Claw Mark

by Lily Harlem

  I investigated the items Ryle had brought along to enhance our fun. There was a set of handcuffs—black leather with golden buckles—a silken blindfold and a flogger with a scarlet handle. I’d never held a flogger before and I let the thin strands of leather weave through my fingers as I studied the silvery streaks that wound through the many slim strands. It was no ordinary flogger. Ryle’s skin, like all vampires, was super-sensitive to silver, and while nothing else would give him pain, sensual or otherwise, silver would sting, burn and give him the sensations he craved.

  I would have to keep my wits about me, even in the final throes of both of our pleasure. Silver, for my husbands, was like playing with fire.

  When I pulled open the door, Ryle was on his knees, naked, his head bowed and his hands resting at his sides. He looked glorious.

  Aimery was still in the chair, and as I stood backlit with the flogger resting in one hand and the blindfold and cuffs in the other, he roamed his gaze over me.

  I said nothing as my skin heated under his scrutiny. I set the items on the bed then reached into the cupboard and found a pair of high black stilettoes. I slipped them on and instantly felt my torso lengthen, my chin tilt and my breasts jut forward.

  Feeling suddenly more confident in my new Mistress role, I strutted over to Ryle, stood in front of him and let the rumble of the train vibrate up through my soles.

  “Look at me,” I said, tipping his chin with the point of my index finger. “Tell me how you feel.”

  “I feel…” His startling blue eyes widened at the sight of me in the outfit he’d chosen, “that I will give you anything, anything at all that you want from me.”

  “And do you have a safe word, in case I push you too far?”

  “You never will. I love you too much to deny you anything.”

  “Ryle.” I reached for the flogger and tapped it against my leg. “Safe word.”

  “Nemesis.” He stared at the strands of silver catching the light and sparkling like threads of tinsel.

  “Nemesis, okay.” I bent and spoke onto his lips. “Now get on the bed, kneeling and facing the window. I want to be able to get to every inch of your delectable body. Your arse and your dick.”

  “Yes, Mistress.” He rushed to obey and a glut of excitement barged through me. Ryle being submissive was completely out of character but hell, it suited him thoroughly and I thanked my lucky stars that he was mine to order about.

  His skin was pale against the jewel-colored bed covers and his short, white-blond hair all the more ghostly contrasted with the dark paneling behind him. Like Aimery’s, his muscles contracted and bunched beneath the surface of his chilled flesh as he moved, immeasurable power and strength lurking for when he needed it. He was a killer, a creature of the night, a devourer of blood, yet he was a pussycat when in my control.

  How had I gotten so lucky?

  I reached for the cuffs and nodded at his hands. I kept my expression stern and my demeanor one of absolute authority.

  He held them out, palms up, and allowed me to fasten the leather onto his right wrist. He watched my movements with acute intensity, his body poised and his lips parted.

  I hoped to heck I got this right and gave him what he wanted. It seemed it was a fantasy he’d got himself pretty worked up over. A sense of responsibility was setting itself firmly within my desires.

  “Lift your arms.”

  Again he did as instructed.

  There was a rail attached to the wall above the bed, and I looped the small chain that held the cuffs together through it.

  I clicked the cuffs around his left wrist then moved back, to admire my captured slave.

  “Is that comfortable?” I asked.

  “Yes, Mistress.” He nodded and the shadows captured his profile against the wall: proud, straight nose, neat square chin and high forehead.

  He was stretched long with his arms above his head and his knees bent on the mattress. He had small tufts of underarm hair, a fraction darker than that on his head, and the outline of his ribs could be made out as his body elongated because of his harnessed position.

  My attention settled on his rigid cock. Thick and full it jutted from his pubic curls and beneath it his balls hung heavy. Like his face and chest, the shadow of his cock was also gracing the wall of our room and looking particularly magnificent in silhouette.

  I licked my lips and glanced at Aimery.

  He’d clasped his fingers on his lap and was watching me intently, his eyebrows pulled low and his back straight and stiff. He was obviously looking forward to the show.

