Taming the Alpha

by Mandy M. Roth

  No panties.

  ***

  Rosaline grinned at the way Kaspar’s cheeks sunk in and his gaze became predatory. This thing between them was crazy, more than a little obsessive and out of control. Yet he filled her with joy and the desire to please only him.

  “You locked the door?” he asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Recording devices?”

  “Turned them off, too.” It made her heart flutter a bit that he even assumed those things about her. He got her. Not just part of her, but the whole package.

  “Are you going to listen to our little conversation again?”

  “On loop, while I transcribe it for posterity’s sake.”

  “You’ll have to give me a copy. Take your shirt off.”

  She didn’t bother with the buttons, just grabbed it and pulled it off over her head. No sooner was the fabric over her head than Kaspar was there, lifting her onto her desk. The glass surface was cold on her ass, but she didn’t care.

  He let her push his jacket off onto the floor, but that was as far as she got.

  Rosaline gasped as he pinched her nipple and clamped a binder clip to her breast. She hissed and gripped the edge of the desk, breathing around the pressure. It was uncomfortable, and yet she arched her back, waiting for the second clamp.

  Kaspar bent and licked her other nipple, while tugging on the clamp. The man was resourceful, if nothing else. Her breath shuddered out as he gently bit down. She hooked her leg around his thigh, pulling him closer. He cupped her mound, pressing his fingers against it as his tongue rubbed against her.

  She didn’t doubt for a moment Kaspar wouldn’t push her, that there would come a time when she hated the toys he picked, but trusting him wasn’t an issue.

  He straightened and she nearly slumped on the desk.

  “I’ve got a bunch of toys I want to try out on you,” he said.

  “I’m sure you do. Later. Now, I just want the toy you came with.” She grabbed the waistband of his jeans and tabbed them open. Slowly she unzipped them, brows rising. “No underwear?”

  “I was inspired.”

  “I’m good with that.” She grasped his cock, swiping her thumb over the pierced head. “I want to feel this without a condom someday.”

  He planted his hands on the desk, leaning over her. “It’ll feel even better that way.”

  She dug in his back pocket while he kissed her neck. Her fingers slipped over his wallet as she struggled to pull it out of his jeans, but eventually she got it. He flipped it open and pulled out a condom, handing it to her for the honors.

  Rosaline made short work of the wrapper, and rolled the latex on. Kaspar forced her back, onto the desk, scattering aside the stack of papers she’d painstakingly put together, as well as a cup of pens. He pulled her ass to the edge of the desk and pressed his cock against her. For a moment he froze there, staring at her, then he reached for her face, cupping her cheek as he slowly sank into her. She hooked her legs around him and clung to his shoulders as he eased in and out of her.

  They were two people, falling fast and hard for each other, and neither could deny it. Not that she wanted to. Kaspar wouldn’t be a gentle man, and he’d probably always push her, but more than anything—she could trust him to tell her his faults and be honest.

  She let out the breath she’d held the moment she felt him fully seated inside of her. He bent, kissing her lips sweetly, and she knew, this was it. The kind of love that lasted a lifetime, that made no sense and didn’t have to.

  Kaspar straightened and palmed her breast as he withdrew. He’d shed the gentleness, and as he thrust, it rattled the monitors on her desk. She gripped the edge of the desk and dug her heels into his ass, grinding their pelvises together. The jewelry rubbed her just right, and she groaned.

  He pistoned in and out of her, tweaking one nipple and the clamp, torturing her until she babbled incoherent words, arching her back, climbing higher and higher. Again, he tweaked her nipple the moment he thrust, and she came in a keening wail, crying his name and digging her nails into his forearm.

  She lay on her desk, panting for several moments, vaguely aware that Kaspar was bent over her, his fully erect cock still inside of her. He pushed her hair aside and kissed her temple.

  “How many times do you think I can make you come before security wonders what all the screaming is about?”

