by BETH KERY
He gripped the upper part of her forearm and lifted her hand. The invading images abruptly ceased. Sweat beaded on her brow. She glanced up at him.
“Silk,” she whispered, referring to the luxurious fabric covering the bed. “It came from a living thing. I can feel its origins.”
He surprised her by nodding once, as if he perfectly understood her. He quickly removed her other glove, carefully holding her hands in the air and touching only her forearms. She murmured in surprise when he drew her hands above her head and efficiently tied her wrists together with the long, stretchy glove. He carefully laid her hands on the pillow, palms and fingertips facing upwards. She stared up at him, her skirt rucked up around her waist, her thighs spread, the cool air in the room kissing her hot, moist sex, her wrists restrained above her head.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
She saw his throat convulse. For a strained few seconds, she thought he wasn’t going to reply.
“I wanted to see your hands naked while I was inside you.”
Her eyes sprang wide when he knelt on the bed and straddled her. He looked awesome in his power in that moment. It frightened her a little. Distantly, she recalled she was his prisoner here in Sanctuary. She’d gone to him to beg for her freedom, and now he was about to fuck her like some kind of warrior claiming the spills of war.
But the hazy thought wasn’t enough to quiet the heavy ache in her pussy. She needed him, whether she liked it or not. She craved him. He stared point blank at the juncture of her thighs. He would laugh if she told him to stop. Not that she could imagine Blaise Sevliss laughing.
Not that she even remotely wanted him to stop.
She licked her lower lip nervously as she watched him situate their bodies so that he could penetrate her. He pushed on the back of her thighs matter-of-factly, rolling her hips back in preparation to receive his length. It would hurt to have him in her. He was large, and she was small.
But she wanted it anyway.
She whimpered in rising desperation as she watched him slide his palm along the back of the thick shaft of his penis. He arrowed the plum-sized head into her slit.
“Oh,” she cried out in shock when he thrust firmly. Her body resisted him, but he continued to press, refusing to be denied. The pressure was almost unbearable. “I don’t think—”
“I’m sorry. I cannot stop it,” he grated out, his voice cracking.
She focused on him. His face and long, muscled torso were damp with sweat. He looked savage and hard, but with her special sense when it came to him, she recognized the power of his need. It frightened him.
Seeing his fear—a desperation that was like an open wound—erased her own.
He placed his hands on the carved headboard, bracing himself. She bit her lip to stop herself from crying out when he plunged into her to the hilt. He paused, his balls pressed against her delicate, moist tissues. His chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath. He circled his hips subtly, the stimulation on her clit making her moan. She clenched around his cock.
She saw his white teeth flash in a snarl. She wasn’t surprised to see his incisors were extended as he began to fuck her—it seemed as though she’d expected it, somewhere in the distant recesses of her mind. His thrusts were precise, thorough and more powerful than she’d ever experienced. She was at his mercy. His face remained stark and hard as he pumped. It would have hurt her, to see his impassive expression, if she didn’t also sense his endless need and his turmoil as he fought that need…
…his pain that he knew he could not win.
She bit her lower lip to stifle a scream. Her body stretched to accommodate his penis—it seemed to be growing even larger as he thrust into her again and again. The bed began to shake and rattle against the wall with the strength of his possession. He created an almost unbearable friction in her. She felt inundated with swelling sensation, besieged with it. Much as when his teeth had penetrated her flesh, she experienced intense pleasure spiced with the edge of pain.
He grunted and rode her harder, his face rigid, his features glazed with a sheen of sweat. A cry escaped her throat when he altered the angle of his driving cock. He pounded into her until she clenched her eyes shut and mewled. She pumped her hips against him, increasing the already unbearable friction, her body a coiled spring. She felt him jerk viciously inside her.
Her eyelids flew open. Wonder coursed through her in equal measure when she felt him coming deep inside her. His face twisted in what must have been pleasure so piercing it resembled pain. The deep, guttural growl he made was the sound of a wounded beast. He continued to stab his penis into her with short, hard thrusts even as he endured his bliss.
