The Cherished One Read online

  She was squirming again, and he liked it almost as much as when she wiggled, since she was almost directly up against his groin. “It does, and yes, I believe in equality. But one of the things that women fought for is the right to do what you want. To get your needs – whatever those are – met. And what I want in my life – what I had in my life –“ she stopped there, because she simply couldn’t go on. The lump in her throat was just too big, and she couldn’t speak around it. She was crying, of course, yet again, in front of him, and she didn’t give a damn.

  He was surprisingly patient, and gave her enough time to get around it, as long as he didn’t think she was avoiding answering him. “What I had was a man who was strong enough to do for me what my parents hadn’t. He held me to account for what I did. I was doted on, but not disciplined at all. I was spoiled. Luckily, I didn’t choose any really bad paths as I grew up, but frankly that was simply a matter of dumb luck. And I mean it, pure, unadulterated dumb luck. I just didn’t happen to fall in with a crowd that was doing anything worse than having the occasional under-aged beer, rather than hard core drugs, and skipping the occasional day of school to go to the lake. I didn’t end up hanging out with people who shoplifted or I don’t know – did any number of things a lot of kids I know did that got lead them eventually either to jail or rehab.” She shrugged those delicate shoulders. “I just lucked out.

  “But Dag made sure I knew that my bad choices – however small they might be - had consequences that he made damned sure I didn’t like.”

  “Did he spank you first, or did you make love first?”

  It was an interesting question that she seemed to need to consider whether or not she wanted to respond, but she knew he wasn’t about to let her do so for very long.

  In this case, he knew she was choosing not to respond, rather than having a physical and emotional problem doing so. Max didn’t yell or spank her. He simply reached down and squeezed her butt. “You seem to be functioning under the misconception that you have a choice in whether or not you answer my questions. Do you really think that I’ll hesitate one second in throwing you over my knee and spanking you again, just because I’ve already spanked you?” He glanced casually at the coffee table, where there was a wooden ruler left over from one of her mother’s many – failed – craft projects.

  Fawna sighed, not bothering to cover her exasperation at having been forced to answer. Why bother? He could read her mind. He knew she was pissed. Why try to hide it from him?

  “Why do you make me tell you things that you already know?”

  “Because it makes me hot, and I know you don’t like it.”

  “And knowing that I don’t like it but that you can force me to do it anyway makes you hot, too,” she intuited absolutely correctly.

  He wasn’t going to deny it. “Yes.”

  She was beginning to hate that almost smile of his. “You’re a control freak.”

  “Most dominant men are, to a certain degree.” Before she had a chance to answer him, or distract him further, he turned her over, so that she was lying directly on top of him. Her worn jeans didn’t offer much protection, and those flimsy panties offered even less, and considering that he managed to spank her the slightest bit harder, he figured he’d offset any help her clothing offered, and, if the tone of her yelps was anything to go by, he’d gotten it right.

  “All right! All right! He spanked me because I went into the wrong part of town.”

  She had him there. He stopped spanking immediately. “The same part of town I found you in this evening?”

  Fawna nodded.

  “And what, pray tell, where you doing there at that point in time?”

  She grimaced, realizing he was probably going to have much the same reaction as Dag had when she gave him her reason for going there. “I went to stop a dog fighting ring.”

  Max tipped her chin with his finger so that she was forced to look up at him. “You, all five foot nothing of you-” she wasn’t going to correct him that she was actually four eleven “- went into that part of town to single handedly take on a dog fighting ring.”

  When you put it that way... And come to think of it, his speech sounded alarmingly close to exactly what Dag had said, and with the same tone of incredulity, too. “Yes.”

  Max actually found himself shuddering at the thought that she had done something so foolhardy, and he didn’t blame Dag in the least for having taken her to task for doing something that stupid. In his place, he would have done exactly the same thing. In fact, he might well just do it again, to make sure she had gotten the point. “And what special powers do you harbor as a half-breed faerie that I don’t know about that would make you think you could come out of a situation like that alive?”

  Something about the way he said “half-breed faerie” set her teeth on edge. He said it to cause insult. It made her not want to answer him, but she was already wearing the blazing red badge of not answering him promptly enough. Her bottom was going to be fairly black and blue around him if she couldn’t get rid of him. What worried her almost more than that, though, was the fact not only was it burning quite briskly, but it was also tingling, as was the entire front of her where it was naturally pressed up against him from lying on top of him. He refused to let her down, and had opened his legs to include hers between them, so she was lying directly on top of what she hoped was his very swollen genitals. If that was him at rest, she pitied whoever he slept with.

  “Thank you,” he said gravely.

  “Stop that! It’s really annoying, and very discourteous, to say the least.”

  It was the first time she heard him nearly giggle. “Yes, and courtesy is always one of my utmost concerns.”

  “Sarcasm noted.” Before he raised his hand again to start spanking her, she answered, “I can call animals. None of the dogs in that room would ever touch me in a violent way. Instead, I set them against their masters. I had the element of surprise, and most of the men were dead by their own dogs before they had a chance to get to their guns.”

