Background – This chapter occurs in the aftermath of an unpleasant encounter with Lyssa’s enemy, the vampire Carnal, and his young human servant, Melinda. No real spoilers here, never fear – we all know Carnal is a lowlife!

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 between 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 stamina?” 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 several 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 often 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 memories 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 better. Just a crucial step closer to what she’d said to him. 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 buttocks in the loose jeans he wore, dipping her toe beneath the waistband.

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.