The Vampire Queen's Servant (3 page)

Just that instance of desire and
she remembered a different image. Rex lying on the bed, his fist in her hair,
forcing her mouth down roughly on his length. One hand clamped on her thigh as she
faced away from him, his fingers bruising her, communicating his intention to
break her thigh bone if she didn't make him come quickly enough. Or to do so
anyway as part of the rush of pleasure of his climax. One of the lovers' games
they'd played.

Withdrawing her hand, she
wondered how it was possible to hate and love someone equally. To miss him
desperately in the dead hours of the night and yet be relieved to be without
him. So relieved that the idea of having another like Rex had kept her unusually
chaste ever since she'd lost both him and Thomas.

"Why did you dress this
way?" she asked.

When Jacob raised his head, his
face was at the level of her breasts. She was aroused just from touching him,
so her nipples were drawn to hard points. Since she was small in that area, she
only wore a bra when she deemed it necessary.

He deliberately studied the
curves, the upward thrust of the nipples, the way they pushed against the
stretched yarn of her sweater, before he raised his gaze. She didn't feel he
was being vulgar, improper. Instead, she felt wholly desired, a woman's need
that the passage of time never diminished. She couldn't deny the potency of it
when it was offered by the right man. From the aching hardness of her nipples,
she concluded he was apparently the right man.

"Thomas told me you'd want
to see as much of me as possible. He said that you had a fondness for this
style and it might intrigue you enough to give me a chance." The dim
firelight shadowed his face, but she was almost sure there was a hint of that
attractive smile again.

You deceitful, conniving
monk, I don't think you made it to Heaven after all.

"I would have stepped out
naked, but…" He lifted a shoulder, and now she was the one who couldn't
take her gaze off his lips. "I figured the security guard might take
exception."

"What if I'd wanted you to
strip before me right there, regardless?"

"I suppose he would've had
to get over it, wouldn't he, then?"

From the shockingly teasing
glance he gave her, the hint of Irish brogue that tempered his words, she
realized he thought she was offering a jest. It appeared Thomas had not
apprised him of everything being a human servant meant. Or that she didn't have
much of a sense of humor.

Would a smile on her lips banish
the lonely melancholy Jacob saw in her face? Such sadness would have made a
mortal woman look drawn, detracting from her beauty. On her it added to the
haunting, mysterious quality. Mixed with a fuck-me-now sensuality, that air of
mystery was turning his compass upside down. Vulnerability, an intimidating,
imperious manner and an erotic aura that would register on the hellfire side of
red hot mixed together to drive him crazy. A man could be torn in half by the
desire to have her body and the need to protect it with every ounce of strength
in his own.

Thomas had been so concerned
about her not having a human servant, Jacob sometimes thought the man had
hastened his own passing when Jacob had refused to leave him until the end. It
had seemed absurd that a creature as formidable as Lady Lyssa was supposed to
be could be at risk from the simple absence of a mortal companion. During these
first few minutes, he understood Thomas's concerns better. She was so tightly
wound up the stress pulsed off her like a force field. Though he couldn't
identify whether the cause was emotional or physical in nature, he sensed she
was in desperate need.

The first step in the manicure
was supposed to be massaging the hands to loosen and relax the joints, easing
tension in the wrists. But after the intimate caress she'd bestowed on him
several moments ago it seemed too personal to start with that. Not to mention
his body was already inflamed by that proprietary touch. She'd been testing him
to be sure, giving him the barest taste of what it would be like to be
considered hers.

"I want you to do my feet
first," she said, gazing at him with those dark eyes that revealed nothing
of her own thoughts.

Apparently, he was to have no
choice in the matter. She was determined to drive him to insanity. He gave
himself a mental shake, steadied himself. "Yes, my lady."

Lyssa settled into the
occasional chair, taking it to a half-reclining position so her feet were
lifted from the floor, but still pointed on a slope toward it. As she did so,
she watched his reaction in her peripheral vision. She wanted him to perform
the pedicure on his knees. If Thomas had trained him, he would obey the
unspoken command her body language was projecting, but she wondered if Jacob
truly understood the significance of it. It was not an easy lesson for most
strong-willed men to comprehend. Even Thomas had occasional difficulty with it,
and he'd spent his life learning obedience to his God.

Jacob moved away from the stool.
Kneeling with simple grace, like a knight before a queen in an Edward Blair
Leighton painting, he took her right foot in his hands to begin the massage. He
handled the move with the same relaxed familiarity with which he wore the hose
and spoke to her. Mixing it all easily with more modern mannerisms and speech,
he roused her curiosity about him further. Was he a stage player of some type?

Lyssa tried to ignore the tremor
that ran through her at his touch and studied his hands instead. He had clean
nails. A dusting of fine hairs lay along the upper part of the long fingers
that handled her with gentle but firm assurance. He didn't grip her as if she
were a doll, but he didn't clasp her too firmly either.

It was evident he was
experienced and confident when touching a woman's body. That perfect balance
could not help but evoke in her mind the way his hands would feel upon her
thighs, along the valley of her spine, sliding down to her hips. Because of
their height difference, when she stood before him and those arms closed around
her, drawing her near if she desired it, the sensation would be sheltering,
provocative. His throat would be warm beneath her lips as he lifted his jaw,
trusting. Offering. Submitting.

His hands moved over the arch of
her foot, caressed her heel and worked the. top of her foot, his fingers
whispering up her ankle in a way that shot signals of hard lust up the insides
of her thighs to her core, dampening the silken fabric covering her there. The
feel of her own arousal, warm and slippery, drove her desire even higher.

