What Happens in Vegas...After Dark (38 page)

Damian pressed her back onto her bed, noting there was a window in her bedroom today, an expanse of blue sky and grass beyond it. A willow tree dipped branches in front of the opening and a bird sang into the room.

“Wow, that’s pretty happy-go-lucky,” he whispered with a glance at the window. “I never noticed that before.”

She smiled against his mouth. “Ever since the day in the church, my reality has been expanded, growing bigger and richer. It’s like my magic has become more expansive with the love I feel for you and the chance at freedom that I’m getting.”

Damian rocked back a little. “That’s incredible.”

“Yes, I think so, too. My father has been impressed, as well. It’s making him rethink his harsh stance on purity. If our family members could increase the strength of their magic through happiness, it would mean more to our bloodline than pedigree.”

He glanced at the window. “No one’s going to peek in the window, are they? I have lots of kinky things I want to do to your sweet body.”

“No peeking, I swear. Bring on the kinky.”

“First, let’s toast.” He reached over and poured them both glasses of champagne. “To the possibility of freedom or death.”

She laughed and their glasses clinked. “To freedom or death.”

Damian drank deep, but didn’t drink all of it. It went down sweet and cold—crisp. All food and drink tasted better in faery. He never wanted to eat anything when he was aboveground anymore. He sealed his mouth to Elena’s and kissed her deeply, their champagned tongues meshing within the hot confines of her mouth, then he dropped lower.

His lips skated over her flesh, the gentle curve of her breasts and each delectable cherrylike nipple, the flat plane of her stomach and the soft hair of her mound. Damian forced her thighs apart and kissed the sensitive inner area on each, hearing Elena’s breathing hitch and grow heavier.

“Do you want me to lick your pussy, Elena?” he purred up at her, breathing over the quivering flesh of her luscious cunt.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Tell me. Use the words.”

She closed her eyes. “I—I want you to lick my pussy, Damian.”

“Good girl.” He rubbed her clit until she jerked and then moaned. “You taste good. I could do it all day.” Gods, and he had. Since the day in the church, he’d spent whole afternoons between Elena’s silky thighs, bringing her to orgasm with his mouth again and again.

He tipped the champagne glass and poured some of the cold liquid on her clit. She jolted, but he held her thighs down and apart, dribbling more onto her cunt. Elena gasped as it ran down and pooled at her entrance.

“Mmmm.” Damian leaned in and licked it up. He explored every one of her folds with his tongue, then slid two fingers deep inside her and began to thrust while he settled his mouth over her champagne-flavored clit and sucked on it.

“Damian,” she breathed. “You’re going to make me come.”

That was his objective. He wanted her nice and boneless for what was to happen next.

He speared his fingers in and out of her creamy cunt again and again until her body stiffened and the muscles of her sex convulsed. He licked and sucked her little clit through it, until she cried his name at the top of her lungs and colorful stars exploded outside her window, making the bird fall silent.

“Oh, gods,” she breathed when it was finished.

“I’m not done with you by half,” Damian said, rising. His cock was hard as rock and he couldn’t wait to slide inside her hot, perfect pussy—couldn’t wait to make himself one with her in the most carnal of ways.

He sought his discarded jeans on the floor and the things he’d put into the back pocket.

Elena watched him curiously. “Lengths of rope?”

“You trust me, right?”

“Heart and soul.”

He grinned. “Rope.”

Damian gathered her wrists and tied them to the headboard, making sure not to bind her too tight. Then he tied each ankle to the headboard, too, bringing her knees level with her chin.

And completely baring her cunt for him.

E lena’s breath came faster and faster. She trusted Damian with all she was and yet she was completely vulnerable in this position. Her cunt was bared to his hand and cock and there was nothing she could do to prevent him from touching it.

Gods, it was exciting.

Damian caught her gaze. His eyes were dark with lust, his cock incredibly hard. He eased his hand down her pussy and speared his fingers deep inside. In this position, with her knees practically up near her ears, she could watch as those thick digits slid in and out of her, wet with her juices. Her clit was plumped and withdrawn from its hood, already red and swollen from the pull of his lips and the lash of his hungry tongue.

