by Joey W. Hill
“Yes, I have. I’ve required you to strip quite a few times when you weren’t expecting it. In my library, to give me the pleasure of looking at you while we were both reading. In the gardens, while I tended the roses. I like seeing your backside flex as you dig or plant. The way your knees press into the dirt, your testicles so heavy and touchable, swinging between your legs.”
He closed his eyes. The fit of the pants was getting decidedly uncomfortable. He was also certain fluid was leaking from his organ, likely staining the front of the thin cloth with a damp kiss. “Why would you do that? Tempt yourself with nakedness but not touch?”
“Because I like the look of you. Pure and perfect, a creation of God. So sexual. You got hard, every time I required it of you. Just as now.”
“And I’ve told you that men cannot help what their cocks do. Only what they do with them.”
“So you have.” A light smile touched her lips, but didn’t reach her eyes. “Thomas, turn.”
He did, and knew she was looking at those fifty raw stripes, the ones that had kept him moving stiffly this past day, though his healing ability had turned them into closed scars. In his world, the healing powers of a second mark would be considered a miracle. In her world, it was simply part of being a vampire’s servant. When she drew closer, that first touch was like a lightning strike, the way her fingers trailed down his shoulder. He closed his eyes again, and his fists. Throughout the ages, men of God had flogged themselves. For penance. To show their devotion by giving up comfort and immersing themselves in agony. To resist temptation.
Father, forgive me...
Could a man ask for forgiveness before he sinned, knowing that he was going to do it, even if it was wrong? Of course not, not unless he was hypocrite. He was worse than that. A scholar, a thinking man. She was right. In his heart, he didn’t consider this a sin.
She let those fingers drift down his shoulder and rest on the line of scars. The pain during the lashing had been excruciating, such that he’d cried out during the last twenty. Afterwards, he’d lain down naked on the cold stone floor of her small chapel. She hadn’t required that. He’d done it to underscore what he was choosing to do, praying for guidance. He’d fallen asleep that way. When he woke, a blanket had been laid over him by her own hands, and his head was in her lap, her fingers stroking his temples. She’d let him into her mind in that intimate moment, and he saw her considering the dusting of silver in his hair, a reminder he was no boy. He was a man. He’d been taught they were all children of God, but he’d often wondered why God would want a world full of creatures who never matured and grew up. Even infants could learn enough from their parents to be guided by their wisdom in making their own decisions. Why couldn’t adults do the same from God’s Wisdom?
“Do you really consider lying with a woman a defilement?” She could purr like a cat, stroke a man with her voice, but sometimes that would fall away. He’d hear a trace of vulnerability it seemed only his ears were allowed to detect. Such evidence of her trust was a gift he valued beyond comprehension.
“Not this. Not with you. God help me.”
She laid her cheek between his shoulder blades, her lips grazing the nearest one. He thought her eyes might have closed now, because her hands slipped around his waist, her knuckles curling to trace the muscles in his abdomen, then down, around the hip bone, along the line of hip and upper thigh. At last, she plucked at a crease in the strained fabric of his trousers, like a string in a violin tightened to near snapping. His testicles contracted at the thrum of incidental contact all along his groin.
“I told you I would want to hear it tonight, Thomas. Why you want to be my full servant.”
“You asked me that the very first day, my lady.”
“Yes. You said you felt it would serve the Lord’s purpose. I laughed at you.”
“You did more than that, my lady. You said, ‘That’s a convenient male excuse.’”
“And you hid behind your wit and impertinence. You said, ‘No man would willingly choose to serve such a demanding taskmaster. Only a monk, used to serving God, would be up to the task of serving you as you demand, my lady.’”
She straightened, her body sliding against his as she pushed up on his left arm so she could pass beneath it and settle herself on him so her breasts rested on his chest, her thigh brushing the inside of his. Their mouths were so close. It wasn’t often that he was so directly reminded of how much shorter she was, a petite doll of a woman. One who, standing so close, had to tilt her head to look up into his face. As he had to bow his own to see hers.
