Beloved Vampire (59 page)

“If so, I expect I’m already defeated,” Mason noted. “I’m not sure I could stand up to such a fierce vampire.”

“Believe me, if he starts screaming, we’ll all run for the hills,” Devlin said dryly. “Try being trapped on a plane with him when he doesn’t get what he wants. Or was that Jacob squalling? I forget . . .”

Jacob knocked out the base of his javelin, attempting to rap the other man’s ankles. Dev moved nimbly out of range. “That was pathetic, Irish. I—” Then he dropped, a lithe roll, as the quarterstaff came whizzing back, with far more of a vampire’s speed.

“Well, then. That’s more like it. Better not bruise my pretty face. My lady won’t like it and she’ll be forced to whip your skinny arse.”

Danny snorted at that. “He heals quickly, Jacob. Do your worst.”

“Would you like to join us, Jessica?”

“Hmm?” Jessica glanced up, startled. The vampire simmered in Jacob’s blue eyes, but there was an open friendliness as well, reminding her that Jacob had recently been human.

“Mason says you’re a pretty sharp fighter. Care to match a few moves with Devlin and myself, exchange techniques?”

“C’mon, love.” Dev gestured toward the square of sand where they’d been sparring. “Between the two of us, we can take him down. He’s become unlivable since he grew fangs. Worse than a teenager discovering his bollocks have hair on them.”

She blinked, but not at the crudity. Vampires and servants joking with one another. Of course, they appeared serious about the invitation, which caused her no little consternation. “I’m not really . . . dressed.”

“Actually, last time they sparred, they had on far less.” Danny gave Dev a thorough appraisal. “It was far more interesting.”

“Well, never let it be said I want to bore you, my lady.” Dev stripped off his shirt in an easy movement, revealing his third mark, an impressive outline of a raven, wings spread across his pectorals. When he shucked off the khakis he’d been wearing, he had on a swimsuit beneath, a pair of snug stretch shorts that emphasized the muscular haunches and a rather sizable—

Jessica caught herself staring and jerked her eyes away as Jacob chuckled, but before she could get embarrassed, he jabbed at the man’s midriff with the quarterstaff, backing him a pace. “Last time you were naked, Aussie.”

Devlin made a cocky come-closer motion as he maneuvered toward their sparring field. “Don’t want you to get confused about which one’s my weapon and whack the wrong thing.” He twirled his javelin deftly, managing to block another forward lunge. “The other one’s only a threat to the ladies.”

“Jacob.” Lyssa’s voice was soft, but Jacob turned toward her immediately. At her unreadable look, Jacob gave her a slow, sexy smile. With a slight bow, he, too, stripped off his shirt, showing off a muscular, broad-shouldered body. Above his hip bone was a brand of a Christian cross. On his spine, Jessica was surprised to see his third mark had survived his transition, a serpentine-looking fossil. The male vampire then slid off his jeans, revealing he wore nothing under them at all. While Dev was obviously overly equipped, enough to cause a fainthearted woman consternation, Jacob’s blessings were nothing to be sneered at. Despite that, Dev snorted and rolled his eyes.

“Unless you’re using a really short dagger, I won’t have any problem telling your staff from that pitiful thing.”

Jacob, though quite obviously quite comfortable with his unclothed state, glanced over at Mason. “My lord, there are a pair of swimming trunks in the duffel there. Would you mind?”

Were they actually making an effort to help her feel more comfortable? She couldn’t tell, because there were too many ways for these five to communicate without her having a clue as to what was happening. However, she had to admit the tension in her shoulders eased considerably when he put the trunks on. It wasn’t that they weren’t beautiful men. But this was how the “games”

started, and they were inviting her to play . . .

She’d tightened her arms on the baby without realizing it, and Mason ran soothing hands down her arms, jolting her back to her current reality. He leaned down, pressing his jaw against her temple. When his hair fell forward over her shoulder, Kane latched on to it instantly with a triumphant coo and tried to stuff the ends in his mouth.

Jessica was taller than the vampire queen, but as Lyssa stepped in, the energy simmering in her luminous eyes suggested that, even if she was a pixie fairy, able to land on a daisy without disturbing a petal, she could still blast a giant onto his ass. “Here. I’ll take him back now. At least if you’re sparring with them, we won’t have to suffer through a tedious stream of male genitalia insults.”

