by Kitty Wilder
With Lerexus moving inside her like a wild animal and John urging her on softly in her ear, it wasn’t long before she felt the tremors of ecstasy racking her once more, causing her knees to buckle and send her forward into her lover’s shoulder while the beast behind her clamped on and lifted her off her curled toes so he did not have to quit until his frustrated growling crescendoed into a sated howl alongside her moans. He stumbled awkwardly as he came inside her, then dropped her into John’s lap.
He welcomed her warmly into his arms, letting her clamber up into his embrace and bury her face into the crook of his neck. He cradled her delicately, letting her ruin his slacks with all the smeared fluids dribbling down her legs, and whispered low into her hair, “Good girl.”
Chapter 24
Lerexus straightened his robes with a repulsed growl, but whether it was meant for Lucy or himself was not clear. In an aggravated huff, he plucked a decorative wooden box from the cold mantle and pulled out a set of handcuffs. Their unusually brilliant gleam stole Lucy’s eye from the chest of her lover cradling her still. In a sudden and violent manner, Lerexus’ cruel hand ripped her from John’s lap and she heard the clicking of the cuffs locking in place around his wrists.
John hissed softly in controlled pain as a visible steam lifted off his stark flesh from the pure metal.
“Stay put while I fetch that lazy whore of a helper, Doris Pemberley. I needn’t remind you my guard is still standing watch attentively outside the room and should you still be tempted to hatch some sort of half-brained escape attempt, I will not hesitate to destroy you both on sight when I catch you,” Lerexus growled as he glared down at his old protégé. “You can no longer run from me, Wright. If you are the smart man everyone thinks you to be, you will accept this undeniable fact.”
For a moment, a look of surprise seemed to flash across his face, but then John’s brow fell low over his stormy eyes and his lips pressed together tightly as he held up his burning wrists. “It would be quite an achievement indeed to escape like this.”
The ancient vampire did not linger a moment longer, turning on his heel and exiting the sitting room in a blur with a sour grumble, “I need to clean this filth off of me.”
The room was left in a sudden silence and Lucy stood awkwardly, attempting to cover what parts of herself she could as she stood on gelatin legs, still nude and beginning to shiver from the ever-present chill in the air.
John leaned forward and tugged his jacket off the back of his chair and offered it to her.
Reluctantly, she accepted it. She shrugged it on quickly and then huddled up on the couch across from him. A thousand questions raced through her foggy mind as she realized this might be the only moment she’d ever get to ask them. How could he have let this happen? Why had he taken so long getting here? Was anything between them real? As she struggled to choose which to demand an answer to first, her mouth hurdled the one she couldn’t seem to shake to the background, “What the fuck was that?”
He looked confused. “I’m sorry, what was what?”
“That? Just now? He was inside me. You just sat there and let it happen! How could you just leave me at his mercy like that? You said you loved me.”
“You weren’t left at anyone’s mercy, perhaps but your own.”
“You should’ve stopped it.”
“What I just witnessed was no helpless wretch. I saw a young woman owning her own innate power and seizing control of the room. I saw a great vampire lord well older than the very country we sit in now brought to his knees, crushed by temptation, seduced into giving in to his baser desires. I saw an unassuming human girl just take advantage of one of the most prideful and powerful vampires to ever walk the earth. I count myself privileged to have witnessed such a sight. Why would I have stopped it?” He leaned back in his chair, obviously still in great discomfort from the silver sizzling around his clasped wrists, but pushing past it to focus on her. “Truly, I am in awe of you, Lucy Beckett. Very few survive this castle. I wasn’t sure what I would find when I got here. You are far stronger than perhaps any of us knew.”
Tears of defeat spilled down her cheeks.
I don’t feel strong.
“What took you so long?” she whimpered, hiding her face in her hands. “How could you leave me so long in this hell, with that monster?” She sobbed into her palms, exhaustion weakening her resolve.
