Branded Sanctuary (42 page)

“Chloe, I can‟t… I‟m not like that.”

“Not built that way.” She nodded, though it was an effort. She put her hand on the latch. “I‟m glad I met you, Brendan. And I‟m sorry it didn‟t work out for us. I wish you only the best. But I want the man, not the priest.”

She stepped out.

“No.” Brendan stared at the door, feeling the chains on his arms as if they were looped lower, tightening around his chest. What the fuck did she want from him? How could she ask from him what wasn‟t his to give?

Why couldn‟t he give himself that? Was he going to let her walk away?

What do you want? Whatdoyouwantwhatdoyouwant…

The raw, uncertain feeling was an old wound, but one he hadn‟t experienced at this level in some time. It wasn‟t welcome, and he immediately wanted to banish it. He gave Mistresses what they wanted, damn it, so there was no uncertainty. No surges of volatile emotions like this, but Marguerite had hit it on the head that day in the auditorium, hadn‟t she? The answer was in the center of that tumultuous sea, as treacherous a place as the spooky London street depicted around him. He didn‟t want a choice. Didn‟t want to take that risk.

That day in the auditorium, he‟d looked toward the stage when Marguerite was bringing that shameful knowledge forth. He‟d looked toward the unattainable grail.

In his mind‟s eye, a grail always sat on a dais, brilliantly lit among darkness. He‟d told Chloe he liked the idea of being Percival. A knight seeking that grail because it served his king. In reality, he hadn‟t ever thought of being the one who found it, grasped it, accepted the consequences and challenges of being worthy of it.

He‟d told himself that was because the focus couldn‟t be on recognition, winning the prize. The focus had to be on the dedication and unswerving loyalty to the quest.

He‟d made the journey the art form, not the completion of the task, because she was right. Marguerite was right. He was fucking terrified of what that light would show inside himself. A small boy, crouched in a corner, learning that his mother was never coming back, that fate had taken her away from him, because he wasn‟t worthy of her.

She was the grail. Now Chloe was on that same dais.

Jesus.
And he meant it as a prayer. Closing his eyes tight, he faced the inevitable, that he could accept this about himself, always be the perfect submissive, the one who every Mistress wanted for a night, or he could put spurs to his horse, so to speak, and see if he couldn‟t actually grasp that grail, dedicating himself to everything it required and meant.

“I want you,” he whispered. Even spoken low, the words were rough, thick, as if by never having been said before, his mouth had difficulty forming the words. The desolation of the night reflected his inside, his loneliness now, knowing what was walking away from him. It lanced him with such pain, he thought a vampire‟s fangs actually tearing into him might feel good. “Chloe.”

He pulled against the wrought iron of the lamp post that had been welded into a temporary plate in the floor. It didn‟t have any give. “Come let me go,” he called out, an urgent demand to whatever staff was watching him. Someone had to be, because no one was ever left unattended in a room. But maybe Chloe hadn‟t realized that. He had to go after her. “Chloe!”

He yanked again, using his full strength. Not caring that he might destroy the prop, he put his feet against it and shoved, hoping to loosen the bolts. “Chloe, I want you.

Come back!”

Just when he thought he was going to have to start bellowing, the door opened.

He‟d twisted around, gotten the chains wrapped over the cuffs and couldn‟t see, but that didn‟t matter. “Get me down. I have to go after her.” He‟d never spoken to anyone at The Zone like that. He‟d always performed as a submissive in all ways, toward staff as well as Doms, but damn it, this was too important. Logically, he could always call her, text her, send her a fucking letter, but even the dumbest hero knew timing was everything. He couldn‟t lose the chance.

“I‟m right here.” His queen of the night was holding him steady, soothing him with long scarlet nails and worried brown eyes as he tried to catch his breath, feeling the cut of the chains in his wrists. It had been less than a couple minutes, he realized, but it felt much longer, the journey in his mind a jump of twenty some years.

