A Vampire's Claim (60 page)

And his lady, ah, her lips against his throat, her arm winding around his waist on the other side, and under Lyssa’s body so her fingertips rested high on his back, below the distracting slide of Lyssa’s breasts against his skin. The vampire queen shifted, making him realize she wanted him down, all the way upon his lady. He was only too happy to oblige, feeling her soft breasts against his chest, her legs now rising and locking over his hips, over Lyssa’s body, too, he suspected, holding them all together.

Danny was quivering, drinking hard, her body moving restlessly enough he knew she was close. He strove to hold out, the blood loss making it difficult to stay oriented. The buzzing in his mind told him Lyssa had in fact second-marked him, and if he had any doubt, now her imperious voice was in his head.

Hold out to satisfy us both, Devlin, and you will have done your job well. Another few moments . . .

He actually lost track of time, so dizzy did he get, but he was aware of his body becoming taut, gathering for release as Danny cried out, her nails raking his skin, her mouth releasing him as her head fell back to the pillow and neck arched, her fangs glittering with the blood he’d given her. And Lyssa, stroking her clit against the upper taut curve of his buttocks, released as well, a sensual moan, reminding him of the contented but intense purr of a tiger.

He couldn’t hold out in the face of such overwhelming stimulation. He climaxed then, his body too foolish to realize he risked passing out.

It’s all right, dearest.
Danny’s voice was in his head, two women’s arms tightening around him.
You’ve cared for me well. I’ll
care for you. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.

It took some time to get things sorted out. There was the arrival of the vampires as Ruskin had planned, only they received the surprise of finding that they had a new Region Master. Lyssa and Alistair took their leave before then, for Danny and they agreed that the vampires needed to see her standing on her own as their leader, with no sense that when the other two vampires left she might be fair pickings. That gathering lasted a week. Dev supposed he should be glad for the few initiations he’d had into vampire gatherings, because while he really didn’t want to think of the variety of things he’d done during the evening meetings, meals and various entertainments with other servants, he found himself curiously accepting of it, sometimes almost eager to see how those things would stoke his lady’s pleasure. Perhaps it was simply a measure of how harrowing the politics were during that week as she established her authority, that he found wild sexual games where he was a pawn a light relief from the rest.

Then again, no matter what happened, what challenge they faced, there was always that precious time just before dawn. When it was the two of them in her bed, and she wanted him in ways that obliterated everything else. That made it all worth it.

Teaching the little ones to drink moderately after having been regularly starved to a killing frenzy was going to take some time. For now, they had to keep them in separate cages. They experimented with giving them some creature comforts, like mattresses or some clothes, but right now their reaction was to tear those things up in their mad rages. So Elisa, who’d come in with Willis on another flight, had picked up toys in Darwin—dolls, stuffed animals and the like—and had them positioned in front of the cages, just out of reach. Like tiny groups of motionless friends come to keep the kids company.

He knew Danny frequently questioned whether they should put a bullet through their heads to knock them insensible and then stake them or cut off their heads and burn the bodies, the most painless death a vampire could seek.

Amazingly, it was often Elisa who deflected Danny from that course. “Ah, nothing to it, my lady,” she’d say, putting her hands on her hips, though her clothes might be torn or she’d be sporting a gash on her cheek from where she’d been too close. “They’re babies. They’re going to test us until they learn a firm hand doesn’t mean a cruel one. They’ve got to learn to trust us, is all, and that’ll take time. It takes time for all of us to trust someone else.” And off she’d go again, a slip of a maid with the quiet, lanky shadow of Willis flanking her protectively, taking the next supply of blood to them. It had been provided by contributions from Ruskin’s household after Danny had made clear the contributions were not optional.

“So when do you think Willis will tell her he’s mad about her?” Danny had observed, a smile in her voice, some of the shadows in her eyes banked.

“Hopefully before the kiddies eat her,” Dev replied wryly. “But you heard her. You’ve got to establish the trust first. And you sheilas, you can be pretty mean.”