  “Three times?”

  “Let’s find out…”

  The End

  About the Author

  It can never be said that Sidney Bristol has had a ‘normal’ life. She is a recovering roller derby queen, former missionary, and tattoo addict. She grew up in a motor-home on the US highways (with an occasional jaunt into Canada and Mexico), traveling the rodeo circuit with her parents. Sidney has lived abroad in both Russia and Thailand, working with children and teenagers. She now lives in Texas where she splits her time between a job she loves, writing, reading and belly dancing.

  www.sidneybristol.com

  No Gentleman

  by V. M. Black

  In the Gilded Age, it was a young lady’s role to be courted, to wed, and to step into her role as a society matron. But Hattie Buchannan rebels from such a fate, and when a mysterious and compelling Frenchman named Jean Morel appears in Southampton, she is more than willing to flout convention—and walk straight into the arms of a vampire.

  Chapter One

  Sitting in the pavilion’s shade, Jean Morel surveyed the pretty debutantes and graceful socialites who filled the beach, and he considered which would enjoy the honor of becoming his next meal. It was an idea they would find shocking, he thought idly as he clinked the ice in his tumbler of scotch. The matrons and maidens of Southampton found many things shocking—or at least pretended to, except behind closed doors, where they concocted so many of the events that they would later be shocked about in public.

  The women all had a sameness about them under their parasols and wide hats, their hair teased into fashionable poufs topped by black mobcaps they did not wet in the chilly waves that lapped at their ankles and flannel-clad knees. Those in bathing-dresses wore black or navy, with occasional fast girls daring a bit of white trim on their knee-length skirts above their pantaloons, which clung to their thighs in a most satisfactory manner when they emerged from the ocean to stroll about on the land under the clouds scudding in the bright blue bowl of the sky. Their sisters in walking dresses watched from above the waterline, lifting the long sweeps of their skirts clear of the sand and revealing little glimpses of the pointed toes of their shoes. They seemed to Jean as much a part of the beach as the sandpipers that picked their way along the strand, and just as interchangeable.

  What did it matter which one he chose, after all? They were all pretty, most young, and they had the same movements and conversational gambits practiced in the same finishing schools, even the same pretty French from their years abroad in Paris, where they each studied watercolors and voice and acquired a vast trunk of the finest Worth gowns.

  They were, in a word, dull. Jean would have been startled at his disgruntlement, if only his ennui were not so great that he could manage no more than a heavy sigh as he sipped again at his scotch. He was tired of these lovely, birdlike women, tired of Southampton, tired even of America, now that its brashness had ceased to interest him.

  How long had he been here? He tried to count the years, but they ran together in his mind. There had been the war, yes, that ridiculousness about expansion of slavery, as if all humans weren’t the slaves of their various masters already. And before that another war.…

  Bah. Jean could simply not be bothered to remember. All he cared about was that it had been long enough that all the newness had worn off this country, and he was bored again.

  And then he saw her. She did not splash about in the shallow waves but swam, the strong stokes of her arms dragging her through the water, flannel and all. Then she stood and emerged from the ocean with no hat to restrain her streaming hair, whi
ch had fallen from its pins to brush her elbows in a riot of tangles.

  She marched toward the shore, no small lady-like mincing steps but big, strong strides that set the ocean to swirling about her legs. The other girls scattered before her, as if her strength might be a disease they were afraid of catching.

  And Jean was…intrigued.

  “Beaufort,” Jean said.

  “Oui, monsieur.” The manservant materialized.

  “The girl with the wet hair. Bring her to me. I wish to talk to her.”

  “Of course, monsieur.”

  His bowler clamped tightly to his head, Beaufort stepped forward, intercepting the girl at the point where the edge of the waves kissed the sand before tumbling back again.

  The girl cocked her head as Beaufort bowed, little tendrils of sea-darkened hair hanging about her face. As the manservant spoke, her questioning eyes sought out Jean in the depths of his striped bathing pavilion. The manservant retired, and she followed, no hesitation in her step.

