by Joey W. Hill
He took a breath, met her gaze. “Until you. You are extra ordinary, Ella."
He said it as two words, which made a puzzled frown pucker her brows, so he explained it to her.
"When I was in Vietnam, in the thick of things, I’d get this despair. It seemed our brutal souls and dull minds were beyond hope. Everything around me was fire, blood, hatred, violence. It coated me, hardened upon me. But every time I was close to losing my mind, I thought of ordinary things. A bowl of cereal in the morning, sitting on the back stoop of my house. Listening to the cicadas in the early morning, telling me it would be a hot day. But it was never that bad early in the morning, because we had an old oak that spread its arms over the house.
“When I was a kid, my friend, Newt, he'd be coming down the road, and when he got to me, he’d already be yammering about what we should do with our day. That was the kind of kid he was, always with a plan. Telling me how he'd found a quarter and maybe we could split a moon pie down at Myrtle's, the lady who ran the general store. My mother, she'd come out with a basket of laundry, fuss at us for blocking the stoop. 'Boys, don't you have nothing better to do than plant yourselves here? Get off with you now, before I find something for you to do.'”
A painful smile touched his lips, reflected in the faint quiver on Ella’s mouth.
“But she'd smile at me,” he said. “That distracted way mamas do when they have lots on their minds. It was…ordinary, Ella. Extra ordinary. In the middle of death, blood and despair, it was those extra ordinary moments I held to me like the greatest treasure that's ever been and ever was. If I lost those moments, I'd lose everything, everything that might make my existence mean something. When I'm with you, it returns me to those extra ordinary moments of life, reminds me they exist. So if I call you extra ordinary, I mean it, with all my heart.”
His little girl had a limitless amount of tears. He brushed each one away again, kissed the tracks, lingered on her lips. And he kept going. He knew every word would tear her open, but he also knew he couldn’t not tell her.
You will never tell yourself I didn’t choose you because you weren’t enough. It was because you were far more than I deserved. You were the answer to the emptiness inside me that I’ve wanted to fill for decades, but never thought I would. That’s how you made it in—I didn’t think someone like you existed.
She opened eagerly to the kiss he couldn’t hold back any longer. She showed him her desperation, her heart pounding with the ache of his truths. He gave her the same emotions in that kiss, bringing her up tight against him, holding her so close as he kissed her, kissed her into oblivion.
When he finally drew back, his body was heated by the need in hers. “Please,” she whispered. “Master.”
They were on a loading dock. While this place wasn’t Atlantis, it had to have at least one camera in the back. No way was she going to be some security guard’s masturbation fantasy. He hooked an arm around her waist. With a flash of vampire speed, he had them in the shadows between buildings. They’d think it was a blip on the screen.
She’d gasped as he’d done it. When he pressed her up against the wall, he saw her eyes shining through her tears, her lips curved in a smile. She could experience joy and laughter through pain. She had a limitless ability to gather to her what life had to offer. If he didn’t immerse himself in that in the next breath, by being inside her, he wouldn’t be able to bear it.
“Yes,” she whispered, telling him he’d given her that thought, and she’d answered, telling him not to wait.
He opened his jeans, hooked her underwear beneath the skirt in one finger and tore it. In the next second, he’d sheathed himself. She was ready for him, his desire and hers matching pace. She groaned as he hit the root, and he growled, holding her hard against the wall with one arm, his other palm slapped to the brick as he dug as deep as he could into her. “This’ll be a rough ride, babygirl. Your Master needs you.”
Her answer was to wrap her arms around his shoulders, put her face to his neck and bite him. Hard. She kept clamping down, as if she was trying to break skin. Nothing turned a vampire on more.
He thrust as if his life depended on it, savoring every second of her slick heat squeezing him, her short breaths and little groans as he shoved into her. The only restraint he showed was not using his full strength. He could be much rougher if she was his third mark. But that was resolved and done. He took what he could get, the same way she did.
