Vampire's Embrace: A Vampire Queen Series Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  There was that settling period, that sense of spiraling back to earth that seemed to be part of having such an earth-shattering climax. As she regained her senses, Nina recognized they were leaned into one another like tent supports. A momentary equality between them. Everyone needed that after an orgasm that intense. But she wasn’t surprised that Anahera recovered first.

  She eased out of Alistair, and there was a clink as she removed the strap-on, set it aside. At least, that was what Nina supposed she did. Tane eased out next, and her hand clutched convulsively at the side of Alistair’s neck, a reaction to the sensation of Anahera’s servant sliding along the channel that had been narrowed further by Alistair’s presence in her backside. Then Alistair was turning her, laying her down on the bed, his palm braced by her side as he eased himself out of her. He’d taken his time and courtesy getting in, but when things had let loose, he’d let her feel all that demand she craved, and her virgin tissues were feeling it, third mark healing abilities notwithstanding.

  “Allow Tane to attend to her while we get a drink,” Anahera said. Now in Nina’s field of vision, she looked despicably composed. She threaded her fingers through her silken hair, rippling over her shoulders. With a cheeky, lecherous look at Alistair, she tossed him his slacks, but held his shirt on her finger a moment before slipping it on, leaving it open over the undeniably tempting view of her toned body in lace and satin. “Think I’ll hold onto the shirt as my trophy. A reminder of the pleasure of having the arse of my neighbor.”

  “That’s custom-tailored. I’ll deduct the cost of it from my next tithe for this rental cottage,” Alistair said dryly.

  Anahera ignored the comment. “Maybe Luigi wasn’t the only one who wanted a mama to care for him.” Sauntering closer, she trailed her fingers down Alistair’s chest. “Maybe you’ll come to stay with me on occasion, enjoy what not being in charge feels like.”

  “Why is it every dominant female I meet thinks all a dominant male needs is to be topped?” Alistair closed his hand over her wrist, lifted her hand to kiss it. “Yet they get in a hellfire blue if anyone suggests the same about them. Ever have any hot, wet dreams about someone taking you over, Lady Anahera? Putting you on your knees to suck his dick?”

  Her eyes flashed. “That’s a bit crude.”

  “Maybe. But why don’t we just enjoy the moment and leave the yard dog posturing for another time?”

  He obviously startled the vampire female when he drew her close enough to brush his lips across her temple, an almost fond gesture. “Can’t we just get each other off and leave it at that? I’ve just had two beautiful women, one in my arse and me balls deep in the other. Life doesn’t get better than that.”

  He sounded composed, unconcerned. Whereas Nina was still trembling, her mind unable to do much more than follow the conversation, and experience a couple primal reactions.

  Utter hatred toward Anahera wearing Alistair’s shirt, teasing him and being teased in return.

  Despair as her Master strolled toward the bedroom door, pulling on his slacks, leaving her to Tane.

  Meal consumed, she was the dinner dishes set aside for someone else to clean up. She wanted to curl into a ball. The two vampires could go on their bloody way, because once they were out of the room, she’d care for herself. Tane would touch her again only if he wanted to lose skin.

  Alistair stopped in the doorway with Anahera. With a light smile, he ran his hands lightly up and down the female vampire’s arms as she leaned into him. “I’ll take a moment with my servant. She needs correction on some things happening in her head.”

  “An investment takes some upfront effort to pay off, hmm?” Anahera said, arching a brow.

  Alistair made a noncommittal noise. “There’s a good Scotch in the upper pantry. Why don’t you have Tane pour you a couple fingers and enjoy the back veranda view of the ocean? I’ll join you momentarily.”

  Anahera studied him, then glanced Nina’s way. “She’s a beauty,” she said, with those sultry tags to her voice. “There’s something to be said for innocence. It’s her broken side that will get her through the darkness in our world, I think. I’ll never forget those first days, teaching Tane how to serve his Mistress.”

