by Joey W. Hill
Which was the exact moment she knew the “substance” Seanna had hinted at. Whatever was in semen counteracted what had been in the lotion, bringing almost instant, blissful, slick coolness to her cunt.
Now she did weep, with the utter relief and wonder of it. A lotion designed to give pain, a pain that could be taken away by her Master’s release. A diabolical thing, designed by someone who understood the dark beauty of what could lie between a Dom and sub.
“That’s my baby,” he said, with fierce approval in his gaze.
Just those few words, and that one place, filled by him and no longer throbbing and in agony, helped everything else feel better. She gazed at him, mindless, trusting him with all of herself.
He unhooked her cuffs, so her hands dropped around his neck. She managed to curl her fingers, hold onto his shoulders. She’d satisfied Lord Richard’s requirements, but that was not her concern. Her Master was in charge of that.
Correct. Keep that in mind, and next time you think you should take a decision out of my hands, perhaps the punishment won’t be as severe.
I couldn’t let you suffer.
I know, sweet girl. Sshhh. Just relax. I’m handling everything right now.
Wolf lifted her so she could wrap her limbs around him, arms and legs, rest her head on his shoulder. He folded his arms around her, holding her. Murmured, "It's all right. I’m going to make everything all right."
She squeezed her eyes shut. Listening to him in the dark, everything had a better chance of being believed. It would be so nice if what he said were true.
"For tonight, it is."
Gideon stood in the control room with Anwyn. He hadn’t been able to watch most of it. Daegan had arrived right before it started, which at some point in the far future Gideon might consider good timing, because Gideon had tried to go through him to get out the door. He wouldn’t let Anwyn watch it alone, but she’d watched it with calm stoicism while Gideon basically wanted to kill the whole roomful of people tormenting Ella.
Ultimately, he just couldn’t look. He stood to the side, staring at the wall, focused only on Anwyn’s state of mind while she didn’t give him a window in her head to watch. Until she put her hand on his arm. You will want to see this part, Gideon.
In the monitor, he saw Wolf holding Ella, wrapped around him like a little kid, while he sat down in the room’s single plastic chair and rocked her back and forth, slow, gentle movements. He kept his thighs spread so her tender backside wasn’t coming in contact with anything. His jeans and upper body were wet where he’d gotten up close and personal to care for her.
He was kissing her, humming. Gideon picked it up in his head, the words of the .38 Special song playing in the slow-mo way Wolf was uttering it, making it into a lullaby.
…so caught up in you, little girl. You're the one that's got me down on my knees…
Daegan stood in the shadows by the door. Things had gotten pretty ugly between them for a few minutes, but Daegan had kept him in this room without breaking any limbs. Gideon might owe him a grudging apology for some of the things he’d called him. Maybe.
“Gideon. Look at her, resting in her Master’s arms, and somehow it makes sense,” Anwyn said softly. “Though I defy anyone to explain it.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’m not seeing it.”
“Aren’t you?” She cocked her head. “Right before the punishment you endured before Council, I told you something. Do you remember what you thought back at me?”
He did, but he didn’t care for where this was going. “That was different.”
“Gideon,” Anwyn said softly. She reached toward his face and he didn’t deny her the contact, though he gripped her wrist, tightened on it. “I require an answer to my question. Do you remember what we said to one another?”
This isn’t what it’s about, Gideon, she’d said. Not what it’s supposed to be.
Then make it what it’s supposed to be, he’d responded. I don’t fear any pain at your hands, Anwyn. A weird part of me… Well, you already know, right?
“Before you looked away,” she nodded at the monitor, “You saw the transformation in her expression, her body language, when she knew Wolf would be wielding the cane, not Allan.”
Anwyn gave Gideon a knowing look. “In the right circumstances, you will crave the most brutal punishments at my hands, to prove your worth to me, to prove your strength can serve me through anything. That you can be a servant I can always depend upon.”
She turned her attention to Wolf and Ella again. “Now, if only you had an equal level of dedication toward keeping your chip crumbs off my couch…”
He couldn’t let the humor in. Not yet, while Ella was a bloody mess, but as he saw her arms tighten over Wolf, and the gentle way he was holding her, pressing his mouth to her temple, disgust and anger gave way to other things.
She is all right, vampire hunter. Daegan’s voice. She is with her Master, and he will be all she needs.
At least for right now, Gideon thought. He had the security of knowing the two vampires in this room were committed to him. Ella didn’t have that. Wolf wasn’t going to give her that.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Anwyn said quietly. “But Ella will have us. Always. No matter what.”
Damn straight.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Wolf took her to one of the recovery rooms. Aftercare often happened on the main floor, in cozy little nooks which provided semi-privacy but allowed a Dom social time with other Doms while caring for their subs. But for the extreme scenes or a Dom who wanted to dedicate his full attention to the aftercare, there were the recovery rooms.
The one he chose was one of Ella’s favorites. The scene projected onto one wall, covering it from ceiling to floor, made it look as if the viewer was standing on a beach. The ocean spread before them, complete with the rushing sound of waves coming in and out. A pair of beach loungers were in the room, positioned under a cabana, canopied with gauzy fabric. The fabric drifted in the air, thanks to a manufactured breeze that had that humid, salt smell to it like the ocean did.
