The Vampire Queen's Servant (33 page)

She could remove him easily,
even reverse the position, but instead her arms locked around his shoulders,
her legs still around his hips. She pressed her face into his shoulder as he
rocked her, pumping her slowly against his cock, reaching beneath her to palm
her soft bottom and guide her on him, up, down, deep in, dragging out.

She hesitated, fighting dark
images he couldn't see or understand, but he could sense their pull. He
wouldn't try to fight those, but he would coax her from their grasp.

"Let your servant please
you. You've nothing to fear from me. My life is yours to do with as you will,
my lady." His voice was hoarse. He wanted her ears to hear the truth of it
as well as her mind.

Neither death… nor pain… nor
loss. Shall I fear. Only my beloved may rend my heart asunder. Burn me to ashes
like the rising of the sun. Vampire…poet. Sjaran, twelfth century.

"Never, my lady.
Never." Daring to tip the scales, he shifted his firm grip on her
buttocks, brushed his finger pads around the rim of her rectum, teasing it as
he stroked against her clit. Pressing his cock even more deeply inside her, he
found the dense area of her sweet spot when he put his lips to her throat, just
beneath her ear.

The grip of her arms increased
exponentially and she shattered, her body arching, bucking against him
convulsively. With her arms and legs tight around him it was a furious wet
friction against his cock that snapped his own barely leashed restraint. As she
spasmed, muffling her cries in his shoulder, her cunt clutched him, the tissues
quivering between her buttocks beneath the probe of his fingers. Finesse had to
desert him in the face of such unbearable sensation. His hand slid back to her
buttock and gripped her hard as he pounded into her, his cock spurting as her
cries grew in volume, her climax increasing in intensity as he tried to enhance
it with his movements within her, his touch, the harsh rasp of his breath
against her ear.

That delicate ear, as finely
made as any flower that grew in the meadow during the first gentle touch of
spring. It was his first rational thought as he regained his senses and found
his cheek on the meadow floor, his gaze on that beautiful ear, touched by
moonlight. Her hair was a pillow for his head, and he took the opportunity to
rub his face against it again before he remembered his manners and pushed
himself up on his elbows to cup her face, his fingers brushing her lips.

She kissed them, her hand on the
back of his neck drawing him down to exchange a kiss between their mouths, and
then another, and another. Until he realized she fully intended to get him
charged up again and was succeeding. A process that should have been physically
impossible to accomplish so quickly, no matter the stimulus.

One of the benefits of the
second mark. Record recovery time.

He'd have smiled if he didn't
want her again so much already. Semi-erect, he slid back into her still
slippery heat and she held him with her muscles there, stroking, rippling.

In a flash, she rolled so she
could sit up and ride him, her hair wild and snarled about her. Catching his
hands she held them, using them as a resistant counterpoint as she sinuously
worked him, drawing him harder and deeper within her, bringing him closer to
explosion with internal muscles as supple as her fingers. She controlled every
movement, pushing down on him with a force underscoring the difference in their
strengths, her reminder that she had all the advantages, that the choices were
hers. His cock responded helplessly, spurting for her again in a much briefer
time than he'd ever experienced before, his control gone.

He let her have her way, for
he'd accomplished his intent, reminding himself why he'd chosen to serve her.
It wasn't the soft firmness of her breasts, the wet pull of her cunt, the sweep
of her fine hair on his skin, though all those were enough to make a man kill
for her. It was the soul of the woman beneath all that he heard calling to him,
making it impossible to walk away.

He'd stand by her, no matter
what she did to him.

But even as he had the thought,
he remembered what Gideon used to tell him. Fate didn't like being dared.

When he came, so did Lyssa, once
again surprising her with how responsive her body was to him. Particularly in
her current state. The demons pounding on the inside of her head had been
driven back by the tender lovemaking he'd initiated. When she took control,
needing the sense of holding the reins to tilt her world back to the correct
axis, they returned like a building storm, their strength increasing the harder
and faster she rode him, so even when the orgasm convulsed her body, she had to
shut her eyes against the pain.

They dressed in silence. She
didn't search his mind, but she sensed his quiet acceptance of her mood, such
that he respected her silence, helped her with her clothes that now felt
unbearably damp and uncomfortable. When he got her settled on the bike, he
pressed his hand briefly over one of hers resting at his hip before he started
the engine. He took them home via forest paths and sleeping neighborhoods,
putting them on the main roads only briefly before he reached her drive.

By the time he stopped the
motorcycle by the fingerprint reader, she was dizzy. She managed to put her
thumb up to it, though her body jerked, alarmingly.

