Five to Love Him (Phoenix Immortal: Hive #1)

8. FARROW

eight

I handed my telephone to Conrad, who stood next to my desk in my office at St. Auguste, his lack of decorum on full display. Morning light added shading to his profile, enhancing what was already there.

I said, “Good heavens, Conrad, would you venture a guess as to what my new secretary disclosed to me?”

“No, Farr, I heard,” the cretin said. Then he proceeded to stuff my telephone—which was the newest model, I had been assured—into his ass pocket.

“Where are you putting that?”

A smile played around that tiny scar on his upper lip. Oh, I wanted to lick that scar. “You want to cop a feel?”

“Conrad, anyone might cop a feel. There are gaping holes in your trousers. It’s an invitation to leeches, much like the state of your hair makes fertile nesting ground for lice and other vermin.”

“Mm-hmm. Horny, are you? I swear, you get your clutches into some idiot human you can dazzle with your polished shoes and your nice ties, and you pretty much cum in your breeches. Why you run a school and not a theater group is beyond me.”

I glared up at him, uncrossed and recrossed my legs. Ah, at least my trousers were free of holes, and there was no chafing despite the state I was in. Conrad had got that one right.

“These young people are our future, and those humans who stumble into our world could ruin our future. That’s why someone with vision is needed to guide the two.”

Conrad pulled out his own telephone and started tapping on it with both thumbs. “And I bet it doesn’t hurt that Lord Hawthorne pays you handsomely.”

“Do you complain? It is that money that buys your moth-eaten jeans and those T-shirts that look like an entire rock band wore them to an orgy before you purchased them. And clearly, you failed to iron either.”

He looked up from his screen and focused on me finally. “You want me to take these wrinkly things off? I’m down to fuck.”

“You’re crude. Behave.”

“I’m not your manservant anymore, and I’m done taking your orders.”

“Then leave, but I will keep those clothes you wear.”

He snorted. “Willing to expose your students to my nude ass?”

I examined Conrad with the kind of incisive stare I knew he liked. “There are things to be learned from seeing you naked. Anatomy is a skill best honed by practical study.”

“You just liked the anatomists because they took the corpses you drank dry.”

“Did you not also feast with me, Conrad? Did you not straighten my coat thereafter and wipe my mouth from criminal blood?”

He rolled his eyes. “Because you are, were, and always will be a great big baby. Normal people, they go with the times and learn to get by on their own once they become vampires, but no, not you. You had to turn me.” He took two slow steps toward me, bent forward to uncross my legs with his hand, then shoved his own between my knees. “You had to turn your hot manservant too because you couldn’t be bothered to learn how to tie your own laces.”

“Cretin. I know how to do that.”

He leaned forward. My breath hitched. “Yeah? Prove it, Farrow. Show me.”

“You think you can command me? You are below me.”

“Not today, sweetie.”

My cock responded with yearning that hardened into desire in the span of a heartbeat.

“I only gave you life eternal so I could watch your behind while you polished my shoes,” I told him, bending forward to undo my shoelaces. With his leg shoved all the way to the chair, it brought my chin to rest on his thigh, and I gazed up at him. His ass was fine and well worth eternity, but it was the dreamy eyes, brown like his hair, and that mysterious scar that had trapped my heart like Hamlin’s piper trapped a city’s future.

He snorted. “You hoped I’d lick them in gratitude. Hundreds of years later, and you still sound like the silver spoons you were born with.” He glanced at the door. “You know, with a secretary sitting out there, I won’t be able to do half the things to you that you want me to do when you ask me to come over here.”

I had managed to get my left laces open and wiggled a finger into my shoes. “Who are you to think you know my desires?” I lifted my knee and managed to let the shoe drop. “Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. I seem to have lost a shoe.”

He chuckled. There were few things in this world that I loved better.

“You’re a regular Cinderella, Farrow. Want me to help you out with those laces you’re so not struggling with?”

With my chin still on his thigh, I said, “I would be obliged, Conrad. So very much obliged.”

The corner of his mouth lifted, the very one where his scar lived. “Fine. But don’t think I’ll hide under that desk when your secretary comes in here to complain about you being so far behind the times it hurts my brain. Don’t think I’ll hide down there and continue sucking your dick down my throat while he reads out the week’s schedule to you. That’s not going to happen.”

