Vampire Mistress (6 page)

As it was, when he was done, he was breathing hard, a winded animal. She was still moving in and out of his tender ass, making it clear this was about what she wanted, not him. He was a slave, just as she’d said. No responsibility but doing what she said.

“Beautiful,” his Mistress purred softly, her voice entirely too calm. “You think I’m cruel, but trust me, I can be much worse. One of my favorite things is watching a powerful, naked man on his hands and knees, scrubbing his come off my floors. I typically make him do it on his elbows, so his ass is high in the air, knees held open with a bar spreader. It makes him shuffle along beautifully. All those lovely muscles bunched up, eyes flashing fire at being so degraded, while his cock and balls swing free between his legs.

“You’d put your back into it, though. Just like you did cleaning up my Queen’s Chamber. Or maybe,” she mused, “I’d make you use your mouth, tell you to imagine it’s my cunt you’re cleaning. You’d be angry at first, but then, as your tongue slid across the slick tile, tasted the musk of spent sex, you’d start imagining it, seeing it, smelling it. That’s the key, Gideon.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as she withdrew, then thrust back in, deep, inexorable, strangling another guttural noise out of him. “We can always be made helpless, but in our helplessness we find that enduring core of strength, the part of ourselves that reminds us to live, to lust and hunger. To never despair.”

She
had
seen that suicidal moment, when her nail had been at his throat earlier. The hard edge entering her voice said she wouldn’t be forgetting it anytime soon. That she would punish him for throwing away what belonged to her. Bloody hell, where were these crazy thoughts coming from?

She curled her fingers in his hair, drew his head back, and bit his neck below the collar, suckling it. A sound of pleasurable arousal hummed in her throat, making him pathetically glad to be given that small gift, to know that she wasn’t as detached as she seemed. Her nails moved over his chest. He anticipated it now, maybe even welcomed it, God help him. He opened himself up for it as she began leaving small cuts on him, drawing his nerve endings up, keeping his lethargic body in twitching response. Then . . . holy Christ, a mouth was back, working his cock again. A different mouth.

“This is Charlene, the tall, thin girl. I’m going to let each one of them suck you to climax, Gideon, no matter how long it takes. Because they need the practice, and I have you for the night. Would you like it if I had some of my boys come and suck you off as well? They’ve much stronger mouths. Many of our male clients like them.”

“Not . . . your . . . client,” he managed against the gag. She’d said so, hadn’t she? That was the way he wanted it, too.

From the way she stilled, but her fingers still twitching on him with the hint of pain and blood, he knew she’d understood.

“No . . . men.” He shook his head again, more emphatically. Now her hand tightened on the juncture of throat and neck, a sharp muscle pain that kept him where he was.

“Still haven’t learned, have you? Charlene, tell Terence to come in next. He has such a pretty, pretty mouth. Gideon won’t be able to tell the difference between his mouth and a girl’s, except that I’ll tell him. Keep saying no, angry man.” She was the voice of a devil in his ear. “Every no means yes to me. You’ll be sucked off and fucked within an inch of your life tonight until you learn to let go. To give me everything I demand and thank me for it.”

His ass was burning and sore, his mind floundering between arousal and rage, weariness and disorientation. But he was still shaking his head, would keep shaking it. He couldn’t do any of it. He couldn’t bear it. He would break. He
was
breaking.

With that powerful climax, something had cracked inside of him. She was right. It was worse than any of the physical wounds he’d suffered. He couldn’t fight this, but he needed to be released from the chains. He had to go to his knees, had to curl around that pain in order to bear it. To survive it.

“Let me go . . . let go . . .” He was saying it, but he wasn’t struggling against her touch. He was just standing there, limp and exhausted, held at her pleasure and will, a woman’s mouth working his decently interested cock.

He decided he was too damn tired to care about pride. “Please.” All of his words sounded garbled with that gag, like a stroke victim. God, he wanted to know her name.

