Cantrips: Volume #1: Minor Magics Crafted to Amuse and Entertain

by Joey W. Hill

  Jessica realized the sting of the thorns had disappeared, though they still dug into her flesh. She couldn’t feel the hold of the manacles. It was as if she’d stepped inside of him, and nothing being done to her body could affect her…though the pleasure he gave her remained, a lovely, writhing coil that made her soul dance and undulate against his, a seductive dance. And she felt his ethereal response, a blast of male heat that twisted around her like a lazy tornado of glittering particles, making her part her lips and taste him on her tongue.

  As a vampire, he’d always had this power, this sorcery, and now he let her experience it as the miraculous gift it was. It was a magic she’d never seen exercised by a vampire before, had never even heard about it.

  Because it is only possible when the servant trusts the vampire so much that she completely surrenders to him, habiba, at every level of her existence. She fears nothing…no pain, no emotion, so long as he holds a claim on her.

  He hadn’t expected it either. She heard it in his tone, a thickness to it that suggested she might not be the only one awestruck and too choked up to give voice to it. They simply rode that feeling together. As she drifted in a haze that was nothing short of miraculous, she wondered if this was what they meant when they said a servant followed a vampire into the afterlife. Because this was more than him being inside of her. She was inside of him and they were melded together, as if once, long, long ago, before they’d first been created as two separate beings, they’d started this way, two souls entwined in the cradle of their creation.

  “No…” She whispered it, because though she felt no pain or the abrasion of her restraints, she could still feel their hold, and the one at her waist was being removed. She didn’t want Amara to take them off. I’ll wait for my Master to remove them. I’ll wait as long as he wishes, if I have to stay this way for days and days…

  A fanciful and entirely foolish idea, habiba. What kind of Master would do such a thing to your beautiful skin?

  It wasn’t Amara. He was here. She opened her eyes, dislodging more tears clinging to her lashes, and he caught them on his fingertips. “Your devotion terrifies me,” he said, his voice a low, unsteady rumble, his amber eyes so fierce and wild, as if he thought he might need to fight something off to protect her. It made her want to touch him, but the cross still held her. “All I want is to keep you safe,” he continued in that same raw voice. “You’re so fragile and delicate to me, a treasure so easy to destroy, and yet your love makes you determined to throw yourself against every rock, including my will. If anything shatters you, habiba, it will shatter me. Do you not understand that? Can you not find the mercy to see why I can’t take you where I can’t keep you safe?”

  Still so deep inside of him, she could feel it, that deep darkness Lyssa had warned her about, a darkness capable of destroying far more than himself if it was stirred up again. The vampire tiger with the soul of a desert djinn.

  “I don’t know how to resolve it, my lord,” she said, just as softly, as those tears kept falling. He continued to collect each one on his fingers as she struggled for the words. “I feel it, I do, and it tears me to pieces to cause you such pain. But…perhaps...” Just as there is a wisdom that vampires have about what their servants need, things we ourselves don’t understand… As your servant, I know for certain, with everything I am, that my place, my destiny, whatever it is, is to be by your side, always, for everything you face. Then she spoke aloud again, staring up at him. “Whatever each of us faces was meant to be faced together. And to deny either of us that is to deny what is meant to be.”

  He cupped her cheek with that large hand that could almost cover the side of her face, and she pressed her lips to his palm, her wet lashes marking him. “Stay here,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’m not leaving this room.”

  She saw Amara was gone. He moved to the doorway and, with one switch, he cut the torchlight in the room. Then the stairwell light was gone as he shut the heavy oak door, plunging them both into total darkness.

  A third mark could see in the dark, as long as there was some component of light, however dim, but with no windows, there was none. This is what Raithe had done to her, shut her in a dungeon with no lights, marked her with blood and let rats and roaches crawl over her. Whereas before tonight she might have cringed, struggled against the terror, now she drew on that certainty of Mason being inside her. With a savagery that could match his own, she used it like a scythe, severing herself from even a hint of such fear. She wasn’t alone in the darkness. She never would be, not ever again.

