It didn’t matter that she knew his thoughts, his heart. There were some things that were instinct, not rational, and no amount of mind reading would convince her they were false.
“My lady.” Lord Uthe’s quiet voice. Not interfering, for another vampire would never interfere with a disciplining between Mistress and servant, but he was tactfully drawing her attention to the fact Jacob’s breath was laboring.
She dropped him. Slapped him. It startled Jacob so much that for a moment, anger lost footing to hurt. While he bowed his head, he sensed Uthe’s too shrewd regard and cursed his inability to mask his reaction more quickly.
“For having your servant such a short time, lady,” Uthe observed carefully, “his confidence in your bond appears extraordinarily strong. Perhaps it’s time you consider another lover, if not a husband. You know servants can get the wrong idea of their place in a vampire’s householdquickly.”
At least Uthe had a strong enough sense of self-preservation he didn’t imply that Lyssa was subject to such influences. Jacob expected she would have incinerated the other vampire in the mood he felt pouring off her. But his lady respected Uthe. He was a peer, while Jacob was the mortal apparently not worth even her attention as she turned her back on him, leaving him on his knees, trying to breathe again.
“My servant has simply been overwhelmed by all the stimuli here. I’ll take care of reminding him of his place. Thank you for your advice, Lord Uthe.” The frostiness of her voice seemed to reassure the man, for he moved away with a nod, giving her privacy to deal with the infraction she perceived her servant had committed.
“That was my shirt, bought with my money,” she snapped. Jacob wanted to rise, dare her to knock him back down. He didn’t want to have her standing over him as she did now, rising off the divan, but he fought through the anger, knowing there were eyes on them. “A shirt? I’ll be happy to pay for the shirt, my lady. If that’s what’s truly bothering you.”
What the hell is bothering you?
You care for her. You chose her. You looked at her…the way you’ve looked at me.
Like he would protect her, no matter what the cost was to himself.
Lyssa turned away from him, not waiting to see his reaction to such ridiculous thoughts. He was human. Debra was human. Servants were servants. She’d never demanded a servant be wholly monogamous, damn it.
My lady. When his hand brushed her side, she didn’t turn, but she didn’t move away. His grip curled around her forearm, slid to her wrist, then to her hand, his fingers twining with hers. Suddenly she didn’t want him on his knees, didn’t want him like that, even as the tiny part of her brain that was still rational knew it was better for him to be so.
Despite the fury that had rolled through him like a wave at her contempt, Jacob had stayed on his knees, demonstrating his loyalty was greater than his pride. But it wasn’t his loyalty she doubted.
She turned. His shoulders were bare, still gleaming from the perspiration he’d generated. She knew every line of that elegant body, knew how it felt pressed against her while his cock slid in and out of her pussy. She knew the many expressions of his blue eyes, the taste of his lips. She didn’t want to share him with another woman like Debra. One too close to what he truly deserved.
She didn’t want to share him with any woman. Ever again.
Studying her face, he slowly rose. Which put him much closer, standing before her, holding her hand, their bodies almost touching. Her breath was rapid as she tried to keep a handle on her reaction, but she knew he saw everything. During their performance, even as her anger built, so did her desire, and when Jacob had come, when Debra had screamed, she could have come simply by imagining Jacob stroking her deep, hard.
“Come with me.” He altered his position so he stood beside her. Lifting her hand, he moved them into a sedate walk where she appeared to be leading, rather than him pulling her along in a spurt of physical reaction she could feel thrumming through his muscles, the wake of the emotional response rippling through him.
It reminded her of a day he’d built a rack to equally space and anchor the dogs’ food bowls. The structure would catch and divert the overflow she always complained about crunching underfoot. So excited by the modifications he’d made, he’d caught her hand and tugged her through the kitchen to the side door to see it, making her laugh at his eagerness. He’d been like a six-foot-tall child who’d forced her into a trot to keep up with his long legs.
Her lover, her innocent child, her servant. Her protector.
He navigated her past the wide variety of very intimate couplings occurring and took her to the outskirts of the tents, to the canopies of the craftspeople. At first she thought he was bringing her to the jeweler whose collar she had described, but instead he stopped before the blacksmith. The man was in Lord Mason’s employ and helped maintain the grounds year-round. He also cared for the two Arabians Lyssa knew Mason stabled on the property.
“My Mistress needs to punish her servant,” Jacob said quietly. “Somehow he has made her doubt he lives only to serve her.”
The man nodded dispassionately and gestured to the myriad irons displayed on velvet.
“The larger brands hurt more, my lady,” he explained. “They of course leave no permanent mark unless you use your blood. That also intensifies the pain considerably, but it will heal to a scar on a fully marked servant in less than a night’s time. You will not find your use of him hampered.”
“I beg you to use your blood, my lady,” Jacob said, looking into her face as if there was nothing else for him. Lyssa felt like weeping. “Set your hand on me, brand me as yours so you will have no doubts. Wherever you desire.”
