Bound by the Vampire Queen (23 page)

“The threat you issued to Patrick? If you harm my queen, you will suffer the same.”

“As long as your queen does nothing against my lady, I will not act against her. I don’t harm women.” Jacob’s gaze was just as unflinching. “Ever.” Cayden nodded. “Make sure everything is tucked into the lift, vampire. It’s a narrow space and something extraneous might get whacked off.” Jacob bared his fangs. “Your envy is showing, Captain.”

Cayden snorted at that. Lyssa was surprised when the guard captain offered his hand to help her step up into the lift. A subtle gesture, but one suggesting his attitude might be easing toward them. Or perhaps his queen was no longer in such a petty mood as to deny her the basic courtesies that should be expected.

That could be a good sign, or simply a distraction for something far worse Rhoswen had planned.

There was no visible source of power to the lift, but then she looked up. She touched Jacob’s shoulder, guiding his gaze upward. A trio of thick vines, populated with what reminded her of her moonflowers at home, was gathered and held in the mouth of a hippogriff. The creature with the body of a horse and head of a raptor had deep purple and black plumage. She surged off the platform with the help of her powerful wings, taking them up smoothly.

When they saw the night sky, Jacob realized the lift silo was open to allow the hippogriff to come and go at her leisure, or at the queen’s desire. When she reached the top, she settled on the stone ledge with a dainty clop of hooves, deftly dropping the vines into a catch hook that brought the lift to a slight thump of a halt.

As it opened, Jacob met Lyssa’s gaze.
By your command, my queen.

A bracing reminder that only one royal held his allegiance. Sliding her hand down to the small of his back, she caressed his servant’s mark along the way. Giving him a teasing scrape of her nails over his bare ass, she stepped out of the lift ahead of him.

Jacob wasn’t certain if this was the queen’s private chamber or simply the place she chose to enjoy those she summoned to her. He suspected it was the latter, because though Lyssa had taken him in a lush bedroom his first night with her, he’d later learned she’d had a matching underground chamber. That was where she went to be herself, unguarded and relaxed. None but a precious few invaded that sanctum. Rhoswen struck him as the same.

This chamber was a display area for a queen’s power and beauty, not a haven for her personal quiet time. A large bed was hung with more moonflower vines and strips of silk. The fireplace was roaring, firefly Fae cavorting in the flames. In the corner, teal yarn was strung on a large spinning wheel. Whoever operated it was creating a tapestry that looked like an ocean wave, the completed portion crumpled below the wheel on the floor.

Positioned before an open window was a standing frame like a doorway, only sculpted of smooth black stone. It looked similar to the Torü outside Shinto temples, gateways to havens for the divine, but he had a feeling that was not Rhoswen’s purpose for it. Through the window, Jacob could see the torchlike Castle of Fire.

Now he followed his lady’s attention to something else. Positioned next to the fire was a no less intricately carved but far smaller throne than what was in Rhoswen’s main hall. A comfortable guest chair sat opposite from it, but between them was a small table with a child’s tea set on it. A doll with porcelain face, long dark hair and long-lashed green eyes sat in the guest chair. Rhoswen sat in the throne, of course.

Lyssa moved toward her, bidding him stay where he was with another touch on his shoulder.

Contemplating the two women together caused his ice encased cock to respond, which almost wrenched a groan from his throat. The gold and green garment was a robe. The dress his lady wore beneath it at Rhoswen’s behest was a stretched sheath of dark cobwebs, every feature of her body visible and yet temptingly shadowed by the lace work. It made her raven darkness, her dangerous edge, even more irresistible.

Rhoswen was her ice counterpart, the vivid blue eyes molten and white hair touched with a gleam in the firelight. She wore a filmy bit of white silk that hugged her hips and draped low on her breasts, showing her nipples through the cloth, the long lines of her thighs. A cluster of fragrant flowers like tiny gardenias were caught in her long hair.

Unlike Rhoswen’s plunging neckline, Lyssa’s was high on the throat, so it made the tight, revealing fit of the lace over her breasts even more noticeable, the nipples impossible for a man to ignore. Her feet were bare, as were Rhoswen’s.

