"Or not, and it will be the beginning of something else. Perhaps you'll learn to trust me, my lady. Not every man who desires your soul for his own wants it for the power, or to delight in your pain. There are some who want only the honor of caring for you. Of being called your champion. Your protector."
Her heart tightened into a defensive fist, his words digging into the tender area like nails.
"My protector." Touching a hand to her brow absently, she smoothed her own skin, the tendrils of her hair he'd loosened brushing her knuckles. The sun was rising. Weariness closed around her like a trap. At one time she could stay up well past sunrise in the quiet darkness of this upper bedroom. She'd watch the sliver of light glitter between the frugal gap in the curtains. Sitting a foot away from where it laid its bright line on the floor, making the threads of the rug glitter, she'd read. Or think. Or simply be.
Even as she relearned how to breathe air that did not contain either the threat or the promise of Rex, she remembered the longing that came with his gentle touch on her neck when she dozed. Lonely versus alone. Rex represented both emotions. When she was tired, it could tear her apart anew to remember.
I always had the power, Thomas. You didn't understand that until the end, did you? I ripped out his heart as easily as I'd crush a peach in my hand. But it was too late for you then. Knowledge of my strength provided you nothing, used too late. That's why I must be cruel, make Jacob understand, even when my strength is not what it once was.
"Follow me or not. It's your choice." She started down the stairs. "If it were me, I'd go home."
He followed.
The bedroom in the hidden room was almost a mirror image of the one above. She wanted to feel she was in her room, not in a pretend chamber, regardless of which one she used. This one had more space, however, for times when she might need or decide to remain out of sight indefinitely. A sitting area and a library were here. There was also an eye-catching centerpiece. A St. Andrew's cross carved of teakwood, the grain smooth as a woman's silken thighs or the velvet shaft of a man's erect cock.
She ran her hand down one of the arms, then exerted pressure. The hinges were well oiled, so it lowered smoothly from an upright to a horizontal position.
"Take off all your clothes. There's a bathroom over there. You'll be restrained on this until I wake, about ten hours from now, so I encourage you to make use of it."
She didn't look toward him, but she could feel the conflict vibrating off him.
"Jacob." One quiet word, but she infused it with everything. Not only command, but the threat of taking away what he said he wanted. Perhaps she could have injected a hint of reassurance, but in this room particularly she remembered who and what she was, and her voice chilled accordingly.
"My patience is thin as the skin covering all your pleasing muscles and just as easily stripped away. I don't want to hear a word from you right now. The stairs are there. If you walk up them, the door will open and Bran will make sure you're escorted off the grounds. You won't be issued an invitation to return."
Moving to the armoire, she began to slide off her own clothes as she heard him go into the bathroom and close the door. Probably to stare at himself in the superfluous mirror and question whether he'd lost his mind.
At least you have a physical reflection, she thought. The mental one can be so much more frightening.
* * *
He was losing his mind. Jacob yanked off his clothes, folded them on top of the commode and looked at himself in the mirror. Something felt off about this whole scenario, as if there were huge pieces of the puzzle missing, a whole script he'd only been given a portion of to read before rehearsal. Access to this chamber, for example. No vampire he'd ever heard of had telekinetic attributes, let alone the ability to transfigure floor and carpet into a stairwell. It wasn't illusion. He'd walked over that exact portion of floor earlier and felt and seen nothing to indicate a chamber below the surface.
She was determined to force him to submit to her on a lot of levels, and sexually was the least of them. He wasn't stupid. As she herself had implied, he knew that was just the gateway to the deeper layers of himself. Perhaps if he knew she would eventually give him some answers, he'd feel a little less nervous about walking back out there, but she hadn't offered that bone. She was making him follow on faith. His head had never been so messed up, and all the things he knew about vampires were taunting his mind, making his gut clutch.
Do you realize, mortal, I could rip you limb from limb…
With a curse, he turned away from his image in the mirror and opened the door. Fuck it. Gideon always said he was fatally impetuous. He might just prove him right.
She'd raised the cross upright again and was leaning against it, wearing a nightgown of sheer black lace, nothing under it from low neckline to midthigh. He saw her nipples, the folds of her sex, all of her curves and the slender shapes of her thighs denned in the provocative pose. As he watched, she threaded her hands through the adjustable cuffs and held onto them as if bound there.
When she slid her feet into the loosened ankle cuffs like slippers, she gripped the hand cuffs to raise and balance herself for the maneuver. As she held most of her weight that way, her legs spread and hip cocked at a defiant angle, he was dry mouthed just looking at her. Even contemplating what was ahead, his cock couldn't help but be semi-erect. At the sight of this it rose to full mast, flooded with immediate, gut-wrenching lust as she licked her lips, showing him tiny fangs. It made a throb of reaction go through his neck, just below where she'd bitten him, and heat sear straight to his groin. Her dark hair hung loose, reaching almost to her waist, blending with the black lace like a silk curtain over a teasing transparent panel.
"Come to me."
He knew all about the way a fly would blunder into the glistening strands of a spider's web. Though her position was one of self-restraint, the sensual splaying of her arms and legs and the way she watched him approach told him he was looking at a predator. No question on who was prey in this room.
Nevertheless, he came forward, the heat of her gaze twining around him like the sticky strands of a web in truth.
A man who doesn't test the mettle of his soul isn't much of a man…
His hunger rose even further as he reached her and she didn't free herself. Instead, as he leaned in, putting his hands on her hips, the flesh separated from him only by thin lace, she strained toward him as if bound in truth. "Touch me. Please. Tease me as you would if I were your prisoner, yours to torment."