Chapter Ten
Jacob thought he'd be worn out and simply seek oblivion. Instead he took his Mistress again and again, using them both hard. The world might treat the idea with crass vulgarity, but in the darkness, with despair closing in, a man found sacred sanctuary in the wet heat of a woman's pussy. His woman's. Exhaustion finally took some of the pain, leaving it vibrating discordantly off of the waves of the last orgasm, but it wasn't enough. He pulled out only to give him the ability to maneuver his mouth down her throat toward the sweet taste of her nipples, the valley be- tween her breasts. When his hand slid between her thighs, she opened to him, let his fingers slide into the channel he'd already soaked with his fluids and her own. Her breath whispered out in a quiet sigh of pleasure. Perhaps Carnal should not have spoken so hastily about inferior mortal stamina. Her thoughts drifted through his mind, her pleasure with him spurring his efforts. And do vampires value stamina in bed over other attributes? When he thrust his cock into her again, her tender tissues took him slowly, her hips tilting up as he slid his arm under her waist, his palm spreading out between her shoulder blades to bring her to his mouth, nip at her sternum.
Tease the flesh of her breasts with his beard. Like size, it's what they do with it that matters. For the man . . . Or vampire . . . Who doesn't know what he's doing, stamina can become never ending . . . Torment. When she moaned, he relished the sound fiercely, deepening his penetration, knowing as her nails curled into his back and her cunt muscles tightened that he would make her come again. And again. Her climaxes, her screams, would drive the memories back, let him fall into a sleep where they could not follow and strangle him. "What about the man who knows what he's doing and has stam- ina?" He nudged into her hair and bit her ear, moving to the tender skin below. Need pulsed like blood hunger beneath the thin veil of his teasing. She drew his lips insistently back to hers. "That man I might just have to keep forever. " He fell into exhausted sleep, still deep inside her. She'd had her arms twined around his shoulders as he rested in the cradle of her thighs, pressing her into the mattress. When he woke that way sev- eral hours later, she surprised him further by staving off her dawn slumber with creative use of his morning erection, bringing them both to peak again.
She didn't shun his company for an indefinite time period as she of- ten had in the past when he'd crossed the arbitrary boundary lines she set between them. It was as if suddenly she intended to give him a collection of pleasant vignettes, like a photo album of good memo- ries shoved between the bad to break them up. It didn't make the pain of what had happened in her master hall bearable, or even bet- ter. Just a crucial step closer to what she had said. We shed our tears and have to go on. The very next night, she invited him to join her in the study, reading while he channel surfed and watched her out of the corner of his eye. Finding nothing on, he switched to music and retrieved a couple of the X-Men comics he'd picked up on errands.
Lying on the carpet on his stomach, he propped his chin on his knuckles and turned the pages, studying the graphics. As he stared at the colorful images, the simple concepts of good and evil playing out among the complexity of human emotion, he remembered Melinda's harsh death rattle. His lady's anger, the strike of Carnal's fist. The silence of the forest, as if every creature sat in judgment of him. He tuned in to find he'd been staring at the same page for ten minutes. Thinking that looking at her would take his thoughts in a better direction, perhaps to the memories of the most recent night, he found his lady watching him. She pointed to the floor at her feet. Bemused, he scooted over, and she amused him by propping her feet on the small of his back. Kneading him with her toes absently, she continued to read, occasionally moving down to stroke his but- tocks in the loose jeans he wore, dipping her toe beneath the waist- band. Before long, she set aside her novel and came down on the floor with him. He explained the comic book's characters as she lay back on his chest and he held the comic up over them. It was like they were studying the stars in the sky. The soft weight of her body held him to the earth when the lack of gravity threatened to send him spinning into space. How many had told him she wasn't his lover or friend? Debra had said it was something unclassifiable, that lover was the closest frame of reference, a dangerously erroneous one. Lyssa would set him back on his heels again; he knew it. It didn't matter. He wasn't going to stop serving her, protecting her. What was between them was a deeper relationship than lover or friend, because it encompassed both of those things and went to a far more intense level. Debra was wrong. They knew what to call it. Mistress and ser- vant. A "'til death do you part" no marriage ever envisioned . . .
"How on earth did you get up in there?" Jacob felt through the tools next to him and chose a different clamp, pulling aside a set of wires beneath the Mercedes.
He'd been inspecting the car's undercarriage, specifically the brake line, when he'd noticed the car had a small, furry tenant. Feline. He'd thought he was on the verge of getting to the little creature, but now he was having a harder time seeing her or him, cloaked in shadows as the animal was. Bran jarred his leg. In his lower vision, he saw the dog crouch down and hunch his shoulders with a hopeful look for his prog- ress. "Not . . . Helping, " he grunted, shoving the dog with his knee. He always put fresh flowers in his lady's room at sunset with in- triguing tokens of his sunlit day. This object might be a good one to leave for her. Depending on how coated with grease it was. And how long it took to extract it. "Ah, damn it. You must be female. " His target managed to shift into another, deeper crevice, into which it would have been impos- sible for even his lady's delicate fist to fit. "Keep it up. I'll get a cork- screw and pluck you out of there by your soft tissue.
"What are you doing under there?" Speak of the devil. Or perhaps--at least for the moment--an an- gel. Tilting his head, Jacob saw a pair of pretty bare feet planted on either side of his left leg. At the same moment, his fingers brushed his goal. An unhappy mewl greeted his triumph. "Come here, little mite. Sssh . . . It's okay. " He managed to hold on to the squirming thing, only because it was too young to be strong, and the mouth too tiny to do any damage. "Can you tell Bran to go sit a few feet away, my lady?" She bade the dog move back and he heard the dog chuff, pad away as Jacob wriggled out from beneath, holding the tiny kitten to his chest to keep it from streaking away. "How on earth did that get here?" "Without the dogs eating her, on top of that. She's not more than about eight weeks old. Mother probably got hit by a car and the kit- tens scattered. " As he came out, his lady changed her stance so she was straddling his waist, standing above him, her brow raised. She was holding her strappy high-heeled sandals in one hand and wore a tailored suit with a short skirt, suggesting she was heading out on one of her business errands.