Was it mercy, or did she realize he really couldn’t bear anything else? Because of the haze of unwelcome emotion, it took him a few moments to realize that Charlene’s mouth was no longer there, and his Mistress had withdrawn from him. When firm but gentle hands released the tether from his cock, he knew it was her, because only those hands could coax his cock past semilife again. She caressed him; then Charlene’s touch took the manacles from his ankles. His legs trembled, and when the one hand was released, he reached out, trying to stop his fall, but he was too late. He was on one knee, one wrist still chained and the collar still on, its tether and the one on his arm thankfully slack enough to allow him to reach the floor. Those same hands unbuckled his gag, guided the embarrassingly wet thing from him, soothed the corners of his abraded mouth.

When she went for the blindfold, he covered it with one hand. “Don’t,” he said in a husky whisper. “Just don’t.”

Instead, she brushed his hands aside, and took the blindfold off. He kept his eyes closed for a minute, but her fingertips were teasing his lashes. Though he felt only the soft pads, he kept his head still, mindful of the razor tips he now knew she wore on several of them, not just the thumb.

Then he forgot care, lost all his attempts to pull himself together, when her mouth pressed against the corner of his.

5

C
OAXING his lips open, she startled him with the deep, soft embrace of her kiss, her hand coming behind his head to hold him there. He opened his eyes to find her face close, stark tenderness and deeper shadows in her blue-green gaze. Charlene was gone, and it was just the two of them.

Closing his free hand on her forearm, he coaxed her down to the tile with him, her knee resting between his spread thighs as he slid his arm around her back, brought her closer, and then that kiss renewed itself in earnest.

She hadn’t seemed to mind that he was covered in oil, that it had smudged her pretty, sexy clothes. He wanted to take those off, rub oil on her so they would slide against each other. Intertwine fingers.

Comfort. He needed the comfort of her body. There was no thought or role to play; it simply was. When he began to ease her down, himself above her, he hoped that the chains around his throat and one wrist were long enough. At the flicker in her gaze, he swallowed, pain gripping him at the tension that rippled through her, having him over her like this. “I won’t hurt you,” he said. “I just . . . I need.”

She nodded, those blue-green eyes filled with understanding, and something else. Though this moment was unexpected, an unusual tactic for what he knew of Dommes, he knew she was like nothing he’d ever known. She’d known he wouldn’t scrub tiles, or suffer having a man’s mouth on his cock. But she’d convinced him that she was entirely in control, capable of doing it to him. For that brief treasure of time, the voices had stilled, caught in the same paralysis as his body. Whatever, whoever she was, it couldn’t be described. As she said, it simply was.

He moved down her body to the boots. Swallowing, fighting with a new idea, that the relative position of their bodies had nothing to do with who was in control here, he lifted his gaze. “May I remove your boots, Mistress?”

“You may, Gideon.” Her voice was soft, her mouth a wet promise, still glistening with their kiss.

He undid the intricate laces and buckles, and then, on impulse, he slid a hand beneath her slim calf, lifted it so he could kiss her instep. Electric current ran up her leg, the way she shuddered. His cock was starting to rise to full performance again, which he’d consider nothing short of miraculous if it wasn’t for the stimulation in front of him. Slowly, watching her, he adjusted her leg a few inches to the right so he could move between them, up to the side fastener of the latex pants. Watching her face, he slid the zipper down. She was the only thing under them, and his fingers trailed over that slim strip of bare skin, a precious indulgence, before he worked them off her smooth, long legs.

She was shaved of course, the pale lips of her pussy as delicate as rose petals around the darkly flushed clitoris. Another time, he would want to taste that, drink his fill, nuzzle the silken labia, bury his nose in her musk. But now he was swamped by the power of a Mistress, letting him lie down upon her, sink deep into her. Like a Goddess allowing man to return to Her earth, be buried in Her comfort and promise forever.

This was a woman, but something more than either one of them was commanding this moment. It was in the vulnerable set of her mouth, the quiver of her body. A connection, a delicate house of cards that he didn’t want to shatter, so he kept his mind out of the equation. Even if this wasn’t what a Mistress would normally do, it was all right. He didn’t have to analyze it. No thinking.

He was barely able to reach her, the collar keeping his chest a few inches above her uptilted breasts, a temptation even still encased behind tight fabric. It was as if he were a beast, kept chained while a lady took her pleasure of him, the restraint intended to keep his teeth away from her. He could accept that. He wanted to keep her safe, especially from himself.

