His Captive Mortal (8 page)

She jerked at the feel of his firm fingers against her sensitive cleft. “Get away from me, vampire,” she cried, wrestling free and staggering back, feigning indignation as her pussy thrummed, hungry for more.

Chapter Four

He loved flustering Sasha, the color splashing across her cheeks, her eyes flashing. Adorable.

“Open it,” he directed, ignoring her snit.

She seemed happy to change focus, eagerly picking up the box and carrying it to the kitchen, where she sliced it open with a knife. “Wait…” she said, holding up a plastic bag containing a black corset/panty set and package of thigh-high stockings. “What are these?”

He smirked. “I happen to be fond of old-fashioned underwear.”

She threw him a condemning look. “I hope these are for you to wear.”

He made a show of sweeping his eyes up and down her body. “They’re for me, but I won’t be wearing them. But don’t worry—I won’t force,” he said, making his tone smooth like honey. “You’ll put them on because you want to please me.”

She tossed them at him. “Fat chance!”

He caught the hurled items and opened the bag containing the corset, holding it up in her direction with a critical eye.

“Stop it.”

He flashed to stand in front of her, taking her chin in his hand. “Young lady, if you do not wish me to strip your clothing privileges again, you’ll mind your tone when you speak to me.”  He sensed heat coming off her in waves, a heady sensation on his cool skin. His fangs began to elongate and he closed his eyes, willing himself think of something besides tying her up and making her come until she wept.

Instead of pulling away, she stepped closer, causing his eyes to fly open. She lifted her face and he could hardly deny what she asked for. Wrapping his hand around the back of her head, he kissed her, his lips twisting over hers, his tongue licking into her mouth.

He caught himself before moaning her name, his desire mounting at the taste of her, the sensuous pleasure of contact. He reached for the hem of her shirt and began to pull it up, but she jerked away, yanking it back down.

“Stop,” she said, breathless. “I...I’m not ready for that.”

He rolled his eyes, not bothering to remind her he’d already seen her magnificent tits the day before. Still, she’d been right to stop him—what the hell had he been attempting? Did he think tumbling her would help alleviate his mounting lust? It would only make it worse, and then he would be blood-starved and blue-balled, which would equal one extremely crabby vampire. And they had real work to do here.

He picked her up by the waist and carried her to a chair at the kitchen table, plunking her down and shoving the box of books at her. “Get busy learning magic, little fairy.”

She tipped the box and peered inside. Pulling a suede flogger out of the box, she looked at it critically.

“Ah yes, that one is for me. To use on you, of course.”

She lifted it to throw at him, but seemed to reconsider, perhaps frightened he’d use it on her. Tossing the flogger back in the box, she changed the subject. “Which book should I start with?”

He shrugged. “You’re the fairy Call it to you.”

Her jaw went slack. “How, exactly, do I do that?”

He didn’t answer, but returned her gaze steadily, daring her to try it. He didn’t know how fairies or witches did what they did, but he’d spent enough time around Anka to know it was what she would have done.

She turned slowly back to the box and peered inside. A glow came around one of the books.

“There! Do you see it?” he asked, pointing.

She whipped her head around to look at him, confusion on her face. She looked back to the box and stared at it. The book remained lit up from his view. He supposed as an immortal, he had the capability of seeing things ordinary humans did not. Like the bubble of protection she’d used when he first saw her.

After a long moment, she picked out the glowing one and held it up. “This one?” she asked doubtfully.

He smiled so widely his cheeks stretched, a surge of—was it pride?— running through him. “Brilliant girl. Clever little fairy,” he praised, practically gushing with enthusiasm. “I knew you’d be a quick study. You read the book, I’ll tidy up around here.” When her eyes widened, he added sternly, “Just this once. I shall expect you to keep a neater house going forward.”

She stuck her tongue out at him and turned to the book, opening it with a look of wonder on her lovely face.

He arranged her clutter into neat piles and began to make dinner. Despite his edict that she cook, he actually enjoyed preparing food. Some vampires chose not to eat at all, preferring to take all their sustenance from blood. He loved food, the years he’d spent in France providing him with a discerning palate.

