidence of his desire for her to be his exclusively. In the vampire-servant world, it didn’t mean that at all. That realization brought back the cold ball of fear that was always ready to take up every bit of space in her lower belly. And grow spikes.

  Before Bangka, she hadn’t feared the unknown and unexpected. That was because she hadn’t experienced the full, crushing weight of what those two elements could bring. She hadn’t understood enough to fear them.

  But wasn’t that the definition of courage? Not the absence of fear, but the ability to face one’s fears, make the best of it. Persevere. Thrive. Find her own way, on her own ground, even if she had the narrowest of spaces to call hers.

  Locking her fear down, she went to prepare tea. Thank goodness, things were well-stocked in the kitchen. After she started the kettle boiling, she tried not to focus on the fact she was preparing tea almost naked. She didn’t know if it helped or disrupted that effort, Anahera and Alistair entering the house with Tane at their heels, the two vampires engaged in casual conversation. To all appearances, they were ignoring her the way the help often was, as long as they were doing as told.

  As Anahera took a seat on the couch, Tane moved to the wall at his Mistress’s back and stood there, his hands folded. Nina had been taught the protocol, but hadn’t really believed it until she saw it. If Anahera spent the next eight hours on that couch, Tane would stay right there, barely moving, ready to attend whatever she needed.

  It was then Nina realized she’d set out a service with three teacups. Alistair had said to prepare tea for him and Anahera. Not Tane. He wasn’t a guest.

  Yet Nina felt the touch of his gaze, frequently. Did Alistair not notice? Not care that the male was examining her in a blatantly sexual manner? But then, so was his Mistress. As Anahera spoke to Alistair, her eyes went to Nina often, and lingered. When Nina brought the tray to the table between them and bent, the female’s gaze slid over the quiver of her breasts. She reached out, her fingertips brushing Nina’s sternum.

  “Stay bent over, girl,” she ordered as Nina started to straighten. “Hold onto the tray. Keep it an inch above the table and remain in that position.”

  Nina’s gaze flitted to Alistair. He lifted a brow. “Your gaze should be lowered, Nina.”

  “There’s another way to teach that,” Anahera said as Nina instantly complied. “Take off your jacket and shirt, Tane. Then come braid her hair. The way I like.”

  Nina heard the rustle of clothing as Tane shrugged out of his jacket. In her peripheral vision, she saw the white flash of his shirt as he pulled it free of his trousers, unbuttoned and removed it, revealing tan skin. Tan marked skin. She had a brief impression of a complicated black ink design marked over a great deal of muscle. When he moved from the wall, the china on the tray rattled, the quiver in Nina’s arms translating to the delicate glassware. Anahera’s full lips curved, a gesture Nina caught before she jerked her gaze back down, but Anahera had seen her infraction.

  “She definitely needs reinforcement of her training, Alistair. While you could fault them for sending you one that’s not as prepared as she should be, the insult comes with the secret delight of being able to do it yourself.”

  Tane’s thigh pressed intimately against Nina’s side as he grasped the tail of hair Nina had clasped with a barrette at her nape. Now Tane unfastened the barrette, and threaded noticeably powerful fingers through her hair, once, twice, again. With each pass, he pulled harder, dug in deeper, until she felt the tension against her cheek bones and jaw, her brow. At length, he began to braid the hair, swift and deft.

  He made the braid tight, leaving the impression that he’d restrained her hair the way Alistair might have done with her arms and legs. Her body responded accordingly, her folds dampening, nipples growing tight, her breath more shallow, but she took no pleasure in the involuntary response.

  “You may put the tray on the table, Nina,” Anahera said. “Remain motionless, however.”

  That sick feeling in her stomach was growing. How long did it take someone to learn how to accept something so contrary to what she’d ever known? Her gaze flitted up again, trying to find Alistair. Even with that tether in her mind, it wasn’t enough. She needed to see his face.