“Oh Goddess, your fingers are turning blue.” Finding the key hanging on the wall, she came back, dragging a crate over that had been used as an alley prop. She stepped up on it to unlock the cuffs on his wrists so he could slide free of the snarled chain slack.

The position put her enticingly shaped cleavage right at his face. When he got free, he banded his arms around her hips and back, taking his lips to that moist crease, then biting the fullness around it. Dropping the key, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

“I‟m right here,” she gasped. “I didn‟t leave. I didn‟t even take my hand off the latch on the other side.”

His knees felt weak, but he managed to get off the cobblestone and lay her down on a pallet draped in velvet in the shadows, a convenience if she‟d decided to take their scene to the semblance of a vampiress‟s boudoir.

As he laid her down, he followed her, propping on his elbow, his body braced between her legs. When she curved a leg over him, he felt the bare brush of her pussy against the front of the tight dark trousers. He wanted to rut on her like an animal, but she had more in store for him. Closing her hand on his shoulder, she pushed at him, hard. He let himself be knocked over on his back as she straddled him with that shapely, mouthwatering hook of her thigh.

“I‟m sorry, I didn‟t catch that last thing when I left the room.” Her expression was serious, despite the slight teasing note to her voice. She was right back in scene, completely in control. Her fingers hooked in that cravat around his neck, tightening the slack in a way that made his cock pulse hard beneath the clamp of her pelvis. She moved against it, rubbing him.

“I want you. Only you.” It was harder with her looking at him. “Is that okay?”

“More than you know.” Testing him, she arched a brow. “And if it wasn‟t?” He understood, because his hands tightened on her, slipping down to mold over her backside, letting her feel his arousal for her, the need in his body. “Well, I guess I‟d just have to say the hell with what‟s okay or not and convince you that I‟m right, that I‟m the only one you need.”

Her eyes warmed on his face. “More, slave.”

A smile pulled at his mouth. “I want you.
You.
For myself. All for myself. Mine.”

“No matter if I think you‟re a completely worthless drama dweeb beneath my notice?”

“Even then. I still want you. Heart, body, soul, everything from your deepest thought to your most casual gesture. I want to see all of it, be a part of all of it.”

“If I try to shake you off, you‟ll stalk me like a predator?”

“Until you have to get a restraining order, and even that won‟t stop me. Even if you call on Tyler and Mac for reinforcements.” It felt so damn good to say it, mean it, see how it lit her face up with everything he wanted to see in her eyes. He‟d been such an idiot for withholding it from her, and found himself ashamed that he‟d put her through the stress of wresting it out of him.

She took a deep breath, let it out with a shudder. Gave him a beatific smile at odds with the dark vampire-of-the-night fangs and expression. “Good. Now why the heck was that so hard?”

He chuckled, he couldn‟t help it. Though she was sitting quite solidly on him, he felt as if a weight lifted right off his chest. “I don‟t know. Chloe, I‟ve been dying for you, three weeks now.”

“I‟m yours,” she reminded him with a smile full of seductive promise and open-hearted need. “Take what you need.”

But it was Chloe who took, reaching between them before he could do it and opening the trousers, taking him firmly in hand. Her noise of pleasure almost put him over the edge. When he reached up toward her, she shook her head, that feline smile still on her face as he obediently dropped his arms back over his head, though his fingers clenched with the desire to touch, grip. She was indulging that desire fully, working him in her grasp, even as she began to rub her mound along the base of his cock and testicles, letting him feel how wet she was.

“Chloe,” he said, urgent need filling his voice. “Damn it. Please.” He didn‟t ever make demands, but he did now, letting her feel that every part of him was rigid with desire for her, not just what she was working in his hand.

“I don‟t want you to ever forget to give me what I want, when I want it,” she said, those dark-rimmed eyes fixed on his face.

“Never.” His gaze coursed greedily over her breasts, the flirty roll of those rubies back and forth over the high curves. “Let me suck on your nipples.”

“Unlace the front.”

