Elusive Hero: Invitation to Eden (Vampire Queen Series Book 12) (42 page)

It gave her strength, but she still needed the sleep. She fell asleep with her mouth on his throat, like an exhausted baby. Curling her against him, he held her, dropping kisses on her forehead, her lips, stroking her silky skin. There wasn’t a human sub in the world who could have taken everything he’d done to her and still wanted more, but she had. If he hadn’t had the third mark he wouldn’t have been able to dish it out, but she’d brought out every desire he’d ever wanted to exercise on a sub who belonged to him unequivocally. Which only left him wanting to do more, go even deeper, explore even more with her.

But this was it. Up in Vardalos’s office, he’d seen it inside her, on her face. She’d known he’d read it from that dark, unhappy energy around her. There was the hard limit line, the one a Dom knew couldn’t be forced, not without dire consequences. This one was her decision, damn her to hell. And he was afraid it would. It pissed him off that the reason she was making the decision was to avoid sentencing him to the same. But he couldn’t bully her on this one, much as he wanted to do it.

She could have changed her mind at any time during the past few hours. Yet she hadn’t and he hadn’t asked her to do that, at least not directly. It wasn’t the kind of thing that could be posed as a question. So he’d done the only thing he knew how to do. Give her a night—or day, rather—to show her it was possible, to give her another way of thinking about it. Maybe it hadn’t been fair, trying to drive a chink in her armor about it, but fair had nothing to do with any of this.

Truth, he knew he couldn’t bully her into anything. A light smile touched his lips. Yeah, she was submissive to the core, but she was a kickass sub. From the way she’d confronted Vardalos, it was clear she’d put any man’s balls in his throat if he ever pushed the wrong button, including him. She’d done it a couple times, hadn’t she?

It made her willing submission such a sweet treasure.

She was also protective. The way she’d nearly neutered the guy at the pool proved that. Unfortunately, that protectiveness was part of the problem they were dealing with now. But he wouldn’t change that about her, any more than anything else. It was all part of what made her so damn appealing.

The plane was scheduled to leave at eight p.m. to get her back to the mainland and safely tucked away somewhere before the following dawn. By tomorrow night or the next she’d be back home, to her life. Pushing away the desolation at that thought, he lifted her. She murmured a protest.

“Just sleep, baby. I’ll get you cleaned up and ready.”

Though he’d rather take a dive into acid than do a single thing that put her closer to leaving the island, he started up the shower, got it hot, and put them both in it. She stayed in that semi-somnolent state while he washed her hair, her body, exploring every crevice. Since he couldn’t help himself, he lifted her against the wall, entering her once more. Not to climax, but just to feel the give of her body, her acceptance. Her arms and legs held him, her lips against his throat, his name a sigh on his lips. She’d remember him at the last as a pleasant dream, and he supposed that was the best way.

He dressed her in panties and his T-shirt, brushed a kiss on her forehead. When he laid her back in the bed, he trailed his fingers over the infinity link choker, the thigh brand, once more. Like the one on the outside of her breast, under her arm, it wasn’t large and would heal in the way brands did, making it difficult for anyone to really know what it said or meant. She’d know what it was, though, because he tucked the plates in her hand.

His dog tags. She’d wear their imprint forever in those two intimate places, long after he was dead and gone.

Give her a happy life, Lord. Give me the strength to let her go do that.

Plenty of people lived happy lives where they had to pretend to be something they weren’t. They learned that there was more than one way to be happy. He hoped to God she could do that. He hoped he could figure it out as well.

He placed the call to the front desk to have her woken in time to catch her plane. Then he left her suite, forcing himself not to look back.

She kept his T-shirt. She assumed he wouldn’t mind. Despite it dwarfing her, she’d worn it over a short skirt, but packed a plastic laundry bag inside her carry-on so once she reached Miami she could change shirts, arrive home looking appropriate. The bag was so she wouldn’t lose his scent. It would be the first thing she took out when she got home. She’d fold it under her pillow, wear it when Fran wasn’t with her.

