Jaded Touch (Vesper) Read online

  I followed Jack up the stairs and found him in his bedroom, shirtless, strapping bandages across his shoulder.

  I stepped into the room at the pace of a hesitant mouse, my arms crossed over my chest. He was shirtless, and I loved it. I wanted to lick his chest, to inhale his pure scent, to bite him… I knew that wasn’t the smartest idea, but I couldn’t deny the desire was there.

  I found my voice. “I’m sorry.”

  Jack grinned at me. “Sorry? Don’t be. You didn’t eat me, right?”

  “I don’t have the right to hurt you. At all. Especially not with… what you’re doing to me.” I trailed off, unsure of what to say… how was I supposed to talk about this thing we’d done? This thing I wanted to do again and again and again…

  Jack’s grin only spread as he sat down on his bed with one knee up, his arm draped across it, a more casual pose than I’d seen from a human since I was one, myself. “You didn’t mean to. I know that. I, on the other hand, did try to hurt you.”

  A smirk tugged on the edge of my lips. “You failed.”

  Jack glared at me with challenge in his eyes, still grinning wickedly. “Yes, I did. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying. And I still made you do what I wanted you to do.”

  Oh, yes! I loved the arrogance in his voice, the way he wanted to push me and let me fall apart, the way he wanted to hurt me. And we both knew he’d fail, but the trying would feel so damn good… I swallowed, still coasting down from the aftershocks of his pleasure.

  “I’m sorry for everything else, too.”

  Jack’s eyebrows lifted and his grin dissolved to a puzzled expression. “Everything else?”

  I bounced on my heels. “What you do to me… I shouldn’t just fall apart like that.”

  Jack’s mouth dropped open with shock. “You need to get it in your head that you’re not doing anything wrong. What, you never had an orgasm before me?”

  I flinched at the word and stammered. “I’m not supposed to…”

  “Who cares what you’re not supposed to do? You like it. I really like it. You’re immortal. I never knew people like you existed until six months ago, and now I get to make you come? Getting you off is like fucking heaven for me.”

  Getting me off. His candor broke through my polite apology. What could I say to that? I tucked a wayward black curl behind my ear and looked at the floor, embarrassed. I wasn’t embarrassed that I’d gotten off, as Jack put it. Well, maybe a little bit. But mostly, I was mortified by how badly I wanted more. “I should reciprocate something. I’m not completely inexperienced, but what you do to me… I didn’t know I could feel like that. I don’t know how to give anything back to you.”

  “You don’t owe me anything. You’re doing what I say, right? I like that.”

  There was that arrogance again, the candor that tempted and frightened me at the same time. “Jack, I can’t…”

  “Can’t what?” he interrupted me. “Can’t enjoy a little bit of life? Can’t give up this rule-bound, careful Vesper adherence to the laws just to feel with me a little bit? You’d be amazed at what you can feel when you give up control.”

  “Give up control to you.” I tried to keep my gaze challenging, but I wanted to melt into his arms and let him have his way forever.

  “Yes. I promise you’ll love it.”

  “How do you know what I’ll love?” I didn’t mean to snap it as harshly as I did, but Jack was undeterred.

  “I know. I can read your body.” His confidence didn’t falter for a moment.

  “My body?”

  He nodded, scanning me from head to toe. “Your body speaks volumes. And you have a submissive soul. I can feel it when you let down your guard. I can make you feel everything more exquisitely.”

  I knew I had a submissive soul. I was an untamed Maid. But I wasn’t a human woman. This wasn’t just about sex. It was about so much more, and he didn’t understand that my entire soul was on the line. “Jack, I can’t. I’ll endanger your life, or jeopardize our secrets!”

  “If you were human and we were on equal ground, would you let me control your pleasure?”

  I stammered. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “You would. You already do. I touch you and you surrender, and it’s fucking beautiful.”

  Holy crap. His words silenced me for a moment. Everything he did to me with his candid speech and masterful touch quieted my argument. His warmth melted away my fears every time I felt him. He wasn’t wrong: I already did allow him to control my pleasure. I just hadn’t said it out loud, yet.