He was watching her closely, but
she had no energy to spare as she settled back on the bike, pressing her cheek
to his back again. Somehow that helped ease the pain roaring through her head,
as if he possessed a magnetism opposite to her own that helped open the blood
vessels.

He stopped by the kitchen
entrance. When Bran bounded out of the darkness followed by his brothers and
sisters, she raised a hand to fend off his usual rambunctious attack, but Jacob
intervened.

"Bran, no." His tone
was sharp, authoritative. The dog stopped in midbound, backing off.

Jacob took her outstretched
hand, concerned by the quiver in it as he helped her off the bike. "My
lady, are you well? What can I do?"

"Yes." Her voice was
muted. Too labored to project. "It was beautiful, Jacob. So perfect. I'm
sorry."

"Sorry for—"

Before he could finish the
thought, she spun away from him and hunched over, a shudder rolling through her
slight frame. When he closed his hands on her shoulders, his palms partially
touching her bare skin below the short sleeves, he found she was burning hot to
the touch. She began to vomit into the grass, bright red blood, the force of
the expulsion yanking her forward. When she cried out, his heart lurched in
alarm.

Filled with pain for her, as
well as questions he wanted to demand she answer, he held her until she
finished. When she did, she was quivering in his arms, weak as any time he'd
yet seen her.

"My lady." He pressed
his hand over her feverish brow. Her shaking hands rose, clamped down on his to
hold it there, either to ease the pain or give her the comparative coolness of
his palm, he didn't know. Her veins were beating violently, a migraine like
he'd never felt before. "Don't speak, my lady. I'll get you to bed. Just
hold on."

Thomas had a form of autoimmune
blood disease that had mutated in his altered servant's body, accelerating
quickly with no hope of cure. Had Thomas known he was giving Jacob yet another
invaluable lesson when Jacob had become his primary caregiver during those last
terrible months? There'd been no doctor to call, no hospital to visit. Not even
a diagnosis of the ailment because it hadn't been logged by modern medicine and
never would be, as long as vampires and their servants remained the shadowy
stuff of fiction and nightmares. As he had then, Jacob fell back on remedies
and first aid he knew, as well as simple things the monks at the monastery had
taught him. He wasn't certain if they would work, but that wasn't the main
concern hammering in his mind now.

Though the symptoms between his
lady and the monk were very different, Jacob had no doubt they were somehow
connected. The cold fear in his vitals told him what he could not ignore or
drown out any longer. She was dying. Whatever this ailment was, it was going to
kill her in the end. The awareness of it was in her eyes, the same way it had
been in Thomas's. In fact, now that he'd given a name to the hollow sickness in
his gut, he recalled that awareness had been there all along, in many of the
things she'd said or done, the silences she'd maintained, the looks she'd given
him. Even the way she touched him, as if she wanted to savor each sensation to
the fullest. Vampires were sensual creatures, so he'd overlooked the
significance of her exceptional desire to dwell on the experience of a single
touch, the beauty of one finite moment.

He'd been angry at her bluntly
stated refusal to give him the third mark. He'd uncharitably thought it was
more of her tests, holding a carrot just beyond his nose. Seeing now what he
hadn't wanted to see, he realized she thought she was saving his life.

With a third mark, if the
vampire dies, the servant dies with her…

A goddess had the full picture
of the journey, its goals and obstacles, in a way a mortal did not. Faith was
required to follow her lead. As she'd admitted with no apology, vampires in
their stunning arrogance imposed the same relationship on their human servants.
But she was a woman as well as a vampire queen, and he wanted her to know she
didn't have to play at omnipotence to command his loyalty. He'd have done
anything at this moment to ease her agony, given anything for the truth to be a
lie.

"The pain… it went away
during…" Her voice was a whisper as he laid her on her bed. She'd had him
take her to her hidden bedchamber. "But afterward. It was like a flood. So
beautiful. I ruined it."

"Ssshh. You did nothing of
the kind. I should have paid closer attention. It was my fault."

"See. Told you. I ruined
it."

Another shudder racked her.
After giving her the vial of medicine he carried, holding her chin to steady
her as she took it down, he turned up the gas logs, for now she was shivering,
her skin gone from fire to ice. Reluctantly, he went into the bathroom to get
what he needed.

So many things about her were
human. So many were not. When he'd helped her across the driveway, since she'd
initially refused to be carried, a convulsion had seized her. Her hand had
flown out, striking the side of the Mercedes, her personal car. It had put a
dent deep in the side that tore the metal, cutting her skin. The wound had
healed to a thin scar almost before he got her a towel.