The Maestro's Butterfly (15 page)

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Miranda’s stomach tightened as she realized she was growing wet.

“Did you think you were special?” he asked. “He’d trade you to me for an old violin if I had one he liked.”

Though she knew they shouldn’t, his words stung. She tried to check Claudio’s expression, but Jack placed his index and middle finger against the side of her chin and made her turn his way again. He raised his eyebrows in an earnest expression. “To answer your question, I’ve been an American longer than you have,, toots.”

He spoke around his fangs, which were now fully extended. Her heart hammered against her breastbone. She bowed her head and stared into her glass, trying to become absorbed in the image of the watery amber liquid. Jack took it away and set it on the table. Then he leaned in and began to massage the back of her neck.

“I would really like to try this one out, brother. Just in case I don’t get the opportunity again.”

Miranda shivered, and wondered what was going to happen to her. Again, she tried to look at Claudio, but Jack increased the pressure on the back of her neck. “Ah-ah,” he admonished. “Just because you’re afraid doesn’t mean you don’t need to focus.”

Miranda flashed her eyes up at him. “Who said I was afraid?”

“Ooh, spunk,” he said. “That’s a good try, but I can hear your heart race like it was blasting through in stereo, babe. Not to mention, the smell of fear is all over you. I like it. Gives the meal tang. Doesn’t it, Claude-Michel? Give the meal a tang?”

“If you want to torture yourself, Victoire, be my guest,” Claudio said. “But fair is fair. How long have you had this one?”

The girl, who had been staring into space and playing with her straw, snapped her gaze up at him. Her eyes were an intriguing, mossy green.

Jealousy shot through Miranda’s body, hot and metallic.

“She’s been with me a couple years now,” Jack said. “Go to him, Katie. Show my brother what you can do with that pretty little mouth of yours.”

Miranda followed the girl with her eyes, trying not to notice how the little tee 108

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revealed a silver stud in her cute little navel, or the enticing flesh that peeked out of her panties. As she knelt between Claudio’s legs and reached to undo his zipper, Jack said,

“I think yours wants to watch.”

Without warning, he pulled Miranda up on his lap. She felt like a cat that had been picked up suddenly, all desperate limbs and startled mewling. She looked at Claudio, but Claudio was watching the other girl work her mouth along his erection. He had forgotten her.

“You don’t mind if I take a little blood, do you?” Jack asked.

“No,” Claudio said, without looking at them. “But only a little. I am planning to feed from her tomorrow.”

Miranda wanted to run to Claudio and push the other girl off of him, but the look of utter dominance with which he regarded the girl, and the sheer subservience she showed him as she teased the tip of his erection with her tongue, excited her.

Jack bounced Miranda on his knee and pressed his large nose into her hair.

“This one smells so good.”

She opened her mouth and gasped loudly. Between seeing Claudio getting a blowjob from some strange and beautiful young girl and being imprisoned on his brother’s lap, Miranda feared she would pass out from overstimulation. Jack pulled the hem of her dress up over her knees and slid his hand beneath the fabric to run his fingers along the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh. His other hand grasped her waist.

“Victoire—” Claudio breathed. “Tell me, what if this little one displeases you?”

Jack paused and turned to him. “What do you mean? If she screws up, she gets the belt. She knows that. Why? Is she not doing something right?”

The girl’s shoulders drooped, but her rhythm never faltered.

“She is doing a wonderful job,” Claudio said. “I was only entertaining myself with thoughts of how she must look bent over a table with a bare bottom. I can see from the look on her face she does not have to imagine it.”

“What about this one?” Jack asked, leaning back to look into Miranda’s 108

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face. She forced herself to meet his eyes, and noticed they were softer in shape than Claudio’s— puppy-dog eyes. But this was deceptive, she knew, because the expression could be just as intense.

At the moment, they glittered playfully.

“Just this afternoon.” Claudio gasped. “Ah my dear, you are very good for one so young.”

“Oh yeah?” Jack asked Miranda. “What happened to you just this afternoon?

Hmm?”

“I—” She swallowed and looked at Claudio, who had closed his eyes.