Easier said than done, with hands that were almost shaking with the power of his need. “Rip it,” she suggested, and almost before the words were out of her mouth, he‟d put his hands on it and yanked. It didn‟t rip, but it loosened enough that her breasts spilled free and his hands closed over them, at the same moment she shoved him back down again. She slid up his body with her eyes fixed on him in hot demand.

“First, you eat my pussy. I want to come on your face. You won‟t come until I say it‟s okay. I want to feel that hard cock inside me.”

Was it the clothes? He didn‟t care what made her act like this wanton vamp now, as long as it was genuine, and he could tell it was, a role she was delighted to play.

Something in her face told him she was on the right path again. Not necessarily the girl she‟d been before her attack, but some new compilation of her own sculpting.

As for him, he didn‟t care if one night she was Chloe, the vampire of his dreams, or tender, giggling Chloe, retying the bow on Prince‟s plush neck. Or pensive Chloe, gluing pictures in her happiness book. Mischievous Chloe, winking as she slipped him and Tyler pieces of free cake at Tea Leaves when she thought the eagle-eyed Marguerite didn‟t see. He wanted to discover every face. He wanted to make her happy and enjoy every damn day of knowing she was his.

He told her that, in rough, broken language as she covered his face, straddling him but staying just out of reach of his mouth as he spoke, his breath caressing her labia, already moist with her honey.

“Good,” she whispered, and came down on him, letting him bury his mouth and nose into that bliss. His hands came up, cupped her bare bottom through the strips of the barely there skirt. The slick surface of her boots pressed against his sides, the hard heels turned in toward his rib cage, digging in as if he were her personal mount.

He was good at oral sex, and he used all his skill now, sucking on her clit, taking slow, dragging licks of the outer labia and then penetrating her like his cock, swirling inside and closing his mouth over the whole vulva to put light pressure on it as his tongue came out, darted here and there, went back in, making her work herself against his face. Her breath came faster, a dew of perspiration and the moisture of the fog on her flesh. He made noises of his hunger against her, and she tortured him further.

Leaning back, she wrapped her small hand around his cock, tugging hard on it as she rocked against his mouth.

Ah, God… He couldn‟t come. He wouldn‟t, as much as he wanted her, because she‟d told him not to, because… oh hell.

He had so much control, but he‟d missed her too much, and having her cunt in his face, her bottom rubbing against his chest, her knowledgeable fingers on his cock, was just too much for any man. He prided himself on obeying a Mistress‟s most outrageous demand, but all he managed was a strangled protest against her. She didn‟t take the hint, didn‟t let up. In fact, she deliberately tightened her grip and rolled it up the length of his shaft, flicking the vein beneath with her thumb, letting him feel the bite of the long nail in his tightening testicles.

She flipped in a quick, lithe movement he hadn‟t expected, straddling his head from the other direction, and put her mouth over him just as he released. She took him into the back of her throat as her ass moved rhythmically in front of his face, her pussy brushing his chin so he angled his head and made damn sure the vibrations of his guttural roars were felt all the way up through her womb as his hips bucked up, driving his cock into her mouth.

It was the pleasure of nearly a month of self-denial, all for her, everything he wanted. It made him wonder why it really had been so hard for him to say, but he knew. And he owed it to her to explain why.

However, first things first. As the orgasm slowly died away, even in the grip of the agonizing aftershocks, he applied himself to her cunt again, nibbling, thrusting, and giving her the occasional tease on her anal rim with his nose, the press of his lips.

She enjoyed the hell out of it, gasping and moving on him, but just as he sensed her about to approach that peak, she turned, taking it away from him. She sat back down on his loins like a queen on her throne, chin up and skin flushed, breath coming fast, nipples taunting him over the loosened corset.

“If you want me to come, you‟ll have to get hard for me again,” she said in a throaty voice. “But first you‟ll have to be punished, won‟t you? Because you broke your promise to me. The promise you made in the park.”

“Yes.” Whatever she wanted to do was fine with him. Hell, she could shove a poker up his ass and he would take it from her.

“Then get up and face that wall over there.”