A Vampire's Claim (45 page)

He met her eyes. “I know where you’re going with this, love. You’re not me.”

Danny looked toward the ocean. “I . . . I’ve killed, of course. My annual kill. But I make that as pleasurable and quick as possible.

Try not to let the person even know it’s happening until it’s all over. And I’ve had some near misses with other vampires, but other vampires, more experienced ones, have handled the situation. Ian was the first I’d killed . . . that way.”

“Premeditated and with malice.”

She kept her eyes trained on the water. “I didn’t care for it, Dev. Made me feel tarnished. Wrong. Other vampires . . . we don’t talk about things like that. Killing, taking full servants, it’s all part of who we are. I wondered . . . No, my experience isn’t yours, but I wanted to know what the Elder said.”

When Dev’s hand touched her face, she resisted a moment, then looked down at him. He passed his thumb over her cheek, her lips. “You’re not a killer, love,” he said quietly. “And for who you are, that’s a bad thing.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“All I wanted was to lie down and stop existing, like an old member of the tribe,” he said at last. “The Elder, he was a karadji of sorts, a medicine man, if you will. He told me I would make the spirits very angry if I wasted the life they’d given me. He told me I was moving further and further from my path, and whether I liked it or not, the spirits would send something to put me back on it.”

He shrugged. “Don’t know if I believe all that or not, but there was something about you that night I couldn’t resist. And though you are irresistible,” he said with a light smile, “it was more than that.”

Danny laid her hand over his on her face, then lifted her other one from the sand to tip up the hat to see his face. “So you think it was destined, you becoming my servant?”

“I think it was destined that you mark me three times, and I be with you for a while. Don’t know about the future, short or long term. I haven’t planned that way for a long time now, love. I just know things seem to happen sometimes.”

Drawing up her knees, she pulled away to lock her hands around them. Wanting to eradicate the ridiculous sense of disappointment, she turned her mind to a few minutes before, when his arms had been around her, his whip holding her. In that position, she could have swayed against him as he rocked her side to side, a pleasant friction of motion as she let her belly slide across his groin, the head of his cock, which would become engorged by the motion of her body across it.

“God, you’re insatiable,” he said. “And you’re trying to distract me.”

“It’s your fault for distracting me. You brought the whip into it.” But she let the shadows go. “Too bad you didn’t bring your swag.

We could find a secluded spot, and I could ride you until dawn.”

She liked the flash of heat that went through his gaze. “Well,” he drawled, “that’s just going back to the room and getting it. But there’s a float somebody’s left tied up over there.” He nodded toward a clump of vegetation flanking the dunes. “We could borrow it for some land-based uses. Or I could push you out into the water, so you can enjoy without sinking.”

“If I fall off, I will be extremely irritated.”

“Well, they haven’t had a good shark story to report around here for a day or so. Those poor noahs, if they tangle with the likes of you.”

Dodging her swat, he took her hand again, caressing her fingers, twining with them on the swirl of cool sand. She raised her gaze to him. “Dev, I don’t want to ruin a lovely moment, but I can’t act this way with you all the time. We can’t be this informal when we’re with other vampires. Like Lady Lyssa and Alistair.”

“You’ve made that clear from the first, my lady. And if there was any confusion, it was taken care of during that dinner with Ruskin and Ian. The whole standing behind your chair and ordering me onto my knees to lick your cunt etiquette.”

A tinge of color stained her cheek at his crudeness, but she nodded. “Even for those I trust, like Alistair and Lyssa, there are things that vampires view as inappropriate, almost as an illness. Too much affection for a human is one of them.”

“Hmm. And
do
you feel inappropriately about me, my lady?”

Danny looked sharply at him. His mind was open to her, and she saw curiosity only. Concern as well, because he didn’t know how he’d react if she did admit to such a thing. That concern was a relief to her, though it came with another twinge of disappointment she chose to ignore. Instead, she gave him a smile. “No, Dev. I don’t. But I tend to be more informal with my staff, and you are my first third-marked servant. I just don’t want there to be any confusion between you and me.”

