One With the Night (31 page)

“Be sure to work it into the tip well,” she ordered. He thumbed the head, shuddering.

Suddenly she rose. She picked up the strap as he pulled at his cock, head bent in shame. She stood behind and to one side where she could both wield the strap and watch his efforts. “Spread your knees wider. You’re going to come as I beat you,” she said as the first stroke made the flesh across his loins jump. What? The heavy strap slapped across his buttocks, already bruised. He felt the control that both Elyta and Asharti always used to stop his ejaculations drain away. The strap struck his back and he groaned.

“Work yourself harder,” she commanded. The strap came down over his buttocks and snapped at the back of his balls. He bent over in pain. She walked over and pulled him upright by his hair. “No one told you to stop working yourself. Cover your stones with your left hand.” He cupped his hand around his balls to protect them from the strap and pulled at his cock. It was still stiff and thick, but that wasn’t natural. She was keeping him hard. No one could keep an erection through a beating. Unless they enjoyed it.

“Don’t forget the tip. More oil.” She kept up both the instructions and the strap. He hunched his back and clenched his jaw, jerking at his cock and rubbing the sensitive head. He was sweating with effort. His cock burned, the need having crossed over into pain. Again and again the strap slapped across his body, and still he tugged at his cock. The loft seemed to swirl. The grunting he heard was his own. She increased the speed of her blows, urging him to be rougher with himself. And then the fire in his balls shot out through his cock in a searing stream of semen. The blows stopped as he spurted into the hay, teeth clenched in a grimace, on and on with pent-up fluid.

When it was done, he bent over, chest heaving. He wanted to sob. Maybe he was sobbing, he wasn’t sure. The sounds he was making were dry and exhausted. He saw her lavender slippers come to stand at his head. The hem of her silken wrapper feathered his brow.

“I am pleased with you, slave. That will be the only way you are allowed to spill your seed in the future.” To his horror he felt himself rising again. She rolled him over. He lay there, naked and erect in the straw. She took several small gold rings, in various sizes, all thin and delicate, from a pocket in the skirt of her wrapper. They glinted ominously in the dim light from the lamps below them. “Do you know what these are?”

He shook his head, afraid to know.

“They are symbols of your submission,” she said, her voice deceptively sweet. She took a smaller ring and pulled it apart. A sharp point detached itself from a hole in the center of the other end. He blinked, frowning. She sidled up to him and put the other rings back in her pocket. “Lie still,” she commanded, “or I’ll tear you by mistake.” She held the ring open with one hand and pinched his left nipple with the other. She was going to pierce him? His impulse was to struggle away. But he resisted the urge. He had committed to submission, for Jane’s sake.

“I like to put them through the aureole,” she remarked. The sharp end pricked his flesh. “The nipple itself is too small on most men.” A stab of pain as she pushed it through made him tighten. She snapped the ring home and slid it round through the flesh. Then with a growl, she bent and sucked to get at the drops of blood. The bar of the metal through his flesh pulled against her lips. She sat back, licking her lips and smiling. “Very attractive,” she said. Then she turned her attention to the other nipple.

When she was finished and had sucked the blood away, she pulled out a larger ring not quite so delicately made. “Spread your thighs,” she ordered. “Now be very still.”

He swallowed. His mouth was dry.

She pinched a bit of the skin on his sac to one side, pierced it and slid the ring through. It hurt enough, but worse, it made him want to shiver, and he dared not. She didn’t pierce his stones, but slid the metal along under the skin and pushed the sharp end out the other side. When it was through, he let go his breath. Again she sat back, admiring. “Excellent. And it can be used to fasten you to a post, if your hands are tied behind your back, or a leash can be clipped to it.”

The images she painted robbed him even of the power to blink.

She tugged gently on the ring. “There will be some swelling for a while, but I’ll slide them through the flesh several times a day, and soon there’ll be no pain at all.”

“What do ye care if there’s pain?” he asked, his voice a hoarse croak.

She laughed. “You’re right. I don’t.” She fingered the bar under his nipple as she leaned forward and kissed him roughly.

He couldn’t bear this! Elyta was worse even than Asharti. And he was worse, too. He had held an erection through Asharti’s mistreatment, but he had never come to orgasm. Had Elyta forced him? He clung to that hope, because if she hadn’t then he had become all Asharti wanted him to be and more, long after she was dead and gone.

