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At dawn, she stripped and laid on the bed. She was tempted to burrow under the covers but she lay on the top, exposed and cold, staring at the ceiling. It was pressed tin that glinted from the candlelight wall sconces. She hadn't wanted the electric lights. When the dawn came, the waterfall sparkled with the sun's rays. Turning on her side, she watched.
Jared had said she was a creature of the night, one who embraced the moon more than the sun. "My witch," he'd called her, on a night when he left their bed to find her sitting on the porch steps in her night rail. She was watching the moon soar across the star-strewn sky. He'd sat down on the step above her, his legs on either side of her body, and stroked her hair. "My red-haired witch."
Was it eternal, the struggle to know what to do, how to live, how to exist in a way where there was a balance? Was there any place where the weak weren't preyed upon, and where the strong weren't always trying to beat them down from weakness into nothingness?
She was one of the strong ones, impossibly strong. She knew she was capable of going on for centuries more, serving Lady Lyssa, protecting those whose care was charged to her, or whose care she assumed. Like Garron with those twin babies. They were so alike in some ways. In many ways. Fighters, killers. Saviors, but not in the grandiose, messianic sense. More like the basic Webster's definition as one who saved something, someone, because the circumstances allowed it to happen. She supposed it amused the Powers That Be when someone was proclaimed a hero, since They knew it would take only a flick of the dial of Time to make it a second too late. Then the hero was just another face in the crowd, someone too slow to act.
What if Garron hadn't looked in the trashcan? The second baby would have died while he slept fitfully only a few feet away, his dreams plagued by what tomorrow would hold for a runaway. Or what if he'd had a few more terrible life experiences under his belt, such that when he saw the baby in the trash, he'd thought, "she's better off dead" and replaced the lid?
Was there anything worse than the death of hope?
Kaela turned away from the water, closed her eyes. She'd get some sleep, get on the plane. She'd have a few days before Fran returned. She'd do paperwork, follow up on several territory matters. Maybe read some books or visit a couple gardens in the area she'd been meaning to check out at night, when she could slip in and dwell there, a shadow among the shadows.
"Garron, I wish..."
She took a breath. She didn't have her mind closed to him, a final act of respect to her Master, but she'd also respected his demand she stay out of his head. So she spoke to him in her own mind, in the forlorn hope he might be listening.
I want you to know there's nothing another vampire could do to you that would make me think less of you. As cliche as it sounds, I know this is about me, not you. I don't know if it's possible to love someone after only a few days, but I know I think too much of you to ever pull you into my world. I wish I could be with you once more. I know that's wrong and cruel of me. Selfish, because I know I hurt you. But I miss you so, Master. I feel like if I could be yours, just one more time, I could endure everything else. I don't want my last memory of you to be in Vardalos's office.
From his closed expression at that last moment, she was sure he wasn't listening. This was just her way of comforting herself, rambling on like this. She even hummed a little song, trying to get herself to sleep. Would Garron like her to hum him to sleep? She had a good singing voice and had done that for Jared, wrapping her arm around his waist, resting her cheek on his back, letting the vibration of her voice take him into dreams. She hadn't had the pleasure of watching Garron sleep yet.
If he had come home with her, she would have wanted to do things for him, the way Fran did things for her. There were too many demands on her as an overlord for her to do all the things that Fran did, but she could make him breakfast, taking tiny samples of the food herself to ensure it was fit for human consumption. It had been so long since she'd cooked... One didn't tend to cook for one, and a vampire didn't cook at all. Though sometimes hot chocolate spiced with blood was good...
She was thinking nothing but nonsense. She shut her eyes tighter, hoping, wishing for oblivion.
I didn't give you permission to sleep, my lady.
Thank God. She shuddered. The reverberation of his voice in her consciousness brought an ache into her throat so strong it choked off word or thought. She wanted to tell him he didn't have to do this, but she would have lost that fight. She wanted him so much that when his fingers slid along the arch of her foot, she quaked all the way down to her bones. Her small cry cut through her from mind to core.