He came within seconds, one of the most animal-like fucks he’d allowed himself in forever. He kept thrusting until she tightened around him and screamed her release, a strangled sound against his flesh he helped muffle by cupping the back of her skull. He kept his other arm tight around her waist and hips, pushing into her, working her until the end.
When at last she was done, he held her against the wall, his weight pinning her, his face against her disheveled hair. Her hands moved over his shoulders and neck, stroking, as their hearts pounded against one another, separated only by an inconsequential amount of flesh and bone.
“It’s going to be all right,” he promised her. “I’ll watch after you always.”
When everything was resolved at Atlantis—fuck, the damn punishment issue—he’d eventually take them back to who they were to one another before. He wouldn’t talk in her head anymore, but he would be there for her, if ever she needed him.
“You are one of the most remarkable women I’ve ever met,” he muttered. “I wish I could be with you. I wish I could make you my third mark. I just…can’t.”
Tell me once more you understand.
A long pause, as her arms stilled, but then tightened over him again, her lips brushing where she’d bitten him. Her mind cleared, that stillness of a stormy sky.
Yes, Master. I understand.
Ella gave it a lot of thought after he left her. He saw her safely home, but he didn’t stay. He told her he’d keep her posted on the Lord Richard matter, but not to worry about it. He’d handle it.
She didn’t know what that meant, but it definitely made her worry.
A couple minutes after he saw her safely into her little cottage, she heard his truck pull away. She’d changed into her nightshirt—Wolf’s shirt, which he’d never asked to have back—and sat in her bed, listening to the crickets and frogs, the sounds of the night, and wondering where he was.
When she finally lay down, she still didn’t sleep much. She drifted in and out. Finally, at a precious, sweet moment of that night, he entered her mind and let her know. He was driving. Just driving, miles and miles of back rural roads, out of Atlanta, all the way to Savannah. It reminded him of where he’d grown up, oak trees dripping with moss, fierce summers, fishing in creeks with his friend Newt. They’d once discovered a nest of baby copperheads Wolf had thought were worms, which Newt had thought was terribly funny. After they were far away from the venomous snakes.
She smiled at that, and he told her a couple more stories about his friend, who she also learned had died in Vietnam. He had a lot of pain over that, too. She realized he was very alone, her Master. He had plenty of people around him who cared for him, but she thought he’d moored himself on a deserted island, within view of the mainland, but with no desire to ever rejoin the people there.
The bitch of it was, she did understand why he felt the way he did, and just how impossible it would be to change his mind. Only he could do that. Unfortunately, that might happen well after her lifespan. That truth was a jagged ache in her heart, her stomach.
Eventually, her Master sat out on the beach at Tybee Island, watched the surf come and go. He didn’t talk much to her directly, but he kept letting her see his thoughts, of home, of the past. Then, near dawn, he told her he was going to find a place to go to ground and ordered her to go to sleep.
She was finally tired, so she slept deep and hard. She should have been bruised all to hell from the rough fucking against the brick wall, and she did wake up sore, but nowhere as much as she’d expected. That second mar
k was good stuff.
She went to her waitress job, still thinking, only this time about other things. From his thoughts, she knew Wolf planned to stay in Savannah at least another day. He said he was going to return to Club Atlantis in twenty-four hours and offer Lord Richard his decision about “her punishment.” That worked because Richard was staying in Atlanta for the week to visit other vampires in his territory. He’d be coming back to Atlantis two nights hence to enjoy the entertainments once more, before returning to his home base in Alabama.
As night closed in, she waited to see if Wolf would talk to her, or she’d feel that sense of him in her mind. She didn’t. That was when she came to a decision.
She was going to do the unthinkable. She was going to handle something, but definitely not the way Wolf wanted it handled.
She wasn’t doing it impulsively, however. She had her reasons, and if he gave her the chance to tell them, she would. But first she was proceeding the way her heart dictated. She headed for Club Atlantis.
