By My Choice...: A Valentine's Day Story (Valentine's Day Stories) (6 page)

Her attempt to retreat from his arms, to withdraw and collect the tattered cloak of her dignity around her shoulders shattered on his refusal to let her step from his embrace. She froze, refusing to meet his gaze. Jen did not struggle, not now that her rational mind had engaged again. One never struggled against a vampire. At least not if one wanted to survive, but she did not raise her head either. She wanted to, wanted to find her dignity and face him. Everything in her told her she had to regain what standing she had lost or become nothing more than a toy in this world. There was a fine line to walk when you were constantly surrounded by beings a lot more powerful than you and she had found subservience not to be to her taste. But it was almost too hard to look at him, to face the humiliation. So she put all the poise, all the pride, she could muster into her expression and tried to look anywhere but into his eyes.
 

The problem was her wayward brain seemed disinclined to let her find her equilibrium. Without one conscious thought her eyes fixed on his lips, still glistening and swollen from their kiss. Her own tongue slipped over her lower lip, drew in the remnant of his taste. She thought she heard him moan barely audibly. It took a conscious effort to turn her eyes away from the temptation of his mouth. Anywhere but his mouth. It fell on the curve of his ear (No one could get aroused by an ear, right?). She caught herself before she could follow her inclination to lean in and run her tongue over the delicate swirls of his auricle. Christ! With a last effort at dignity she collected her thoughts and tried for detached respect:

“I am sorry, Milord. There is nothing I can say to make up for this, I have no idea what came over me.”
 

She only got this far in her apology, an apology she did not even understand how it could have been necessary, before he interrupted her:

“I do.”

It stopped her in her tracks, caught her fractured attention and held it. He did know. Now that she was setting all those tangled emotions of fear and anger, the mortification and, yes, the desire, aside she could see it, see the calculation, the need, the acceptance — and the pity in his eyes. It was that last emotion which gave her pause, which turned the mortification into new fury.

“Then tell me!” Angry demand in every syllable. Screw dignified respect. She would not be pitied. The anger finally gave her the strength to stiffen her spine. She felt his sigh along the length of her whole body, held as she still was in his arms

“I had hoped you would arrive earlier, that we would have more time for this but between Fabian’s reluctance to part from you and your own need to assert your independence we have barely over an hour to say all that needs to be said. And I fear it will be even less time as you seem to be feeling the effects already.”

Jen almost thought she knew what he was talking about, almost could put together the illusive puzzle pieces which had tried to form a dim picture in her mind. But she knew he was wrong, knew that explanation for her state was impossible. Simply impossible. Everything she knew contradicted what he was hinting at — or did it? What did she remember from the vague stories and salacious myths told with abated breaths at the court of her childhood? She could not think, not with his arms around her, his hand stroking her cheek as if she were fragile, not with the way his body felt against hers.
 

“Let go of me, please.” Her voice was modulated to hold as much detached reason as possible. It had a strange effect on him, gentleness seemed to overflow in his eyes, a caress in its own right. His voice, when he spoke, vibrated through her, stroking along her nerves with tendrils of smooth silk.
 

“Little one, it will just get worse, if I do let you go.”

She wanted to misunderstand what he meant, wanted it with every part of her being. And she would fight for every moment longer in which she could do so. She would not go gently into the night.

“Let. Go. Of. Me.”
 

Enunciating each word with care she glared at him. He only smiled, those bewitching lips holding an expression too wistful for amusement, too wry for anything remotely comedic and by far too full of an emotion she was not willing to name; but in the end he let her go.
 

With a long kiss to her brow, more protective than sensual, he dropped his arms to step back. Immediately the pressure of sensation, of emotion returned — her body tightening under the burn, her mind reeling under the confusion. It took all her concentration to keep her mind from drifting, to ask the question she needed to ask. She let her anger speak.

 
“Say it. Spell it out. Tell me exactly what is happening without prevarication and vague hints.”
 

Unwilling

She knew her rage to be a defence, but it was the only defence she had against what she feared he would say. Jen could not deny the rising tide of sensation overwhelming her anew. It was impossible to suppress, or filter the emotions running amok in her. She recognised even her anger as a symptom of the sudden lack of control reigning her body and mind. She was a boat on a tempestuous sea, battered and thrown rudderless from wave to wave. And she hated it.
 

Though no matter how much she hid behind the fear, she had reached the moment when lying to herself failed. Not even Jen herself could deny what lay beneath the fear, the anger, the confusion. Heat travelled along her skin and pooled between her thighs, her breasts felt sensitive, heavier than normal, swollen and tight. She felt her hard nipples scrape against the seam of her bra and there was no way to blame the cold for their engorged state. If anything, the room as too warm, her skin too hot. Every inch of her body, of her mind, seemed to yearn for something. But she still needed him to say the words, needed him to take away the last vestige of escape for what she suspected was too horrible to contemplate.
 

“You are an ErGer, a Bloodhaven.”

There it was, out in the open, and though it was preposterous, the magnitude of the declaration nevertheless robbed her of her breath. An ErGer, one of the almost mythical power nex
ū
s. Though most races could produce them, they were so rare, and so rarely survived to adulthood, that much was still unknown about them. It was assumed their innate ability to unite the most disparate courts, their capacity to call forth the deepest loyalty from sworn enemies was a result of some ancient genetic mutation, or of inbreeding with a race long since disappeared from this earth. It mattered little, there was no real medical research on it as none of the existing ErGer’s Lords were willing to allow anyone close to their prize. There was the rumour of an unattached Bloodhaven on the run, but most held this to be the paranormal version of an urban myth.
 

