"I want you to do my feet first," she said, gazing at him with those dark eyes that revealed nothing of her own thoughts.
Apparently, he was to have no choice in the matter. She was determined to drive him to insanity. He gave himself a mental shake, steadied himself. "Yes, my lady."
Lyssa settled into the occasional chair, taking it to a half-reclining position so her feet were lifted from the floor, but still pointed on a slope toward it. As she did so, she watched his reaction in her peripheral vision. She wanted him to perform the pedicure on his knees. If Thomas had trained him, he would obey the unspoken command her body language was projecting, but she wondered if Jacob truly understood the significance of it. It was not an easy lesson for most strong-willed men to comprehend. Even Thomas had occasional difficulty with it, and he'd spent his life learning obedience to his God.
Jacob moved away from the stool. Kneeling with simple grace, like a knight before a queen in an Edward Blair Leighton painting, he took her right foot in his hands to begin the massage. He handled the move with the same relaxed familiarity with which he wore the hose and spoke to her. Mixing it all easily with more modern mannerisms and speech, he roused her curiosity about him further. Was he a stage player of some type?
Lyssa tried to ignore the tremor that ran through her at his touch and studied his hands instead. He had clean nails. A dusting of fine hairs lay along the upper part of the long fingers that handled her with gentle but firm assurance. He didn't grip her as if she were a doll, but he didn't clasp her too firmly either.
It was evident he was experienced and confident when touching a woman's body. That perfect balance could not help but evoke in her mind the way his hands would feel upon her thighs, along the valley of her spine, sliding down to her hips. Because of their height difference, when she stood before him and those arms closed around her, drawing her near if she desired it, the sensation would be sheltering, provocative. His throat would be warm beneath her lips as he lifted his jaw, trusting. Offering. Submitting.
His hands moved over the arch of her foot, caressed her heel and worked the. top of her foot, his fingers whispering up her ankle in a way that shot signals of hard lust up the insides of her thighs to her core, dampening the silken fabric covering her there. The feel of her own arousal, warm and slippery, drove her desire even higher.
Was she losing her mind? She'd met the man five minutes ago. What had Thomas been thinking? She knew her own reactions and desires well enough to know her response to this man was out of proportion, even for the cravings for blood and sex she'd been experiencing before coming through the door. Thomas would have been very ill at the end. Would he have been ill enough to make a poor judgment call? Been compelled to do something he did not wish to do? Had someone found him, despite her best efforts to ensure everyone thought he was dead, killed by her own hand? Was Jacob a trap?
The thoughts helped her rein in her wayward responses. She narrowed her gaze on the man at her feet, a hawk targeting her prey.
"I can't believe Thomas would do something like this behind my back."
"He didn't intend disrespect. He—"
"I know how Thomas felt about me." She spat it. "You, on the other hand, I know nothing about."
"Thomas's introduction—"
"I read it. Why do you want to become a human servant? Are you running from death? Or are you one of those idealistic idiots who believe vampires are misunderstood creatures, issuing pretentious threats while we cling to the shadows and whine out our angst over our lost mortality?"
The description made Jacob smile. Too late, he realized he should have curbed the urge. He'd been warned her moods changed as quickly as the snap of a whip.
In a blink, the room closed in on him with a suffocating energy. Making the chamber much warmer than the gas log fire, the power raised the hairs on his neck.
"Do you realize, mortal, I could rip you apart limb by limb? Tear out your entrails and take your blood while you watch, choking on your last breath? Don't play games with me, and do not speak false, or those words will be your last."
When Jacob raised his gaze, he saw her eyes had taken on a reddish cast as she spoke, a hint of fang pushing over the right side of her full lip. The humanity had disappeared from her expression.
A wise man would have taken his hands off her foot. Put about a hundred feet between him and the threat he knew she was capable of executing. But Jacob knew that would be it. Game over. The last nine months of his life a waste. Most importantly, he would fail her, something he'd sworn to a dying man he would not do.
"I know you can destroy me," he said quietly, staring down at that shapely foot. "My reasons for wanting to be your servant are complicated and personal, my lady. My tongue isn't clever enough to explain them as you wish me to do. But I can prove myself to you, if you'll give me the opportunity."
It took Herculean effort to manage the words in an even tone, to raise his attention back to her face and hold that preternatural gaze without flinching, though his muscles tensed in an involuntary readiness he knew would be futile if she chose to strike. "I suspect if you truly intended to tear my limbs off, you wouldn't take the time to threaten me."
"Perhaps I feed on fear."
"There are other, more satisfying meals I can offer you." Daring or just plain stupid he didn't know, but going with his gut, Jacob bent and placed his lips against the top of her foot.
Chapter Three
Small, fine-boned, cold. Like his mother's china. When he was little he'd been forbidden to touch it. As a man, he'd learned how to handle delicate things, enjoying the sensation while taking the proper care to keep them from harm.
Despite her strength, which could tear out the concrete foundation of the Eldar if she chose to exercise it, he thought of her as delicate. There were many formidable women, with or without vampire strength. But it was his experience that all of them had a need for love, unless damage to their heart had caused them to wall it off. They all desired to be cherished emotionally, and the art of conveying that through physical touch was one of the most potent ways to do it.
His lady appeared to have some sizeable fortifications around her heart for reasons he knew too well. Even so, he thought he could see a light guiding him through the crevices that still remained in those walls, toward the dark center of her soul.
Perhaps that intuition came from Thomas's many insights into her. Or maybe it wasn't intuition at all, merely the rationalizing stupidity that came with a man's lust. But though he'd woken countless times in the middle of the night bathed in sweat, his cock spent like a teenager's over the dreams he'd had about her, as many or more times the dreams had been about other things. Things that created a deeper-than-physical yearning unable to be assuaged with a grip on his cock. Only the feel of her in his arms would be enough. He let that guide him now.