  “I’m going to take away your sense of sight,” I said, turning to Ryle again. “So that you can really feel, really concentrate absolutely on the heat of my strikes and how all that intensity will travel to your dick.”

  “Yes, Mistress.” He’d already closed his eyes. “As you wish.”

  “It is as I wish, as is the fact that I want you to use your safe word if at any time it becomes too much.”

  “Yes, Mistress. Of course, Mistress.”

  Balancing one knee on the bed, I reached up and tied the blindfold over his eyes. The long loops of silk hung down his nape, tickling the top of his spine.

  I touched my fingers to his lips, tracing their shape then let my caress float down the column of his neck and onto his chest.

  He trembled slightly as I circled his nipples, first the right and then the left before stroking over the small scar he had there.

  “How did you get this?” I asked.

  “A fight, Mistress, many, many moons ago.”

  “Who did you fight with?”

  “Not who. What.”

  I stilled my caressing. “Explain.”

  “A wolf, Mistress, from the Carlton Pack. We had a run in, when I was in Russia. He caught me with his teeth.”

  I pressed my lips to the scar and wished he hadn’t had to defend himself from a vicious wolf. “How come he managed to mark your skin?”

  “We are sworn enemies for many reasons. Their ability to pierce our skin with their teeth is just one of their revolting qualities.”

  “I hope I never meet one of these nasty Carlton Pack wolves.”

  “I hope that too,” Ryle said. “With every beat of my heart.”

  I decided to push on with the task at hand, dipped downward and pressed a kiss to his navel.

  He sucked in a breath.

  “You’re so hard,” I whispered, knowing my breath would be warm on his cool skin. “Hard and ready for me to make you come.”

  “Yes, Mistress.” His voice suddenly had a breathy quality to it. “Please, Mistress.”

  I curled my fingers around his dick and gave a few firm push-pulls.

  He groaned and canted his hips forward as though pressing in for more of my touch.

  “Are you ready?” I asked, reaching for the flogger with my free hand.

  “Yes, Mistress.”

  Still holding his cock, I swung the flogger at his ass. I let the strands slap lightly against his skin and the sound whispered around the room, belying the extreme hit of pain they would have delivered.

  “Argh, fuck.” He jerked and I nearly released his cock with the forcefulness of his movement.

  “Too much?’ I asked, fear washing through me that I’d started off too hard, even though it had only been a very gentle, very fleeting blow.

  “Hell, no, it’s just…been a while since I’ve had silver heat.”

  “But it’s what you want?”

  “Yes, fuck…yes.” He dropped his head back, so that his face was angled at the ceiling. “More, please.”

  I slapped him again with the same strength behind the lash and was treated to another flinch and a groan. His cock became denser in my hand and a pearly drip of pre-cum seeped from his slit.

  “Let it build,” I said, “harness that pain and send it here.” As I’d spoken I’d stooped and swiped my tongue over the tip of his cock and gathered up that delicious droplet. “Let it burn you up, just
here. It will be so intense when I let you climax.”

  He groaned and I struck again, squeezing his cock at the same time.

  I knew what I was talking about when it came to experiencing sensual pain. Ryle had spanked me on many occasions, starting from the very first time he’d fucked me back in London. He loved the way my skin bloomed pink, the blood rising to the surface with each strike.

  Aimery had been sitting watching then too.

  I shot a glance over my shoulder.

  Aimery was leaning forward, knees apart, elbows resting on his thighs. His mouth was a thin slash and his dark eyes almost black. He gave the smallest of nods when he saw me looking his way.

  He was enjoying himself. This was satisfying the voyeur in him.

  I returned my attention to Ryle and continued to take him to a place where pain and pleasure became one—a delicious tangle of wanting more, needing less and a sub-space where nothing existed except the delights and torments of the body. I struck him several more times then stroked the flogger down his back, slowly, teasingly, knowing it would be super-intense for him to feel silver this way when he was in such an aroused state.

