Elusive Hero

by Joey W. Hill

  He left her, moved to a closet. She heard racks sliding along a metal bar, clothes in the closet.

  "Did Bill and Waylon unpack my clothes?"

  "Hardly. These are a couple things I had put in here prior to your arrival, things I wanted to see you wear."

  The rack made a little ping as an item was removed from it. He was standing before her, dropping a garment of fragrant silk over her head. He guided her hands through spaghetti straps, settling in place what felt like a lacy nightgown that pooled at her hips, leaving her bare-assed on the bed but the fabric folded in her lap.

  As he removed the blindfold, he stroked her hair from her face, combing his fingers through it before he set the blindfold aside. She blinked, and though she'd not yet seen the bedroom, the first thing she wanted to see was him.

  Because she'd been denied sight for that short journey between the grotto and her suite, the structure of his face and dark brows, the jagged path of the scars over his face and throat, the scattering of them over his broad skull, seemed sharper, more vivid to her.

  "If you wore leathers and a patch, everyone would think you were an outlaw biker."

  "Maybe we'll get a chance to role play this week. I'll put that on the list."

  Even though she saw a flash of amusement in his gaze, that intensity she'd felt through his touch and the press of his body against hers was still there. He was just as aroused as she was. She was used to touching Fran whenever she wished, so she reached out to run her fingers along the ridge of his erection before she even thought about it. He caught her wrist, squeezed it in reproof. Folding her arms against her upper body, he used the tether to wrap both her wrists against her neck this time, securing the end of the leash to the collar. The position put the sides of her hands against the pulse points on either side of her throat.

  "Hands to yourself, my lady."

  The leash and collar were fragile things, so easily breakable. She fingered the links of the leash caught in the collar. The metal loops dug into her wrists, against her sternum, a titillating pain. When he disappeared into the living area without explanation, she let her gaze drift over the room, a weak effort to recall herself from the bright edge of lust, reclaim some of the self-control that being restrained made her want to abandon.

  A gold and green area rug with a Celtic style border lay on the floor, a thick cushion beneath her feet. There were more live screens showing island scenes, framed by curtains so they looked like windows. There was a wet bar, entertainment center, a desk and a couch, making this room as comfortable and versatile as the main sitting area.

  The bed was a replica antique, the mahogany headboard carved with an ornate scene of Victorian women playing with dogs and flowers. Something that would grace a titled lady's room in a different time. Jared had given her a little music box like that once. Not that exact scene, but that kind of thing. The bed was covered with a thick comforter, cupping her backside like a nest. The pillows looked equally inviting, for sleep as well as for other things. She imagined Garron piling up several up those pillows, putting her over them so he could do all manner of things. He'd hike up the pretty nightgown she was wearing, pull all that ivory lace and figure-molding fabric out of his way so he could do the type of things she usually fantasized about just before dawn.

  So her attempt to distract herself from the heat of her desires was failing. Obviously. Or maybe her mind had turned in that direction out of habit, because she could feel the dawn's approach, even down below the earth like this. Jet lag didn't apply to vampires. No matter where she was, she responded to the cycles of sun and moon. Particularly the sun. She was old enough to resist it, such that she could stay up almost close to midday before the sunlight lethargy that affected all vampires to some extent would impair her, but perhaps here, with Theodosius's magic water, it would be different. While a part of her was ready to recharge out of habit, another part was so overcharged she might explode if the right wire was touched.

  Garron returned with an electronic device that looked like a remote control for a television, only broader and heavier, the base shaped like an oblong egg. He set it on the nightstand and unwrapped the tether from her hands, unhooked it from the collar, but he kept his hand on her shoulder, his thumb sliding along that snug strap as his attention slid over her. This time she had the feeling he was evaluating her physical state as much as taking pleasure in her partial nudity. Her breasts were almost spilling out of the low cut lace bodice of the gown, the translucent fabric showing the smudge and shape of her nipples.

