by Joey W. Hill
Slow, he reminded himself. Take it slow.
But it was torture, that deliberate thrust and retreat, in and out, her inner tissues hugging him like a wet fist. He never took his eyes from hers, the contact the only thing that centered him. She held the power over him, and the more time he spent with her the more he realized he wanted it that way.
"Selene." He let out a ragged breath. "I can't--"
"Not yet," she warned. "Not until I give permission. Touch my clit. Pinch it. Hard."
Quinn adjusted his position to slide one hand to her pink slit, finding that hot button of nerves and rubbing and squeezing it. Stroke, stroke, stroke. He saw the impending climax in her eyes, in the flare of heat in her irises. Her gasp of breath. He was ready to beg when she finally said, "Now. Hard and fast."
He drove into her like a stallion mounting a mare, his thrusts so strong the headboard of the bed slammed into the wall. Over and over he plunged into her wet heat. With her ankles as leverage she lifted her hips until he was sure he could drive straight through her body. The second he felt her orgasm grip her and her breathless "Now, Quinn", he let go, every muscle spasming as his cock flexed and spurts of semen filled her.
He collapsed forward, grateful that Selene eased her legs down, permitting him to do so. A sheen of perspiration coated his skin, his heart trip-hammering so fast he thought it might pound its way out of his body.
With sex this intense, he'd expect to feel like he'd never be able to move a muscle again. In that first second, he barely had strength to ease himself from her body, but as he lay there he realized he wasn't as tired as he normally would be. He felt more like he had ten years ago, when he'd already be thinking about the next way he'd take the buckle bunny lying next to him.
"I think it's best you censor some of those thoughts," she warned, her lips curving with that sensual set that suggested she was thinking of ways to teach him just how to do that. His ass was still throbbing.
She pushed him onto his back. Drawing a line of kisses from his groin to the hollow of his throat and then along the line of his jaw made him go still, touched and aroused at once.
"Mistress," he murmured.
She straddled him, leaning down to lick the underside of his jaw. "Sleep now," she told him. "I think you'll find if you close your eyes, you're more tired than you expect. The second marking needs time to get fully through your system."
His eyes closed, and he found she was right. With that signal that he was preparing to sleep, his body seemed to sink an extra inch into the mattress. But just as he was about to tumble into the black void, the whisper of her voice drew him back.
You make me feel safe, cowboy.
Did she actually say that? He wished he could get his fucking brain to work, because he had a feeling he was missing something important. Safe from what?
He must have mumbled something because she brushed her mouth over his. "Not my body. My heart. I never thought to have that, yet here you are."
"Heart," he said sleepily. "Safe with me."
Her fingers curled into his chest. I know. It's yours that isn't safe with me. I'm sorry. But I promise I'll do everything in my power to keep and protect you.
That's all any of us can do. His mind drifted around hers, a floating, dreamlike dance. Human or vampire. Right?
Before he could hear her answer, he fell into a dreamless sleep.
*
Selene stroked his chest. In the random swirl of his thoughts as he drifted to sleep, she saw that he still wanted to take her to dinner Sunday night. Then he wanted her to come spend the night at the ranch with him. He wanted her to meet Annette, the housekeeper and cook, obviously an important person in his life. She supposed it could be worse. He could be trying to introduce her to his parents. What the hell was she doing?
She was trying to pretend she was still a human, where she could conduct this relationship like that. She could block Quinn from the thoughts in her head, all while fully monitoring his every thought without him having any ability to stop her. Yet she'd kept her mind open when she'd second marked him, and said the words that had just come into her mind, so sweet, simple and true. So terribly dangerous. Even as she whispered them again aloud now.
"You make me feel safe."
She'd told him the truth, that she meant her heart. She'd learned the heart's safety was more important than physical well-being, because physical power was an illusion. There was always someone more powerful who could threaten the body or mind. But with the right person, the heart could feel safe, inviolate. A rare, precious gift, one that made her afraid, but not at all for herself. All for him.
Just before dawn, she retrieved his clothes from the bar to put them neatly folded just inside the bedroom door. When she left him to retreat to her cellar room, out of habit, she locked it. Though Quinn had keys at his ranch, she didn't expect he'd brought them with him and so she'd be left undisturbed. She needed to keep sending him the message that everything was on her terms.
While it was a rational decision, she knew more than logic was driving the decision. She liked the idea that he was hers to command. Not only like a Mistress, but like a vampire. She just couldn't decide if holding on to her humanity or relinquishing it all to her vampire side was the best path for Quinn. Or if she'd damned him regardless.
God help us both.
*
Mid-morning, Quinn sat at his home office desk, booted foot propped on an open drawer, staring at a stack of paperwork, unseeing. He was thinking about the way they'd joked about the difference between Texans and New Yorkers. Yeah, people up North talked and acted fast, and they could be as sharp as they appeared. But his people weren't any less sharp. They thought things through, long and hard, from all different directions. Sometimes that could take a piece of time. Sometimes it only took a blink, especially if a man had had a lot of practice at having to make important decisions that might or might not land him under a bull's feet.
