Susan Krinard - Nightmaster

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 stumbled, though the floor of the corridor was smooth as glass. She knew now that she should have worked more diligently to appear submissive, even frightened—the kind of serf that would bore a creature like Palemon. But when she’d seen Ares’s interest, she knew that ploy wouldn’t work with him. She needed to arouse more than his lust; she had to intrigue him, engage his intellect and admiration as well as his desire.

But she’d also have to “negotiate” with that dark, animal side. The side that had reacted so violently to the touch of a human hand.

Yet his hand had caressed her so gently afterward, and she’d felt his regret. “Sentimental,” Palemon had said. Ares had come as close to an apology as any Opir could.

Trinity smiled grimly as she put one foot in front of the other, careful of her strangely uncertain balance. Most humans believed that Nightsiders couldn’t experience emotions that weren’t directly related to survival or protecting their status in the Citadel. Perhaps it would be easier to manipulate Ares than she’d had any right to hope.

But she knew she’d be lying to herself if she denied her own loss of emotional discipline. And it wasn’t getting any better with time. She was reminded of her unwilling attraction every instant she was in Ares’s presence. He smelled not of blood but of wholly masculine scents she couldn’t quite name. His uncommon black hair, drawn into a simple queue at the back of his head, framed his starkly handsome face like raven’s wings, making her ache with the need to bury her fingers in it. His nearly human eyes had an almost metallic sheen that reminded her of a dagger’s blade, yet she could imagine she saw warmth in them.

And his body... Under his loose clothes his physique had been a mystery, but once he had removed his shirt she had seen a chest, shoulders and arms hard with muscle and honed for battle. She remembered how powerful he had been, how graceful and deadly his every move as he’d fought for her.

She could so easily imagine herself in those strong arms, her nails raking his back as he entered her, as she cried out in pleasure and...