Elusive Hero: Invitation to Eden (Vampire Queen Series Book 12)

by Joey Hill

  You make me feel…helpless.

  He lifted his head, stared at her. “Like they did?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Good.” The anger in his gut eased. “Then don’t let me see you get that shit confused again.” He bared his teeth in a wicked smile. “Or I’ll let you go. Take you out for dinner, and have some nice, safe vanilla sex with lots of cuddling afterward.”

  Her gaze warmed with a variety of responses. Gratitude, intrigue, relief. As well as other things that turned his world on his axis as much as he was doing to hers.

  “You’re mean.”

  “You have no idea,” he managed. “Trip my sadist trigger, baby, and I’ll make you regret it. There will be flowers. Candy. Kenny G.”

  Her eyes glowed even brighter. He slid his hand down over her mound and cupped her, rubbing his thumb over her clit and making her squirm in the bonds. Her lips parted as she absorbed the arousal, letting it mix with the sorrow, fear and memory, balance it once again. She might be a tossing ship, but she refused to be sunk.

  With relief, he saw that, despite the horror of such memories, she didn’t view herself as a victim, had never viewed herself that way. Normally that was the most crippling obstacle to getting over such a thing. She’d acted against men like her captors in wartime, used information to turn the tide of battles that might have killed their friends, other family members. Their punishment beyond capture had been motivated by rage. The dark sadism all men carried in them had been goaded, demons brought to life by hate. She understood that, had realized it wasn’t personal. Vampires might have an immortal lifespan to analyze personal trauma, get past it, but they had no time to wallow in it or milk it. Life was brutal, tough. If you didn’t want all of it to be that way, you had to figure out how to move forward.

  He saw all those thought processes in her mind, wondered how conscious she was of all those layers, or if it was just who she was. Regardless, he admired her stoicism. Her strength.

  Beyond that, her human past had obviously been the key to opening her up, helping her claim the submissive needs she’d always yearned to embrace. Jared had been her Master, the only Master, and his time with her had been too short. If the male had loved her as much as she’d loved him—and Garron had no doubt he had, because this woman inspired a man’s devotion as much as his territorial instincts—he was giving Garron a blatant fish-eye message.

  Make it happen, you fucking bastard, since I can’t.

  Chapter Six

  After a little breather of just stroking her, touching her, getting her focused on arousal again, he released her legs and brought her back to the original standing spread-eagle. He fixed the broken link and felt her attention build as he did it. She’d gone quiet, her mind a slow spinning top. No longer agitated, her body on a low hum, waiting for more of what he had planned. That was where he wanted her mind.

  Retrieving a different ointment from his personal stores, he stood before her as he spread it on his fingers. He coated her clit and labia with it, reaching further between her legs to apply it to the tiny creases of her rectum. It had a soothing blend as well as a lubricant. For his own pleasure, he put some on her nipples, making them glisten. The ointment sparkled, metallic pieces part of the mix.

  Returning to the counter, he put away the ointment, retrieved a violet wand and opened his tool box, choosing a mushroom-shaped electrode to fit into the neck. The violet wand made a humming noise as he turned it on, the mushroom casting a lavender light. Behind him, he heard her draw in a breath as the oil started to do what it did. It would warm at first, start to tingle, then stimulate. Then he would add to it with the wand.

  He came to her, began to pass the mushroom-shaped glass attachment over her nipples. The metallic pieces sparkled as she arched in surprised reaction at the electricity passing through them. She rocked up to her toes, fingers closing on the chains holding her manacles. “Garron.” It was surprise, trepidation, pleasure.

  He leaned forward, kissing her lips, her cheek, her forehead, her eye brow, touching her face all over with his lips. She whimpered. Out of all the sounds she made, that pleading note was his favorite. Especially since he expected nothing like it had crossed her lips in some time.

