Beloved Vampire (64 page)

She shook her head. “He can’t avoid more formal circumstances forever, because I know what he’s become among the Council and others since your absence. What happens if he demands something of me I can’t give in those circumstances? He’ll have to punish me, force me to obey against my will to maintain the appearance of strength. He knows that as well as I do. I would end up hating him, fearing him, for my mind will never be able to accept that. It will break, and I’ll be lost in Raithe’s dark world forever.

It’s best if he lets me go.”

Lyssa leaned her hip against the table, cocked her head. “Come here, child.”

Jessica’s brow furrowed, but she obeyed. When she stopped a couple steps away, Lyssa gestured her forward again. Though the butterflies came back in force, she did it, and was nonplussed when Lyssa simply plucked a loose string off the collar of the T-shirt, snapping it with a quick flick of her wrist. Her knuckles brushed Mason’s silver collar.

“You are assuming you know best what he wants and needs. A common problem with human servants, when they think they can read their Master or Mistress’s thoughts. Regardless, that is not the true question that troubles you.” Her gaze pinned on Jess’s face, holding her there.

“Mason was the equivalent of your human street child among vampires after his parents died. Except a human child would have had the slim luxury of occasionally finding a friend, a soup kitchen haven for a night, or an adult who isn’t a complete monster. A teen vampire is in the company of killers, all more experienced than himself. To survive that, he had to cultivate his darkness and play terrifying games of chance beyond your comprehension, perhaps even beyond mine, at an age where he was prepared to do none of that. But he did it. He lost his soul doing it, several times, which is why I think he did what he did to Farida’s family. When he loses his moral compass, there is no more deadly and dangerous vampire than Lord Mason. And I include myself in that evaluation.”

Remembering the coldness she’d seen in his eyes when he spoke of Farida’s village, Jessica couldn’t think of a response to that.

But Lyssa was not finished. “It took some doing, but that savage wisdom became part of his strengths, honed ruthlessly with finer, nobler attributes. I’m not ashamed to say I was almost as brutal with him as those others, in order to see that happen.” She inclined her head. “But in the many years I’ve known him since then, I’ve only seen him lower his guard twice. Once with Farida, and now, with you. The question isn’t whether or not you can be the proper servant to him, Jessica Tyson. The question is whether you love him enough to risk everything you are to stand at his side. Give him your love, your heart and your trust, no matter how illogical and senseless it seems. Because that is what love does.”

Jessica pressed her lips together, her mind in confusion. Fortunately, Lyssa didn’t appear to be seeking a response. She sighed instead. “No matter how noble or foolish her actions, Farida loved him,” the queen acknowledged. “I do not disagree with that.

She loved him completely and senselessly, but she lacked the necessary understanding of darkness to love him wholly. The woman who can be his moral compass and hold his heart, that is the woman he needs.”

Leaving the towel and comb behind, Lyssa moved to the kitchen doorway, paused. “What goes on between two hearts is far, far apart from the matter of whether you stand at his side as his wife, or three paces behind as a servant. That was something Farida
did
understand. Loving him was everything.”

30

W
HEN sundown came that night, Jacob joined Lyssa at the boundaries of the temperate rain forest, the two intending to spend some time exploring the lush jungle of exotic plants and animals, and each other. Jessica sat on the verandah, watching them go, her bare feet through the railings, the gauzy skirt Dev had brought her hiked up to her knees. She’d showered and changed after the horses and put it back on, though instead of the T-shirt, she wore a light halter, one she knew Mason liked.

As they stopped at the forest’s edge, Jacob drew Lyssa to him, caressed her face. He spoke and she smiled, then his hands were on her shoulders, pushing her light dress off her shoulders. It pooled around her feet. As he bent to touch her neck with his lips, a flash of fang catching the dying sun, she twisted away. In that blink, she’d transformed, her amazing winged self performing a teasing loop above his head and then disappearing into the trees. Jacob picked up the dress, tucked it into the duffel he was carrying and vanished into the shadows of the trees as swiftly as the hunter he’d become, the beginning of an obvious game of cat and mouse. Though Jessica couldn’t imagine Lyssa as something as gentle as a mouse.