He’d met Anka in Paris, where she owned a bordello. The raven-haired madame had seemed as immortal as he, her witchcraft giving her the appearance of eternal youth. She had flawless olive skin, almond-shaped black eyes with thick, curling lashes.

Born to a Romani mother, she’d had a French father, so while she’d inherited the gift of sight and healing from her mother, the tribe had found her lacking the Romani spirit and had declared her Gadjo at age fourteen. Sent away, she’d found her way to Paris to make her living first as a prostitute and later as the proprietor of one of the most expensive brothels in the city.

Thinking of her now did not make him angry as it usually did. He almost pitied her. Alone, with no one to help her, she’d had to use every bit of magic, every manipulation she knew to get ahead. Using him had been out of habit. The fact that she cursed him showed she had truly cared. Else she never would’ve minded his finally walking away. He opened the refrigerator and took out the steak to marinate. He also grabbed a few potatoes and set them to boil. He had a hankering for twice-baked.

He hadn’t thought as much about Anka as he had in the last two days for a very long time. The possibility of ridding himself of her curse brought the memories of her to the forefront of his consciousness.

As he worked on the food preparation, he caught Sasha stealing looks at him from under her lashes. She appeared to have a mystical intelligence, as if she saw beyond his self-centered vampiric existence straight into his heart, where she sifted through his loose morals to determine whether he had anything left to redeem. An old soul, it would seem. Descended from the fae.

He had to admit parts of him he’d presumed dead had come to life in the past two days. Something about his little fairy soothed his spirit, made him feel human again.

Her cell phone rang and she picked it up. “Hey, girl, what’s up?” She looked over at him. “Tonight? I can’t…” She twirled a piece of hair between her fingers and looked at him again before walking toward her room. “I met a guy,” she said in an undertone.

He smiled, glad for his heightened sense of hearing, because this was one conversation he did not want to miss.

“Yeah, well...I met him at work...sort of. And we’ve just been...hanging out for the past couple days…Charlie. Yeah. I don’t know,” she said with the suggestive lilt to her voice that teenage girls use when telling secrets.

Something in him turned warm and sugary. He loved hearing her talk about him as if he were a love interest. Her innocence shone through in the conversation and it brought out a protective instinct in him. He’d had no intention of developing a relationship with Sasha, but the idea of her wanting one somehow changed things.

He doused the steaks with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, onion powder, salt, and pepper. He wrapped strips of bacon around the edges and fixed them in place with toothpicks, then returned them to the refrigerator.

Sasha emerged from the bedroom.

“If you work very hard, I might let you go out with your friends.”

“Shut up, vampire,” she said, but she wore a flirtatious smile.

“Are you going to introduce me to them?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Why you want to meet them.”

“I’m going to kidnap them and keep them as blood slaves until you free me of the curse.”

She snorted, but darted a glance at him, as if checking to make sure he was joking.

“Nah, that’s only if you haven’t figured it out by Tuesday.”

“I don’t perform well under pressure.”

“I don’t believe that.” He scooped out the insides of the cooled potatoes and mixed them with butter, cheese and chives, popping them into the oven, along with the steaks which he planned to top with blue cheese during the last few minutes of baking.

Sasha walked up behind him and he found himself longing for her to touch him of her own accord. Instead, she said, “What can I help with?”

“You could work on making a salad.”

He moved out of her way and she took the salad fixings out of the refrigerator.

“So how did you become a vampire?” she asked as she began chopping fresh vegetables.

He folded his arms across his chest, leaning back against the cabinets and watching her work.  “I was the carriage driver and groom for the Duke of Lynton. His wife, the duchess, had a penchant for being bent over the hitching post and taken roughly from behind.”

Sasha stopped and stared at him, a mixture of fascination and shock on her face. “By you, you mean?”

“Yes, although I imagine I wasn’t the first groom she’d recruited for her recreation. The night I was turned, I’d just driven her to London and had thrown up her skirts in the stables when the Duke found us and shot me.”

