Like a terminal patient who’d waited too long to seek treatment so that the treatment was not as effective, the annual kill and third mark were not likely to carry her as far as they would have if she’d acquired them six months ago instead of a handful of weeks. He should have listened to Thomas, come to her side sooner.
Do not worry about what cannot be changed, Jacob. And the annual kill has helped a great deal. I am just conserving the energy it has given me. Never fear.
The brutal images of that night still haunted him. The way Carl Ronin had struggled against his hold, his eyes white. When he realized he had no chance of escape, the fear of death was in his eyes. With his prescience, Jacob could feel every nuance and change in the man’s emotions like a roar in his head. The desire to live was the strongest of man’s emotions, a primal instinct that rose to the forefront when it was challenged. It made Jacob wonder about the knight…him, when he was the knight. Had the internal screams of men dying around him been louder than the outer din of an army in full-pitched battle? He was glad not to have that memory.
He’d gone to church, lit a candle for Ronin, asked his forgiveness and then put it aside to take care of his lady. There’d been too many details he was handling on her behalf now, too many loose ends he was tying up for her. She needed his focus, and she’d have it. Time was too short for anything else.
As he raised his eyes to the mirror, he met Mr. Ingram’s gaze and knew that the driver was as cognizant as he was of the significance of her nap. “You know,” Elijah said after a bit, “my mother died of cancer. Some people, you just can’t figure it, because they don’t deserve that. They just don’t deserve it.”
That was nothing but the simple truth, though Jacob appreciated what it took for Mr. Ingram to say it. He knew the man still viewed Lyssa as something of a creature of darkness. He could hardly argue with that.
The men maintained a companionable silence for the next hour, letting her nap undisturbed. When she woke, she fished about and found one of the oranges. As she began to peel it, she kept her bare feet tucked under Jacob’s thigh, her gaze considering him beneath her lashes as if she was still drowsy. Elijah began a discussion with Jacob on which nailer was best for laying a hardwood floor.
He answered, keeping his eyes on her, sensing the shift in her mood. Her fingers coaxed the skin from the flesh of the orange, her knuckles getting moist from the abundant juice of the homegrown fruit. Her hair was in a twist over one shoulder, the edge brushing the top of her thigh, outlined by the way her skirt lay upon it. Her toes curled, pressing into his thigh muscle. Moving his hand to her ankle, he stroked the delicate bones there.
When she raised a slice, she leaned forward, apparently wanting to feed him. As she caressed his lips, her fingers grew moist with his saliva as well as the juice of the fruit. He couldn’t resist a nip that caught a finger. As he drew it deep in his mouth to suckle it, her eyes glowed like a cat’s at him through the darkness.
“So, Mr. Ingram, why does it make a difference what kind of nailer you use to put down hardwood floors?” She said it with a smile in her voice, but she had an entirely different expression as she extended the next slice of orange to Jacob.
Take it from my fingers. I want to feel your mouth again. Did you know some vampires don’t allow their servants to eat or drink except from their Master or Mistress’s hand? Ever. To underscore their bond.
He met her gaze in the shadowed gloom of the backseat. That focused intensity she was so good at projecting washed over him with the same arousing effect of feeling a gush of warm, wet response between her legs spill over his fingers.
Do you think I need a reminder?
No. But I like making you dependent on my will.
He considered that. She’d worked one foot even deeper beneath his thigh, and the movement of her toes teased the flat base of his testicles constricted in his jeans.
It’s a long trip, my lady.
It is at that. How long do you think you can stay hard for me?
When do I ever stop?
Though her mouth curved, she continued her peeling. Offered another slice. This time after he took it, he captured her wrist in his hand, held her there. They stared at each other in the darkness. Slowly, he moved his mouth to her palm, feeling her nails curve in, the points pressing against his eyelid and the soft, vulnerable tear duct as he suckled her pulse, let his thumb stroke the same territory, the network of highly sensitive nerve endings he knew were there.