  “You wished to speak to me, but I’m afraid I have not made your acquaintance, sir,” she said boldly, stopping in the sunlight a few feet from where he sat upon his deck chair.

  “That is because we haven’t been introduced,” Jean said.

  “Yes, and you shouldn’t be speaking to me.” But there was a smile on her lips, and her blue-green eyes danced with curiosity. Jean was pleased to note that she was attractive—not just the prettiness of youth that most girls had, but the more lasting attractiveness that came of elegant, fine bones and a fashionably small cupid’s bow mouth. “I suppose my reputation precedes me?”

  “Your reputation?” he echoed. “I fear I must confess my ignorance. To which reputation do you refer?”

  “That I am either a hoyden or unappealingly mannish,” she said with a negligent shrug. “I can only assume it was the first. The second would hardly cause you to send your man after me.”

  “It is true?” he asked.

  “Which one?” Her smile widened into a grin. Her mind was like a bright flame behind her eyes. It was rare that he found a human who seemed so completely alive.

  He could not remember the last time he had felt that way.

  Yes, he liked this one very much indeed. The old hunger gnawed at his gut more sharply, and he had to hold back the darkness within him that wanted to reach out already and overwhelm her.

  Soon, he told it. Very soon.

  “Both,” he said. “Either.”

  She twisted her hair idly, wringing a stream of saltwater from it. “It depends on whom you ask, sir. But if you believe that means that you might be familiar in your conversation with me, you will find that you are very much mistaken.”

  “I imagine you believe this.”

  She barked a laugh, throwing back her head, a motion that was both entirely feminine and completely unladylike.

  And Jean found himself thinking, for the first time in a long time, that he hoped this one would survive.

  “What is your name, little one?” he asked.

  “Henrietta Buchanan,” she said. “And that is Miss Buchanan to you, before you get any ideas.”

  “And I am Jean Morel.” He held out his tumbler for Beaufort to refill. “And that is Jean to you, if you so choose.”

  “I most certainly do not, Mr. Morel,” Miss Buchanan said. “Why were you spying on me?”

  “Spying? I hardly call it spying when I was merely surveying what was in plain view.”

  “Why did you call me over, then?” she asked, her pretty voice colored with a trifle of impatience.

  “I wished to meet the mermaid who swims so bravely in the waves that the other young ladies fear. Is that so surprising to you? And I would also like to know what engagements you have tonight.” Jean smiled and allowed a tendril of power to reach out towards her and wrap, ever so gently, around her will.

  “We shall be at the Henleys’ soiree,” Miss Buchanan said, and instantly, her brow creased. “I had no intentions of telling you that, I’m sure.”

  “I will be there then, as well.” Jean still smiled.

  She tossed her hair over her shoulder and looked down her short button nose at him. “I am quite certain that you are not invited, or else you would have already been in my circle of acquaintance. The Henleys are not known for their eagerly welcoming every new upstart.”

  “I am hardly an upstart.” Jean was amused at the idea—he had held titles centuries before that bit of skirt had been born. “Do you doubt that I shall be there?”

  “No. I don’t doubt it.” Miss Buchanan looked at him, truly looked, her gaze raking across him before meeting his eyes steadily despite the power that he still held her with. “Who are you?”

  “I’ve already confessed to my name,” Jean said.

  “That’s not what I meant. What I meant was…what are you? I was not going to tell you where I would be. And I know very well that you are not invited. Yet I am equally certain that I will find you there, among the guests, even if it should make you the odd one of the party.”

  Jean allowed himself a small chuckle, the sound rusty with disuse.

  “My dear Miss Buchanan, trust me when I say that you will find out soon enough.”