  Why did he confuse me so much? He was bossy and arrogant and knew how to derail me from controlling the situation. My gaze darted side to side as I tried to grasp what he was saying. He wanted to do this even though it was dangerous. And somehow, that made it even more delicious.

  “Get over here, Three, would you?” Jack patted the bed beside him, and the cool, certain invitation seemed so natural that for a moment I forgot he was human I was not. I sank to the mattress, twining my fingers with his while he shifted to face me.

  “I’m not good at talking to women. Not the human kind, anyway. I am good at fucking. And you… well, you’re an untouchable. A feared Goddess. I can’t think of a good reason you should want me to touch you, yet I can do things to you that you say you’ve never done before.”

  “But that is the reason I want you to touch me.”

  “Then, what’s wrong, here? You don’t know how to do this. I do. So let me drive.”

  Let him drive. I bet he could drive really hard, and really fast. I shook my head. “Why do you want to control me? Because you’re captive by the Vespers, because you lost your future to our service?” Because he’d rather be Pharaoh, holding the whip?

  Jack laughed. “No! Three, I’m not angry that I’m a slave to the serpents. I’m honored. I told you, if I really didn’t like it, I’d leave regardless of the price. I’m one of very few in the world who gets to have this job, and I’m one of even fewer who gets to touch a Maid, to give her pleasure. It’s like serving a Goddess who wants me to dominate her.”

  “I never said I wanted you to…” I tripped on the word, “…dominate me.”

  “But you do.”

  I met his gaze, the smoldering jade smoke in his eyes, and I hissed at him. “You sure know how to make assumptions.”

  “You sure know how to skirt a question.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest with a huff. I didn’t know how to answer him. Did I want Jack to dominate me? I pictured him holding a whip. Not Jack the Pharaoh beating his slaves, but Jack the man, towering over me – strong, sexy, warm, vulnerable. And me on my knees, expectantly waiting, submissive and eager. I’d dissolve in his hot, dangerous pleasure, and love every minute of it. It was a fantasy I was only beginning to dare to indulge, and he was offering it to me without hesitation.

  “I can’t tell you certain things,” I said. “I can’t do certain things you might want me to do. There’s too much risk…”

  “I know. I’ll never understand the true magnitude of your life, and that’s okay. But you can’t seem to shut up your worries long enough to enjoy anything. And I can shut them up for you, like this.” He reached up to my neck, wrapped his hand around it, pulled me forward, and kissed me.

  His lips moved with a soothing stroke at first, and then grew aggressive, and then I was lost in his mouth until he released me and stroked back my hair. I pressed my hand to my chest and tried to catch my breath.

  Jack chuckled. “Now that’s what I love. Serving my immortal Goddess. In every way I tell you to let me.”

  I gazed up at Jack. Vashni had warned us that human men could develop an unhealthy attachment to us by our nature as the most forbidden women. Men wanted what they couldn’t have. Though I’d never seen my reflection, I’d seen my sisters and they were so beautiful they even swept my breath away. If I was the same as they were, Jack’s infatuation with me was reasonable, and possibly more intense than I realized. That was why this
was so wrong, according to the rules by which we lived. But if Jack drove, if he pulled the strings, and called all the shots... if I let him push me around when the lights were out the way I so wanted him to do, did the power balance out?

  Did it matter if he wanted me because of my nature? Would he want me just as much if we were equals? Did I want him to be my equal, a Vesper who could control me further, harder?

  Yes, I did. I stared at Jack, stunned by my own thoughts, struggling against the moral screaming in my heart that told me I was an abomination for even thinking of it. He had no idea how deep my scars ran or what messed up, damaged goods I was beneath the steel-strength pallor and silken lips he adored.

  Jack just stared back at me, letting me process it all without pushing me. And in the acceptance of his gaze I realized he wouldn’t push me in any way other than sexual. He wasn’t angry; this wasn’t vengeance.

  This was a peculiar and powerful kind of love.

  I nodded. “I need you to understand something about us before we go any further.”

