He began to pump hard, driving into her, moving them on the bed. She made tiny, maddening sounds each time he sheathed himself to the hilt, taking himself as deep as he could go, cock and mind together. Maybe even his soul. He pulled back from her mouth, knowing she’d had as much as she should have, but compensated for the loss by arching her up to him and sealing his lips over her left nipple, drawing it in deep as he worked his cock inside of her and prepared to explode. Her muscles quivered, on the verge of a second orgasm.
He was able to hold out, barely, until they went together, her cries music to his ears as he released into her, a hot flush of life that made her his in all ways, blood and seed.
He wanted her to say it, and must have told her so, because she was repeating it, over and over, branding that on the new shared universe between them.
Servant. Your servant.
Mine.
It took a while to get oriented to the new feeling, and though he adapted more quickly to it than her, he gave her time, curled in his arms. As he’d promised, he’d stripped them both at last, so he lay naked with her cuddled against his side. Her hand was on his abdomen, shyly stroking down his pubic area and occasionally whispering over his currently replete organ, which nevertheless was receptive to the stroke of her curious fingers. For his part, he caressed her hair, occasionally dropped a kiss on the curve of a breast, teased the damp line of her thigh with his fingers, watching how her thighs automatically loosened and parted at his touch.
It was when he rolled her to her stomach to brace himself over her body, rub his cock against the seam of her soft bottom as he kissed his way up her nape, that he found the visible proof of the third marking. Never having made a third-mark servant before, he’d forgotten that aspect of it. Every third-mark bore an impression on the flesh of their full surrender to their Master or Mistress. It was not something the vampire controlled, a mysterious reflection of their unique bond.
He’d nudged his way beneath the fall of her silky hair, where the changed texture of her skin above her delicate nape warned him something was different. He lifted his head, using his fingers to slide the strands aside.
“What is it?” she asked, in a voice softened by lazily unfurling desire and exhaustion.
Though the puncture marks had healed, he was acutely aware of the first place he’d ever bitten her, when he’d made it clear to the fledglings she was his. That sweet line of throat, just behind the ear. He could still remember the placement of his fangs, probably because he was looking at two short slash marks that emulated both the shape of his fangs and marked the entry point. Between them was the impression of a flower bloom, five fragile petals drawn up like a half-opened bud, flanked by those two marks. The stem slid in a slim crescent down beneath them. Atsilusgi.
He leaned back down, pressed his lips over it again, feeling an oddly volatile reaction. He wanted to take her again, taste her again. He wanted to hold his lips against that mark forever, feel the fierce pleasure of knowing it was on her skin, a permanent part of him.
Your mark, Elisa. Your full servant’s mark is on your neck. He showed it to her, stayed in her mind to see her slowly digest it. As a result, he was tempted almost beyond recall to follow through on his urgent desires when he saw a delicious mix of confusion, yearning and shivering pleasure roll through her at the knowledge she bore a visible impression of his ownership.
The night’s duties were calling, though. At length, he reluctantly donned his jeans and shirt. He bade her to stay naked and then scooped her up in his arms, putting her on his lap. As he nuzzled her throat, he approved of the way she turned her face into his shoulder to give him access to that mortal artery, but then he tightened his arm over her back.
“In a few more minutes, I want you to get dressed, Irish flower. You were determined to get my mark and then go back to your daily duties. That’s what I want you to do now.”
When she gave him a somewhat dazed, disbelieving look, he nodded. “You’ll do whatever chores Kohana has for you, and whatever ones you set for yourself, and you’ll work hard. In fact, my office floor needs a good scrubbing from muddy boots tracking things in.”
She blinked, and he was amused to see some of that haze dissipate, enough that the maid with the outwardly dutiful tongue and the internally impertinent one reasserted itself, even if she was wobbling on her feet a bit. He suppressed a smile.
“Yes, I’m aware of whose boots are primarily responsible for that. You and Kohana remind me often enough. These”—he pushed her discarded panties with a toe—“do not go back on. You’ll be bare under your skirt. You’ll do your scrubbing in my office once I’m in there later this evening, working on the books. You’ll do the work on your hands and knees, with the hem of your skirt tucked up in your belt so I can see your pretty bare ass and sweet flushed cunt. You’ll keep your knees shoulder width apart for me, and if you forget, I’ll just have to give you a couple slaps of the belt, make a few welts on the insides of your thighs to remind you, won’t I?”