She’d held such iron control, but here, holding her, she was all female. More delicate than himself, smaller, less physically strong, with bones that could be broken. He placed a hand on her knee, then slid it up her thigh, seeing his tanned, weather-roughened skin, the size of his hand against the milky expanse of slender leg.

She could deny him. He wasn’t sure why she wasn’t, because he knew that intimacy didn’t happen here that often. It was more about the head games and physical release. But when she’d walked in, she’d been the answer to the question of this place, the one that had nagged at him, made him ache, and kept him coming back. She was the one he’d sensed here from the first.

He and Jacob had shared that, an intuition that some would say bordered on psychic, anticipating something that they often couldn’t define. He’d used it in times past to stay alive. Maybe this was the same, because some vital element of survival certainly lay in this room.

“Will you take off your shirt? Be completely naked with me?”

As she removed it, she arched up, the way she would if he’d entered her and she’d lifted herself toward him, an unconscious offering. Her breasts brushed his chest, a brief contact. His heart hammering up behind his ears, he helped, closing his hands on the delicate fabric and setting it to the side. Her breasts were round and firm, a perfect size for her torso and hips. He wanted to devour. He wanted to worship. He wanted to find what felt so close, what he hadn’t had in so long, that she seemed to hold in those blue-green eyes.

As he shifted forward, bracing himself on one arm, she rested on her elbows, lifting a hand to his face. “Take your cock and guide it into me, Gideon. I want to watch.”

“Do I . . . I’m not wearing . . .” He didn’t want to say it, because he had a powerful need to feel her without any barriers, but he struggled to remember that there was a reality that couldn’t be ignored. As always.

She held the depressing thought at bay, sliding that razored thumb-nail along his jaw, a gently lethal motion. “I can’t get pregnant, and I’m not worried. You’ve always shielded yourself, until now. Haven’t you?”

Not in a million years would he have ever fucked a woman without a condom on. Not the kind of women he’d sought for release and comfort. But the fact she knew it, as well as accepted how much he needed to do the opposite now, was enough to strangle him with the need to be inside her.

He nodded, unable to speak, and she pressed her thumb against his lip, making a tiny cut. “Then obey me, Gideon. Guide your cock into me.”

Gripping himself, he took his eager member to those soft lips, rubbed the head there. As much as he wanted inside, he wasn’t a complete dick when it came to being a lover. He wanted to be sure she was ready for him, but there was no worry of that. She was so slick he slid halfway in without intending it. When she contracted on him, he growled at the bliss of it. Her gaze lifted to his face, her lips parting.

It was Heaven and Hell. He’d never teetered so close to both at once. Then her legs widened, ready to take him all the way into the cradle of her body, rock them both to completion.

Instead of continuing that slide into Nirvana, his mind froze.

High on the inside of her thigh, there were two puncture scars. The kind that remained when a vampire fed from such an intimate spot. Not just once or twice, but on a regular basis.

There was no mistaking it for anything else.

He jerked back on his knees as if he’d seen a rat trap waiting to snap down on his cock. “Let me loose.”

Because she was obviously adept at reading people, he wasn’t surprised to see her body language change as swiftly as his. Her expression went blank, her body tensing. But as her muscles flexed, telling him she was about to slide out of range, he shot a hand out, clamped down on her arm. “Unlock the rest of these fucking chains,” he said.

She looked down at his bruising grip on her arm, and then her gaze came back to him. Her eyes were hard to read, but her tight mouth said she didn’t care for being manhandled. “Or what? You’ll break my arm? Hit me? Threaten me? We have twelve cameras on us right now, Gideon.”

“Which you signaled your staff to shut down when you decided to go this route with me. I saw the hand motion, the red lights blink off, cut the audio. You didn’t want them to see or hear their unflappable Mistress spreading herself like an eager bitch in heat.”

