5.
Ruby could tell he was agitated as they walked--more like stalked--back to the apartment. Movement boiled out of him like the clouds bore storms. He said nothing, and while he remained close, he made no move to touch or lead her.
She trailed after him, struggling like a puppy and hating herself for it.
When the apartment door slammed behind them he finally collapsed onto the couch so bonelessly it was like something inside him had deflated. "I despise this place with every cell in my being."
Ruby wasn't sure what to say. Her emotions spun around like a roulette wheel and landed on anger. "You promised me honesty. Who are you really? Why do you sit at the head table of the court?"
Jackson laughed. "Ah, my pet. I will give you honesty, but how can I be expected to explain to you every dark secret spun around me in the breadth of time we've had together?"
He looked at her with a wry smile and a gleam of boyish charm in his eyes. She wanted to growl at him. As if he sensed it, he laughed. "You are so refreshingly honest. Thank you, my pet, for trusting me with your true emotions. You are allowed to have opinions and I am very curious to hear what they are."
"You're playing some kind of game here. I don't know if I'm a piece on the board or just..." she waved her hands angrily, "...some obstacle on the players' path."
"I couldn't have said it better myself. Most days I'm not sure if I'm an actual player either." He sighed and all the fight went out of him.
"You're right to notice the place I'm assigned. The head table is reserved for the Ettington line. The king is my grandfather, vampirically speaking. Adrian is like my cousin." He waved his hand, like a falling bird, as he explained.
"We're told to attend a formal dinner, our presence is mandatory. And in the end it doesn't matter if the bastard himself even shows, as long as we attend like good little dogs.
"Do you know what happened the last time I didn't show up for a required formal dinner?"
She didn't, of course, but the question was rhetorical.
"The High Lord Ettington had me dragged out of my apartment, stripped, flogged until my back was bloody ribbons, then he forced me to attend the banquet as I was, with the added threat of having an extremity removed for every drop of blood I left on his precious furniture."
Ruby recoiled. Her tiny meal tried to climb back up her throat.
"The only thing the monsters enjoy more than tearing apart humans," he said softly, "is destroying each other."
They were mad, all of them. And he'd dragged her into it. She'd be better off dead.
"I hate you," she whispered. Tears burned in her eyes.
Jackson accepted her words with a nod. "Nearly as much as I hate myself, pet."
The tears broke free. Jackson stood and reached toward her. Ruby snarled and jumped back. Blindly she reached around for anything that she could use as a weapon. The only thing her hands found was a heavy glass pot frothing with a healthy pothos.
Jackson paused, watching her curiously. "Would it help you feel better to damage me, love? If it would soothe your rage to spill my blood I could be persuaded to give you that gift. One of us should feel solace at least.
"I'm nothing, if not a survivor. Pain would be what I deserve."
Ruby abandoned the pot. "Why do you keep making me pity you?"
He was a blur of movement, laying on the leather, looking defeated and resigned to his fate, then he was against her, his embrace iron and electricity. He ran a warm finger down her bare shoulder and his other arm sneaked around her waist. "You are free to feel many things about me, pet. Hate me, want me, fear me. But never, ever pity me," he whispered into her cheek.
Ruby's breath came shallow and fast, the electric feeling between them threatening to become a flame.
Then he was gone, across the room, walking into the kitchen. Had he really moved that fast, or had she stood here, stunned, like a fool?
Jackson grabbed a dark, unlabeled wine bottle from a cabinet and gave her a half salute with it. "Relax. Make yourself comfortable. I'm going to go blow off some angst in the tub. I'm sure you can figure out the t.v., stereo, or whatever else you can find to amuse yourself."
Then he stalked up the stairs, leaving her, head still spinning, behind.
***
Jackson plunged his head into the water and growled, letting his frustration exit the world in bubbles. He thought of removing the ring that let him feel her, but he couldn't bear the thought of something happening to her on his watch. So he tried to tune her out.
She did things to him. Vanessa had charmed his soul. She'd been his calm in the cruel chaos of life. She saw the man in his monster soul and brought it out.
This Vixen would not bring peace to his soul. She'd have him mad and frenzied for blood with a look if he wasn't careful. He needed to put space between them.
