Wicked Wonderland (7 page)

“Is she truly Orane’s daughter, then, this Lillian Rudolph?”

His curiosity obviously overrode his lust for her. She saw that in his eyes, and it angered and annoyed her. She pushed herself off him and got to her feet. He stood too, brushing snow from his feathers, and followed her as she paced up the beach.

“Forgive me, Mistress, but that is the rumor I hear. I’ve heard the earth fae and the air fae whisper. I keep my ears and eyes open at all times, as you have asked me to do.”

“Yes,” Zenia answered coldly. “Lillian Rudolph is a daughter of Orane. He gave her the name ‘Lillian, the Promised One’, before he tired of her mother and turned his back on them both, as is his usual habit. He thought at the time that she would be queen one day. He was mistaken. How he could think a foolish half-breed born of a mortal could ever become queen of the Fae Realm is unfathomable to me.”

The Secret One did not like to speak of her sylph father. Her heart hollowed when she thought of his coldness, of all the times she’d tried to impress him and failed. The very few times in her life that he’d praised her had left her with a heady euphoria, but generally, in her quest to inspire feelings of love or respect in her father, she’d been defeated time and again. His coldness stung her. It was difficult to accept she’d never been more to him than an object or possession, as important and valuable as a pretty vase of flowers or an embroidered cushion.

But no one would ever know she had such feelings. The only emotions she ever revealed were anger, hate and joy. She had complete control over what she thought of as her only real weakness, the desire to please a father who didn’t care.

No, try as she might, she could never deny, even to herself, how disinterested in her Orane actually was. Perhaps if she had been a male sprite or had less of her mother’s fiery nature, she could have captured his interest. Orane’s violent breakup with her mother meant he had even less time and interest in her than he had before. When he looked at her, Zenia suspected, he saw the ex-wife he now despised.

Orane was a Son of Air, the coldest, most intellectual and emotionless of air sprites, a powerful king of that one element. But Zenia’s mother, Zenobia, was a Daughter of Fire, and that left Zenia with passion in her veins, desire and an aching hunger for power. She was no cold breath of an air sprite like her father. No flighty sylph. She was all fire, rage and passion, a fire elemental, a salamander at heart like her mother.

But if she could obtain more power, perhaps become stronger in magic than even Orane himself, he’d have to sit up and take notice. If she could show him the jewels she’d collected from half fae, if she could take the throne herself… Oh, that would impress him, surely.

Brock’s cawing refocused her in the moment. He had more questions in his eyes.

“Speak, then, slave.”

“Why have you not killed the Promised One?”

“By the Dark Path, I have tried to kill the sniveling mortal bitch any number of times!” The rage in her voice was enough to silence Brock and make him bow his head. “One never knows with a half-breed, half-fae bitch whether she’ll turn out to be mortal or immortal, but all signs indicate Lillian Rudolph is the latter. Little whore has come through every mishap unscathed.” Brock nodded, and Zenia set her mouth in a firm line. She did not need to tell him the rest.

She wasn’t too worried, though. She’d separated Lilly from two men who might have been her fated mates ten years ago, and they had never returned for her. One had even given her turquoise, the so-called Blue Spirit Stone, and even that gift had not brought Lilly into any permanent love connection with two fated mates, so all seemed safe in that regard. Zenia sighed and watched a feather blow across the wide expanse of white beach.

Brock cleared his throat, catching her attention. “Surely, Mistress, with your cleverness and power you can triumph over any half fae, whether she’s mortal or not.”

Zenia let a small grin spread across her face. As always, Brock had said just the right thing to cheer her up. That was why she valued him. Thoughts of the cruelty and pain she could inflict upon her half sister, even if she could not kill her, revived her sex drive. She pushed Brock to the ground again and sat on him.

A slow smile spread across her lips. “Mortals have more weaknesses than you can possibly imagine, Brock. Your mistress uses the emotions of human and half-human fools against them. I use what they love the most, what they hate. I twist love like a knife in their hearts.”