His voice cracked as he leaned forward once more and said, “I need you to trust me, princess. Everything is going to be okay.”
“You’re just saying that!” she wept. “None of this is okay. Nothing can ever be okay after this!”
A sneer from Lerexus interrupted them. “Now it’s crying.”
Great. Back to being less than human.
“Johnathan,” he continued, “I believe you remember your old colleague.”
Doris swept proudly into the room in a long, romantic gown of black with a bodice cinched tightly about her small frame, emphasizing her in all the ways she desperately needed.
She finally found something that works on her. I guess Doris is the only one who found her happy ending.
She did a proud twirl and smiled wide enough for her sharp fangs to show. “Well, what do you think?” she asked with a condescending giggle, as if she had stolen it from him.
“I think this explains why you took our talk so well.”
She laughed again, cold, metallic. “Yes, I hadn’t any use for you any longer. You refused to give me what I wanted for so long, but I finally found someone willing to give it to me and he is more man than you can ever hope to be.”
Her prodding couldn’t rattle him in the slightest. In an even tone, he answered as though what he spoke was simply fact, “You’ve always been a parasite, Doris. It’s only fitting you should have fangs now.”
Her jaw clenched and her nostrils flared with anger.
Lerexus stepped in between them before the tension could escalate. “There,” he said to Doris, “you’ve had your little moment of revenge. Now, take this thing away and see to it that it is cleaned up. It’s revolting in this state.”
Lucy cringed under his words, shame seeping into her chest despite herself.
Doris gripped her upper arm with her long nails digging into her soft flesh and dragged her away from the two men, a sour grimace settled on her scarlet painted lips at the unsatisfactory vengeance she had been permitted.
She was shocked when Doris led her back up the castle’s winding stairwells to the master suite, positive that in Lerexus’ brief moment of defeat and rage, he’d have her sent back to the dungeon. Her guide unlocked the massive double doors and threw Lucy in carelessly, letting the girl tumble over the back of the couch in the sitting room and topple onto the cushions in front of it.
She closed her eyes, her head spinning from the shock of the sudden movement.
“Get up,” Doris commanded icily. “He wants you to bathe again. You shouldn’t even be on the furniture in the disgusting state you’re in. I heard what you did, little slut, getting your filth all over the master, making him unclean with your lust. I think he should be done with all this and just kill you. You don’t deserve his kindness.”
Lucy stared daggers at the woman, repulsed at the idea that any of the things he had done to her could be called kindness. Lerexus was vile, evil incarnate, and this slow death he was putting her through was a torture she wouldn’t wish on any save him, not even Doris.
“You’re a shameless whore, but there is nothing special about you, nothing exceptional or timeless or magical. You’re nothing but a pair of tits and apparently male vampires are no better than mortal men at using the head on their shoulders rather than the one between their legs.” She knocked a vase off a table in anger. “Stupid fucking men!” Her washed out green eyes stared deeply into the fire warming the massive hearth and whispered softly to herself, “It should be me.”
Doris Pemberley a vampire queen? That’s laughable.
What does being his queen e
ven mean?
She watched her old professor sneer at the flames and then storm out without so much as a single glance her way before slamming the heavy oak doors behind her.
Lucy shakily lifted herself up onto unstable legs which felt ready to give at any moment and took slow steps towards the private bath. She felt drunk, lightheaded and as if she were walking on air as she glided through the rooms, and so foggy that by the time she had finished washing herself and was climbing into the massive four poster bed, she wasn’t quite sure how she had even gotten there. Too fatigued to care, she fell back on the pillows and slipped into terrible nightmares of screaming blind in the black pit of Lerexus’ crypt.
Chapter 25
The following evening she was given a new dress to wear, black lace that floated down to her toes, though still sheer enough it could barely be considered clothing. Once she was dressed and her long hair combed out, Doris ushered her down to the dining hall.