An ErGer was the most powerful tool a Lord could acquire and therefore they were coveted and jealously guarded. For an outsider it would seem strange that the ability to concentrate loyalty, to create a feeling of home so strong the members of a court would be willing to sacrifice all for it, would be so highly praised in a society in which most was based on pure strength and power. But there is little more powerful than loyalty. Furthermore, there are few things any being would not do in the pursuit of happiness, even if that happiness was merely a limitless sensation of belonging and an illusion of safety. Though what made the ErGer so useful to any Lord was that the loyalty it created was not centred on the ErGer but rested with the Master holding the bond. And there was no need for reciprocity. There was no need for the ErGer to feel any form of happiness, or even safety, for their owner to reap the rewards of their mere presence. Fate’s cruel sense of humour.
 

One of the reasons why the ErGer were so rare was the way the genetic mutation made itself known. At the same time as paranormals became able to sense their rare nature, they became immune to any form of mind control of forced bondings and their blood became addictive, not just to vampires but all paranormals. Most bled out, torn apart by courts who had desperately wanted to own them. The first documented example of an ErGer was St Valentine. In honour of his tragic life the one day in which an ErGer’s hormone levels made bonding a certainty, the one day their mental shields were undermined leaving them open and without any inhibitions, was named St Valentine’s Day. An ErGer on Valentine’s day became a maniac, a being at mercy of its own body’s urges, sexually demanding without reason and if unable to fulfil that need, violent towards itself.
 

An ErGer’s only chance to survive was a strong bond with a paranormal able to protect them against all others and that bond came, as was rumoured, with the absolute subjugation of the ErGer’s will to that of the one holding said bond. An ErGer bonded to a master on Valentine’s Day never recovered the mental shields, utterly dependent on a Lord who more often than not broke their mind for the power they presented. No one knew for sure as the few ErGer known to exist were jealously guarded, rarely seen outside their courts. And he thought she was an ErGer? Impossible. More than impossible — and not just because she could not imagine a worse fate. He was overlooking one pertinent point, one fact which would refute his assertion of her state as ErGer. With all her strength she held on to the hope in that omission:

“I am twenty-nine years of age. I cannot be an ErGer, I would have never made it to adulthood.”
 

Typically an ErGer identified as such towards the end of puberty, so late teens, but was definitely fully developed before their second decade. That made her a good ten years past the date when someone should have noticed - and they had not. Lady Justitiana would never have let an ErGer slip though her fingers. The thought came almost as a relief, even though the painful burning in her body increased in urgency with every moment.
 

He reached for her again, his intent clear, but she evaded his touch, his embrace and repeated:

“It cannot be. I am too old.”

“Jennifer, you need to believe me. You are an ErGer - Justitiana, Fabian and I all agree on that point. There is no doubt.”

“It’s why he did not let me go home over Christmas.” Her voice was breathless, drawn by the magnitude of what she perceived as a further betrayal.
 

“He knew he would not be able to protect you. Tirana was the best place for you, he could keep you isolated from most stronger paranormals and his presence alleviated the effects of your development.”

She was still not certain she believed him, not certain she could, though it became increasingly hard to ignore not only the state of her own body but the fact that he presented her with an explanation for the actions of a man she knew and loved. Fabian loved her like a brother, she was certain of it, and still he had forced her to come here, had essentially sold her. Rationality told her he would only have done so if he thought he were protection her in some form by the action.
 

“How?”
 

Her legs began to shake and it was almost impossible to remain upright. She had to lean on a chair for support as she asked the question. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him move towards her, saw him reach for her as if to support her trembling form. Her raised hand halted his movements, kept him at a distance. Jen was surprised by his willingness to subside, to give her the space she demanded, though she was certain he would not do so for much longer.

“Your survival and lack of discovery are most likely due to having grown up in a court. There has never been any record of another ErGer in that position, normally they enter a court only after they are discovered around puberty. We suppose that the presence of your parents, the deep familiarity everyone had with you and the close link with Fabian, a vampire with a high enough power level to create a blood bond to you, has masked the development. The last three years, away from two of those elements and with Fabian forming his own court and therefore spreading the mental touch he previously reserved for you to the rest of his court, have allowed your body to complete the development to an ErGer. Your emotional distress, your constant withdrawal becoming ever stronger are a sign of this — your body protected itself as it was not able to hold those shields against the overwhelming pressure without the constant exclusive link to Fabian.”

“No!”
 

“Yes! Just look at yourself. Stop running and feel what is happening to you.”
 

His tone had lost its gentleness, its careful persuasion and left was only cold rationality. He was stating a fact and there was nothing she could do to escape. Her eyes had fixed on the pale green embroidery on the chair’s upholstery, on the image of mermaids and merrows frolicking in the sea, but she did not see them. Her knees were shaking, and so were her hands. Heat and cold travelled over her skin, a heaviness warmed her womb and breasts. She could feel the hard pebbles of her nipples painfully and her panties had long since soaked through. She knew the signs well enough, though had never felt them with such violence. She was aroused, pure and simple, aroused to a level that was beyond normal in the circumstances. He had kissed her, nothing more, and his kiss had been more designed to calm the fire burning in her than stoke it. Her arousal was too violent. She was aroused as an ErGer in the early stages of the fever taking her on Valentine’s Day.
 

As if the mental acceptance of that state had opened the floodgate to the wave of overwhelming need which drowned her, heat and pain and, yes, arousal, swamped her thought processes. She fell to her knees, panting, and would have doubled over if not for the arms which drew her up, fitted her back against the solace of his large body.
 

“No.”
 

She did not want this, did not want to lose herself in this, feared his very touch. It mattered not, he would not let her go again. His dark promise assured her of that:

“You will be mine, Jennifer. From tonight onwards you will be mine no matter how much you want to resist. Your own body will not let you.”