The Vampire Queen's Servant (15 page)

She pushed against him. As he
straightened, he took her with him so she sat on the counter's surface and he
stood between her spread thighs. Gripping her hips to slide her forward, he
effectively kept them joined and changed the angle, rubbing against the dense
spot inside that female vampires and humans shared as a pleasure spot. When she
arched in response, he took advantage of that, taking a firmer hold on one
buttock, his fingers teasing in the cleft beneath her robe.

"Enough," she said
softly. She didn't shove him away, she wouldn't be that cruel, but she wanted
to be certain he understood. No matter the intensity of the moment, she didn't
stop being his Mistress.

Jacob met her gaze. Removing her
fingers from his throat, she saw she'd done a good job. All sorts of dark
feelings of pleasure ran through her at the two swollen marks there. "Your
hands by your sides."

Slowly, with great visible
reluctance, he withdrew his touch, resting his hands alongside his thighs. When
he started to pull up his jeans, she shook her head. Reaching down between her
still spread thighs, she gripped him, caressed his wet testicles and brushed
the hot sticky skin between their heavy weight and the musky dampness on his
thigh. "If I choose to give it, my next mark will be here. I'll command
you to spread yourself, hold yourself open to me. Without restraints, you'll
have to remain still and trust my fangs will find your thigh and not other
tempting areas. But now it's almost dawn. I want you close. Get dressed and
follow me."

She set the house alarms before
she took him back to her room. He watched carefully. The majordomo duties of a
servant were extensive, particularly for a vampire with a Region like hers.
From his close attention, she was reassured that Thomas had prepared him
adequately for that, at least.

When she led him through the
house and stepped back over the threshold of her bedroom, she realized it might
be a mistake to bring him here instead of to a guest bedroom. The nested
intimacy of the room, the rumpled covers, the lingering scent of what had been
done here earlier, distracted her. As did the manacles still on the bed, tossed
there when he'd freed himself.

She spoke the chant of opening
and the wood floor shimmered. The colors of the Persian rug melted, buckling
and evolving into the shape of a flight of stairs disappearing into the
darkness of a lower chamber.

Jacob studied it, his brows
raised. "I don't remember this in the catalog of vampire powers."

"There's much you don't know.
You'll join me below. When I rise, we'll speak about your interim duties."

"You intend to test me.
Again."

"Yes." She glanced at
him without apology. "Thomas's endorsement means a great deal, but I must
be fully convinced. Perhaps you'll flaunt this test as you did my last one. Or
perhaps you'll suffer it despite your tricks. Spend the time thinking about who
I am and what I want from you. Perhaps by tomorrow night, you'll decide you
want your freedom and that will be the end of it."

"Or not, and it will be the
beginning of something else. Perhaps you'll learn to trust me, my lady. Not
every man who desires your soul for his own wants it for the power, or to
delight in your pain. There are some who want only the honor of caring for you.
Of being called your champion. Your protector."

Her heart tightened into a
defensive fist, his words digging into the tender area like nails.

"My protector."
Touching a hand to her brow absently, she smoothed her own skin, the tendrils
of her hair he'd loosened brushing her knuckles. The sun was rising. Weariness
closed around her like a trap. At one time she could stay up well past sunrise
in the quiet darkness of this upper bedroom. She'd watch the sliver of light
glitter between the frugal gap in the curtains. Sitting a foot away from where
it laid its bright line on the floor, making the threads of the rug glitter,
she'd read. Or think. Or simply be.

Even as she relearned how to
breathe air that did not contain either the threat or the promise of Rex, she
remembered the longing that came with his gentle touch on her neck when she
dozed. Lonely versus alone. Rex represented both emotions. When she was tired,
it could tear her apart anew to remember.

I always had the power,
Thomas. You didn't understand that until the end, did you? I ripped out his
heart as easily as I'd crush a peach in my hand. But it was too late for you
then. Knowledge of my strength provided you nothing, used too late. That's why
I must be cruel, make Jacob understand, even when my strength is not what it
once was.

"Follow me or not. It's
your choice." She started down the stairs. "If it were me, I'd go
home."

He followed.

The bedroom in the hidden room
was almost a mirror image of the one above. She wanted to feel she was in her
room, not in a pretend chamber, regardless of which one she used. This one had
more space, however, for times when she might need or decide to remain out of
sight indefinitely. A sitting area and a library were here. There was also an
eye-catching centerpiece. A St. Andrew's cross carved of teakwood, the grain
smooth as a woman's silken thighs or the velvet shaft of a man's erect cock.

She ran her hand down one of the
arms, then exerted pressure. The hinges were well oiled, so it lowered smoothly
from an upright to a horizontal position.

"Take off all your clothes.
There's a bathroom over there. You'll be restrained on this until I wake, about
ten hours from now, so I encourage you to make use of it."

She didn't look toward him, but
she could feel the conflict vibrating off him.

"Jacob." One quiet
word, but she infused it with everything. Not only command, but the threat of
taking away what he said he wanted. Perhaps she could have injected a hint of
reassurance, but in this room particularly she remembered who and what she was,
and her voice chilled accordingly.

"My patience is thin as the
skin covering all your pleasing muscles and just as easily stripped away. I
don't want to hear a word from you right now. The stairs are there. If you walk
up them, the door will open and Bran will make sure you're escorted off the
grounds. You won't be issued an invitation to return."

Moving to the armoire, she began
to slide off her own clothes as she heard him go into the bathroom and close
the door. Probably to stare at himself in the superfluous mirror and question
whether he'd lost his mind.

At least you have a physical
reflection, she thought. The mental one can be so much more frightening.