My fangs were showing, I could tell. Conrad had that effect on me, unfailingly so. I hated him for it, and I loved him for it. I’d gone onto the pilgrim paths to gain distance from him and vent my anger at humans dull enough to be filled with faith, and because Conrad was the pilgrim moon in the sky above my balcony, he had followed me there, had found me in the night and complained how foolish he was to be in love with me. He’d complained while he was inside me, thrusting relentlessly as if he had a right, forcing me to bite straw-filled pillows so I wouldn’t scream out in ecstasy.

He still complained at times, but at others, like today, he sank to his knees with greater grace than vampirism alone could account for, picked up my shoe and put it back on me, tied it fast, then opened my breeches to free my cock.

“Do you take attendance with a boner like this?” he asked.

“I am headmaster here. I take no attendance.”

His breath grazed my heated flesh. “I’ve seen you teach Latin like the old fucking sack of powder and pomade you are, Farrow.” He licked my tip, and my teeth dropped all the way. “You’re too fucking easy, sweetie. Get a grip, headmaster.”

“You insult me. Hand me my ruler.”

“You wish. Oh, how you wish. If you don’t cum in my mouth, you’ll make a huge big mess, and your new secretary is going to see and think filthy thoughts about you. You better control yourself, because I’m not going to fetch you a change of clothes either.”

I grabbed his hair—tried to. Conrad saw it coming and easily caught my wrist. “Rich people like you feast on the common folk. Makes you slow, Farrow.” He ran his tongue down the length of me, all the way to the base, to where the aching need was greatest and only getting greater still.

“The world is what it is, and I was born to my place in it. Give me your mouth.”

“Nah.”

“You deceptive—”

He released my wrist and lifted my left leg over his shoulder, all so he could pull me down in my own chair, get me to where I was completely at his mercy.

“Count yourself lucky I love you, Farr. Now make sure to give me all you have to give like the good little lordling you never were.”

My eyes fluttered shut when he sucked me into his mouth and worked me with the skill of the best sex workers any age had produced. I was sure he had sought them out, gone to learn from them, and here, now, he returned those learnings to me a thousandfold. He deserved top marks for it, verily.

He had me writhing and spilling into him in under a minute. In truth, I had always been slave to this man, when we’d been human, when I had shared my blood with him, and like he did me, I cherished him, loved him. With all of my heart, royal and rotten though it might be.

Conrad pulled off. The expression on his face—hunger, deepest, rawest hunger—was beautiful. “Nicely done.” He pulled the kerchief from my inside pocket, cleaned me up, then put me back in order while my breathing eased and my teeth retracted, at least a little.

With me sitting in my chair like butter in the heat of summer, Conrad stood between my legs. “Look at me,” he said.

“You serve me,” I told him as I did.

“Right.” He pulled down the zipper of his jeans and freed his own cock, swollen and pink, the sight making me shudder, even in the state I was in. “Give me that stuck-up expression of yours, sweetie. I want to cum on your face when you look at me like that.”

“What you want is no care of mine.” I ran my hands up his thighs and sides, admiring the tension there, his huffing breaths while he brought himself to conclusion.

I could have preened at the speed with which he managed it because I knew it was my face that commanded his lust in that manner. His juices marked me, warm and salty, and I dabbed at his cum even as he leaned on the backrest of my chair and breathed heavy, like a stallion after a run.

I licked his cum from my fingers. “Isn’t it strange? I barely remember what humans tasted like. One might think I have spent too much time with you.”

He chuckled and audaciously sat on my lap. He used the kerchief on my face now. “Is that why you recruited that human as a secretary? If he’s a hive’s mate, they’ll kill you for that. Hmm. Suppose that would be good. I’d finally be rid of this little lordling who can’t work his own laces.”

“Ah, but you like that I need you. You love it.”

Conrad leaned forward to lick himself from my chin, then kissed me. “Yes. I do. But your fucking moods still drive me up the wall, Farr.”

“Did you bring me a clean shirt?” I asked and wrinkled my nose at the state of me.

“Of course I did, you ass. Occam’s fucking razor says that human’s going to walk in on us when we do this at some point.”

“They are less prude these days.”

“No, you fucking enjoy shocking people by being spoiled and showing it, and don’t you pretend otherwise.”

“Aren’t you a spitfire? I’m in need of a clean shirt, Conrad. Go fetch it for me.”

I let my head fall back and opened to him, relishing the kiss and the taste it brought, myself, him, the both of us, mingling in pleasure.

“Maybe I need a new master.”

I put my hand on the back of his head. “Never. Where would I go without shoes?”

He chuckled, and I might have drowned in his eyes. That tiny scar stood out nearly white. He was a seducer, Conrad was, and I lived to be at his mercy, each day anew.