  Jack’s smile was so genuine it melted my nerves. “Sure. Anything.”

  “It’s about sex.”

  “Oh, good.” Sparks of arousal lit his eyes.

  I would have blushed if I had human blood in my veins. “And dominance.”

  “Even better.”

  I rolled my eyes. “More about what happens after sex, with us. When a Vesper is created by a Vesper of the opposite gender, we’re susceptible to a powerful type of bond.”

  “Aren’t all Maids bitten by your Lady?”

  I nodded. “Most are, yes. Not me.”

  Jack’s grin melted and that flash of possessive anger was back. He pressed his lips together in a restrained line. “I see.”

  I searched his eyes. “I was bitten by a Gent. He was killed for it long ago, and my memories were altered so I don’t remember him.”

  “Your masters fuck with your memories the way you can fuck with ours?”

  “Yes.” The word slipped out without sound, just breath. I couldn’t believe I was telling him all this.

  Jack was quiet for a long moment, studying my gaze, anger simmering just beneath the surface of curiosity. “What happens to a Vesper who fucks a unique Maid like you?”

  I swallowed hard. “I would be tamed by him. Owned in body and soul forever, our bond cemented in stone. I would serve him without question until my final breaths.”

  “And if you fuck a human man?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. That’s why it’s so dangerous, and why I’m always so careful around the Gents. They know I’m susceptible to tame, unlike all the other Maids. They say it’s why I have such a violent temper, too. If one of the Gents wanted to claim me as his...” I trailed off, shuddering as I spoke my fears aloud.

  “All he’d have to do is take you.”

  I watched him process the information. Varying degrees of emotions fogged his eyes in turn: surprise, anger, and fear. When he spoke, his voice was soft, and heavy with sorrow. “Three.”

  “Yes?” My heartbeat rang in my ears with each thud of panic in my chest. What would he say to all this?

  “If you can’t remember your creator and your memories were altered... how can you be sure that’s really where you came from? Or that he was killed?”

  I blinked. This was not what I expected. But he had a point. “I don’t know,” I said. I really didn’t.

  Jack winced at the darkness in my tone. “We don’t have to talk about that.”

  A shudder ran through me once more at the idea. He could still be alive? No. No, he was dead. He had to be: Levitiqas was not half as forgiving as Vashni. I nodded and looked away.

  “Have you ever been fucked before?” Jack asked, and my hand flew up to cover my mouth. “Really fucked?”

  Seriously? I hadn’t prepared for this conversation… or anything at all with Jack, for that matter. He caught me off guard at every turn, disarming my careful defences. “I have,” I whispered. “But it was a long time ago. My human days. And it wasn’t anything like what you do to me.”

  Jack shook his head. “That is a damn shame. Beauty like yours shouldn’t go to waste.”

  I scoffed, but I knew Vashni’s assessment of human males and their perception of us was dangerously correct. “I’m a man-eating half-snake.”

  “And a fucking gorgeous one.” Jack took a strand of my black curls and ran it between his fingers, admiring me without fear.

  I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t used to getting compliments. We Vespers didn’t often discuss appearances… we all knew what we looked like, but without a reflection, the topic often led to brooding and depression over the curse of vanity, so we dodged it whenever we could.

  But Jack thought I was beautiful, and that was worth more to me than any mirror could offer. So I lunged forward and kissed him again, and he fell back onto the bed, kissing me back, tasting me as I wished I could taste him, rolling us beneath a blanket and blocking out all of the moonlight.

  In the dark, his touches grew more possessive as he stroked my skin. His hand moved up to cup my breast and he bent to kiss me there, and oh, that fire lit up in my veins anew, surging down below as he covered me with his body.

  Jack kissed up my neck with such warm, moist lips, and hesitated when he reached my bite scar, so I threaded my fingers into his hair and pulled him down, inviting his mouth there. That scar didn’t bother me, didn’t hurt unless I angered Vashni enough that she dug her fingers into it. Jack’s kisses were tentative there at first, and then grew more demanding as he opened his mouth and slid his tongue from my chest up my neck to my chin once more. So hot, in so many ways. I stroked the back of Jack’s head, romanced by the softness of his hair as it brushed along my cheek – not like the heavy wire of Vesper hair. How could a man be so human yet hold such power over me? My body reacted to his touch like my emotions to his words: erratic, unexpected, and alight with new desire.

