Beloved Vampire (19 page)

Her bootheel caught and she let out a yelp. However, instead of landing headfirst in the dirt, she was in his arms, holding on to his biceps, his face intensely close. Her foot was still tangled in the fence railing.

“I told you I could catch you if you warned me.”

“You’re being juvenile,” she retorted, trying to ignore her shiver. She called it fear, instead of something far more confusing.

“Really? Did I just smear horse manure on
your
clothes and knock you off a fence?”

“Let me up.” She squirmed, and he didn’t budge.

“If you were of a mind to be civil, I’d take you for a ride on the beach.”

She stilled, and despite herself, desire leaped in her breast, so strong it registered in the pleasure filling his own gaze. That in turn added another kind of desire to the feeling. God, he smelled good. Like the desert, exotic and mysterious.
Ignore it. All vampires
emanate the fuck-me vibe. It’s physical.

He cocked his head, obviously reading her thoughts. He didn’t say anything about it, though, just gave her that faint, sexy smile again. Holding her up in one arm, he freed her boot and lowered her feet to the ground, keeping one arm around her waist.

Belatedly, she noticed she was still gripping his arms. She jerked free and stepped back, her cheeks warm. He was right. She
did
feel like an adolescent.

“So do you need a saddle?” he asked.

She shook her head. She’d first been put on a horse when she was three years old. It was one of the pictures on her mother’s desk, behind which was a wall of blue ribbons and trophies. She’d taught her daughter as much as she was willing to learn, and unlike most girls, Jess had never grown out of her horse stage. Squatting, she began to unlace the boots. While being shoeless around a horse wasn’t always a good idea, she couldn’t resist the idea of riding bareback and bare-foot, along a sandy stretch of beach sparkling under the stars.

Mason was speaking to the grooms, and a bridle was brought out, slipped on the head of the white mare. Jorge led them both out of the paddock. They were already prancing, crabstepping, knowing where they were going. Ears pricked forward as Mason approached, spoke to them in Arabic.

Jess straightened. She couldn’t imagine a more breathtaking picture than the two Arabians, heads held high, manes tossing, feet stomping, and the man holding them, weight shifted to one hip in the snug breeches, broad shoulders flexing as he stroked their muscular necks and then glanced back at her. He said a word to the black and led the white forward. The black stayed where he was, watching with interest.

“Hasna’s name means ‘beautiful.’ ” He smiled down at her. “Very appropriate for you.”

Jess ignored that and his offered hand, took a handful of mane and rein and swung up with a lithe twist of hips that felt so damn good she almost laughed aloud. Hasna pranced about, but a horse sensed a rider who knew her business, so she quickly settled as Jess spoke to her and adjusted the reins.

She noted Mason’s look. Having taught riding before, she knew that expression. He was gauging her experience level to ensure she would be reasonably safe on the mount he gave her. It surprised her enough that, when he touched her leg and crooked his finger to have her lean down, she did so. Sweeping off her bill cap, he combed his hands through her sweat-stained hair to loosen it from her skull and then took his hands away before she could get more discomfited by the casual contact.

“So you can feel the wind,
habiba
.” He gave her a quick smile before he turned the hat over to Jorge. Then the vampire turned and spoke another Arabic command. Coman came forward eagerly, and Jess noted he had no tack at all, not even a bridle. Mason swung up, just as lithe.

Farida had been right. Jess saw it, from the instant he completed the mount. So easy, so relaxed, the horse barely registered he had a rider. The powerful thighs flexed on the black’s sides and he was moving forward, Mason taking the lead toward the beach. In this position, she could see him lay his hands on his thighs, guiding the horse solely with his knees. Watch that excellent ass shift with the horse’s movement, making it impossible not to imagine it bare, flexing in a coital rhythm.

If Mason heard her embarrassing thought, he at least had the courtesy not to show it. To all appearances, he was taking in the night sounds, his attention on the shore up ahead. What in the hell was she doing? She’d been fine these past couple weeks, until he appeared. But how many times had she fantasized about him, guiltily stepping into Farida’s body as she imagined what he might do to it, what soft, seductive things he would whisper to her late at night?

