Page 49 of The Vampire Queen's Servant (Vampire Queen 1)

Chapter Thirty-three

She looked startled, making him wonder if she even realized she'd been projecting the thought.

He understood an inkling of the bond that could grow between mother and child when the child was dependent on his mother's sustenance for life. While his feelings for Lyssa were not maternal in any sense, when she lowered her head and found his throat, allowing him to slide his arm over her shoulder, rest his hand on the crest of one wing, he knew the fierce, protective connection was the same, the sense that this was the most important thing he'd done or would ever do in his life, caring for her. Committing himself to her. Nurturing her whenever, however she needed it. He was also aware that hunger encompassed several different things for her.

He moved his other hand up her hip to the stark indentation of her waist and along the ripples of her rib cage, his thumb grazing the base of her breast. Stroking her, just feeling the slope of her. Her breath touched his jaw as she released his wrist to curve around his throat and shoulder, tilting his head up to an even more straining arch, making him aware of the rush of blood through the arteries, the vulnerability of his windpipe that could be crushed with the pressure of her thumb, the clamp of her jaw. Closing his eyes, he moved his other hand along her thigh as she changed her position and straddled him, pressing her bare sex down against his pelvis and eliciting a groan of pleasure as the movement confirmed he was hard and erect for her. Her wings moved, stretching out and then folding over both of them like the curtains of a bed, closing them into even greater darkness where he could just make out the line of her shoulder, feel the press of the elbow talon against his side.

He didn't want to do it, knew it was the wrong thing to do, but he had to.

My lady, a vampire's confidence in her superiority can be a fatal mistake.

He'd counted on her not using the mind link between them, but when he made the comment in his mind, she lifted her head, her fangs an inch away from his throat. He increased his grip on the slender stake he had pressed firmly between her ribs. In one blink, he could have sent it spearing into the heart beneath.

When one gave a shot to a horse, one thumped and poked the powerful muscle repeatedly. Once the animal was used to the rapping, one tossed the needle like a dart into the spot. The pressure and teasing of his fingers had served the same purpose.

As she rose above him, straightening, he gripped the shaft between them, broke it and let it fall to the earth beside him. "I'm not easily killed, my lady. I may be driven by anger when you are in danger, or distressed by that monster who pretended to be your husband's friend, but I never stop using my brain. "

Except when I'm sunk deep into your body.

As she continued to stare at him, not speaking, he knew he might lose her in a blink, her capricious moods dictating she withdraw at his unexpected move and disappear into the shadows of the forest, leaving him a hollow victory. In fact, making his heart lurch with the loss, she suddenly stood five feet away from him, her back straight, that tail following the line of her hip, curled around the front of her feet. With her taloned fingers slightly curled, wings at half spread, she looked like a demonic angel.

"Don't go, my lady. " He whispered it, sitting up and extending a hand toward her silhouette, not wanting her to fade into the darkness. "I beg you. Appease your hunger in whatever manner your body demands of me. "

The wind kicked up, making the branches of the live oaks creak, the pines whisper secrets. The night creatures had stilled, sensing a predator in their midst.

He used his eyes now, keeping them clamped on her outline as if that could compel her to stay. Then she began to move back toward him. Slowly. One step, two. When she stepped over him, he settled his hands on the outside of her thighs, his thumbs caressing her flesh. Bending forward, he laid his lips on her upper thigh, close to the tight folds of flesh hiding her sex. If the emotions driving the gesture had physical force, color, perhaps he would have left the imprint of a tiny bloodred rose on her leg, a permanent reminder of the kiss and all it meant.

Her hands came to rest on his shoulders, pushed at him, eased him to his back as she straddled him again, pinning his shoulders to the ground before she sat back and continued to study him, as if confused by the type of prey she'd found.

He felt like her dark eyes were gazing into his soul, making it yearn to be a part of her, connected to her forever. The need surged up in him. While his rational mind argued with him not to voice it, not to ruin this moment, his heart was fiercely sure it needed to happen. Right now. This was the time. The turning point.

Go with your gut.

"I've no doubt you're my Mistress. " Reaching up, he stroked his knuckles along the line of her cheek, his thumb against the corner of her dark eye. He moved back to her ear, down to the side of her throat, following her windpipe, feeling her swallow. When he increased his grip, her eyes flickered to him. "I'm your servant, my lady. Please, let me serve you. Don't doubt me or yourself. I've proven my loyalty to you. My skill. Believe in me and give me my own choice. "

Why do you force me to play games? All of you, even Thomas. Can't I have one person whom I don't have to force to do my bidding for their own good?

So she could communicate in this form. Hearing her voice in his head sounding as it usually did was startling with the contrast of this winged transformation, but he recovered quickly.

Perhaps you need to stop feeling you have to make those choices for us. Old you are, my lady, he teased her gently. But God you are not. Even God gave us free will.

