Authors: Joey W Hill
Tags: #Vampires, #Horror, #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Fantasy, #Erotic Fiction, #Erotica, #Fiction, #Occult & Supernatural
Vampire Instinct (47 page)
“I need . . . time.”
“No, you don’t. It’s just a matter of whether you accept it or not.”
“Is it what you want?” She stared at him. “You’ve never had a third-mark servant. Why do you want me?”
He should have known she’d have the courage to think about that side of it, make it about more than her decision. She never forgot others in her calculations. In fact, the decision to keep the record player to herself, even for a mere night, was the first time he’d ever seen her take something for her own.
“I take things for myself all the time,” she whispered. “When I wake up early to see the sunrise. When I pick wildflowers. When I read in your study, just so I can smell you, see the way you look against the lamplight, watch your hands as you stroke your cats and wish it was me . . .”
He’d let her into his mind unintentionally. He was preparing her for a connection that would link them that way, so perhaps that was why he’d dropped his guard. Maybe in this moment he wanted her more deeply in his mind than he’d ever wanted anyone there. Maybe she’d find wildflowers and sunshine he’d missed or, more likely, she’d bring those things with her.
She gave an unexpected giggle, a nervous sound. “Now I’m picturing wildflowers sprouting out your ears, and sunshine bursting from your arse.”
“This is a serious moment,” he informed her, though his lips quivered against a smile. “You’re supposed to be awed at the possibilities and yet compliant to my wishes.”
She arranged her face in a semblance of sobriety, though the laughter did fade out of her eyes. “I am. That’s what terrifies me. Both for myself and for you. I don’t know if I would be any good as a third-marked servant, at the types of things you might need from me, even if it’s just for a little while. And what if I want to keep being one, but you want to send me home? I’d feel like I failed you.”
“If that happens, it will be because I’m such an ogre you’ll be glad to go home.”
She frowned, a tiny pucker between her brows. “I don’t think I have that in me. To admit I can’t be what you need me to be.”
He knew that. It made her so irresistible to his vampire blood, he had to bite back a need to rush this moment. There was a painful, dangerous reality to this. The third mark could damage her soul in the long run. It could even destroy it. That mattered to him, even as instinct pushed him forward, an irresistible tide. Nature was cruel, but inexorable. It would override good sense and caution and, though the result might be tragedy or loss, it knew things the rational mind couldn’t. He believed in it, but he’d also seen his cats obey instinct to fight things that would be for their own benefit. The question was, which situation was this?
She moistened her lips. “I think we have to take the chance, don’t we? It’s just the way it has to be, like a baby taking his first steps. He may be walking toward a life of hardship, but God intends him to walk, so he walks.”
He’d closed his mind to her after the wildflower observation. Not because he didn’t appreciate her humor, but because he sincerely didn’t want to influence her. The fact she’d picked up on his thought process regardless and given it her own unique stamp was unsettling. But it also sealed her fate.
With her body so close, her soul quivering in his grasp, as near as the pulse pounding in her throat, he wasn’t going to argue with his own nature any longer. He’d embraced it long ago, after all, letting go of what he’d been before, a shipwreck that he’d lost in the current of his life too quickly to mourn its loss. That had come far later.
Maybe this drive now was all vampire, or maybe being a vampire simply tapped into the dark places that always existed in the male mind. A need to give and receive pleasure through conquering. Not all women responded to it, but almost all of them recognized it in some way.
He turned her from the wall, effortlessly hitching her up his body. She fell forward against him, curling her arms around his shoulders, dropping her head against his so he carried her almost as a man might carry his child, her body going loose and fluid against him, trusting, compliant.
He laid her down on her bed, and, following his own desires, he slid off the skirt. She wore the sneakers he’d decorated for her, and he put those to the side, taking off the short white socks. Then came the practical panties. Before they visited the mainland, he’d be buying her some very different ones, including bras that would lovingly cradle that eyecatching bosom of hers rather than strangling it. She’d wear them under her neat, practical outfits, distracting him with the knowledge she was wearing them to please him.