  Her gaze slid to her servant, lingered. “Come, Tane. I need more than a couple fingers after such strenuous activity. And your cock needs a reminder of who it serves. You were somewhat too enthusiastic about plunging it into the body of Alistair’s sweet servant.”

  Tane’s brow rose. “I serve my Mistress’s wishes. I cannot help that I can only do so with great enthusiasm.”

  Anahera barked with silvery laughter. “We’ll see how enthusiastic you are when I tie your cock up in rope for a week.”

  They left the room, banter continuing, though Nina was pretty sure the female Region Master would likely do what she said and more.

  Tane would draw pleasure from it, because he was serving her. Because he liked that, and the fight, the push-pull between his Mistress’s desires and his own male nature to take. Nina had felt the latter unleashed fully as he pounded into her…all while his gaze had stayed locked on Anahera’s face, his blue-grey eyes piercing and intent. He’d been fucking her, not Nina. Nina thought of what Alistair had said, and wondered if Anahera had ever given Tane that gift. Allowing him to put his Mistress on her knees, wrapping the miles of long hair around his big fist to push her mouth down on him…

  She couldn’t imagine it. No more than she could imagine Alistair willingly getting on all fours to be buggered by Nina. Or by anyone, really. He liked men; Stanley was proof of that, but he was pure dominant. He didn’t take the bottom. Unless forced to it…or if it was politically expedient.

  Alistair had stepped into the bathroom for a moment and she heard running water. Perhaps he was washing himself. She had Tane’s stickiness between her thighs, and now, in the aftermath, that made her feel…wrong. She would go in after Alistair emerged, and clean herself. Surely there’d be time to do that.

  When he came to the bed, she did curl into a ball, turning away from him. “I can attend to myself, my lord,” she said. “You’ve guests.”

  “Think you can tell me what to do, Nina?” he murmured. He put his knee on the bed, bent over her. “You’ve thoughts in your head that don’t belong there.”

  “I don’t—” She choked on the word as he brought her to her back and, in one smooth motion, he’d pushed a cock still impressively erect deep inside her cunt.

  He framed her face with his hands, his body stretched on her. He filled her vision, all her senses, overpowering her, making her helpless to the sheer demand coming off of him in waves. Take me, Nina. Your pussy is still vibrating from having him there. I won’t tolerate any man’s touch remaining on your flesh a moment longer than necessary.

  She’d been told the third mark was relentless, that a servant would be ready for her Master within minutes of the last climax. That had been an understatement. She measured it in seconds. With his skill and stamina, she could stay in a constant state of desperate want.

  “I look forward to inflicting a full day of orgasm denial on you sometime. Followed by a day of orgasm torture. Do you know what that means?”

  She shook her head, let out a little moan as he pushed into her again. He had his arm around her hips, keeping them canted up. Her arms spread like wings, fingers clutching the covers. “I expect you understand the denial part. A whole day where I bring you to that edge again and again, but counter it with ways to drive it back, so you can never orgasm, just stay on that delicious cusp. By the end of the day, you will be so hot for it I will have to suspend you with your legs spread wide and no ability to move, since the slightest twitch of your hips might set you off. I’d leave you like that, no relief, through the next day.”

  He pushed, withdrew. Pushed, withdrew. “Alistair…” she whimpered. “Don’t do this.”

  “I will do all of it and more, sweet nurse.” His voice became rougher. “You think I like the idea of him tending
to you? Enjoy having to take your arse here first, when I’d planned to do it at home, where I could take hours, enjoy your discovery of it, just the two of us? I punished you earlier, but now I know I’m not done. Those two days will be the perfect balance to my feeling about it. And an avenue to opening your soul even further to me. Helping you give everything to me. I don’t have to have your full, lasting trust to open your soul, Nina. But it is a treasure I want to have, so I will pursue it relentlessly.”

  His lips captured a tear as he burrowed deeper, making her hips push restlessly up against him. “Be still,” he murmured, and she managed to obey, those swirling feelings from his tone of command helping her.