  He, of course, pounced on the same word Dag had. “Most?”

  “Yes. I lost two dogs, though.” He could feel how deeply the loss of those two dogs, dogs she didn’t even know, effected her. “I rescued everyone else and either got them rehabilitated into good families or placed where they could live out their lives without worrying about harming humans. And the cops arrived right when I expected them to.” She had alerted them to what was going on, and had given herself just enough time to do what she needed to do.

  He should have asked what the police thought about a dog-fighting ring that was absent the dogs, but he didn’t really care. “And you escaped unscathed?”

  Damn. She’d been hoping he wouldn’t ask. Dag had had a fit when he’d found out she was injured, even though it was hardly life threatening. “I was fine.”

  “Unscathed?”

  “A bullet grazed me, but it was just a flesh wound.”

  “Where?” It was suddenly very important to him that he know where she’d been wounded. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t want to question his motives any too closely, but he wanted to see her injury.

  “The back of my arm.”

  “Show me.”

  Knowing he expected an immediate response, and knowing that her bottom couldn’t take much more of his correction, Fawna heaved an exasperated sigh and sat up. He didn’t let her go far, just put one leg down and had her sitting in front of him, on the edge of the couch. It was, for a bullet wound, a very small scar, but it was an affront to him that a woman as exquisite as she should be marred in any way, especially by something as brutal as a bullet.

  If anyone was going to mark her in any way, it was going to be him, and he was going to be the one wielding the implement. And the mark would never be permanent. He found the current trend towards piercing and tattoos distasteful.

  It was long since healed, and was little more than a puckered pink line at the back of her arm. It didn’t hurt, and s
he rarely even thought about it, especially since it wasn’t something she saw very often. Then he did something then that she didn’t expect. Max leaned over and pressed his lips against the scar, as if he was kissing it better.

  “I’m sorry you were hurt.”

  “Why?”

  It was a valid question. “Because someone as beautiful as you doesn’t deserve to know an instant of pain in this life.”

  Fawna snorted. “That sounds kinda funny, coming from a man who’s essentially kidnapped me, who’s spanked me – which has definitely caused me pain,” as if to prove her point, she shifted somewhat gingerly in front of him, “and is supposedly out to kill me, after having already tried once.”

  She found herself atop him again, his hand claiming her bottom, pressing her into him again, grinding himself against her, and she realized with a start that he hadn’t been fully erect until just now, and her eyes flew open at the sheer size of him at full capacity. “Perhaps I’ve reevaluated my goals.”

  Fawna wasn’t at all sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but he wasn’t giving her much of a chance to consider it. Max’s mouth took hers, descending like a hawk after a particularly plump rabbit to claim her mouth in a way that she should have resisted, should have done everything in her power to challenge, to twist away from, not to give in to... and she found herself truly ashamed at how quickly he overcame what little resistance she was able to put up.

  His hands roamed over her back and backside at will, strongly, firmly, keeping her in place, letting her know that he wasn’t about to allow her to escape, but also massaging and gentling, somehow, at the same time. He was lighting fires that were well beyond her to extinguish. She was weak, and wanted to blame it on the sudden loss of her beloved Dag, depression, dejection, fear for her life... But it was more than that.

  It was him. It was something in their connection, perhaps the fact they had shared blood, perhaps not. Perhaps the fact she was, for all intents and purposes, his prisoner, and she was experiencing a bit of Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps a combination of all of it. All she knew was that she wanted him, and that was the last thing she wanted to happen. She should be screaming and shouting and clawing at him and exhausting her very last breath to get away from this vampire who had caused her to lose the man she’d held so dear, and, from his own mouth, very nearly her own life.

  But right now, all she asked in this world was that he didn’t stop touching her.

  And he didn’t. He had her naked in his arms in a second, without so much as a peep from her. In fact, she applauded him silently, knowing he would hear it, because it allowed her fevered skin just that much more of his touch. His hands were slightly cool, and she instantly knew he hadn’t fed lately. “Do you need to feed?” she asked, wondering where that left her in the equation.

  It had been a very long time since anyone had showed any concern about him. It felt... strangely good. And awkwardly touching, considering their situation. “No, Cherie. I’m fine. And no one should ever feed from you again. You would likely not survive it.”

  He gripped her nether cheeks, one in each big hand, squeezing and separating, squeezing and separating, then running his fingers lightly up that tantalizing crevasse, then up the length of her spine, feeling her shiver from the chills his touch evoked.

  His palms reached under her for a second, lifting her by her ribs so that she almost floated in the air over his mouth, pink peaked breasts hovering right at mouth level. Max twisted and turned her as he teased and tantalized each morsel, suckling and licking and occasionally biting, just so that she remembered that he could – and would – sometimes balance the pleasures he offered her with an occasional sting of his hand, or teeth, or a ruler or a paddle... depending on what the situation called for, as well as what was at hand at the time.

  She was purring. He was quite sure of it. He’d never heard his name purred. “Maaaaaaaaaaax!” It was part purr, part groan of pure pleasure.