  Chapter Two

  Jean stepped into the stateroom of his ketch, and he saw the decadence into which he had let it fall. The sheets were tangled around the coverlet of his bed, and discarded bottles—brandy, wine, whisky, and even rot-gut gin—were scattered with abandon, while the withered corpses of once-elegant bouquets rotted carelessly on his dressing table and chest of drawers among the litter of cologne and cognac.

  “Beaufort! Millais! Lambert!” he roared. “What has become of this place? It is a disgrace!”

  His valet and the two stewards materialized instantly, stepping through the doorway to give him identical stiff bows.

  “I see, sir,” Beaufort said tonelessly. He had been a stoic man when Jean had swept him into service, and the thrall had wrung whatever small store of emotion he might have still retained from his rendition of the perfect gentleman’s gentleman. “I will correct it immediately. Lads!”

  He clapped sharply, and the three of them set to work as Jean flung himself in a chair to watch.

  The state of his room had nothing to do with a lack of care on the part of his servants. They were, as always, flawlessly attentive to his every need. They could not fail to be, being in the service of a vampire. It was he who had forbidden them from his room—or, more correctly, had drunk from the housemaid Josefina on their last desultory trip along the American coast, predictably causing her death, and in a fit of something like remorse, he’d forbidden anyone else from performing her duties.

  Except, of course, to see to the emptying of the chamber pot. That portion of his orders he had rescinded on the second day, overcome with disgust by the task of dealing with his own waste.

  He hadn’t touched a woman since. Not one giggling, vapid virgin or stout matron had he invited down to his stateroom. As he watched his servants scramble about, Jean took a deep breath of the sea air. It smelled…like summer. How long had it been, then? He’d stopped marking the passing of days long before because human timetables were always flexible to a vampire’s needs. But when had he stopped noticing the passage of weeks and months? When he had taken Josefina into his rooms after playing out the delicate dance of spider and fly to its inevitable end? What season had that been?

  Surely not summer then. Perhaps not even spring. He knew he would feed again, that he must feed again, because he was not one of those vampires who would descend into the ravening madness and become a monster that armies of men came to put down. But he knew neither how long he’d fasted nor how long he had left before he reached that state.

  The soiled, stinking blankets with their dark stain of blood in one corner were whisked away. Jean wrinkled his nose in disgust as Lambert took them from the room. How had he let himself descend to such a state? How had he stopped caring about…well, everything? />
  And how could one rebellious girl, deep in the waves of the ocean, wake all the parts of him that had been so firmly asleep?

  Henrietta Buchannan.

  He tasted the name on his tongue.

  Jean had never expected Josefina to live. To expect that was worse than foolishness. It was self-delusion, a thin excuse woven to make the truth appear less tawdry. He had known that Josefina would die when he took her down to the room. She had known it too, had known it for years, and yet she had waged a war of seduction with her willing master.

  Because she had wanted to gamble her life with loaded dice? Or because he had wanted her to? She had been growing old, past the flower of her youth, which she had preserved far longer than she should. She had known that her one chance of reviving her past charms was also her only chance near-immortality—and the devotion of her beloved master.

  A slim chance at eternal youth and beauty for her. A certainty of the extension of his own life and of inhuman heights of carnal pleasure for them both.

  Jean watched as the vases were taken away, the bottles collected, the empty ones vanishing with the bustle of the servants and those that still held some of their liquid tucked away in the liquor cabinet or taken to the sea-cooled wine box in the bilge. It was all meaningless, of course, as meaningless as Josefina’s death had been and her life had proved. He would bring another young woman aboard in a day, in two—and Henrietta also would die, just like all those who had come before.

  Some vampires could remember as far back as their childhoods, either due to their own youth or to committing to memory the bare facts of their existence as if it were a kind of rote incantation. Jean’s own origin was lost in the mists of time, as were the identities of his parents. But his memory stretched to millennia, and not once in those many centuries had he found a consort. Not one of the thousands who had bled under his teeth had survived.

  He had long ago given up hope that one ever would.