He’d tried not to make the first move, but this maddening proximity to her was more than he could resist. Since that explosive coming together after Carl, she’d been withdrawn. The intensity of that night had been far over the top of what he’d ever been with a woman, and he’d realized it had broken new ground for his lady as well. When they next came together it would be there, this different level between them, and she apparently hadn’t been ready to face that.
She’d kept him busy with preparations and the handling of her day-to-day affairs. That level of activity was all that kept the hunger for her at bay. He’d had the overwhelming desire several times to assuage it in the quiet darkness of his own room, usually in a half sleep when his hand moved to himself without conscious thought, dreaming of her body, her touch.
Oddly, it was worse when he was away from home. She’d sent him on a couple of out-of-town trips, for he was now accepted as her agent, her assistant to the highest level, and not just to the perception of her vampires. She trusted his judgment without requiring her consultation on most things, simply allowing his voice to become her own.
Now, with her pulse pounding beneath his hand, he wouldn’t deny the savage need anymore unless she refused him. Fortunately, he sensed she was ready to embrace it as well, whatever form it would take between them.
I’m curious, Sir Vagabond. Did you…assuage often?
My mind is open to you, my lady. You know all.
He felt her there like her hair or lips, brushing him in light, provocative touches.
You didn’t.
No, he hadn’t. He’d pulled his hand away from himself, chosen a cold shower when he’d needed it. You seem surprised.
You’ve never demonstrated such…a submissive characteristic before. Waiting for your Mistress’s permission.
It was that. But it was more than that. I wanted only you, my lady. After experiencing the wet, hot silk of your pussy, my cock finds my rough hand a woeful substitute.
“I do not find your hand that way at all.” Lifting it, she pressed her face into his touch. Her left eye, most of her nose and half her lips disappeared behind the cover of his palm and fingertips.
He noticed then the screen was up, likely raised by a compulsion she had sent Mr. Ingram or just the man’s perceptiveness.
“When our flight lands, it will be daylight and I’ll sleep on the plane. But when we rise at sunset, I have to meet with the Council first thing. Without servants present.” She cocked her head. “The Council and several other high-ranking vampires meet on the first night to discuss issues of more confidential concern to our kind. It’s a courtesy, mostly an overview of the things we’ll hear over the next three days and those things we won’t, but will manifest themselves.” A slight smile touched her lips. “A briefing, if you will.”
“I remember, my lady.”
He moved his touch to her calf, his fingers teasing under the hem of the skirt, finding her knee. Her gaze held his steadily, but he noted her lips parted at the provocative touch.
“When you go to our rooms to get us settled,” she said, her voice throaty, “you will…assuage your need. I want to see you in my mind with your hand on your cock, stroking yourself to release.”
Enough was enough. He was only human, after all. Ignoring her breathless laughter in his mind, he reached out and dragged her across the seat to him, clamping down on her mouth with his own. He knew that was what she wanted, though he didn’t know if it was his psychic intuition, their mind link or just the bond b
etween the two of them.
Soul mates. Those disturbing words again, planted by Thomas. He didn’t know if it was true, but he couldn’t deny it seemed like he knew her mind better than his own. Raising his head, he met her gaze. “My lady …”
“Sssh. Give me what I need, Jacob. It is just us here. Soon I shall have to be very different, very cold. I’ll have to remind you that you belong to me in ways that are not comfortable to you. It is our way. But for now, take my woman’s heart. Hold it for me so I’ll be able to find it again after this is all over.”
Dropping his hand to her waist, he curled his fingers under her shirt, felt the soft skin stretched over the smooth valleys between her ribs. Moving up to the satin of her bra cups, he brushed them with his thumbs. When he took the shirt over her head, he watched the way her clipped-back hair formed a twisting spiral as it funneled through the neckline and then fell back to her shoulder, down her now mostly bare back. Spanning her skin with his large hands, the tan skin against the pale unblemished, he put his lips on the top of one curve, his jaw brushing her.