  "Do you need the bathroom, my lady?"

  "I know where to find it if I do." She arched a brow, nakedness notwithstanding. Some part of her did it just to see that crooked smile, the glint in his eyes. His pupils seemed to merge into the irises in a way that made them almost indistinguishable, except for occasional hints of a swirl of colors, like two paints when they were first mixed.

  "Your choice." He cocked his head. "In the tunnel, before you bit me, you said 'it will be over before it starts'. What did you mean by that?"

  She hadn't realized she'd said her thought out loud. She lifted a shoulder. "It's difficult to explain."

  "Difficult or uncomfortable?"

  She didn't have to answer him. But she met his eyes. "I had the feeling, if I went ahead and took your blood before you agreed..."

  "That this is like Jeopardy? One wrong answer and you're out? You only get to take home what you've already won?" His brow creased. "Actually, I'm not sure if that's Jeopardy. Some of my co-workers watch game shows in the break room."

  "There's a break room on Eden?"

  "Wherever there are employees, there's a break room." He took a seat next to her on the bed, propping his arm behind her. Because the back of the gown scooped down just above the dimples of her ass, his biceps pressed into her bare back. He smoothed his other hand down her thigh. First using the palm, then one finger, taking a pass over her knee. Sliding back up her thigh, he sent a frisson of sensation up both legs, between them. Then he retraced his path along that seam toward her knees once more. Still only using one finger.

  "Open your legs, Kaela."

  She did, albeit slowly. Yet he didn't dip lower or take advantage of the position, which just made the throbbing want between her legs resume its insistent beat.

  "When you're sitting with a Master, you stay open to him. So he can play with your cunt if he wants. You sit up straight..." He adjusted that muscled arm behind her so she did straighten, lifting her chest as part of the movement. His gaze slid over her approvingly. "So he can see your breasts, high and proud, the nipples stiff, begging for his attention."

  This was the type of thing she'd seen new servants have to learn, though in more extreme conditions. Submissive 101 for servants was throwing them into an orgy populated by sadists and seeing how they did. She thought she preferred Garron's way, even if there was an element of sensual torment that might make her as insane as the other method.

  "If you had taken my blood before I agreed, it would only mean you'd earned a punishment. And that I need to figure out a different way to help you understand what it is you're really seeking." He brushed his thumb over her lips, her cheek bone. The constant touching was a marking, a way of getting her used to the fact that he would touch her how he wanted, when he wanted. She understood that, even as she wondered at the way the knowledge made her want to tremble as much as the contact itself.

  "It's not pass-fail, Kaela. It's a journey, and Masters like bumps in the road. If you didn't give me reasons to punish you, it wouldn't be half as much fun."

  Now he was teasing her, but not in a soothe-the-little-girl's fears way. The set to his mouth, the lock of his gaze, showed her the sadist within, the one who would take pleasure in doling out a punishment, at kissing away the tears he'd caused. Garron wasn't a gentle Master, and he obviously looked forward to showing her that side of himself. The way her body became taut in response and that hunger rose anew said she could complement that crav
ing with her own desires.

  Before she could take that thought any farther, he rose. Sliding an arm around her waist, he brought her to her feet, letting the gown fall into place. He pulled down the covers and scooped her up as if she weighed nothing, placing her in the bed and tucking the covers around her.

  "You'll sleep awhile now. When you wake, I'll feed you again. There'll be some breakfast things. Theodosius said vampires can't eat much real food, but you enjoy sampling. We have several chefs here that could make dishes for angels." He picked up the tether again, snapping it on her collar and looping it over the post of the headboard. As she watched, bemused, he took a spool of thread from the nightstand, broke off a piece and ran it through two of the links before looping it to the post, tying it into a firm knot. "Lift your chin."

  She did, eying him, and he did something similar to the collar buckle, his fingertips brushing her sensitive throat before he tucked the small spool in his pocket. "You don't get up for anything without contacting me."