He was running through everything he'd heard in Selene's voice, seen in her body language when she talked about her life before. She was tough, his Mistress, but he could tell until she resolved this thing with Laurent and her past life, she was going to have to keep running and living scared. Yeah, there wasn't a timid bone in her body, but he could feel the fear, way down deep, when she held him, and whispered those potent words, You make me feel safe. There was too much sadness in it, as if she understood the feeling was deceptive. Even worse, he could tell she thought she'd somehow failed by marking him twice, looping him into her world.
Everybody needed somebody, and he was damn proud she'd chosen him. No matter how fool crazy it seemed, he wanted that third mark too. But first things first. He had an idea, and it seemed best to exercise it during daylight when she should be fast asleep and couldn't come traipsing into his head ordering a cease-and-desist.
Yeah. Like to see you enforce that in the bright sunlight, honey.
Picking up his phone from next to the steaming mug of coffee Annette had left him, he dialed. Time zone was off by a couple hours, but Sam got up with the dawn every damn day.
"I can almost smell Annette's coffee from here." The old man picked up with that greeting. With Sam it could be caller ID or damn telepathy. Quinn didn't question it.
"She probably waves it in your direction out the kitchen window. You know she was pretty taken with you. You probably could have tapped that."
Sam scoffed, affecting an old cowboy-western movie Indian monotone. "You hold out forbidden fruit, white man. That squaw is heap big trouble."
Quinn grinned. "No argument there. She fussed nonstop about you being here, but I could tell she missed you after you left. Think she liked your throw-downs."
"They were debates."
"Sounded like chickens chasing each other around the yard to me and the boys. So how's it going up there in the middle of Nowhere, Nevada?"
"It's been an interesting couple of years. Maggie and Matt moved back east and the new neighbors are...stimu
lating."
"No shit? I know they said they'd eventually head back that way since Matt was from North Carolina, but they seemed real dug in. They were a big help to you."
"The new ones are as well. A goddess-in-training and her angel mate."
"Of course," Quinn said dryly. "Couldn't be your standard couple, him a tax attorney and her a real estate agent. You have to train to be a god or goddess? Who'd have thought?"
"Everything new requires a period of growth and learning. As well as a lot of meditation on the right path to take." Sam's voice sharpened. "Which brings us to why you're calling."
Yeah, that was Sam. He didn't do a lot of chitchat, but when Quinn had spent time at his campfire, he'd found he really liked those long silences, filled with nothing but the crackle of the flames and the energy that filled the world around them.
"So should I even ask my question, or have you already heard it on the wind?"
Sam snorted. "You answered the most important question before it left the lips of the universe, so your way is set there, for better or worse. You might as well ask the other ones you have, since those answers might help you survive your foolish impulses."
"Are all shamans cryptic and patronizing?"
"We take a special course. It adds to our mystery."
Quinn shook his head. He loved the old guy and missed him. He didn't know if Sam would give him a straight answer or tell him he was off the rails. Which he very much might be. But if he could ask anyone, it would be this man.
"Do you know anything about vampires?" A cowboy asking about a vampire. What the hell must Sam think of that?
The old man chuckled. "Would you like to narrow it down? That's like asking whether I know about cars."
"Still driving that '68 Chevelle?"
"I will do so until the close of time."
"Yeah, not sure the warranty stretches that far."
"Quinn, I like talking to you, or not talking, when it is time for us to enjoy company. You have a purpose in calling, and it's important. Let's get to it."
Quinn cleared his throat. "I'm seeing one. Dating one. Sort of. A vampire, I mean. She's in some trouble." Briefly, he gave Sam the details. "Goes without saying this is just between you and me. I'm just wondering...how does she get out of this? I get the feeling she's no more than a kid in that world, so for all that she stays about three steps ahead of me on everything, I'm thinking you might have some insight...or know someone who can give us some."
"So you don't doubt what she is."
"She didn't leave me much choice." He thought of that speed trick, the slamming against the wall. But deep down, she'd been right. He'd already known.
"Has she marked you, Quinn?" Hearing Sam know exactly what the problem was kind of confirmed all of it, gave Quinn a lightheaded sense of passing into a different dimension. He settled himself down with a firm admonishment to focus.
"Twice. She won't give me the third, so she says."
"But you're thinking you want that. You understand what that means?"
"Can we talk about me after we deal with the important stuff?"
A significant pause, then Sam spoke again. "That was a potent answer to the question, Quinn. A vampire's servant always thinks of the vampire first, their own well-being secondary. You have always been a hard worker, a man who cares deeply for those who matter to him, and will do whatever is needed. I can give you some advice, but do not proceed on it without that third mark. She'll know you need that as well, or she'll go alone."
"She's not going alone."
"You also have much to learn about a vampire, even a young one." Sam's voice held grim amusement. "Are you aware that the vampires have divided our world into territories, and each territory has a vampire overlord? Groups of territories are under Region Masters, and the whole structure is directed by a Vampire Council. There are not many vampires, but because of their power and nature, they operate in a feudal way. Each territory overlord demands tithes from vampires in his or her territory and in turn the overlord ensures they are all complying with the rules of the Council to ensure the safety of vampire kind, for everyone's mutual benefit."