He was an idiot that day. A weak moment that has caused more pain and aggravation in the world than can be measured.

Something shimmered in her expression, something that turned into a hard quiver running through her body. He was astonished to see moisture collect in the corner of one large dark eye, become a glittering tear. A moment later he knew what track a tear would take in this form. The diamond shape of it was split into three trails by the overlapping folds, dampening her face. Catching the moisture with his finger, he carefully wiped it away. "Don't cry. Please, my lady. "

He began to rise, intending comfort. As unexpectedly as a lightning strike out of a clear sky, she seized his hand, pulled back on her haunches and twisted him so she rolled him over. Forced him to his stomach where he could not see her and his arm was pressed at an uncomfortable angle behind his back. With his cheek pressed into the dirt and grass of the forest floor, he could only see her in his peripheral vision. Just brief impressions, shadows, though she was very solidly real, the way she anchored herself on his body. She stood on his thighs how in her birdlike crouch so that her sharp toenails pressed into his muscles. Using her other hand, she pushed away his torn T-shirt, baring the strip of skin just above the waistband of his jeans. He turned his pinned wrist to twine his fingers with the claws holding his arm to his back. While she accepted the contact, it did not ease the strength of her grip. When she bent to him, the tip of her tongue touched him, a tongue that felt forked and a bit longer than it had been. He felt the scrape of a fang.

Use your free hand and reach under yourself. Unzip your jeans.

It took a bit of effort. This form was not much heavier, but with her weight on his upper thighs and pressed on his lower back, she didn't give him much maneuvering room. He sensed her pleasure in the necessary flexing of his muscles and buttocks to rise up the amount needed to do her bidding. Since she was completely naked, it stood to reason she would desire him in the same state, though lying prone on a bare erection was not the most comfortable position in the world. The unbidden image of her impaling herself on him as he lay on his back, his arms drawn to straining over his head by vines dangling from the trees above, tortured him further.

Hold on a second. He wouldn't envision himself bound. But the next image was the sultry glide of her slick cunt down his length. . . One inch. . . Two inches. . . She was offering him her fantasies, goading him with her own desires.

It was like the intense eroticism of watching a woman masturbate, only he was getting to see it from inside of her head, the visions she conjured to stimulate herself.

He managed to complete the task and struggled to get his shoes off in the same fashion, inspiring her to run her hand over his buttocks as they shifted to accomplish the task. Once the shoes were gone, she pulled the jeans off him in a quick move that took his lower body off the ground, dragging him a couple feet. He gripped at the earth, seeking balance, but before he could find it she was back on top of him again. She guided his arms back so the elbows were bent at right angles, his hands gripping his forearms to form a square on his lower back. Then she manacled his overlapping wrists with one long-fingered hand, the talons snicking together like the sound of a lock, scraping against his skin.

Why are you afraid to let me be free, my lady?

Why are you afraid of surrendering, Jacob?

With her free hand, she flicked a claw across the top of his thigh, raking him, taking flesh, drawing blood.

It stung like nettles, the fire racing over the back of his leg, telling him she carried some type of venom in those razor tips, hopefully just a temporary measure to distract prey. But Jesus, it burned. He couldn't help his spasmodic twitching. But she showed mercy, leaning down and blowing on the area, bringing the feel of a cool mist across desert sands, easing the feeling. So flooded with relief, he wasn't prepared at all when she eased two fingers deep into his backside. He jerked immediately after though, struggling against her. He clenched around her invasion, creating a different burning sensation, almost as uncomfortable.

Easy, Jacob. Breathe deeply and relax. She held him down effortlessly. It made him fight even harder, his mind overcome by panic at the physical and emotional reactions that surged through him at the uninvited penetration. There were no inanimate manacles he could slip. She moved effortlessly with him as he thrashed, and the predatory pleasure he sensed from her at his struggle only made his reaction harder to control.

A virgin in this area entirely, aren't you? Never even allowed a woman to tease your rim, though you go for mine often enough. I know you've enjoyed the pleasure of a woman's tight hole.

While he was sure his rectum was going to simply erupt into flames, he was cognizant that before she'd invaded she'd transformed her fingers back to human form, for there was no feeling of cutting sharpness, just a woman's fingers, lubricated with that oil he'd felt on her skin. Maybe also from oils lower down. Perhaps she had actually touched herself when he'd envisioned her masturbating.

Easy, Sir Vagabond. Be my slave. Submit to my pleasure. Leaning over him now, she pressed her thighs against the outside of his, her mons brushing the base of his ass just below where her fingers were penetrating. Though I admit I love to watch you fight me, your muscles rippling along your back and shoulders, that delectably tight ass. I love your power, Jacob, knowing you're a strong man who will resist even when you know you're irrevocably caught. But as much as that arouses me, I love when you give me all that power as a gift.

You also like taking it, my lady.

