She stared back down at the water. Silence ensued, and she wondered just how he was interpreting her lack of response.
Putting one hand under her elbow and another at her waist, he pressured her to rise to her feet. While she let herself be guided to sit down on the bench next to him, she kept looking at the water, not questioning why she couldn't look at him. Wouldn't. The silence became laden with something else, a feeling that became even more weighted as she felt his hands at her waist again, this time slipping the tie of the robe.
Suspend disbelief, she told herself. Just let it happen.
He spread open the cloth, the humid mist touching her bare flesh. Now she did turn her attention to him, met his eyes. He didn't lower his gaze, and it made the moment more potent, that he'd exposed her naked body, but hadn't chosen to look at it yet.
"Stay still for me. Time for that experiment."
When he removed a coiled object from his jeans pocket, a dozen thoughts and feelings swirled through her like a capricious breeze coming through an open window, scattering papers on a desk, sending them into disarray, a lack of order.
It was a collar. Nothing elaborate, just a silver band no wider than one of her fingers.
"For a lot of submissives, there's a shift of consciousness when you put a collar on them. They let go of some of their worries, get more inside their heads, more in tune with what they're wanting. I'm going to put this on you, let you wear it for a little while, see how it feels."
"Like letting a horse feel a halter for the first time to prepare her to be ridden."
His lip quirked. "If you want to go down that road, sure, but you're getting a little ahead of me."
She pursed her lips. "I doubt that."
"Lift your chin, my lady."
She tried to see self-serving lascivious intent in his expression. Turn him into a man who had the arrogance to think he could top a vampire. She was a challenge to his testosterone, his ultimate goal being to fuck her, conquer her. Nothing more.
There were times she wished she weren't smart enough to see through her own defense mechanisms. Desire for her came off him in waves, yes. She expected that from a human male, no different than what she'd expected from the porters. It was Garron's control of it, the way he refused to let it distract him from what he was doing, and how he channeled it to feed an even more intense action-reaction between them, that made it different. His control was capable of scrambling hers, and his confidence in that wasn't arrogant. It was as if he had a window into her soul and was following her own cues, her needs and desires.
Trying to suppress that internal quiver, she lifted her chin. She could do this. It was a gesture, was all. It didn't matter that, when his eyes warmed with approval, her toes curled against the rock as if she'd been given a gift.
Garron guided the collar around her throat, his fingers stroking her as he buckled it. The strap didn't rest on her collar bone. It fit just below her jaw, snug, compressing the arteries and her windpipe enough to feel restrictive, the buckle below the hinge of her jaw.
He caressed her jaw above the collar's hold, her throat below it, soothing her. Even so, her pulse fluttered like a line of butterflies, her body going even more still. So did her mind, all those dozen thoughts dying down to puzzled whispers. A quietness took over, while other parts of her became far less calm. The tissues between her legs had contracted hard when the strap constricted.
A different level of consciousness, he'd said. All from placing a collar on her throat.
He drew her to her feet, and she stood mutely as he slid the robe off her shoulders, let it fall and pool around her feet. She was standing naked in front of a fully clothed human male, wearing nothing but the collar he'd placed on her neck.
She didn't need to breathe, yet she was making shallow, desperate little breaths.
"Ssshhh..." He ran his fingertips down her jugular, all around the collar, and slid them into her hair, massaging her nape, his thumb tracing the silver band. "Easy, my lady. Just breathe. I know you don't need to do that, but I expect the act calms you as much as anything. It's just a collar. Christ, you're beautiful."
Her attention snapped back up to his face. He said it fervently, reverently. It wasn't practiced, part of some elaborate strategy. Even as he was staying conscious of her every reaction, he was genuinely savoring, absorbing every inch of her, from the way her hair fell down her back and over her shoulders, to how her painted toenails gleamed as her toes dug harder into the stone.
"Is it always the same charge for you...no matter what she looks like?"
Not sure what emotions she was feeling, she couldn't inject any into her voice, not consciously. Her beauty had always been just there. Another shield over whatever she really was. Sometimes a vulnerable woman, sometimes a monster, sometimes a vengeful warrior. Sometimes an ugly wreck of grief and rage, despair and yearning.
"Yes," he said, meeting her eyes. "I've had the pleasure of mastering submissives who fit someone's ideal of beauty, and those who are so far from it they've forgotten beauty is in the eye of the creator, not the beholder." He stroked a hand down her hair, caressed her elbow. "All this beautiful hair alone would make a man kill to fuck you, to wrap his hands in it." When he reached her wrist, her fingers started to curl, anticipating him tangling his own with them, he shook his head.
"Stay still, my lady. I'm touching you now. I'll determine how you touch me when the time is right. Just feel."
"So you see yourself as God? The creator?"
"Hell no. I try to reach a place with a submissive where we look inside one another and find what a creator sees. When I get there, the sub doesn't doubt her beauty or worth. She sees the absolute perfection she is."
His voice, that stilted rumble, could mesmerize. She had her gaze fixed on his mouth, and quelled an urge to lay a palm on his chest, feel his voice like the thunder of the waterfall, a sound heard below the surface of the earth. Below her surface, for certain.
"Time to go back to your room," he said, and withdrew another item from his pocket. A blindfold.
"I want you to trust me to get you back to your room. You've seen the tunnel, know where we're going. This way you can absorb the way it feels, walking with me like this."
Naked. In his collar. If he hadn't just made it clear they'd take the same path back, she might have refused, but still caught up in the spell of his words, she gave a bare nod of acquiescence. As the darkness descended, she managed to suppress a flicker of panic with a couple rational reassurances. He wasn't tying her hands. She could get out of the blindfold whenever she wished.
He touched her throat again, clipped something to the collar. A tug told her he'd fixed some type of tether to it. He'd collared, blindfolded and leashed her, and she'd barely been off the plane two hours.
It was too much. But as she went rigid, began to pull back, he made a little hum in his throat, a soothing note. He moved next to her, putting his hand against the small of her back, thumb stroking the upper curve of her buttock. He had hands large as bear paws, it seemed, and they compelled a mesmerizing calm.
"Just stand here, my lady. Feel it, get used to it. Nothing is going to happen to you."
She knew how empty reassurances of safety were, but she found she could be just as susceptible to their comfort when accompanied by his touch, the press of his body. A second mark servant could speak inside his Mistress's head, and she wondered how that would add to the tempting sense of sanctuary between Master and sub.
Once every five years, vampires assembled at the Council Gathering. Usually held in a sprawling estate or castle, the event required extra staff, so servants of lower echelon vampires were often drafted to serve as extra help. During that time, they were naked except for head masks to conceal their identity. It underscored that those servants were there to serve the pleasures of the visiting vampires indiscriminately and with enthusiasm, to honor their Master or Mistress. The idea had spawned quite a few more fantasies for her, the first year she'd atte
nded.