Vampire's Embrace
Vampire Queen Series 15
by Joey W. Hill
Blurb
Nina's twin sister Sher has been groomed to be an Inherited Servant since she was six years old. At twenty-eight, she will be given to a vampire of the Council's choosing and serve him up to 300 years. While Sher insists that Nina is no less service-oriented than herself, Nina does not see any correlation between her own desire to pursue a career as a nurse and her sister's to be the slave of a blue-blooded vampire, where she is allowed no will or dreams of her own.It's 1941 and Nina signs up to serve with the Australian Army Nurses Service in Singapore. What happens to her when the city falls to the Japanese will shatter Nina all the way to the soul. But fate seems determined to give her more than she can bear. When her sister dies in a car crash, Nina is informed that she must take her place as an InhServ. She will be given to Lord Alistair, a vampire who sees Nina as his property, to do with as he pleases.
Even as she rages against her fate, she is baffled at Alistair's insistence on having her as his servant. Especially when the Council offers the Queensland Region Master the option of another InhServ with all the proper training to support his political needs. But that's not the most confusing thing about her new Master. The ways in which he commands her surrender to him leads her to a terrifyingly different understanding of her will and her dreams. By binding herself to him, can she become whole again, but in a way she never expected?
Excerpt
What would you do if the whole course of your life was changed, and you were bound to a vampire for an eternity? Find out in Vampire’s Embrace by Joey W. Hill, November 15.
* * *
“So you like to watch, sweet nurse?”
Alistair’s voice was at her ear, his heat behind her. Vampires could move noiselessly. She knew that. She just hadn’t expected him to creep up on her. But she knew he hadn’t been there long, because his proximity was as tangible to her as a rush of heat from a fire.
Would it be easier or harder to handle all this if she didn’t react to him so strongly? Three years, and his voice, his touch, could still affect her. She could rationalize it, say it was the circumstances that had brought them together that made his presence in an unbearable situation bearable, but she wasn’t sure. After a week of intense InhServ training, she wasn’t sure of much anymore. Except she needed to escape all this before she lost herself entirely. It was the only thought that consistently made sense, so she clung to it, returned to it as often as the moment allowed it.
This was not going to be one of those moments.
Alistair closed his hands on her shoulders. His lips found her throat, teased there. Her heart accelerated, and he acknowledged it, his grip tightening further.
After he nudged the peephole closed, he turned her toward him. A step forward put her back against the door. As he had in the hall, he dropped to a knee, laying his hands on her thighs. He slid his touch beneath the hem of the skirt, raising it to study the state of her sore knee.
“You cleaned and tended it. Good.” He gave the wound a chaste kiss, bemusing her. Rising to his feet, he clasped her hand. “Come with me. We can leave Stanley to his own devices for a while.”
“He looks unhappy.”
“Well, he should have behaved better.” He drew her out of the study, led her down the hallway toward the lower level stairwell. “But he’s got a nasty, bottomless need to be punished. It will keep.”
“I don’t mind waiting on…” She colored and chose a different path. “I don’t want to interfere with your time with your guest.”
She had no idea what Alistair had planned, but his bedroom was downstairs. The ball of tension in her belly coiled tighter. She didn’t think she could bear the loss of her virginity in a slap-dash fashion. She was even less mentally prepared for the second and third marks that would irrevocably bind her to him.
Alistair came to a halt. He did it so abruptly she had to place a hand on his chest to avoid stumbling into him. But he countered that, tipping up her chin, holding her face in a firm hand.
“How polite of you. To be willing to wait while I bugger that poor sod. Will you wash my dick when I’m done? Dry it with your hair? Have they trained you so well in a week?”
The vindictiveness took her aback. Her eyes snapped up and this time she didn’t lower them as she was supposed to do. He’d raked his hands through his hair somewhere between leaving the study and arriving behind her. He hadn’t aged, wouldn’t have, but there was something older about his eyes, the set of his mouth, that she didn’t particularly like at this moment. It reminded her of the house, she realized. Empty of personality, though with all the right polish to make it pretty.
Her thoughts of finding an ally in him faltered once more, her hopes taking another hard hit. But the InhServ trainers had devoted considerable effort into driving in the harsh truth, hadn’t they? They’d considered that reality a gift, and now Nina understood why. At the gateway to Hell, one last glass of ice water wasn’t a kindness. It merely increased the craving for what one would never have again. A true gift was the ability to endure constant thirst.
She let her expression go flat. “If my Master wishes me to clean him that way, he merely needs to command it,” she said. “My hair isn’t long, but shoulder-length is amply sufficient to dry the desired area. More than needed, really.”
Alistair stared at her, then blinked once. His lips curved, a dangerous smile. “Goading me, sweet nurse?”
He moved in closer, and she took a step back, her shoulders meeting the hallway wall. His eyes bored into hers, pinning her body in place. “Why are you looking at me?” he said, with a Master’s sensual menace.
A hard tremor ran through her. He was telling her she was supposed to look down. But she had to speak the truth.
“I can’t look away.”
* * *
Want to read the first chapter? Find it here - http://storywitch.com/book-vqs-ve
“Only Joey W. Hill can make me yearn for blood and fangs.” –Romance Junkies
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