Beloved Vampire (10 page)

“Hurry.” He spoke again, his voice, tense, clipped.

Another pair of cuffs was fastened onto her ankles. A short chain between them prohibited her from anything but the mincing steps of a slave. They were long enough to spread her to be fucked, though, whenever, and with whatever, he wanted. She kicked her legs violently. She wouldn’t tolerate being trapped. The metal cut into her ankles, her movements jarring her knees and hip joints, but she embraced the pain.

The short chain was removed, her thrashing legs hooked together at the ankle cuffs. Realizing she’d been immobilized, the fight over, her mind crumbled. She couldn’t bear any of it. His touch, the chains, where she was. Why wasn’t she dead? Her bladder voided itself like a frightened animal’s. The sickening warm wetness of it bathed her thighs, pooling beneath her.

“I won’t go through this again.” His face was a blur. She panted it, ten times, twenty, until her head was bobbing uncontrollably with the mantra. Emotions suppressed for months squeezed her chest so hard that she’d have been driven her to her knees if she were standing. Only she’d never kneel before a vampire again. He could cut off her legs first.

She’ d loved him. Farida had loved him
.
Oh God oh God oh God, let me just go there. If I have to live through this again,
let my mind shatter. Let me be there, in their world, not in this one.

Mason, alarmed, slid his hands up her arms as her breath strangled in her throat. Her heart was thundering, near explosion. Then her head dropped back, eyes rolling up as her body began to buck. She was having a seizure.
“Jessica.”

In the absence of anything suitable within reach, he forced the side of his own hand into her mouth. As her teeth sank down, his blood seeped out. Some of it would get on her tongue, down her throat. Despite Amara’s gasp, he knew that would help.

It took only a minute or so, but it felt like infinity, watching her convulse, her jaw clench, the whites of her eyes roll and tears pour out of them. When she at last began to wind down physically, she was still careening through her mind, mumbling things he didn’t want to hear.

When Amara had called for him, her urgent cry had only increased his pace, for he’d already been on his way. He’d been tuned to Jess’s mind when she woke. Her meandering ribbon of thoughts intrigued him, until they’d turned toward darkness and he realized he needed to be there. Damn it, he’d thought she’d be calmer if she saw a human first. But now he knew the ripple of unease in his gut when he’d left her in the room before dawn had been a warning. He should have stayed with her, helped her come to grips with the reality with a firm hand. Not like this, chaotic confusion and mindless panic.

Enrique had been right on his heels and, thankfully, had closed the French doors while they struggled with her, so the tendrils of sunlight wouldn’t turn him into a barbecue. Even in the shade, Mason felt the punishing reach of its heat. He’d thought she’d like a room full of sunshine, not thinking he might need to get into it before sundown.

Though Jess’s body was bound, Amara still held her legs in reassuring hands to prevent further thrashing. His servant looked up at him, her eyes sheened with tears. “What did he do to the poor child, my lord?”

“If there’s any justice, what’s being done to him in Hell right now.” Mason shook his head, preventing further conversation on the topic. Jessica still had his hand in her teeth, but instead of a deep bite, it was more of a spasmodic gnawing, like a distressed tiger cub might do. Her body continued to twitch.

“Shhh . . .” Drawing her away from Amara, he gathered her into his lap, heedless of her soiled state. She was shivering now, her skin cold. “
Habiba
, easy. I’ve got you. Amara, a blanket, quickly.”

When he wrapped her up, she calmed further. Though part of it might be because he’d given her warmth and made her less vulnerable by covering her nakedness, she’d slipped below conscious thought, her vulnerable mind protecting itself from her untenable reality. He noted, as he had at the caves, that the deep aversion she bore toward his kind ebbed when her mind left her body in charge of determining who was a threat. She responded to his touch, to his voice.

As he stroked back her hair, he watched the lips slacken from their frightening rictus. Remembering his earlier suspicion, Mason tested the waters further. “You are being silly,
habiba
,” he told her with gentle command. “You will stop this tantrum and listen.”

Her tense expression eased another fraction. Slowly, her eyes opened to mere slits. She stared at him much as an infant might.

Processing what and who he might be, this stranger holding her. But when recognition started to return, the revulsion came with it, and what she couldn’t hide from him—soul-deep terror.

“Jessica.” He spoke in the same resolute tone, before she could slide into hysteria again. “I need you to hear me. I swear you will not be harmed. Not by me, not by anyone here. Never. I swear it on my love for Farida, which is the one thing you want to believe is real and true.”

Her fingers curled against her thighs, her wrists straining against the bindings.
Off, off, off.

“Soon,” he said. He wanted them off as soon as possible as well. They were only adding to her panic, her sense of being trapped in

yet another situation she couldn’t control. But in her swirl of emotions, he still saw the overriding demand for self-destruction. He willed her to listen, to understand.

“I gave you the third mark to save your life, nothing more. You will stay with me for your protection, but in time, as you regain your strength and your mind, you will be able to take advantage of your potential in whatever way I can help you achieve it. Do you understand? I will
not
hurt you.”

“You’re . . . lying.” Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. He caught them on his fingertips, brushed them against her temples.

She shuddered, tried to draw her head away, though she felt a warring reluctance to do so, which only confused her further.

“Why would I lie?” He drew her attention back to him, engaged her mind to distract her from her instincts. “I have the upper hand.

It serves no purpose.”

“To torment me. To make me trust your words, and then betray me. To make me hope, and then take hope away. That’s what you feed upon . . . despair.” Her head dropped back, like a baby whose neck was too weak to hold it up. He caught it in the cup of his hand, but she was laughing now. Allah, he hated that demented laugh, the way it twisted her lips in an ugly scar, how it deadened her eyes. He wished he’d never seen the picture of her before, a laughing face and spirit as innocent as a child’s recklessly bouncing ball.