She stared at him, and he held her gaze, waiting, seeing if she could handle this. It was a lot to ask, but his intuition told him not to hold back. At length, she gave him a short nod. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. You’ll go back to what we were doing before as well. Just before dawn every day, you’ll go to my bed. You’ll strip naked, lay upon the covers and await me there, to surrender your body however I want to savor it. It’s your new responsibility, and one of your most important ones. There may be times I want you to stay there with me, sleep until your normal rising hour. Be prepared for that. For the next week, this will be the way it is. In ten days, we’ll go to the mainland and meet with Lord Marshall. The things I’ll require of you over these ten days will help you prepare for that.”
Though all that was true, as he spoke, they became his demands, his desires, beyond simple training and preparation. He wanted her mind focused this way, to teach her how to respond and obey him without question. It crossed his mind that he wasn’t sure how the others were going to react to seeing a vampire’s nature unleashed like this. He’d deal with that. Chumani would probably just give him her arch look that said it was nothing new to them . . . just a different form of it.
Will doing all this . . . prepare me to be the servant you wish me to be as well? Elisa’s eyes were deep, and intelligent, and something else. Something he couldn’t deny or resist. Just as he had to make sure her choice wasn’t all about the fledglings, maybe she was trying to decide now if his decision to mark her wasn’t merely functional. He liked knowing that it mattered to her, even as it unsettled him, her inadvertent ability to shoot a bull’s-eye through his thoughts.
“Yes.” But he forced himself to add the rest. “It will also tell you if you think you can be a vampire’s full servant. Remember, Elisa, the choice to be my full servant is yours, until things are resolved for your fledglings. Once that’s done, I’ll ask you again if being my servant is what you wish. If your answer is still yes”—his eyes locked with hers—“then after that, all choices will be mine. Do you understand?”
It sent a pleasurable shiver through his new full servant, but she nodded. She thought he was far more likely to decide she was not suitable servant material than the reverse. Unfortunately, he knew she was wrong. She was everything a vampire could want in a servant. In a bare few weeks, he’d claimed her, no matter his supposed practical reasons. He’d heard the truth of it in Danny’s smugness, damn her.
One of these days, he’d get Dev off by himself and strong-arm the man into telling him whether Danny had had two agendas all along. She’d been servantless for two hundred years herself, but now she seemed to be playing matchmaker, thinking everyone had to have a servant to be complete.
Unfortunately, feeling this sense of balance in himself he hadn’t felt in a long time—so long he didn’t want to think back to when he’d last had it—he knew she might be right. And that was just plain annoying.
28
OVER the next ten days, Elisa realized the most remarkable thing was not the change in her relationship with Mal, which was extraordinarily exciting and frightening by itself, but the changes in herself. And change was entirely the wrong word. It was more like some dormant powerful force within her had been roused to life, taking over her entire perspective on things. It was a part of her that seemed familiar and yet wildly strange as well, like a dress that looked dark and modest on one side, but when you turned it right side out, had brilliant colors and an exotic cut. It was still the same dress, the same person, but a different way of wearing who you were.
Some of the things he asked of her were a bit frightening, and intimidating, but she followed his lead, trusting him, and discovered a well inside of her that wanted more, more, more. He hadn’t striped her with the belt when she was scrubbing his floor—he’d spanked her with his open hand, which made her nearly incoherent with inexplicable desire. Then he’d knelt and taken her there, from behind, making her continue to scrub as best she could while he was doing it, until the climax swept over her.
He made it clear to Kohana that she was now solely responsible for attending his needs, whatever they might be. This included everything from keeping his rooms clean to providing him blood, fresh. While that necessarily meant she couldn’t give as often or as much to the fledglings, he told her firmly the staff would fill the gap. He preferred to take the blood directly from her, something she was glad he initially did in the privacy of his office or room, because of the feelings it stirred inside of her. Plus he tended to like to let his hands wander over her, opening her blouse to tease her breasts as he held her in his lap, nourishing himself at her throat. At his command, she wore only skirts in the house, no trousers, so he could slide his hand beneath her skirt and stroke her to a shuddering climax right there, crooning at her helpless cries.
He didn’t do everything privately. Several days into her new role, they were having one of their outside dinners with the staff when he gestured her over to him. Thinking he needed something, she came to his side. “Yes, sir?”