Danny gave him an arch look, but left it there. Another day passing with a few smiles, a lot of worries.

She’d been tempted to have the pretentious manor torn down, but for that it was Dev who’d convinced her that the stone edifice would stand up well to the storms, be a good shelter for the towns-folk. When she left—for she’d adamantly insisted her base of operations would remain her own station—she could simply donate the use of the house to them, holding the ownership on the condition that they agreed to maintain the property at their own expense. He visited the town mayor himself and won almost instant agreement and gratitude. While they knew nothing of what Ruskin was, all knew he was a bad sort. He’d kept his nose clean in the town, wisely not taking any of the town children, but people had eyes and ears. Plus, Dev had learned the aborigines in the area had standing warnings about the place.

Of course, he’d disregarded such warnings the first night he met Danny. But then, he was the Gravedigger. What better match for him than a vampire?
You will travel far until you find your place. And until then, you will dig or walk over many graves . . .

I feel alive with you.
That was what his lady had told him. Death had its own rotten place in life, but he was ready to put it down and not carry it with him anymore. It could find him all on its own.

Maybe for a time, it would let him rest in peace. If, for no other reason, than because it was leaving him in equally demanding hands. Sure enough, being with Lady Danny wasn’t conducive to peace
or
rest.

The thought always brought a grin. What a daft bastard he was. Her daft bastard.

HE’D been rootless for so long, he was surprised by how welcome it was to see Thieves’ Station again. And even more to think of it as “home.” But then, in the two months it had taken them to get back here, it had also been a surprise how many avenues opened up to bring the two of them closer together. It was a lot like running a station, watching for her cues and leads, anticipating what she wanted from him and doing the job well, everything from handling how they’d transport the little bloodsucking blighters, as he not-so-fondly had dubbed them, to how he’d make her sigh with pleasure in those early predawn hours.

Sometimes he understood what Thomas was trying to say to him about his relationship to her. It still kind of slipped in and out of his mind, eluded his full grasp. During those times, he could still manage to step on her nerves, as she ignited his temper. They settled it out of sight of those who might question such things in the wrong way.

He had his own mind about that. Despite her formality, he suspected even Lady Lyssa had understood he and Danny were a bit of a different entity from the more ritualized European vampires. He wondered if the American vamps had a bit more stockman in them as well. Or as they’d call it—cowboy.

So it went for the first few weeks. He got in step with the stockmen on the handling of the sheep, coordinated bringing in more breeding stock, and worked with Elisa and Willis on making the best accommodations possible for the children in the outbuildings.

Even integrated the wildly unpredictable feeding and training sessions with them into the daily routine.

It was all starting to settle in. Enough that on this late afternoon, he found himself sitting on the porch in a rare undisturbed moment, staring out at a glorious sunset as he drank his tea on the top step, listening to the wind settle, the last call of birds and the hum of the flies.

If he’d been out in the bush, he’d have wet the billy and been taking a cuppa about now, watching the spread of color from one end of the earth to the other, nothing in his view but that sky and the low-lying scrub leading up to it. He’d have been alone, purposefully mindless. Now, he was a bit tired, a lot of things still running through his head. He supposed he hadn’t yet figured out how to take care of things during the day and be around when she needed him at night.

“That’s because you’re not going to delegate until you’re sure everything’s being done right, and you’re so head-over-heels about me you can’t stop fawning over me at night, whether I need you around or not.”

He glanced back, saw her standing inside the screen door, watching that sunset from the safety of the shadows. “Think you’ve got me all figured out, do you?”

“There are flies swimming in your cup,” she noted.

“When you come out here, they’ll stop pestering me.”

“I think my chief value to you is as an insect repellant.”

“Well, it does make the evenings far more enjoyable than they used to be. Can even wear my shorts despite the mosquitoes.”