Her hair fell in curls down to her hips and teased his fingers there. “You amused me, because it was a challenge,” she said. “You were an enigma. You still are.”
“I doubt that. You are inside my mind, my lady. If you honor me with your final mark, you believe you will have ingress into my very soul.”
“I have seen a squirrel dance across a branch that should snap beneath his weight, fling himself in the air and land without fear on a tree limb fifteen feet away. I know squirrels can do that. It doesn’t make the mystery of how they came to be what they are any less. Your greatest sin is speaking the truth, embracing your own wisdom, believing that it can be inspired by God’s. And that sin has endured, despite a lifetime of self-deprecation, of being nurtured on the idea that man is hopelessly weak, ignorant and misguided. You try to flagellate yourself with it, and yet your skin bears no scars. Not until mine.” Her fingers passed over them again. “Do you want to touch my hair, Thomas?”
“Yes.” He swallowed, but kept his hand hovering in the air where she’d pushed it, the other in a clenched knot at his hip.
She nodded, but didn’t give him permission to do so. Instead, she outlined his collar bone with one long-nailed finger, scraping enough to leave a mark. “That first day, I thought you a man of God led astray by your lust. But your gentleness intrigued me. And when I looked in your eyes, I saw something far more than lust in your gaze. So now, you must tell me the truth, whatever it is. Why would you turn from God to give yourself to me?”
Now her expression sharpened in that way she had that took a man off guard. All playfulness gone, no games or tricks. Her gaze was as piercing as a monarch’s, and her voice was clear, demanding truth. Though he hadn’t been quite sure how he would say it, it came from him concise and immediate, the way she had trained him to react to her commands.
“Because I feel I am turning toward Him, not away.” He swallowed and made himself hold her gaze. There were times she didn’t allow it, but this was not one of them. She waited, wanting more, because she knew as he did there was more truth to be told. She wouldn’t break the lock between their eyes until she had all of it. All of him.
“The history of my church, of men in my church... Monks, cardinals, priests, popes...we’ve often engaged in earthly matters. Politics, wars, scheming. Acts of deceit, to secure power or privilege for the Church. Such men have stood next to kings, influenced the direction of countries.” He swallowed again. “They believed power was an acceptable weapon to secure faith. And sometimes it was. Though sometimes, to our shame, it wasn’t.”
He only had to look into her slanted eyes and at the abundance of her black hair to know they would have burned her alive during those shameful times. Being a vampire would have been the least of it.
She nodded. “I have been alive for nearly nine hundred years, Thomas. Such a time span gives one far less respect for religion, and far more for the Divine.”
Despite the tension of the moment, the conflicting reactions of his body and his heart, he couldn’t help but smile. As beautiful as she was, he sometimes thought it was her clever, irreverent mind that truly bewitched him.
“I do not seek to compare myself to such men,” he continued, “though I pray I am not misguided as some of them have been. But I see what you are trying to do with the Vampire Council. And if I may be so bold, my lady, I will say that perhaps I have seen what others have not about your i
ntentions. You may not consider humans equal, but you do not think that gives you the right to take advantage of the power God has given you. You think like a predator, not a human. You take what you need, and you demand respect, but that is all. You do not kill or subjugate merely for the power.”
Her other hand still rested on his back. But now her fingers dug into one of the scars, enough to have him draw in a breath. “You may be wrong about a part of that,” she murmured. “Sometimes I do subjugate...for the pleasure in the power. But you haven’t finished your explanation, have you?”
This was the more difficult part. He almost had to close his eyes again as her hand came back to his neck, slid down over the pectoral to tease the nipple. Her clothing was thin, and he could feel the press of her body. He wasn’t a virgin. He’d come into the monastery after sowing a few wild oats as a stable boy, so he knew what it was to feel a woman’s arousal through her breasts, the hardening tips a reflection of his own body. It was a heady feeling, one that made him dizzy, but she was holding him, steadying him.