Amara made another noise of shock, and Enrique’s hand tightened on her, reassurance and forbearance at once.

“You’re right,” Mason said steadily. “That’s what Raithe would do. But I’m not Raithe.”

“It’s not just Raithe. You all do it.” She stared up at the ceiling, blood smeared on her lips and nose, her mouth. “I’m bound to you forever.”

“Yes, you are. I can’t change that. But that doesn’t mean what it meant with Raithe. We are not all like him.”

“You put me in chains, like he did.”

Mason guided her chin back to him, allowing Amara to use a wet cloth on her face. When his servant drew back, he lowered his other hand to one of the wrist cuffs. He ignored Jess’s flinch as he closed his fingers on her flesh over the cool metal. The position brushed his knuckles against her bare thigh, but again he kept his face impassive, not reacting to her jerk of aversion. “I put you in manacles to protect you. You tried to kill yourself. I have lived a long, long time, Jessica. Long enough to know that the one thing that endures is the will to live. This desire to take your own life will pass.”

Lifting his hand back to her face, he cradled it, sweeping a thumb over her cheek, despite the fact she remained as rigid as a corpse in his arms. “While people do not essentially change, their needs and desires do. Frequently. What you feel today won’t be what you feel tomorrow or the next day.” He allowed himself a slight smile. “In fact, given that you’re a woman, your desires change far more often than that.”

012

Her body was trembling. She couldn’t stop it. She could smell her own urine, and she hated that as well. She wanted the power to kill every fucking one of them, even if the conflagration took her down with them. She was tired and frightened, and tired of being frightened. She’d been so close to some kind of peace, even if it was just dust.

She’d always believed that being crazy meant not knowing one was crazy. Then she’d learned that she could know she was insane, and yet not be able to do a damn thing to change it. Now, as she wanted to hate his hand upon her, and she told herself she did, some twisted psychosis inside her wanted to lean into it, wanted to hope he wouldn’t hurt her too badly, if she was good. If she pleased him.

His eyes darkened, and she saw a swirl of emotions there, torn between anger and tenderness. “You break my heart,
habiba
. If I could go to Hell and find him, I’d make him suffer for everything he did to you. You are a rare bloom, and Raithe’s only desire was to tear apart the petals. He thought the prize was conquering and destroying something unique, rather than winning over your heart and cherishing it. But he didn’t destroy it. You’re still here.”

She didn’t want him saying these things to her, things someone who cared about her would say. She couldn’t handle having her mind fucked with again.

“So now you can finish what he started.”

“No.” He shook his head. “You stood inside Farida’s tomb and told two men who physically outmatched you that you would die defending her. You will not be harmed here.”

She was too drained to think of a response to that. Physical exhaustion reduced her to a dull stare as he drew her attention to the two others, the woman kneeling at her feet, and the man who stood behind her. “These are my third-marked servants, Enrique and his wife, Amara.”

Startling her then, he dropped a casual kiss on her shoulder, bared by the blanket. His lips were unexpectedly warm, not invasive, a passing brush. But his fingers whispered over the manacles, making her jerk with unease again. “These stay on,
habiba
,” he said quietly. “You have too much rage and pain inside of you, and your mind is in a very fragile state right now. I won’t allow you to harm yourself. When I sense that need is gone in you, and you are no longer a threat to your well-being, you will be released. Until then, Amara will watch over you.”

She wanted to argue, but he could read her mind, couldn’t he? He knew better than she did what she was feeling right now, and could use all of it against her. It was time to wrap her mind around her situation, determine what, if any, options she had. A vampire with
two
third-marked servants? Well, three, if she wanted to count herself, but he had a husband
and
wife? It confused her further, but then she noted Enrique’s gaze on her bare shoulder.

It reminded her again she was naked beneath the blanket, and restrained. As if Mason had heard her thoughts, and of course he had, Enrique backed away and slipped from the room. Probably to give her a false sense of security. Of the two males, Mason was the one she should want gone, far, far away. But even now, her body was pulled between the desire to be held by him, without feeling fear, and a screaming need to get away.

Mason’s amber gaze flickered, his mouth set. “I will be as near as your thoughts, Jessica. If you need me, call. Otherwise, Amara will let me know of your needs.”

8

W
HAT would it be like, to be born with no imagination? No ability to conceptualize beyond the reality right in front of her, behind her? She couldn’t contemplate a future. She’d done that, and she’d rather die than do it again.

Twenty-four years old. She’d been twenty-four when Lord Raithe took her. Jack was a sailor who’d left college to take a job cruising a large sailboat around the world for a wealthy man. He’d never gone back, and when he and Jessica met in Rome, he’d been thirty, and owned a modest sloop himself. For all their travels, both were straightforward people when it came to love. They let themselves be swept up in the joy of it and each other. They planned to travel the world together, taking odd jobs in ports while she continued her studies. Simple, imperfect dreams.

She didn’t know her joy had been noted by someone else. Jack told her she was beautiful, and while she’d never given much thought to it, she didn’t know that a woman in love had a special radiance that could attract the interest of a predator.

Jack had to go on a short run to Turkey. When he returned, three weeks later, she’d been reported killed in a fiery car crash, the ultimate cliché. She wished to God he’d left Rome in his grief and been at sea somewhere, impossible to find.

When she learned Farida’s story, Jess had foolishly believed she knew how Lord Mason had felt after they’d captured him. There he was, thinking things couldn’t get worse, and then Farida had ridden into her father’s camp. Fear for oneself was a terrible, frightened animal, but seeing the one you loved most of all, riding into the jaws of unspeakable horror, with no way to warn them or convince them to turn back . . . that was worse than any other torment Raithe had devised.