“I don’t want you to kill anyone. I’m just worried for my family. But…they’re probably still…better off…” I wasn’t sure what to say. I couldn’t involve Dad, Carrie and Joan with these vampires. That would just be out of the frying pan and into the fire.
“What are you worried will happen to them with Father Joshua?” Rayner asked.
“Maybe nothing. It’s…hard to explain.”
“He did something to you.”
“Well…not…not yet…”
Silvus took one of my hands in his. I felt the spell backlash fade. He nodded. “Be careful.”
“He will marry you and force you to have sex with him,” Rayner said.
“He has already made me…bear witness to…” I swallowed. “The priestesses of the village…” But every time I tried to explain, words failed me.
Rayner straightened out to his full height, no longer hunching around his wound. Now he showed off his full strength to me, a move that was hardly even human at all. With every small gesture and shift of his stance, he looked like he was preparing to do battle. He brushed a finger across my chin.
“I’ll kill him for you, Tulip.”
“No…please don’t.” I was trembling again, but I wasn’t sure what emotion was driving me.
“Silvus, leave us,” Rayner said.
“Have a good night,” Silvus said.
“Please…,” I begged.
“Why shouldn’t I kill him?” Rayner asked.
“I don’t want you to kill anyone. Not even him. My whole village follows him…believes in him.”
“Is he capable of changing his ways?” Rayner scoffed. “Most men aren’t. I know this well. And you will soon know it too.”
“You’re not still going to— After I gored your hand?”
“I have been waiting for you so long, Tulip, that if I die in your arms tonight, it will be with a smile on my face.”
And just like that, my spell meant nothing. We were right back where we started. My small body was in the arms of a vampire who thought I was someone I’d been a long time ago, determined to have me. The sight and scent of him seemed familiar, the timber of his voice like something from a dream, and yet I was terrified of him too. I was terrified of every man, and he was particularly terrifying. There was already blood on his hands. Blood for the people who had hurt me in other times, in other places…
“You remember…,” he whispered in my ear. “I see it in your eyes, Lisbeth.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Did you like the dinner Thomas and Jie made for you?”
“It…it was good…”
“We know you. I know you, especially. All of your secrets. No wonder you’re scared. Something deep down inside you knows I am the one. I know every way to bring you pleasure and once I taste you tonight, you will never be the same. You will be immortal, because you have me and I remember you. No other man will satisfy you. Your life as you knew it, from this day forward, is gone. You are mine. Ours. Our cherished girl, through time, and I do believe that if you ever woke up into a new life and we were gone, you would know. Maybe you wouldn’t put your finger on it just then, but you would know.”
In that moment, as I shut my eyes and felt his presence, heard his voice, a piece of the woman I was broke away and I felt like he was speaking the truth. I was his. I wanted to be his. He said he had always rescued me and protected me, and…I wanted that. I wanted to believe, to succumb.
My trembling slowly shifted into more of a tingling. I was still scared, but it was…right.
Of course I’m scared. He’s still a vampire.
“There’s my girl.” He stroked my neck and then, his fangs sunk into me.
Oh gods. This was happening.
I didn’t fight him. Once a vampire bit their prey, it took great force of will to fight, especially if attraction was involved. I learned this in class. Father Joshua wrote about the dark Sinistrals in his books. We were taught never to look at men or allow ourselves any feelings toward them, even within the walls of the village, unless an Ethereal priest gave us permission. This was for our protection, against a moment like this.
I felt pain mingled with pleasure, a sweet pain that made me weak, as I felt his mouth suck at my skin and heard him make little wordless murmurs of satisfaction. His hand crept to my skirt and shoved up the hem, his hand pawing between my legs as if he knew exactly what he sought. The heat of the wound shifted to a heat between my legs, a heat that was almost as painful as the backlash of my spell. He satisfied it with a flick of his fingers, a rapid fluttering against my female parts where no man was supposed to see or touch until…
Then I felt his own cock press against me again, swollen and urgent, seeking me out.
The memory of Father Joshua leapt to the surface immediately and I screamed. “No! No!”
I don’t know if I managed to get away from him or if he let me go. In my blind panic, I just made it to the corner of the room. He wasn’t touching me now. My skirts were down. Modest. Covered. Everything in order the way the Ethereal spirits told me a girl should be if she wanted to survive the end times. My own blood trickled down my neck and ran between my breasts.
He had violated me. And I let him. I liked it. I was a wicked girl and now I was numb.
“Lisbeth…” He wiped his mouth off with a handkerchief. “It’s different this time. You remember me. I saw the spark of it. And you know everything I say is true. Your soul desires me. But…you’re afraid of…being touched.”
“No, I…”
He was right. I was incapable of being touched without remembering Father Joshua.
I was overwhelmed by everything. Mom dying, leaving my family behind forever, and being thrust into this situation I felt completely unprepared for.
“Shh,” he said, although I had already stopped speaking. He tamped down the hunger in his eyes—with effort, I thought, but that was still a respect Father Joshua never showed me. “I said it was different this time. You’ve never had an easy lot in life, but every other time, it’s been a misfortune of society. You were hungry because the crops failed. Your feet were bound because every woman’s feet were bound. You had to leave your family and go west to find work because many people had to do the same. But this time…it’s personal, isn’t it? This man targeted you.” His hand stroked my hair, as if he couldn’t stand not to at least touch me.