The flicker in her gaze told him he was right, but it didn’t hold fear, as he’d expected. It was ice. He told himself he didn’t care that he might be hurting her, that he’d destroyed this moment. It was a house of cards, right? He should have known. It was another trick, another dead end or dark alley holding nothing but more of what he always knew. He shouldn’t have looked for more. This was as much a lie as that night with Jacob and Lyssa had always been. He should have accepted that a long time ago. His cock was just fucking with his head.

Regardless, he must have felt he owed her one shot, because he didn’t block her when those lethal nails raked across his chest. One swipe of an angry cat’s claws, laying him open with a burning flesh wound. Then he caught the arm. He was tempted to twist it, but he didn’t. She didn’t struggle against him, though. She glared at him as if she were fully armored in her clothes, not wrestling naked with him on cool tile. Her hair slid over his arm, a reminder of how he’d wanted to bury his face in it earlier.

“If you let go of my arm,” she said coolly, “I will release your chains and you can collect your things and go.”

“Are you willingly his?” He knew the truth would hurt, because this woman didn’t unwillingly give anything of herself. He was certain of it, which made what she’d been about to do that much more excruciating.
Ah hell
. As if his mind wanted to torture him further, he realized now what the unidentifiable musk mixed with her arousal was. Another man’s seed. It was the scent of his own, staining the tile beside them, that helped him make the connection. It could be some other man’s, but he’d lay good money it was the vampire’s. She didn’t seem the type to spread her affections casually, which only made this hurt worse.

“I’m not a servant, Gideon. No vampire owns me.”

“So you’re just his drinking buddy.” Gideon’s gaze flicked down to her thigh. Since she was up on her knees now, not delectably on her back, he couldn’t see the dual puncture scar. “Unlock my chains and I’ll let go of your arm.”

“To do that, I have to go there.” She nodded to a panel in the wall, beyond the range of his bindings. “You will have to trust me, Gideon. Just as you did a few moments ago.” Her brow rose. Her armor was a foot thick, no evidence left of the vulnerable woman who was about to give in to something they’d both wanted. “If this was some elaborate trick to kill you, I expect we could have done that earlier, or on any of your other visits here.”

“Vamps like to play with their food,” he said flatly.

“In which case, the security outside the door will kill you, no matter what you do to me.”

“I’ve gotten out of tougher spots.”

“Let go of me, and you will walk out the same way you walked in. You are in no danger here, which you would see if you weren’t obsessed with your hatred of an entire species because of the life of one girl.”

Gideon’s expression froze. In that blind second he was gripped with the damning desire to do her real harm, just as he had in that crazy moment when he’d ripped up the prayer bench. Seeing it, she threw up her chin, dared him, her eyes flashing.

“You don’t know shit about that,” he gritted out. But she did, didn’t she?
Warrior, killer.
She’d called him that. Lost in a haze of lust, he’d thought she was role-playing, rather than exposing her knowledge of who and what he was.

“Why do you think you’re not dead, Gideon? One man dedicates himself to a personal war against the vampires, and there’s no Council decree to hunt him down? No territory that decides to pull together a posse, of sorts, and take you down?”

This bitch had known all about him the first time he’d walked in the door. Probably because of whoever was sucking her blood on a regular basis. He’d been unbelievably stupid. He hated her.

“Because vampires are very clannish,” he retorted. “If you don’t take out one of their own, they don’t give a shit. They also see it as a sign of weakness when the vamp loses to someone like me.”

“Yes, there is that. But for many vampires, it is a regrettable part of their life that they have to take an annual kill. They don’t hold your grief against you.”

“How fucking noble of them. Let me go.” He snarled it, his patience at an end. “Whatever game you’re playing with me, it’s over. Unlock the chains from here.” He seized her beneath the chin, his grip tight enough to pull her head up, strain tendons. “Or I break your pretty neck.”

“I can’t.”

Gideon tightened his fingers, so her air became constrained. “I’m not playing.”

“Neither am I.” Her breath rattled over his grasp. “Are you ready to cross the line and become the monster, Gideon? Or are you already there, so you don’t care?” Her eyes were hard stone, the color brilliant. “You do whatever you’re going to do, but I’m not going to play
your
game. You have been treated fairly here. What happened here happened as you experienced it. There is no trick. Everything is not about you.”