What Happens in Vegas...After Dark (37 page)

Don’t do it.

Damian’s voice echoed in her head. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and forced away the flood of emotion that clogged her throat. She opened her eyes and wistfully stared at her expression in the mirror.

“You look stunning,” her aunt Millie declared.

Elena had fifteen aunts. All of them would offer an opinion on her appearance before they reached the church.

Millie turned her to face the lengthwise mirror, a smile blooming across her age-weathered face. “Reynolds wil drool when he sees you walk down the aisle.”

He would drool and she would cry. It would be a festival of bodily fluids.

It was true she looked good, though. The fitted sheath ivory wedding dress she wore accented her slimness. The train trailing behind floated like a cloud. Her aunts had pul ed her hair on top of her head in a sleek chignon—classic. Pearls dripped from her earlobes and nestled in the hollow of her throat. Elegant ivory gloves stretched to her elbows and her makeup was done flawlessly—understated to accentuate her natural beauty.

She sighed. “Very well, let’s get on with it then. Is it time?”

Her aunts frowned at each other. “Yes,” answered Millie. “It’s time.”

Great.

E thereal music wafted from the Church of the Morrigan, which only yesterday Damian could have sworn stood in Tibbing Square in the fae city secreted under Darkness (twenty-seventh door on the left). He didn’t let the oddness of it slow his step.

Life in the fae underground was odd at every turn; he wouldn’t allow a spontaneously relocating church to get the better of him.

He was on a mission.

No, he didn’t hold an invitation to Elena’s wedding, the event of the season, by all fae accounts. The Underground had been atwitter for days.

No. No invitation. Instead he was going to crash this party and run off with the bride.

Damian was not going to let her get away from him. He didn’t care about fae culture, or what Elena’s last name was. He didn’t care what kind of blood ran through her veins. She could be related to the King of the Las Vegas Fae, or Oscar the Grouch for all he cared.

All Damian knew was that beyond all reason, beyond all sanity, he’d fal en in love with Elena. And no one, not even Reynolds with his fake tan and his sparkling white teeth that looked like oversize Chiclets and his money and prestige, was going to stand in Damian’s way of his happily-ever-after with her.

He’d so thoroughly worked himself into a self-righteous frenzy that when he burst the doors of the church open with his magic, he hit two men who’d been behind them. They careened off to the sides, swearing loudly. Luckily he hadn’t hurt them too badly. Both men stood, rubbing their heads, and glared at him. No wonder Damian had hit them; the church was standing room only. It was packed.

All faces turned toward him. Pews squeaked. Someone coughed. Other than that, all was silent. Expectant.

Oh, shit. What was he supposed to do now?

At the front of the church, Elena also turned toward him. Even at a distance, he glimpsed shock on her beautiful face. She shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d told her he wasn’t going to let this happen, and he’d meant it.

Damian strode down the aisle toward the couple standing in front of an angry-looking fae clergyman. His boots squished flowers into the carpet. “I object to this union!” he cal ed. “I object on the basis that Elena is my heartstring.”

The crowd collectively gasped. Murmuring began.

“We’ve found each other, against all odds, and it’s wrong to make her marry a man she doesn’t love. I don’t care who her fa—”

A man suddenly blocked his path, a man who’d come from nowhere. Damian stopped short. He recognized him, of course. It was the king. The force of the man’s magic made him want to drop to his knees and bow his head. Damian refused to give in to the impulse, instead drawing himself up to stand taller.

The king knit his brows and scowled. “You mean to interrupt my daughter’s wedding, you insignificant little fae foundling?”

Wow. Talk about elitist.

“What gives you the right?” the king asked.

“Love gives me the right.”

The king laughed. “Are you a twelve-year-old girl? Our world doesn’t work that way.”

Elena had removed her hand from Reynolds’s grasp and started down the aisle toward them.

“I know how your world works. You expect Elena—all your children—to marry fae truebloods and spend their lives as broodmares and studs in order to make more truebloods. It’s wrong. I don’t care how long the tradition goes back.”

