The Scientific Method: A Vampire Queen Novel (Vampire Queen Series Book 10) (12 page)

He shook his head. "It was essential, especially because of my age — let alone my outlandish ideas — that I always appear completely detached, objective."

As he spoke, his gaze was sliding over her, an inch at a time it seemed, reminding her how thorough he could be, how detail-oriented. He caressed the other hip bone, making her twitch restlessly. Bending, he kissed her navel, rimmed it with his tongue. She was dying, her throat closed and choking her, heart aching. When she placed her hand on his head to stroke his hair and he turned enough to kiss her palm, she had to choke back another sob.

He lifted his head, met her gaze again. "I'd heard choosing your first full servant is a lot like a first crush. Having a servant to call my own, and one like you...it was a heady mix, such a brilliant woman willing to submit to me, become my servant." A shadow crossed his gaze. "I spoke to others about it. When I described you to them, how impressed I was with you, how much I wanted you, my feelings must have shown. They teased me. Normal hazing, not even unkind really. But I thought my behavior reinforced what they believed, that I was still going through growth spurts, and my scientific pursuits were simply a phase.

"Then you told me you loved me. You asked if I loved you back. An honest question. You weren't even nervous, so clear-eyed and direct. In your world, it simply is, right? Two people fall in love."

Tears trickled out of her eyes and he put his lips to her cheek, capturing one. He cradled the other side of her face, absorbing those tears in his palm.

"It seemed like the test I was waiting for, to prove to them and you that you didn't have that hold on me. I told myself I was teaching you a lesson, but I was teaching myself a lesson as well. Proving I had the self-control to accomplish everything I intended."

His gaze lifted to hers. "I was testing a hypothesis. 'If she hasn't affected my heart, then I can behave as if she doesn't matter. I can hurt her deeply and still continue to see her as my servant, expecting her to be my servant, no matter what I do to her.' I salved my conscience by reminding myself you came into the relationship fully informed."

"Women are known for an appalling lack of self-regard when they fall for a man," she said. She'd meant to sound wry, not bitter, but she knew she failed. The flash of hurt on his face startled her, but then it was gone, replaced by something softer.

"For the next few years, we stayed so busy. I thought you found a way to heal your heart and accept the way things were."

"You proved your hypothesis." She wanted to be anywhere else, but remained rigid under his touch now. He brushed her lips with a thumb.

"No, I didn't," he said softly. "The intensity, how you respond to me, the overwhelming physical pleasure of having you as my servant, made it easy to assume I had. Yet whenever you kneel to me, whenever I hold you in my arms, it's far from simple."

When her brow furrowed, his lip curled, a sign of personal frustration. "It was a fucked-up hypothesis, Debra, because it was based on twisted logic."

Sliding his arms beneath her, he lifted her to her feet, her bare soles sinking into the blanket, cushioned by the layer of grass beneath. He stayed kneeling, his arms banded around her thighs and hips so she had nowhere to put her hands but on his shoulders, her knuckles brushed by the strands of his blond hair.

"Here's the right hypothesis: If I didn't care for you, then I never would have felt the need to do that." Taking her hands, he gripped them tight. His hazel eyes were serious and intent, the way they were when he knew he'd hit the right vein on a research problem. "Here's another one. 'If I truly love you, then I can convince you once more that I am your Master.'"

She blinked. Had he said...love?

"The Master who cherishes and values you. The one who humbly and on his knees" — he glanced down at himself wryly — "begs your forgiveness."

Amazed disbelief flooded her, followed by apprehension. "Master, don't." She tugged at him. "If someone should see..."

He stayed stubbornly in place. "You risked your life for Lord Daegan, for Gideon and Anwyn. You did it without thought."

"I had every intention of waiting in the car."

He gave her a look. "We're not in the lab. Don't correct me."

An unexpected snuffle of laughter caught her. He was right, it was the only place where she would correct him. But when she kept trying to get him back on his feet, he gave her a little shake.

"Cease. I'll do as I like, risk or no risk, because I hurt you badly, Debra. I damaged your trust, and I'm realizing exactly what that may have cost me. Tell me what I can do to earn your forgiveness. Show me."