A hot tub was also provided, nested in a rock façade. It gave the beach goers the impression they’d found a hot spring, hidden in a cave near the surf. Wolf turned the jets on low churn. He took off his clothes and got in with her, turning her so she was once again facing him, folded into his arms, her thighs spread over his lap, all of her limp, and yet quivering from the aftermath and pain. He dropped something into the water, something that made it slippery and soft, and eased the pain even more. A healing topical, applied by the bath jets. She blessed the designers of Atlantis, all the attention to detail and the needs of those who might play here.
He’d given her pain, and taken it away. That worked so well in her mind, her feelings about having a Master who controlled everything for her, and who could look to her for love and support in return. It wasn’t fair. She could be so good for him.
“I know, baby. I’m sorry.” He stroked her hair.
She nodded, and knew only some of the moisture she was feeling on her cheeks was mist from the bath.
She understood there was a struggle happening within him, against an enemy he’d made clear was only his to fight. Usually she’d try to figure out the face of that enemy, to see if she could help him fight it, but she’d had a sinking feeling from the beginning it wasn’t that kind of fight. Learning his truth had confirmed it. But she had right now.
“You said, after we got Atlantis up and running again, we’d have to go back to how we were before. Do you think, before we make it official, we could…do something?” Her voice was rough, shaky.
“Something like what?”
She lifted a shoulder, and he understood. “Show me in your mind,” he suggested in a low rumble. “You’re not telling me what to do that way.”
“Well, before you could read my mind, that might have been true.”
He smiled. “Show me anyway. That’s an order.”
She wanted to go som
ewhere with him for a couple days. Somewhere that they could be whatever they wanted to be to one another, a timeout place from everything that had to be faced and accepted. She didn’t really care where. A beach, an interstate hotel. The main thing she wanted was him as her Master, no holds barred.
“Won’t that make it harder, afterward?”
“Yes. I don’t care about that either. Afterward, you can mark Haru, or do whatever you need to do. You’ll go back to being Wolf, this fabulous Dom who’s not my Dom…but in my head, I’ll feel you, know you’re my Master, and that will be enough for me.”
“Why? Why is that enough for you?”
Because it has to be. The simplest answer, but that was the other irritating thing about the best Doms. They didn’t ever let you get away with the simplest answers.
“No,” he said, lifting her so she was facing him, meeting his eyes. “How can that be enough without it breaking you, Ella? Not that I think anything can break you.”
“I’ve been broken plenty of times,” she said. “I mend.”
His hands tightened on her, and he repeated himself, that Master’s edge coming into his voice. “Tell me. How can it be enough for you?”
“Because life is abundant,” she said, tears in her throat. “There is so much we’re given, Wolf. I was given you for these few days. If you tell me you love me, and that you would give me all of yourself if you could, I believe it. That’s the gift. Not having it after a certain day will hurt like hell, but I’ll know it was mine, those feelings.
“You know how I told you most people don’t get me, think I trust too much, and why that is? Well, this is like that, too. Everything that comes my way…I don’t have low expectations. I have a highly developed sense of gratitude. Because if I focus on what I don’t have, parents, siblings, a love of my life that I can grow old with…I would miss so much, wouldn’t I?”
He let her slide back down, put her head on his chest. The water lapped against her back, soothing. She felt bruised, so bruised. A heavy caning did that, bruised the muscles beneath the skin. Bruised the soul. He ran his hand along her arm, down to her hip. He skirted around all the areas he’d hit, never coming in contact with one of them, telling her he was aware of her wellbeing, her condition, every inch of her. A good Dom did that, too.
She was lying between his splayed thighs, his cock pressed to her belly. Remembering him inside her, at the height of the pain, the way his seed had taken away the pain in that channel, made her move against him now. A soft questing stroke of flesh against flesh, her fingers curling into his shoulders. She wanted him inside her again. Truth, she could lie beneath him, his sex hard and full inside her, and she might not ever need to be anywhere else in the world.
“You like me on top of you, do you? Pressing you down, holding you there?”
“Yes, sir.” She imagined his hands on her wrists, holding them pinned as he thrust. He didn’t need to do so. He could order her to keep her hands where he put them, and that would bring a similar charge to her lower belly, a deepening need as he triggered the submissive side of her.
“But you like that feeling. Sometimes, you’d like to fight a little, wouldn’t you? Struggle.”
He spoke to her drifting thoughts, making the hazy cloud of feelings into coherent words.
“Not to get away,” he added thoughtfully. “Just to remind yourself how much stronger I am, how I can hold you down. That you have to submit. That you’re safe under my control.”
A little sigh, another nod. Yes, Master. When he was inside her, on top, she felt like he was taking over everything.
“All right. I’ll think about it. The couple of days together when we reach that point.”
She swallowed, closed her eyes. He saw the feeling in her mind, swelling up strong from her heart.