“Don’t look at him. Look at me,” Jack said. “What happened to you?”

“I—he spanked me.”

“For fun or for real?”

“I—” Miranda’s cheeks went hot when she realized she couldn’t answer.

Jack laughed and pulled her tightly against him, rocking her and kissing the top of her head. “You don’t even know. You
are
green, aren’t you?”

“For fun, I think.”

He kissed her earlobe and whispered, “Do you know when you’ve been fucked for real?”

Trepidation entwined with desire made Miranda tuck her hips and move against Jack’s thighs.

“I think you do,” he said. “I’m going to find out for sure, though, right after my little snack.”

Jack moved more quickly than she could comprehend, and had her on her back before she could respond. She drew in a breath and moved her arms back and forth as though someone had thrown icy water on her. He positioned himself over her and reached under her dress to pull off her panties roughly, never taking his eyes from hers.

He wasn’t smiling anymore.

She studied his long, angular features for clues about how he was going to take 110

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her. He stared her down, dominating her with his dark green eyes. Still watching her, he stood and began removing his jacket. “Take off your dress,” he said. “I want to see your body.”

Because she had already grown accustomed to Claudio’s flowery language, the brusque command startled her, but she sat up and pulled the dress over her head, then tried to fold it neatly. Jack, whose unbuttoned shirt revealed a lithe, well-sculpted torso, bent over to take the dress and toss it on the floor.

“Lie back,” he commanded.

She glanced in Claudio’s direction, but he seemed more interested in what Jack’s girl was doing with her tongue, so she obeyed Jack’s command. Jack lifted a corner of his mouth in the tiniest of smiles.

“Good girl,” he said, sliding out of his suspenders and removing his shirt to reveal a sculpted, hairless body. The sight of his bare chest and fully-extended fangs made her feel lightheaded. It was so easy to forget what he and Claudio were.
Nobody
knows I’m here,
she thought.

When Jack’s long fingers went to the button of his slacks, she imagined what he would look like removing a belt. He had already said he used one on Katie sometimes.

Miranda shivered, and stared up at him, wishing she were strong enough not to want to please him, wondering what it felt like to be punished by him.

Finally, he stood nude by the couch. He looked down at her unselfconsciously as she waited. “Open your legs,” he said, his voice deep with desire.

She kept her eyes on him and did as she was told, letting her gaze drift to the dark nest of hair at his crotch, and the impressive erection there. Miranda tried to think about how attractive he had suddenly become to her, tried to admire the little curl that still fell over his forehead, but couldn’t stop trembling. She remembered her first night with Claudio, and listened to him groan with pleasure across the room, but could not take her eyes off the long, angular face of the man who now approached her like a hungry panther.

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She could smell him, slightly sweaty from the spotlights. She swooned. It was all she could do not to scramble off the couch and hide. The intensity of his presence was almost too much to bear as he positioned himself between her legs. Miranda bent her knees obligingly.

“What is it about my brother that you like, hmm?” he asked while rubbing the head of his cock against her opening, spreading the slick pre-come all over her. Miranda wasn’t prepared for a question like that, or for any question.

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do. But I can tell you. You like him because he takes what he wants.

He doesn’t ask. He just takes.” With that, Jack slid his engorged member into her painfully. It made her catch her breath. “Did that hurt?” Jack asked, keeping his torso raised. “Gets your attention, doesn’t it? Because that’s the kind of girl you are.”

As Jack rested inside of her, the pain lessened. He regarded her curiously before settling his body on top of her, pressing his stomach against her and rocking his hips as the other girl made slurping sounds on Claudio’s cock.

He lowered his head to her ear and whispered. “Do you know what life with vampires is like? What life with my brother would be like? You’d be part of a large harem. Do you want that?”

The question confused her. “Why are you talking to me like this?”

“I’m just talking. But it’s true. One day you’re going to really piss him off and then you’re going to see what real punishment is like. It may seem like fun and games now, but believe me, it won’t be fun in the long run.”

She whimpered and grasped his arms as he drove deep into her.

