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

by Joey Hill

  The idea hung between them, ripe fruit, heavy with temptation. All it lacked was a snake peddling it, but they didn’t really need that, did they? All they had to have was the desire in one another’s eyes.

  “I’d like to be able to stand inside your soul, Garron Rand,” she said. “I expect it’s very much like the man containing it. A stronghold. A safe haven. A place I can say I’ve had the privilege to be, at least once in my life.”

  He cupped her face, sliding his fingers along the fair brow, the sculpted cheekbone, the delicate chin. “Beauty and the beast.”

  “I expect either one of us could be the beast, couldn’t we?” She tilted her head into his touch, a response and a caress at once. “I didn’t want Beast to turn back into a pretty prince. I liked how he could be vicious and gentle both. You have to understand both sides of the coin to understand the value and purpose of each.”

  Her gaze slid over his scars. “There are male vampires so beautiful it’s arousing just to look at them. Some can also be as cruel as spoiled children, just because no one can tell them no. You understand the word no, Garron. You understand the force of that word, the consequences, the anguish of it. The lessons that can be learned from it. You understand denial and pain, and you know how to turn those things into pleasure for a woman.”

  “I want you to stand inside my soul,” he said abruptly, eyes boring into hers. “I want that. Let me give you that.”

  Her eyes misted a little. “I’m not sure. I know you say it’s temporary but…I’m just not sure. I’ve barely been here two days, Garron.”

  He was reluctant to postpone it when it seemed they were both willing to do it, but as usual his gut gave him guidance, seeing her conflict. “Then we wait a bit.”

  But he wanted to keep her mind on it. His gaze strayed back to the dresser. She’d said giving him a third mark, even temporary, might be too soon, and what he was thinking now could fall into the same category. Even so, he slid the top drawer open and reached into the back, closing his fingers over the box tucked behind neat rolls of underwear and folded socks.

  Feeling her eyes on him, he gave himself another moment, thinking it through, but he already knew it was the right choice. What was in the black velvet box had been purchased from a silver shop years ago, after his rehab, when his buddies took him to Hawaii. He knew it had been goaded by sentiment, thinking about a permanent submissive he knew he’d probably never have. But he’d never given it away, letting it travel with him from place to place.

  Since he’d come to Eden, he’d realized there were very few strong impulses in life which were random. It was as if there was a thread taking a man toward something inevitable, and he set down his intentions along the way, marking that trail.

  He opened the box, lifted out the contents. He heard her draw in a breath, felt that stillness sweep over her body, through her mind. The choker had been crafted with heavy silver links, each one twisted into the figure eight infinity symbol and connected to the next. No other adornment, the weight of it a statement of its own.

  As he turned to face her, he wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but it turned out words weren’t necessary. Both her slender hands cupped his large fist, her head bowing so she could kiss the silver links wrapped over his knuckles. The tremor in her hands matched something in himself.

  “I know you’re worried about how you’ll deal with things when you leave, my lady,” he said, as steadily as he could. He touched her chin, met her eyes. “But no matter what happens, I want you to take this with you. It will remind you…you can always come back to me. I’ll always consider you mine, Kaela. Maybe that will help.”

  §

  Help and tear her to pieces at once, to know her dream existed in reality. But she’d take it. Kaela would prefer that to the alternative. She lifted her head, her chin. “May I wear it now?”

  He moved behind her to thread the necklace around her throat. She put her hand up to touch it, hold it in place. “You have the strength to break it if you need to do so,” he said.

  “I won’t.”

  As he adjusted it, he removed three of the links. In his mind, she saw he hadn’t known what size neck the woman would have. He’d just known he’d put it on the neck of the woman who would be the one he’d want to always wear it.

  Her fingers flexed on the choker. When he fastened it in place, her hand remained there, her breath shallow again. “Master?”

  “Yeah.” He had his hand on her nape, curved over it as she bowed her head and he leaned in, nuzzled her hair, pressed his body up against her.