Her breath held, her teeth biting down on her lips as a distracted smile of pleasure curved them. Her fingers rested on his shoulders. For once they didn’t dig in, just held as if she were seeking an emotional anchor. Her skin was so sensitized that if he teased one small part of her with tiny touches of tongue and lip, he knew her body would begin to quiver, like ripples in a lake that expanded and became a wake on a shore from that one minute disturbance.
She knew how to draw an extraordinary level of sensual enjoyment from the simplest acts, and he’d been a good student. He could bring her to climax with this one contact because of how deeply she could focus on it.
But that wasn’t what she needed now. He put his hand between them, freed himself from his jeans and found her beneath her skirt, bringing it up to her hips so he could slide his finger under the band of the silk panties she wore, move the crotch aside and test her wetness. She was slick and warm already. When he guided her onto him, she sank down on his length with a noise between an animal sound of acceptance and a murmur of contentment, completion. She tightened on him, inch by torturous inch. When he had her fully seated, he put his arms around her, pressing her against him, her head down to his shoulder. Her arms shifted to wrap around his shoulders, almost like a child being carried home in an adult’s arms. Following instinct, he began to rock, slow, sliding strokes up inside her. Wrapping a complex dichotomy of desire and comfort tightly around their bodies, a lullaby of searing sensation. Her hips moved on his, circular desire, tightening, releasing, lifting, lowering. He nuzzled her neck as she moved her grip to his hair, his trimmed beard making friction across the top of her left breast, eliciting a soft, shuddering sigh.
He’d never wanted anything to go on forever so much, this magical journey through the night in the quiet solitude of a moving car, baptized by the lights of the passing vehicles. The soft sound of Ingram’s preferred slow groove station came through the back speakers. Jacob’s release built with hers on every stroke as they moved in perfect harmony on a star-kissed sea of their own world.
It was a sweet ride, holding her body close, feeling her move with him, her cheek pressed against his hair, her grip there alternately tightening and stroking. He was sure Mr. Ingram knew what was happening back here. Somehow, despite the fact he’d never formally taken Lyssa’s offer of a job, Elijah had become part of the journey they were on, a journey Jacob was all too aware had an end. Mr. Ingram knew it, too, and maybe that was why he was with them still. Sometimes, despite all the reasons a man’s mind told him he needed to avoid a situation with a woman, his heart overruled him. No matter the pain or danger, this was the course that called to him.
“Jacob.” A soft murmur of sound, her voice breathless. He took her up high, down slow, stroking her with his full length, despite the fact he knew he was going to explode in no time from such exquisite slick torture. She liked to squeeze, liked to feel the ridge of him push through her muscles.
“Ah …” He kept it slow as her hands began to jerk in their hold on him, her body tightening, ready. He held her to his pace and she let him, didn’t try to take the lead, smiling even through her strain, acknowledging the wonder of it. He wasn’t even sure if he was in the lead or if they were in fact on a tide that was inexorably, rhythmically, pulling them both toward their destination.
A cry broke from her lips, but he kept pushing her down on him, again and again, until her whole body was quivering, rocketing with the intensity of the climax he was inflicting on them both at such a pace. When he began to come, he banded his arms even more tightly around her, burying his face in her neck, pressing his lips there as he surged strong and hard into her pussy, piercing her deep, giving her a taste of pain with the vibrating pleasure of her aftershocks. Her teeth scored his ear, responding. He smiled, closing his eyes as shudders racked through him.
He let himself be content to hold her then, knowing his lady never told him false. At the next moonrise, they’d be at the Gathering, where everything would be different. She’d given him this to remember. And just as she’d asked, he had her heart in his safekeeping, beating in his own chest. He was sure of it.
Jacob stretched his legs after they deplaned from the private jet on a narrow landing strip. They were somewhere in Chile or Argentina, but he knew little else about the location of the Vampire Gathering. The stronghold where they’d hold the annual Vampire Gathering was secluded, another hour’s travel by off-road vehicle. Lyssa had said the private resort getaway was located on the coast and backed by the lush, temperate rain forest of this region.
