The Mark of the Vampire Queen (42 page)

Not only had she had to protect herself alone, she'd had to protect their child. He should have told Mason and Gideon to go to Hell and go after her. What was the world with a few less Girl Scouts, anyway?

“Oh, my lady. My sweet lady.” He pressed his lips to her temple, held it there as it all washed over him. “How could you do it? You gave me everything.”

“You were worth everything.”

 

As the night waned, they sat by a creek, and he let her find her voice again. Find herself again. He managed to coax a smile out of her and had the bliss of holding her and their unborn baby in his lap. His family. He couldn't stop touching her, wanting her. It was easy to move her to straddle him, take them back up again until her cries shattered the forest's quiet.

When they lay twined together, he felt her worries that they would be hunted, that she would face losing him.

He rose to one elbow and pushed her to her back, leaning over her to cup her face, touch her lips.

“My lady, I swore an oath to protect you. Thanks to you, I now find myself tremendously gifted to do just that. There are some vampires who tried to track you, other than me.” Before she could suffer a moment of worry, he pressed on. “I taught them the penalty for disloyalty to their queen.”

“You've”—she wet her lips—“you've learned quickly to defend a territory.”

“With great help from Mason. Even from Gideon. We had some squabbles.” He smiled and it took her breath. That smile always had, from the first time she'd seen it flash from a knight's dusty and blood-streaked face. “He goaded me into putting his head into a wall when I hadn't quite mastered my temper. I had a terrible moment thinking I'd killed him. I'd forgotten there's little you can do to break a head made of solid rock. He stabbed me in the thigh with a poison arrow and covered me in boils for three very miserable days. No one would ever accuse Gideon of having a nurturing soul.”

“And is Mr. Ingram all right?”

He was pleased to give her good news, and the warmth of it spread through her, reassuring her before he even voiced the thoughts. “Mr. Ingram is the majordomo of your estates now. Bran and his pack are entertaining his grandson regularly. Brian and his father spoke on your behalf before the Council,” he added. “As well as Mason and some others. As a result, your properties remain in your name, and I am a fascinating scientific subject. Brian is actively courting my favor.”

His voice teased her. She couldn't tease back, not yet.

“Mason spoke quite eloquently on your behalf. You
are
going to tell me what kind of friends you are one day.”

She closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the knowledge of it all. “So…” She didn't dare hope, or believe, but as he coaxed her to look into his mind, she saw the truth there. “They won't be coming after us.”

“No, my lady. There is just you and me. And there are several territories in which we will be welcomed. We can find a home, and you can be or do whatever you wish.” He traced a hand down her throat, making her open her eyes again.

Her lower abdomen still quivered with the shock of having him here, of being in this form again. Physically and emotionally exhausted by their rough lovemaking, which she had yearned to experience for so long, she'd let her tears wash so much out of her soul she'd been carrying these many months. And while she was no longer vampire, only Fey, her mate was vampire. It was too much to digest in one night.

However, despite her postcoital exhaustion, an aroused growl rose in her throat again, inciting a matching red glint in his eyes. When he passed a hand over her rib cage, the lean flank as she quivered under his touch, his fingers played at her still slippery cunt. “You haven't been eating, my lady. I think we'll have to punish you for that, make you eager to claim life again.” She shuddered.

Abruptly, however, he tightened his grip on her there, making her arch up at the aggressiveness of the hold. “There is nothing you can do to hurt me, my lady, except leave me,” he said, his blue eyes intense, determined. “Don't tear a hole in my universe again. I need you to be with me. You're not alone anymore.”

The words he'd said to her at the beginning. The words he imprinted on her soul as an eternal promise she'd never doubt again. This was the life that was theirs at last.

“The day I lost my parents,” he said slowly, “Gideon and I were playing in the water, wrestling. We'd rolled out of the surf and into the wet sand. He was much bigger at the time, so he was trying to push my face in the sand and I was yelling at him. The sun was warm, and we weren't at school. You don't think of it consciously, but it was all perfect, all good. We were starting to get hungry and I was thinking of the sandwiches Mom had packed for us. Sometimes I think, well, if they had to leave, I'm glad it was then, when they were laughing, treading water, watching us, and we all were together as a family, feeling good about that.”

Leaning closer, he brought his lips to hers, grazing her with his fangs to make her part her lips. The heat shimmered between them such that she felt mesmerized by his proximity, wanting to stay in that warm enclosure forever. Give him herself; take everything he was offering.

“If we ever are parted in such a terrible way,” she said softly, “we'll make sure it's that way. On a very good day we can carry into eternity forever.”

“We'll carry each other into eternity, my lady. I shall never leave you.”

T
HERE
were caverns she'd been using for refuge. At times, before she realized she was pregnant, she hadn't emerged for days until hunger and thirst and the cursed desire to live that overrode the pain in her heart had brought her forth.

She knew hearing that in her mind offended him anew. He made love to her often in those next few days, even waking during daylight hours to take her to the pinnacle of ecstasy, arousing not only her body, but resurrecting her heart and soul from the deep well in which she'd buried it. Soon she was responding with just as much desire. She shrugged off the dangerous lassitude of the past few months to embrace him fully.

While she could transform easily in and out of her winged form again, Brian had confirmed that her blood held enough humanoid properties to nourish Jacob as only a fully marked servant could. Full circle once again.