Sometimes fate lined things up so well she knew she had to be on the right track. Or it made it easier for her to tell herself that.
She found Allan in the small conference room with Fort, Anwyn and Saturnia. Gideon wasn’t there. She considered that fortunate, since Gideon would strongly oppose what she was trying to do.
The only human present was Hollow, but he was reviewing info on a tablet while he sat at a corner table. Ella had done her best to draw him out since he’d arrived, but other than yes and no answers to most questions, he was so uncommunicative she would have believed he was mute. In every way, he projected a complete lack of interest in engaging with anyone.
From what she’d learned about Saturnia and Hollow’s CIA backgrounds, Ella thought Hollow might suffer from some kind of condition that severely detached him from the rest of the world. Except Saturnia.
Toward her, he had an entirely different body language. The way he positioned himself toward her, minute changes in his behavior when she moved or spoke, showed how hyperaware he was of his Mistress. Ella found it odd that Saturnia rarely touched him. Even when she leaned over his chair to look at what he was doing, she’d brace her hand on the table, or on the back of his chair. If he leaned back, where there’d be contact between her hand and his body, she’d remove it. It was like they were more co-workers than vampire and servant. But then Ella had a front row seat to only one vampire-servant relationship, Anwyn and Gideon. She expected everyone was different.
As Ella entered the meeting room, it was obvious how non-human their vampire visitors were. Three sets of vibrant and unnaturally steady eyes were focused on the door as she came into view. It made her moisten her lips, a nervous gesture. She acknowledged Anwyn with a nod, but went straight to Allan.
He was pushed back from the table, his jean-clad legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, his hand resting on the table. She could see the smooth curve of biceps stretching the sleeve of his T-shirt and pushed away the thought of how much strength he could wield with that vampire-power enhanced arm.
In her hours of thinking, she’d forced herself to acknowledge what consequences in the vampire world meant. This wasn’t going to be a Dom/sub session at Club Atlantis, where pain might happen, but within the structure of limits, safe words, under the watchful eye of a Dungeon Master. It would be an actual punitive sentence, like in the days of public whippings.
But her decision was made. No sense getting butterflies over it now. She knelt before Allan. “Forgive me, sir,” she said. “I’m here to submit to whatever punishment you and Lord Richard deem fair. I accept whatever you wish to do.”
A significant pause gripped those at the table. She expected some WTF looks were being exchanged over her bowed head. Maybe some more thoughtful deliberations. The chair creaked as Allan pulled in his feet. She tensed when he leaned forward, but he simply touched her head, her temple, a cue to look up and meet his steady gaze. He had strong features, a handsome male. Though she remembered the violence that flashed through his gaze when she’d struck him, she remembered how he’d restrained himself. If Gideon’s analysis of vampire strength was to be believed, Allan could have killed her with nothing more than a punch to the face.
Lonnie would have hit her for nothing more than irritating him. She would have carried bruises for a week if she’d hit him with a pool stick the way she had Allan.
“You can’t accept anything, little one,” Allan said, not unkindly. “Only your Master can, on your behalf.”
She swallowed. She could try lying to them, say Wolf had said it was okay for her to handle this in his absence, but that sounded so lame, even to her, she’d destroy any credibility she had unless she went for the whole truth.
“I…I want to prove to him that he can require this of me.” That I can be his full servant, capable of existing in his world, even if he can’t choose me. Because maybe, sometime in the future, he’ll change his mind.
“I know that’s not the way things are done. But I think…you’ve all been human. Perhaps, in this case, you’d understand and accept my offer, to help him. I don’t want him to be in trouble with Lord Richard. You all made that sound like it’s a really bad thing. Wolf is in Savannah, at least until tomorrow night and he doesn’t…he doesn’t really listen in, like I’m his servant.”