She’d explained that the resort belonged to Lord Mason, a vampire Jacob knew was one of the older ones at over six hundred. He was rarely seen, choosing to live in seclusion in the Saudi desert. However, he loaned the property to the Vampire Council for their purposes, apparently having no desire of his own to visit it, but equally having no desire to relinquish it.
Mason and Lyssa had a history. Jacob had seen at least one correspondence from the vampire to her. Though he hadn’t been privy to the contents, he knew it had somehow contributed to the events that led her to give him the third mark. Thomas had also told him something of Mason. Years ago, Lyssa had wanted Mason to be more involved in the Council formation, but Mason apparently was not a joiner. He wanted nothing more than seclusion and turned away from the notion of “civilized” vampires. Lyssa had been disappointed, perhaps even feeling a bit betrayed by the friend she’d hoped she could count on. Since that had been so long ago, she’d obviously gotten past it enough to exchange correspondence with him again, but that was all.
Jacob had tried not to be selfishly glad of that. Thomas had implied there’d once been something more between the two of them. If not for Mason’s aversion to vampire society, it might have been Mason instead of Rex that Lyssa would have chosen for marriage.
You don’t court me, Jacob. You serve me.
He pushed that memory away, knowing he needed to be steady and balanced as they stepped out onto the tarmac to meet a full complement of Council members. For the next three days he would be surrounded by creatures that saw him as food, a sex slave, an inferior being, a tool. For his lady’s benefit, he would have to perform accordingly. Knowing his lady, that performance could take many forms. And most of them would make him nervous as hell if he dwelled on the possibilities at all.
Humans were expected to satiate vampire desires as sexual submissives on many different levels. At the Gathering, that aspect of a servant’s role was turned to high volume. Until now, except for the dinner with Lord Tara, Lady Richard and Lord Brian, most—though not all—of his submission to his lady had been private. He suspected that would not be the case here.
While he didn’t agree entirely with Debra’s assessment of it, he knew on one important level she was right. His lady loved him and had told him she did, something unique to a vampire-human relationship. She also viewed him as her servant, expecting h
is obedience. While she trembled under his touch, she wouldn’t hesitate to physically hurt him if he defied her to the point of blatant disrespect. And he understood that. Accepted it in a way that wouldn’t make sense to Gideon or anyone else. Perhaps it only made sense to someone who had the mind- set to be a human servant.
Now he stood at her back, a deferential few feet behind while she exchanged greetings. A meeting of hands, a brush of the lips across the cheek. A contingent of humans stood back, waiting as well. From their appearance, he knew these were not the human servants attached to these Council vampires.
The overlords invited to the Gathering were not of equal rank. Therefore those of the lower ranks might have their servants pressed into all sorts of duties during the Gathering—cleaning, waitstaff, bellhop services. While he and Lyssa had discussed that, she had neglected to tell him how these servants would be garbed.
The group of men and women waiting for direction had extremely attractive bodies, noticeable because they wore little on them. Their individuality was denied them because they wore full head masks with nose and eye openings, but no mouth opening. From the stretched concave curve in that area, it appeared they wore ball gags beneath so speech was not possible. They could only receive and follow orders. Each wore a modified form of chastity belt where the genitals were visible but caged by a closely fitted wire mold. Other than those two items, they wore nothing else.
It made him terribly grateful he was attached to a high-ranking vampire. Never mind that their identities were safeguarded by the masks. He was sure it was not for their benefit, but a practical consideration for their Master or Mistress, so no one could identify their servant and try to manipulate them for political benefit.
He would not be commandeered for any services of which his lady did not approve. She’d also made it clear he was to follow only her direction and to never, ever let his guard down once they were off the plane.
VQ 02 - The Mark of the Vampire Queen Page 20