"How do you know all this? Never mind. You're going to say something like 'how do I know the sun shines or the rain falls'. You have a goddess and an angel next door, after all."
"If you are going to answer your own questions, you could do so silently, so you're not interrupting," Sam retorted. "What I was going to say is, if she is in trouble and fleeing one overlord, your only solution, albeit an uncertain and dangerous one, is to seek asylum in another territory, petitioning that overlord for protection and advocacy. Does she have any skills that could benefit the Texas overlord in any way?"
"We have an overlord?"
"Have you been paying attention? Yes we do. Or rather, the vampires in this territory do. Answer the question."
"She's a hell of a bar manager. She was making the other guy big bucks running several of his places up in the New York and New Jersey area. She's already turning my place around and she's been here less than two weeks. Do they have some kind of compulsion thing?"
He knew he'd just taken a ninety-degree detour, but Sam had a way of bringing out those subconscious concerns, pushing them right to the top of the list. "I mean, I've never fallen so hard and fast...but I want it to be real, Sam. I want it to be real like I've never wanted anything in my life."
Another silence before Sam spoke. "When I first met you, Quinn, I felt strongly that the energies surrounding you were taking you toward an otherworld path, but the path was not clear for a long time. Your subconscious knew it too, for I sensed you were preparing the ranch not just for yourself, but for someone else as well, even when you did not see it. You're a man who enjoys his solitude and quiet spaces, but the right person is a complement to that space and solitude."
What should have sounded remarkable sounded like something Quinn had always known, hearing the words said aloud. But he wasn't going to jump completely on the Kool-Aid train yet. He waited for the answer to the question. Sam sighed.
"Yes, vampires have some compulsion ability, to help them feed, to help their food forget, but to make a man decide to give up his life to one of them, no. That requires human consent. There is a lot of evidence to suggest vampire servants are a specific subgroup of humans, a switch inside them somehow triggered by the presence of a vampire. Perhaps the right vampire, much the same way certain people are attracted to other people."
So whatever he was feeling for Selene...it was real. That loosened things in his gut, made him feel much more sure of all of it. As long as she felt the same way, no matter what she said about vampires and humans.
"So we need to go visit this Texas overlord. You don't have a name, do you?"
"Caleb Buford Dorn."
"Butch Dorn? You're shitting me."
Quinn had met Butch Dorn years ago at a cattlemen's convention in Dallas. It had been a brief meet, the two of them hitting the bar at the same time and shooting the shit for a couple minutes. Quinn was as straight as they came, but he remembered the guy was a handsome bastard, with piercing gray-blue eyes, dark, short-cropped hair and a magnetic personality that seemed to go along with the large and successful spread in southwest Texas he owned, Blood Rock Ranch. Quinn also remembered that every time he'd seen Butch had been at night. During daytime he had a guy who represented him at the meetings, his right-hand man. What was his name...Dixon. Dixon Conner.
He leaned forward, flipped through the giant rolodex of business cards he insisted on keeping. He knew he should put them in his phone or on the computer, but he liked looking at the designs on the cards, and he'd remembered Dixon's. There it was. Christ. Talk about hiding in the open.
Dixon Conner, Ranch Manager, Blood Rock Ranch. The two Rs for "Rock" and "Ranch" had a stretched, sharp point. Almost like a pair of fangs, if you held it back a bit and knew what you were looking for. The card was red, the lettering black. He remembered arguing a couple points of order w
ith Dixon over beer afterward, and he'd also asked about his boss, because it had been hard to get those piercing eyes out of his head. Now he thought about what Sam had said, about certain people gravitating toward vampires, and shifted uncomfortably. He remembered Dixon shooting him an odd, long look before they parted, and giving Quinn his card with a friendly, "Call if you're ever in the area."
World was full of crazy intersects, wasn't it? Almost made him believe what Sam had told him, countless times. If you step back and could gaze at the universe like a god, you'd see all the threads cross other threads. They all circle, weave and spiral in ways that make the universe like a rippling flag.
"Son of a bitch," he murmured. He realized Sam had been silent throughout his whole revelation. "Sam?"
"Have you found what you needed?"
"Yeah. Think so. You said this would be a dangerous way to go. Why?"
"Humans often craft societies that give the illusion of civility, rules, structures. Vampires have strict rules and structure, but violence and death are as much a part of their world as breathing."
Quinn thought of what Selene had said. Vampires are more about power and politics, where people end up dead or wish they were.
"Do not be misled by whatever you know of Butch Dorn. What you know of him is what he has presented to the human world. A vampire overlord is dictator to the vampires within his world. They live or die on his word. He also might decide to torture them for several years in his basement just to reinforce a point of order."
"Selene seemed pretty worried about what would happen if this Laurent character finds her."
"She should be. I wish you had not been drawn into this, Quinn. Though where you are meant to be is not always in line with the wishes of those who care for you."
"Hey, don't worry about me, pal. I've weathered my share of knocks."
"Yes you have. I can't assist you in this because I have no influence in that world. If I was simply a mortal with no connections to the magical realms, what I know of vampires would win me a death sentence, for they are very particular about who knows about them."
"Should we be worried about this phone conversation?"