Jessica didn’t dare hold him with less than two arms, so there was a momentary delay as Lyssa extricated Mason’s hair, with Jessica trapped between them. While the vampire queen held the little fist and pulled Mason’s hair free, as she’d done for Jessica, she glanced up at him, gave him that half-smile look he returned with a similar warmth in his eyes. Lyssa pushed his hair back over his shoulder, a bit of a stretch for her shorter height. Though her forearm brushed Jessica’s neck, she could have been a piece of furniture for as much notice as the queen paid her. When she drew back, she let her fingers linger in his silky hair, what any female with a hormone would be tempted to do. Still, the obviously intimate gesture pierced Jessica’s lower abdomen like a small spiky ball.

But then Lyssa had taken her son back and Mason was squeezing her shoulders. “Go join them,
habiba
.”

Lifting his voice, he drew the other two males’ attention. “Do not teach her anything that would make me uneasy in my bed at night.”

Dev grinned wickedly. “I expect she already knows how to do that, my lord. We’ll just teach her how to make it quick and painless.”

“I’m not sure that’s necessary,” Jess muttered, stepping out of the gazebo. She didn’t know if Mason had caught it or not. Likely not, because he was speaking to Lyssa. As he took a seat in a chair next to the swing, he picked up the wine she’d topped for him.

Then he leaned forward in an attitude of full attention, one hand loose on his thigh as he sipped the libation and studied the child.

While he was doing that, Lyssa dropped the strap of her dress to bare a breast and feed. Jess’s emotions warred with her curiosity as she stopped an extra second to watch. There were a pair of uneven scars on Lyssa’s breast, just above her nipple. She couldn’t help the sympathetic wince as baby Kane pierced her there, latching on to drink his mother’s blood. The queen’s breast was distended beyond the size of her frame, as any nursing mother’s would be, only instead of swollen milk ducts, apparently she had swollen veins.

Of course, curiosity wasn’t the only emotion Jess experienced as Lyssa so casually bared that plump breast before Mason’s gaze and continued to talk to him, as if it were nothing. She laughed, a sultry sound, as Mason unpinned one part of her sable hair and drew the long lock forward, a silken veil to cover the breast and Kane’s small skull. Jessica noted his hand lingered, gave the skeins a passing, soft stroke of affection before he withdrew, sat back and answered a question Danny posed. She had her arm stretched along the back of the swing behind Lyssa, her body turned in a relaxed pose to watch the mother nurse. Like Mason, but far different, to Jessica’s way of thinking.

Turning on her heel, she moved toward the practice field. Of course they’d been intimate. She already knew that. Vampires were incapable of curtailing their libido around one another. She was just a human, after all. In his bed at dawn, her ass. She wasn’t about to be part of some threesome he had in mind.

She was surprised to catch an expression on Jacob’s face suggesting she wasn’t the only one adversely affected. His mien as he studied the gazebo had become far less friendly, far more dangerous than he’d yet appeared, enough to bring her to a wary halt.

But then Dev nudged him, murmured. Jacob’s jaw flexed, his grip on the quarterstaff increasing. Though his face relaxed into a more ambivalent expression, she noted sparks of cobalt fire in those eyes.

A servant noticed everything, because that was key to survival around vampires, and Dev was no exception to that. “Choose your weapon, Jess,” he said, giving her a steady look, an unspoken signal easy to decipher and intended to reassure, she expected.
This
doesn’t involve us.

How she wished that was true, that it didn’t matter to her at all. She wanted to be magnanimous. Lyssa had saved his life, helped him through some of his worst moments. He’d known her for hundreds of years. Their history was as natural a thing to them as breathing. But did they have to breathe so loudly? And of course, technically, vampires didn’t have to breathe at all.

“Hand-to-hand. Whatever style works.” She unknotted the hip scarf and let it fall, kicking off her sandals. She performed a few deep stretches, getting out the kinks. The overwrap bodice provided a generous amount of cleavage, and the spandex as she spread her legs to work her groin muscles would draw attention to the plump lips of her sex. The high French cut certainly offered a pleasurable view of her ass.

