Elusive Hero: Invitation to Eden (Vampire Queen Series Book 12) (28 page)

He knew how to deal with that, too. That cagey bastard Vardalos. God bless his dark, mysterious soul. He’d known Garron needed a purpose as demanding and meaningful as the battlefield he’d left behind. She was it.

Ever since he’d nearly lost his life, hearing and sight, he’d had to fight his way back. During the endless torturous rehab sessions he thought might be the way to go for CIA interrogations instead of waterboarding or fingernail pulling, during the adapting to different ways of seeing and hearing, he’d tried to find himself again. Standing inside her soul, her standing inside his, was the reward. There was no need to strain to hear, to see, to feel. It was all here, within her. There was more waiting for him in the silence and the darkness of her soul than in every voice and sight in the whole wide, blessed world.

Thank you, my lady.

Did any vampire allow his or her servant at least one delicious breath like this, this deep inside their Master or Mistress? He doubted it. From what she’d implied, it was a one-way thing, the door to the vampire’s mind forever locked, while the servant’s mind could be plumbed to the soul if the vampire so desired.

Based on what he knew she needed from him, it made the thought he sent to her all the more critical.

This is our contract, my lady, the only non-negotiable condition for me being your Master. That you never close me out of your heart, soul and mind. Not now, not ever. Everything else we figure out. Day by day, moment by moment.

§

It was entirely possible for a woman’s heart to be sliced in half. Kaela felt all he was feeling, even as she experienced her own reaction to seeing who Garron Rand was to the depths of his soul. She’d never had that pleasure with a servant, but she’d certainly been told about it. No words could describe it. He was entirely hers. She could crush that soul in an instant, destroy his mind and heart with the power she had in the third mark binding. Yet her mind kept returning to his words.
Make me your Master in all ways… It’s not about physical strength…

In the end, it would be about physical strength, though. It would be about what happened after she left this island. No matter what he thought, she couldn’t take him with her. She certainly couldn’t stay, no matter how addicted she was to what he could offer her. There were those who depended on her protection. The Vampire Council would come after her. Fran would be destroyed. Feeling like she’d betrayed the Council and her Mistress, the InhServ would commit suicide in her monastic cell back at Council headquarters, her shame and failure leaving her no other conceivable option. Vardalos and Garron would die as well, for knowing too much about vampires.
Garron would die
.

Her Master made a surprised noise as she pulled him even closer, not measuring her strength, only knowing she needed to hold him as tight to her as possible with arms and legs, him buried inside her, so she could dispel the image of him dead at the hands of the Council.

No. This was what she could have. If she could have Jared back for only ten days, knowing she would lose him again after that, she’d still do it. As horrifying as that pain would be—and it would probably be ten times as much, because she’d know what it felt like ahead of time—she wouldn’t even hesitate.

So she would accept this binding for the next few days, and afterward she would leave. There were things that had nothing to do with fear of the aftermath.

Did he hear all of that? He could have, and was choosing not to spoil this moment with disagreement. Or he could still be getting accustomed to the many intersecting lines of communication a mind-to-mind connection included, overt as well as passing thoughts, some directed, some random. Either way, she was glad for the focus to remain elsewhere. Suddenly, ten days felt like the shortest time ever.

Garron lifted and took them out of the lagoon, past the cobbled path around it to a patch of grass screened by ferns and more of those exotic red flowers. His eyes on hers, his mind inside hers, he removed the remainder of their clothes and put himself upon her again, slid back into her. Her legs twined over his hips, his muscular buttocks, and she reveled in his strength, his fierceness. When his lips met hers, she opened her mouth to him, making a soft plea as he explored her mouth with his tongue, with teeth. He stretched her arms out to her sides, made her leave them there, expecting her to obey his will. Every part of her, inside and out, inside him—because that was also where she was—capitulated.