  As his lips kept her nipples achingly taut, the fingers of his right hand began to travel towards more interesting territory, slowly making their way over her flat tummy and beyond, to that startlingly bare mound, one thick middle finger parting eagerly plump lips to delve into the hot heart of her, eager to discover the extent of her interest. The first bud he encountered was stiff and swollen, which he counted as a very good sign, but he pressed on to part those inner lips and delved – carefully – with one gentle stroke, inside her, finding her almost alarmingly, excruciatingly tight, so much so that his cock contracted within his pants as if in a dry come.

  His bold curiosity was rewarded fourfold. The broad tip of his finger was drenched in her slickness, and he nearly bellowed in triumph, carrying a fingerful up to that taut, aching bud and rasping over it several times, as a test, watching her response avidly. Fawna’s eyes nearly rolled back into her head as she whimpered softly, mewling, like the purring kitten she was.

  Not letting up the constant stroking of her greedy clit, Max left her breasts in favor of slanting his mouth across hers, losing his other hand in the masses of red curls as he relentlessly drove her to a writhing, screaming, crying peak.

  The moment she began to convulse beneath his finger, he saw something he’d never seen before. Two long, shimmering gossamer wings sprouted from her back, floating above them and beating slowly, allowing her to hover over him without his assistance. They were rainbow colored, in places a lime green, sometimes a burntish orange, some places a bright red, others an azure blue, royal purple... it was an amazing sight, but as her pleasure faded, so did her wings, fading into her back as if they had never been and lowering her gently on top of him again. For a moment, he questioned whether they had been, but then he knew they had.

  “Wings?” he said, wishing he could bring them back.

  In his surprise at her enchanting gift, he had lowered her onto him, and she lay, almost snuggled but not quite that relaxed around him yet, on his chest. “Mmm-hmmmm.”

  “You have wings?”

  “I’m a faerie. When there’s room – when I’m on top, they come out.”

  “Half a faerie,” he seemed to enjoy pointing out.

  He felt how much his reminding her of that fact hurt her, and resolved to stop saying it. She didn’t say anything to him about it, but he could feel her withdrawal, and he wished he could have retracted that comment, because it seemed to have destroyed the fragile intimacy that had existed between them. She gave him a hard look, one that didn’t seem to take into account – or, maybe, rather, it did take that into account – what they had just experienced together – gathered her clothes, and left him. Although he couldn’t see them, he could feel the tears she was crying on her way to what had always been her bedroom in this place. She closed the door and locked it, knowing full well it was a futile gesture, but it said what she wanted to say to him, none the less.

  He let her go. It just didn’t feel right to him to stop her. Max stood. It was near dawn. She was apparently on a nocturnal schedule, which wasn’t surprising, considering her relationship with Dag. He’d learned a trick or two that Dag hadn’t, apparently, and could sleep anywhere, any time, he wanted to.

  And right now, that meant nowhere other than with Fawna. He gave her some time to fall asleep herself, figuring that joining her right now would only serve to upset her. After conducting a thorough search of the place for telecommunications equipment, and finding none, he tuned the television into a special on what the Earth might be like after humans, which he found extremely interesting, and after one episode, he could feel that she’d fallen asleep, whether she really wanted to or not, as she was exhausted, mentally and physically.

  After grabbing the ruler from the coffee table on the spur of the moment, just in case, he joined her in the room – the lock was not a deterrent, considering his strength - which he spent a certain amount of time exploring while she wasn’t going to hassle him about doing so. There were pictures of her when she was younger, with her family and h
er friends, almost always looking radiantly happy, the occasional award – all of them scholastic, he noted, not a one of them athletic – lots of books and games, and more shoes than he thought a hundred women would own. The way the room was decorated was a wonderful reflection of who she was now, even thought it was probably decorated when she was younger. It was done in pastel pinks and purples, with a lot of flowers – mostly roses – and ribbons. Her bedspread looked like expensive wallpaper, with bouquets of pink and purple roses held together with complimentary ribbons. There were tons of pillows and frilly decorations... it was so feminine it made him itch, but if it was where she was sleeping, it was where he was sleeping.

  Max stealthily lifted the corner of the comforter and sheet and slipped under them, wishing he had some sort of power that would allow him to do so without waking her, but he didn’t know of one. Luckily, she was pretty much dead to the world. She didn’t even wake up when he tugged her up against him, stroked her hair and fell asleep himself.

  ***

  Fawna awoke before he did, and she would have sworn that she had gone to bed alone, but it didn’t appear that locking the door against him had done her any good what so ever. She’d remember that in the future to save the cost of door repair. She needed to get out of bed. If she didn’t do it now, she never would. When she thought about the wreck her life had become in such a short time, she just wanted to crawl under the covers and never come out. She didn’t think she’d ever stop crying, and now she had much more to cry about. Not only was she alone, but she’d shamed herself and her family by allowing herself to be fondled by someone who intended her – and Dag – harm. Hell, he’d already told her that he was the reason she was alone, and yet she’d let him crawl into her pants anyway. She’d never thought of herself as a slut, but it was beginning to look like she would win the prize.

  Chapter Six