  “I want to…” She turned, stepped back. As his gaze rested on her, she removed the T-shirt he’d loaned her, revealing her body in the scant swimsuit. Her attention went down, and then the rest of her did, her breasts so ripe and full in the swimsuit top they had a little quiver as she knelt before him. Resting her hands on his thighs, she fixed her gaze on the strained state of those wonderful swim shorts. When she’d first come into the room, she’d zeroed in on them, the way the fabric molded and creased over his muscular buttocks, emphasizing the strength of his thighs, the power of his upper torso. She was pretty certain he’d never have chosen such a style himself, so she blessed the woman who’d talked him into it, even as she had a perverse desire to do her harm. “I don’t want to go to the pool yet. I want you to be with me…here.”

  “You were listening to my thoughts.”

  “Yes, Master. I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.” But his voice had that stern sound that said, rather than being displeased, he was considering exactly what they might both want. He wanted to take her here. Take her in ways neither of them would ever forget, and the sexual heat that surged from him over that idea made her tremble. It was as if the session in his room at Club Sin had been days ago, and she wanted him just as much, all over again.

  “Stay on your knees.”

  Moving to his desk, he opened the top drawer, withdrew a quill. It wasn’t a quill with a built-in pen, like most of them were. It was an actual quill, and he took a small pen knife from the same drawer, sharpened it even further. There was a pad of paper next to him, but she didn’t think he was preparing to write.

  “Eyes down, my lady.” He didn’t look up, which made the flutter in her throat and chest more frenetic as the seconds drew out. He hadn’t said she couldn’t talk, had he?

  “What do you really want, Master?” she asked softly. “What can I give you that no other sub can?”

  She jumped as he closed the drawer with a decisive slam. He wasn’t angry, just catching her attention, but his tone told her he was ready to draw the reins tight. Excruciatingly tight.

  “I didn’t give you permission to call me Master, did I?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I apologize.”

  “You don’t ever apologize to me, Kaela. If you do something wrong, I’ll punish you, in my own time and way. Now look at me.”

  When she did, he was putting the pen knife aside, testing the point of the quill. He stared at it before he lifted his gaze.

  “I want the chance to fulfill the dreams of a submissive who’s like no other. Who needs it not just as a release at the end of the day, or to have fun, but because it’s as vital as breathing or blood to her, and she’s done the miraculous—gone without breathing for almost two hundred years.”

  “Rather easy for vampires, really.” The wry humor didn’t ease how tight the words made her feel, like she was wrapped up in rope from neck to ankles the way he’d described, completely helpless to him. His crooked smile didn’t dilute the intensity of his dark eyes, either.

  “Hard to do metaphors with you supernatural folk. Come here, my lady.”

  At last it occurred to her, why the address sounded different when Garron said “my lady.” It wasn’t obsequious in the least. It was possessive. My lady.

  She went to him. She wanted to kneel at his feet again, so close to his erection he couldn’t resist her. Her gaze slid over the te
rrain above and below, the ropes of muscles on his thighs, the layers sculpted over stomach and chest.

  He caught her arm before she let her knees buckle. “Trying to top from the bottom is never a good idea, my lady,” he said with deceptive mildness. “Nothing will make me meaner, faster. Open up.”

  When she parted her lips, he put the quill in between them. “Hold onto that. Gently. Don’t drop it.”

  Her world tilted as he bent, banded his arm around her thighs and—no other word for it—tossed her onto his shoulder. The capable movement, indicating the sprawling strength and grace of his body, his palm gripping her ass, the choker pulling against her throat, exacerbated her desire for him, her need to feel him inside her once more. It seemed the wanting him never ended.

  “Glad to hear it. But that pussy of yours is going to do without for awhile. Everything my way, my lady. That’s just one lesson you’ll learn about wearing my collar.”

  He employed the fireman’s carry, her head hanging down, hands trying to find purchase on the rise of his ass, the rugged landscape of his muscular back, as he took her out of his office and workout room to the futon. Settling down in the center, he turned her so she was draped over his legs, hips arched over them and knees sunk into the couch cushion. He gripped her face, turning it toward him. Taking the quill from between her lips, he set it beside him.