  He arched his spine and shifted on the bed. I was trailing kisses of fire over his cold flesh. He seemed to want it, judging by the way he shivered and shook, but the way he writhed and bowed made me double-check.

  I stilled and licked the ball of his shoulder. “More?”

  He nodded. “Yes…more.”

  “You may succumb to your orgasm,” I whispered. “Come for your Mistress and show me how much you like this scene.”

  His cock twitched in my grip and I knew it wouldn’t be long before he climaxed. The concrete feel of him was delicious and it was all I could do not to take him deep into my throat and order him to spurt hard and fast in my mouth.

  “You’re doing so well,” I murmured, resisting my sudden urge. “Just keep going for this last bit and it will feel amazing.” I moved away so that I could swing my arm at an easy angle and still massage his cock.

  I hit the pale orbs of his arse cheeks, again, and then again and soon lost count of how many strikes I’d delivered. His skin didn’t reddened despite my harsh treatment, but I could guess by his reaction to the silver flogger that it felt burned. It was a sharply erotic sensation that I adored and craved, and judging by Ryle’s frenzied state, so did he.

  Within a minute or so he was groaning—a long low sound punctuated by gasps. I picked up the pace, increased the power behind the strikes until suddenly he stilled. His cock seemed to solidify in my hand and his buttocks clenched.

  I rubbed at his shaft with a rapid force, whacked him again, with extra gusto, and then was rewarded when a long rope of cum shot from the end of his cock and onto the bed. I quickly scooped up some of the cold fluid and used it as lube, continued to wank him through his orgasm and gave one final, biting strike with the flogger.

  “Ah, ah, yeah fuck…” he shouted. “That’s it!”

  “So sexy, Beatrice,” Aimery said sharply, excitement lacing his tone. “Really bloody erotic to watch you—”

  A deafening screech rang through the cabin and I was thrust forward as the train slammed on its brakes.

  Everything went black. The lights flashed on again, then off. I’d just made out Aimery standing and whipping around to face an almighty crash at the window.

  My head banged into the paneling and my body folded into a bundle. I felt Ryle shifting as pain screamed across my scalp and down my neck. Air was knocked from my lungs and my knee twisted beneath me.

  Still the awful noise continued, it was disorientating and I called out for Ryle who was still trussed up next to me, or so I’d thought, because a chill wind had burst through the window and now I couldn’t make him out at all.

  “Ryle, where are you?” I called.

  Nothing.

  The violent deceleration made it impossible to move. The train was crashing, I was sure of it. Jolts and bumps, shaking and shifting were pinning me in to one place. With a brutal lurch I was flung in the opposite direction and then instantly careened backward at another angle.

  Fear gripped me. The train was off the rails. I screamed, flailed my arms and was tossed to the floor. Suddenly an almighty force scooped me up, and the agony of super-cold fresh air blistered into my lungs. I was being held tight and firm and squeezed against something hard and solid.

  A brilliant flash of red and orange turned to a white heat that flamed around me as the wind rushed past my ears.

  I was out of the carriage. Racing along. Being carried. I attempted to move from the grip about my waist but couldn’t. My breaths were hard to catch, my heart beating wildly and the pain in my head was intensifying.

  I struggled to focus because my eyes felt scorched from the explosion. I tried to scream but no sound came out. I was floating, flying, my limbs were numb, my body not my own.

  Everything went black, still and deathly quiet.

  Chapter Four

  The cold was an agonizing army of knives slicing against my flesh. My feet seemed a distant memory and my skin raged a protest about the icy air surrounding me.

  I tried to move but my back was pressed against something hard and unyielding. My wrists were bound, trapped behind whatever it was that I was attached to.

  “Ryle. Aimery,” I called, blinking in the silvery light of the moon’s beam on glistening snow. “Where…where are you?” I tried to shift again but my frozen limbs wouldn’t work. My teeth were tapping together and the bitterly cold night was stinging my eyes.