It wanted more.

Elena whimpered.

“What do you want, baby?” Damian asked, stopping to rub her clit until she moaned.

“What do you want me to do to you?”

“I want you to fuck me.” The words tumbled from her lips easily. Before Damian had brought out this naughty, dirty-talking side of her, she never would have used those words in bed.

He teased her clit back and forth. “Mmm…that feels good, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.” She licked her lips. “Don’t tease me, Damian. Give me your cock.”

“Where do you want it?” He speared two fingers deep into her cunt. “Here? You want my cock fucking you here?”

“Yes.”

“My cock is better, isn’t it? Thicker. Wider.”

“Damian!” She slurred his name, drunk on pleasure.

He pulled his fingers free and stroked her clit again. She could tell this game cost him, too. His entire body was tight with desire. “Are you so impatient to have me inside you?”

“Please, Damian, yes.”

He rose up and set the head of his cock to her entrance. “Then take me, baby.” He pushed deep inside her aching cunt—all the way to his base.

Her breath left her lungs in a rush and she closed her eyes. It didn’t seem to matter how many times they made love, or how many times she had his cock inside her, it was like heaven every time. She would never grow tired of it. Having Damian inside of her made him an extension of her and she wanted to experience that intimacy forever, every single day if she could.

“Fuck, Elena,” Damian breathed, his head fal ing back and his eyes closing, “you feel so good.”

And then he began to thrust.

She sank her teeth into her bottom lip as she watched his cock glide in and out of her.

He shafted her slow, so she could see every inch penetrate her, come back out coated in her juices, and then slide back in. His cock seemed almost too big to fit inside her, yet he did—so perfectly stretching her muscles to that point where she could orgasm from penetration alone.

“Oh, Elena, that’s so good,” Damian breathed, grabbing the headboard above her head.

“You’re so wet for me, so hot and sweet. Are you watching me fuck you, beautiful?”

Elena couldn’t even respond. Pleasure caught the words in her throat before she could force them into the air.

He increased the pace of his thrusts, his shaft plunging into her faster and faster. Elena watched every hammering downward thrust that stretched her so wide and fil ed her so wel . He grabbed her hips and held her steady and he took her harder and faster, until the only sound in the room was the slick sound of their bodies coming together and the heaviness of their mingling breath.

Damian licked his thumb and set it to her clit, rubbing the small bundle of nerves as he fucked her. He knew just how to touch her, how hard to press, how fast to stroke her….

“I’m coming, Damian!” she cried. “Oh, gods, yes!”

It rolled over her like a freight train, stealing her breath and her thought. Ecstasy slammed into her body and forced a cry from her lungs. He kept up the pistonlike movement as she orgasmed. She pul ed on the rope that bound her as he drew it out longer and longer, until she sagged, limp with exhausted pleasure.

Damian untied her, frantically working the knots free until she collapsed into his arms.

His cock still glided in and out of her. “Touch me, baby,” he whispered raggedly. “Hold me. God, I love you so much.”

She wrapped her hands and legs around him, kissing his lips, face and throat. Her hands skated over the bunching muscles of his shoulders and back, slipped down to cup his buttocks as he thrust into her again and again.

He nipped the sensitive place where her shoulder met her neck, the place he’d marked when they’d first met. “Ah, Elena, baby…baby.” His cock jumped deep inside her and she felt the hot rush of his come.

Damian rolled to the side and pulled her up into the protective cradle of his body. His hands roamed her body territorially, as they were wont to do after sex. He kissed her shoulder. “Elena, you taste and feel so good. I love you, baby.” His voice shook. “I never want to go a day without you.”

A flare of happiness bloomed in her chest, making the blue sky outside her window even bluer. She closed her eyes and smiled. “Hopefully we’ll never have to, Damian.”

It was the very last door on the left. The very…last…one.

Damian had never walked the entire corridor. It was long, at least two miles, and simply lined with doors. Apparently every major city had a nightclub like Darkness and every nightclub had an underground like this one.