  So that was the reason for the bathroom question. If he thought she was going to call him if she needed to do that... "Why?"

  "Because while you're here, unless you decide you want something different from your Eden experience, you belong to me." He said the remarkable statement simply, putting a hip on the bed and bracing one hand on the other side of her. He twined his fingers in her hair. "Now's the time to get advance permission for reasons to leave the bed. If you want to lay them out for me, I'll consider them."

  He'd consider them? She was changing her mind about his lack of arrogance. The man had plenty, with extra to spare. "Even if I agreed to something like that," she said tightly, "how am I supposed to contact you for things not on the list? Telepathy?" Which brought second marking him back to mind, something she pushed away. The situation was outrageous enough.

  He picked up the item that looked like a remote. "This is the communicator. This button calls me. It won't go to a voice mail or any bullshit like that. I'll have it with me at all times."

  "What if you're taking a nap?"

  The lines around his eyes crinkled. "I'm a very light sleeper, my lady." He nodded to the headboard. "If you leave the bed, you'll break the thread on the tether, or the collar, depending on which you remove. I'll know you disobeyed me."

  "And this should bother me, why? I'm not asking permission to go to the bathroom. I'm an adult."

  "Yeah, you are. Capable of making your own choices." Leaning over her, he brushed a chaste kiss on her forehead. She thought about biting off a piece of his ear and spitting it at him. Instead she absorbed the heat of his body arched over her, the strength in the hand that touched her cheek. Rising, he strode to the doorway, but he paused there, looked back. "Kaela, I expect you to fight me, to fight yourself. Usually there's plenty of time to do that. But if you want to make the most of this, see where it can go in the time we have, you're going to have to give yourself permission to have this experience sooner than later. I think you've wanted something like this long enough to make that possible. Think about that as well."

  She had her hand coiled in the tether. With one pull, she could not only pop those threads, but the links themselves, probably gouging the finish of the post and taking out a piece of sheetrock with the recoil of the chain. She thought of doing it now, in front of him, and seeing what he'd do. He really couldn't do anything, could he?

  But he knew that. So did she. Who was she fighting? Him or herself?

  His eyes rested on her clenched hand, visible over the covers. "There's another option as well, my lady. If you prefer, I could turn you over to a professional Dom. It would be included in your resort price, and he could help you pursue your submissive fantasies in a more structured way, where you hold onto more control. You wouldn't be the first submissive who came here who changed your mind about what you really want."

  He was as calm as a professional Dom would be, no hint of his own feelings on the matter, which rankled her further. She met his dark eyes. "So it's your way or no way?"

  "As I said, my lady, you're not part of my job. I'm a Master personally interested in you as a submissive. So yeah, if you want my company, it's my way. But if you don't, no harm, no foul. There are several excellent Doms on staff I could recommend to you."

  "I don't want to know about any others. Not right now." The first statement was kneejerk, the second an amendment, leaving her options. Maybe this wasn't the best set up for her. That was the voice of controlled reason, the one that guided her life every damn day, down to the second.

  "Understood, my lady." No emotion betrayed itself in that resolute face, the relaxed stance of his powerful body. A body her own still hungered for. "Just keep in mind, imagined fantasy and desired reality often aren't an exact mirror. If you decide you want something different than this, just break those threads, contact me on the communicator and we'll see what else Eden can offer you. Otherwise, I'll see you in a few hours after you sleep."

  He shut off the light, leaving her in a luxurious nest of bedding, the gurgle of the waterfall her only company.

  SS

  Except for her own damn mind, which wasn't good company at all. Her irritation, her worries about his words, her damn spinning mind, kept her from sleeping. But at length, she was just lonely. Sad. Unsure of what to do. She kept twisting her fingers in the links of the tether, but then she turned on her side, slipped both her hands in a folded position on the pillow, put her cheek on them and drew her knees up, a position of self-comfort.

