Vampire Instinct (54 page)

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Authors: Joey W Hill

Tags: #Vampires, #Horror, #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Fantasy, #Erotic Fiction, #Erotica, #Fiction, #Occult & Supernatural

BOOK: Vampire Instinct
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He looked at her, gave her a faint smile. “Of all the things about you, Irish flower, your ability to simplify matters is one I cherish the most.”
She shrugged. “I’ve been told I’m simple, plenty of times.”
He opened his mouth, but then he saw her eyes dancing, and his own lightened in response. More shyly, she reached out and touched his knee.
“Thank you for telling me that.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I’d heard having a third-marked servant allows a vampire a way to unburden his soul, because he can trust his servant more than any other, having her mind bound to his so irrevocably.” His gaze touched hers, the becoming flush in her cheeks his words evoked. “I thought it was romanticized nonsense. But I’ve never told anyone that story,
atsilusgi
. I think I’ve been needing to tell it. As well as to apologize, deeply, for the things I said right after Leonidas’s attack.”
Her eyes widened in surprise, but when her lips parted to speak, he shook his head. “The problem was I had more in common with your fledglings than I wanted to admit. Just like that chief, you made me face that harsh reality, made me see that I’d once again taken the wrong path. I don’t feel that way anymore.”
Glancing out the window as they pulled into the driveway of a sprawling, stucco waterway mansion, he made a quiet grunt, a comment on the house’s opulence or something else, she didn’t know, but then he turned his head, met her gaze squarely.
“I can’t remember my name, but I took the name they gave me, Malachi, and made it my own, not theirs. If we can manage it, we’ll give William, Matthew, Nerida and Miah the same chance.”
32
 
R
ETURNING to the present and that waterway view, she recalled she’d been moved by what he’d shared with her, enough to let it pass that he hadn’t mentioned Jeremiah. They’d stayed away from that subject for the several days before they left, even as she’d visited the boy at the enclosure as much as travel preparations permitted. Though he’d come to the fence for her, listened to her talk, he’d had little to say. Each time she went back to her Jeep, he moved back to his cell, disappeared into his shelter and belowground as if he’d simply come up for her comfort, not his. He wouldn’t speak in her mind.
Something would break loose, though. She would have faith, and pray. If God had any mercy at all, surely Jeremiah was deserving of it.
She saw lots of palm trees scattered over the short lawn behind the property and framing the view of the waterway. The swaying fronds made her think of the picture shows where Cleopatra and Egyptian pharaohs were fanned on silk couches. She could well imagine those pharaohs as vampires, so powerful and remote, yet tempting touch with their strange and exotic appearance.
The things Mal had had her do to prepare for this certainly qualified as strange and exotic, far beyond her normal experience. However, with those new experiences had come a new level of intimacy. Bedtime conversations they’d shared, things he’d told her about himself, like in the car. It was disturbingly like she’d imagined it would be between her and Willis once they gave themselves to each other, heart and soul, knowing each other like no one else ever would.
For her part, when she saw him, it was like her heart was pinned on her chest, beating so hard. One night right after dinner, a group of the staff, including Chumani and Kohana, had been gathered in the front room, listening to a radio show. Elisa had a pile of mending with her, but when she got to Mal’s shirt, one he’d ripped in one of his tussles with leopard cubs, her hands had lingered on it, smoothing the fabric. She’d looked up to see him watching her with an entirely unexpected expression. For a blink, she thought he was as absorbed in what she was doing as she’d been in his shirt, the rest of those in the room disappearing. Under his stare, she’d flushed, and quickly bent to her task.
She wasn’t entirely stupid. She knew how silly lust could make the mind, how it could dazzle with thoughts of love and emotion that didn’t exist. But just like that conversation in the car, those quiet moments in his bed, curled in his arms, hadn’t been all about sex. Not while listening to his voice rumble through his chest as he answered the questions she had, then asked his own, their conversations meandering like an easy river. She felt things from him during them, things she was hard put to explain.
The staff did act differently toward her now. They’d been affectionate and kind from the beginning, but the ones who’d been so casual about giving her a hand into the Jeep, or nudging her out of the way in the kitchen, were a little more circumspect. Even Kohana’s occasional hugs had that flavor. It had taken her a few days to put her finger on it, but she’d realized it was the way men treated a woman who’d clearly been claimed by another.
On top of all that, there was that third mark, the way it made her feel, so completely connected to him. He hadn’t said he wanted her to stay on the island forever, but he hadn’t said he wanted her to go back to the station when all this was over, either. He was leaving it up to her. She could stay, and every day that passed where she served as his third-mark servant was one day further from the life she’d once expected to have. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Sad or simply... accepting?
She thought about what Mal had said, about his past, present and future. Lord Marshall and Nadia, losing their babies. Danny and Dev, their fierce bond, how and what they’d fought, side by side. She and Willis, looking toward a simple, lovely future and having it all taken away in one terrible moment. Yes, they were all different, but they were the same, too, weren’t they? All of them wanting and needing, capable of being hurt and grieving. Capable of love.
Imagining William and Matthew here, as part of this household, she knew why Mal had reached out. He’d taken the risk of committing a severe offense with his presumption, because certainly two vampires who would never grow any older in appearance were far different from three born vampire babies who would have. But he had exceptional intuition. He thought this would be a good home for them and that, approached correctly, Lord Marshall and Nadia would consider the idea.
So when all was said and done, to make that happen, he needed her to set aside her trepidation about whatever might happen tonight. She wouldn’t let him down. Taking a deep breath, she took one last look at that view, the disappearing sun, and decided to head down to his room and give him a proper waking. Then she’d change into those tiny scraps of underwear and clothes designed to show her off as something she was not, but that she could be, if the reason was important enough. And it was.
 