Her lower body was completely bare now. He opened her shirt, holding that one straining button for last, then flicked it open. Sliding an arm beneath her, he freed the bra, then scooped her forward, let her lean against him, his one knee planted between her thighs to keep them spread as he pulled the shirt down her arms to the elbows. He let the bra follow, taking the cups over her head and behind her, so the straps and the sleeves of her shirt kept her partially restrained in movement.
When he laid her back down, he kept his arm under her so her breasts tilted up invitingly toward him, those large pink nipples already tightening before his gaze, wanting his mouth. She loved it when he suckled her. Sometimes, when she went to sleep here, when he couldn’t be with her, she passed her fingertips over them before she fell into dreams, thinking of his mouth there, and other places. She was fascinated with the cleverness of his mouth.
Hearing the drift of such thoughts in her mind was not helping him show restraint, but he wanted her wet and begging, beyond thoughts of fledglings or floor scrubbings, all his in every way, knowing she was entirely focused on him when he did this. He might be superstitious, but he wanted it that way, so there was nothing to taint it. He might not be the first who’d ever had her body or even her heart, but he would be the first who’d taken her like this. He’d also been the first to take her how she wanted to be taken, and that was a key difference.
“Why . . . ?” Her voice was breathy. “Why do you like me tied like this? I won’t try to get away.”
“You know why, Elisa. It’s in your mind, and it’s why it makes you wet. Tell me why. I want to hear it from those distracting lips of yours.”
They parted as she moistened them. “You want me . . . helpless. Owned. Yours. You want me . . . overcome with these feelings, beyond thought.”
He nodded. “Now hush. And feel.”
He’d left the bedroom door open. Kohana could come down the hall, or anyone who came into the house. She could be seen like this, stretched on the bed, legs spread for his pleasure, breasts bare. He’d seen her gaze drift to that open door, and knew it was a worry in her mind, but it was something else, too. She didn’t want to acknowledge it, modest thing that she was, but it excited her, in a deep, dark place. It was a statement on what she was becoming. It didn’t mean he was cheaply using her and not caring who saw her naked and vulnerable. Instead, it was a way of underscoring her value that most wouldn’t understand, but she did.
Danny and Dev had plowed that ground for her. A vampire female had exceptional hearing, so he knew the times Elisa had stumbled on the two of them, she’d been allowed to see what she saw. While others might look if Danny desired them to do so, no one was allowed to touch Dev unless she said it was all right. Elisa understood it enough to remember that now, and revel in the idea she could be that . . . essential.
Essential
was the perfect word for it, because if the whole island started to sink into the sea right now, he wouldn’t have stopped. The only thing that could have accomplished that was if he saw a true rejection of this in her mind. But instead, while the waters were fraught with hazards and the possibility of regrets, she was riding the crest of the wave far above that, accepting what fate would give them in the future, and taking the now.
was the perfect word for it, because if the whole island started to sink into the sea right now, he wouldn’t have stopped. The only thing that could have accomplished that was if he saw a true rejection of this in her mind. But instead, while the waters were fraught with hazards and the possibility of regrets, she was riding the crest of the wave far above that, accepting what fate would give them in the future, and taking the now.
He stood above her, the one knee planted between her legs as he studied her, from thighs to throat. Up to the flushed face and desirebright eyes, the long, thick lashes and pretty wings of hair around her face. Her one foot was braced against his calf, toes curled against denim. The other foot dangled, shin brushing the side of his leg. The longer he looked, the more she trembled, and the thicker the scent of her arousal became, such that he saw the tempting cream gather on those nether lips beneath the tiny brown curls. A drop began to slide down toward the crease of her buttocks, making his fangs lengthen and saliva gather in his mouth.
Please . . . Please, Master.
It was unconscious, the plea in her mind, since she was trying not to speak, picking up on his demand that she be still and quiet, surrendering to whatever it was he wanted from her right now. That subliminal plea swept fire through him, particularly as her lashes lowered, emphasizing that surrender and yet lingering over his chest and abdomen, past his belt and then down to the arousal clearly pressing against his jeans. All for her.
Kneeling on the floor between her dangling legs, he cupped her buttocks to slide her forward to his mouth. When only his breath touched her cunt, she cried out, an involuntary whimper, and he saw the tiny muscles flex, the clit ripple. A pure, perfect new drop of honey formed as a result. He licked it away, dipping inside briefly, and she shuddered, giving another delectable whimper.