  Anahera reached out, seized the braided rope of her hair and yanked it forward, straight over her brow and down. It jerked Nina’s chin toward her chest. A thunk, and Nina gasped, startled, as Tane drove a knife into the table through the braid. Now her head was held down next to the tea tray, so close to the table her forehead almost brushed the wood surface.

  She couldn’t see anything but the tray of sugar cubes and pitcher of milk right in her peripheral vision. Unless she twisted her head around with enough effort that disobedience would be an intended infraction. The heat of the tea pot was close enough to condense moisture against her cheek.

  She then became aware of other presences. Tane was gone and the leg pressed against Nina’s hip and thigh was Alistair’s. Anahera was standing on the other side of her, the soft whisper of her clothes against Nina’s flesh.

  “You can let go of my wrist, Lord Alistair,” Anahera said mildly. “I intended her no harm.”

  “One cannot be sure, Lady Anahera. You looked rather vicious. I’d rather not have to tell the Council I’ve already damaged this InhServ irreparably.”

  Alistair’s voice was cordial, but flat. As if a lot of compressed emotions were behind it. Nina didn’t know if that was something only she intuited, or if it was equally apparent to Anahera. From the woman’s casual response, perhaps not.

  “You have third marked her. She is quite sturdy, I’m sure. Fragile only in experience, not in body. Nina, I want my tea with two sugars and milk, please.”

  She wanted her to pour it from this position? Obviously so. But that wasn’t all.

  “Tane, could you please start the punishment?” Anahera settled back on the couch. Alistair moved back to his chair as well, though Nina missed the contact far too intensely. She wrapped her mind around that connection again, the lifeline, though she dearly wished he’d say something, anything, in her mind.

  “I assume Nina will not spill any of my tea,” Anahera said. “For if she does, the punishment will have to continue until she does it right.”

  “You missed your calling,” Alistair said lightly. “Perhaps you should have joined The Mistress.”

  “I have spent some time at Taonga. Did you realize that’s what she calls it, informally? She honors the Maori, since she is part Maori herself. Though I think she gave it the name merely because she likes the meaning. Treasure is the simplest interpretation. But there are older definitions. Property obtained and held through aggression or rather, ‘by the spear.’”

  Moving as carefully as possible, Nina poured Anahera’s cup of tea. Dipped the small spoon into the sugar. Anahera tsked as a few grains slipped off the spoon, the result of Nina orienting her movements to her awkward position. Her breasts rubbed against the table and her stomach muscles clenched at the effort of performing the task.

  “She should have named it whakamaurutanga, though that is far more of a mouthful.” Anahera chuckled. “Sanctuary. The Mistress welcomes Region Masters and overlords there when they feel a need to get away from cares. It’s one of the few attractions we have for the
upper echelon outside Australia.”

  There was a cynical edge to the comment, but then it was gone, Anahera’s tone casual again. “It gives her initiates real vampires to serve, practice their skills. The Mistress herself is an added benefit. She is not as old as I am, and a made vampire on top of that. I have forced her capitulation to me before, but we both found it a good fight, as well as a good outcome. She is a pleasure. Her and her Steele man. You could take Nina back there for a couple weeks of continued training while enjoying the restorative qualities of the place. When there is less to occupy you in Queensland.”

  “Like that’s ever likely to happen,” Alistair observed dryly, and won another feminine chuckle.

  Hearing The Mistress had been made to capitulate to the demands of another was an eye opener. Was that part of why Killara had tried to show her the power that came unexpectedly with submission? The Mistress had learned from it, learned how to give and take, ebb and flow. Could Nina do the same?

  Maybe. But now all she wanted was to rewind a few hours and wish Alistair had decided to leave earlier, no matter what she would have missed with him during that time.

  But would that time have any meaning when this was done? Any true intimacy between them seemed perpetually disrupted by a reminder that she was his property, no rights but what he gave her. Even those rights could be overridden by the politics that governed his life.