Particularly since he made her feel confused enough inside without her projecting it to those who might understand it even less.

“There isn’t, my lady. Never fear.” But when he raised his gaze to her, she got a little lost in the hazel green of his eyes, the fan of brown lashes. “And I thank you for this, these few days . . . to just be.”

“The pleasure has been all mine,” she responded. He shook his head, increased his grip on her fingers.

“No, my lady. The pleasure has been ours.”

They spent some more time wandering the shore, because shell study was a favorite pursuit of hers. She told him their names, stories and legends about the shells, as they both kept an interested eye on the dwindling number of other vacationers sharing their beach.

Well past the midnight hour, when the few families at Surfer’s Paradise had gone to sleep, and the moon was turning the surf the color of foaming milk, they returned to that float. Danny straddled the muscled body of her bushman, his hands helping her slide the skirt in soft folds up to her hips so she could take him inside her. Pressing her hands down over his thundering heart, she watched him look at her face, her breasts, the cream color of her skin in their shared passion. After he tangled his hands in her hair, drawing her down to kiss her throughout a screaming, shuddering climax, she let herself be coiled on his chest, clasped tight in his arms, their bodies still joined, his cock a welcome, insistent pressure against the walls of her channel. Sand crusted on her feet as she dug her toes into the cool stuff outside his long calves.

“I’ll build you a sand castle,” he said at last, after they’d been quiet for quite a while.

She smiled against his chest, hearing the slow heartbeat, the sleepy note to his voice. “How many rooms will it have?”

“At least three or four hundred. You can have a different world in every room. There will be a library, a room with a huge fountain.

With a giant lizard sculpture,” he added. “Another room will be completely empty except for a tree growing up through the floor.

The pattern on the floor will be thousands of the most beautiful shells in the ocean. Starfish will decorate the tree’s branches. They’ll be alive, because everything will be possible inside the castle.”

“Everything, hmm?”

But she’d heard the slurring to his words and let him drift off, have his doze. She’d wake him again, another couple times before dawn, to feed on him, to bring him to release again as he serviced her needs as well.

I’d have a room in there for you, too, Dev. A room with your green Queensland station and your son and wife. You’d live
there as long as you like, laughing with them. Telling your son stories, teaching him how to be a man like you . . .

She tried to be good, tried to imagine him with his wife, but she found she didn’t want to do that. She settled for having the well-meaning thought and then shut it down, preferring to listen to his heartbeat, and his breath stir her hair. The tide rushed in and rushed out, like the tide of her feelings. They’d get higher and higher, until she couldn’t hold off any longer and would rouse him to her once more.

19

H
E’D really enjoyed Surfer’s Paradise. He wasn’t going to examine whether it was because he’d liked the people he and his lady became there, no matter how insulated a bubble it took to accomplish it, or because he was nursing a gut-level uneasiness about Brisbane.

Though Brisbane wasn’t Melbourne or Perth, it was sizable to him after having spent so many years in the Outback, with only occasional forays into places like Elle’s.

Danny’s place just outside the city was a large home, dating from the eighteen hundreds with traditional architecture. The house was raised on stilts to promote airflow, and possessed wide, shady verandas. Tropical vegetation was cozied up to it like a beautiful nature sprite’s lush green hair, dotted with splashes of color from blooming bushes and clusters of artlessly scattered flowers.

Despite its size, the house captured the same quiet peace he’d felt at her place in Surfer’s. He was given a guest room with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked a garden. While he was used to the sweep of wildflowers after rains in the desert, the vibrant color of everything was absorbing and overwhelming at once, from the royal blue and gold of the carpets that didn’t have a constant layer of dust to sweep off, to the ruby red of flowers the size of his hand on the bushes below his window and the bright green of the lush ferns. Even at Surfer’s, there’d been enough of a monochrome theme between sand and ocean to help him ease into a different environment.

Bemusedly, he also found several changes of clothes, slacks, shirts and collars, appropriate to diverse occasions and his size, waiting in the wardrobe for him. The room even had a private bath.