Danny and Dev had volunteered for babysitting and, last she’d seen them, they were tucked away in the library, playing games with baby Kane, surrounded with a variety of his toys. She’d leaned in the doorway there for a bit, watching Danny on the floor, laughing, those deceptively Disney-like blue eyes dancing as she held him above her on straightened arms and swung him back and forth as if he was a tiny superhero. Dev had been stretched out on a lounger near her, so her bare feet twined with his as he read, her toes caressing his ankles under the cuffs of his pants, a casually intimate pose.

She might have been looking at a domestic scene in any human home, like her cousin with her baby and husband. But it was a lie.

Wasn’t it? Leaning her forehead against the rail, she sighed. Regardless of what Lyssa said, or her own heart, she wasn’t sure of any of it.

“You know I cannot bear your sadness,
habiba
.” Mason touched her shoulders as he sat down behind her, sliding his legs through the railings on either side of hers, wrapping his arms around her chest. She hooked her hands over them, feeling his solid strength all around her, even as he had her effectively trapped in this one position. “You were not there when I woke. I was displeased.”

She smiled despite herself as he nipped her shoulder. Tilting her head to the left, she dropped it on his shoulder as he marked her skin. He was shirtless and wearing a pair of jeans, apparently having decided to match the casual garb of his male guests. It was a far too appealing look for him, the rough denim and hard muscle squeezing her hips, his groin pressed up against her lower back and upper rise of her buttocks. When she leaned back into his grasp, she lifted her arms to link around his neck, automatically giving him access to slide under her brief halter and fondle her breasts, stroke her nipples to aching hardness with little effort. Did a servant ever tire of wanting a Master? Did the third mark come with a compensatory elevation in sexual drive to keep her from being exhausted by her vampire’s carnal appetites?

“I would say yes, but I much prefer the ego-boosting idea that I keep you in a state of wanting me.”

His hand descended now, gathering the skirt, and the breeze touched her bare skin as he found his way under it, found her. Jessica arched, when, with little preliminaries, he simply eased his fingers into her, slow, finding her gathering wetness. “Mason . . .”

“This is what I want right now, my servant. I want to make you come, helpless in my arms. Drive your worries away.” Caressing her clit with devilish knowledge, he used his other hand to knead one breast and then the other. His mouth burned a path down her throat again, tongue flicking the pounding artery, the cord at her neck. She bucked and writhed as he took her up swiftly, more swiftly than he ever had before, making her wonder if his ego-boosting idea was right on target. All the things she’d been mulling in her head were gone, wiped away by his demand that she surrender to him.

This is what I desire, above everything,
habiba
. Not your willingness to play games with others at my pleasure, but that at
my very touch you surrender your will, trusting me to carry you to ecstasy, letting me satisfy my need to own you, body,
heart and soul.

Her breath sobbed in her throat as his words and the climax pitched her into abandon. Her cry was as wild as any that might come from the thick, dark forest where mysterious creatures such as Lyssa roamed, connecting to instinct and need, not thought and intellect.

She spasmed against his fingers, and his fangs scraped her neck, not biting, just a reminder of another way she served him, as the waves of the orgasm rose and fell in her. She couldn’t fight his strength, and the diabolical vampire knew exactly where to hold her still, where to let her move so that she strained, whimpered and capitulated all at once. When at last she was limp in his arms, another part of her still ached to be filled by him in other ways.

However, after that heated greeting, he seemed content to hold her cradled against him for a while, his lips brushing her brow.

Occasionally, he murmured to her in Arabic, and though she didn’t know what he was saying, it didn’t matter. He was thick and hard against her back, but when she thought to concern herself with that, he simply bid her to be still with a flex of his arms.

Turning her cheek to his chest as the night darkened, she gave him pictures of her day, her favorite things about it. Sometimes he liked her to speak the words, but now she let the thoughts drift between them like clouds. Lights flickered on the ocean, local fishermen she’d seen out there before. Tonight they appeared to be casting in closer, though they had a bit of a struggle, since the wind was blowing them off the shore.

“Do you have a boat?” she asked, her fingers intertwined with his on her thigh. His thumb stroked her knuckles with idle gentleness.