I could feel his burning desire even when he treated me gently. Even after he cleaned his mouth I could feel the mark of him on my neck.
He took his hand back and tucked his arms behind his back. “I’m not like him.”
“Then prove it,” I said.
I wondered how I would behave if I wasn’t thinking of Father Joshua. If I could regard Rayner objectively.
Objectively, I thought, he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. His hair was thick and honey-colored and his eyes were the bluest I’d ever seen. His face was handsome, high cheekbones and dimples but there was a roughness to it. A little crookedness to his nose and cruelty in his mouth. I could have been afraid. Or I could have thought: This is a man who wouldn’t be afraid of Father Joshua.
I wasn’t sure which it should be.
“Maybe he was the one who kept you from me all these years,” Rayner said, a little hiss in his voice like escaping steam. “Who raised you?”
“My…family,” I said. “They’re not at fault. They thought they were doing the work of Etherium.”
“So where were they when this man was abusing you?” Rayner was so close to me as he spoke, as if we were already married, and I suppose in his mind, we were. My mind resisted him, but if he didn’t try anything, my body calmed in his presence.
“They were afraid for me. My mom was pregnant. She died having the baby and that was when my dad said…Father Joshua killed her…and that I had to leave. My little sisters are still there, and…”
“This happened tonight?” Rayner said.
“Yes…I…I just want to be
alone.”
“I see why you don’t seem like yourself,” he said. Finally, he took a step back from me. “Tulip, I want you to rest tonight.”
Relief surged through me, that I no longer had to worry about his hands on me—or worse. “Thank you.”
“I have tasted your blood. For tonight, it is enough. No one will touch you. I want you to keep wearing this dress. Be as I remember you. It will make me very happy, and perhaps it will remind me of the young man I used to be, for a few days, at least. He would not have dreamed of the things I will do to you.”
I drew back against the wall, the relief vanishing.
“I will kill him for you,” he said. “Don’t bother to protest. No one hurts you like that. Rest, Tulip. I will sleep on the floor for your protection only, but first I must see Silvus.” He shut the door firmly behind him, daring me to open it and tell him to stop.
If I couldn’t convince him to stop, maybe I could convince him to protect himself.
“Rayner, he has bullets that kill Sinistrals!” I yelled through the door.
I just heard him laugh, and keep walking.
Chapter Fourteen
Rayner
“How is she?” Jie, Thom and Silvus were all waiting, itching to spend time with Lisbeth the same as I was.
“Never, in all my years, have I seen her shy back from me quite like this,” I said. “It is the fault of this man, Father Joshua, of the Order of the Blessed.” I didn’t know the man. But I already despised him, the sound of his name and his ‘Order’. Although I could not have named their leader, tales of the Order had spread across the magical community over the last few decades. They started as a fringe group of wizards, but lately it seemed they were infiltrating more corners of the magical world.
“That’s those warlocks who destroy demons,” Thomas said. “Religious warlocks. Two of my least favorite things put together.”
Thomas and Jie were playing cards, keeping busy as best they could. We weren’t home and had left in a hurry, so we didn’t have much to do.
“He didn’t rape her, but he left her so shaken that I know he was playing with her mind like a cat plays with a mouse. He did something nearly worse—he made her anticipate that he was going to rape her and marry her as well, so there would be no end to his cruelty. And then he killed her mother. Thomas; Jie, I want you to watch over her. Silvus—“
“Sit down,” Silvus said. He yanked out a chair and pointed at it. “Right now. You aren’t killing anyone tonight.”
“I will have no peace until this pox of a man is wiped off the face of the earth. I am going to snap his neck and you’ll help me do it.”
“Might I remind you, I didn’t find Lisbeth,” Silvus said. “We had to ask for help from a witch. From the Diviner. They were hiding her from us. They’re powerful. And if you run right in there and get yourself killed or captured, you will never even get to feel her one last time.”
I would not soon forget the way my Tulip looked at me as she started to remember me, and then the way she jerked back in terror the moment she felt the throb of my need. I wanted to murder the man. I could already taste his blood in my mouth. I could hear his last gurgling scream in my ears. It took me a moment to even register Silvus’ words.
“Sit down,” Silvus repeated.
I finally did. “Fuck,” I said. I hated giving up. I hated waiting. Too much of my life was waiting, and then, in these sweet moments, I got to truly live.
Silvus put a hand on my shoulder and kneaded the tension out of it.
“We all want to protect her,” he said. “But don’t be an idiot.”
“I suppose you want to make a plan first,” I said. “So let’s make one.”
“No. First, Rayner, you will calm yourself down and see that Lisbeth is comfortable before you kill anyone in her village. Remember the last time?”
Jie and Thom watched us, awaiting the verdict. Would we kill tonight? Thom was always ready to stir trouble, while Jie preferred tricks and maneuvers to blunt attacks.