  Straightening, he went back to creating more magic for her. An even flow of movement over the nipples, down the stomach, to the cunt, tipping his elbow up or down as needed for stronger sensation. He stayed away from direct contact with the manacles, since that would result in too intense a charge for what he was wanting to accomplish. She started to dance under his touch, and this time he stayed mindful of how hard she was jerking against her bonds.

  Please… Subs always used that word. It was like an aphrodisiac to a Master. Please stop. Please more. Please…just please. It was his favorite word in the whole world for all the things it meant, especially coming from her lips and mind now.

  Words were keys, clues to the inner psyche. When he demanded them from a sub, it wasn’t to stroke his ego, but to get farther inside them. He knew which ones were key transition moments. He always treasured the first time they were spoken, and this time even more so.

  “Please, what, Kaela? Say my name. Tell me who I am.” He slid the wand over her clit, heard the static crackle as he passed it up and over, down and around in a swirling pattern. The slick tissues convulsed again.

  “No…I can’t…no…”

  “You’ll come as often as I want you to come. You make me so fucking hard when you come, my lady, I may not ever let you stop. I may keep you chained here all ten days, screaming my name and your cunt gushing, over and over. Give you water to keep you hydrated, let you feed from my throat, and beg me for release… When you say no, when you try to fight it, it makes me more determined to keep you chained up.”

  He moved the wand over her breasts again, down over her pussy, over all her flesh, watching the streaks of electrified color move between the device and her body. Her glazed eyes were on them as well, her mouth working but no words coming out. Except one.

  “Master.” Master.

  His fingers tightened on the wand, and he forced himself to keep his head down an extra second, savoring the sound of it.

  She broke again, her body straining. He saw the first flickers of mental and physical exhaustion, the climax carrying her away with no resistance, telling her just how helpless she truly was. That panicked her, such that she started to fight again. He knew how to work with that, so as she rolled off the climax, he was using the wand to take her up once again. Even as the tears started to roll, he catapulted her back to that peak once more.

  She sobbed, broken words coming out of her mouth. “Master….no more, please. Master…”

  He set the wand aside, but only to strip off his jeans. He’d tucked himself back in when he needed the restraint, so it was a relief to finally make himself as naked as she was. He released her lovely legs, coiling them around his hips. He put his arm around her waist, holding her to him as he released her wrists. Carrying her to the mattress in the corner, he laid her down on it, himself on his knees over her.

  He felt how fragile she was now, her eyes clinging to him, her lips parting again as he gripped her thighs and pushed his cock into her. Her hands fell above her in an unconscious posture of surrender.

  Slow this time, inch by inch. He held her hips, worked her on him. She understood without words, even without thought, that he wanted her to lie still, let him move her upon him the way he desired. She was deeply, fully submissive, the way she’d obviously yearned to be for so long. Her fingers curled over her head, her throat working, and still she cried, silently, the tears slipping down her cheeks.

  He adjusted, stretching out upon her, bracing his elbows on either side of her head. She hid her face into his throat as he worked his hips, driving in and out, slow and easy, a reminder as well as a provocation. He wanted to take her to climax again, but this part wasn’t so much about that. This was all about connection.

  “Say it
again, my lady,” he rumbled against her head. “Put your arms around me.”

  They coiled over his shoulders, his back, as her face pressed more tightly in his neck. Master. “Master,” she whispered.

  “My lady,” he responded. “Mine.” He kept moving as her heart and soul emptied into him. He was surrounding her, holding her like he had the other night, giving her shelter. In that darkness, her face against his throat, she could let go.

  It took some time, but he made sure he pushed her up to one more climax. She came through it even more exhausted. Numb, out of her head, disoriented…floating. He’d put his lady into subspace, and he’d never worked so hard for something he wanted so much.