Which would be soon. She was going to send Fran back to the Council. It wasn’t fair to keep doing this to her. Kaela would request a second-mark from the Council staff. Not an InhServ, but one who had no expectations beyond being her secretary and a functional blood donor.

She looked through the square plane window. Joely was firing up the engines, the craft shuddering and bobbing. In a moment, they’d be moving across the water and in the air.

According to the note from Theodosius, given to her at check out, the energies of the Bermuda Triangle would dissolve her markings on Garron once they flew out of its boundaries. She wouldn’t be able to reach Garron’s mind, know where he was. Hear him in her head. He would wink out of her existence.

While your trip may not have been everything you hoped, my lady, it is my sincere wish that you visit us again. As often as you like.

She wished she could come back. Once a year, maybe twice a year. Be whatever she wanted to be with Garron here, and not risk him in any way. But she couldn’t come back, couldn’t do that to him, any more than she could do it to Fran. He would become her pre-dawn fantasy now. Her only one, flavored by the painful precious reality of what she’d had for just a short time.

There is nothing more powerful and frightening than choice. It’s the field on which courage and love are tested.

She closed her eyes, remembering those words, as well as others. In ways large and small, he’d told her he’d be her servant. That he
was
her servant, as well as her Master.

Please start up the plane. Get us out of here.
She was going to bend, to break. She’d made the right decision. Or had she?

After barely three days, this wasn’t supposed to be such a momentous decision, but it felt like it. Almost as fateful a decision as her turning, all those years ago. She’d actually spent her first fifty years wondering what had compelled her to make that decision. Then she no longer questioned it, because it was no longer relevant. What was done was done. She’d embraced her strengths, turned them into an iron shield and made it work for her.

Just as Seth, her vampire sire, had anticipated she would.

§

She’d gone straight to Jared’s grave after the war. Well, as straight a path as a penniless woman with no remaining family could take. Once she’d been released from the prison, she made it back to the farm by begging and other means. The methods hadn’t mattered at that point, but getting to Jared’s grave had. She wasn’t sure what she’d do once she arrived there, but seeing the marker was all that had mattered to her. Everything else had shut down.

The farm had been burned to the ground, nothing left. His marker was there, though it had been kicked over. She set it back straight, cleaned the area around it, despite night closing in and the rain that started to fall. She’d stayed there, kneeling in the mud, her clothes and hair plastered against her, not really caring if she stayed that way forever. Which was probably why the hand landing on her shoulder hadn’t alarmed her. She’d barely had enough interest to lift her head, blink water that wasn’t all rain out of her eyes.

She’d looked up into the dark eyes of a compelling stranger. Remarkably clean shaven, given that the gray Confederate coat and trousers he wore had seen far better days. His weapons were well maintained, however, which told her his priorities. He held out a gloved hand.

“Come with me,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Something in his touch made her obey. Maybe it was her natural compulsion to respond to a true Dominant. A compulsion she’d thought had been buried deeper than Jared’s body. But she followed the male through the rain and the darkness. He didn’t have a horse, and her exhaustion and near starvation claimed her by the second mile. Only her goal to get to the grave had kept her on her feet this long, so when she crumpled to the wet ground, she figured he’d leave her there.

He stripped off his coat, wrapped her in it, and carried her onward. For hours it seemed, before they’d reached a cabin in the swamps.

He’d removed her wet clothes, toweled her hair and fixed her soup. After spoon feeding her, he tucked her into bed like a child. As she stared at him with numb eyes, trying to figure out what he wanted, wondering if she cared, he pulled a chair up next to the bed.

“Before we go forward, it’s important for you to understand that Jared knew who and what I was.”

That got her attention. She blinked at him as he closed his hand over hers.

“Warmer, but not warm enough,” he observed. “You want to die. But you’re too strong to take your own life. You have no direction, no compass, but you can’t be compelled to do evil.” A faint smile crossed his lips. “Which shows a rather remarkable will. Jared loved you. If he has awareness of anything in the afterlife, I’m sure he still does. Our paths crossed, we fought together. When he died, he died in my arms, and gave you into my care. So you’ll stay here for a time, and we’ll see what we’ll see.”

He rose, stripped off all his clothes. “Let’s get you warmer.”