“I think what you are doing will save lives. It will make it possible for two species to live in relative peace. From what I can see, you are alone at the head of a small army, standing against a far more savage one. One that wants no law but blood. I...feel what you are, my lady. I know there is a savagery inside you as well. You have the strength of will to use it for good...but you are also alone. If you will forgive me for the presumption, I can give you what others cannot – a quiet place, a confessional, a place to rest. A place of understanding. A reminder of why you are doing what you are doing.”
Despite the urges of his body, the conflict in his mind, something else took hold of him now. He spoke without flinching, his voice gaining in strength, resonating with the attentive look on her face. “I think I can be a way to hold onto your compassion and mercy. I can help you retain your belief in balance, that it is more important than power for its own sake. It is ambitious for a humble monk, and I have prayed upon it. Scorn my humility if you will, and though it could be my ego, pride or truth that guides my feeling in this, I know I feel it. As surely as I feel my love for God.” He took a breath. “And my love for you.”
At the flicker in her gaze, the press of her lips, he allowed himself to twine a finger in one ebony curl. Not to touch, but to affirm. “In the end, we answer to God. But I know by serving you, I serve him. I’ve made that peace, and this moment is as much about that for me as it is for anything else.”
He stared directly into those jewel-green irises, the darkness inside of them. As her fingers came to rest on his face, near his lips, he spoke again. “Whether I burn for it or find my way to the Heavenly Gates, it is what I have decided. May God have mercy on us both if I’ve chosen wrongly.”
“I think you are burning now,” she said after a long moment. “Your skin is so warm. Just a light gleam of sweat.”
“It’s from the fire. You like it far warmer than most would find comfortable.” She would be comfortable in the bowels of Hell itself. Lucifer would offer her a comfortable chair and a glass of wine, if she ever graced his gates. A creature of all worlds and none.
After another long pause, she spoke. “I accept you as my servant, gentle monk. Tonight I will mark you as I take your body. Give yourself to me generously, this one night. Every ounce of your heart, soul and body. If you do that, you will have done my bidding.”
She smiled, and the soft pleasure to it dropped the bottom out of his world. It was several moments before he could speak. When he did, he knew he’d stepped out of the world of books and theology, and left his eloquence there. Now he could only say what he was feeling. This primal place was her world.
“I’m nervous,” he admitted. “Nervous that I will not please you.”
“Now that is shameful pride.” Her eyes glinted and she teased his mouth with her fingers again, such that he couldn’t help himself. His lips parted and he tasted her. In the reflection of her eyes he saw the look of concentrated wonder on his face, amazement at himself. Lifting up on her toes, she brought her lips within a breath of his and spoke in that sensuous whisper she did so well.
“Thomas, I promise you, you are incapable of not pleasing me. Before this night is over, you will kiss my throat, my breasts, between my legs. You will taste every inch of my skin, and I will taste yours. As well as your blood. No more waiting. As much as I have enjoyed our dialogues, until I bid you otherwise, I bid you silent.” Her eyes grew close, taking over everything as the whisper became a breath, taking the air in his lungs.
“Kiss me. Use your body to talk to me.”
Part Three
“I know you’ve thought of touching me with your mouth, these hands.” Closing her fingers over his right hand, she lifted it so they were palm to palm. She widened her slim fingers, watching as he slowly slid his in between the spaces, down those narrow valleys. His expression reflected his wonder at the feel of her skin moving against his in just that small way.
That reaction made something inside her go still and quiet. Lyssa teased him often, and she wouldn’t deny a certain amount of feminine satisfaction in having this night with him. But he was right. She did respect him. She’d never met a man of such singular conviction, who so trusted his intellect to teach him God’s will, rather than faith alone. She’d never met a man so close to God, and she’d walked with cardinals, shared at least one dinner with a pope. Back in the...fourteenth century, she remembered. He’d chewed with his mouth open and explained to her, in great detail, the edict he’d issued against the practice of witchcraft.