That was a different Mason, Farida’s Mason, a storybook character she’d enhanced in her mind. It didn’t mean she wanted this one, but it was logical that she would respond to his presence, particularly with those vampire pheromones swirling around him, like flies swarming a corpse.

That damned diary. It was confusing things. Raithe had never confused her like this. She wanted to say she was sorry she’d ever found it, but she knew that would not only be a lie, but an insult to Farida’s memory she couldn’t permit. She’d had the strength to survive Raithe because of her.

She would resist Mason, like she’d resisted Raithe. Though Raithe had known how to get around that, just like Mason did, exploiting the weakness of her own body.

You say you hate it, you filthy cunt, but your slit is wet
. . .
Fuck her ass, Trenton. She’ ll cry from the pain, but she’ ll still
come all over your balls and lick them clean afterward, like an eager little bitch in heat
. . .

Hasna whinnied. Jess jerked out of the memory, flinched from Mason’s touch on her shoulder. He’d brought Coman alongside and had his other hand on the mare’s rein.

“Easy,
habiba
. Stay right here with us.”

There was a strained note to his voice, though, and she wondered if he was regretting his decision to let her ride one of his prized horses. Then she raised her attention to his gaze and realized it was something else. Fire, the rage of Hell in the depths of his eyes, but not toward her. Coman shifted restlessly beneath him, but he stilled him with the movement of his knees. “Come here,
habiba
.

This one time, I’m going to outrun those memories of yours. For both our sakes.”

Before she could protest, he’d plucked her off Hasna and sat her before him on the black. He slipped off the white mare’s bridle and tossed it over a salt-encrusted bush. Hasna followed them as he put the black into an easy trot toward the water’s edge. His arm slipped around Jess’s waist, making her far more cognizant of his heat at her back, the solid chest, the feel of his groin and her buttocks snugged in against it. A soft command, and the horse was cantering, the wind building in their faces.

Male vampires didn’t have facial hair, and she’d missed that during her captivity, the rasp of a man’s five o’clock shadow.

However, she didn’t mind the smooth, firm line of Mason’s jaw, pressed against her temple. She put one hand on his forearm across her stomach, and had no place other than his thigh to put the other.

“Would you like to go as fast as he wants to go? Feel his wildness call to your own,
habiba
?”

“I would love it,” she said, before she could think to be more reserved.

“Good. I would, too.” His arm tightened around her waist in approval, and she couldn’t help but compare the muscles that flexed against the back of her shoulder to the musculature of the horse’s crest. “Now, as he runs, move with me, no stiffness. I won’t let you fall.”

Of all the scenarios she’d imagined for herself, combining one of her favorite pastimes with the company of a vampire had been far off the radar. But now, she made a concerted effort to relax her body into his, giving herself tacit permission to enjoy the forbidden, without interposing the memory of Farida to keep him at a safe distance. “Go,” she encouraged.

He smiled against her temple. Another word, that musical language she didn’t know, and she gasped as the horse’s feet lifted off the ground in a joyous response. Coman leaped forward, Hasna on his flank.

The silver line of moonlight on the water wavered into jagged lightning as the body between her legs moved with all the reckless power and speed the stallion had been blessed with. She’d seen horses run wild in pasture, but the fence curbed their speed. When given limitless stretches of ground, horses became the favored animal of the gods, fire on their fetlocks, thundering them to the heavens to do battle for Zeus.

Coman went faster and faster, as if on the next breath he was going to leave the ground in truth. As exhilarating as that was, feeling the male body behind her added to it. Mason moved with Coman, united with that horse’s exuberant spirit. He let out a wild yell, like a Berber raider coming over the dunes. It made her laugh and tremble at once, her fingers digging into his thigh and forearm, her head thrown back on his shoulder, fear for once gone from her mind when his arm cinched around her. Remarkably, they went even faster. His breath was at her ear, body pressed in hard against hers. She was so alive. Damn it, she was
alive
. Nothing could touch her like this. Nothing except what she wanted to touch her.