  The threads weren't about a grown woman having to ask to go to the bathroom. It had been a straightforward, powerful reminder that she was under his care. Alone, she could admit it had scared her, because she wanted that feeling to be real, so very much. It had been so long since she'd been under a Master's care, yet it was still the most vivid memory of her life.

  Jared. She remembered kneeling over his grave in the rain behind the ruins of their small farm, not caring that her dress was soaked, that she was cold. She was alone. What did any discomfort matter?

  A Confederate soldier, determined to fight for the South's autonomy from the Northern states, he'd been cut down in the first year of the War for Southern Independence. The history books called it the Civil War now and made it sound like the whole thing had been driven by the evils of slavery, because history books were always written by the victors. An important lesson for her, then and now.

  While he was off fighting, she'd run the farm. When a pack of Union deserters had come through, looting the area, she'd driven them off with the help of the neighbors. She'd forever won their admiration by taking down the mounted leader with Jared's axe, though she knew the wild swing that embedded the blade in his thigh had been desperate luck. She'd had no fighting skills to speak of then, just the fury of a woman defending her home.

  She and the others had dragged him from his horse and he'd bled to death. Despite his transgressions, she'd unsuccessfully tried to staunch the wound. Ten days later, Jared's body had come home in a pine box, on a wagon drawn by a mule and guided by a man who looked as old as she felt when she understood that box held her husband.

  At the time, she'd been too numb to realize it, but in the later weeks, months and years of the war, she realized what a mysterious miracle it had been to be able to put her husband to rest. Neither side was prepared for how to handle literally thousands of dead during wartime. A shallow or mass grave was the best fate for most, with far worse for others. The old man would not tell her who had paid him to bring Jared home. She learned that much, much later.

  Jared had been her first and only Master. Of course, they didn't use all the terms they used now. Yet when they made love, when he held her wrists to the bed, her desire would rise like the tides, and he'd noticed it. He was as much of a natural Master as she was a submissive, and they explored so many things together. Playful children, madly in love, so young. Even though he'd been twenty-eight, ten years older than her eighteen years when they married, she knew now how
young they both had been. She'd been twenty-two when he died, and she'd thought she'd break apart when she lost her Master, her lover, her husband, her heart.

  The grief had given her the strength of hate. She'd walked away from her past and put on the mask of a Union sympathizer. That, and her looks, had allowed her to feed information to the Confederacy, sway some battles. She'd taken greater risks as the war became more desperate, as she began to fear it would all be for naught. Maybe she'd wanted to be killed. Even so, she'd often wondered how it would have changed the war if she'd gotten that last missive through. But she'd been captured, and that failure had weighed on her heavily for a long time.

  Because she was a woman and beautiful, she had it better than most, turned into an unpaid camp whore, eventually serving the needs of the captain in charge of the prison camp, as well as his higher ups when they came for official visits.

  In the end, the resources of the industrial North triumphed. Decades later she would get past the hate, realizing that humans would forever kill one another on battlefields, the same way vampires would always fight for supremacy within their much smaller world.

  But there had to be something left over to make it meaningful. Something real. Her hand settled over the collar on her throat, stroking it.

  She realized she was staring at the communicator, sitting on the nightstand. Reaching out, Kaela closed her hand on it, brought it back into the covers with her. She lay there another half hour, wondering.

  Turning onto her other side, she fingered the communicator. She knew she was being fanciful, but it seemed to hold the warmth of his fingers. She held it to her cheek, moved it to the pulse in her throat, felt the beat against the metal, the faint hum of the device.

  Whatever his motives, Vardalos had gone to great lengths to craft an environment that assured her she could exercise her cravings, but Garron had picked up on her recurring despair that it just wasn't that easy. What if she couldn't surmount her defenses to take a single step closer to her desires?

  Garron had gotten past the first line. Maybe even the second. But there was still a long way to go. Merely saying--"Look, the stage is set. All you have to do is step onto it and start...acting."--wasn't enough. That was the problem, wasn't it? She could act all day long. She didn't know how to be her real self.