She blinked sweat out of her eyes, disoriented. It shocked her a little that he’d come so rapidly. He seemed like such a powerful creature…such a powerful lover. Seeing his vulnerability made her want to weep.
She lay there, panting, trying to find a measure of reality to grasp onto in the bizarre, electrified moment. He lowered his hands off the carved headboard and placed them next to the pillow where her head lay. He hunched over her, his neck bent, gasping wildly for air. The fact that he wasn’t entirely human struck her anew when she noticed how quickly he recovered. Within ten seconds, he went from desperately trying to catch his breath to calm, even breathing.
And his cock remained enormous and throbbing inside her.
She cried out brokenly several seconds later when he reached between them and spread her labia wide, exposing the sensitive kernel of flesh of her clit. He removed his hand and ground his pelvis down on her, rotating his hips, stimulating her. She gritted her teeth together at the pressure of being so filled by his cock while he massaged her clit. Orgasm loomed, the suddenness of its approach, the magnitude of it, stunning her.
She hadn’t fully recovered from her climax when he began fucking her again. Her palms began to tingle. She opened her eyelids and saw he gazed at her bare, restrained hands with a fixed, blazing stare. He didn’t speak, just thrust into her with lancing precision, a blade plunging into a shuddering sheath. Yet she felt the intensity of his longing, knew instinctually how much he hungered for her touch.
A fever overcame him. It enveloped Isabel as well, and together they existed at the center of an inferno. Again and again he took her, not understanding his need, but acknowledging he was ruled by it. His hunger never disappeared, but sometime close to dawn, he told himself it had at least eased. He untied Isabel’s hands and took great care in replacing her gloves.
“Come to bed,” Isabel said after her hands were covered, her voice roughened by passion spent many times over.
He hesitated where he stood next to the bed. She looked up at him so trustingly. Elysse had once regarded him thus, until she’d fully understood what he was. Then disgust—and worse, fear—had entered her clear, blue eyes. She’d been destroyed by that knowledge, ending her own life because she couldn’t bear the idea of having lain with him.
“What is it?” Isabel asked, and he realized his doubt and disbelief over what had occurred between them had entered his expression. Before she could ask him any more questions, before she had the opportunity to become repulsed, he placed his hand on her temple.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered roughly, not allowing himself to look into the wells of her dark, velvety eyes. He used his power to will her to forget everything that had occurred since she’d first entered his quarters earlier that evening.
Chapter Six
The next morning, Isabel recalled nothing about the night before. It only struck her as strange for a brief moment that she was not anxious about this. Her consciousness seemed to bounce and skitter off the vacant spot in her memory like a drop of water on a spot of oil.
She rose to the sound of water running in the distance and the smell of coffee, cinnamon and fresh-baked rolls. Her mouth watered. She pulled the covers around her breasts, sat up and stretched.
“I’ve started you a nice, hot bath, dear,” Margaret Turr
ow said as she stepped into the room and marched over to the table where she’d laid out the breakfast things. “And I’ve made you fresh cinnamon rolls.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Isabel mumbled. She placed her hand on her throat in surprise. Her voice had sounded rough and hoarse, as though she were getting a cold. Margaret glanced around, coffee carafe in her hand.
“Are you getting ill?”
“No,” Isabel said honestly as she got out of bed. “I feel good. Really good,” she added under her breath as she examined the brown silk nightgown she wore. Confusion flickered through her. She couldn’t recall putting it on last night.
“Here’s your robe, dear,” Margaret said, grabbing the silk confection at the foot of the bed. “Lord Delraven was right again, I see. He chose this gown special for you. You look scrumptious in this chocolate-brown color.”
Heat inexplicably flooded her cheeks at the sound of Delraven’s name. She suddenly became highly conscious of how sticky things felt between her thighs. For a moment, she felt disoriented, but then she suppressed the dizzy feeling and focused on the mundane details of the room and the woman bustling toward her.