“Damian,” Elena said in a warning voice behind her father. “Please be careful. You don’t know what you’re doing.” His gaze locked with hers and he glimpsed deep worry in her eyes.

Reynolds came up behind her and pushed her to the side. Elena stumbled against a pew. Rage shot through Damian, hard and bitter. Her fiancé came to stand next to the king. “Give me permission to dispatch this common fae swine.”

Damian couldn’t wait to knock out those big Chiclet teeth.

The king took a step backward. “Please.”

Reynolds stepped forward and punched him in the jaw.

Pain exploded through Damian’s face and he flew backward, skidding on the floor of the church. Goddamn! That had been a teeth-rattling punch. Did Reynolds work out…

or…the bastard had used magic! Damian could taste it faintly on the back of his tongue, glittery sweet.

He groaned and remembered hearing Elena shriek when he’d fallen. He looked up and saw that Reynolds was holding her by the upper arm, keeping her from running to him.

Bastard.

Damian rolled to the side and forced himself to his feet slowly. Holding his jaw and split lip, he laughed the whole way. A raw, mirthless sound. It was the only noise in the church.

“Okay, so I see how it’s going to be, attorney-boy. You’re not very tough and you know it, so you’re going to use magic to back your punches.” He held up his hands when Reynolds protested. “Hey, don’t worry. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all feel a little weak sometimes.”

Reynolds pushed past Elena and charged him. Damian took him full in the chest, but Damian was magic-laced, too, this time, so it was more like a being hit by a bus than a train. They both went careening backward and landed in a tangle of punching arms and kicking legs in the middle of the aisle.

Distantly he heard the scrambling of the wedding guests to get out of their way, heard their gasps and exclamations. Then he took a solid punch to the face and all he heard after that was ringing.

Damian brought his fist up and connected with Reynolds’s jaw. His head snapped back and he rolled to the side. Damian had pricked his pride, which meant the pure-blood fae was no longer using magic to back his fists.

Now Damian could take him.

Damian jumped Reynolds and began to punch. He didn’t stop until hands pulled him off and up. He glanced down and watched Reynolds roll to his side, holding his eye and cheek. Damian’s fists burned.

“Damian!”

Elena’s voice was the only one that broke through the fog the fight had put him in. His head snapped to the side, to her face.

“What are you doing?” Her face was pale, her pretty lips bloodless.

The people around him were murmuring and talking excitedly. He caught the words hae ilyium several times.

“Trying to stop this damn farce of a wedding,” he replied.

“Enough!” Boomed the voice of the king. Everything went silent. The only sound in the church was Reynolds groaning.

Elena cast him a worried glance. “Father, be lenient with him—”

The king held up a silencing hand. “You have no recollections of our people’s laws?”

her father asked her. His voice grew shril er with every word.

Elena frowned. “What? What—”

“If a wedding is broken on hallowed ground without the aid of magic, and if the challenger prevails, the challenger gains certain rights.” The king looked utterly defeated.

“Hae ilyium,” a man to Damian’s left said. The old guy grinned and bobbed his head excitedly.

Reynolds groaned once more at their feet and then lay stil .

“Hae ilyium,” the king repeated as his shoulders rounded and slumped.

“Wait a minute, what does that mean, Father?” Elena asked.

The queen pushed past the king, a triumphant gleam in her eyes. “It means, daughter of mine, that your heartstring has a chance to save you.”

Hae ilyium turned out to be something that had been neglected in Elena’s schooling.

Now that she knew what it meant, she could see why.

She looked from Reynolds, who lay unconscious on the floor, utterly defeated beyond a shadow of a doubt, to Damian. Damian’s face was marked with blood, his lip was split and a bruise was already beginning to bloom on his jaw.

Hae ilyium was an ancient law, one from which not even those of noble blood were exempt. It was almost unheard of and Damian had accomplished it without even being aware. He’d goaded Reynolds’s pride and forced him to drop his magic for the fight, then he’d jumped on Reynolds like a practiced barroom brawler and knocked him out within a minute.

