Melissa MacNeal - Beyond Redemption

My heart pounded weakly in my chest, and the room began to feel extremely tight. Was this vampire sucking all the air from it? Just as she'd sucked the lifeblood from so many of the other orphans raised here? I'd never been one for death wishes, but I had a dark moment wondering why this malevolent creature hadn't offed me when I was young, too. Lord knows she'd had enough cruel, critical things to say about me over my lifetime.

The response to my unasked question smoldered in her feline eyes.

"You know who you are, Alexandrea. You're just too much a coward to admit it." Smoke curled upward from her flared nostrils, again reminding me of a dragon about to devour some poor feckless heroine in tales of yore. But there it was-my inclination to escape into a fictional state whenever reality felt too difficult. Orphans spun entire lives from threads of their wishful imaginations, and despite my legal degree, I was still a little lost girl at times.

Perfidia pivoted, apparently bored; the cat who insisted her captive mouse play along until the bitter end. She turned to study Billy then. Against that wall he still hung, naked and spread-eagle, pinned by the vampire's invisible fetters. "Do you want me, Billy?" she purred, stepping toward him with a sinuous swish of her deep red skirts.

Tripplehorn snorted. "Bitch! Why would any man-"

His head swiveled with the force of her slap, even though she remained several feet in front of him.

"Time you learned about humoring older women, stupid goose," she sneered, and then she snapped her fingers in the air. "Justin and Jeremy had the same sort of attitude when I chose them, but now they're the perfect servants. The perfect lovers. If you're smart-if you truly love my Andrea-you'll model yourself after their exemplary behavior. Right, boys?"

The blond twins appeared from out of nowhere, their eyes fixed on Perfidia as though they owed her their very life. And, it occurred to me, they'd been spared the same way I had. Without a word, they bowed in unison and their silken saris slithered down to puddle at their feet. They were already rock hard, pulsing with the desire to please her.

"Kneel," the vampire whispered.

One of the twins went to his knees immediately in front of Perfidia, while the other approached on hands and knees to act as her footstool. The lithe vampire lifted her leg, revealing her nudity as the long skirt parted, and then placed her foot in the middle of her slave's back.

"Lick me," she commanded.

The blond before her approached with reverent eagerness, his eyes closed as his lips met her skin. The tip of his tongue made long, sensuous lines up and down her inner thigh, teasing her just to the point where her tight, pale curls met the crevice of her leg. Up and over he went, laving her in a semicircle that arched above her mound, to then lavish his attention on the other thigh.

An intake of breath told me Billy was reacting the way Perfidia had hoped. While his dark eyes and hair accentuated the stubborn refusal written on his face-the intent to remain unaffected by what he saw-the rise of his cock betrayed him. After all, a beautiful woman stood facing him with her legs parted while she took her pleasure from another man.

Perfidia's expression remained cool and emotionless as she watched Tripplehorn's erection point toward the ceiling.

"This could be you, Billy," she said in a sibilant whisper that came from all corners of the room. "Say the word, and you could be serving me the way Jeremy is."

"Forget it!" he spat. "I won't be a slave to any woman!"

His yelp punctuated that statement, and the flinch of his suspended body told me Perfidia had slapped him somewhere much more painful this time. Billy gasped, writhing in his invisible bonds.

The blond twins stifled their laughter, and Jeremy reached up to part Perfidia's sex lips with his fingers. It was no secret he enjoyed the freedoms his slavery afforded: his pale face grew pink with expectation as his hard, slender cock jutted between his mistress's legs.

Perfidia abruptly cuffed him, which sent him sprawling backwards on the floor. "Taking liberties has always been your downfall, fool," she growled, pointing a pallid finger at him. "Assume the position for the whipping you so richly deserve."

Jeremy paled, yet his face took on the taut expectation of one whose fear acted as an aphrodisiac. For a moment he seemed ready to protest-to beg for mercy-but that unwavering digit made him think better of it.

"Before you present yourself, fetch the cane. Crawling, like the worthless worm you are."

"Yes, mistress," came the strained reply, and Jeremy slithered like a snake toward my hearth.

I had no idea how that slender switch came to be among my fireplace tools, but my insides clenched as I watched the blond cross the floor on his belly again, bearing his instrument of discipline. Perfidia's smile curved like the cusp of an ill-begotten moon as she took it from him, and then glanced over at Billy.

"You might recall the night we met, Mr. Tripplehorn, and my references to the discipline I maintain in this household," she said, casually smacking the curve of the cane against her hand. "What you are about to witness shall be a lesson to you about who shall rule and who shall serve, now that you've decided my Andrea interests you. She, too, will expect nothing less than perfection and absolute submission from her mate."

Billy's glance told me he wasn't believing a word of this, yet the darker pink of his cheeks belied some doubts-and his eyes widened with the sudden smack of wood against flesh. Jeremy had doubled over with his forehead on the floor and his slender ass in the air, to receive Perfidia's first stroke. Another followed it, leaving a stripe that ripened into a slash of pink crisscrossing the first one.

I stepped forward with the next raising of that cane, but Perfidia's glare froze me in place. "Your intervention will only earn him more stripes, Andrea. Better get control of your emotions, so you can handle it when it's Billy's balls that jiggle beneath my whip."

As though I would fall for that one! Tripplehorn would no more submit to any woman's domination than… Well, he was still pinioned against the wall, naked, wasn't he? Something told me to keep my mouth shut as Perfidia calmly resumed her disciplinary display.

Whack!…whack! As the slender rod bit into Jeremy's flesh, I sensed he was trembling as much from excitement as from the burning of his backside.

"Have you learned your lesson, Jeremy?" Perfidia quizzed.

The blond quivered. "Perhaps a couple more, mistress. It was very presumptuous of me to touch you without asking permission," he rasped.

The vampire raised her cane…remained poised to strike for countless agitating seconds…and then finished with three rapid cracks that resounded in the small room, along with her slave's single whimper.

"Now-return the cane to its place, and resume my licking without anything but your tongue touching me," Perfidia said in a low voice. "I know how you love to caress me, Jeremy, but we must serve as an example to our new boy, mustn't we? You may walk upright this time."

The blond nodded, and as he replaced the cane he stole a glance at his backside. Those welts had to sting like nothing I had ever experienced-and wasn't the humiliation surely worse? Yet Jeremy appeared…relieved. As uplifted as a sinner newly absolved from all stains upon his soul.

From there, the display only grew more difficult to watch: Perfidia snapped her fingers and pointed to the floor, demanding that the chastised Jeremy become her foot rest while his brother got the honor of pleasuring her. Justin masked his puppylike eagerness by clasping his arms around his own waist, so as not to succumb to temptation as his twin had. Beneath her, in a most worshipful manner, he extended his tongue so that only its tip touched her skin.