Thomas was also right about his purpose in her life, but he couldn’t know how accurate his word choice had been. Confessor. There’d been times, in her darkest hours, she’d wanted to go on her knees to someone, have him lay a comforting hand over her hair, give her absolution, tell her that her sins were forgiven as long as she regretted them in her heart. That was not her life, not who she could be. But Thomas understood. Those nights when she’d sit with him by a window, studying the moonlight or the rain, the way the wind moved through the trees, she’d speak her thoughts to him in a random, unguarded way. He would listen, and that was as close to confession as she’d ever come, to any man or God.
He was still studying their hands, the way they fit together, and it both amused and moved her to see how he was lingering over it. Not delaying, but simply marveling at what he’d never experienced. She spread the fingers of her other hand out on his shoulder, then slid her knuckles along his throat, moving up to his face. He often wore the wire-rimmed glasses. The second mark hadn’t improved his eyesight, oddly, or perhaps he did so much reading he just found the glasses a comfort and support. She liked watching him read in them, the way they accentuated his serious gray eyes, the set of his mouth. At first, his hair had been shaved short, but in his travels with her, she’d required him to grow it out, so he blended more with the styles of other servants. It was best not to attract too much attention, and a monk who traveled in close attendance on a single woman of her looks and bearing would attract attention. A servant, however, would not attract as much.
She unhooked the wire fitting over one ear, and then freed her other hand to do the same with the other side, removing the glasses and setting them to the side. He had beautiful gray eyes, long-lashed and intent, the kind of eyes that any woman with a heart could see had strength to them, and courage.
She ran a finger over his lips, enjoying the feel of them. He had such a pleasurable mouth. How would he pleasure her with it? “You know, you’ve never thought about it, not when I was listening,” she murmured. “I assume I am not, in fact, deflowering a virgin.”
He shook his head. And though he obeyed her directive not to speak, she saw the image in his mind. When he’d worked as a stable lad, an orphan taken in by the monastery, those gray eyes and lean young body had caught the attention of a village maid. One with an ample...very ample—bosom.
A smile curved her lips at his rueful look
. But after that, there’d been nothing. Once he’d taken his vow, he’d not given himself any form of release, even by his hand.
“Then perhaps we should deal with that.” She cocked her head at his startled expression. “I can order you to spill your seed first, then I’ll spend the night building you back so you can spill it inside of me.”
He held her gaze. I beg of you, my lady. Let me be inside you when that happens. Make me hold out until then. Make my torment your pleasure.
He surprised her, the ferocity of that desire, welling up inside of him. He’d watched her tease and torment others, making them wait, and wait, and wait. He’d seen how it heightened her pleasure. That knowledge was in his gaze now, and she felt that tightening around her heart again. Her monk who saw so much, understood so much. Even this, which in so many essential ways revolved around him, he’d turned back to her...as a gift.
“Very well,” she said, keeping her voice steady with an effort. “But I may make you do the other later. Afterward. This one night, you will give yourself to all the pleasures I demand as your Mistress. Do you understand? You will not question or refuse me. So I will know that forever forward, you can do what I demand of you as my third mark.
When he nodded, she gave him an arch look, changing the tone. “And now, I think I told you to kiss me. To use your body, not your voice or your mind, to speak to me.”
But my lady...you’ve told me often that a man has to use both his mind and body to please you. That rueful look became his quiet smile, but before she could seek a suitable reprimand for impertinence, he lifted both hands to her face, that intent expression on his own as he cupped her jaw and settled his fingers along it, framing her face. He passed both thumbs over her lips and, when they parted, he traced the fangs, holding a finger under one until she pressed down gently, drew several drops of blood that fell on her tongue. His eyes registered those bright red drops, and then he dipped his head. She kept her lips parted, still, as he touched his to her mouth, and his tongue slid over hers, over that blood, sharing it between them, sending heat through her. She held back her reactive desire, though, too titillated by what her monk was doing, how he would try to please her.