To his preinduction mind, it would have seemed unbelievable, fantastic, unreal. Now, however, after he’d found his place among his people and had honored that promise his blood had made without his knowledge or consent, it seemed perfectly reasonable. Not only that, it seemed right.

He glanced over at Elena, who stood with him before the very last fae door in the Underground’s corridor. She seemed right, too, in a way he’d never have believed possible before. She fit against him like a smooth puzzle piece, snuggling into his life and blending into his personality—his heart, his mind—like a drop of water absorbed by the earth.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

“No.”

She stared at the door. “Me, either.”

He took her hand. It was warm and strong in his—like the woman. “I still want to do it, though.”

“Then let’s go in.”

Together, they walked through the door.

G rass cushioned their footfal s and trees, ringed by bushes, rose around them. They stood on a hill. It was just past twilight by the looks of it. Cool air, just enough to make Elena shiver, tugged gently at her shirt.

Their hands still intertwined, they waited, watching the full moon rise unnaturally fast over the crest of the hil and nightfal coat the ground around them.

Eventually the sound of footsteps on the grass, a gentle rustling, reached their ears.

Over the rise of the hill came three people, dressed all in white. One of them was her mother, the queen. The other two men Elena didn’t recognize.

The queen stopped in front of them both and smiled. “My daughter and her lover.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Heartstring, too. Perhaps after today he’ll be your mate, Elena.

Are you sure you want this? Have you considered what you’ll be throwing away?”

She started in surprise. “Mother, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain in Damian. He’s one of my best matches on this planet. If I don’t have a chance at happiness with him, there is no hope at all for me.”

“You have nothing to lose but your life, Elena.” Her voice cracked like a whip. The queen skewered Damian with her icy gaze. “You, too, could end up buried under one of these hawthorn bushes before the night is over.”

“Well, yes, there is that,” answered Damian, his full mouth twisting in a grin. “There is the possibility of death tonight, but I’ll die anyway if Elena is forced to marry Reynolds.

So, for me, there’s not much of a choice.”

Elena smiled and glanced at Damian, who stared back at her with an expression of tenderness on his face.

“Oh, gods,” sighed the queen. “All right, let’s get started then.” She motioned to the men standing near her. “This is Marsden and Terry. They came from San Francisco to administer this test. Hae ilyium doesn’t happen very often. This is their bit of faery and the test you’re about to undergo is their creation. Are you ready?”

Elena glanced at Damian, alarm ratcheting up her blood pressure. “Uh, how should we be getting ready?”

“Actually, that was a trick question. There is no ready.”

The two men in white waved their arms and the hil , and everyone on it, disappeared.

Elena stood in the middle of her father’s library, wearing a dress she’d owned as a teenager—blue, designer, short. She hadn’t been able to fit into this dress since she’d been eighteen.

That was her first clue that something was very, very odd.

Somewhere in the hallway, something crashed. A little boy screeched for his mother.

Elena frowned. That sounded like her little brother, Tad, but Tad was a grown man.

“Tad, what are you doing? You tipped over your mama’s favorite pedestal with your cavorting!”

Flashback. That was her nanny’s voice, Hilda. Gods, she was back in her parents’ house and she was a—no! Elena ran to a mirror to make sure she wasn’t sixteen again and sagged when she saw she was.

“Oh, gods.”

She would do anything to avoid reliving her teenage years in her parents’ house. Elena didn’t even want to revisit that time, not for a moment.

From the corridor beyond the room, she heard her mother talking in low, chiding tones to her brother.

Invisible hands tightened around Elena’s throat. She was back home.

It wasn’t that she’d had a horrible life here, or that she’d been beaten or anything dark like that. It was just that her parents, with their strained, uncomfortable marriage, had choked her every day into doing things she’d never wanted to do. Her father had been especially bad, with his duty! duty! duty! refrain beating endlessly in her head. Her mother had mostly been distracted, trying to pick up threads of happiness in a life gone sour.

Elena had never wanted to end up like her mother, though she’d always known it was her destiny. Oddly, now she understood that her mother didn’t want Elena to end up like her, either.