by Joey W. Hill
Then he moved back and struck Uthe with the riding crop in the center of his back.
Uthe flinched, not expecting the strike. It wasn’t overly painful, but it shimmered through his nerve endings in a provocative way. Kel did it again, and this time it was like being struck by a barbed lash. A grunt caught between his teeth when the tip yanked at his flesh as the whip pulled away, though he didn’t feel a trickle of blood. A very real illusion. Kel purred in masculine appreciation. “You should see the way your muscles in your shoulders and ass flex when I do that.”
He kept doing it, rubbing his hands over the offended places when he left imagined welts. The harder he struck, the more Uthe’s body became rigid with need, blood pooling into his loins, his testicles drawing up at the stimulation. Keldwyn, seeing it, alternated the strikes between teasing, flirting and painful, until Uthe had slashes of heat and feather light echoes of sensation all over back, ass and thighs.
All those secret dark fantasies about penance involving the lash came to the surface, deliciously tangled with other reasons he’d longed for them. The pleasures of punishment, which allowed a release of thought and care in full surrender to the one wielding the scourge.
The vines were drawing up, lifting him off his feet and away from the wall. Another vine wrapped itself around his throat and forehead, holding his head arched back as his legs were drawn further up, bending his knees. He was tilted until he was swaying in a basket hold, his knees spread and pressed up against his rib cage, arms out to his sides. Keldwyn came out of the shadows toward him. The Fae had stripped off his own shirt and was only in his tight, laced leggings. He was pure sin from head to toe, with his cruel mouth, fathomless eyes, beautiful hair and hard body.
Then the wooden vines wrapped around Uthe’s eyes, closing them. He jerked as what felt like a handful of those light motes landed on cock and testicles and began to prick and heat, sliding down toward his anus. A curse slipped from his lips, his heart squeezing up in a kind of terror as Keldwyn made it clear just how helpless he was.
“I know your Lord is your salvation in all ways, my lord Uthe,” the Fae Lord said conversationally. “But when I bring you to this room, now and in the future, there is only one way to salvation. Through my will. And who am I?”
Had Kel known taking his sight would make it easier? “You’re my Master here on earth,” Uthe croaked. “In this room, your will is the only will that matters.”
Kel paused. He obviously hadn’t expected more than a one-word answer, but Uthe had so much happening inside him right now, he wasn’t willing to rein any of it back. So many things had commanded his passions for so long. He wanted Kel to be the center of those passions when it was like this between them. Had Kel intended that result, or was it a pleasurable surprise to them both?
The crop hit his vulnerable testicles, his unprotected cock. Uthe jerked, yanked, and danced in his bonds. “Agh…” He almost strangled on his own tongue as Kel slid a slick finger inside his rectum and probed. He had some of those mote things on his finger, apparently, because Uthe’s channel caught fire in a heated, crazy way that had his cock twitching further. His body was lifting as much as it was able. With every movement he made, a vine came in to quell him, until he realized Keldwyn was stimulating him for that purpose. He intended to completely immobilize Uthe, as he’d stated earlier. When he gave the Fae Lord the third mark, it would emphasize this was no vampire-servant relationship. Not now, not ever.
His Master embraced pride. He was arrogant, Dominant. And his heart belonged to Uthe.
Kel slid his knuckles along Uthe’s cock and trailed them up his stomach. As he moved around Uthe, the vines adjusted so he was dropped back, his body tilted so his raised and spread knees were higher than his head. The vine around his neck tightened, arching his head back further. Kel put two fingers in Uthe’s mouth, making him open. He teased Uthe’s fangs until Uthe bared them in warning, his animal nature rising to the top, as Kel intended. Kel was pushing against Uthe’s own Dominant instincts, forcing them to give way.
A vine slid under his fangs and out the other side, curving up to open Uthe’s mouth wider until he thought his jaw might crack. Keldwyn pushed his cock into that heated cavern, pressing it against Uthe’s tongue to avoid the fangs. He insinuated himself all the way to the back of Uthe’s throat, his corona rubbing against the flat of Uthe’s tongue.