She stopped there. First, because it hurt a little bit to say that aloud. Second and more importantly, because years of embracing a submissive nature had taught her when to be silent. It was a Master or Mistress’s decision, not hers. Just as Allan had said. Third? Though she thought she was doing the right thing, acting so deceptively behind her Master’s back gave her a heavy feeling in her chest.
Fort at last spoke. “Your decision, boy,” he said gruffly. “He’ll do his level best to kill you if you do it.”
“Well, it’s been a few hours since that’s happened,” Allan responded dryly. “I was starting to feel he didn’t love me anymore.”
Saturnia chuckled. When Allan looked toward her, she shrugged. “You know Wolf. He’s a team player until he stumbles over a point of honor. I think it’s our only option, unless we want to wait for him to tell Richard what he told us. To go fuck himself, because nobody is touching her.”
“Then Richard will be forced to decide whether to kill him, or worse,” Fort added.
Ella bit back an automatic protest, hearing Wolf might come to harm. But if Wolf had said that, he meant it. She knew he did. Which meant being here was doubly the right thing to do.
Then she understood what Fort meant by “worse.” Richard likely wouldn’t kill a vampire over a human servant, but he would kill the human servant. Wolf wouldn’t be able to stop him. With all the other deaths on his heart, Wolf would be destroyed anyway.
You were the answer to the emptiness inside me that I’ve wanted to fill for decades, but never thought I would…
She’d thought about those words, over and over. Held them close to her heart, filled with an almost giddy joy, while she wept over what she wished could be, for both of them.
“You think Richard will be fine with Wolf not being present?” Saturnia asked. “Or himself?”
“He left Seanna here until his return,” Fort said. “We can run it through her. I’m guessing he doesn’t care all that much about being present. To him, it’s a minor matter. He’ll watch through her eyes. His priority is ensuring the punishment is severe enough and carried out.”
“What punishment is being considered?” Anwyn spoke at last. Ella could feel her employer’s eyes upon her, and heard the tension in Anwyn’s voice. She didn’t want to do anything to upset Anwyn, and did her best to look completely accepting, the calm submissive. Not one scared down to the bone to be doing this without her Master present.
She returned her gaze to Allan’s feet and imagined they were Wolf’s instead, in his thick tread shoes. He also had a pair of laced knee-high boots. One night he’d worn those with a pair of slick latex pants that fit his thighs and ass so mou
thwateringly well, it felt like a transgression to indulge even the quickest look without his permission.
“I’m thinking the standard punishment,” Allan said. “Nothing too creative. Which reinforces that it’s simply a procedural matter, handled and done, no more attention to it needed. She’s a second mark, and a relatively new one, and Richard already knows she was given that second mark under unusual circumstances.”
“On that note, he’ll likely want an update on her ownership status,” Saturnia pointed out.
Ownership status. Unsettling words in the world outside these walls. Even inside them, those involved knew, deep down, that ownership was a consensual thing that met mutual cravings. The way Saturnia said it, the way they treated it, the way Gideon had spoken of it…it was real. If she carried two marks from a vampire, she had to belong to someone.
Fort spoke gruffly. “Wolf has made it clear he’s not retaining her as his full servant. I believe you agreed to become her permanent Mistress.”
Though Ella’s head was still down, she knew that was directed toward Anwyn. “Yes,” Anwyn said quietly. “Which means technically my being present for the execution of the punishment should be sufficient. But it feels wrong to me. As I expect it does to you, too, Ella.”
“We do it any other way, Wolf is going to get himself in deep shit with Lord Richard,” Allan said.
“Which is his choice,” Anwyn responded. “Look at me, Ella.”
When Ella complied, the Mistress of Atlantis was as serious as she’d ever seen her. “You understand what you’re doing here is overriding your Master’s will.”
There were lines of tension around Anwyn’s mouth, in the set of her delicate chin and swanlike throat, that told Ella how stressful agreeing to this might be. Ella didn’t know how to fix that, other than to assure Anwyn that whatever happened had her full consent.