If a challenger of a wedding bested the groom without the use of magic and that challenger was a heartstring…the strung couple would be given a chance to be together.

They had a chance. Elena could hardly believe it. However, they had to undergo a test that would force their hearts to show true. A true heartstring, it seemed, trumped all the political marriages in the world. There was a catch, though.

The test could kill them.

She twined her fingers with Damian’s as her mother smiled, her father raged and the church dissolved into delighted shocked chaos. For the first time in a very, very long time, hope fluttered in her chest.

H ae ilyium.

There were no two sweeter words in the fae language. Damian didn’t know much of his genetic mother tongue yet, but that had to be true. He had never heard two more beautiful words in English, that was for sure.

Reynolds had tried to pick two fights with him since the incident in the church, but apparently that was against the rules of hae ilyium because some guys dressed in gray had corralled the big attorney the second time and hauled him off kicking and screaming to the gods only knew.

Reynolds was not happy that his societal meal ticket was being snatched from his jaws right as he was about to sink his Chiclets into it. No one was cueing the violins for him, though, not even the king, who had seen how Reynolds had roughly pushed aside his daughter in the church.

Damian had been a no-show at his own wedding, only to crash another one days later.

The fact hadn’t been lost on the fae residents of Darkness and he and the princess were the talk of the Las Vegas Underground.

He didn’t care about anything—not about the strange twist his life had taken, not about Reynolds, not about the fae Underground. Damian only cared about Elena. Come hell or high water, he was going to make sure he spent the rest of his life caring about her, too.

And the test—which hung over their heads like some shiny, well-polished guillotine—just might bring forth hell or a flood of high water, maybe both. They had no idea what to expect.

But while they waited and while Reynolds had been effectively muzzled, he and Elena spent every waking moment together.

He knocked on her door, balancing a stack of Tupperware containers under one arm.

She opened the door and stared at the containers.

“Picnic?” he asked. He followed her gaze to the Tupperware. “I didn’t have a basket.”

His magic was getting strong enough that he could manifest things within his quarters, in his little slice of alternate reality. However, when he tried to take those objects he created past the threshold of his apartment, they disappeared. He was told that was true for all fae, no matter the strength of their magic.

She smiled warmly and ushered him within.

Elena took the containers from him and he paused to consider her pottery. “If you make it through this test, will you be allowed go into business for yourself?”

She returned from the kitchen, licking frosting off her index finger. Apparently she’d found the cupcakes.

Elena leaned against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest. She wore a soft vanilla-colored sweater with sleeves a bit too long for her. Damian wanted to take it off.

Clothing on Elena offended him, in general.

She tipped her head to the side, thinking. “I think hae ilyium changes a lot of the rules.

If I’m allowed to twine my life with yours, I’ll be able to do lots of things I would have been forbidden before.”

“That’s great.”

She smiled. “It’s an added benefit. I want to be with you, Damian. The rest of it is just a bonus.”

He grinned. “I’m the grand prize?”

“Better than a million dollars.”

He held out his hand. “Come here and let me start living up to that.”

She pushed away from the wall and walked into his arms. He twined his fingers though her hair and kissed her earlobe, closing his eyes and inhaling the scent of her. God, he loved her so much. The sensation of it filled his chest with lightness, made him almost dizzy. He couldn’t give her up, not ever.

“I love you,” he whispered into her ear.

She moved her head and stared into his eyes. “I love you, too, Damian. More than I can express with words.”

He lightly touched his lips to hers—just a breath of a tease, a promise of more to come. “Then let’s say it without words.”

He took her hand and led her to her bedroom, stopping in the kitchen to gather a cold bottle of champagne and two glasses. Food could wait; Damian wanted to taste Elena now.

With roving hands and lips, nips to flesh here and there, they undressed each other.

Damian loved undressing Elena. It was like Christmas every time. He dropped a kiss to the swell of her breast in the silky demibra she wore, then got rid of that, too.