The last thing she’d expected to do tonight was deliberately flaunt her assets, but at the moment she received a certain satisfaction from being noticed by the two males. Coming to her feet, she rolled her head on the stem of her neck, shook out her hands like a boxer priming to fight.

Dev came to her side, his lips pressed against a smile, his sea green eyes telling her he was aware and perhaps familiar with her state of mind. “Now, my Mistress, she doesn’t particularly care for me trying to improve my skills against a vampire opponent. She wants me to turn tail and run, thinking no human can hold his or her own against a vamp. You’re living proof that’s not quite the case.”

“I got lucky. Very lucky.” She didn’t have any illusions of that, but Dev only nodded.

“That may be true, but the way I feel about it is this. If my lady is ever attacked by one and I can buy her a few seconds, well, then, that’s what I’m going to do. In your case, you must have felt the same, for a different reason, else you wouldn’t have taught yourself to fight.”

She lifted a brow. “How much has Mason told you about me?”

“Enough to know to be on my guard. I don’t want to have my arse kicked by a girl.” He winked. Then his voice lowered. “And don’t worry about Jacob. He’s got his blood up about his lady and Lord Mason, but he won’t be taking it out on you. Me, on the other hand, he’ll beat on like a rug.” He gave her a grin. “So you don’t mind if I’m a bit unchivalrous and say ‘ladies first’? You might coax him out of his foul mood.”

She couldn’t help it, his humor was too infectious. She managed a smile, but pounding on something for a few minutes sounded fine to her. Mason hadn’t even noticed the stream of invective she’d sent his direction, and she’d thrown in some choice words. He was too wrapped up in his beloved queen and her maternal breasts that should be gracing a
Hustler
magazine centerfold. She could probably stake him where he sat, more oblivious than the wounded Raithe.

When she turned back to the makeshift field, Jacob nodded to her. Apparently reading her mood, he assumed an attack position without further conversation and began circling. Dev had obviously understood her feelings, but now she wondered about Jacob.

He’d been a human servant. How often had he been forced to stand by while his lady took her pleasure with others? He was still with her, though, despite being a vampire, and male vampires were not known for sharing, unless it was their idea. She couldn’t imagine what kind of power struggles the two of them had been forced to resolve as a result of Lyssa turning him. Obviously some of those struggles hadn’t been entirely laid to rest.

When he lunged at her, she made herself focus. He could out-match her in an instant, she knew, but the purpose seemed to be analyzing potential strategies, not overwhelming his human opponents. She appreciated the value of testing skills against a vampire holding himself in check, but right now she was irritated, with herself mostly.

Avoiding the lunge, she moved in with a leg sweep, ducked past his attempt to seize her midbody, rolling away. He was on her again in a flash, and she went deadweight, bucking at the key moment to break his hold. Jamming an elbow hard into his thigh as she went down, she twisted beneath him, catching his ankle. It would have set another man on his ass, but he flipped out of it, lithe as a cat.

Dev whistled. “Nice.”

Jacob nodded in agreement, backing off. “You could buy yourself a second or two with that, if you used seduction as an additional distraction. Males of all species are usually easy in that regard.” His smile was faint, ironic. “Even if we know it’s a distraction, we still have to look. Biological imperative and all.”

They circled again. He taught her a few more maneuvers, had her break down a couple of hers. He worked her hard as Mason had, the night in the workout room. Then Dev came in, and the two of them worked out tandem strategies that kept Jacob on his toes. He increased the use of his speed and strength as they gained more confidence. Jess found herself concentrating so hard, everything else disappeared as she strained her mind and body to its limits to outsmart him, outflank him, acting in concert with Dev.

At some point, she realized she was having fun, in a way only competitive athletes could. Who couldn’t enjoy the setting? Ocean in the backdrop, moonlight overhead, and two powerful, handsome men engaging her in a mock physical combat that brought her in close proximity to broad chests, a hip or buttock, a long length of thigh, flexing beneath her hands or against her body as they twined together, hit the sand or rolled off one another, like a particularly competitive game of Twister.

Despite her pique with Mason, it made her think of his body beneath her hands, her mouth. Then his body on top of her, flexing between her legs, challenging her to the utmost, in a different, far more erotic way than it was being challenged now, but there was a similar physical undercurrent to it that had her breath shortening from more than physical exertion.