To rebuild strength, their games of cat and mouse became a nightly occurrence. As her endurance and agility improved, she explored the full range of both and tested his as well, as was her nature. As of yet, he hadn't failed to catch her, though she was able to lead him on some merry chases that sent him cursing into briar patches and into a comical tussle with a displeased bear one night. When he caught her, he took out his revenge in ways that were searingly sweet, ways that sometimes made her wonder if she'd died and this was the illusion of Heaven, the real Jacob somewhere on Earth without her. It didn't take long in their primal couplings for that thought to slide away in the face of erotic fires much too hot to be blazing among the clouds of Heaven.

When she was in her winged form for hunting, he finally got to see the pixies who often followed her. It amused him how they perched on her shoulders and completely ignored her. They'd sit, feet dangling, heels tattooing her breasts as they chatted with each other in their odd birdlike language. She ignored them as well as she went about her business, though she was always careful not to dislodge them.

“They're like spectators at the Elephant Man tent,” she scoffed. “Gauche creatures.” But Jacob sensed her affection for them. Since they were the only ones who had accepted her no matter her form, he always treated them as honored guests.

By day Lyssa hunted for herself, though he preferred her to wait. She knew at first he'd been reluctant to have her more than a few feet from him for obvious reasons, and she couldn't say she disagreed or wanted anything differently. But her prey was easier to find during the day. As the link between them strengthened in frequent use again, he could always find her once he woke, if she wasn't already back at the cave by then. Oddly enough, Lyssa thought she'd never been so happy and content in her life. A tranquility filled her that she'd never had before, a sense of completion so absolute there were times she just sat in the sun on a branch outside the caves and did nothing but absorb the treasures of sun and wind, the aromas of earth and the nearby creek waters, anticipating the evening with Jacob.

“What would you think about staying here for a while? Is it terrible for you?”

He sat with her on the edge of their favored embankment one night, she curled against his side, they watching the moon together.

“Anywhere with you is not terrible, my lady.” He bent, brushed his lips over her ear. “‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear.'”

“Thoreau,” she murmured, touched. “‘I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…'”

“Indeed,” he said quietly, putting his lips to her throat.

Before she could arch back to give him better access for his dinner, he was on his feet, taking a defensive posture in front of her so quickly it amazed Lyssa. While she knew he had all of her abilities, it still took her by surprise, how formidable and dangerous he could be. He used his powers as a vampire with a skill that should have taken much longer to acquire. But then he'd been a warrior in every life, and he adapted any resource he had at his fingertips, particularly to protect her and their baby.

She stiffened when she saw it was the Fey lord. The one she'd seen several times before Jacob came, who'd discovered her while she was with the pixies. She'd sensed the threat of him, had been prepared to run as she'd had to do before, but he had merely moved on with his bow to do his hunting.

When she'd discerned the disdain in his expression, she'd summoned enough of herself to eye him just as scornfully. She'd dealt with vampires with an overinflated sense of themselves for too long to be intimidated by him, his ability to drive her out of his territory notwithstanding. A grudging smile had pulled at his lips at her reaction, and he'd surprised her with a nod before he disappeared into the wood.

Now he gave a slight bow, and extended his hand. “I have something for you.”

It took Lyssa a moment to realize what he was offering. Aware of Jacob's still watchfulness, she took a couple of steps toward the Fey lord.

It was a rose bloom, which shimmered when he turned his long-fingered hand and carefully rolled it into her smaller one. The petals were fresh, soft, wet with dew.

“What you are holding is centuries old, preserved by old magic. As long as your love for your father lives, it will never dissolve.”

She drew in a breath. “My father.”

“It was plucked from the branches of his bush before the desert was allowed to turn him to dust. Those who felt the punishment to be too harsh wove the spell, with the intent of one day giving it to the daughter. Time passes fast or slow to the Fey folk, Lady Lyssa.” The moonlit eyes gleamed. “It is all the same. A gift. You are welcome here, both of you, as long as you wish.”

With a nod, he turned and vanished into the wood.

“Oh, Jacob…” She touched the petals with one finger.

“I think he recognizes a queen when he sees one.” Jacob stroked her hair, gazed after the man. “I'd planned my own surprise for you tonight, but I think he just stole my thunder.”

Lyssa turned her attention to him. “No, I want to see it. I can't have too many surprises in one night.”

“Eager for gifts, are you? Just like a woman.” He took off and let her chase him, staying just out of reach, letting himself be caught a couple of times to give him the opportunity to kiss, to bury his hands in her hair, to spin with her under a moonlit sky, where there were no Masters or Mistresses, just two souls too much in love to deny one another anything.

He came to a stop abruptly. “Stay right here, my lady.”

He disappeared. Lyssa spun around, looking. She started as feathers brushed against her skin, and then she realized they weren't feathers, but small disks of silken white. She looked up in time to be baptized by a shower of them, floating down on her with the fragrant smell of cherry blossom petals. “You found a tree…”

“Every once in a long while, you find a volunteer sapling determined to survive the odds, even if it's not in its known environment.” He smiled, joining her back on the ground now. “It's spring, my lady. Time for new beginnings.”

She closed her eyes, leaning into the circle of his arms, feeling his palm over her stomach as he brought his lips to her throat, scraped her neck with his fangs, giving her a shiver of desire as the petals flowed down on her. As she cupped the rose bloom in her palm.

In the end it was a blessing.

My lady?

“I knew from the very beginning you wouldn't be able to accept your place as a human servant.”

“My lady, I know my place. I've always known it.” He drew her chin up so he could meet her gaze with an intent one of his own, a look that pulled her in and was like that swirling cloud of petals…a handsome man dancing with her…Heaven.

“My place is by your side. In front of you, behind you, wherever you most need me to be. That will always be my place, now and forever.”