  I glanced around. The back of my head was tender and rubbing on what I now guessed was a pine tree. I was surrounded by them. Tall, thin trunks topped with bowed branches heavy with snow. They rose out of a wintery carpet into the black night sky like silent sentries.

  A sound to my right caught my attention and I spun to see a flurry of snow landing in a sparkling heap from a stem that was bouncing in relief. The snow puffed upwards, like glittery powder, and then settled mutely.

  I tried to make sense of where I was and what had happened. I remembered the fierceness of the train crash, the heat of an explosion and being carried, swept away from the destruction by something strong and swift.

  A thudding pulse in my right temple reminded me of my head banging against the paneling, next to Ryle, and I winced at the memory. “Ryle,” I said again, my lips barely moving in the cold. Damn, he’d been tied up and blindfolded when the train had crashed. But that was okay, wasn’t it? He could move like the wind, those cuffs were for a scene, he could have broken out of them in an instant had he really wanted to.

  I tried to peer into the line of trees, hoping to see Ryle and Aimery walking out of the shadowy depths of the Canadian forest. They’d be here any second. I was sure of it.

  But there was nothing—just eerie stillness.

  Perhaps I was dreaming?

  “Aimery. Ryle,” I called, louder this time. “Where are you?”

  “Call all you want. They won’t hear you.”

  I gasped and twisted to my left.

  Standing ankle deep in the snow, her furred cape floating over her shoulders and her red hair piled tightly on top of her head, was Elfrida.

  Panic raged through me. A shot of adrenaline burst into my veins and I yanked frantically at the bindings on my wrists.

  How had she found me? What the hell had happened? I should have known she’d had something to do with this.

  “You look confused,” she said, her mouth contorting into an evil smile. “But it must have happened so fast for you so I’m not surprised your human mind is taking a while to catch up with events.”

  She stepped close. Close enough so that the puffs of warm air leaving my lungs circled around her face. She tilted her chin and breathed deep as if savoring my scent. There were no puffs of air from her cold body as she released the inhalation.

  “Ah, yes, that’s it. I knew they were hiding what you really were.” Satisfaction flashed across her eye
s. “You are pure. There is no perfume, no cover up now. Just the sweetly exotic scent of the rarest blood of all and it’s about time I savored it.”

  “Let me go. They’ll be here any second, Aimery and Ryle, and when they find you being on the council won’t save you, not here. They’ll kill you for this. You must have killed countless people on that train.”

  She cackled and pushed a strand of my hair over my ear. “Stupid humans in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “You’re disgusting.” I jerked my head away from her touch. Her icy fingers and her sharp nails instilled dread in me. Where were my husbands? I needed them, now. “I officially belong to Aimery and Ryle, you know? You can’t touch me or have a drop of my blood.”

  “Ah, that’s where you’re wrong. I can do whatever I want.” She leaned in close and appeared to delight in the scent of my skin.

  “No.” I writhed and wriggled. “They won’t allow it.”

  “I don’t think they’ll have a choice.” She paused and stretched her lips into a broad smile that showed off her teeth, including her fangs.

  Oh God, she was going to bite me, here and now. She wanted my Bombay blood this instant and she wouldn’t be able to stop guzzling like Aimery and Ryle did. She’d been waiting centuries to sample my unique flavor. Once she started she’d drain me dry in a feeding frenzy.

  “Please, no.” Again I looked frantically into the dense blackness of the woods. For a second I thought I saw a stooped shadow, something gray, but then it was gone. In my desperate state my imagination was playing tricks on me.

  “They can’t stop me taking what I’m due,” Elfrida said, sliding her palm over my right breast, her fingers tapping over the lace of the woefully thin body stocking. “Not when they’ve finally got what they deserve. Banishment.”

  “What…what do you mean?”

  She ran her hand over my stomach and pressed the heel of her palm against my mound.

  I tried to move but I was trapped between her and the tree.

  “What I mean is…” She leaned in, her target my neck. “They’ve gone. I’ve finally rid the Order of them and their undisciplined law-breaking ways. The vampire community is better off without Aimery and Ryle and all their lies and deceit.”