Retribution (Book 3 of The Dominion Series) (39 page)

When he's done, he looks up into my eyes and smiles. "No hair in my teeth."

"That's one advantage," I say, my voice shaking from my arousal. "My Lord."

"Now," he says and sits up. "Stand up, turn around and bend over. Lean against the bed. I have to do the rest."

I frown. "What do you mean?"

"Your ass, Eve. I have to shave there as well."

"No," I say and hold my hands up. "Sorry. That’s where I draw the line."

"Eve," he says, closing his eyes. "This is part of the agreement."

I suddenly feel very naked and very self-conscious. With one hand, I cover my breasts and with the other, my very naked pubic area. I shake my head.

"I…" I say, my voice breaking. "I just
can't
."

He puts the blade down and motions to me, waving his hand, his expression all business.

I shake my head and turn away.

"Come," he says and takes my arm. He pulls me into his embrace, his face tilted up, his chin on my arm covering my breasts.
  "Let me do this, Eve," he says, his voice soft. "Just take a leap of faith that I know what I'm doing. Trust me."

"Do you have
any
idea how I feel?"

"I know
exactly
how you feel, Eve. I just have to touch you to know. That’s precisely why I'm doing this. I have to push you just a bit."

I shake my head, unable to speak.

"I'm not giving up," he says softly.

"I'm afraid…"

"Eve, do you think I
want
to hurt you?"

I sigh. I don't think so but if he wants
that
…

"Answer me. Do you
really
think I would ever do anything to purposely hurt you?"

"
That
hurts," I say, referring to anal sex. "You want to do it. Therefore I assume you want to hurt me."

"It doesn't have to hurt. I said I won't do it."

"You only do that so you can hurt someone. That's what
he
did…"

"Eve," Michel says and I can hear the exasperation in his voice. "I'm not him. You're no longer a little ten-year-old girl. I assure you it won't hurt. Nothing I do will hurt you except when I brand you, spank you and bite you. Nothing else. I only want to give you pleasure. Don't you understand that? Only pleasure."

I sigh. I don’t want this. I don’t want him to touch me there.

"Eve, turn around, bend over as I commanded. Do it now."

"I just…"

He puts a finger to my lips. "No argument, Eve. You agreed to this. This is part of pushing your limits."

I take in a deep breath and comply, turning around, bending down but I feel terribly embarrassed that my ass is so exposed to his gaze, right in his face.

"Spread your legs," he orders and I do with extreme reluctance. I'm glad I don't have to look in his face when he does this and grimace, squeezing my eyes shut. He rubs the shaving brush against me and I flinch for it both tickles and makes me embarrassed. Then, horror of horrors, he spreads my cheeks with the fingers of one hand and shaves me with the other, carefully, and I try not to think of what I must look like, but then I can't help it. I burst out in a stifled laugh, almost snorting because I try to hold it in and fail.

He stops for a moment. "You find this amusing, Eve?" he says, his voice light, a touch of humor in it. "Does it tickle?"

"No, my Lord, it just must look so," I say and struggle for words, tears blurring my vision. "So
ridiculous.
It’s just so …
embarrassing
."

"Believe me," he says and I can almost hear his smile even though I can't see it.
  "It doesn’t look at all ridiculous from where I'm sitting.  It looks inviting."

I snort again, the notion that my spread ass cheeks are inviting almost unbearably funny to me and I wipe away the tears off my cheeks. When he's done, he washes off the area with a wet cloth and then dries me off. I try to stand up but he refuses to let me, pressing his hand on my back to stop me.

"Stay like that. You shouldn’t feel embarrassed, Eve. It's actually very erotic to me."

I cover my mouth with a hand, giggling, unable to control myself now.
  I try to stop laughing, taking in a deep breath, but it's just under the surface.

"You actually find my ass
erotic
?"

"Very," he says, his voice serious.

I burst out laughing at that, covering my face as I try to stop my laughter. "Please, don’t make me stand like this any longer. I can't take it."

"No, I think I’d like you to stay like that for a while. Don’t move. I have to get something."

He leaves me, and I glance around to see where he's going. He's at a large bureau and opens a drawer, removing a box of some design. He returns and then sits down again, and does nothing. I wonder – that better not be a sex toy…

I wait, but he just sits there, staring at my ass.

"Are you just going to sit there and stare at me?"

"I think I might. You're being quite disrespectful. I could spank you right now, Eve, based on our agreement and your lack of respect. Instead, I think I'll just make you stand like that for a while longer. Besides, I can see your pussy so well from this position. All nice and pink and bare."

He runs a finger between my lips to the entrance to my body and I gasp at the sensation. It feels so good and seems to stifle my need to laugh, my mirth replaced by lust.

"That’s better."

I close my eyes and just allow myself to feel the sensations as he strokes me. Finally, without speaking, he turns me around and pushes me back onto the bed, then lies on top of me, my hands above my head grasped in one of his. He kisses his bite mark, licks the skin there, and despite everything, despite my anxiety, my embarrassment, and my fear, I respond to the feel of his tongue on my skin.

"Here," he says and stands up, pulling me up with him so that I sit on the edge of the bed. He reaches for the box and opens it to reveal a thin black leather choker with a small black and white cameo pendant. "This is your collar – the symbol of your slavery to me. You have to wear it all the time."

I take it from him and examine it. The cameo is beautiful, made from what looks like Onyx, and in the shape of a white
fleur-de-lis
against a black background. It's about the size of a nickel and delicate. He fastens it behind my neck and positions it so that the cameo falls just at the base of my throat.