I’ll give you the third mark here, Irish flower, so that you’ll remember it each time your thighs brush together.
Her response was incoherent acquiescence, a sweet, wordless song to him. He kept up that slow lick, teasing her lips, the clit, the weeping gateway that would be stretching to accommodate his cock before this was done. He could hear the rush of blood in the femoral, so close, but he wanted the taste and scent of her orgasm on his mouth when he finally turned his mouth to that. She was quivering so hard in his grasp, trying so hard not to move, because she knew that was what he liked . . . usually.
You may move, Elisa. Buck against my hold, work those hips against my mouth, show me how you become under my touch, the way you are with no one else.
The way I alone want to make you feel.
He didn’t share that unexpected thought. But he didn’t have to dwell on it, because she obeyed like a wild bird freed from a cage, her body surging up against his mouth, her restricted arms tensing, fingers digging into the bed as she undulated up, her breasts wobbling back toward her throat as her body became a crescent of need, all reaching for him. As she fought his irresistible hold, showing that delicious female conflict that always existed in the grip of pleasure—the need to pull away and yet be as close as possible—he teased her clit with more insistent lashes of his tongue. Her climax surged upward, and she was trying to resist it, but he wouldn’t allow that, either.
He didn’t share that unexpected thought. But he didn’t have to dwell on it, because she obeyed like a wild bird freed from a cage, her body surging up against his mouth, her restricted arms tensing, fingers digging into the bed as she undulated up, her breasts wobbling back toward her throat as her body became a crescent of need, all reaching for him. As she fought his irresistible hold, showing that delicious female conflict that always existed in the grip of pleasure—the need to pull away and yet be as close as possible—he teased her clit with more insistent lashes of his tongue. Her climax surged upward, and she was trying to resist it, but he wouldn’t allow that, either.
He watched with eternal fascination as her breath became short puffs, almost like a woman in labor, and then she was making short cries, one right on top of another, staccato notes that rushed up a hill she couldn’t escape.
Go over now, Elisa. Obey me.
Muscles and nerves stretched to their limit and her cunt contracted hard against his mouth, a small spurt of sweet liquid gushing onto his tongue. A scream tore from her throat, building in volume he wouldn’t allow to diminish as he kept working her with his mouth. Plunging his tongue in hard and fast now, he sucked that tight bud, moving his lips over her in a random motion that kept the nerves straining to keep up, feeling the sensation everywhere so it wouldn’t ebb.
He brought his fingers into play, taking over for his mouth as he turned it to her thigh, sinking his fangs into that pounding artery. Her cry escalated, her arms beating against the mattress, hands clawing the covers such that she had handfuls of the fabric crushed in it. Her lush backside was off the mattress, working her pussy up against his fingers. As her blood filled his mouth, he released that final serum, felt it swirl away into her, rushing for her heart and that deep place science said didn’t physically exist in the human body. Vampires had always known it did.
The soul was the true image of divinity, because it was everywhere and nowhere, what gave life and spark, but was never fully defined or understood in its plan or desires, its needs and demands. Every living thing had it. To deny it was to deny whatever God was and reject miracles like this, simple and unfathomably complicated at once.
Her pleasure overcame her such that the other leg wrapped over his back, holding him tight to her, her soul reaching for him. He took the precious extra moment to seal the wound, then came up her body, sliding her thigh back to his side, fingers leaving a firm imprint.
Her eyes were so feverish and needy. If there was such a thing as Heaven, it would be her, always like this, completely connected to him, her naked body still shuddering in the aftermath of the ecstasy he’d given her, her eyes fastened on him in total concentration.
He opened his jeans, freeing his cock from the painful confinement. Her hungry gaze only made it jerk in further need, almost making him wince. He needed to release into her, relieve this intense pressure, that pussy clasping him with blissful friction. But first . . .
He could have her bite him, but he knew his gentle maid. Even in her most ferocious moment he doubted she would be able to bring herself to pierce his flesh. So he drew the blade he carried at his nowundone belt. He paused, considering, and then took it to his throat, a short, practiced slice. He could have chosen the wrist, but he knew what he wanted, and from the flicker in her gaze, he knew she wanted it, too.
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