Vampire Mistress by Joey W. Hill

his violence to the objects around her, and defensive maneuvers only. By opening him up, Anwyn had pushed him closer to direct violence than he’d probably ever committed against a woman. She could tell, because it was in the damning self-condemnation in his eyes, the tremor in those large, dangerous hands that held her.
    The world outside Atlantis was one of intellectual, self-righteous cynicism, which mocked acts of nobility. It scorned the notion that there was a definitive right and wrong, a structure of morality and code of honor. In such a world, the soul of Gideon Green was quite lost.
    “I’m sorry,” he said at last, his voice rough, a wounded lion’s growl. “I’m going now. I’ll come back and pay later, but I won’t bother you again.”
    When he stepped back, she reached out, hooked her hand in the waistband of his jeans. Her knuckles brushed his abdomen, her sharp-edged rings scraping his flesh under the cotton shirt. Holding his gaze, the color of midnight skies that never felt a hint of sunlight, she closed her other hand on the shirt collar where it hung low and tugged. The split back made it easy to take it off his long arms, over the lean muscles that rippled like strong river currents. Since she hadn’t cut the shirt all the way down the back, it got caught at his hips, but she stepped closer, worked it free of the waistband and let it fall to his feet, around his boots.
    Broad chest, gleaming shoulders, a lightly furred abdomen that couldn’t hide the striations of hard, tough strength there, either. Maybe he’d used a gym to get to a certain point, but she was looking at a warrior. Her lips pressed together at the scars. She knew what she was seeing. After all, in a former life, she’d been an emergency room nurse, having a front-row view of man’s violence toward man, and toward himself.
    Gideon Green bore scars from bullets, knives and punctures. There were burns, faint tracks along his rib cage that she knew would originate in the back, because they came from a brutal flogging, not meant for anyone’s pleasure but a true sadist. Without the scars, he would have had a beautiful body. It was still a work of art, though, the cost interwoven with the potential.
    “Stay completely still. Don’t move. I’m going to show you the right way to get a kiss from your Mistress.”
    He looked puzzled, but then she closed those several inches and brought her lips to his, staring into his eyes. His body constricted under her touch, her fingers resting on his chest and at his waist, all that lovely bare male skin. He kept his eyes open, gazing into hers, and she breathed into his mouth, brushed her lips over his, tasted them with a delicate tracing of her tongue, until she started to feel him sway toward her, the tortured pain in his gaze flickering with something else.
    She stepped back as his hands were lifting to close over her body. He could have stopped her, but his fingers merely slid along her waist and hip as she backed away.
    “I require two things,” she said. “That you tell me the truth, consciously. I will, on occasion, forgive the unconscious lie, the one you believe yourself, but I will dig it out, force you to face it. Outside this room, you can be a liar. Most of us are, to be what we need to be. But here, I only accept the truth that comes directly from your soul.”
    “That’s not what I want.”
    Wrong, angry man . She arched a brow. “It’s what I want that matters, Gideon. Remember? I’m in control of that.”
    “What will you do to me, if I let those women tie me up?” His pulse was up again, she noted, and the fingers were clenching, but from the very question, she knew his mind was circling around the temptation of it, his need to surrender. It made it harder to keep her voice steady.
    “Whatever I want. Your choice is to trust me, even if you’ve never trusted anyone in your life.”
    “Why should I do that?”
    The truth was there, but she almost hated to say it.