  A clinking of a belt had her hands tightening on the tray. Tane was removing it from his slacks. Opening them, from the sounds of it. Her stomach did a somersault.

  His large hand appeared in her field of vision. She’d prepared some toast for the vampires, since they enjoyed a few mouthfuls of food with their tea. Tane picked up the butter knife, cut a pat and put it on a plate. Then he ran his fingers through the softened substance. Oiling them up.

  They hadn’t put fingers inside her at the InhServ school, because Alistair was determined to take her virginity. He had, and now it didn’t matter who did it, apparently. The prize won and taken. Taonga. The clattering of the cups was increasing.

  “She is so green, Lord Alistair. Now I’m not surprised to hear you haven’t been bringing her out in public. I’d want to keep her all to myself, enjoying her every exercise in experience first.”

  The ache in Nina’s throat told her she was getting perilously close to tears, but she shoved them down viciously. She would not give this lot that satisfaction. She had given them to Alistair, and he’d wiped them away on his fingers. It was as if she was bound to a man with more faces than she could track, and—

  Tane eased her knickers to her knees, and his fingers probed her. She managed to hold still with tremendous effort. She was shamefully wet, but that was how she’d been trained, hadn’t she?

  Then he set his hands to her hips and started to drive a cock the size of a mallet into her.

  A shockwave of ice-cold rage and revulsion exploded inside her. She twisted away, hitting the tray so it spun off the table. The teapot crashed to the floor, but by the time it did, she’d reached over her head, seized the knife, yanked it free of her braid and spun.

  She’d been given precious little combat training. Not enough for it to be second nature—or so she’d thought. She’d cut her hand finding the knife handle, but it didn’t slow her down. Glass shards and a spray of hot liquid stung her calves. The blade flashed in a vicious arc as she swiped it at her attacker, driving him back. The fleeting shock in Tane’s eyes was so gratifying it almost made her snarl in triumph.

  The only thing that kept her from laying him open like a fish was his own defensive skills and the two vampires who could move far quicker than her.

  Her arm was seized in a bruising grip intended to crush bone. Before that could happen, she was yanked free, her shoulder wrenched so brutally and fast the joint was dislocated and then wrenched back in place, a snap of agonizing reflex. Screaming, she cursed them all. She had no friends in this room.

  She was pummeled, kicked, her body giving way before savage blows. But she felt no pain from them. At first, she thought it was because of the adrenaline. Then she realized she wasn’t being hit at all.

  Alistair was.

  She was jammed into a corner of the living room, down in a crouch, with his body a shield above her. He and Anahera were engaged in close quarters combat, ugly, brutal fighting. Nina heard fists hitting flesh with incredible force. There was kicking, pulling, shoving, as the two vampires struck at each other.

  No. She was wrong about that, too. From Alistair’s grunts and shifts, his movements over her, she realized it wasn’t his fists hitting flesh. He was blocking, shoving the other vampire back. The grunts came from the blows he was absorbing.

  Oh God. He wasn’t actively fighting the other vampire; he was putting his energy into protecting Nina.

  Nina cried out as the ferocity of the attack increased. Did Anahera have the knife? Nina had dropped it when the female vampire had seized her arm. She knew it had been her because of the four deep gouges the female’s nails had made in Nina’s arm.

  Surely, he had to fight back. She wanted to help. Wanted to…but she was helpless to do anything but huddle there under the arc of their struggling bodies. The violent energy, the smell of blood and rage, was too much. She wanted to escape it, black it all out, go somewhere quiet and still, but Alistair was here, taking this for her.

  Stop, please stop stop stop…

  She was shrieking it. So caught in a maelstrom, she didn’t realize that the combat had stopped until she felt Alistair’s hand on her shoulder, heard his mind-voice penetrating her pleas.

  It’s over, Nina. Be still.

  Anahera had at last recognized Alistair’s passiveness and backed off. Or something else. She felt the female vampire’s eyes on her and wondered if it was her hoarse pleas that had disrupted the fight. Then her words confirmed it.