He slid onto the bed behind her, and another wave of relief went through her at the warmth of his naked body against hers, legs under her hips and fitted to the backs of her knees, chest against her shoulders and blessedly hard cock against her buttocks. He was a furnace.
"Christ, you're freezing." He wrapped his arms around her, held her as she shook.
"I--"
"No talking unless I tell you." Pushing her hair to the side, he put his lips against her throat. She didn't think anything could surpass the excruciating, bittersweet pleasure of him being here with her, granting her last wish, but then her heart broke as she felt him wrap the choker around her neck, re-securing it.
"I told you it was yours to take with you, my lady. So you can always remember who your Master is."
Her eyes closed in painful bliss as he put his mouth over it. When he slid his hand down her hip, around to her ass, she opened her legs to him.
"Good, my lady." She arched against him as he probed her cunt, stroked her rim, exploring and reacquainting himself with what was his. She felt it in his touch, heard it in his head, and wholeheartedly agreed. Yes, she was all his. It wouldn't matter if she left tomorrow. She'd never again feel a touch like this, the one that told her she'd found her Master. God bless his memory, even Jared had not awakened this level of submission, a hunger to give him absolutely everything he demanded, even if he asked for her very life.
"Good. Because I plan to be very demanding. Beyond what even you think you can give."
He pushed her onto her stomach, stretched her arms out to either side. He left the bed only to pull cuffs out from beneath the mattress, two at the head, two at the foot. He locked her in them, adjusting the ties with a sharp pull so she was stretched out to the muscle-straining point.
She turned her head, but he slid a full mask over her head, closing her into darkness. It only had a mouth opening, so her enhanced senses of hearing and smell were muffled, her sight taken away. The inside of the mask smelled like cinnamon and heat. She didn't have to be told to stay out of his head, though the temptation to try and figure out what he had planned was fierce. She didn't have long to wait, though.
She cried out at the strike across her hindquarters. The switch, she was sure. That lick of fire was unmistakable, followed by another one.
"You won't break those bonds, my lady. If you refuse or disobey a single thing I demand of you before sundown, I leave."
He spoke against the mask so she could hear him and she could tell he meant it. He wouldn't be taking any shit from her. He was showing her just how hard a Master he could be, fully unleashed.
"Now stay still. Absolutely still."
She froze in place, even though it was a struggle as he doled out the punishment, five strikes, ten...fifteen. She was shrieking, the pain incredible, and when he reached twenty-five and stopped, her ass and thighs were on fire.
"Too much noise." Her head was pulled up and a large ball gag forced into her mouth. Steel, cold and smooth, and immediately slickened by her saliva. She made an involuntary grunt as he cinched it around her head, tight. Tighter, the size of the ball pinning her tongue down.
"Those straps will leave an impression at the corners of your mouth. Until they disappear, it will remind you you're such a bad girl your Master had to gag you."
The switch came back, three more times. Her eyes almost rolled back at the pain. He replaced the switch with his mouth, and her body caught fire a wholly different way.
Licking, nipping, suckling. He adjusted the straps holding her ankles so he could slide his hand beneath her mound, lift her up enough to nuzzle her cunt, start eating her pussy as if it was the only thing he planned to do with his day. She writhed, and his mouth and touch disappeared.
"Five more strikes to teach you to stay still. I've been holding back, my lady, being overly gentle. I think you need to understand just exactly what you've taken on."
By the time he was done, he had her trained to stay motionless while he sucked, licked and tongue-fucked her pussy to near climax, even as she quivered like a tuning fork. She lost track of the number of switch marks it took. Even with her healing powers, her ass was so tender that on the last few strikes she'd had all she could do not to crack her enamel on the ball.
He rubbed his hand over her abused ass, gave it a smack. "I think you're wrong, my lady. You have very impressive self-control. I can reinforce that with lessons like this, teaching you how not to interfere if some of your vampire friends are giving me a workout."
No. She'd made her decision. This wasn't about that. She bit back a howl as the switch cut into her backside.
"Your hand curled, my lady. You're a statue until I say otherwise."
