by Joey W. Hill
“You brought it back to me, habiba. And the third mark binds us. You will never lose me. Wherever I go…”
“I follow.” She stared up at him. But fate could play terrible tricks, couldn’t it?
“Ssssh.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her forehead, to her cheeks, then across her lips, teasing her when she tried to strain for him, for a deeper connection. Instead he played his tongue over hers, traced her mouth and gave her a tiny nip on the corner before drawing back and picking up another bloom.
“Something to take your mind from such nonsense.” Putting that bloom in her opposite hand, he cut the stem and wound it over the other biceps, once again cinching it in for that delicate sip of her blood. God, she wanted the penetration of his fangs as much as she wanted the penetration of his cock. They meant the same thing. She was his, to give whatever he needed, however he needed.
Now he was trailing the next bloom over her breast, covering the nipple and teasing it with the thick cluster of petals, a contrast to the sharp tiger teeth. Leaning forward, he pinched that clamp, removed the one on the left side. As the blood rushed in and her breath sucked in hard at the pain, he soothed it with his mouth, suckling her, letting her feel the barest graze of his fangs before he replaced his mouth with the rose’s sweet stroke.
During those few moments, as she drew in deep, shuddering breaths, she felt him sink to an even more intimate level of her soul, further than he’d ever gone before. She’d known of a vampire’s power to do that to a third mark, reach so deep, into such dark places. On a mere whim, the vampire could tear apart the servant’s mind, break her in a hundred different hellish ways. Feeling his power to do that was truly as terrifying as she’d heard. It was like having one’s soul skewered by a steel spit, and the steel weapon was his implacable will. It made her mind and heart as helpless as her body was, restrained like this.
But it was Mason there, the implacable weight of his will. Her Master. She loosened her grip on the roses in her hand, realizing she’d crushed them. More petals drifted to the ground around her.
He removed the other clamp, nuzzled and cosseted that nipple the same way, but then he took two small tea rose buds, positioned them over her nipples and repositioned those tiger teeth. The pressure was far less, buffered by that floral cushion, but the teeth bit into the buds’ thick layers, sending the sweet fragrance up to her nose.
Breaking off the heads of three more roses, he lifted them over her head. She raised her face as much as she was able, closed her eyes as the petals pattered down over her face, her bare shoulders. Several landed on her breasts. He wrapped the first stem around her throat, his hands collaring her there, a firm pressure for several delicious moments before it was replaced by the constriction of that stem. It was longer than the other two, but he wove the next two stems into it, creating a collar of intertwined pieces that pricked her in a random pattern.
She was licking her lips, needing him as he worked so close to her the fabric of his jeans leg brushed her knee. His amber gaze was intent, absorbed in what he was doing. It held captive any words she might have, because she was being treated as a true slave, expected to be still and compliant beneath his hands, his wishes, no matter what. She’d never felt so fulfilled, and yet needing-to-be-filled, all at once.
But as she watched him, she also could appreciate the creative artistry of the Master who’d claimed her. There was a small bundle of long wires that had been slipped into the vase, probably another of Mason’s silent instructions to Amara. Using the wires and tiny clips to split, connect and tighten the hold of the stems, he was weaving her into a web of slim, sharp rose stalks. The next one attached to the collar went straight down her sternum. Two more branched out from that piece to curve under each breast. They passed under her arms and were reconnected to the collar in the back.
He had to move closer to position them. It brought him right up against her. As she made an incoherent moan in her throat, he pressed an absent kiss along her temple, then he tightened that connecting piece. The thorns bit into the tender flesh under her breasts, making her nipples tingle hard in their rose and silver constraints. The strands of thorns around her throat pulled against her windpipe, reminding her of that restraint. At the same moment, he slid one finger over her clit, a passing, unexpected caress that ricocheted through her like an electrical shock.
She bit into his flesh, the muscled pectoral beneath the stretch of his T-shirt, and heard his growl as she tried to puncture him through the heavy weight cotton. But he didn’t draw back. He let her mouth him through the cloth, turn the bite into a random, erratic pull at the shirt with her teeth. She wanted it off, wanted to taste him. Instead, he hooked another stem to the binding he’d created in the back, down to her lower back. There he connected two more long green stems and brought them to the front, crossing over her hip bones, arrowing toward her pussy.
He stepped back. As she watched him with greedy eyes, he connected two stems to that connection point just above her mons, and threaded them along the crease between thigh and pussy, along the metal clamps on either side of her labia. She contracted on the rose bud he’d placed inside of her. As she did, he circled those stems around her upper thighs and reattached them at the labia with the help of those diabolical little clips. One more tightening, and here, too, he drew blood.
Stems now passed under her breasts, up and down her back, over her hips, through the juncture of her thighs and around the tops of her thighs. Around her biceps and throat. Though the cross held her fast, the delicate strength of the rose stems was what had her trembling the most.