  “You are the sweetest gift,” he muttered. “Orgasm torture would start the next dusk. I will finally let you come, which at first will make you thank me for my mercy. But that day, at every strike of the half hour, I will make you come again. And again. Until it seems like torment, until you are begging me, because orgasm torture comes with an excruciating side effect. All the emotions that get bottled to the point of explosion the previous day now detonate with every climax, a wound cut open again and again.”

  She could sense it, had already sensed it with what they’d done here. “Why would you want something like that from someone else?” she asked, her voice breaking on the syllables as he thrust. But she knew. She knew.

  When she looked up into his blue eyes and still face, she remembered that raw look. Maybe for some vampires it was a matter of the power. Some part of it was for him, too. But it was something else.

  Something he needed, too.

  He scooped her up against his body and brought her up, sitting back on his heels so she straddled him as he thrust into her, harder, his face against her throat as her arms wrapped around him. She was making feminine noises of distress, because it felt good, but it hurt, too. In ways too hard to describe.

  He stilled for just a moment, his back rising and falling as if he were breathing deep, and he kept his face against her throat, her chest.

  I’m here. I’m here with you. She didn’t know what brought the thought to mind, but his response to it was to tighten his arms around her so tightly, she knew he’d forgotten his strength.

  “My lord,” she gasped, and he eased the hold. When he laid her back down on the bed, himself above her, his expression had eased, but still reflected satisfied male lust at her parted lips, wide eyes, the shudder of her body. “Keep your legs spread far open and knees bent, feet flat on the bed,” he said hoarsely.

  She did. As the sensations built, so too did her small cries, at every in and out motion. At long last, she was too close to hold out, and he gave her an imperceptible nod.

  They came together, his face tightening and eyes flashing, body hardening from shoulders to thighs against hers. She moaned, cried out his name, held onto him, burying her face in his chest as he rocked her to completion.

  I don’t want her wearing your shirt. I hate that. Hate it.

  He held her, made soothing noises. “The moment she took it, it was no longer my shirt. Not in my mind. I have a wardrobe full of shirts and you will wear all of them, so your scent will be upon them.”

  It made her feel better. Even as the next words broke her open.

  “Now I will care for my servant, because that is my desire. To clean her up, to put a soothing balm on the places we’ve treated harshly. To give her something loose to wear and take her out to rejoin our guests. If I’d had to do it, I would have left Tane with the charge, but it was not my wish, Nina.” He touched her face.

  “I can think of nothing better than the pleasure of caring for you.”

  He did all that, found her a short robe and wrapped her in it, and then brought her out to the back veranda, his hand wrapped firmly around hers. Anahera was there, curled up on the veranda bench against a sprawling Tane. They were both sucking on lollipops, an unexpectedly whimsical and more-than-a-little unsettling picture. Tane had his fingers threading and twisting through his lady’s hair. She wore her skirt but had left on Alistair’s shirt, open over the pretty bra. She removed the treat from her mouth at the sight of him and waved it. The scent suggested cherry and vanilla.

  “Tane found these in a jar in the kitchen,” she said.

  “No idea how old they are, so buyer beware,” Alistair advised. He took a seat in a spacious wicker chair. He dropped a cushion on the boards between his feet. Nina sank down on it, resting her body against his leg, her head against his knee as his hand settled on it, stroking her hair, her ear and neck with caressing fingers. With a little sigh, she curled her arms around his leg. She didn’t look at Anahera in the hated shirt. Fortunately, vampire protocol said she shouldn’t look at her without permission anyway. Tane waved at her with the lollipop and lifted the jar, silently offering. She shook her head, but her lips twitched despite herself. He looked as relaxed as a sated hound.

  “Vampire constitutions can survive old lollies.” Anahera popped the treat back into her mouth in a curiously carefree and youthful manner. Rolling over onto her stomach, her feet in the air over her back, her knees bent and elbows propped against Tane’s thigh, she considered Alistair thoughtfully. “You are an odd one, Lord Alistair. To let me take you so baldly and seem so…accepting of it.”