“I do. I can take you out in it. There’s a nice cove not too far from here. At low tide, there are caves you can explore while I watch.”

She smiled. “I forgot. Vampires don’t like to swim.”

“No, we can’t swim. We sink. Most don’t even like boats, but I like the water.” He nodded to the view. “Obviously.”

“It reminds you of the desert,” she guessed, shivering as he stroked the damp lines he’d created between her thighs. Her fingers convulsed under his nape. “The waves and vastness.”

“So it does,
habiba
. You know me well.”

His head lifted then, and she sensed him studying the darkness. “Mason?”

“Shhh. I heard . . . something.”

She straightened in his arms, searching the night with him, listening to the lap of the waves on the shore. “Maybe Lyssa and Jacob?”

“No.” His hands opened, an easy caress, at odds with the sharp thoughts that abruptly flooded her mind.

Jessica, I want you to obey everything I tell you to do. Without hesitation or thought. Do you understand? Do not speak
aloud. And do not be afraid.

“Good evening, Lord Mason.”

She expected him to leap to his feet, but instead Mason brushed his cheek over her temple, gave an irritated sigh. “You’re forfeiting your life, Trenton, coming to my home uninvited. There is no welcome for you here. What do you want?”

“It is who we want, and I think you know the answer to that.”

She stiffened, but Mason’s grip reminded her to stay relaxed. Only then did he slip from around her and rise, taking a spread-legged stance that covered her in front while the railings provided some protection behind her. Glancing through the slats, however, Jessica saw a cadre of male vampires, seven of them, come from beneath the shadows of the verandah. They formed a semicircle below. Despite the ball of ice that formed in her chest and stomach, she showed them to Mason in her mind, felt a flicker of acknowledgment. Then she slid her legs out of the rails and turned on her backside to see the threat before Mason, while keeping at enough of an angle to maintain the others in her peripheral vision.

She’d recognized Trenton’s voice right off. Now she saw him, with a dry-mouthed surge of panic she tried to push down. She also knew most of the eight vampires who stood behind him. Raithe’s progeny and hangers-on. Her heart stopped as she realized two had crossbows notched with wooden arrows aimed at Mason. They were accompanied by well-armed servants.

“What foolishness is this, Trenton?” Mason asked coldly.

“We intend to kill her. Slowly, as she deserves. You can find another servant. Raithe’s death must have justice.”

“Raithe’s death
was
justice. And while Raithe sired most of this litter”—his gaze coursed over them contemptuously—“I don’t think their motives for being here are devotion to their sire’s memory. You think you can take my home, live off of my earnings?”

Trenton’s face tightened. “Everyone knows you spend most of your time in the desert or isolated in this palace of yours. If you disappear, no one will even think to ask about it. But I can be merciful, Lord Mason. Start walking away, toward the forest now, and don’t look back. We’ll have your estate and your servant, but you’ll have your life.”

God, he doesn’t know you at all, does he? What an insufferable little prick.

That desperate, wry humor she used so unexpectedly would have eased the tension in his chest, if Mason wasn’t preoccupied with the odds, her safety, and the fact that beneath the grim bravado, Mason could feel her terror. She was holding together so far, but her mind was too fragile. It wouldn’t take much to snap her. Darkness was already swirling in her mind, taking away her ability to think and act. It infuriated him that they’d entered his property, given his servant even a moment of fear. A darkness of his own surged up in his chest, only it would compel him past thought, into pure, murderous action.

He cursed himself for being off guard. Having three other vampires already in his home had covered their approach well. Thanks to the shift in loyalties of Gideon, Jacob’s vampire-hunting brother, Mason’s estate was off-limits to all but isolated rogue hunters, and vampires didn’t typically attack this way. He’d never expected vampires to approach from the water. Obviously he hadn’t reckoned on the impetuous stupidity of youth, or how destructive it could be. Or Trenton’s soon-to-be fatal audacity, in the face of Council ruling.

Pushing aside the self-flagellation for later, he focused on the vibrations of bloodlust around him. Most of it seemed directed at him, not Jessica, which told him, regardless of Trenton’s feelings, his companions wanted this property more than anything else. Of course, that didn’t make Jessica any safer from them, unless he was, in fact, killed.