Elusive Hero: Invitation to Eden (Vampire Queen Series Book 12) (21 page)

“You can ask. I’ll decide whether or not to answer.”

It wasn’t something she was used to in her world, he knew, and it was fascinating to see her fluctuate between two identities, the one that would deal out punishment for impertinence, and the one that craved him to be a hard-ass with her.

“Will you…touch my face?”

Such a simple request. But to a sub in this mode, it was like requesting the moon, a child hoping their dream would come true. Knowing his set expression would tell her he was thinking about her request, he finished restraining her. He picked up the massage lotion, spread it on his hands. When he started to work on her shoulder, she let out a purr, melted beneath his touch. He smiled, bent and kissed her ear, nuzzled her cheek. Pressing his own against her, he gave her that requested contact.

“You did very well, my lady. Your Master is very pleased with you.”

She hiccupped over another tiny sob. She still hadn’t recovered enough self-awareness to calculate her responses. Straightening, he continued his way down her back.

Her gaze flitted to his arm, saw streaks of dried blood. “I hurt you.”

“You tore me up like a tiger, my lady. But I don’t worry about scars.”

Another tear slid out of her eye and he tsked, catching it. “You’re free to use your claws on me. If I can’t hold my own with you, I’m not the Master you’re seeking.”

She wanted him to talk, he saw it in her mind, anything so she could hear the rumble of his voice, hold onto it like an anchor.

It was a fucking charge, to be in her head like this. He thought about his earlier musings on having the third mark. Vardalos had said the second mark was a mind to mind thing, but the third mark went all the way to the soul. Whatever that meant. Though as a Master, he expected he understood even better than most what it could mean. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

As he massaged her, he probed gently through her hazy mind, seeing how far he could go with the second mark. He knew when he reached that point, because it was like another door presented itself, a fortress within a fortress. Her consciousness slipped away beneath it like smoke.

The door the third mark would open, he suspected. The threshold to her soul. Feeling like he’d already had the privilege of briefly crossing that line during this session, he knew he wanted to go there again. And again.

He withdrew to see her fingers kneading the table padding as if she needed to be touching something. She needed some more grounding. So did he, else he might lose control and start all over again with her.

On that wry self-admonishment, he began to talk about the island, all the things that were here. The forests, the hidden streams, the exotic flowers that appeared in unexpected places, like fragile treasure. Thunderstorms where blue forked lightning shot over the ocean waters and one could smell the ozone, feel the electric current in the air heating the skin. He massaged her with both hands, but when one of them came close to her bound hand, she grasped it and wouldn’t let go, her eyes closing.

§

Despite how good the two-handed massage was, Kaela didn’t want him to pull away and was relieved when he didn’t. He started to stroke her back, her flanks, the nape of her neck with his one free hand, letting her hold the other.

At length, he moved her to a mat on the floor, placing a blanket over her to keep her warm. Sliding a chair up next to her, he took a seat there. He was watching over her, a quiet reassurance like a tree canopy. She probably needed to stop thinking of him in tree analogies, but there was something so reassuring about a large, sturdy tree…

She adjusted so her cheek was on his shoe, her temple lying against his jeans cuff, since he’d pulled his pants back on. He braced his other foot behind her, so his ankle and calf were against her back. She couldn’t stop shaking, inside and out, but that wasn’t the worst of it. She wanted to say things she couldn’t say.

This is a safe place, a safe zone, Kaela. You can say anything you want here.

Because it’s just a fantasy. A temporary respite.

He grunted and stood, pushing the chair out of the way. Lying down in front of her in one lithe movement, he stretched out on his hip—facing away from her.

She immediately pressed herself up against him, her face between his shoulder blades, her cheek against the coiled whip tattoo and the red letters enclosed in its circle. Reaching back, he threaded her hand under his arm, over his bare chest, and held her firmly there. He could have faced her, but he seemed to know this worked better for her, where he couldn’t see her face, where she could just anchor herself against him.