  His touch on her ankle brought a soft sigh to her lips. “Afraid that I might see you weeping, my lord?” she asked, a tremor in her voice. “I feel your emotions inside of me.”

  In answer, his mouth touched her leg, just above her ankle bone. To do that, he had to not only be kneeling, but bent forward, a position of total homage. When he lingered there, his mouth grazing her insole, her emotions matched the strength of his. She was the one bound at his behest, helpless to his will, yet he was giving her this, an act of servile devotion, a message so clear that it didn’t need to be said.

  As much as she was his slave, so, too, was he hers.

  He made his way up her calf, but he took a very long time at it, teasing his way down to her foot and back up again, caressing the back of her knee with his tongue in a way that shot her focus back to her unabated desire in full force. It was like he’d pulled her out of warm water in an underground spring into the cold, brilliant shock of ocean waters under the bright sun. She realized then that he’d unlatched the manacles around her ankles, and freed the rose stems there.

  As he worked his way up her thighs, he did the same to the stalks he’d wound around her upper thighs, used his fangs to slice the ones that he’d drawn along the crease of hip and thigh from her waist. His lips came so close to her mound, her aroused clit, she let out a moan, chased by a full cry as he didn’t deny either of them. Sliding over to give her a slow, wet lick there, he sealed his mouth over her clit to gently suckle it. He teased her labia and the opening below with the tip of his tongue, sliding into her for a languid exploration. With his mouth, he drew the soaked rose bloom from her, and she sensed from his shifting he’d carefully set it aside. She knew he’d do what he’d promised. Preserve it, and ever after when she saw it in his gallery, she’d remember this and remember every feeling, every fervent desire.

  The basket clamp was removed, withdrawn from inside of her and replaced with his tongue, punctuated by her shuddering sigh. She was in such a chaotic haze of the physical, emotional and spiritual, she didn’t move, not even to strain toward him. Her nerves were compact and dense with sensation, her muscles holding her utterly still so she could feel everything he did to her.

  He moved away at last to lick the places the thorns had dug into her, soothing her skin. Then his hands were at her waist and he straightened, his body pressed against her as he cut the stems at her back, and sternum, so that everything fell away except the collar of thorns he’d worked around her throat. Now she did move. Tightening her stomach muscles, she used them and the brace of the cuffs holding her arms to lift her legs, twine them around him. He wore only a towel, wrapped low around his hips. The salt water on his bare skin brushed her breasts, the pressure of his chest rocking the clamps and tiny rose buds up in a way that had her strangling another agonized sound of pleasure. As he cupped her face with both hands, he kissed her mouth with unutterable tenderness. Slow, his tongue moving in deep, coiling around hers, no rush, nothing but the two of them in that mind to mind, heart to heart, soul to soul, perfect merging.

  When he lifted his head, he removed the stems around her biceps, then her forearms. Only the wrists and forehead were left. That and the clamps.

  Deep breath, my love.

  She drew it, and he removed the clamps at the same time. Even with the rose buds buffering them, their bite had been cruel, and she sucked in deeper at the rush of pain, but his hand dropped, massaging her clit, balanc
ing it. When you join me in my bed for my dawn sleep, I will suckle and soothe them, massage healing balm into them with my own hands.

  She would be content if he fell asleep with his mouth on them instead, her arm around his wide shoulders, her other hand stroking his hair. Her Master, her terrifying, ferocious, yet incredibly tender and loving Master, held in her arms like a sleeping babe, so she might bring him comfort for every fear he had.

  Ah, habiba. The thought won her another kiss, and he removed the binding across her forehead. At last, he slid his fingers over her wrist and flicked the binding free there, and then from the other. His arms stretched out to meet hers, body leaning into her, holding her still pilloried, only now with the restraint of his hands, his fingers tangled with hers. She tightened her legs over his hips, holding him even closer, and rubbed herself against his hard, blessedly unrelieved length beneath the Egyptian cotton.