Perhaps it was only a few minutes, but when he brought the horse back to a half gallop, then to a canter, she was breathing hard, as if she’d been the one running. A long time ago, she’d galloped her palomino, Deena, through forest meadows. As they cooled down by the river, Deena would walk and Jess would lie back on her rump, letting the reins go slack, because Deena knew the way home. Jess had stared up through the screen of trees at the blue sky, listened to cicadas and frogs, and dreamed about the marvelous, heroic woman she would be, never realizing she should have treasured the girlhood, because her ability to dream for herself was a loss she would never get back.

You don’t know that,
habiba
. Your life is far from over. And you
are
that marvelous, heroic woman.
Keeping his arm around her, he lay back and brought her with him, her shoulder blades against his upper abdomen, head pillowed on his chest. The distracting press of his impressive groin adjusted in the small of her back. But he had no demands of her, allowing her to use him as a prop as she stared up at the stars and moon. Then at Hasna, for the mare’s head filled her vision, ears pricked forward as she nosed Jess, curious about her position. It made her chuckle, stroke the long nose until the horse snorted and nosed Coman instead.

He gave her a playful nip, but stayed to a walk, mindful of his master’s will. Mason’s thighs were warm beneath Jess’s palms and she had to make a conscious effort not to stroke the long muscles as she might Coman’s flanks.

“She stayed right with him,” she said, desperately hoping he would continue to ignore her thoughts, or at least not comment on them.

“She can run nearly as fast. His legs are just longer. They’ve been together since they were babies. They’re very devoted to one another, gentle as lambs, for all that their high spirits make them a bit of a handful.”

“They’re magnificent.”

“Thank you. Coman’s name means ‘noble.’ Their bloodlines go back centuries. Far purer than mine. I think they know they outrank me, but they’re tolerant.”

It made her want to smile, but she restrained herself this time. When she turned her head to look out at the sea, it pressed her cheek to him, so that she felt the bump of his nipple, distractingly close to her lips. She noted again that he smelled good, like cinnamon and a male musk, as well as a trace of the tropical flowers she’d passed in his gardens. He smelled like his home, as well as the desert.

He’d let his arm slide to a resting spot on her hip, and she was aware of the pressure of his long fingers there, how easy it would be to slide upward beneath her T-shirt. Or down, beneath the loose waistband of her jeans to tease her between her legs. Then, using a modicum of that impressive strength to lift her, he could turn her over and let her rest on her stomach, his heartbeat in her ear, her legs tangled with his behind the horse’s shoulders, her fingers curled into his shirt at the ribs. She could sleep this way, moving in a fantastic dream of moonlight and horses running under the night sky.

“Sit up,
habiba
, and I’ll turn you over.”

“No,” she whispered, staring at the sea. “Don’t. My thoughts don’t mean anything.”

Of course he didn’t listen to her. He lifted them both to a sitting position, and as she sat tensely, he guided one leg over so she was sitting sidesaddle, legs draped over one thigh, and then the next step, turning her to face him, straddling his lap. She’d gone numb, her mind not working. She was afraid, but wanting, too, caught between her dream of him and Farida—

“Jessica.” He curved his palm over her cheek, but she wouldn’t look up. She stared at the open collar of his shirt, at the column of his throat, the smooth skin revealed there. He paused, his breath stirring her brow, then he reached between them and, before her eyes, he slipped two buttons, so she saw more of that muscular flesh. Lifting her hand, he placed it inside the fabric, against his heart, warm male flesh.

“Being with Farida, it was a dream. A beautiful one. I don’t blame you for escaping there when the awful memories you’ve had to carry become too much. But this is you and me right now. Can you face that?”

Sometime during the ride, his hair had become unclipped and the wind rippled it forward over one of his shoulders, teasing her cheek. Reaching up, she caught it, twined her fingers in the copper strands, but she shook her head. “I don’t know what’s real or a lie anymore, Mason. I don’t think I even want to know. Can you please . . . just let me pretend for a little while?”

Before he could answer, she slid her hands under his arms, pressing her palms into his back, laying her cheek with wonder on the warm flesh.
This is Lord Mason, Farida’s Mason. That’s all that’s important.

Her tension eased as he sighed, folded his arms around her and lay back again, taking her with him. “This is not helping you, Jessica.” His deep voice thrummed against her upper body, through her chest and stomach.