She would never have a third marked servant. It was so obvious, wasn’t it? She’d had so many fantasies involving this vacation, but the reality facing her now was painful, impossible.

The only one she wanted as a third marked servant was someone capable of dominating her. The deepest wish she had, the one that would bring balance to her life, could not come true.

Maybe she never should have come here to learn the truth. Ignorance might not be bliss, but it made life far more bearable. Now that she’d had this with him, she couldn’t imagine ever depriving herself of it.

He turned, propping himself on an elbow. Sliding a fingertip down her sternum and over her breast, he returned to her face to touch her cheek, her chin. “So what would that look like, Kaela? Your Master being your third mark servant?”

§

Her gaze snapped up to him. He’d shown he was capable of absorbing so much from her—body language, unvoiced yearnings, and some of the most subtle thoughts in her head—even before she’d second marked him. Of all the magics she’d found on the island, that one amazed her the most, since it wasn’t magic at all. It was the man.

“It's ludicrous. It's—

“Yet you’ve imagined it. In detail.” He gave her a thoughtful look. “I want to know what it looks like in your mind.”

She shook her head, but he caught her chin, lifted it and gave her that stare which made things go all fuzzy inside her in a way that shouldn’t affect her how it did. He was a human.

“Is your mind open to me, Kaela?”

She’d shut it back down out of habit, the way she did with Fran. She opened it up again, though it took some effort. Decades of caution weren’t so easily reversed. If it wasn’t for the set-up, the fantasy elements the Master of Eden had provided, it would have been entirely impossible. Was Garron in her mind, examining everything he found there? How did she feel about that?

It doesn’t matter how you feel about it, Kaela. If you submit to me, you open up all of yourself to me.

She felt that trickle of resentful reaction she’d felt before she’d second marked him, then she remembered how she’d felt after she’d taken that choice out of his hands. As if she’d betrayed herself, as much as him. She’d let fear take over, though she’d fought much worse things in her life.

“He would be in my mind, because he could be. But I wouldn’t block him.” She paused, realizing that was exactly what he had just demanded. “So even when he’s having to behave as my servant, meeting the demands of my world, I could hear his voice in my head, know he was still in control. But it’s impossible, because he would have to act as my servant, truly be that way, in front of other vampires. How could someone who is truly a Master…like you… bear that?” She touched his face. “I couldn't bear it,” she whispered.

His eyes stayed cool, the lips firm. “You're taking too much on yourself. A Master makes his own decisions, doesn't he?”

“It doesn’t matter. This is a vacation. This is what I can have. I won’t talk about it anymore.”

“Take that high and mighty tone with me, my lady, and you’ll find yourself back in those restraints.”

This was a ten-day fantasy. What gave him the right to talk about it as more than that? She didn’t want him to do that, make it harder than it was.

He gave her another thoughtful look at that, but didn’t say anything else. Just rose and pulled a robe out of a closet. He put it on her, letting her do very little to help him with that before he picked her up and put her back on the mattress. She watched him pack away his equipment, leave instructions for their care to the submissive attendants who ensured that all of it stayed clean and ready for his next session. She was quiet, inside and out, watching as he typed out a text on his phone. He paused, swept an appraising look over her, went back to the text. A few minutes later, a knock came at the door. She heard a female voice, saw a slender arm pass a glossy Eden gift shop bag through the opening. The voice belonged to Bridget, the woman at the desk.

She remembered then she could now see through his eyes, so she caught a quick, blurry glimpse of a lush brunette in a velvet red corset before the door closed. She blinked. Blinked again. Now she understood why he looked at her in such a careful, measured way. The man had terrible vision. How on earth did he read lips so well? Why didn’t he wear glasses?

When he turned to look at her, she realized something else was going on. He could see auras. Not just a vague halo of light, either. It was as if a different part of his mind other than his sense of sight detected the energy signatures, and they were complex, detailed, beautiful…

“Yours in particular,” he said. “Yeah, it helps with reading lips, though I can’t really explain how. The auras give me another sense of what’s being said, along with body language and the rest.”