  Temptress.

  I need you, my lord. She spoke against his lips, wanting the sound of the whisper in the darkness. “Please. I need you inside of me. I’m begging you.”

  I cannot resist your pleas, but first…

  He slid his arm around her waist, and she clasped his shoulders, giving an ecstatic mewl as she was able to hold him at last, his chest tight against her sore breasts, his ribcage brushing her abdomen, her thighs locked around his hips. He carried her through that darkness as easily as he would carry a child. When he sat her down on one of the stools at the bar, she heard him opening something like a briefcase. She hadn’t remembered there being a case there, but she hadn’t been entirely cognizant of anything but him for quite some time now.

  She blinked as he lit a taper candle on the wet bar, creating a dim flicker of light. The first thing she wanted to see was him, and she immediately lifted her fingers to his face, traced the strong bones of his jaw, his brow, his lips. He allowed it, watching her every movement, the slight, tremulous smile that lifted her own mouth.

  “I love you so much, my lord.”

  Those amber eyes darkened, and he took hold of her wrist, pressing his mouth hard against her palm, so hard he gave her a tiny nick with his fang. He was always so in control, that unintentional blood draw told her how moved he was. Then she saw what he’d brought her and she was overwhelmed.

  “You proved to me beyond doubt tonight that you don’t need this,” he said, lifting the collar before her wide eyes. “But if you will accept it, then perhaps it will always remind me of your devotion, your trust and faith in me.” He paused, so much in his eyes it almost burned her skin. “Maybe that will give me the strength to yield to your will, this once, and believe that Allah will help me protect what surely must be one of his greatest treasures. I know you are mine.”

  She gave up the attempt to hold back any more tears. The one-inch circlet, with the metals patterned to look like a tiger’s skin, was perfect. As he unhooked the closure, which looked like a tiger’s talon, she noted the amber pendant dangling below it. She reached out, cupping it in her hand, and looked at the unusual swirling pattern inside of it, two intertwined crimson spirals.

  “My blood and yours, habiba. The clear amber was infused with it by a very special jeweler, one who also blessed it with a great many protection spells. The collar will lock on your neck, and only I have the key to remove it.”

  “I’ll never ask you to do so,” she promised. She raised shining eyes to him. “Please, Master. I accept it with all my heart. Please put it on me.”

  When they’d lifted her onto the cross, Enrique and Amara had removed the temporary slim silver collar. As much of an impression as that accessory had made on her, it was nothing next to the weight and significance of this one. If he was placing a ring on her finger in front of an assembly of the entire disapproving vampire world, including the Vampire Council, it couldn’t mean more.

  It fit her neck closely, holding it as lovingly and irrevocably as his hands might. After he latched it, he picked up the key strung on a silver chain. He was going to thread it over his head one-handed, but when she reached for it, he let her do it, dipping his head so she could guide it down, using both her hands to free his long hair from it and take the chain to his nape. The key slid down the provocative track of collarbone and sternum, resting at last between the flat planes of his pectorals. Leaning forward, she kissed the key, and the heated skin beneath.

  Sliding his hands beneath her arms, he lifted her off the bar. Holding her only with the strength of his arms, he backed them up, until he’d reached the heavy oak chair again. Lowering her to her feet, he gently but firmly set her from him. When she lifted her gaze, she saw the stern, steady gaze of her Master.

  Her eyes automatically lowered and her knees bent, taking her to a kneeling position before him. She didn’t even have to consciously send her mind the command. As he took a seat in the chair, the towel parted high on his thigh, giving her only a shadowed view of what it concealed.

  “Come take me in your mouth as you desired to do, my sweet slave. Prove your devotion to your Master. Prove to me how intent and uninterrupted your focus would be, if I commanded you to your knees to do this before the whole Vampire Council.”

  It could be the whole Council or the whole world. As far as she was concerned, from this moment forward, with that collar on her throat and all it symbolized—whether it was just the two of them in a blissful moment like this, or in the middle of the Vampire Gathering—there was only him.