“Play your tongue over me, Varick,” he commanded. “Get me slick with your own mouth.”
It took effort and concentration with half his mouth restrained, but Kel wasn’t in a hurry. When he at last slid free and the vine released Uthe’s mouth, his fingers caressed Uthe’s lips. Uthe kissed his Master’s fingers, sucking on them one by one until Kel took them away. The vines raised him to that basket position again. Keldwyn pressed in between his spread thighs, fitting his cock against Uthe’s rear opening beneath the fall of his heavy testicles. Uthe’s cock was taut, a line of moisture at his navel telling him the pre-come oozing from the glans had smeared against his belly.
Uthe grunted as Keldwyn pushed through the outer ring of muscles. He brought his body so close to Uthe’s that Uthe’s cock was mashed between them, against Kel’s muscled abdomen. He felt the pressure on the vines as Keldwyn used a tight hold on them to finish penetrating him to the hilt. His fingers overlapped Uthe’s forearms.
Uthe couldn’t move at all, and it was overwhelming, an excruciating paralysis. He let out an anguished sound as the vines wrapped around his cock and balls, cinching them tightly, rough tree bark embedding itself in tender flesh.
“A reminder that your climax belongs to me. Your thoughts, your desires, all of them are submissive to mine right now. And you only grow harder as I torment you. Ah, Varick, you are not making this easy on yourself. If I’d known earlier you would respond this way, I would have had you long before this.”
Think I would have been that easy, my lord?
He couldn’t form the words, all the sensory overload paralyzing his vocal chords, but Keldwyn’s mind and thoughts slid around his, as much of an erotic restraint as the vines on his flesh. Not at all. Which is exactly why you would have been that much more of a temptation. The tastiest meat comes from the hardest quarry to run to ground.
As Keldwyn pushed in again, his mouth captured Uthe’s, a branding kiss. Turning his head, he brushed his lips along Uthe’s jaw, his temple. He stretched up so his cock pressed in deeper and his throat was against Uthe’s curved fangs. The vines swayed with their movements.
“I want your third mark, vampire. Give it to me now.”
Uthe bit, and nearly came from the pleasure of doing that, especially since Keldwyn reacted by beginning to thrust rhythmically, punctuating each deep plunge with the command in his mind. Do it. Now.
Uthe drank several swallows of the Fae’s rich blood. When he felt it sizzling through his system, he released the third mark serum. As pleasurable as his marking of Mariela had been, it was nothing like this. It was as if the vibrant blue serum shot through the Fae’s veins and turned into blue fire in both their minds. It was the color surrounding starlight, the one found in the night and dawn skies, at every layer of the ocean. The connection between their minds expanded, larger and larger, and then split open, an explosion of images and feelings that made everything their bodies were feeling all the more acute.
Uthe was moaning, snarling against Keldwyn’s flesh. His fangs pressed in as far as they could get, as if he wanted to devour the Fae and give him the pleasurable agony of that penetrating pain at the same time. Kel had stilled, his cock embedded inside Uthe, heated stimulation rippling up and down Uthe’s channel. His moans and snarls were near sobs of sexual frustration and anguished need.
The soul. He was in Keldwyn’s soul, and he felt Keldwyn in his. It hadn’t occurred to Uthe to try to block him, as a vampire could so easily with a servant. He knew it wouldn’t be that easy with Keldwyn, and that was part of all this, Keldwyn’s warning. It wasn’t about Uthe never calling him
servant. It was about never treating him as one, never shutting him out. Uthe thought of the human marriage ceremony, with its oath to be with one another, through better or worse, sicker, poorer. Kel’s willingness and demand for the third marking was a direct indication of his willingness to go on that journey with Uthe.
It was too much. He was dying from the pleasure, the pain, the love and demand the Fae gave and took from him at once. It was as if Uthe was suddenly catapulted back to that time with his father, the lowest, most horrible memory of his life, where all the bad had culminated and taught him the truest meaning of despair. Keldwyn had reached back through the years and extended a hand to him. Locking Uthe into the mystery and beauty of his onyx and moonstone eyes, he simply said, “Come away from there. I’m here now.”