He stroked inside her, watching her face, and then he pulled out, working his way down her body. His mouth teased her clit, played at her pussy until she was gasping and squirming, grabbing handfuls of grass to anchor herself. Turning her over, he pulled her up onto all fours and covered her. He slid back into her pussy, taking her over again as he pushed her to her elbows, dominating her physically, mentally. She had no need for thought or will beyond what he desired of her, and that thought alone was enough to bring her to climax, especially when she heard his voice, the thought echoed inside his mind.

“You’ll come now, my lady.”

She cried out despite the nearby bathers, because he just felt so damn good, stretching her, his thick cock filling her so deep. His hands closed over her breasts, cradling and gripping them hard as he reached his own climax with her, hips slamming against hers so she was driven against the ground, the heels of her hands creating furrows in the earth. He loved looking down at the slim line of her back, her buttocks quivering, her head down as she took all of him, as she gave all of herself to him, her cunt squeezing down on him as if it knew her Master’s cock was the only one that was supposed to be there, now or forever.

Best keep that in mind, my lady.

When he finished, he was breathing hard, running on the emotions as well as the physical exertions. Which took another spike when he coiled his fingers in the heavy links of the choker around her throat and twisted a loop in it. Her whole body rippled at the constriction, her pussy giving him such a strong contraction his balls spasmed with the pleasure of it, especially as a short scream wrenched from her throat, an aftershock as strong as a mini-climax.

He rocked her through it, pushing in short strokes as she made tiny sounds of delight. Not until he’d wrung every last sensation out of both of them did he finally ease that hold and drop down over her. Bracing his palm beside hers, he coiled his arm around her waist. “Good,” he murmured. “Good, my lady. You’ve served me well.”

She shuddered, her forehead to the ground, and her hand moved over, hooked his fingers, gripped hard. He put his lips on the back of her neck, over the heavy chain, and stayed there. He breathed against her, his chest rising against her back, keeping that connection as she pulled herself back together. But she couldn’t. She just kept shaking.

It seemed like every time he took her, she ended up back in this place. She didn’t know what was wrong.

Not a thing, my lady. You’ve just hungered for this so long, whenever the gateway opens, you go into the deep end. It’s a beautiful thing to see. A total gift for your Master.

Making another soothing noise, he pulled out of her, put on his swimsuit so quickly there was barely a breath before he was touching her again. Garron turned her over, scooped her up, and her arms went around his neck as if he was her last hope before falling off a cliff. “I’ve got you, my lady,” he whispered, staying there on the ground, holding and rocking her.

Please, I want to go back to the room. I want to be just with you. No one else watching.

§

The way she held onto him when she was like this made his heart tilt. While it was pretty private here, he understood her request, even if he hadn’t been so far into her head it was like having two different minds in his own, side by side. She always had to stay aware of her environment, of who might be in her space. She didn’t want to hold onto any of that.

He lifted her in his arms. Vampires
were
extremely dense, her weight more than he’d expected, but he could carry her as far as she needed. He’d do it or die trying.

He’d collected the pieces of her swimsuit, putting them in the cradle of her body. This lagoon was on the fringes of the adults-only part of the island, so close to the BDSM public play area that nudity and sex play were tolerated. A guy carrying a naked female through it wouldn’t cause any problems. Nevertheless, he was glad not to meet anyone along his way and he stuck to the darker, unlit paths, well familiar with them. He took the tunnel back to her suite and, once safely inside, he didn’t turn on any lights. With bad vision, he was used to navigating more by shape and shadow, so that wasn’t unusual, but it wasn’t until he was halfway across the room that he realized he hadn’t used the lights for a wholly different reason.

He could see in the dark. Not fully, but like the grey light of dawn. Yet the room was fully dark. Was it his imagination, or did his vision seem sharper?

He pushed that away. It didn’t matter now. She was his full focus. This time he’d use a shower to ground and relax her. Going into the bathroom, he put her down on the commode and turned on the shower jets. Making sure of the temperature was a matter of lifting her hand, holding it cradled in his, and putting it under the spray. He felt it register, felt her desire that it be warmer, and accommodated. She was floating again, but basics like physical comforts seemed to be handled by a different department of the mind. He was bemused that he received that information not exactly in words, but in a shared satisfaction with the temperature. Fucking amazing. He could anticipate her every need not only by the instincts that had always served him well, but through the mind-to-mind connection.