  Part Nine

  Jessica put her hands on his knees, sliding over the bone to the firm joining point of the muscles that layered his thighs. All her senses were open to the nth degree, such that the nerve endings in her fingers registered each element of the terrain. Smooth, slim bands from the knees, tributaries to those wide muscles leading up his inner thighs. She hooked the opening in the towel, tugging enough to have it loosen at his waist, then slid her hand under. She enjoyed the pleasure of first finding him by touch, caressing his testicles, then the pulsing life of his cock. As she closed her grip over the thick base, she rested the side of her hand on the heavy sac beneath it. With the other hand she pushed the towel back, revealing the impressive length and breadth of him. She felt a surge of quaking delight at the viscous fluid collected at the top, waiting for her parted lips.

  Can you imagine it, habiba? They are all watching, the most powerful vampires in the world. Their servants stand still behind their chairs, yet every eye is on you, every mind wondering if you will serve me well.

  There is only you, Master. She repeated the thought, letting him feel the resolve in her, the simple truth of it. She nuzzled the top of his cock, touching the tip of her tongue to the wet slit, her grip tightening and sliding upward, letting him feel the friction. She spoke, so she could breathe on him. “Nothing but your approval will matter to me.”

  His fingers twitched on the chair arm, and it made her lips curve, even as her heart tightened with such love she thought it could crack from the pressure. “It will be only you, even if…even if one of them orders his female servant to kneel behind me, turn on her back so she is laying between my knees, which she pushes open wider to accommodate her, so her mouth has access to my cunt.” Male interest in a female’s mouth on another female’s flesh was eternal, and she used it to ease into the other idea. “And another Council member gives an order to her male servant…”

  A thread of tension ran up his thighs, but she slid her hand over one of them, her knuckles stroking, then dipping to cup his testicles in her hand again. As she caressed them, she tilted her head to trace the flare of the broad head with her tongue, a slow circle.

  She’ll tell him to kneel and spread the legs of that female servant, and drive into her. But as he does, he slides his arm around her back, lifts her up. She curls her arms over my hips to steady herself as she uses the angle to put her mouth on my pussy and start eating it for their viewing pleasure…and yours. When he fucks her slow, deep, building her response as she is driving mine, you’ll be able to feel it. Not onl
y in my mind, but in the way I suck on you, how hard it is for me to concentrate as she nibbles on my clit, sinks her delicate tongue into me, that place that craves the far more substantial thrust of your cock.

  “Jessica.” His voice was a growl. “Suck me.”

  She took him in, stretching her lips to get over his substantial girth, a noise of pleasure in the back of her throat as she slid down his length as far as she could go at this angle, her hips off her calves. She’d given him the image, but now there was only him to her, no ability to maintain any other focus. She sucked him deep, hard, then came up slow, the way she knew he liked it. Mason was as good at using denial to prolong his own response as he was at administering it. He knew the power and pleasure of making her work for his release. She hungered to feel it, to feel that powerful hand convulse on her hair, pulling hard and painful at her scalp as he drove up into her mouth, pumping his seed into her. Some sense of her punishment lingered in this, such that she knew she couldn’t hope to have his cock sinking into her cunt this first time, joining them together the way she needed so desperately.

  Work for it, my sweet slave. Earn it. The Council is watching.

  It’s only your approval that matters to me, Master.

  His fingers grazed her nape, tugging on her hair, a gentle affection, but with a hint of strength to it. She savored the taste of his thick shaft in her mouth, going down then back up again, sliding her tongue all over it, random erratic patterns, then settling into a rhythmic pump, vividly imagining it shoving into her wet heat, the muscles of her pussy sucking on him in a torturous drag every time he withdrew, then came back in. The intimate tissues between her legs contracted at the thought. Sometimes, when he didn’t have her hands pinned or bound, she could let her fingers slide over his buttocks, feel those muscle groups tightening and releasing, increasing the drive of his thrusts.