Kel’s mouth was on his face, capturing tears. There were harsh noises coming from Uthe’s throat. He wouldn’t call them sobs. They were too animal-like for that, the pain overcoming him. Keldwyn caught his head in both hands, and the vines released around his cock and balls. Easy, my lord, Kel soothed. I am right here.
“Kiss…”
“Anything for you.” Kel kissed his mouth, his cheeks, his brow, then came back to his mouth again, delving in deep, making it last, a restorative and a way to arouse him further. It took him back up that pinnacle once more, letting him fly higher than the weight of his painful emotions. It was like he was back on the dragon, the fantasy and reality merging. Kel began to move his hips again, stroking Uthe inside as he was kissing him. The vines shortened, drawing Uthe’s legs up higher, almost bending him double so Kel could fuck and kiss him equally thoroughly.
“Oh…God in Heaven…”
Now. Kel’s voice was a savage whisper in his head. Give your Master everything.
The climax split him like a sword from throat to groin. The violence of it swept through him, pain, pleasure and joy that seared him like fire. Keldwyn closed his hand over Uthe’s cock and caressed his balls, which enhanced the sensations that had Uthe shuddering in his bonds, his immobility adding to all of it. He’d never experienced a climax he was certain would be fatal, but this one swept him past any control, thundering him toward an edge over which if he fell, he probably wouldn’t stop falling for days. Forever.
Then Kel came inside him, and there was no choice but to take that leap. He groaned, his release jetting from his cock, bathing Kel’s hand, Uthe’s belly, his chest, his chin. In this position, there was no dignity or holding back and he wasn’t allowed that pride. Nor did he have the slightest desire for it. His Master wanted everything, and he gave it to him, dark and light, good and bad…he trusted him with everything he was.
When it was over, he had no sense of time. Only of the slow thud of his heart, the ache in his muscles and the spinning of the world around him which didn’t seem to be stopping. The vines slowly released him, and Keldwyn’s arms were there to catch him. He wasn’t lowered to a stone floor, but onto a soft mattress of green leaves and flowers and rich earth. He opened his eyes, the wrap of vines now removed from them, and saw a canopy of leaves above him, all the colors of fall, in red, yellow, gold. The light motes fell from them, only now when they touched his skin, they were a mist, heating cooled and abraded flesh.
He was in the Fae’s arms, his head on his chest. Kel was sitting halfway up in the bed, lying on his hip, one knee crooked. Uthe’s arm was draped over his hip, the other resting on the thigh of the leg stretched out straight. For the moment at least, the Fae Lord’s cock was thoroughly satisfied, but it still caught Uthe’s attention, the curved length of it stretched so near his fingertips. But as many thoughts as that inspired, his eye and sense of touch were caught by something else. As he traced his fingers over Kel’s hip and up his side, he figured out the shape of it. His lips parted in a painful smile.
“I didn’t think it would happen. It didn’t for Lady Lyssa when Jacob marked her, but…” he left that thought drift off as Keldwyn realized the same thing he did and twisted to see it. Uthe pushed himself upright enough they could both see.
“When a vampire third marks…someone, it usually leaves an impression on their skin.” At Keldwyn’s narrow look, Uthe lifted a hand, smiling. “I am not about to use the ‘s’ word on you, my lord. I have been fair warned.” Though since his body was still vibrating as if it had an insane desire for Keldwyn to do it all over again, he wasn’t sure he might not test the Fae’s reaction to it sometime.
Kel’s eyes flashed in pleasurable threat…or a promise. Uthe cleared his throat. “From their shape and design, the marks come from a higher power or an elevated portion of our own consciousness. Whichever one it is, it seems to know more about us than we know about ourselves.”
He didn’t really know the scientific way it worked. That was Brian’s area, not his, but he wasn’t sure Brian knew the whole of it since there were reactions to a third mark impossible to explain in the scientific world. How the souls could be bound together, how it resulted in a permanent mark on the servant's body whose meaning was always significant and yet impossible to explain.