“That’s all right, Margaret,” she said with a weak smile when the little woman held up the robe. “I think I’ll just have some coffee and get in the bath.”
“I’ll get it, dear,” Margaret insisted when Isabel headed toward the table and the carafe of coffee.
Isabel gave a small laugh. “You don’t have to wait on me, Margaret.”
“On the contrary, I do,” Margaret said as she poured the black, aromatic fluid into an elegant white porcelain cup. She glanced up as she handed over the coffee and noticed Isabel’s wry expression. “But of course I want this particular duty, as well.”
“I’m a duty?”
Margaret poured a splash of fresh cream into her coffee. “Lord Delraven wants me to see to you personally, and I told him I was glad to do it. He probably thinks you’ll grow lonely here, without the company of another mortal.”
“You make it sound like I’m going to spend the rest my life in this weird place,” Isabel said sharply. She waited for panic to rise in her—why wouldn’t she grow anxious at the idea of being kept a prisoner for her whole life because of the bizarre whim of a paranormal creature?—but nothing happened. She remained calm, an actress portraying panic rather than actually feeling it.
When had this change been wrought? Why did the opposite—the idea of leaving Sanctuary—suddenly disorient her?
Margaret’s blue eyes flickered over her before she set down the creamer. “There’s no telling what the future will bring, but you’re here now. May as well make the most of it. You’re free to access almost all of Sanctuary, which—trust me, Miss—contains a lifetime of interesting amusements. Lord Delraven told me before he left this morning to tell you that you may have run of the place, although he did ask that I accompany you until you become used to the premises. One can easily get lost here and wander for hours. Jessie told me he never got a chance to show you Delraven’s library, which is truly spectacular. Perhaps today you could pick out a book or two and relax poolside. At your word, I’ll send for a masseuse and you could get a nice massage—”
“Massage,” Isabel repeated incredulously. She broke into laughter at Margaret’s wide-eyed look of innocence. “Margaret, you’re priceless. You mention that my captor is offering to treat me to a spa experience so nonchalantly.” She continued to laugh under her breath as she walked toward the bathroom, sipping her coffee.
“There’s lotion, shampoo and conditioner beneath the sink, dear, and bath salts next to the tub. I put your towels on the warmer.”
Isabel paused and glanced around. Margaret’s face was completely serious, but the sparkle in her eyes hinted that she was every bit as aware of the humor and strangeness of the situation as Isabel was.
After she bathed and dressed, Margaret and she spent a lovely day. Isabel had suspended her sense of judgment as best she could and found herself truly enjoying Margaret’s company.
They’d wandered around a library that seemed as vast and impressive to her as the Library of Congress. Afterward, Margaret mysteriously told her she wanted her to see something. The older woman led her to a pair of ornately carved, white-painted doors and opened them. Isabel squinted, trying to see in the pitch blackness. Suddenly the room was illuminated.
She gasped in stunned pleasure.
It wasn’t a room at all—it was a theatre. A perfect, majestic little theatre.
“It’s a miniature of the Gielgud,” she said hollowly, referring to the London theatre designed in the ornate, Louis XVI style. She’d attended a play for the first time at the Gielgud with Lester Dee just days ago. She stared in wonder at the ornate gilt and wood carvings, not really believing what she was saying.
Margaret looked pleased. “You’ve been to the Gielgud? Yes, Delraven had it modeled after that theatre. He loves to attend plays.”
“He does?” Isabel asked, still vibrating in pleasure at the discovery of this latest miracle housed within Sanctuary.
“Oh yes,” Margaret enthused. “Lord Delraven is a great patron of the arts. He told me to tell you that as his guest, you may choose any play that you like and perform whatever part you choose. He will provide the cast, crew and director.”
Isabel laughed. Surely Margaret was joking.