Dear God, he meant it. Here she was, facing what she'd always hoped to hear from him, yet there were too many layers of hurt. It didn't penetrate. It didn't feel real. How could he really know what it meant if he'd fought it so long? If he'd never really loved? And in his world, he could be risking...everything.

"Yes, I could. But a scientist who ignores truth and how it influences everything else fails anyway." She saw that flash of frustration again. "Debra, I don't deserve your trust. I know that. But give me something. Let me earn at least an ounce of your forgiveness tonight. I want to find the woman I met in that lab long ago, the one I hope I haven't destroyed."

He had destroyed her. But he'd remade her as well, the subsequent years of emotions and experiences crafting a whole new person, a new way of looking of things. Built on the foundation of the Debra she'd been.

She took a breath. If this was a dream, it would be just as capable of breaking her as it would if he didn't really mean it. Because she didn't want to wake from a dream like this.

An ounce of forgiveness. One tiny step. It seemed so little, but his steady expression told her he knew just how wide a chasm it was. She closed her eyes.

He wanted her to show him how he could earn her forgiveness. It was far more likely that he could show
her
. As she bit her lip over that thought, she sensed the warm drift of him in her mind. His feelings so sincere, in a way that had her heart squeezing up into her lungs, inhibiting their airflow.

"You know that's not medically possible."

She opened her eyes. "You're not supposed to correct someone you're asking to forgive you."

"Valid point. I'll file it away for later discussion."

She resisted the urge to pinch him, then glanced down at the blanket. She saw the rose that had fallen there.

"Can you...would you lie on your back, my lord?"

He considered, then nodded, complying. She held her breath, not sure this was really happening as he stretched out on his back for her. He let one arm lie above his head, the other resting loosely across his abdomen. His gaze never left her, making things tremble in her lower belly. Kneeling next to him then, she picked up the rose. The breeze picked up a little, riffling the petals, his hair across his brow, sending another shiver across her skin.

"Put the coat back on if you're cold." His voice, a masculine tenor well suited to presentations and convincing others of his intellectual authority, was potent in a whole different way when lowered to a sensual purr.

She shook her head, then dropped her touch, letting the bloom slide over his chest, his upper abdomen. His gaze shifted, tracking it, and she drew in a pleased breath, seeing his skin shudder under the touch of the flower. She made a circle around his nipple, saw it harden. Leaning forward, she braced herself with a hand curled over his upper thigh, so high her forefinger could make a tentative caress of his testicles under the denim.

"Debra."

"I'm working on forgiveness, my lord. As you commanded."

His lips quirked at that, but then they firmed, his eyes watching her like a hawk watched a field mouse. That waiting intensity told her eventually he would strike, and the pleasure would overwhelm her. Doing what he'd so rarely allowed her to do was overwhelming enough by itself.

It couldn't fix all that buried hurt, no. Trust didn't switch on and off like a light. But he was a smart man. She knew he knew all that. He was asking her to take a step in that direction, see if she could find it in her to open herself to the possibility. She wanted that, she truly did, but she'd learned the heart, when wounded, didn't always respond to the wants of the mind. It had to make its own decision, in its own time. And it wasn't necessarily easy. There were so many pitfalls in the vampire world, so many things that would require Brian to underscore her status as a mere servant, things that could send her back in that wrong direction again. Things beyond both their control.

But he was right. She'd known most of those requirements when she signed up for this. It was how he'd abandoned her emotionally to face so much of it alone that was at issue. He was giving her an opening, a chance to believe he might be capable of making up for it. If she'd lacked any evidence to back that up, she would have been dead in the water right now. But she'd seen the type of vampire master possible in the relationship between Mason and Jessica, Lyssa and Jacob...

It would be new to him, though. He was right, in that all his focus had been proving himself to the vampire world, a world that still pretty much considered her expendable, her needs second to all of theirs. Could she be strong enough to trust him through missteps, even if he was truly headed in the direction she'd hoped for all along? That she'd sensed during those first few days together, so strongly she'd never doubted his feelings had been real, not all these years. Sometimes that was more painful than finding out she'd deluded herself.