  “You need a good spanking, Lady Kaela,” he said shortly. “Being in my mind when I told you no. Calling me Master before I gave you permission. You may heal fast, but pain is pain, and I could leave you black and blue with my hand alone. I think I should wear your ass out good. Shouldn’t I?” His tone sharpened, making her start.

  “Yes.” She was whispering.

  “I didn’t hear that.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Better.” He wrapped his hand in her hair again. “Breath control’s off the table with a vampire, more’s the pity. I think you’d like that, my lady, me controlling whether or not you get to breathe. But you’ll get some of the effects of it like this.” He pushed her face down into the seat cushion and jerked the ties to the swimsuit bottoms, pulling them off before he began rubbing firm circles over her buttocks, a sensation that had the nerve endings begging, all her erogenous zones tingling.

  “You disobeyed me partly because you’re still floating in that post-subspace, where there’s more intimacy. I don’t mind that. Even like it. But you recouped your energy more quickly than a human sub, so now you’re disobeying me because I’m giving you too much room to think. So get ready to lose control of your mind. And anything else I want to take from you.”

  Jared had spanked her a couple times. The first time had been an accident. She’d dropped hay in his hair and he’d threatened to spank her. She’d teased him by flipping her skirt at him as if she’d lift it. He’d driven the breath out of her, catching her up against the loft ladder and yanking the skirt up himself. She thought he was going to take her there, tear through her thin drawers. As a result she’d been instantly, gushingly wet. Eventually he’d done just that, but first, he’d drawn back his hand and…

  Thwap!

  She shuddered. She didn’t want to think about all the things that could go wrong about this once she left the island, things that felt like subdrop multiplied by a hundred suicidal thoughts. She wanted Garron to help her stop thinking.

  She got her wish.

  He leaned over her, hooking the coffee table drawer with a foot, and withdrew something. When she started to turn her head in that direction, he pushed her face back down into the cushion. “Not your job to see what I’m doing, my lady.” He tapped one thigh. “Spread these for me. Shoulder length apart. Put your arms behind your back, wrists side by side.”

  The position increased the pressure of her face in the cushion, made her wetter, and she moaned as he indulged himself, sliding two fingers inside to scissor and play. He unhooked the back of the swimsuit top, untied the neck, pulled it from beneath her so she was naked except for his choker.

  “You make a man want to fuck you to death, my lady.” Withdrawing his hand, he clasped both of her wrists and picked up what he’d taken out of the coffee table drawer.

  She realized what it was as soon as he began threading her arms into it. A corset sleeve, meant to lace a sub’s arms together behind her back, going from wrists to upper arms, as tight as could be tolerated. She’d seen modifications to them used at vampire events and vividly imagined one on herself. The strain on the shoulders, the way her breasts would thrust out, the tightness of the hold.

  As the sleek, tough fabric molded to her limbs, her breath caught. She didn’t breathe at all as he drew the lacings taut, increasing that sensation.

  “Yeah, there you are. You like being restrained, my lady. It turns you on ten different ways and puts your mind back where I want it. Keep floating.”

  Which was exactly how it felt. The ties holding her to rational thought were cut like balloons, letting her drift and spin, even as her body throbbed, begged for even more. Anything he wanted to do to her.

  He was pulling her shoulders back in increments until he had her upper body off the couch. He moved a cushion under it to hold her, indulging his desire to fondle the breasts that were now thrust out. She gasped at the tweak on her nipples before he placed another bigger cushion under her chin and pressed her face back into it, putting less strain on her neck.

  Her shoulders ached from how far he pulled them back, locking her in the arched position. But he knew she craved greater levels of discomfort than a human sub. It pushed her deeper into that place in her mind. The iron bar of his cock against her belly said he fucking loved being able to push past those boundaries, indulge desires he’d never been able to pursue this far before.