“When you wish to do it, my lady, each of these designs is already in the fire.” The blacksmith nodded to the vat behind him. “They’re sketched in the handle. Simply take your preference and hold it to his flesh as long as you like.”
The man was then called to explain some of his other offerings to another vampire overlord. Jacob’s hands went to his trousers and he dropped them, leaving him naked from neck to ankles before her.
If it will ease your mind and keep you from having a shred of doubt in your soul, my lady, then do as you will.
Despite her wish to appear indifferent, the vision of Debra in his shirt rose in Lyssa’s mind. She knew it was pathetic. Childishly dangerous and cruel. But if she didn’t hurt him, test his willingness to suffer for her, this feeling would not abate in her chest. And she didn’t care for the feeling one bit. She wanted it gone.
Hands laced behind your head.
He did it without hesitation, though he certainly knew what she was capable of doing, where she might choose to place the brand. Bringing her hand to her lips, she bit into the Venus mound of her palm with one fang.
He waited. His jaw firm, his eyes steady on hers. She found herself perversely aroused as if she were on the pinnacle of climax, even as the pain radiating from her heart made it seem as if a bed of nails pierced her insides. He was aroused, too. In his thoughts she saw his memory of the branding he’d witnessed earlier, how it had intrigued him in a disquieting way he hadn’t expected. Seeing him getting harder at the idea only fueled her need to mark him this way. Claim him visibly.
Lifting the closest brand from the fire, she let the blood run down her palm and drip onto the white-hot metal. Those blue eyes never wavered. Reaching up, she curled her hand on the back of his neck, under the soft hair. Locking her green eyes with his, she pressed the brand to the inside of his left hipbone, above the pubic area.
His face contorted with the effort to remain silent, his upper body going rigid. The muscles drew up tight and hard, close to the skin. His hands became fists behind his head, the biceps flexing to the consistency of smooth rock. As his fingers clenched, her hand curved on his neck was drawn in to the bond, his fingers holding hers, locking them together in a knot of reaction. It reflected the torturous snarl in her heart, the way she’d felt watching him and Debra.
He’d hurt her by doing what he’d been told, in that unique way that made him who he was. The man she wanted like no man or vampire she’d ever met. In return, she’d hurt him deliberately, slapped him, forced him to prove himself, punished him for making her feel this burning pain in her heart she didn’t understand.
With an oath, she pulled the brand from him. She extricated her fingers from his while he gasped, holding the pose she’d demanded and managing the pain. He couldn’t help but capture attention. A powerful man standing before his Mistress, his slacks a soft pool at his feet, the upper body displayed in fine detail by his subservient position with the hands locked behind the head. But that was all physical. Being a slave, subject to another’s will voluntarily with all one’s heart, was not defined by postures or brands. It was in everything he did, and she’d come to count on it. Until tonight, she’d never let him know how much, but he’d known just how to answer her fears. She was a fool.
Her gaze coursed down to the brand. For the next few hours until it healed, the pain of it would be fierce. She’d placed the brand at his hip because she wanted to have her hands on it when she rode him, scrape her nails over it. If she took him in her mouth, she would abrade it with her hair. She’d wanted it close to his cock so he’d always know to whom that powerful organ belonged, along with the rest of him.
“An unusual choice, my lady,” the blacksmith said, returning to them. “As a permanent mark.”
It was a Christian cross.
Stepping forward, she ran her fingers lightly over it. Jacob sucked in a pain-filled breath, but because he knew his pain aroused her, she didn’t stop, the rising agony in her breast an odd contrast with the gentleness of her touch, the razor edge of her nails. “Perhaps I should have chosen something else.” Her voice was strange to her, almost broken, and Mason’s man gave her an odd look.
Jacob shook his head and lowered his hands. Brushing one along her hair, he cupped the line of her face. “A symbol of faith, my lady. You couldn’t have picked a better one, for my heart is faithful only to you. You are my religion.”
It was also a symbol of sacrifice. Taking on her sins. The insidious whisper from her own mind had the power to gut her.
She drew her head back from his touch, giving him a sharp look. In response, Jacob returned his hands to his head, dissipating the curiosity of the blacksmith. Taking the edges of his slacks in her hands, she brought them back up, zipped, fastened and belted them, cinching the strap in tight until she earned a grunt of pain. Smoothing her hand over his cock, she fondled his testicles. Knowing the brand was burning fire under the tight yoke of the belt even as he began to get hard again under her touch sparked other needs.
Gods, Jacob was right. She was a piece of work. She knew Jacob had wrestled with the possibility that her brief moments of vulnerability toward him might just be the progress of the disease, not real. She found she couldn’t tolerate the idea of that doubt. Or the conflicting feelings he was making her feel right now.
“You’re forgiven,” she said abruptly. Nodding to the blacksmith, she handed him a folded bill, a tip for his service. Then she pivoted on her heel with deliberate regal indifference and moved away from her servant.
Jacob didn’t know which was worse. The throb of the brand or his continued failure to make her understand. Maybe the two things were the same, one a physical manifestation of the emotional.
