Nightmaster. Susan Krinard
“Commanded?” she whispered, rubbing her throat. “Is that what you plan to do to me?”
“No,” he said. “That is not how I handle my humans.”
“You mean by the throat, or are there other ways?”
It was hardly possible for an Opir to feel shame over the treatment of a serf, but Ares knew he had behaved no better than Palemon by giving way to his instinctive rage at her unexpected touch. He had hurt her, though he should never have expected her to fully grasp the taboo against unwanted physical contact when humans were so drawn, even compelled, to initiate it.
And her touch had done more than enrage him. It had aroused him to such an extent that he would gladly have dragged her into one of the private rooms off the lobby and taken her then and there.
He would not fall prey to such primitive urges again.
“Are you in pain?” he asked more gently. “Do you require medical assistance?”
She touched her throat again. “I know you could have broken my neck. But you didn’t. I don’t think you plan to kill me anytime soon.”
Ares couldn’t help but admire the courage that allowed her to behave with such composure when she had twice come so close to death. He pulled her hand away from her throat and bent close to examine her skin. The marks were nearly gone, but her pulse still beat very fast in the hollow of her neck.
She did not need healing. But still he felt...
Regret. That was the proper word. Regret for touching her in anger, for marking that delicate flesh. And there was a small, hard knot in his stomach, like the grain of sand that becomes a pearl within an oyster’s mantle.
His gaze fell to her parted lips and the small cut where Palemon had struck her. The soft, pink skin still held a trace of blood.
He glanced down at her chest, rising and falling with each harsh breath, her erect nipples pushing against the shift’s thin material. He stiffened, imagining those breasts in his hands, those sweet, rosy nipples in his mouth.
Then he remembered the vow he had made to himself. He would not take her in any way, body or blood; she must come to him of her own will. She was an intellectual puzzle to be solved, her bewitching essence a challenge to his self-control. A challenge he intended to win.
“You must understand,” he said, “for your own safety. You are my property. Step outside of the boundaries set for a serf when we are in public, and you must suffer for it.”
“Because of your pride?” she asked.
“Pride, as humans understand it, is not a factor.”
“Of course. It’s because you have to maintain the respect of those who would be happy to take you down.”
“You understand our culture, then.”
“I’ve studied it,” she said. “But I still don’t understand it.”
“Perhaps you will come to, in time.”
She gazed into his eyes. “I’m a little confused,” she said. “Why did you claim me, if you’re not going to use me the way most of your kind use humans?”
“Your spirit intrigued me. You speak our language well, and I have some interest in the human perspective. Perhaps you can provide me with a new one.”
She looked at him as if he were mad. “Will Palemon Challenge you again?” she asked.
“Perhaps. But that will not be your concern.”
She rubbed her arms as if she were cold, though nearly all of Erebus was kept warmer than most of her kind preferred. “I know I have no rights,” she said. “I know you can kill me on a whim and no one will care. But I am...glad you won me. And not just because you saved me from him.”
Ares wondered if she was confessing to some kind of attraction. It seemed very sudden, but then so was his lust for her. Perhaps, in a way, her admission allowed her to keep some dignity, some small control over her situation, even though she would never again set foot outside the Citadel.
Yet her eyes were half-closed, her lips parted, her face flushed as if with desire. The unmistakable scent of sexual arousal rose from her body.
Ares grabbed her by the shoulders, lifted her face and kissed her. His teeth grazed her lower lip, giving him the smallest taste of her sweet blood. She struggled for a moment and then went limp in his hold, her eyes losing all expression.
Disgusted again at his own behavior, Ares altered the composition of his saliva and took her lower lip into his mouth. The bleeding stopped instantly. Soon there would be no trace at all of what he had done.
Not on her body. But frightening her, making her believe he would use her whenever he liked, was not at all what he wished.
“I...did not intend—” he began. He hesitated, knowing he could never apologize to a serf, and yet wanting her to know he regretted his actions. “It was not my intention to harm you.”
Her eyes focused on him again. “I know,” she said softly.
He nodded and continued along the corridor. She followed, her footsteps a little slower than before.
Ares knew curses so ancient that no human remembered them. He must... He would conquer this savagery within himself. As he would conquer Trinity—without ever again touching her against her will.
* * *
It had not gone quite as Trinity had expected.
Ares strode ahead of her without once looking back to make sure she followed. He wouldn’t have had to worry even if she hadn’t promised to go with him willingly. Getting to this point had been difficult enough, and she wasn’t going to ruin what she’d managed to achieve against all the odds.
She watched the play of Ares’s muscles under his clothes, the grace of his long stride, and marveled at her luck for the dozenth time. She never would have expected that her new master would ask her if she should be bound, as if she were free to make the decision. That he wouldn’t bite her after he’d won his Challenge, when she knew Opir custom demanded that he complete his claim. He’d only tasted her blood when he’d—
She probed at her lower lip and then at her throat. It felt as if Ares had never touched her. She couldn’t hate him for half choking her; it was as much her fault as his.
More her fault. She’d done it deliberately, as a kind of test, to see just how far she could push him. She’d discovered his limits the hard way.
Ares had simply acted out of sheer Nightsider instinct. Vicious, animal instinct that ran in all Opir blood like a poison. A poison she’d known must be hidden under the skin of the black-haired Nightsider, even when she had chosen him as the master she must win.
Walking obediently behind him, Trinity could still remember how she had felt when she had first met his gaze. She remembered her inexplicable emotions, the way her whole body had lit up inside like a Fourth of July sparkler even while he had been assessing her as he would a broodmare, his surprisingly light eyes taking her in with unnerving interest. Unnerving because there was no naked lust in his that gaze, not at first. Only remote curiosity.
Not like Palemon’s greedy stare, his undisguised hunger when he had forced her to strip and had seen only a female to service him, a human to break with casual cruelty.
Until that moment, she hadn’t been ashamed...not of her nudity or her vulnerability. She had always thought she was ready for anything that might occur during the Claiming.
But she hadn’t been prepared for Palemon. When he had begun to show interest in her, she had fully realized how much she could lose if the black-haired Nightsider didn’t choose to claim her. She could still feel the crack of Palemon’s hand against her face, sending her to the floor with the taste of blood in her mouth.
Trinity