Her breasts moved the rings that pierced his nipples as she thrust her tongue into his mouth. He didn’t think he could endure more, either the humiliations themselves or his reaction to them. But he had to, for Jane’s sake. He imagined Elyta chaining him, naked and erect, to the hitching post outside the barn by the ring in his balls for all to see his submission. She could make him masturbate in front of everyone, and he wouldn’t be able to tell Jane that he wasn’t so twisted as to want this, or so deviant that he could come to orgasm while Elyta beat him.

He wasn’t, was he?

*   *   *

Jane stood back, hands on hips, as Flavio finished bolting the metal frame together. Packing crates were everywhere, their stuffing coming out like broken dolls. Glassware covered every surface in the kitchen. There were two new caldrons hanging from hooks in the grate of the great fireplace. Her father’s laboratory was rising from the ashes here in the kitchen.

She carted crates out the back door. The night air was clearly redolent of spring. It was what, mid-May? Almost. It would be dawn soon. Where was Kilkenny? She glanced up to the barn and saw that the lanterns still gleamed feebly. Had he been up there all this time?

She frowned. She’d just go see that he was well. She listened for movement as she got closer. Was that the animals rustling in the straw of their stalls? She walked through the great doors. One lamp had failed, making the barn dim. Faust was indeed restless in his stall but … on the beaten earth floor of the barn aisle was a heap of clothing; a kilt, a shirt, stockings …

The noises were coming from the loft. And she smelled cinnamon.

Damn her! Hadn’t she warned Elyta clearly enough? She didn’t take time to climb the ladder. She pulled the darkness around her, waited the one long moment for it to coalesce, and then popped into the loft above her head.

Kilkenny hung above a naked Elyta, who sprawled on a wrapper spread over the hay. He was on one elbow, plunging his cock inside her, his right hand holding a breast while he sucked it. Elyta was arched in ecstasy. Jane couldn’t make sense of a glint of gold in the darkness. What she could see was that his back and buttocks were both bruised and crisscrossed with welts.

“Stop it!” she shouted.

Kilkenny raised his head. This time there was no look of horror, only resignation.

Elyta laughed. “You do intrude where you’re not wanted, don’t you, Jane?”

“I’ll not have you compelling him, Elyta. You want the cure, don’t you?”

“I’m not compelling him. Ask him.” She turned to Kilkenny. “You may withdraw.”

Kilkenny hung his head and rolled off Elyta. To her shock, Jane saw that there were small gold rings right through his nipples, and … and a larger one through his scrotum. A tear across his breast bled. Elyta’s lips were red with his blood. Jane felt sick. This had to be compulsion.

“Very well,” she said, trying to control her anger. “You can answer truly.”

“Nae.” His eyes were flat, his expression dead.

“What was that?” Elyta asked sharply. “Am I compelling you to have sex with me?”

“Nae,” he answered more clearly. “Ye keep my erection up so I can last, but that’s all.”

“You can’t make me believe she lashed you, or … or put in those … rings with your permission,” Jane sputtered.

Elyta smiled, wrapping her robe around her. “He suggested the whips himself.”

Jane drew her brows together and looked at Kilkenny in disbelief.

“I let her do it.” He looked down and away as he said it.

“You know … they come to like submission, and he’s been trained by the best—an acolyte of mine, in fact.” Kilkenny flushed scarlet. “He comes to orgasm under the lash.”

Could that be true? Did he … did he want to be abused? She’d heard women in the brothels talk about clients who liked to be beaten during sex, but she’d thought … she’d thought those were weaselly old men, not young, handsome specimens like Kilkenny. “He doesn’t look very happy about it,” she said. But her voice was uncertain even in her own ears.

“What he’s not happy about is you seeing it. That is quite a different thing.”

Jane couldn’t believe what she was hearing, and yet …

“Go, Jane,” he said unevenly, his expression fierce. “Just go.”

She didn’t trust herself to draw the power, but scrambled down the ladder.

“Well,” she heard Elyta say as she ran to the barn doors. “You are not quite done, slave.”

Jane burst into the kitchen. Flavio was moving about in his room upstairs. Clara was trying to prepare food in between all the glinting glassware.