  “It gave you pleasure, my lady, and settled the matter between us. It was fair. I have no problem with fair.”

  She gestured with the red-colored sweet again, pointing at him imperiously with it. “You gave me the advantage over you.”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said. “I allowed you to fuck me. No more, no less. I suspect on your rise to Region Master, you had moments where you were seemingly on the bottom or losing side of a situation. Even as you endured what must be endured, you were already formulating how, one day, that situation would be reversed. How you would be three times as merciless in inflicting the lesson of power upon the one who inflicted it upon you.”

  “Was it that horrible?” she said testily.

  He smiled faintly. “It wasn’t horrible at all. I’m using that example to make a relevant point. Why should I be any different, because I am a male? I didn’t get to where I am by wasting my time on pointless pride. Or empty ritual. I know who I am, Lady Anahera, and where I am going.”

  Nina glanced up at him. His expression was resolute, calm. She expected she wasn’t the only one who was getting a better understanding of why Lyssa had thought he’d be a good Region Master. “I have no quarrel with you,” he continued in an affable tone. He nodded to Tane. “Throw me one of the purple ones.”

  Tane obliged and Alistair snagged it neatly from the air. He waved it at Anahera. “It was my way of personally asking your forgiveness for the oversight that put us here without your prior approval. You and I have dealt with one another before. Fairly and honestly. We reached an accord that made common sense between us, not something driven by absurd vampire politics.”

  As he settled back in the wicker chair, he stretched his arm out along one side, his leg firmly pressed against Nina’s side. He didn’t open the lolly right away. Instead, lounged back like a king in his palace, he gave Anahera a much cooler look. “But make no mistake about it, Lady Anahera. If I’d chosen to make a fight of it, I would have won.”

  “Really?” Her expression also became far less casual, her tone far more dangerous. “So you’re saying you let me win, Lord Alistair?”

  Nina felt the thrum of tension. Tane had become watchful again, and Nina’s grip on Alistair’s leg was a little tighter than she’d intended. She tried to relax it.

  “I am saying it served no purpose to make you my enemy here tonight. But do not unwisely think the decisions I made tonight were not fully my choice.”

  “Indeed.” She studied him a few moments, then turned her attention to their surroundings. “This place is cared for.”

  Nina let out the breath she’d been holding. Tane relaxed slightly. Though his eyes remained alert, Nina expected the danger had passed.


  “I allow renters,” Alistair said, accepting the subject change with smooth grace. “You get a percentage of it from the quarterly income. Your financial person can verify it.”

  “Very considerate of you.”

  “It’s vampire law. I try not to break something unnecessarily.” Alistair’s gaze slid to Nina. “Especially when it’s something of great value.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Upon their return, the staff didn’t comment on her absence, except for Nero telling her that he hoped she’d had a good trip with Alistair. It suggested her vampire had made them believe she’d simply preceded him to a shared destination, on his orders. They didn’t know she’d tried to cut and run.

  Once they’d arrived, Alistair had touched her face, given her a warm look. And then promptly been sucked into a pile of phone calls and visits away from the house that had kept him apart from her for the next couple of days.

  She might have reverted to some of her earlier insecurities and worries, but this time he kept a line open to her. He talked to her in his mind, reaching out to her several times in the evenings.

  There is a full moon here in Mackay tonight. Go onto the rooftop so you can see it.

  It’s breathtaking, my lord. What are you doing?

  Trying to get Luigi to focus on something more than his latest shiny toys.

  Don’t you have five cars, my lord?

  That is a far different matter. Very impertinent of you to draw that connection.

  Another night:

  Where are you, sweet nurse?

  Taking a walk through the neighborhood. The Victors have planted Dutch tulips. They look like a rainbow.

  Tell JD to get us some. I want you to walk on the beach tonight for me. Walk barefoot in the tidal pools close to the dunes after high tide and watch the crabs scuttle about. Perhaps we’ll even build a sand castle.