He and Kel looked down at it together and Uthe slid his fingers over it again. It always looked like a mix between a brand and a tattoo, with the skin raised beneath its imprint, giving it texture. He’d never seen one fade from the passage of time, and he was glad this one wouldn’t. The pendant he’d always worn was gone, melted inside the Baptist’s head. But what he looked at now, it was as if the metal disk had been heated and then the design branded into the Fae Lord’s skin, a crisp image of two knights riding one horse. A seal of the Templars, now also representing the promise and bond between two men.
“There was a time you worried my love of God would keep you from me,” Uthe said, easing back down and looking at Keldwyn’s face above his own. “I saw it in your mind, the flashes of it.”
“I did not know if there was room for us both,” Kel said lightly. He adjusted onto his elbow so he was leaning over Uthe, fingertips playing along his chest. “Which is why I never made it a choice between me and Him. Well, except here, in this room. I am selfish. I want one place where you are all mine.”
Uthe drew him down further, Kel’s eyes filling his vision before he sampled his mouth once more, scraping him with his fangs, their minds twining around one another as he did it. He had never felt more content, more at peace with all he was, had been and could be, so it made the words easy to say. He let Keldwyn draw back, just enough for Uthe to speak.
“Love of God, my love for you, it’s all one, my lord. All love is Divine love. Everything you’ve done and loved in your life, it’s all part of it. There is no choice to be made. It is who we are and what we embrace, every day, for all of our lives.” He smiled. “‘Beloved, let us love one another, for love cometh of God. And every one that loveth, is born of God, and knoweth God.’”
Reaching up, he touched Keldwyn’s face. “Though I like the way Marguerite Porete says it even better, no offense to John the Evangelist. ‘I am God, says Love, for Love is God and God is Love, and this Soul is God by the condition of Love. I am God by divine nature and this Soul is God by the condition of Love. Thus this precious beloved of mine is taught and guided by me, without herself, for she is transformed into me, and such a perfect one, says Love, takes my nourishment.’”
They faced one another, reclined in a bed of flowers and leaves, with sweet fragranced mist falling around them. As Kel put his palm against Uthe’s face, Uthe placed his own beneath it, cupping his knuckles, holding him there. “Your mind will never be lost, Lord Uthe,” Kel said, a thick note to his voice. “Your wisdom exists through you and all around you. If ever you need a reminder of it, I will be here.”
Uthe threaded a hand through Keldwyn’s long hair, unbound and spilling over their bare flesh. “I am covered in my release, my lord,” he teased gently. “I will soil this if you don’t let me braid it.”
“We will go swimming in the pond.”
“In a while.” Uthe drew Kel closer, his othe
r hand moving to his hip, his fingers fanning out toward more intimate areas. As the Fae’s eyes darkened, Uthe bared his fangs. “For all your wisdom, have you not learned just how insatiable vampires are, my lord? Perhaps you should learn how to tire one out.”
Keldwyn’s gaze gleamed, telling Uthe he was more than up to this task—and any other they would ever face together.
About the Author
Joey W. Hill writes about vampires, mermaids, boardroom executives, cops, witches, angels, simple housemaids... She's penned over forty acclaimed titles and six award-winning series, and been awarded the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award for Erotica. But she's especially proud and humbled to have won the support and enthusiasm of a wonderful, widely diverse readership.
So why erotic romance? “Writing great erotic romance is all about exploring the true face of who we are – the best and worst - which typically comes out in the most vulnerable moments of sexual intimacy.” She has earned a reputation for writing BDSM romance that not only wins her fans of that genre, but readers who would “never” read BDSM romance. She believes that's because strong, compelling characters are the most important part of her books.
“Whatever genre you’re writing, if the characters are captivating and sympathetic, the readers are going to want to see what happens to them. That was the defining element of the romances I loved most and which shaped my own writing. Bringing characters together who have numerous emotional obstacles standing in their way, watching them reach a soul-deep understanding of one another through the expression of their darkest sexual needs, and then growing from that understanding into love - that's the kind of story I love to write."
Take the plunge with her, and don't hesitate to let her know what you think of her work, good or bad. She thrives on feedback!