  He was bleeding, bruised and still nursing a hell of an erection, but he’d gotten where he’d intended to go. He stayed on top of her, holding her, soothing her. He’d worked subs through subspace and subdrop before, and this was quite a bit of both. He used his arms and body to warm her chilled flesh, rocked her, kissed her temple, the bridge of her nose. She was truly hell and gone, so far inside herself, as if she’d like to lose herself there and never come back. It was desire and grief, loneliness, loss and longing, ecstasy and pleasure wrapped in such a confusing mass he knew he would have to do some long and hard thinking on it, on how best to handle it to be the type of Master she needed.

  The one thing he knew for sure was he damn well wanted that challenge.

  He’d never had the honor of seeing it happen so deep, so strong, but he wasn’t arrogant enough to think that was all his doing. He might have known how to turn the key in the lock, but what lay behind that door…it was all her. He was arrogant and possessive enough to want to keep that magic for himself forever. He’d never seen such treasure in a submissive’s response.

  He’d exhausted a vampire. He’d have no small satisfaction about that, except he knew a great deal of the exhaustion had come from the fluctuations of her mood, her inner war between want and need, duty and survival. What she could live with. Fuck, he knew all about that kind of struggle.

  As if his intimidating appearance didn’t make it plain, he was a very physical man. He knew how to use violence to achieve objectives and protect the defenseless. He knew how to use intense sexual encounters to take a submissive to a whole different level. But the way to that, particularly with this female, was through the brain, the heart. The soul. He had to convince her she could trust him with that part of herself and to do that, he might have to do something he hadn’t done before, at least not to the extent that would be necessary. Let her get as into his head as he needed to get into hers. In the case of a vampire, that was kind of a literal thing.

  But first things first. It took quite a while, but at length he had her calmed down enough to move to a grounding phase. Rising to his feet, he lifted her, took her to his massage table and laid her down on it on her stomach. She watched him with vacant eyes as he used the Velcro straps to hold her hands and feet to it. A reminder of her submission, something to help steady her in her current state.

  “Master?”

  He lifted his head, met her gaze. Her eyes were glistening, as if she wasn’t aware she couldn’t stop crying. But that was to be expected. It was clear her tears had come at a hard cost, as if it had been a long time since she’d cried. He expected she’d taught herself not to do it, not to indulge the weakness when there was no shoulder to spill them upon.

  “Yes, my lady?”

  She moistened her lips. “May I ask something?”

  “You can ask. I’ll decide whether or not to answer.”

  It wasn’t something she was used to in her world, he knew, and it was fascinating to see her fluctuate between two identities, the one that would deal out punishment for impertinence, and the one that craved him to be a hard-ass with her.

  “Will you…touch my face?”

  Such a simple request. But to a sub in this mode, it was like requesting the moon, a child hoping their dream would come true. Knowing his set expression would tell her he was thinking about her request, he finished restraining her. He picked up the massage lotion, spread it on his hands. When he started to work on her shoulder, she let out a purr, melted beneath his touch. He smiled, bent and kissed her ear, nuzzled her cheek. Pressing his own against her, he gave her that requested contact.

  “You did very well, my lady. Your Master is very pleased with you.”

  She hiccupped over another tiny sob. She still hadn’t recovered enough self-awareness to calculate her responses. Straightening, he continued his way down her back.

  Her gaze flitted to his arm, saw streaks of dried blood. “I hurt you.”

  “You tore me up like a tiger, my lady. But I don’t worry about scars.”

  Another tear slid out of her eye and he tsked, catching it. “You’re free to use your claws on me. If I can’t hold my own with you, I’m not the Master you’re seeking.”

  She wanted him to talk, he saw it in her mind, anything so she could hear the rumble of his voice, hold onto it like an anchor.

  It was a fucking charge, to be in her head like this. He thought about his earlier musings on having the third mark. Vardalos had said the second mark was a mind to mind thing, but the third mark went all the way to the soul. Whatever that meant. Though as a Master, he expected he understood even better than most what it could mean. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

  As he massaged her, he probed gently through her hazy mind, seeing how far he could go with the second mark. He knew when he reached that point, because it was like another door presented itself, a fortress within a fortress. Her consciousness slipped away beneath it like smoke.