If Kilkenny wants to be abused, I’m the last woman in the world to deny him.
She paced the kitchen. When she looked up Clara was gazing at her steadfastly. The woman said nothing. Jane ran a hand over her hair. She must look a sight, disheveled, pacing about, distraught.

“Sit down,” Clara said. “I’ll get you some tea.”

Clara, ever practical. She took a handful of tea leaves and poured hot water from a caldron into a tea pot, over the leaves. Jane sat at the table now arched over with tubes and flasks and metal struts. They’d
have
to eat in the dining room now. Jane found herself thinking that she would miss the intimacy of dinners in the kitchen with Kilkenny. Why? There could be no more intimacy with Kilkenny if she knew he was sitting across from her yearning to have Elyta whip him. Just like with that woman who had made him vampire and sucked at his groin. He liked that treatment. He must. How boring her simple idea of lovemaking must have been to him!

It just didn’t
feel
right. Or true. Something was wrong.

If Kilkenny wanted to be abused, why had Elyta had to use compulsion on him before? The first time she’d interrupted them, when he was still a vampire, there had been no mistaking the fact that Elyta had to use her power to compel him. She’d had red eyes.

Clara brought a cup, and the kettle to the table. Her movements were deliberate. Jane stared as the tea swirled in the cup. Clara got a cup of her own and sat down at the other side of the corner. Their knees practically touched.

“Now, what is eating at you?” Clara asked calmly.

Jane thought about the last time she’d talked with Clara, or rather sobbed and shrieked at her father’s grave. Clara must think her a near lunatic. She got a grip on herself and tried to answer calmly. “Kilkenny. He says Elyta isn’t using compulsion on him. But whips and … and little rings pierced through his flesh and sex … She must be.” She clutched her cup. “But she didn’t have red eyes. Still, that kind of thing isn’t
normal
 … and I know there are different kinds of normal. But could he really…?” She had lost all sense of calm.

“What kind of compulsion did he mean?”

“What?”

“Well, he said she wasn’t using compulsion. Was it just the vampire compulsion he meant, or all compulsion?”

Jane’s mind sputtered, and then went to work at the double. Wise Clara. There were other kinds of compulsion, weren’t there, besides the kind that needed red eyes. But what did Elyta have that could compel Kilkenny? Jane raised her eyes from her cup to Clara, plain Clara, practical Clara. “Why do you stay with her?” she asked suddenly.

“Who says I stay with her?” Clara stirred her cup and sipped.

“Well … well, you’re here, aren’t you?”

Clara lowered her eyes. “I stay with Flavio, not Elyta.”

Jane felt her eyes widen. Clara? Practical Clara loved Flavio? And he must not know …

“At home, in Mirso Monastery, there is not so much … freedom. I came … I came out that I might know of the world outside again. To see if it had changed since I had been in Mirso.”

“How long were you at Mirso?” Jane held her breath.

“Four hundred years?” Clara considered. “Four hundred and thirty.”

“Oh.” And she came outside to see if love existed and to follow her lover.

“I felt compelled to leave Mirso. There was nothing for me there. Elyta was going on a mission with Flavio. Therefore, I chose to serve Elyta. Compulsion works in many ways.”

Jane stood. She couldn’t help herself. “But what could compel Mr. Kilkenny to submit to her … her torture? Especially as I think he has been subjected to that kind of treatment before. He has been … damaged by it, I think.” Could he have been damaged enough to want it? She turned on Clara. “Do you know about Mr. Kilkenny’s past?”

“I know what is said.”

“Tell me.” Good or bad, she had to know.

“He was made by Asharti, an acolyte of Elyta’s.”

“Who treated him the same.” She’d been right!

“Most likely. She made many vampires, some for an army to overthrow the Elders and rule the world of humans, some for more personal use. But she was stopped. And then the ones she made were hunted down and killed.”

“Except for Mr. Kilkenny…” But the Elders still wanted him dead. Elyta said so.

“Stephan Sincai, Flavio’s ward, was sent to hunt him down. Flavio says Stephan spared Kilkenny. Flavio thinks Stephan is a good man. Perhaps Stephan did not dispatch Kilkenny because he too is a good man.”

“But then why would he serve Elyta in this twisted way?” Jane cried.

“I can think of several reasons,” Clara said, in her calm way. “Sometimes we bargain with the devil as the lesser of two evils.”