Soon. Please, soon. I can’t bear to have you much longer, and then not have you. If that makes sense. If you don’t want to do it, the couple of days, then okay. Just tell me, and that will be okay, too. It was just a wish. I can handle not having it come true.
She could imagine how it would have been, and that would be enough. It wasn’t his fault. It was no one’s fault. Life was hard, and complicated. That was all.
Somewhere, someday, it wouldn’t be.
A highly developed sense of gratitude.
Wolf thought of that after he tucked her into the bed they had in the recovery room, and left her under Anwyn’s watchful eye. He bypassed his truck and started walking. Once he started walking, he just kept going, mile after mile, through parts of Atlanta where other, lesser predators watched him and drew back in the shadows, recognizing a man whose thoughts they would regret disturbing.
Until he met one who didn’t give a shit.
He’d made a big circle, and saw Gideon leaning against the bumper of his truck when he returned to the Club Atlantis parking lot. He wondered how long the male had been standing there waiting on him, or maybe he’d asked security to give him a heads up when he came back.
The midnight blue eyes were inscrutable, the jaw set, but Wolf had been around Gideon long enough to know when the male was ready to throw down. He could get his own hackles up about it, play the vampire card, but all he could feel was sadness, and a resigned gladness that Ella had strong friends in her corner. Ones who could stand by her.
He was going to need to leave. She knew it; he knew it. It was what wasn’t being said, and what that request for two days with him was about. He would likely come back a couple years down the road, when they’d both had space and time. Or he wouldn’t. A vampire’s life was hard to predict. The one thing he wouldn’t do was force her to be the one to withdraw and stay away from Club Atlantis. She needed the sanctuary, its protection. He would make sure she had ready access to it, always.
Which would also make it possible for him to check in with Anwyn and see how Ella was doing.
He stopped a few feet from the truck, braced his feet. Gideon didn’t straighten. He appeared to be looking up at the sky, his arms crossed over his broad chest.
“Good news and bad news,” he said. “Good news is Daegan found the cell that engineered the alley bombing.”
“Okay.” Wolf’s brow creased. It seemed pretty momentous news to be sharing out in the parking lot. “Get any info before he killed them?”
“No. That’s the bad news. All three of them killed themselves before he could. Last one laughed at him while he chewed on the cyanide pill.” Gideon’s gaze flicked to Wolf as Wolf frowned.
“Shit.”
“Yeah. Left us all with an uneasy feeling. Didn’t find a damn thing where they were holed up. Completely scrubbed of anything useful. Fort will give you all the details, which aren’t much more than what I gave you.”
“Which he could have done, without you waiting for me here in the parking lot.”
“True enough.” Gideon looked back toward the sky. “You know, most vampires gravitate toward the big cities. I’ve had to spend a lot of time in them. Makes it hard to see the stars.”
“Yeah. Harder to find places to go to ground outside the city, though. Did you check on her?”
“Yeah.”
“You need to take a swing at me, get it out of your system?” Because Wolf figured that was the real reason Gideon was here. “I’ll give you a free shot. Just you and me out here. No Lord Richard.”
“Tempting.” Gideon kept on with his star-gazing. “You know, when Anwyn made me her servant, she and Daegan had to take me for an audience with the Council.”
“Jesus.” Wolf considered that. “And you walked out alive.”
“They were in a mellow mood. Well, after they made Anwyn carve up my back with a bull whip. She nearly refused, just as you did.”
Gideon brought his gaze down, met Wolf’s. “I wanted to kill you tonight. Wanted to rip your fucking heart out for hurting Ella. I’m bound to Daegan and Anwyn, but there’s a part of me that still fucking hates how the vampire world works. Still pretty much despise most of them
. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?”
“Tonight wasn’t one of my favorite nights either, Gideon.” Wolf found his cigarettes, tapped one out, lit it, cupping his hands over the flame. “But I suspect you’re heading toward a particular point. Or you’re hiding a spear gun and waiting for the right moment.”
“Naw.” Gideon shrugged. “Spear guns ruin the line of my jacket. For this scenario, a wide-open parking lot, an explosive with a fifteen-foot range is sufficient. You pack it in something you can throw at the vampire like a baseball, only it hooks onto them, sticks. They can pull it away in an instant, but there’s that moment where they look down to see what it is. If the detonation is less than three seconds, you’ve got them. Trick is being out of range yourself and throwing with accuracy. I played football in high school. Long time ago, but who knew it would be a useful skill for anything other than attracting girls?”
Wolf blinked. “How’d you figure out the sticking thing?”
The corner of Gideon’s mouth curled. “That game where you throw the Velcro balls at a target and try to get them to stick to the bulls-eye? I compared that to the engineering of butterfly grenades and figured out how to bring the two ideas together.”
“Would have been better for Perry if he’d figured that out.”
Gideon shrugged. “Don’t think it would have mattered. He was looking for a way out. He found it. And those other guys killing themselves? It suggests they all knew there was only one end for them and this particular plan. It’s bugging the shit out of me. You don’t sacrifice four hunters for nothing.”
“Yeah. Good thing we’ve beefed up security. Maybe they’ll move on to an easier target. Not that that will make any of us feel any better.”
