What Happens in Vegas...After Dark (5 page)

Ryan’s tongue stilled for just a second, and then it returned to its vigorous lapping as his mouth fitted tight to my sex and he fed hungrily from my pussy.

One of his hands left my thighs to move beneath the dress’s übershort hem and tease along my crack. The tip of his finger, wet with caramel sauce, dipped past a diamond opening to nudge at my anus. At least, I thought it was his fingertip. I recognized the butt plug’s small, rounded head about the time its caramel-lubed shaft eased inside my anal passage one ecstatic wail at a time.

I howled like a werewolf bitch in heat as he worked his tongue and the plug into my juicy openings in tandem. I’d been handled this way before, but there was just something about him that made it seem new and truly un-fucking-believable.

Then it got even better, when he pulled his tongue from my sex to replace it with his cock.

Obviously, he had me seriously gone with lust that I’d missed the point at which he’d unzipped his fly and took out his dick. I got even further gone with lust as the fiery halo of the energy burst I’d conjured up just before I ordered the kitchen door to open, illuminated his face. Deep green eyes unquenched with raw desire bored into mine as he bent his head and took my mouth in an urgently demanding kiss.

The mingled taste of delicious caramel and salty cum sent my senses on a wild ride of seduction. A starburst of sensations whipped through my body. Every filled orifice dripped with tingling, primal need.

I came instantly. Screaming his name, just as he’d vowed I would do.

I pulled out of Deitre and collapsed on the floor in front of the couch. It was a damned good thing we didn’t need to use condoms—from the first sweet lick of her pussy, I would never have remembered to put one on. I didn’t even remember to peel the red leather from her body so I could get my hands on her beautiful tits.

Of course, there would be another chance. Probably in a half hour, knowing her appetite. The butt plug would be carefully hidden by that point in time. I was plenty comfortable with my sexuality, but there was still no way I was letting her stick that thing in my ass.

Silky, red locks slipped over the edge of the couch to stroke against the side of my arm.

I jumped with the contact, still too keyed up despite another of those almost spiritual orgasms. I was dragging butt again, too. Not nearly so bad as I had last week, not getting that pukey sensation, but my breathing was coming out as wheezes and I felt like I could do with a twelve-hour siesta.

Deitre popped her head over the side of the couch. I expected her to be smiling. All right, I feared that she would be smiling. That sexy-as-sin siren’s smile that would no doubt have my dick swelling right back to hardness.

She wasn’t smiling. She wore a look so serious I pushed to a sitting position despite my body’s aching plea to remain on the floor. “What’s the matter?”

She swiveled around, until she was sitting on the couch with her megaspiked heels digging into the carpet. “What you said before, about your life changing so much a year ago, I can’t forget that.”

Hel , she sounded sad. And like a total asshole, I was staring at her nipples peeking out from the holes in the low-cut top of her skimpy red dress.

Cursing the single-mindedness I struggled to shake around her, I met her eyes and focused on her words. My gut clenched as they settled. She wanted to know more about what happened the night of the apartment fire. Part of me stil wanted to share the information with her. Another part was scared shitless she would agree, that while I had done my job by the book that night, I’d still fucked up in the long run.

All of me feared that the admission would be enough to make her walk away.

It wasn’t just the fear of losing her as a lover, either. Somehow, in less than two weeks, she’d worked her way into my mind as much as my heart. I didn’t get that somehow. And I didn’t want her in my heart. At least, I shouldn’t. Not when I wanted kids and she couldn’t get pregnant.

Of course, we could always adopt. And I was putting the cart way in the hell out in front of the horse…

Tucking both cart and horse into the back of my mind, I affected a calm tone. “Why can’t you forget it?”

Sorrow entered her eyes. “Because mine changed a year ago, too.” She looked down at her lap where she worked her joined fingers anxiously. “My best friend was killed.”

I went the asshole route again by breathing a sigh of relief to know that she wasn’t talking about my past, but her own.

Regaining a bit of nice-guy ground, I took one of her hands into mine and gave it a supportive squeeze. At least, I’d planned to gain some nice-guy ground with the move.