He was losing his mind. Jacob
yanked off his clothes, folded them on top of the commode and looked at himself
in the mirror. Something felt off about this whole scenario, as if there were
huge pieces of the puzzle missing, a whole script he'd only been given a
portion of to read before rehearsal. Access to this chamber, for example. No
vampire he'd ever heard of had telekinetic attributes, let alone the ability to
transfigure floor and carpet into a stairwell. It wasn't illusion. He'd walked
over that exact portion of floor earlier and felt and seen nothing to indicate
a chamber below the surface.

She was determined to force him
to submit to her on a lot of levels, and sexually was the least of them. He
wasn't stupid. As she herself had implied, he knew that was just the gateway to
the deeper layers of himself. Perhaps if he knew she would eventually give him
some answers, he'd feel a little less nervous about walking back out there, but
she hadn't offered that bone. She was making him follow on faith. His head had
never been so messed up, and all the things he knew about vampires were
taunting his mind, making his gut clutch.

Do you realize, mortal, I
could rip you limb from limb…

With a curse, he turned away
from his image in the mirror and opened the door. Fuck it. Gideon always said
he was fatally impetuous. He might just prove him right.

She'd raised the cross upright
again and was leaning against it, wearing a nightgown of sheer black lace,
nothing under it from low neckline to midthigh. He saw her nipples, the folds
of her sex, all of her curves and the slender shapes of her thighs denned in
the provocative pose. As he watched, she threaded her hands through the
adjustable cuffs and held onto them as if bound there.

When she slid her feet into the
loosened ankle cuffs like slippers, she gripped the hand cuffs to raise and
balance herself for the maneuver. As she held most of her weight that way, her
legs spread and hip cocked at a defiant angle, he was dry mouthed just looking
at her. Even contemplating what was ahead, his cock couldn't help but be
semi-erect. At the sight of this it rose to full mast, flooded with immediate,
gut-wrenching lust as she licked her lips, showing him tiny fangs. It made a
throb of reaction go through his neck, just below where she'd bitten him, and
heat sear straight to his groin. Her dark hair hung loose, reaching almost to
her waist, blending with the black lace like a silk curtain over a teasing
transparent panel.

"Come to me."

He knew all about the way a fly
would blunder into the glistening strands of a spider's web. Though her
position was one of self-restraint, the sensual splaying of her arms and legs
and the way she watched him approach told him he was looking at a predator. No
question on who was prey in this room.

Nevertheless, he came forward,
the heat of her gaze twining around him like the sticky strands of a web in
truth.

A man who doesn't test the
mettle of his soul isn't much of a man…

His hunger rose even further as
he reached her and she didn't free herself. Instead, as he leaned in, putting
his hands on her hips, the flesh separated from him only by thin lace, she
strained toward him as if bound in truth. "Touch me. Please. Tease me as
you would if I were your prisoner, yours to torment."

He went on instinct. Sliding his
arm around her waist, he splayed a hand between the wood and her body, gripping
her ass to rub her against him, pushing her forward further against her
restraints as he nudged her face to the side and used his teeth to mark her
shoulder, right at the juncture of her throat. He clamped down much harder than
he'd done it before.

She gasped, shuddered. In his
peripheral vision he saw her eyes widen in shock. She strained against the
bonds, pressing her breasts into his bare chest. He brought his other hand up
to squeeze her there as he would if he were fulfilling his own desires only,
using her body to slake his lust. The ripple of reaction got even more violent.
When she dropped her head back on her shoulders, he moved from his bite to
suckling her throat, tonguing the narrow valley at her collarbone while she
quivered. Dropping one hand, he cupped her through the gown, found her hot and
soaking.

"You're wet for me, my
lady." He stared into her dark, fathomless eyes. The pupil had all but
swallowed the green, so it was just a ring of glowing emerald. "Your pussy
wants me again."

Her lips parted at the crude
talk. He noticed she didn't take as much care to hide her fangs when she was
aroused. That reddish tint was back in her eyes, and there was a tautness to
her features hinting at some other face he'd yet to see. As if he were seeing
brief glimpses of a different being, a metamorphosis, here and then gone.

"It makes you hard, having
me this way, does it?" Her voice was a breathless whisper. When she moved
her body urgently against him, he curled his fingers in the gown, holding her
still with a touch on her spread thighs as he guided his tip to her to rub her
clit with slow, small movements. She went still and trembling, as if feeling
the intensity of it.

"Yes," he said low.
"It makes me want to fuck you until you can't walk. I want to hear you
scream my name, my lady."

"Then you understand the
power of it," she said in that same whisper. "Having something you
want so much as your willing captive." She closed her eyes and rocked
against him. The feeling was too much. He backed off, intending to ruck up her
skirt, find her beneath it and feel the sweet honey of her pussy run over his
cock again, smell it in his nostrils.

Instead he was spun in a circle,
a flash of black disorienting him as his body was bumped, turned so fast he
stumbled and couldn't get his bearings. She was moving around him, gripping an
arm, an elbow, his hip, making him dizzy like a child twirled to stagger after
a piñata.

Only she wasn't intending him to
chase after anything. He was thrust backward against the St. Andrew's cross and
his feet swept from beneath him as he and the cross were taken to a horizontal
position. His wrists and ankles yanked apart, spread and cuffed. Not held
loosely as she'd done it to herself. In no more than a few blinks, while his
head was still off balance, she had his limbs buckled down tightly, no keys
this time, adjusted so he was stretched out in the X-shape, fully extended as
she'd done on the bed. Then she brought him upright again, the world tilting,
his stomach dropping.

"It's even more pleasurable
when that can be done slow. When a Mistress makes her slave stand still, watch
her thread each strap, tighten it. Make him feel his loss of freedom an
increment at a time, his lust growing and stirring her own. But for your first
time we'll do it a bit differently."