She wasn’t surprised to find him still in the bed, since they’d arrived so close to dawn and he was young enough that such near-sun exposure could sap his strength. Even when he needed sleep, though, he slept restlessly. It was as if the human he’d once been ached to be out under the stars, rather than in a dark room like this, the curtains securely closed over special heavy blinds such that not a trace of light came through. Because they lived by the water, there were no subterranean rooms, but Lord Marshall had outfitted the rooms well for even his younger vampire guests. Another good sign for William and Matthew.
She’d noted Mal’s penchant at home for keeping all the French doors open at night. Sometimes he even took his paperwork out on the porch, listening to the cats calling across the island during their nocturnal wanderings. She thought of his childhood, how he’d run away, but they’d caught him, time and again, and locked him up.
The covers were half-off of him, his upper body twisted so his back was to her. The sheet was low enough she could see his hip, the rise of a buttock, for he slept naked, God bless every fine inch of him. She leaned in the doorway. It wasn’t often she got the chance to ogle without interruption, though she knew he was awake—merely not awake enough to acknowledge her.
Given everything she’d learned about predators, if not for their aversion to light, vampires would be nigh invulnerable, at the top of the food chain. No wonder they preferred to keep their existence a secret from humankind generally. Whole legions of vampire-hunter teams would form to try to root them out during daylight, when ones like Mal were weakest.
She didn’t like that thought. But then something amazing occurred to her, something she hadn’t considered before. That was one of the reasons a vampire had a full servant, her senses enhanced so that she could hear the movement of household staff on the upper and lower floors, could scent the lingering traces of anyone who’d passed by this room in recent hours. She’d never thought of herself as anyone’s protector, certainly not a formidable vampire, but she’d been equipped to be just that. Well,
protector
was a little strong. More like a small, yappy guard dog, one who would make absolutely sure Mal knew someone was coming, if ever his senses were thrown off.
“Yappy guard dog? Like one of those fuzzy mop dogs we saw when we pulled in last night?”
“Those fuzzy mop dogs are Horace and Helmsley, who apparently belong to Nadia’s mother, Latriska. She stays here and does bookkeeping for Lord Marshall, because she’s a very accomplished bookkeeper and secretary. She’s not marked, but Lord Marshall chose to bring her here anyway after Nadia lost her third baby.”
Mal rolled over then, raising a brow. “You could have been an intelligence operative during the War.”
“Who says I wasn’t?” She struck an exotic pose at the door. “Don’t I look like Mata Hari? Her maid, at least. Or her maid’s maid.”
The skin around his eyes creased with a smile. “You look like a foolish, delightful girl who needs a spanking. And you would have been barely out of short skirts during the War. Come here.”
She considered his near nakedness, too well hidden by the blanket now that he’d turned over. He’d been so serious in the car, so many demons plaguing him. She was glad to see those gone, but she thought she could drive them further off.
“I think I’ll get far more out of it if I say no.”
“And how do you figure that?” His brow arched, his eyes taking on that wicked glint her body recognized, already warming.
“Well, you’ll insist on chasing after me, which means you’ll have to jump out of bed, and I’ll see you all bare-arsed. A girl has to get her thrills where she can. That’s what Danny always says. Or at least she said it when she caught me taking a peek at Dev. He was washing up behind the house, because he’d spent a day in the bush and was coated in mud and grime. Danny said he couldn’t come in until he was two coats of dirt lighter, so he grumbled, went to the pump out back and stripped down, all of it. Mrs. Pritchett was at the kitchen window and her eyes fair popped out of her head. I decided we needed to have more wood for the cookstove, because the window cut off too much. Plus, Mrs. Rupert was crowded in next to her, and they’re stout women. I couldn’t squeeze in to see.”
He was regarding her with fascination, but when she wound down, he crossed his arms over his bare chest. “Your idea won’t work.”
“Why not? I—”
She gave a short shriek, for he’d moved faster than she could follow, such that all she sensed was a brief jerk, her feet leaving the floor, and then she was in the bed, turned beneath him. The sheet floated down over the two of them like a disturbed cloud. His hands were sure and firm, one palm spread behind her shoulder blades, the other gripping her hip, his body between her legs, pressing against the thin fabric of her skirt. Like many males upon waking—something she’d quite recently learned, never having woken in a man’s bed before Mal—he was a more than impressive size. So impressive she couldn’t help the involuntary arch against him, the drawing of her lower lip between her teeth.
“Are you wearing any panties?” His tone shifted to that husky murmur she recognized meant he was no longer willing to play, the hunter taking over.
“No. You told me not to do that, ever, except when you instruct me to it.”
“And why did I do that?”
“Because you wanted me to be accessible to you whenever you wanted to . . .”
“Say it, Elisa.” He bent, caught her ear in a brief nip, then worked his way down the side of her throat, teasing that flower mark with sensual intent before piercing her over it without preamble. She gave a tiny moan, her fingers flexing on his biceps as he took his first blood of the evening.
“When you want to be inside my c-cunt. With your tongue, cock or whatever object pleases you.”

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