"Beautiful."

He takes my hand and leads me to the antique bureau with a large mirror and stands me in front of it so I can see what it looks like on me. I stand there with the cameo choker around my neck, my breasts bare and pubic area shaved. He pulls my hair away from my face, holding it up in a loose ponytail so that long tendrils fall around the nape of my neck. He bends down and places his mouth over his bite mark possessively.

Then he pulls away and lets my hair drop. "Now to the last rite of possession. The brand."

I grimace, for I know it will hurt. He turns me around in a pirouette and then sits on a chair in front of me.

"Where should I mark you?" he says, eyeing my body closely. "Perhaps on the outside curve of your breast just under your arm? I love the way your breast swells there," he says, pulling me closer, licking the area before taking my nipple in his mouth for a brief suck.
  My muscles clench at that.

Then he turns me around so my ass is towards him.

"Perhaps here," he says, touching the base of my spine between my cheeks. He licks the spot and then kisses each cheek. I tense.

Then he turns me around again and leans down to stroke my naked pussy with his tongue. "Maybe here," he says and licks just to the side of my pubic mound, between it and my inner thigh.

"It would really hurt there," I say.

He glances up at me and raises his eyebrows. It’s then I realize I haven't been using the proper form of address with him. "I'm sorry," I say. "
My Lord
."

He doesn't respond. "I think I'd like it here," he says and kisses the spot beside my pubic mound. "That way, when I eat you, I can see my mark as a constant reminder of the fact I possess you. All of you. Every inch."

I take in a deep breath, a bit anxious about the pain. I'm used to pain that I self-administer. Somehow it isn’t as bad when you do it yourself. When someone else does, you don't control it. It feels more intense.

He goes to the fireplace and removes a tiny metal rod with a wooden handle. At one end is a brand that now glows red-hot. It's pretty small – no more than the size of a quarter. A circle with a
fleur-de-lis
in the center. From his family coat of arms, the
fleur-de-lis
signifying Occitan nobility.

"Go lie on the bed," he says and I do, lying on my back with my legs hanging off the edge. He leans over me with the branding iron but first, he touches where he wants to place the mark with a finger, then he presses the brand against my skin and
oh, my God
it hurts like hell. Worse than anything I've done to myself. The pain sears me and I flinch away from him until he finally removes it. There's already a real mark, blistering, red, where the brand was. He returns the poker to the fire and then comes back to me.

"OW, ow, ow!" I say, my breath drawn in between my clenched teeth. "Ow. That hurts so much!"

"I know, " he says. "I have to leave it so that it takes. I'll stop the burn in a few seconds." Then he leans down and licks me over the brand, and the sensation is nice and distracts me momentarily from the pain. "The burn won't get any worse due to the healing properties in my saliva."

I nod and sit up to examine my new mark.

"You are so
lovely
," he says and pushes me back, lying on top of me. "Naked, shaved, my collar on you, now my brand. You are truly all mine. Keats never had Fanny the way he wanted, Eve, but I have you. I've always thought how tragic was his love story with Fanny. He so capable of loving her entirely and completely and unable to have her that way. I've wanted you so long and now you are mine. Every inch of you."

"My Lord," I say, enjoying his weight on top of me. "We've only known each other for four months. You haven't waited long at all."

"I feel like I've known you for eight hundred years."

I frown. "What do you mean?"

"I was there when you were conceived, Eve," Michel says and strokes my cheek. "I saw your mother's ultrasound at eighteen weeks when we discovered your siblings had all died in utero. I was there when you were born, waiting outside the delivery room. I saw your first recital. I saw your last recital before your mother died."

He kisses me and I can feel his erection pressing against my groin, causing an instant response in my body, despite the pain from the brand and my confusion about what he's saying.

"You were there when I was conceived?"

"Soren's scientists used your mother's egg and father's sperm. They infused the fertilized egg with selected DNA that had been manipulated to include some from an Ancient, and some from another human."

"What other human?" I say, a sense of dread filling me.

"You have some of your mother in you – what we needed. Your fight skills, your telepathy. You have some Ancient DNA that gives you the ability to act as a conduit between vampires and Ancients."

"Which Ancient?" I say, alarm filling me. "Not Soren…"

"Yes," Michel says. "You are his creature."

I can't even think at this point. Soren is
not
my father. I have some of his DNA – that's all.

"Who else? What other human?"

Michel doesn't say anything for a while. Finally, he takes a lock of my hair between his fingers and holds it up to his nose. "Danielle."

Danielle?
"But," I say and can't speak for a moment, confused. "She
died
… You killed her!"

"We dug up her bones and used her DNA. There are techniques, Eve, that never existed until now to extract DNA from hip bones. There was enough to use to make you look like her. Your hair. Your eyes. Your build. The shape of your nose. Your chin. Your long neck. But your dimples, they're your mother's. Your freckles? They're from your father."

My eyes widen. 

"But why?"

"Soren promised me that if I was at his side, he'd make you for me. You see, he played us both, Julien and I. Promising us both a copy of you in return for our obedience and compliance with his plan. Then, your siblings died in utero and there was only one of you. He thought that was even better – to have us both enslaved to him, fighting over you."

I lie there, unable to speak or even think, while he starts to move his mouth and tongue all over me, from my neck to my breasts and then down, licking me all over. I try to understand – I'm
not
Danielle. I look like her, but I'm my mother's daughter. I'm my father's daughter. I have her dimples. I have his freckles.