He felt her dangerous amusement. Yes, I do. Did you know, from the first time I saw you at the Eldar, to every second you've been in my house, there hasn't been a single moment I haven't wanted to taste you, smell you, fuck you? Eat you alive. You're a hunger I seem unable to appease.

She was doing it again, putting images in his brain that were making his cock into a painful iron bar against the ground. She worked her fingers inside of him in a way that had him pushing himself mindlessly against the earth as if it were her pussy he was plunging into. He was working a furrow into the forest floor that was getting warmer from the heat of his body, making the dirt and packed leaves moist from the arousal leaking from him.

You're trying to change the subject, my lady. Turn us away from the course you know is inevitable. It won't work. Shut up, slave.

She leaned farther forward, putting more straining pressure on his arms. She'd turned completely back to human form except that one hand holding him, for he felt the difference in her weight distribution. Her hair fell against his shoulder blades. The skin of her thighs had become silky smooth and soft like her breasts as they pressed against the top of his folded arms. Putting her teeth to the juncture of shoulder and neck, she bit deep, her nose and cheek along his jawline.

She drank with her body on top of his, her fingers far too cleverly pumping in his ass. As she drew sustenance from him, using him completely for her pleasure and nourishment but offering him nothing beyond that, it shattered him into pieces.

His mind simply stopped functioning. She tightened her thighs on him rhythmically, matching her cadence with her drinking. As she rocked, she pressed her pubic bone against the loose curl of her hand in a way that bumped her fingers more deeply into his ass, as if she had a cock and her curled knuckles were the scrotal sac slapping against him. He thought there might be four fingers in him now, stretching him past bearing with the physical pleasure and emotional turmoil.

He didn't have any interest in being fucked by a man, never had, but this image, of his delicate, sexy Mistress using the illusion of a cock to force him to climax, overwhelmed him in a way he didn't expect. Hadn't Thomas told him she would force him to explore places in himself he'd never even thought to look?

His cock was pulsing hard. "My lady. . . Mistress. . . "

"You'll come for me, now. Now, " she repeated it sharply, and he groaned, a sound that wrenched from him as a snarling growl, evolving into a roar as his insides drew taut and he spurted like a hot geyser. He slammed his hips into the ground, the earth nowhere close to the slickness of her cunt, but it didn't matter to his frenetically humping cock. He could imagine it, for she was filling his head with it. She was remembering their first night, when he had the taste of her in his mouth, her grinding against his face, her thighs gripping his skull.

It spurred an orgasm that had already reached an intensity level he'd never known existed. If she'd used pheromones, he was sure it would have killed him.

When he roared at the intensity, somewhere out in the night he heard Bran howl. He thought he even felt vibration beneath him when his seed fertilized the ground. As if the Earth Herself had responded to the energy rolling over him like an avalanche.

She didn't let her fangs slide out of him until he at last slowed, breathing hard. Even then she kept her tongue and lips on the wound, her soft breath in his ear.

As he tried to steady himself in the aftermath, she stretched out on him, her body quivering with her own reaction. The curve of her pelvis fitted over his buttocks, her stomach against the small of his back as she mashed her breasts pleasantly into the upper broadness of it. Her now completely restored hands folded over the base of his neck, her fingers tangling in his hair as she laid her cheek partly on them, partly on him, her lips nuzzling his flesh. Her bare toes rested against one of his calves, one knee planted between his thighs, close enough to put the weight of her thigh against his temporarily depleted testicles as she draped over him.

"You haven't let me give you pleasure. " His voice was hoarse.

"You've given me more pleasure than I've felt in a long time, " she corrected softly. "Just be still and quiet for me now. Let me lie upon you and believe, at least for a little while, that the world is a place where I could love you the way I want to. "

The words startled him, but her hair whispered over his shoulder as the breeze picked up again, the strands drifting across his lips as if trying to underscore her desire for silence.

What you were worrying about a couple days ago. . . You are wrong in so many ways to be a human servant. But I want you in a way I've not wanted anything in a very long time. I keep intending to send you away, and I just can't.

I wouldn't go, my lady. You can't make me. "Yes, I--" She stopped, and he felt her smile against his hair. He'd smile back if he wasn't so exhausted, his body drained, his emotions a maze.

"We'll argue about it later. "

"All right. "

The trees rustled above, the earth a comforting smell beneath him, a restful bed. He drifted and dozed awhile with her lying upon him, her body shifting on his. All of it integrated into the languid pleasure of providing her a bed, his body recuperating from the explosive orgasm. From the effort of offering her all she'd demanded and everything he wanted to give, and having it rejected again. But he was here.

I'll never leave you, my lady. . .

At length, he surfaced. It might have been a half hour later, perhaps an hour. He was aware of an aura of needy energy sinking into his body from the heat of hers. As his senses sharpened, he became aware of the sensual rub of her lips on the back of his neck, the alternating tensing and relaxing of her hips as she stimulated her clit on the curve of his buttocks.

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