They were all remembering the most notorious incident in my history with Lisbeth. The time I slaughtered her husband and his family and burned their home to the ground. They had mistreated her relentlessly and with pleasure, and she was just a vulnerable young woman; she owed them no mercy. None at all.
But I would never forget how her sweet little face turned to complete rage when she learned what I had done. She called me a kidnapper and wouldn’t even look at me. All of this had to go through Jie, back then, as my Tulip only spoke a Chinese dialect at the time. In fact, even Jie didn’t understand her perfectly, but I had chosen him in part for his aptitude for languages. He was one of the few Chinese men who spoke English we encountered and seemed able to speak to nearly anyone.
“Yes, you see, you have to sell her on it first,” Silvus said. “It’s a lot for a poor girl to take in; being kidnapped by a clan of vampires and getting comfortable with the idea of murder isn’t what most young ladies dream of, even ours. I’m not saying you can’t kill this man. Just that we should wait until she’s gotten comfortable with all of us.”
“Well, shit,” Thomas said, licking his lips. “I was ready. It sounds like the Order has it coming. She might not be the only one we’re doing a favor.”
“I’m going to bed,” Silvus said, giving me that little meaningful look that we had developed over too many years together.
Too many years…
I stood and followed him to bed.
Silvus was the first man I ever turned, before I learned that it was better to ask permission. I was desperate, mad with grief, when I attacked him and drank his blood, then forced him to drink my own. Our history was…complicated, to say the least.
He was also my greatest ally. After four hundred and fifty years together, we knew each other so well that we were closer than anyone. Nothing about Silvus was a surprise to me after a few centuries, or so I thought, but our relationship had taken a new turn when we shared Bertie.
Bertie was the only male incarnation of Lisbeth. A beautiful boy, but a boy all the same. A boy who resisted taking four male lovers when he thought he was saving money to take a wife. I had always wondered how I would feel if I ever found Lisbeth as a male, but Bertie was still my Tulip. The same devastating combination of submission and spunk, kindness and hard work. I found that I didn’t even care. I had lived enough years that all the morals and taboos I had once learned in the family church in Amsterdam were long washed away.
Bertie was how I learned that I liked to share. That I liked the feeling of my Tulip quivering, helpless, pleasured and pleasuring at once.
It teased out something deep in my old relationship with Silvus, something that seemed as if it must have been there for a long time, simmering patiently, waiting to be heated to a boil.
It started with Silvus’ touch becoming more a part of my life—a comforting hand on a shoulder or a tense squeeze of my hand to convey our unspoken conversations leading to a caress, and then there was the night when we dropped all pretense. When I was knotted with grief, having just buried my Bertie, my Tulip. Losing her was never any easier. Never.
Except that this time, Silvus ran his hand down my bare neck and my skin responded as if he was a stranger.
Silvus was the one person who had learned to tame my instincts—only a little.
He knew what he was getting into.
When we walked into the room, he didn’t look at me, but turned on an electric tea kettle and spooned out some loose leaf oolong into a tea ball. “I can smell her through the walls,” he said. “That one taste must have been heavenly. We have never waited this long for her.”
I walked up behind him and thrust a hand down his trousers, wrapping my hand around his hard length, feeling his entire body stiffen with a craving that we all knew would only be fully satisfied by her. But I kept hold. I felt his hard shaft throb, kept tight in my grip. He swallowed.
“It was heavenly,” I said. “Perhaps the closest you a
nd I shall ever get to heaven. I can still taste her on my tongue, Silvus.”
I exhaled gently on his own lips, and he breathed in. Our sense of smell was so acute. Lisbeth’s blood would linger there, the taste of it always strangely the same—and perfect. Like coming home.
The kettle started to hiss, close to a whistle.
“I would not keep an Englishman from his tea,” I said.
He stirred and sipped, but I could feel the impatience clawing at him, the hunger. I don’t know how Silvus could be so restrained. I had never learned that trick. I started opening his shirt and unbuttoning his pants, pulling out his cock and pulling my hand up and down the soft sheath of his skin until I broke his composure.
“I shudder to think what sort of treatment I will get tonight when you know she’s right there for the taking,” Silvus said.
“And you are right to shudder,” I said. “I’ll fuck you as I think of her, and as I think of killing him. How I wish I could choke you.”
Silvus put his hand over mine and pulled it off his cock. He turned to look at me with his secretive smile fading fast. “Take it out on me, because that girl will need gentle treatment at first.”
“I know. And I will.”
I shoved him toward the bed and pinned him down with my knee to his back while I quickly stripped off my own clothes.
“Did you leave that girl all alone with her grief?” Silvus asked. “Or are Thomas and Jie with her?”
I paused with my trousers open, gritting my teeth through my impatience. How could I still be such an impatient man after living so many centuries? I had come to appreciate my own impatience. I think if I ever lost it entirely, it would be time to meet my maker.
“She’s alone,” I growled. “Well, I can’t leave those two with her! Would I leave a frightened rabbit with a fox and a coyote?”
“She must be in such despair. Our poor little one,” Silvus said.
He was good at making me feel like an ass.
Take Me Slowly (Forever in Their Thrall Book 1) Page 9