She made a face. As the sun cracked on the horizon, spreading out and then disappearing quickly, as it was wont to do this close to the edge of the earth, she slid out the door and took a seat next to him. She was as female as they came, but out on the station he knew she had little patience for anything but her moleskins or jodhpurs, combined with some soft, flowing tucked shirt that always made his fingertips itch to follow the line of her bra beneath the pale fabric, tease the cleft of her breasts in the neckline. Her eyes smiled at him, a slow, sensual response, picking up his thoughts, but she leaned back against the opposite post and comfortably braced the sole of one boot against his hip.

“You said you’d tell me one day,” Dev said, “why you wanted to come back here.”

When she made a noncommittal hum, he took another sip of tea, looking out at the spread of darkness over the flat terrain, the transition of the mulga and gums to intriguing dark silhouettes. The last rains had put a touch of yellow on the mulga, and he’d thought about cutting her a sprig, giving it to her tonight to put in her hair, but one of the kids had escaped and he’d had to help Willis corral her. They were going to have to come up with a safe way to get them out, let them stretch their legs.

“I always liked living out here,” she said at last, surprising him. She straightened and turned next to him, the snug stretch of her jodhpurs allowing him to feel the length of her thigh against his. “It never gets boring. I can hear everything. The whine of the mosquitoes, flies . . . the movement of lizards, a snake twisting through the sand.”

She nodded into the darkness. “I used to sit here and look at the trees and saltbushes and tell my mother that they became something else at night. A tall stockman with one arm raised, an aborigine bending with his straw to find water, a two-headed roo with a wallaby’s head for an arse.” She pointed and it was a remarkable description for the shrub she indicated, such that he smiled.

“I like quiet, Dev,” she continued, giving him a speculative glance. “I don’t need a fast-paced life. I can sit on this porch for the next twenty-five years if I want, and I’m sure I’ll still see something new every day. When I left all those years ago, I traveled to all the busy places. Paris, London, Berlin, Beijing and Hong Kong. New York and Hollywood.”

When he raised a brow, she nodded, humor in her gaze. “Places where you don’t have to put the feet of the safe in pots of water to keep the ants out of your tucker. But I don’t need fancy places like that. I have some reading I want to catch up on. Do you
know
how many hundreds of books are written every year?”

Her eyes lit up with the idea of it, and he couldn’t help but smile again. Seeing it, she nudged him with her shoulder. “I love to read, and haven’t done much of it lately. Now that I’ve got a scholar in residence, maybe he can recommend some things to me. Maybe I’ll even coax him to read aloud to me, listen to Yeats or Dickens in that drawling sexy voice of his.”

“You might get him to do that.”

She gave him an amused look. “One of my favorite things, when I was here before, was staying up long enough in the morning to tune in to the radio calls.”

“Hear the messages being passed up the line about births and deaths,” he remembered. “And all the local gossip.”

“Yes.”
Her mouth curved. “When life is this simple, there’s a purity to it.”

Looking at her then, Dev wondered how she might feel if he took her hand. Her gaze flickered to him. “I wouldn’t mind it,” she said. “You’re a bit of an old-fashioned romantic, you know that?”

“Pot calling kettle again, love. Does it bother you?”

“No,” she answered, with such sincerity he believed it. “Another thing about vampires. Innocence goes very quickly. It’s not something you lament, because pleasure is, by its very nature, something worth the sacrifice if done right. But sometimes I miss the sweet joys of romance. Think that’s a female thing?”

He shook his head. “I can only speak for myself. I like a woman’s body as much as the next bloke, but sometimes, when a sheila looks at you with soft eyes and says she wouldn’t mind if you held her hand, something inside you gets all coiled. It’s almost better than having her on her back. Though you won’t find me admitting that to any mate,” he added. “Just to girls with big blue eyes that I want to shag.”

He ducked the swat, but then she reached out, touched his face. “Sex and violence . . . sometimes they’re too close. Particularly the way vampires practice them.” Her eyes turned outward again, her hand resting in his, their fingers comfortably interlaced, sitting on his knee. “Maybe that’s why I like the tranquillity, the sense of something perfect unfolding right before us. It gets inside you, rests there as delicate and momentary as a butterfly. It’s a balance that can be pushed off by too much . . . force.”