Lucy was surprised to find the room well lit. Every candlestick in each holder of the gold encrusted sconces and hanging chandeliers over the long table flickered with soft light that bathed over Lerexus sitting regally in robes of deep burgundy at the end and John seated adjacent in one of his expensive suits. Both men found her immediately, the former trying to hide his wandering gaze and the latter looking her over worriedly.
“Sit,” Lerexus motioned towards the seat to his right. “Doris, pour us all a glass, yourself included.” He watched his lackey take the pitcher and move around the table to fill both of the men’s goblets obediently, though with a visible tension in her posture. “Squeezed fresh this evening.” He made a poor attempt at hiding his self-satisfied smirk, then waved for Doris to sit.
The woman glared daggers at the back of John’s head, clearly wishing to occupy his seat next to her master. Her eyes didn’t flick over to Lucy for even a second, not a single thought wasted on the absurd notion of sitting next to the girl. Reluctantly, she gracefully slid into the chair next to her old paramour.
Lerexus turned to Lucy then snapped his fingers and the vampire that had tracked mud through the foyer nights ago appeared with a steaming plate of food. With a humble nod to his master, he glided in and set the dish down in front of Lucy. “Thank you, Maurice.”
“Always a pleasure to serve, my lord,” he answered so genuinely even Lucy believed him, then exited the way he had come in.
A hot meal. The master suite. Is he the world’s worst kidnapper or is he just trying to confuse me?
She saw John’s fingers drumming on the tabletop as he watched her, still painfully clasped in the silver cuffs.
“Well,” Lerexus commented jovially, “isn’t this nice? All of us together at last. One big happy family.”
Doris snorted, John grimaced harder – if that was even possible, and Lucy ignored the asinine comment, glad to be eating something other than power bars or stale sandwiches.
“Is this what you wanted?” John asked as he continued to drum his fingers and eye his sire’s captive from across the table.
“It is very close, indeed. It is good to have you home, boy. You strayed far and for so long. And for what?” He waved his hand at Lucy. “This? In exchange for godhood?”
The vampire lord’s once-apprentice chuckled condescendingly, “You did not hold up so well to the temptation yourself.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” the master sneered with a hateful glare. “The only interest I have in your precious toy is to spoil it for you so you can at last lose interest and move on, just like all the other little girls you played these ridiculous games with, isn’t that right?”
John’s posture stiffened. “Have you not also left a string of lovers in your wake over the millennia of your long life?”
Lerexus laughed loudly and startled Lucy out of her haze. “True. The two seem to go hand in hand.”
“You will note, though, this time is different.” His luminescent gray gaze landed back on the girl to whom they referred.
Lucy started to feel a bit more lucid with a full belly and looked up in surprise to find all three vampires staring at her.
“I’ve seen a thousand like her,” Doris commented disinterestedly. “I don’t get what all the fuss is about. It would take a positively exceptional creature to be worthy of such a great and powerful vampire lord’s attention.” She flitted her lashes in her master’s direction, who barely took notice of the remark.
“She is an excellent student. Sharp. Obedient,” John commented.
“I disagree, old friend. There is fire in her, the ability to lead. Can you imagine what she could accomplish with the right group following her?”
“She is rebellious,” Doris corrected coldly, “manipulative, irreverent. She thinks she’s better than everyone.”
Lucy felt a small sense of outrage at the nasty accusations from the jealous woman but chose not to acknowledge them since it seemed the men hadn’t either. The discomfort did not leave her though at having a group of immortals telling her what she was.
“Perhaps what makes her so unique,” John continued, “is there is both in her.”
“You are not worthy of her, boy and you know it. You would have her kneel, make her weak, force her to follow for the rest of her short days. I am interested in seeing what she can do if she accesses that inner fire. She has already shown great promise. I think I will take her under my tutelage now. Consider yourself relieved.”