Was she losing her mind? She'd
met the man five minutes ago. What had Thomas been thinking? She knew her own
reactions and desires well enough to know her response to this man was out of
proportion, even for the cravings for blood and sex she'd been experiencing
before coming through the door. Thomas would have been very ill at the end.
Would he have been ill enough to make a poor judgment call? Been compelled to
do something he did not wish to do? Had someone found him, despite her best
efforts to ensure everyone thought he was dead, killed by her own hand? Was
Jacob a trap?

The thoughts helped her rein in
her wayward responses. She narrowed her gaze on the man at her feet, a hawk
targeting her prey.

"I can't believe Thomas
would do something like this behind my back."

"He didn't intend
disrespect. He—"

"I know how Thomas felt
about me." She spat it. "You, on the other hand, I know nothing
about."

"Thomas's
introduction—"

"I read it. Why do you want
to become a human servant? Are you running from death? Or are you one of those
idealistic idiots who believe vampires are misunderstood creatures, issuing
pretentious threats while we cling to the shadows and whine out our angst over
our lost mortality?"

The description made Jacob
smile. Too late, he realized he should have curbed the urge. He'd been warned
her moods changed as quickly as the snap of a whip.

In a blink, the room closed in
on him with a suffocating energy. Making the chamber much warmer than the gas
log fire, the power raised the hairs on his neck.

"Do you realize, mortal, I
could rip you apart limb by limb? Tear out your entrails and take your blood
while you watch, choking on your last breath? Don't play games with me, and do
not speak false, or those words will be your last."

When Jacob raised his gaze, he
saw her eyes had taken on a reddish cast as she spoke, a hint of fang pushing
over the right side of her full lip. The humanity had disappeared from her
expression.

A wise man would have taken his
hands off her foot. Put about a hundred feet between him and the threat he knew
she was capable of executing. But Jacob knew that would be it. Game over. The
last nine months of his life a waste. Most importantly, he would fail her,
something he'd sworn to a dying man he would not do.

"I know you can destroy
me," he said quietly, staring down at that shapely foot. "My reasons
for wanting to be your servant are complicated and personal, my lady. My tongue
isn't clever enough to explain them as you wish me to do. But I can prove
myself to you, if you'll give me the opportunity."

It took Herculean effort to
manage the words in an even tone, to raise his attention back to her face and
hold that preternatural gaze without flinching, though his muscles tensed in an
involuntary readiness he knew would be futile if she chose to strike. "I
suspect if you truly intended to tear my limbs off, you wouldn't take the time
to threaten me."

"Perhaps I feed on
fear."

"There are other, more
satisfying meals I can offer you." Daring or just plain stupid he didn't
know, but going with his gut, Jacob bent and placed his lips against the top of
her foot.

Small, fine-boned, cold. Like
his mother's china. When he was little he'd been forbidden to touch it. As a
man, he'd learned how to handle delicate things, enjoying the sensation while
taking the proper care to keep them from harm.

Despite her strength, which
could tear out the concrete foundation of the Eldar if she chose to exercise
it, he thought of her as delicate. There were many formidable women, with or
without vampire strength. But it was his experience that all of them had a need
for love, unless damage to their heart had caused them to wall it off. They all
desired to be cherished emotionally, and the art of conveying that through
physical touch was one of the most potent ways to do it.

His lady appeared to have some
sizeable fortifications around her heart for reasons he knew too well. Even so,
he thought he could see a light guiding him through the crevices that still
remained in those walls, toward the dark center of her soul.

Perhaps that intuition came from
Thomas's many insights into her. Or maybe it wasn't intuition at all, merely
the rationalizing stupidity that came with a man's lust. But though he'd woken
countless times in the middle of the night bathed in sweat, his cock spent like
a teenager's over the dreams he'd had about her, as many or more times the
dreams had been about other things. Things that created a deeper-than-physical
yearning unable to be assuaged with a grip on his cock. Only the feel of her in
his arms would be enough. He let that guide him now.

Thomas had exaggerated nothing,
even the way she made this abrupt transition from haughty goddess to merciless
sorceress. As overwhelming as she was, he wanted to please her, to give her the
gift of losing herself in her own desire. She was so lonely. He felt it from
her like a labored heartbeat that made his own chest ache. . So he shifted his
lips to her instep, tasted her there, his tongue flicking along the curve as he
nuzzled the sole of her foot. When she placed her other foot against his
shoulder, he figured she was about to shove him back on his ass. Or through a
wall. But when he lifted his lashes, he found she'd gone motionless and was
watching him. Turning his head, he brushed his hair along her ankle before he
put his mouth against her calf. Slowly, so he conveyed his respect and his
intention, he gripped her ankle and lifted her foot from his shoulder,
supporting her calf in his other palm as he tasted her, all along the length of
that fine limb.

The gauzy points of the skirt
brushed his forehead. His nostrils flared when he smelled her response, which
spurred his cock like a shot of adrenaline.
Steady, mate. Make it about her
.

He didn't suppress the male
passion that made him nip at her as he reached her knee, her thigh. She arched,
a gasp leaving her at the rougher contact, and he did it again, marking her
lightly with his teeth. Her other foot moved, rested on his thigh as he
squatted before her. Then, not content with that, she slid it under his arm,
bent her knee so her leg curved around his bare back, drawing him in. He made
himself take his time though, nuzzling the thigh of the leg he still held,
working his way up in millimeters. A tiny caress of his tongue, a quick suckle
from his lips, then that scoring again, tasting her flesh in his mouth,
feminine, silky skin.

Always ask permission.