  With every restraint he added, her mind…went away. She had little licks of panic over it, but they were distant, intriguing reactions, not able to organize themselves into a full revolt as before. Her legs were spread, her pussy so wet she was sure it was dripping against his bare thigh. She loved that idea.

  Now he cupped her jaw, lifting her face out of the cushion to tease the broad ivory feather of the quill over her lips. It made her want to lift her chin even higher, especially as he stroked it down her throat, over a breast. He was mastering her in his home. Like she was one of his possessions in truth.

  “Damn straight about that. You’re don’t talk unless I command you to. Tell me you understand.”

  “I do.” God, she wanted to call him Master now, but he hadn’t offered it again, the chance lost, and she was afraid to ask. Afraid of what it meant. Afraid she’d beg. He’d said she couldn’t talk anyway, a convenient excuse.

  He moved her off his lap, laid her down on her side on the coffee table. Kaela licked suddenly dry lips as he lifted the quill. Opening his hand, he punctured the heel with the sharp end, efficient and deep, the welling of blood immediate. He waited as the blood formed a small pool in the cup of his hand. While he did that, he watched her, how riveted she became by that ruby bright flow.

  He dipped the tip of the quill in it and leaned forward. “Eyes on the wall behind me, baby. You don’t get to see what I’m writing until I say so.”

  Reluctantly, she obeyed. Her skin shuddered as she felt the press of the sharp tip and he began to write. It was scratchy, sharp, ticklish by turns, depending on where he was writing. Over the curve of a breast, around her navel, on her hip. When the blood clotted on his hand, he stripped off his T-shirt and punctured himself again. In the corner of her eye, she could see where. His pectoral, his biceps, his other palm…his throat. Except for his palms, he dipped the quill directly into the wound to ink the tip. Her nostrils flared, saliva gathering in her mouth as thin crimson rivulets of blood slid down his neck, over the curve of his biceps, down his pectoral, along the ridges of his abdomen.

  And yet he kept writing. On her thighs next, then he turned her onto her stomach to make swirling, sharp scrapes down her back, over her ass. He cupped her chin, givin
g her support since the corset sleeve kept her arched up. She dipped her head enough to taste the blood on his palm and he gave her a sharp poke with the quill, an unspoken reprimand that had her pressing her lips tight together. She savored the small taste she’d stolen.

  The lower curve of her breasts pressed into the ridges of the bamboo coffee table, a provocative friction. He leaned over her, his knees pressed against her shoulder and hip. He shifted his hold to her sternum, spreading out his hand there to give her additional support.

  “Spread your legs.”

  When he wrote on her inner thigh, the feather curling over to tickle the seam of her ass, the back of the opposite thigh, she was whimpering, pleading without words, since he’d told her she couldn’t speak.

  At last he put her back on her hip and shoulder, facing him. He touched the bloody quill tip to her lips, her tongue, letting her have another taste of him.

  “You can look now. See how beautiful you are to your Master, inside and out. I’m writing the words I think of when I look at you, my lady.” The quill dropped, began to trace the word he’d written on one breast. “Strength.” Down to her hip bone, her lower back. “Laughter. Tears.”

  His dark eyes were fire, capable of making her shake inside, everything susceptible to him. Even without giving him the third mark, she didn’t think she had any shields that could resist his invasion as deep inside her as he wanted to go.

  His gaze flickered, but he went back to tracing the words. “Rage. Grace. Breasts. Cunt. Ass. Legs.” A smile touched his lips. “Because I can’t help but think about those things, too. Being a man and all.”

  She realized she’d obeyed him so literally she hadn’t even allowed herself to think in full thoughts, because that was a kind of talking. But she really wanted to know what the looping scrawl on her back had been. He’d written along either side of her bound arms.

  Scooping her off the table, he settled back onto the futon with her on his lap, on her stomach. “Surrender, on this side. On this other, my name. In between…” Putting his fingertips on the narrow opening between her shoulder blades, he bent and put his mouth on it. “Mine.”