Her eyes rounded, the knife suspended in mid-air.

“I managed to stumble out onto the streets of London. He let me go—I imagine he didn’t think I’d get very far, but I must have walked a few blocks before I collapsed. And then a beautiful woman lifted me into her arms as if I weighed no more than a child, and she carried me to her apartment. She asked if I wanted to die, or if I preferred eternal life. I chose eternal life,” he said with a broad grin.

“Is that true?”

“Vampires can’t lie.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“And the only thing that kills you is a stake through the heart?”

“Not exactly. We heal quickly, so most injuries wouldn’t kill us, but decapitation or some other major injury which might cause us to bleed out before regenerating would. Sunlight, obviously.”

“Silver bullet? Or no, that’s werewolves, right?”

He chuckled. “Silver can harm us too, actually. Takes away our strength and burns our skin. Not fatal, but not a friendly element for us, either.”

Sasha returned to chopping celery, but her eyes remained on him, bright with interest. “Ouch,” she cried, jerking her thumb up to her mouth.

The smell of her blood reached his hunger-starved brain before any thought. He flashed to her, taking her sliced thumb into his mouth and sucking hard.

Sasha yanked her hand out of his mouth, terrified. He’d done his materializing trick, appearing right in front of her with his fangs fully elongated and a look of pure hunger on his face. Not lust this time. He’d looked like a drug addict who needed a fix.

Without thinking, she drew back her palm and slapped him across the face as hard as she could.

A look of surprise flickered over his features. He grasped her waist and spun her around, bending her over the kitchen table. His fingers worked the button on her jean shorts. Pulling them down along with her panties, he slapped her ass, harder than she thought possible with just his hand. But then, he had special vampire strength, didn’t he?

He continued to spank her and every slap stung, making her catch her breath and list from side to side to avoid them. After about twenty, her ass adjusted, heat flooding the area, taking the shock of each new slap away. Now they came as impact, warmth. Dominance.

Her knees turned weak. Something had to be seriously wrong with her, because she began to welcome each smack, no longer dodging the blows, but lifting her ass to his hand, her breath coming in pants now.

He stopped and stroked her hot skin. “You will never, ever lift your hand to me again.”

“I’m sorry,” she muttered. She meant it this time. She remembered now that his saliva sealed the cut. He’d probably just been trying to help and she’d over-reacted again. And she definitely should not have struck him. A dumb move. Who slaps a vampire? She gave a prayer of thanks that her vampire preferred kink over violence when it came to retribution.

Charlie put a hand in the middle of her back and pushed her belly down on the table. Sliding his hand between her legs, he pried her lips apart and outward with his thumb and forefinger, exposing her pussy to his view. She heard him inhale deeply.

“Somebody is turned on,” he remarked.

“No, I’m not,” she bit out too quickly to sound convincing.

He covered her hand on the table with his own and dragged it down, past the edge of the table, threading it between her legs, from the front. He pushed both her fingers and his own against her slit, moving them up and down across her slippery folds. “Keep your fingers here,” he murmured in her ear.

Her pussy was wet, the tissue swollen with need. Every thrust of her fingers sent zings of pleasure rippling through her body.

He drew his hand away and she instantly missed it. Fingering herself was not so exciting as having someone else guide the motion. A sharp slap landed on her tingling ass, then another. She drew in her breath, dizzy. Charlie began to spank her again, at a slower tempo. With the next slap, she shoved her fingers inside her pussy, almost involuntarily, as if they knew that’s where they belonged. He swatted her again and she repeated the plunging, growing more eager with each thrust as pleasure began to take over, outweighing the buzz of pain from her punishment.

“The spanking won’t stop until you come,” he informed her.

She groaned, her knees buckling.

He reached his left hand around her hips and added his fingers to the mix again, still spanking with the other palm.  “And don’t even think of faking it, because I can feel your muscles.”

He needn’t have worried; she was just a few strokes away from orgasm. But then he began to slap harder, causing enough pain to distract her from the pleasure. She bit her lip. Would she be able to make herself come with her ass on fire like this?