She assumed he wanted to be paid for his kindness with what all male strangers seemed to want from a woman traveling alone with no obvious protection, but that wasn’t the case. He circled to the other side of the bed, slid into it with her. He had brown hair that reminded her of a dull copper kettle and was soft as silk when it fell over her bare shoulder. That happened when he slid both arms around her, pulling her back against him.

“Go to sleep, Kaela. Your Master has sent someone to care for you.”

She was too tired at that point to ask what he meant. But that changed as the weeks passed, as she slowly started to learn why Seth went into the root cellar during daylight, why he bullied her into learning a variety of fight styles and weaponry. Though he never let her deny him the intimacy of seeing her naked, holding her or touching her when he desired, he never once made any sexual demands on her, even when her long dead libido started to stir. She despised that about herself, not wanting to respond because of the things this obvious Master triggered inside her. She only wanted to respond that way to Jared.

Then one night, Seth had come up behind her while she was cooking dinner for herself, and he’d fed from her throat. By that time, she suspected what he was, though facing the truth of it was startling, especially when it didn’t repel her. He didn’t hold any part of his nature back that night, and she couldn’t stop herself from responding when he reacquainted her with her desires. She cried through it, but she wanted him to take her, make her surrender to her own pleasure, and he did, until the tears dried up.

But he wasn’t interested in acquiring a servant. He told her about all of that, about the structure of the vampire world. Eventually, he also told her he had been given permission to turn her, but the choice was hers.

“Why would I want to live forever?” she asked. “When I could be with Jared much sooner as a mortal?”

Seth liked to play the lute and was trying different tunes on it, sitting in the doorway of the cabin. They hadn’t left it in months, such that there were times she felt like they were the only humans left in the world. Or, in Seth’s case, humanoid. It was like she was in a fairy tale, the girl lost in the forest. “Vampires are sexual Dominants,” she persisted when he didn’t respond. “You said so. That’s not me.”

He shrugged. “I think the chemical changes during a turning take whatever alpha qualities a person has and expands them. So that if they weren’t true Dominants before, they are afterward.”

“Always?”

“Always.”

“So you think changing my essential nature is a good thing?”

“Maybe I just wonder if it will work that way, and how you will handle yourself if it doesn’t.” He shrugged again. “Vampires are known to be like cats, cruel in our curiosity. We all have different sides to us. Unexpected ones. I may be mostly one thing, but I’m not all that one thing. We have purposes to serve before our day is done.”

“But I want to be done. I don’t want… I want Jared.”

“I know.” Seth looked at her with compassion, but also an implacability that didn’t let her hide from the truth. “You know it’s not yet your time. There’s a reason he told me about you.”

“He was just a man far from home talking about his wife, missing her.”

“Nevertheless.”

“I may respond to you…taking charge, but I don’t love you.”

He laughed, eyes sparkling at her. “I know that, dear girl. This isn’t about that. This is about you getting a chance to be more, to not be old and used up before you’re thirty. You don’t belong in this world, this human world, anymore. You’ve walked the line between living and dead too long, but you’re not ready to join the dead yet. I can give you time to decide which one you are. See if you survive. You liked being a spy, helping others. You did it for Jared first, honoring his memory, but you found you were good at playing those politics, succeeding where others failed, protecting those who needed to be protected.

“You were raped”—his gaze flickered—“Yet you don’t think of yourself as a victim. You detached, survived, moved on, figured out your next step. You don’t even have nightmares about it.”

“It was rape, but most of it wasn’t brutal, except that prick captain with his damned cigars. Just lonely men using a woman they considered the enemy.” Yes, it had been worse than that, but as Seth said, she was good at compartmentalizing. He saw it, nodded, didn’t pursue it.

“The vampire world is at an odd crossroads. There’s a Council of sorts, trying to deal with our on-again, off-again territory wars. Trying to figure out ways for our species to survive our own power games and blood thirst. I could see someone like you being of great use in that world, a stabilizing influence, if you survive your first fifty years. Look at it this way. If you let me turn you, and you change your mind, all you have to do is sit in a doorway like this until the sun rises. Poof, you float away on the wind as ash.”