  He shifted between my legs. I parted them for him and he pressed against me, the gentle flannel of his pants rubbing on sensitive skin, the sensation heightened by my orgasm. He pressed his body to mine as I stretched my head back and let a moan escape my lips, lost in passion. No thoughts of breaking the rules or betraying my commitments ran through my head. With Jack touching me like this, his fingers grabbing as though he was so desperate, so afraid he’d never get this chance again… my mind was quiet, and I let myself fall into the moment and just feel: something I’d been so afraid of doing for so long.

  Jack ground his hips against me and I moaned again, and he kissed my lips and slipped his hands beneath my shirt, caressing my stomach. I panted. His touch was so divine I could hardly bear it: smooth like leather but hot– so damn hot - and I arched my back to touch him more, pressing my breasts to his chest.

  Jack slipped my shirt higher as I did, and I froze. He worked the hem of my shirt up to the level of my breasts, and then I sucked in a gasp and shrieked.

  “No!” My scars! I slammed my back down against the mattress to trap the shirt where it was and stop the mad ascent of his hands.

  Jack shoved himself off me and backed away, his hands in the air. I scrambled to a sit and yanked my shirt back down, kicking off the blankets and squeezing my legs together, an involuntary growl escaping my lips.

  “Fuck, Three, calm down! I’m sorry! You wanted to.” Fear shook Jack’s voice, but I could barely hear him. I’d been this close to letting everything go, to exposing myself, to giving him access to things he didn’t need to know…

  “Three!” Jack panted as I jumped to my feet and cast about, eager to escape. I bolted for the door.

  “Wait!” Jack called after me, but I was already out the front door into the wet night. I sprinted down the street and heard him again, louder, angrier. “Three!”

  I skidded to a stop and turned. Rain pattered down around me, gluing my hair to my scalp, and I stood there for a long moment, trying to calm my panic as Jack jogged down the street i
n nothing but his flannel pants.

  “What the fuck, Three?” His voice was sharp from exertion or rejection, I couldn’t tell which. He glared at me with narrow eyes, glinting in the moonlight. I crossed my arms over my breasts, which ached from the vacancy of his touch. The familiar chill of the night was far less of a friendly caress after I’d felt such heat in a human being: the temperature of Jack’s body enhanced by passion.

  Jack stopped before me in the middle of the street and planted his hands on his hips, his bare chest heaving. “What the fuck?” he repeated. “You give me a glimmer of hope – more than a glimmer – and then just bail? How can you do that to me?”

  I shook my head. “This is a mistake,” I said, ignoring the harsh edge of emotion in my tone. I knew I was reacting out of plain fear, but I couldn’t bring myself to back down. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “Why did you come then?” He spat the words at me, and I flinched.

  “I wanted to make sure you were healing okay.” The lie didn’t sound like one of mine. It sounded like a girl with a hell of a lot on the line.

  “And you wanted more. More of me, and what we did. Don’t fucking lie to me, Three, you owe me that much.”

  My jaw fell open at the audacity of this mortal, but he stood his ground, huffing at me through his nostrils. “I don’t owe you anything!” I said. “You said so yourself!”

  “You do now! You can’t twist my heart around you and wrap me up in your spell, and then just blast out of there like I did something fucking wrong. You owe me honesty, and an explanation for what just happened back there!” Jack shouted, gesturing back to the house, his muscles enhanced by the moonlight or thickened by aggression, I wasn’t sure. It was attractive, though – sexy, even - and I shook my head to try and get my urges under control.

  “Yes, I wanted more, okay? But I am too messed up for this! I can’t balance, I can’t feel this intense and then...” I trailed off. “I wanted more. But I’ve had enough, so just drop it!” I put a little bit of authority into my tone, hoping to force him to back down.