Blood was trickling down her breast from the punctures at her throat. Two streams, one coming from the thorn at her shoulder, the other closer to the collar bone, on an intent, slow trek down her sternum. As she watched, the one from her shoulder made its way with sensual accuracy toward her nipple. Before gravity could slide it away from that goal, the tea rosebud clamped over it caught the flow, the blood staining the petals, outlining the ruffled tip.
Her eyes closed as her Master took care of the other stream, catching it with his mouth at the point right between her breasts, his hard jaw teasing the curves. He suckled the blood off her, licked his way back up to her throat, his tongue tracing around the puncture point and setting off fireworks in those sensitive nerves along her neck. Fighting her restraints to turn her head toward him, she caressed the side of his face, his hair, with her cheek. She sought any part of him she could reach with her lips, but he drew back again.
Two roses left. He put the stems around her ankles, above the restraints, and she was caught up in a storm of reaction when he knelt with his lithe grace to taste the blood there, working his way up to where the ones around her thighs were likewise producing small streams.
Bleed for me… She was bleeding for him. She would give him every last drop if he demanded it.
“If I ever asked such a terrible thing, I would expect you to do your best to stake me, habiba.” He glanced up at her, those amber eyes ablaze with passion. “For I would truly have lost my mind.” Keeping his eyes on her, he followed the blood track with his mouth until he was high up on her thigh, his hands on her hips. So she was locked in his gaze when she saw his fangs, and let out an enraptured cry when he pierced the femoral, the fast rush of life-giving blood enough to send a squeezing, incredible surge of reaction into her pussy. Her clit spasmed and her mouth opened, sucking in air, trying for the words.
“Master…I can’t…”
You won’t come, habiba. Not yet. Those metal pieces won’t let you.
And by all the fires of hell, he was right. It was the nearest thing to an almost climax she’d ever experienced, but the constriction, the tight hold that wouldn’t allow any movement, prevented her from going there. But she was gasping and making the sounds of a climax, tiny, near screams, choking sobs as the sensation passed over her like a coquettish wave, just out of her reach. The feverish shudder through her limbs had her pleading.
What lay behind the self-control took her to a whole different level of madness. She was immersed in a raging storm of male lust, a flash of images and emotions, all the things he wanted to do to her, things that could strain her to the endurance of her mind and body. They battered her, sent her reeling. Then, after that brief immolation in the flames, he let her fall back from that door and closed it again, leaving her shaken.
He closed the punctures with the coagulants all vampires possessed and rose, his tumultuous gaze sweeping over her in a way that had her swallowing sound again.
“You’ll stay with her.”
Jessica blinked, realizing her whole world had narrowed to him. Amara was back, and she had no idea when the woman had arrived. She knelt beside his chair, her hands folded, head bowed.
“You will not communicate with her in any way. Your only job is to watch over her. You will tell me if she is in any discomfort that is unacceptable to me.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Mason’s gaze slid over his other servant, then came back to Jessica. She stared at him. He couldn’t possibly leave her, not like this. She was dying, her body consumed by desire so ravenous it was a dragon, about to swallow a virgin damsel in one bite. Perhaps it was the look in his eye that brought that comparison to her whirling mind.
“Good. I’m going for a ride on Coman. I’ll be back in a while.”
§
It wasn’t until he disappeared around the corner of the stairwell that Jessica really believed it. It overcame her, such that she wanted to rage like a temperamental child, scream curses after him. He was leaving her alone in this state…and in this dungeon, tied to this cross. Amara was here, but…
No. He wasn’t leaving her. The feverish euphoria of her denied and bound state refused to let panic take the upper hand. His mind would be with her every second. She knew him, knew he wouldn’t let her suffer a moment of true fear. He wanted to see if she could trust him, trust her Master. He was punishing her, yes, but he was doing more than that.
It took a good few minutes to work all that out, however, since her mind was so consumed with lust, disbelief and trepidation, that thinking in any linear way took supreme effort. Amara kept her gaze down, only flicking it up every few seconds to check on Jessica’s status, though she eschewed any direct eye contact, following Mason’s command to the letter. Whatever he’d said to them, apparently Amara wasn’t pushing any boundaries.
That was Jessica’s job, and she’d accomplished it, hadn’t she? Spread and bound, aroused and teased by rosebuds, thorns, nipple clamps, clit compression. Punctured with tiny floral fangs in six or seven key places, and the inside of her thigh still throbbing with the tantalizing impression of his mouth. She should have known, however, that he wasn’t nearly done tormenting her – and that he didn’t have to be in the room to make it worse. All those images in his head…the lingering impression of brutal lust and an all-encompassing need to take.
Jorge already had Coman’s bridle on, but Mason apparently hadn’t requested any other tack. He let her into his mind’s eye as he swung up on the horse. Coman reflected his master’s state of mind, because when Mason mounted, the horse was cutting a circle, his ears laid back, but the savagery of the two males were in accord. Coman was more than willing to be turned toward the beach. They took the dune at a canter, but when they hit the shore, Mason let him have his head.