“Maybe you want to be punished. That’s it, isn’t it? I’ll bet you’d like it if I took you into the bedroom and used a belt on you right now.”

Miranda panted and worked her hips against him, her whole body pricking with chills. “You wouldn’t,” she said.

“I would. If you were mine I would.”

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Before she could say anything else, he claimed her mouth with his, penetrating her with his dancing tongue. She lifted her chin and returned the kiss, careful to avoid the tips of his fangs, reaching into his curls with her fingers and pulling his head toward her. Because he wasn’t Claudio, and because she felt reasonably sure that Claudio wouldn’t let him punish her, she felt bold.

“How?” she whispered into his ear.

“Maybe I’ll show you sometime,” he said, and nuzzled her neck. “Oh God, you smell so good.” He kissed and tasted her skin, found her pulse with the tip of his tongue.

All at once, Miranda remembered what he was and lost her nerve. She had been bitten only one time before, and hadn’t known it was coming then. “Wait,” she breathed.

“Shhh,,” he said, and probed her neck with his tongue, found the spot. Slowly, relentlessly, he slid his teeth into her flesh. The pain felt hard. It seemed to ooze from her.

She whimpered and struggled briefly, making his thrusts all the more forceful.

He found her wrists with his hands and pinned them to the couch.

“It hurts,” she mewled.

He moaned into her neck and moved his body against hers. She opened her mouth and let her eyes roll back as the spot began to tingle.

“Jack, please..” She brought her hands to his shoulders and pushed. “Really—”

But he was immovable. She closed her eyes tight as he took what he wanted.

Finally, the pain seemed to reverse direction and he raised his head, licked his lips and regarded her with a little smile. “I wouldn’t mind doing that every day,” he said, circling his hips, making her gasp. “What’s he feeding you?”

She went limp against him for a moment, just from the sheer intensity of it all.

Then his hips teased a rhythm from her again. He watched her face with a lazy smile, and she could tell he was reading her. He knew pleasure was building between her legs 112

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and in the hot pit of her stomach, even if she’d tried to hide it. A normal man wouldn’t have known. But he knew, and he tested her response to the movement of his hips and the depth of his thrusts until her body was no longer her own.

The orgasm was so strong, she felt as though she were dying. And she wouldn’t have cared if she had.

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What happened on the night of the first dress rehearsal changed everything.

Three weeks after Miranda’s arrival at le Chateau du Fresne, Claudio took her to the theatre. After her experience with Jack, she had felt strangely calm. She assumed she would know what to do at the end of thirty days. There were only a few days left, so she decided to enjoy herself until then, giving herself to Claudio, Seth and Adam with abandon.

At the old theatre, she watched as Claudio roamed the stage and auditorium, observing his performers from every angle, criticizing and encouraging. He sparkled under the lights, in white suit, silvered cape and glittering mask. The owlish thing covered his eyes and part of his nose, leaving his jaw and mouth bare. One moment, he pressed his lips together in agitation; the next, he took delight in the look of uneasy concentration on Brent’s face as Seth climbed into the rigging with eerie agility. He had not yet changed from his T-shirt and blue jeans into his tuxedo.

Claudio caught Miranda’s eye and gave her a deep bow and a wink. She returned his smile, and felt happy.

He returned to the stage during the overture. When Chloe missed her cue, he held up his hand for the others to stop. “What is this, eh? Last week it was perfect—and now?” Claudio ripped off his mask. “This is going too slowly. I want everyone here.”

He paced while his musicians and some of the feeders drifted in from backstage. He looked over them.

“I don’t see Maria and Autumn. Where are they?”

Brent glanced around and cleared his throat. “Last time I saw them, sir, they were kind of goofing around. They like to check out the hallways downstairs when nothing’s going on.”

“I thought you were using them to help you, hmm? Keeping an eye on them?”

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“I didn’t need anything,” Brent said. “I thought it would be all right if they went off and found something else to do. I’ll go find them—”

“No,” Claudio said, taking off his mask and waving it in the air. “I’ll go. Work without me until I return.” He stalked across the stage. Miranda could hear his footsteps even after she could no longer see him.