  “What is wrong with her, Alistair? Is her mind broken?”

  Nina had her head down, but her eyes open, so she saw the woman’s bare feet retreat several steps, brace. She must have kicked off her expensive heels when chaos erupted.

  “She is not broken,” Alistair responded sharply, his voice a warning growl. “She went through things during the war.”

  Tane was off toward the left. He hadn’t been involved in the fight, apparently, but Nina could sense the tension in him, see one clenched fist at his thigh. She suspected he hadn’t been happy for his Mistress to be fighting the male vampire without his help. Perhaps registering Alistair’s defensive strategy had helped rein him back, or his Mistress had that much control over him.

  Unlike Alistair’s over her, woefully apparent. But Nina couldn’t have reacted any other way. She couldn’t have. Yet now, in the aftermath, she was realizing with a sinking heart just how bad this was. It wasn’t merely an infraction. She’d actively, violently refused to comply with a vampire’s command, a command that had been supported by her own Master. Or at least not opposed by him, she corrected herself, though it made her heart ache like it had been poisoned to think it.

  “I see.” Anahera’s voice was flat, now hard to read. She paused a curiously long moment, and Nina felt her eyes on her again. When she spoke next, her tone was different, directed fully toward Alistair. “You are unwise to hesitate to fight a female vampire, Lord Alistair. You only encourage more of my ire. Your own sire is a woman, and powerful enough to take most of us down.”

  “I mean no disrespect to your strength, Lady Anahera,” Alistair said. His voice was strained, but remarkably cordial. As if they’d merely had a slight disagreement, rather than a full bloody altercation. Even though it was a relative thing to vampires, Nina wanted to know how badly he was hurt.

  “My InhServ’s reaction was due to her inexperience and the trauma I mentioned,” he continued. “I would not have her spirit broken by a stumble along her learning curve. No more than I could strike out at you when you are the insulted party, albeit truly unintended.”

  She had her hands cur
led around his calf, Nina realized, and she was shaking hard against the wall. Alistair, I’m sorry. Are you okay? I just couldn’t…

  Be silent. His command was so stern, she jerked at the sound of it in her head. Pulling her hands back against herself, she huddled against the wall. She wanted to stand, be straight and proud, look Tane and Anahera in the eye and tell them to bugger off. Her legs were trembling badly, though, and she needed to do nothing that undermined Alistair’s authority further on this. That much, she’d worked out. The sinking feeling in her stomach told her she’d put him in a sticky situation on several different levels.

  It’s not your job to worry about such things, Nina.

  That wasn’t true. Not if her InhServ training had clued her into things right, but maybe that was just his way of saying he didn’t expect her to be capable of acting like an InhServ. That he didn’t expect that from her.

  Then she thought of Tane’s hands, his…oh God, his cock, shoving into her body.

  Bloody well right he can’t expect that of me. Let a stranger fuck me as part of bloody tea and expect I’ll just go along with it. The rest is bad enough.

  He had a choice to take her back before thirty days. If she mucked this up enough, he probably would. But she couldn’t change, couldn’t suppress the plaintive thought that rose to the top, wanted to come spilling from her lips in a harsh whisper.

  If I had to be yours, I wanted to be yours alone. She wouldn’t have thought she had any such girlhood dreams left, but apparently some things stuck.

  “If you’ll give me a moment, my lady,” Alistair said formally.

  He must have received an acknowledgement from Anahera, for the woman moved back toward the couch, Tane retreating with her. Alistair dropped to his heels, laid his hand on Nina’s hair. He presented his back to the other vampire, a decision that made Nina worry, but was obviously intentional, an act of trust. Look at me, Nina.

  She’d had her gaze on the floor, on his shoes. Lifting it to his steady blue eyes was so difficult she almost didn’t manage it, but he helped, putting a hand under her chin.