  The door the third mark would open, he suspected. The threshold to her soul. Feeling like he’d already had the privilege of briefly crossing that line during this session, he knew he wanted to go there again. And again.

  He withdrew to see her fingers kneading the table padding as if she needed to be touching something. She needed some more grounding. So did he, else he might lose control and start all over again with her.

  On that wry self-admonishment, he began to talk about the island, all the things that were here. The forests, the hidden streams, the exotic flowers that appeared in unexpected places, like fragile treasure. Thunderstorms where blue forked lightning shot over the ocean waters and one could smell the ozone, feel the electric current in the air heating the skin. He massaged her with both hands, but when one of them came close to her bound hand, she grasped it and wouldn’t let go, her eyes closing.

  §

  Despite how good the two-handed massage was, Kaela didn’t want him to pull away and was relieved when he didn’t. He started to stroke her back, her flanks, the nape of her neck with his one free hand, letting her hold the other.

  At length, he moved her to a mat on the floor, placing a blanket over her to keep her warm. Sliding a chair up next to her, he took a seat there. He was watching over her, a quiet reassurance like a tree canopy. She probably needed to stop thinking of him in tree analogies, but there was something so reassuring about a large, sturdy tree…

  She adjusted so her cheek was on his shoe, her temple lying against his jeans cuff, since he’d pulled his pants back on. He braced his other foot behind her, so his ankle and calf were against her back. She couldn’t stop shaking, inside and out, but that wasn’t the worst of it. She wanted to say things she couldn’t say.

  This is a safe place, a safe zone, Kaela. You can say anything you want here.

  Because it’s just a fantasy. A temporary respite.

  He grunted and stood, pushing the chair out of the way. Lying down in front of her in one lithe movement, he stretched out on his hip—facing away from her.

  She immediately pressed herself up against him, her face between his shoulder blades, her cheek against the coiled whip tattoo and the red letters enclosed in its circle. Reaching back, he threaded her hand under his arm, over his bare chest, and held her firmly there. He could have faced her, but he seemed to kn
ow this worked better for her, where he couldn’t see her face, where she could just anchor herself against him.

  She would never have a third marked servant. It was so obvious, wasn’t it? She’d had so many fantasies involving this vacation, but the reality facing her now was painful, impossible.

  The only one she wanted as a third marked servant was someone capable of dominating her. The deepest wish she had, the one that would bring balance to her life, could not come true.

  Maybe she never should have come here to learn the truth. Ignorance might not be bliss, but it made life far more bearable. Now that she’d had this with him, she couldn’t imagine ever depriving herself of it.

  He turned, propping himself on an elbow. Sliding a fingertip down her sternum and over her breast, he returned to her face to touch her cheek, her chin. “So what would that look like, Kaela? Your Master being your third mark servant?”

  §

  Her gaze snapped up to him. He’d shown he was capable of absorbing so much from her—body language, unvoiced yearnings, and some of the most subtle thoughts in her head—even before she’d second marked him. Of all the magics she’d found on the island, that one amazed her the most, since it wasn’t magic at all. It was the man.

  “It's ludicrous. It's—

  “Yet you’ve imagined it. In detail.” He gave her a thoughtful look. “I want to know what it looks like in your mind.”

  She shook her head, but he caught her chin, lifted it and gave her that stare which made things go all fuzzy inside her in a way that shouldn’t affect her how it did. He was a human.

  “Is your mind open to me, Kaela?”

  She’d shut it back down out of habit, the way she did with Fran. She opened it up again, though it took some effort. Decades of caution weren’t so easily reversed. If it wasn’t for the set-up, the fantasy elements the Master of Eden had provided, it would have been entirely impossible. Was Garron in her mind, examining everything he found there? How did she feel about that?

  It doesn’t matter how you feel about it, Kaela. If you submit to me, you open up all of yourself to me.