Dropping his swim trunks, he got her to her feet. “Here you go, baby. I’ve got you.”

Again her arms slid around him, held, while he moved them under the spray and closed them in. He combed his fingers through her hair, getting the chlorine off her. Despite all the excellent efforts to make the lagoon look like a real live lagoon, even down to the emerald green coloring, they still had to maintain it like a public pool to keep it clean. Particularly given what things humans did in it. Erotic, unforgettable things.

He smiled at that. She stood quietly in his arms, let herself be turned and rinsed. Every once in a while her eyes opened and she focused on him. He stayed hand in hand with her mind to be sure she wasn’t thinking, wasn’t chewing on any worries. That was where he wanted her, though he saw shadows he wished he could dispel. They were waiting just beyond the fringes to cover her, to turn this into something she needed to worry about. He’d hold that off as long as he could, be her umbrella against the rain. No one had ever taken care of her. Not like this.

Next on the list was drying all that long, silky red hair. He sat her down at the vanity, worked the towel over it, massaged her scalp. Picking up a brush, he began to comb it out. It was startling to see only himself in the mirror. He hadn’t been sure what about vampires was fact or fiction, but the lack of reflection part was true.

Even so, he could feel her gaze as he braided her hair, finding a hair band in the well-stocked cabinet which had everything from mousse to ribbons and curling irons. He suspected a vampire’s hair dried like silk, but since sleeping on wet hair didn’t feel good to anyone, he did the braid.

As he fixed the band to the tail, he realized he’d been doing everything in the dark. He snapped on the shower light. Though it only cast a dim light over the bathroom, it still made him stop, momentarily frozen. He wasn’t imagining it. He could see better. Not a hundred percent, but far better than before. Christ. And his hearing…he’d been listening to her inside her mind as well as to her voice, but now he realized he could hear the water dripping down the drain. He’d taken the hearing aids off for the visit to the pool and hadn’t put them back in, yet he could hear the plop, plop of those drops, something he might have had trouble detecting even with the hearing aids.

Her hand covered his and he looked down at her face. The shadows were there, but a poignant smile was in her luminous eyes as well. “I’m glad I could give you that, if only for a little while.”

She was worried it would affect him the way embracing her submission was affecting her. That it might be worse to do without it after having it again for such a short time.

“Who says it has to be a short time?”

Her gaze dropped and that tension returned to her shoulders. “Because that’s the way it has to be, Garron.”

Once again, they were back to her not wanting to talk about it, the walls of her mind closing. He tightened his hand on her shoulder, drew her attention back up to him. He shook his head. “You don’t hide from me, my lady. We talked about this.”

“Do you know with the third mark, a real one, I can destroy your soul, Garron?”

“No one can destroy someone’s soul, my lady. You can mangle it, shred it, but in time it knits itself back together. It may not be the same, but it survives everything, just like a cockroach.”

“You’re so sure. But that was based on what you knew about life before. Now that you’ve felt me in your soul, you know what I’m telling you is true.” Her gaze slid back down. “I’ve seen a vampire do it. Shred his servant’s soul until she was writhing on the ground as if she were trapped in Hell with no way out.”

“Why did he do that?”

“Because he could,” she said quietly. “Someone at the dinner table, another vampire, doubted it was possible. He was proving it could be done, for their amusement and to satisfy their curiosity. It was early on, before I was an overlord. I had no power, no way to intervene.”

He saw how that had damaged her, how a hundred different things over the years had chipped away at her humanity, her belief that anything was possible, that dreams were anything more than wistful fantasies that had to be put aside in favor of survival.

“There are many beautiful things about the vampire world,” she said, softening that. “Amazing things. It’s not all terrible. But the things that are terrible, are beyond nightmares.”