His lungs burned. But how much space could he stand, now that he had her?
***
His fingers found her shoulder and a flurry of emotions blossomed in her, like an opening flower. Those fingers trailed up and around the curve of her chest and found her collarbone. A moment later she felt his breath in the vacancy his fingers left behind.
A delicious ache began somewhere in her core.
She should tell him to stop. But no part of her wanted him to. She wanted more, his hands to find more parts of her bare flesh, his gentle, electric touch to make more parts of her sing.
His hot breath tickled her skin, lower, lower. Then his lips brushed against her. A livewire lit up between them. Ruby gasped as liquid heat spread through her.
"Vixen?" Jackson whispered. This was much more pleasant than where these kinds of dreams usually led her.
"More, please," she answered.
His hands traced the curve of her hips, clutching and clinging and pulling her to him. Their bodies pressed into each other, but there was still space to move, to escape.
The words should have come, some part of her knew. This was wrong. This was too much. This was...
Delicious.
She arched her hips against him, and a mewling sound escaped her throat where the no should have been. She couldn't say no, she thought again, because she didn't want to. She felt the hard silk of his manhood rub against the curve of her ass, No, she definitely didn't want this to end.
His fangs entered her at the same moment as his cock did and--oh gods--it was nearly too much. Her body clenched around him, the anticipation alone was lightning. That moment when it became reality was enough to either turn her into a boneless puddle of bliss, or some kind of hungry slut monster who needed more. More.
The words rolled from her throat, begging, pleading. "More."
She strained and cried out, her own voice whimpering aloud waking her and her body stretched against the sheets. In the darkness Ruby froze.
Had her moan made it past the paralysis of sleep? Had she actually cried out his name? Slowly she leaned up and looked around. She was in his bed, alone. She'd kicked off the blankets and she was decently dressed in a t-shirt and shorts long enough to keep all her fun bits covered even through a night of restless sleep.
A single sconce lit the room with a dull blue glow. A nightlight, how nice. She was alone in the room. Good. Ruby breathed a sigh of relief. The past night he had worked at the little sitting space across the room, as if he'd been unwilling to leave her alone. But the couch and chair were empty, as was the coffee table between them.
Ruby flopped back down onto the bed. The dream wasn't a new one, but Jackson starring in it was. She wasn't going to let lust ruin her this time. She'd learned the hard way how want corrupted her ability to protect herself. Many pets felt attracted to their masters. How could they not? Not only were they stuck in situations which encouraged bonding through trauma, but the monsters could be--and often were--very beautiful. Even she could acknowledge the appeal of a gorgeous, vicious monster, tamed only for them. That's what pets were for after all, to keep the monsters attached to humanity.
Human stories were full of fantasies about the wild beast who bonded with one special person. And romance stories were double filled with incorrigible rakes tamed by the right woman. Or man. Ruby held no illusions that it might be her. She didn't even want to tame a monster. But she did have a raging, if irritatingly-timed libido.
Her hands slid beneath the waistband of the shorts. She could make sure the pretty boy didn't distract her from her own survival. If her subconscious wanted to offer him up as lust candy...She tried to edit the dream, stripping her imagined lover of a face and identity. He was a body, hands to touch, a mouth and cock to pleasure, nothing more. He was a figment, not a real person at all. It was best that way.
***
Jackson lay still, barely daring to breathe until he recognized the soft pattern of Vixen's breath and the soothing blankness of her unconsciousness from the spelled ring.
What the hell was that?
Oh, he recognized lust when he felt and smelled it. Her pleasure coiled through the air, as thick and appealing as blood. He didn't know why. He didn't understand why a woman, ripped from a tumultuous past and kept in a cage by a man who starved and maimed her still had the strength to indulge herself in lust in the middle of a vampire nest.
He would let her go. She didn't have to beg, or plead. Just ask. He'd release her, give her enough money to keep her in comfortable luxury, and never have to darken her doorstep with plots and intrigue again.
But she didn't ask. She stayed, and she learned, and she played her role, despite claiming she wasn't a performer.
So who was she really? And how did he escape what feeling her emotions was doing to him?