“Come, dear,” Margaret said, waving excitedly for her to follow her down the aisle between rows of scarlet velvet chairs. “The theatre contains its own library, filled with scripts from every century and every part of the world. You’re going to think you died and went to heaven.”
“Have I?” Isabel whispered, not moving. Margaret heard her and came to a halt. She blinked when she took in Isabel’s slain expression.
“Delraven meant it to be a pleasure for you, Miss. He said he could think of no one better to bring the theatre to life again. Was he wrong? He told me you were an actress. He must have thought you would enjoy—”
“Of course I would enjoy it,” she said through a constricted throat. Isabel swallowed thickly and tried to get a hold of herself. The perfect theatre was magnificent—she felt as if she stood in the middle of a priceless jewel. But it was Margaret’s admission that Lord Delraven himself had suggested this treat especially for her that had truly left her speechless.
“Why…why didn’t he make this generous offer in person?” she asked in a thin voice.
“Lord Delraven?” Margaret clarified as she walked toward her. “Oh, he’s very busy. He has a vast number of business and personal concerns.”
“Oh yes, I see.”
She couldn’t quite put her finger on how Margaret’s words made her feel. Or she could, but the hurt that swept through her at that moment made no sense whatsoever, so Isabel chose to interpret the emotion as bewilderment.
Why should she care if the man who was holding her prisoner refused to offer the magnificent gift personally?
But even to herself, her disregard sounded hollow. She did care that Delraven kept his distance from her.
After they’d toured the small theatre, they’d had lunch poolside surrounded by exotic palms and colorful flowers. The ceiling of the pool was made of hazed glass. Once again, Isabel doubted that she was underground. She would have guessed that above the glass was a pale blue sky with puffy white clouds that occasionally sailed across the radiant orb of the sun.
She’d seen no one all day save Margaret, but again, Isabel had the impression of being observed—not by malicious eyes, but watchful, intense ones. Once, she’d seen a large shape rush through the shadows of the thick foliage surrounding the pool, and amazed herself further by suppressing the exclamation and questions that sprang to her tongue.
Later that afternoon Isabel paused and examined herself in her suite’s bathroom mirror. She’d taken off her cover-up and wore only gold hoops in her ears, a new pair of gloves—these made of a gold, thin synthetic that hugged her hands tightly—a
nd a darling scrap of an emerald green bikini that was offered to her by a straight-faced Margaret that morning. Isabel surprised herself by putting it and the accompanying silk cover-up on without comment.
Why shouldn’t she dress as decadently as she chose? This was all just a great cosmic joke…a dream.
Wasn’t it?
Those clouds seemingly floating across a brilliant sun earlier while they were poolside and supposedly hundreds of feet belowground seemed just as unlikely as Isabel Lanscourt agreeing to wear this revealing bikini.
Her fingers trailed along her neck. She checked for the tenth time that day, but no—there was nothing visible that could explain the slight soreness she felt there.
Her pussy ached too, but in a pleasant, arousing sort of way. Or at least it was pleasant when she didn’t let herself think on the “whys” of the soreness too greatly.
She showered, washed her hair and dried off with the thick, absorbent towels provided for her—these were made of some synthetic that did not disrupt her consciousness with unwelcome, bombarding sensations. Instead, only a few whispery images struck her mind’s eye of some sort of chugging machinery, and then quickly, a hint of a bored, blonde female who smoked unfiltered Benny Hennies maneuvering fabric beneath a bobbing needle. The weak perceptions vanished as quickly as they’d come, as they often did when her fingers and palms touched new synthetics.
She walked into the closet naked.
Margaret had laid out two dozen different gloves for her on a long shelf in the closet. On a whim, she chose a pair of tight, black, wrist-length gloves with a metallic sheen. When she glanced into her empty suite and saw that Margaret had started a fire, she dressed in a light, amber silk gown that fell to her thighs, and a matching robe. In the bureau, she discovered that Margaret had added to her store of lingerie. Her fingertips ran over exquisite silks and laces, only to settle on a tiny thong that matched the amber of her gown.