His fingers stilled and the room was quiet but for the soft sound of Lucy’s rhythmic breathing. John’s brow lowered and his lips pressed together tightly. “I will not,” he answered with a cool decisiveness. “Lerexus, you’ve had your fun. You got your way and I am here under your control once more. You even got to have your way with her. Now let it be done. Let her go.”
Lerexus’ mouth stretched into an ominous grin. “No.”
John’s nostrils flared, a new level of irritation and anger Lucy had never witnessed in him yet. She felt a guilty sense of relief that he was upset by the situation. He had thus far been so calm she had wondered if she had ever meant anything to him.
“She needs medical attention, you fool!” He raised his voice in outrage. “Look at the poor girl! Any paler and she’d be dead. Your greed has allowed you to drink too much from her.” His hand gripped the lip of the table and there was an audible crunch of wood as his fingertips depressed into the hard surface with his preternatural strength barely restrained despite the silver still burning his skin. “And these ridiculous dresses you’ve been putting her in. She’ll catch her death wandering around this frozen castle like that.” He turned to Lucy. “Are you cold, dear?”
She faltered, unsure what to answer. Even though she knew now what they had shared was real, she still couldn’t shake the anger from the fact everything that had happened was his fault.
If he really cared, it wouldn’t have taken him a week to get here. And aren’t I supposed to be rescued by now? Why am I still in this fucking castle if this is a rescue attempt?
Oh god. It isn’t. He’s not here to save me. He failed.
“Perhaps my appetite has been a little overzealous, but can you blame me? You’ve tasted her. She’s the sweetest of your collection yet.”
They continued to argue, but Lucy fell away into her thoughts, pushing the remainder of her food around with her fork as she watched it grow cold.
She could feel Doris’ icy glare on her the more heated the men debated over what should be done with her. She could hear John pleading for her release, but it was obvious Lerexus would not let her simply walk out. Even if he did, she wouldn’t get very far in her current state. She was weak, possibly already dying, and had no idea where she was. Then, above the cold stare across the table and the gravelly hum of John’s protests and debating, she felt another set of eyes.
She looked up and saw Lerexus’ violet gaze settled fixedly on her even as he indulged his once-protégé in their argument.
No one is going to save you. Stop waiting an
d save yourself.
Was Lerexus right about her? Was there a fire locked away somewhere deep in her? Could it be accessed? Did she even want to if it meant he was right about something?
She saw then that just as John had laid out his own games of submission, so had Lerexus. Whereas John’s games were meant to offer the opportunity of submission and teach her the art of surrender, his sire’s games seemed centered around force to either crush her into that submission, as Doris had obviously allowed herself to be, or to rise up and push back. Did he actually want her to fight back? Why?
Those pale eyes watched her intently, as if he could hear the private process of her thoughts, his very gaze leaving her feeling violated.
Forget what he wants and these stupid games. He’s tipped his cards and shown a soft spot for you. Take advantage of it.
“Enough,” Lerexus raised his hand and broke away from Lucy’s blue eyes. “You’ve spoken your piece. I will not let her go and you are indeed under my control. I suggest you spend this time in quiet meditation on your transgressions and what you need to change going forward if you are to rejoin the brood. I will not suffer a traitor in my ranks. Bear your punishment in silence like a good boy.”
It was odd watching the vampire lord talk down to John. The master of the castle did not look in appearance much older than Lucy, yet condescended to her old professor who had not been immortalized as a vampire until middle age.
“I trust the handcuffs will not be necessary moving forward?” he asked John who tightened his jaw, but nodded.
“Doris, escort him back to his quarters. I’m sure you two could do with a little catching up.”
The woman sneered in disgust as she looked over the man she had once worked beside. “Hardly.”
“Are you disobeying me?”
Her eyes widened. “No, my Lord,” she whispered in contrition. “Forgive me. I’d do anything for you.”
He nodded then motioned for her to lead John out. Once they were alone, his eyes settled back on Lucy. He rose from his seat, then extended his hand.