It underscored again that he was traveling with a woman of tremendous wealth, which gave him some discomfort, particularly when she seemed to be picking up the tab for everything. He’d had to argue to pay for his own meal and beer when they went to a restaurant, and she laughed at him for it, reminding him he was her employee. Which, of course, he was.

In the desert, you saved my life. You think I don’t know you’re the type of man who’d work ten jobs to care for his family?

I don’t need that. I need other things from you.

And do I provide them, my lady?

She’d given him a leisurely glance, that distant smile. “In spades.”

Still, he felt damned uncomfortable with it, though he wasn’t quite sure why. And he paid for the bloody beer.

Lady D, as she was known to the staff, had her own private wing, and it was clear no one ventured there unless invited. She underscored that herself when, arriving just before dawn, she left him with a lingering kiss and smile, and told him the maid would show him to his room. Then she disappeared.

As he prowled the room, he found himself tempted to reach out, try to speak to her. The bed looked solitary, lonely. He’d stay on the floor in his swag.

Bugger it.
If she liked her alone time, he couldn’t cast stones, could he? When she wanted him, she’d let him know. That suited him fine. It wasn’t like he’d had the time to get so used to her company he couldn’t do without it.

Dev, find the pen and pad in the desk. There are people I need you to contact today, arrange for their stores to be open
after dark. Use my name and they’ll agree.

Startled by her intrusion into his thoughts, he assumed, with some relief, that she hadn’t heard them. He jotted down the names and stores she noted; then, before he could speak further, she added,
If you have any difficulties, see the staff and they’ll help.

Also, please check over the house accounts and review maintenance with the property manager, Mr. Forbes. As my third-marked servant, you would oversee the maintenance and operation of all my properties.
He sensed a smile in her voice then.

That should keep you busy, but be sure to get some sleep. I’ll be up by sunset. Be ready to go with me.

Keep him busy. Bollocks, she
had
heard his thoughts. However, it hadn’t escaped his notice that part of this trip
was
about exposing him to the wide variety of things a third-marked servant was supposed to know and do, to see if he could handle it.

Right. Because, whereas being the bait for some psychopathic vampire’s three-day game wouldn’t faze him, knowing he had to inventory a pantry might send him screaming.

The echo of her laughter in his head had his gut easing, if not his loneliness.

For the next two nights, he revised his opinion of shopping as a leisure pursuit. A human woman could be singleminded in the pursuit of her goal, he knew, but a vampire female was dedicated to the hunt, and tireless. At the end of the evening, when they got in, he was exhausted by all the choices, decisions and—he shuddered—color swatches, such that he practically staggered, falling facedown on his swag. Almost exhausted enough to ignore the fact she was shutting him out of her room and sometimes even her mind, far more than she’d done before.

Hell, he missed her. And of course she knew it, so there was nothing to talk about. She was doing it for some mysterious purpose of her own, and he had too much pride to act shirty about it. But not too much pride to stay around and endure it.

Sometimes when he woke during daylight, he had to put his hand in his shorts, wrap his fingers around himself and imagine it as her.

One thought of her sweet mouth closing over him, her hands digging into his thighs, and he exploded in a matter of seconds. It didn’t fix the gnawing in his gut, though.

He got cranky about it, truth be told, though he didn’t know if his irritation was primarily with himself. So he did his job. He handled the transportation details, coordinating with a freight company to have the items they would truck out to the station coincide with their return. Thinking ahead, he noted that they might also have items returning for consignment, and after he described some of the antiques and rich appointments Ian had preferred, the proprietor was more than happy to coordinate the details of that with him as well.

“Well, that’s done,” Danny said, as they stepped out of the drapery shop into the darkness of the near midnight time. “And thank God. You were starting to be grumpy. Next time I’ll carry a few lollipops in my purse for when you get fussy. Of course”—she arched a brow at him—“the assistant to the proprietress in there seemed to perk up your spirits considerably.”