Embroidery nearly covered the sleeves and lapels of the coat, putting a little glitter of color near all that white skin. The pants were black satin, poofy, like there was way more cloth there than was needed for Damian’s slender legs. He wore a wide green sash for a belt and a pair of black leather boots that folded over just above the knee, so that the outfit was very pirate-y.
“How was work?” I asked.
“Danse Macabre is the hottest dance club in St. Louis.” He kept walking toward me, gliding rather. There was something about the way he looked at me that I didn’t care for.
“It’s the only place where people can go and dance with vampires.
Of course it’s hot.” I looked at him, concentrated, and I knew he had fed tonight, on some willing woman. Willing blood feeding was considered the same as willing sex. Just be of age, and you could feed the undead and have bite marks to show your friends. I’d ordered Damian to only feed from willing victims, and because of our bond together, he could not disobey me. Necromancers of legend could boss around all types of undead, and they had to do your bidding. The only undead I could boss around were zombies and Damian, and frankly, I found even that unsettling. I didn’t like to have that kind of control over anyone.
Of course, there was one kind of control that Damian had over me.
I wanted to touch him. When he entered a room, I had an almost overwhelming urge to touch his skin. It was part of what it meant to be master and servant. This attraction to your servants, this need to touch and tend to them was one of the reasons that most servants were treasured possessions. I think it also kept even the craziest, most evil of vamps from killing their servants out of hand. For often a vamp didn’t survive the death of his servant, the bond was that close.
He walked around the table, fingers trailing on the backs of the chairs. “And I am one of the vampires that they have been pressing their bodies up against all night.”
“Hannah is still managing the club, right?”
“Oh, yes, I am merely a cold body to send into the crowd.” He was around the table now, to the island that separated the working area of the kitchen from the rest of the room. “I am merely color, like a statue, or a drape.”
“That’s not fair. I’ve seen you work the crowd, Damian. You enjoy the flirting.”
He nodded, as he came around the end of the island. Nothing separated us now but the fact that I was still leaning against the far cabinets and he had stopped at the end of the island. The urge to close that distance, to wrap my hands around his body, was almost overwhelming. It made my hands ache with the need, and I ended with them pressed behind me, pinned by my body the way Nathaniel had leaned against the Jeep earlier.
“I enjoy the flirting very much.” He traced pale fingers along the edge of the island, slowly, tenderly, as if he were touching something else. “But we are not allowed to have sex while we work, though some of them beg for it.” The emerald of his eyes spread and swallowed his pupils, so that he looked at me with eyes like green fire. His power danced along my skin, caught my breath in my throat.
My voice started out a little shaky, but I gained firmness as I talked, until the last was said in an almost normal voice. “You’ve got my permission to date, or fuck, or whatever. You can have lovers, Damian.”
“And where would I take them?” He leaned against the island, arms crossing over that expanse of pale chest.
“What do you mean?”
“I have a coffin in your basement. It is adequate but hardly romantic.”
He could have said a lot of things that I’d expected, but that wasn’t one of them. “I’m sorry, Damian, it never occurred to me. You need a room, don’t you?”
He gave a small smile. “A room to use for my lovers, yes.”
Then I realized something. “You mean like bring strangers here.
People you’ve just picked up, and have them like sleep over, be at the breakfast table in the morning?”
“Yes,” he said, and I understood the look on his face now; it was a challenge. He knew I wouldn’t like the thought of strangers coming into the house, much less facing a strange woman that he’d simply brought home to fuck, first thing in the morning.
I had a tiny spurt of anger, and that helped me think. Helped push back that need to touch him that had nothing to do with theardeur, and everything to do with power. “I know you had a room at the Circus.
Maybe we could arrange something with Jean-Claude, so you could take lovers back there.”
“My home is here, with you. You are my master now.”
I cringed a little at the master part. “I know that, Damian.”
“Do you?” He pushed away from the island and came to stand just in front of me. This close the power shivered between us. It made him close his eyes, and when he opened them, they were still drowning emerald pools. “If you are my master, then touch me.”
My pulse was jumping in my throat like a trapped thing. I didn’t want to touch him, because I wanted to touch him so badly. In a way, this was part of the attraction between Jean-Claude and me, as well.
What I’d taken for lust and new love was also partly vampire trickery.
A trick to bind the servant to the master, and the master to the servant, so that both served the other willingly, joyfully. It had bothered me when I first realized that part of what I felt for Jean-Claude was somehow tainted with vampire mind games, though it wasn’t on purpose from Jean-Claude’s point of view. He couldn’t help how it worked on me any more than I could help how it worked on Damian.
He was standing so close I had to crane my neck backward to see his face clearly. “I want to touch you, Damian, but you’re acting awfully funny tonight.”
“Funny,” he said. He moved in so close that the edges of his coat, the poofy satin of his pants brushed the thick cloth of my tuxedo pants. “Funny, I don’t feel funny, Anita.” He leaned his face close to mine, and whispered his next words, “I feel half-crazed. All those women touching me, rubbing themselves against me, pressing their warm,” he leaned in so that his hair brushed my cheek, “soft,” his breath felt hot against my skin, “wet,” his lips touched my cheek, and I shuddered, “bodies, against me.”
My breath shook on its way out, and my pulse was suddenly loud in my ears. It was hard to concentrate on anything but the feel of his lips against my cheek, though all his lips were doing was resting lightly against my skin. I swallowed hard enough that it hurt, and said, “You could have gone with any one of them.”
He laid his cheek against mine, but it meant he had to bend over more, which moved his body farther from mine. Compromise. “And could I trust that their windows were proof against sunlight?” He stood up and put a hand on either side of the cabinet behind me, so that I was trapped between his arms. “Could I trust that they would not harm me, once the sun rose and I lay helpless?”
I tried to think of something to say, something helpful, something that would help me to think about something other than how much I wanted to touch him. When in doubt be bitchy. “I’m getting a crick in my neck with you standing this close.” My voice was only a little breathy when I said it. Good.
Damian put his hands around my waist, and just the solid feel of his hands around me stopped whatever else I meant to say. It stopped him for a moment, too. Made him bend his head down, eyes closed, as if he were trying to concentrate, or clear his mind. Then he lifted me, suddenly, and sat me on the edge of the counter. It caught me off guard, and he had put his hips between my knees before I could react.
We weren’t pressed together, except for his hands on my waist, but we were one step away from it.
“There,” he said, voice hoarse, “now you can see me better.”
He was right, but it hadn’t been what I meant him to do. I wanted breathing space, and instead my hands were free, and he was a hard thought away. My hands came to rest on his arms, and even through the heavy material of his coat I could feel the solidness of him. It was as if my hands had a mind of their own. I traced up the line of his arms, found his shoulders, and ended with my hands on the broadness of those shoulders, with his hair tickling along the back of my hands.