Even that subtle touch had sensual heat arcing in the air between us and the fiery halo of light expanding until the living room was as bright as if the shades were drawn and sunlight flooded the house.

I wanted to question where she’d found whatever was giving off the light—it could make for an invaluable tool while searching smoky and night-blackened fire scenes. But right now, all that mattered was soothing her grief. “I’m sorry to hear that, Deitre. We have to face loss as a part of our job, but it never gets any easier.”

She looked up and pinned me with an impassioned glare. “She was killed because of our job.”

My want to comfort her combusted as an eerie sense of foreboding started a vicious roiling in my gut.

Our pasts couldn’t be intertwined. Not the way my suddenly spinning mind was considering. “What happened?” I asked, unable to keep a tremor from my voice.

“Jada was trapped on the top floor of a burning apartment building.” Deitre’s voice shook twice as badly as mine had, and tears glittered in her eyes. “Supposedly, the fire crew on site did everything they could to get her out—I mean, I know they did—but I stil can’t help but feel like they should have done something more. She was such a good person.” Sniffing, she sent me a wobbly smile. “Actually, I could see the two of you getting along well.”

Ironically, so could I. Because Jada and I had gotten along well, right up until the day I decided she was getting too clingy and I ended our relationship.

That was about two months before Ladder 19 was cal ed out to her fire-ravaged apartment building and I was left with the choice of saving her, or a stranger down the hal before the roof collapsed. I had no idea if Jada was even stil alive. The stranger I was guaranteed was alive because I could hear him screaming for help. The stranger lived. Jada hadn’t.

Fuck.

My guts clamped tight and bile rose up in the back of my throat. How could this be happening? How could the woman who was so completely perfect for me that I’d fallen for her without even trying be the best friend of my dead ex-lover?

Yeah, I had a generous supply of ex-lovers and most were from around the Vegas area.

Still, it was too coincidental. It had to be a mistake. Some other Jada and some other fire.

Because Jada was such a common name and there had been so many massive apartment blazes in the city a year ago.

“Ryan?” Deitre’s voice piped through all the nasty shit that had returned to my head as a near-deafening roar. “You okay? You look pale again.” She gave a soft laugh. “I swear sex with me really is too much for you to handle.”

“I’m fine,” I snapped back. Fine as goddamned shit.

“Is that why you’re trying to break my fingers?”

My gaze cleared and I recognized the death grip I had on her hand. The blood had drained out of her fingers to the point they were stark white.

“Sorry.” Feeling like I might crumble from the weight of guilt riding on my shoulders, I released her hand and came unsteadily to my feet. After tucking my shaft into my briefs and zipping my jeans, I started toward the kitchen with the fervent hope she wouldn’t follow. “I need to find some real food. I didn’t have a chance to eat lunch.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry. Talking about my friend has clearly upset you.”

“Nah, it hasn’t.” Seriously, I wasn’t upset. I was well past that point.

She gave a quirky laugh. “Because big, tough firefighters aren’t bothered by the thought of someone perishing in a fire, right?”

“Not when we’ve never met the person,” I said without turning back or breaking stride.

“It’s a necessity if you want to stay sane on the job. But then, I don’t need to tel you that.”

I also didn’t need to tell her it was a lie that firefighters weren’t bothered by the thought of death by flames. It bothered us so much that we made it a point to never consider it an option until destiny deemed it otherwise.

Destiny. Two weeks ago my only clear one had been mind-blowing sex with Deitre.

Tonight, my destiny was figuring out how the hell I could ever own up to the sins of my past while keeping Deitre by my side and in my arms.

Deitre

After the way Ryan had intimated three nights ago that he’d never met Jada, I should have let him eat the poisoned stew. I hadn’t. But now, tonight, I was getting a second chance at seeing to his demise and without having to lift a finger.

A mortal wouldn’t be able to make out the face of the fal en firefighter past the shroud of heavy black smoke and the high-licking orange-blue flames that filled the basement of the processing plant.

I wasn’t a mortal. I also, clearly, wasn’t in my right mind for considering saving him from a perfectly agonizing death.