Everything she let him offer her was a gift to him, not a sacrifice. Her willingness to let him be with her forever was the Paradise he’d always sought. The emptiness that had followed him throughout his life had dissipated the night she’d given him the third mark, gone as if it had never haunted him. And yet she couldn’t accept what that meant to them both.
She’d always been a woman whose relationships were fraught with politics and often peril. Perhaps Thomas’s beliefs had gilded their memories, making them believe what they wanted to believe. However, to know his bond to her was true he only had to remember the present, the handful of weeks they’d had since he’d become her servant.
He’d expected her to be a queen, an infuriatingly arrogant female vampire, but there were many things he hadn’t expected.
Her watching him when she thought he didn’t know. While he was doing repairs, cooking, reading. He’d even sensed her presence sometimes when he napped, a lazy, pleasurable vision at the edges of his dreams.
Finding her fast asleep by a window. The Secret Life of Bees had been open in her lap as the rain trickled down the stained glass behind her, painting her pale face in translucent rainbows of color.
Hiking her dress around her knees like a young girl to squat barefoot in a rain puddle. All for the pleasure of catching a frog and holding the creature in the palm of her hand. She’d coaxed him closer to dump the hapless amphibian down the front of his shirt. Then she fished it out to spare the disgruntled animal harm. Her fingers had caressed, girlishness disappearing into a wild sensuality that had them drenched and coupling on the back lawn. He remembered rain drumming on his bare shoulders, her heels clutched over his hips, her body arched so he could suckle rainwater off her throat.
To hell with it. As she left the courtyard, he cursed under his breath and went after her.
The stone defiles that allowed exit from the courtyard were strung with fairy lights to guide the way. Jasmine flowers woven into the cords allowed vampires to be guided by their scent. In this corridor there was an alcove with a wall fountain installed. An elegant frieze had been propped behind the bowl in the hollowed-out area, depicting a medieval lady among a meadow of stone flowers.
His lady had stopped at the frieze, her fingers resting on the lip of the bowl of water. The area was narrow and dim, providing privacy, the shadows protecting them from too close a scrutiny. Good.
He didn’t expect his approach to be equally camouflaged, but when he caught her slender arm by the elbow and whipped her around, her green eyes widened in startled reaction.
While she’d felt him coming up behind her, Lyssa hadn’t expected this. She’d assumed he would stand quietly behind her, awaiting her cue of where she wanted to go next, what she wanted of him. She’d expected him to try to soothe the tides of her emotions stirred up by his branding, his touching of Debra. Instead, he yanked her up to her toes and took her mouth with his own, giving her a tide of passion so strong it went beyond usual response into the realm of a blood bond. Her hand clutched the edge of the stone fountain, cracked it as her grip convulsed in reaction. Catching that hand, he unerringly put it on his hip, right over where the brand was, squeezing his hand over hers so her fingers dug in, causing a ripple of response to shudder through his body. Even as the pain shot through him, he gathered her more firmly to him with an arm cinched around her waist, so close his fingers wrapped around her hip and grazed the edge of her stomach, pressing on her sensitive navel region beneath the thin silver dress. Through it, she could feel all the heat of him. Every hard, insistent curve of muscle and the press of his groin. When he raised his head at last, his eyes were blue fire, made incandescent by the lights, his mouth a hard line.
“Only you, my lady. I’m all yours.” Say it to me and mean it. How could any woman take a man away from Lady Elyssa Wentworth? Say it.
“Mine,” she whispered.
“All of it. Not just this.” He increased the pressure of his pelvis against her, making her thighs tremble. “Nor this.” He inclined his head, indicating his mind. “All of it. Now tell me why the hell you would ever get a daft notion otherwise, woman? Just because I chose to protect an innoc
ent girl.”
His kiss had swept away her doubts. Now the impudent comment restored her fully to herself. She pushed away from him, giving him a reproving look even as she let her fingers linger at that place just below his belt.
“I don’t have to explain things to you, Sir Vagabond,” she responded, tossing back her hair. “You’ll do well to remember your place.”
But he’d expected—no, demanded—that she mark him, place another visible sign of ownership on him. His thoughts were tangled in her mind, giving her images she couldn’t ignore. He was hers. He wanted her, needed her. He cared nothing for anyone but her.
I love you, my lady.
Capturing her hand, he brought it to his lips. Then he laid her palm meaningfully over his heart.
“That’s all I ask you to remember as well, my lady. My place is with you. Only you.”
Chapter 17
After that, the temptation to pass the evening tangled in sheets with Jacob was almost too much to resist. There was an animal edge to her lust she knew she couldn’t afford to let control her tonight. But as difficult as it was to resist the need to sate the desire he’d roused, she knew it was the emotions he could evoke that had too much power over her. She had to keep herself balanced, so she made them both return to the festivities.
Even so, throughout the rest of the eve ning, she stayed in close communication with her servant, seeing things through his eyes, hearing his verbal responses as well as sensing his less articulated ones as they worked together as one mind. In its own way, it was as deeply pleasurable as having his body.
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