Rhoswen’s outfit made her appear softer, more feminine, and so the whole picture was disarming, which made Jacob even more on his guard. What appeared to be bees were hovering around the flowers in Rhoswen’s hair, more of the tiny insect Fae. While others might fear her wrath, apparently the small est of her subjects felt comfortable being in her chambers.

Still, that tea set and doll bothered him.

Rhoswen nodded to Lyssa genially enough, gesturing her to the chair with the doll. Those tempting legs crossed as she turned her attention to Jacob. Starting at his feet, she worked her way up, inch by inch. As she covered the terrain, her lips parted, moistening. He was far too aroused to ignore the fact the pink frosted gloss on them made them all the more mesmerizing. He could imagine a wide variety of crude, wicked things she could do for him with those lips. She made it worse by becoming more stimulated during her appraisal.

Her nipples drew tighter before his gaze, thighs sliding in a restless shift, a telling arousal. Her musk was flavored with those flowers, but his vampire senses knew female readiness, no matter the species or scent.

Lyssa took a seat, picking up the doll and setting her on the table next to the tea set. Rhoswen nodded to the stone archway. “Put yourself there, vampire.

And take your time. I’d like to see you walk.” Walking fast with ice shoved up one’s ass wasn’t really possible, so he could accommodate that. But that erection was going to kill him, the heat and cold making every step pleasure and torment both. As she drank it in, he sensed his lady doing the same.

No matter the situation, Lyssa’s natural sensuality would kick in to enjoy him to the full est. He could resist it all he wished, but he knew it was one of the things that kept him hard so often.

Rhoswen purred, no other word for it. “I’m going to love taking my pleasure of that, vampire or not. How do you ever let him get any rest?”

“Who says I do?” Lyssa returned, and won the queen’s tight smile.

When he reached the archway, he saw imprints in the floor to place his feet. He figured he must be getting more used to the magic of the Fae world, for he barely flinched when talons emerged from the floor and circled his ankles above the ice manacles, though he bit back an oath as those talons pierced his skin, drawing blood. His wrist manacles released, but it was a temporary reprieve. Rhoswen gestured above his head. “There.”

He glanced up, saw the hook. Shifting his attention to Lyssa, he waited for her nod before he lifted his arms. The hook distorted and split, becoming a two-headed silver snake that slithered down over his arms, holding him fast. It delivered a menacing hiss inches from his face before melding back into inanimate silver, tightening so his body was stretched taut between the frame above and the ankle restraints below. He felt the pul in his back and shoulder muscles, the thighs and groin. And particularly in the nipple area, that excruciating stimulation.

“A nice display.” Rhoswen nodded to the tea set then. “Can I interest you in a cup of tea, Lady Lyssa?”

“My Irish servant has told me it’s not wise to eat or drink of Fae fare. That it can bind you here forever, or make you forget things you don’t wish to forget.”

“That applies to humans, not to vampires and part Fae.” Rhoswen shrugged. “And most human minds are filled with things they’d like to forget, or that are already so forgettable, our magic is almost unnecessary to drive it entirely from their minds.”

“Hmm” was Lyssa’s only comment. “What kind of tea?”

“It’s from the honey of a flower here called a lilania.

It ensures one’s pleasure is endless, because after every climax, your stamina and desire are doubled. If we drank enough of it, and if he was human, we could literally couple with your servant until he died.

We had a mortal steal some of it once, a long time ago. Not only did he rut on his female until he kill ed her, he devoured her afterward. Literally. A cautionary tale to humans, that Fae magic is dangerous to play with, and that our worlds should not cross paths.”

“Yet there was a time they did, quite often.”

“Yes. And the tragedies far outweighed anything else.” Rhoswen extended the tea. “You said you wished to share your servant with me. Will you allow me to enhance that experience, Lyssa?”

“And it is the only thing this tea does, enhances sexual pleasure?”

“It is. You have my word.”

Two women, completely comfortable with having a naked, aroused and restrained man awaiting their pleasure, overhearing how they intended to push him far beyond his limits. To all appearances, they were both indifferent to his reaction to that, though Jacob knew his lady was quite conscious of how the erotic apprehension would keep him in an excruciating state of want. He bit back another painful grunt. God, even at vampire hands, he’d never experienced an agony quite like this.