“You think glasses or surgery would mess with it.”

“Maybe. I don’t really want to take the risk. It gives me something, when I’m working with a submissive. Something I’m not willing to give up.”

Any more than most vampires would be willing to give up the soul connection with their servant. Yes, for some of them the servant was merely a valued tool, but for those like Jacob and Lyssa, it went far beyond that.

She thought about the second mark connection she already had to Garron and understood that far more than she was comfortable saying. Why was she thinking about this? It didn’t matter. He wasn’t leaving with her.

Her gaze flickered up to his again and they held that contact. Her attempt to push away the thoughts and his awareness of them formed a humming energy between them. At last, he spoke.

“My lady, you looked through my eyes because you were curious about Bridget, weren’t you?”

Her relief that he wasn’t going to push her on the issue was supplanted by an inexplicable defensiveness. She bit back on a dozen things she could have said, settling for, “Yes. She’s very lovely.”

His eyes glinted with humor. “I didn’t give you permission to be in my mind. You just want more punishment, don’t you?”

She was pretty sure the answer to that question was a resounding
yes
, but she simply offered a noncommittal shrug and pushed up from the mat, combing her fingers through the wisps of hair that had come loose from her braid to frame her face. His look said he’d heard that
yes
loud and clear, and that it would be his pleasure to accommodate. Her skin heated under that regard, but he merely tossed the bag to the floor in front of her. Opening it, she saw two scraps of cloth, a bikini. “Put that on. We’re going to take a dip in one of the pools. It’s shallow,” he added. “Only five feet so you can stand.”

At her little sigh of relief, he gave her a wink. “Vardalos mentioned vampires are uncomfortable in water over their heads.”

“That man knows far too much about us, and it’s not a fear. It’s just a preference. We’re not buoyant. We sink.” She considered the swimsuit. “There’s not a lot of this. Why even bother?”

“Because I want to see you barely wearing it.” He gave her an appraising look. “Put it on.”

She felt spots of color in her cheeks as she responded to the order. During the heights of her arousal, it had been a little easier to accept her instinctive compulsion to obey his commands. Even so, she shed the robe and donned the bikini. Though there wasn’t much to it, his gaze was hot and appreciative. The bra cups were low enough she nearly spilled out of them, while the press of the sides and straps kept her breasts pushed up high with a tempting valley of cleavage. The bottoms were Brazilian cut with little beaded ties that could be pulled free easily.

She was used to being seen as beautiful. Being seen as her Master’s possession, inciting his desire with her every move made her slow down, take more time with it. She was still enjoying a dreamlike state of post-arousal, but the more he stared at her like a wolf wanting to devour, the more that was turning in a present tense direction. Vampires were known to be insatiable. She’d never been happier about that trait.

§

He was going to die of a hard on. Garron imagined Theodosius writing that one up for the mainland authorities. He’d probably give up on it and just pay them off, saying that Garron had died at the hand of a homicidal maniac yet to be apprehended. Easier that way.

He leaned against his work table, fueling his frustration with the view as she stepped into the bottoms, re-tied those little strings and fitted the top around her luscious tits, making his mouth dry at how she reached in and adjusted them, sexy as hell. She started to twist her braid into a knot, but he shook his head.

“Take out the braid and leave it down. I want to see it look like mermaid hair, all silky while you’re swimming.”

She slid the band off the end that he’d twisted there, and began to unravel the thick strands. He stayed where he was, watching, letting her see his pleasure at merely watching her perform the task. The way she combed her fingers through it, freeing it to rest on her shoulders, was almost as enjoyable as doing it himself, savoring the feel of it, the way her eyes darkened when he pulled on her scalp.

“Vampires don’t swim you know,” she said. “We’re too dense.”

“Wading is fine. I’m not going to ask you to compete in freestyle. Though seeing you do the backstroke would be every man’s wet dream.”

The teasing was putting her feet back under her, restoring her fire. She tossed her hair back. “I’m not here to be on display to others.”

“No? So you had no interest in checking out the 24/7 area?”