As he crouched low over the horse’s neck to steady him, they thundered across the sand. Every reverberation of the horse’s hooves thrummed through Mason’s thighs, his aching balls and hard cock. His mind was pummeled by visions of wanting to take Jessica off the cross, take her down to her knees and possess her utterly, the way Coman’s instinct would take a mare in heat. Those teeth to the neck, the pressure of the male body pressing dominantly down on the female’s. Mine, mine, mine…
Jessica closed her eyes, immersed in it, aching and short of breath. My love…
She didn’t know what made her call him that, but whispered from her lips, she responded to the emotion under the fury. He was angry that she’d forced his hand in this. More than that, his own savage reaction, as her blood began to flow and she began to beg him, had driven him out here, to try and control a need for her that ran as thick and hot as hers did for him. His mind didn’t tell her that, but the fire pumping through his blood, that she picked up from the glimpse of his mind, told her.
He slowed the horse at last, made the loop and came cantering back. Coman shook his head, snorting, his sides lathered. Mason slid off him, tied the reins on his neck and sent him back toward the stables with a slap on his flanks and a mental signal to Jorge that the horse was coming for a rubdown.
Then he stripped. T-shirt, jeans, a mere two items that left him completely naked before the waves, feeling the cool evening breeze play off his skin, ripple over his thighs, his erect cock. He glanced down, giving her a full scale view of it. She’d been right. It was larger than even usual, the tip damp with fluid, his testicles smooth and tight. She wanted to touch him, close her hand over him, see if her fingers would reach around that impressive girth. Take him in her mouth, all the way to the back of her throat, let him punish her that way if he wished.
Instead, he walked into the tide line, laid himself down on the sand and let the foam laced waters wash over his thighs. She shivered, though the tropical waters were still warm from the day’s sunlight. She let out a small, plaintive protest as he took himself in hand and began to stroke his cock with strong, clever fingers.
No, my lord. Please…let me.
He was imagining it as her hand, her mouth, her wet, sucking cunt. Her on top of him right now, his hands driving her down on his length. He’d watch her eyes grow wide and vulnerable, her throat straining out screams of pleasure and agony, the release powerful enough to destroy them both.
Part of your punishment, Jessica. You will get this later. When you know for certain what kind of Master I am, and submit fully to that knowledge.
No… She was protesting not his words, but the fisting of that cock. Her pussy clenched anew, unable to create any friction with that metal frame inside of her, just the taunting whisper of the damp rose petals. That excruciating near-orgasmic feeling once again swept over her, making her cry out, pull against her bonds, as he let her feel what he was feeling, the rolling power of the climax coming up through him. Whenever he came home from his travels, he spilled his seed inside of her first, nowhere else. Now he was going to give it instead to the sea, an offering to long-haired sea sirens who would taste the salt of him and wish that they could lure him out to them with their songs, where they’d forever make him their captive.
There is no song but yours I will ever hear, habiba. Only you.
Every part of her was taut, and she was having trouble breathing, straining against her bonds. He wasn’t too far away from her to see. He could see everything through Amara’s eyes if he wished.
Please, my lord. Let me… Come back to me here. I beg you. Take me however you wish, even deny me, but do not torment me like this. I can’t bear it. I need you. You will tear my soul in half. Please, please don’t.
His hand stilled. What if I make you suck me to completion, but refuse you a climax, not just today, but for the next ten days, while I continue to torment you however I wish, keeping you aroused and wanting?
I will want to stake you in your sleep, she admitted honestly, but I will obey anything you desire, my lord. However, though it took an effort so great
it made tears roll down her cheeks anew, she managed to find her original resolve in the center of her besieged heart. The determination that had not dimmed throughout the past few interminable and ecstatic hours, but instead burned more brightly than ever.
Anything except being left behind. It’s you who taught me what being a vampire’s servant truly means. I’m here for you—for the protection of your heart and soul, even your body—and when you leave me, you deny me the right of being your full servant, of being all those things to you. I don’t care what others may do to me – it will never be as unbearable as spending a moment without you.
Part Eight
Perhaps it was because of how vulnerable she felt right now, how stripped down to the soul, but if he brought himself to completion, gave his essence to the waves and the sand, rather than to her body, it would be as sharp and devastating a rebuke to her heart as anything else he could do. She equated it with his choosing to leave her behind, not letting her share every part of his life. He was her Master, her life and will his to command, yet it wasn’t that simple. She loved him; she had demands of her own, so many of them connected to her deep-seated need to serve him.
Those tears touched her lips, suppressed sobs fair choking her. He’d proven his point. He could break her down to this, to pure need and pain, no rational or sensible thoughts in her mind, only emotion. Please don’t…
That feeling came again, that he was at the deepest level of her soul, a tender, quivering thing he held in his strong grasp. But this time that sense spread out through her, holding all of her, so strong an impression it felt like actual physical contact. She could smell him on her skin, even feel the pressure of his fingers on her flesh. This was what he could have done for Farida, if he hadn’t been magically blocked from helping her during her tragic end. She could have avoided a single moment of true fear, and even more than that.