She had no answer to any of that. She'd just focus on this, see if she could navigate a moment of trust. The physical part of it was certainly no hardship. But an edgy part of her wanted to test, to push the boundaries of what had always been acceptable between them. So she let that bloom drift down over the nice muscled ridges of his stomach and play at his belt. It wasn't tight at his lean waist, so she brought her fingers into the equation. Dipping below, she found his bare hip bone and nothing else. No underwear. It made her pulse trip a little faster, thinking of his cock and testicles right against denim.

She reversed the bloom. The stem had several sharp, thick thorns. As she fed the stem below the line of the belt, imagining it curving on the inside of his hip bone, against the tender flesh over the pubis, she saw his gaze sharpen on her again, felt his attention in her mind, like the hum of electricity. She savored feeling him there. Those servants who grumbled about the vampire's presence in their minds didn't know what it was like to do without it. When he was aroused and his emotions were high, it was as clear he was inside her head as if he was standing behind her in the lab, his breath on her neck, making her have to work to concentrate, not mess up her process.

You manage it well. I'll have to work on that. It would be nice to punish you for actual cause sometimes
.

He was teasing, because they took the work they did seriously. But she expected there were some less important things she could mess up. Just because.

His lips curved at that.
My servant likes punishment. I'll make a note to meet her needs more often
.

The usual thought crossed her mind, that her needs weren't his to worry about, but he lifted the hand on his abdomen, grazed her cheek.
Everything about you is mine to worry about, Debra. It always has been
.

She ducked her head, not able to handle that. Too close to that nest of snakes that could eat her alive from the inside, if she let herself trust too fast, too much. Bracing both her hands on his hip, over the stem beneath the cloth, she pressed down, hard. Harder.

She felt two of the thorns puncture him. He didn't flinch from the pain, but fire flared in his gaze, all the muscles along that distracting upper body rippling. As she eased off, small spots of blood bloomed through the fabric, staining the fibers.

"Blood isn't easy to get out of clothes."

"I don't want it to wash out." She wanted there always to be evidence of this one experience he'd given her. If there wasn't another, maybe having at least one like this would last her the next seven years.

She unbuckled his belt, slid the button of the jeans free to push her hand in beneath the zipper. She guided it down from inside and out to ensure it didn't catch any tender, turgid flesh. There was a difference between intentional pain, like what she'd done with the rose, and pain caused by carelessness.

Perhaps that was why the memory of Lady Carmela had remained so painful, festering. Because he'd done it intentionally. It tempted her to lock down her emotions, simply enjoy the physical the way he'd been doing throughout their relationship, and not risk her emotions. He was right. It was safer that way.

"Debra."

She shook her head, peeled back the jeans. Removing the rose, she dropped it to the blanket and put her mouth over one of the marks, relishing the taste of his blood. Even a few drops could be rejuvenating to a servant, and it fizzed through her, making her leave off the delicate licks and suck on his skin instead, swirling over it with the tip of her tongue. Her hand slid down to cover his erection, stretching up thick and tempting out of the open jeans. He pushed up into her hand, his breath drawing in, part growl, part sound of pleasure. She didn't have to imagine the restraint he was exercising, letting her do this. She could feel it, like a chain stretched to breaking.

Often after a vampire social event, once the vampires turned in for the dawn, the servants would have impromptu gatherings of their own, if they were friendly enough with one another. She remembered one where Dev, the Australian bushman who was Lady Daniela's servant, had made them all breakfast as they lounged about the kitchen. During the gossip and information trade that was part of such an informal social meet, one servant had speculated whether or not there were any submissive vampires. It was intended as a joke, and had gotten the expected eye rolls and chuckles.

There were always exceptions in Nature. It was one of the ways life evolved and adapted, but for Brian it wasn't a remote possibility. Other vampires might think him mild-mannered because he didn't care about pissing contests at fancy vampire dinners, or political wranglings at the Council table. But he was passionate and determined about his work, single-minded in a way no different from Daegan Rei studying a target, or Lady Lyssa facing down the entire Council.