A massive wooden support beam had snapped without warning, knocking him off balance and onto the oxygen tank secured to his back. The lower half of the beam came to rest against his upper thigh. Between the weight of the tank and the beam, he was immobile from the waist down.

Essentially impotent.

It would be easy to leave him there. Let the fire reach him in another couple minutes, and watch as it slowly devoured his turnout gear and facepiece, and then went to work on burning away at his skin and muscles. The beam didn’t just trap Ryan in place. The top half butted up against the door we’d entered the basement through moments before, blocking the rest of the crew from coming inside.

He was such an easy target. The revenge couldn’t be any more exact.

Deitre!

He didn’t attempt to shout my name and break the seal on his respirator. But even without his body being aroused, I could hear my name screaming in his mind. See the plea for help in his fear-filled eyes past the glass of his smoke-filmed facepiece.

Sorry, bad boy. Not gonna happen today.

Ah, hell, I already knew better. It was going to happen.

Just like three nights ago, my heart was slamming with the thought of not having him around to toy with a little longer and my sex fluttering its loss because, by mortal standards, he was an incredible lover. And my mind, my freaking mind couldn’t stop from thinking what a shame it would be to burn off that endearingly lopsided smile he got whenever he was feeling out of sorts.

Hoping to Hel , literally, that my father wasn’t watching over me, I hurried across to Ryan. I knew fear was flooding my eyes to match his own, and I also knew that my concern was only partly pretense.

With my eyes, I questioned his condition. In answer, he wrapped his left arm around the side of the beam and attempted to push it out of his way.

I almost laughed at that. I mean, what an arrogant bastard to think he stood any chance of moving the thing on his own. We also had no chance of moving it together without me employing my supernatural strength. That he’d tried to move it on his own suggested he had no idea how much weight he was up against, so I circled my arms around the beam from the other side and acted like we were about to make an amazing team.

I waved my right hand to signal his attention and then stuck up three fingers. At his nod, I bent them one at a time. My third finger folded over, and his features contorted behind his facepiece as he pushed for all he was worth. Popping a little sweat out on my brow for effect, I gave a gentle tug and then stepped aside as the wooden beam went crashing down in the opposite direction.

The beam was out of the way of the door now, as wel . The odds were favorable more of the team would be filing into the nearly fire-engulfed basement in search of us in about ten seconds. If I had any chance of fixing whatever damage the beam had done to Ryan’s leg before they arrived, I had to work fast.

Dropping down on my knees, I yanked off my gloves and palmed his right thigh through his yellow rubber trousers. With adrenaline cruising through his system, he wouldn’t be able to feel the extent of his injuries. I could feel his crushed femur as acutely as if it was my own. Healing wasn’t a gift I’d ever owned up to possessing—succubi were meant to harm, not fix. It also wasn’t a gift I’d used before today, at least not on anyone other than my favorite familiar, my cat Tinder, who I’d planned to move into the rental house this coming weekend.

Praying the gift—holy fuck, I wasn’t just thinking the guy was cute, I was actually praying for his pathetic ass—would be strong enough to heal him, I closed my eyes and focused my energy into my fingertips.

Heat so intense it singed my fingers shot down my arm and momentarily turned the leg of his trousers neon orange. Both the heat and the color disappeared then, and I felt like they took every ounce of my strength with them.

The turnout gear and oxygen tank had always seemed light as a feather. Now, they seemed to weigh a ton, or probably, rather, what they really did weigh to the rest of the team. I swayed against Ryan. My helmet rammed into his midsection as I shot my palms to his thighs and just stopped my face from planting in his crotch.

On second thought, that sounded like an excellent place to be. Snuggled up tight against his solid shaft, lips wrapped around the bloodred corona, and pulling back his delicious seed.

I closed my eyes on a comforted sigh. Just a few sips from his cock and I would be as good as new.

Ryan

I hadn’t saved Jada. I also hadn’t loved Jada. Whenever it happened, I’d fallen fast and hard for Deitre, and I was saving her even if it meant dying in the process.