He wasn’t sure if he could bear it, but that choice was beyond his grasp. In reaction to the tangle of physical and emotional strain, his hands quivered in the restraints. The shudder that started there rippled out through his body, despite his efforts to quell it. The movement caught their attention. When they turned toward him, tracking him with twin focus, they were perfectly synchronized.

Their body language, the tilt of their heads, the shape of their mouths—they were an unmistakable mirror of one another. For a moment, it was so unlikely he doubted himself. But then, replaying it in his mind, he was sure.

My lady… you share blood. You can see the family resemblance.

An aunt? Grandmother? It was impossible to tell Rhoswen’s age, just as it was impossible to tell Lyssa’s, unless one got lost in her jade eyes. Then the centuries of wisdom swept over one like a wave, awe-inspiring or deeply terrifying, depending on what mood she wanted to project.

This was one of the instances where that wisdom proved itself. Not by a twitch did she betray a reaction, and he knew she’d heard him. Releasing a thought inside her head had an intimacy to it, like touching her inner thigh, that silken skin sliding beneath his fingers as she opened herself to him.

Holy Mother of Christ, he needed to stay away from analogies like that, though it was kind of difficult to do so. Especially with him prepared like this, and the two of them looking so incredibly fuckable. Each incremental hardening of his cock inside that enchantment of ice and heat wrenched a higher pain and a more blatant level of lust out of him.

Lyssa sipped her tea, pressing her lips together over the taste. “Like lemon,” she said. “A very mel ow form of it. With a touch of vanilla.”

“Yes,” Rhoswen said. The Fae queen sat back in the throne. Whether or not she truly was, she appeared far more relaxed than she’d been in her great hall. “I’ve had some of your foods, you know.

Chocolate.”

“And what did you think?”

“That your foods and liquids are far more likely than ours to lead to dangerous, forgetful bliss. Our younger Fae can’t resist your Starbucks.”

“Their hot chocolate is ambrosia of the gods.” Lyssa put down the tea. “You sound indulgent with them. Yet you locked Catriona in a tree for twenty years. Was the lesson for her, truly, or was it for Keldwyn?”

Her tone was merely curious. Showing the effects of the tea, she let her gaze wander over Jacob, lingering in places that made her moisten her lips and made him stifle another groan of need.

“Both,” Rhoswen said, watching her. “Too many of our young Fae are overly curious about the human world. I control the gateways, but youth can be clever and foolish at once. One tragic, horrifying example such as hers helped reinforce the gates better than a hundred enchantments. There have been far fewer infractions since.” Rhoswen put down her cup as well. “She was a lovely girl. It was regrettable, but necessary.”

“The vampire world has lived in the shadows of the human one for a very long time. Why can’t the Fae?”

“I think you already know the answer to that question.” Rhoswen gestured to the open window, past Jacob’s stretched form. She directed Lyssa’s attention to the Castle of Fire, the green rolling hill's beyond, a dragon soaring through the sky against the yellow moon. “How does all this fit into your concrete world? The earth, the source of magic and life, is desecrated with your asphalt and garbage, your greed and fear. You drown out everything but your own voices with your ceaseless noise. What kind of queen would I be if I threw open the gates, let youthful foolishness like Catriona’s destroy the next generations of our Fae in that cacophony? Free will is earned, not by simple existence, but by maturity, wisdom.”

“That sounds quite sensible,” Lyssa noted. “But even if you are the wisest queen in the world, eventually the throne must pass to someone else.

And what if the next one isn’t so wise? What if it is someone who uses the restriction of free will not to teach and protect, but to increase their own power and abuse it? It’s a very delicate line, and all leaders face it. A civilization governed by free will always teeters on the brink of self-destruction. That’s part of its appeal and danger at once.”

The Fae queen gave a delicate snort. “You are practiced in such conversations.”

“Not so much. It’s difficult to find someone who understands the unique issues a monarch faces.” The Fae queen rose abruptly, moved to a cabinet where she added what looked like more lemon to her tea. As she did, one of the bumblebee-like Fae left her hair and drifted over to Jacob. It was a female in bright yellow clothing, her feet enclosed in remarkably tiny slippers. When she hovered directly in front of his face, violet eyes staring at him out of a halo of brown curly hair, Jacob pursed his lips and blew gently. It sent her back in a lazy somersault.