The birdman quivered beneath her, and she realized she’d frightened him. “Do you know how I did that with Lillian?” She didn’t wait for the birdman to answer. Laughing, she threw back her head and smiled up at the gray winter sky. “Touch me.”

Brock slid his humanlike hands under her buttocks. With his claws retracted, they felt almost like a man’s hands. He massaged wide circles on her ass. He knew what she liked and began pulling the string of her red thong up and down. He pulled it tighter, and it brushed along her clit at the front and up her ass at the back. She intermittently gave little gasps of pleasure, but she didn’t stop talking about the subject which was, after all, of the utmost importance.

“I disguised myself in many different ways. I played with my little half sister in the mortal world since the day she was born.”

“You are a master of magical disguise, Mistress.”

Zenia slid her hand down and played it over his prick, moving the foreskin back and forth. He gave a sharp intake of breath that made her grin as she continued talking.

“It’s the fire blood in me, from my mother’s fire-sprite heritage. I used disguise to infiltrate her pathetic mortal life. The iron chest the other slaves carry on their shoulders once contained the body of Lillian Rudolph’s mortal mother.”

Zenia smiled, remembering how her own cleverness had stopped Orane from ever finding the daughter he had sired upon a mortal. “I separated Lillian from the mortal protection of her mother by means of the poison, antimony. My father was disgusted by the effects of the drug on his former lover. She was forever vomiting. Her skin turned yellow, and her hair fell out. He was so repelled he abandoned her completely.” Zenia laughed. “Cold fish, my father.”

She arched her back as Brock slid a thumb inside her drenched folds. He had nice, big thumbs. He added a finger to his thumb thrusting inside her core. A groan escaped, and she threw back her head and rode his digits.

A few seconds passed before she could speak again, but she found her voice to say what was important. “As long as Lillian never encounters her fated mates again, I have nothing to worry about.”

Brock stilled the thrusting action of his thumb and finger, making her groan. “But what if she does, Mistress?”

The very thought of Lilly reuniting with Nick and Kris froze the blood in Zenia’s veins. Her mouth formed a grim line, and she ran her nails down Brock’s shoulders until she drew blood.

“Then I’ll capture and starve her. I’ll imprison her for life. There are worse things than death.”

“But, Mistress…”

“Silence!” Her patience had worn thin and her anger and lust inflamed to the point where she would tolerate no more distraction from her slave.

Moving the crotch of her soaked panties to one side, Zenia guided the engorged head of Brock’s large cock into her slippery opening. Brock exhaled on a groan. The birdman remained as still as a statue, leaving her in control. She dragged her cunt halfway up the length of his pole, then sank down on him to the root. As the delicious sensations unfurled within her feminine walls, so did her feeling of power and command. She laughed with heady delight, riding him faster, harder, grinding her clit against his pelvis over and over. When he caught her breasts in his hands and caressed them, she dug her long, gold-painted fingernails into the flesh of his shoulders and spasmed around his cock, screaming out her release in the way only a dark fae destined to be a queen could.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Rurik staring at them, his gaze filled with hatred.

Chapter Four

Lilly appeared to be enchanted with the view. The look on her face, her wide and shining eyes and the smile on her lips, made Nick’s heart sing.

“So how does it feel?” Kris called out to her above the noise of the bells and reindeers’ snuffling.

She took a deep breath and put a hand on her chest, though her smile remained. “My heart is thundering. I’m glad I’m not one of those people who are afraid of heights.” She laughed. “My God, it’s overwhelming. I’m exhilarated. I feel like I’m capable of anything!”

Kris reached out in front of him as though touching something Lilly couldn’t see. “We have a partial invisible shield up that protects us from the worst of the wind and from water should we hit a cloud.”

“A cloud?”

“Here, feel it.” Kris took Lilly’s hand and put it on the shield, and although she couldn’t see it, what she was touching felt like plastic. “It keeps us from getting wet.”

Lilly nodded and took her hand away from the shield, then sat back a little. Her nervous fingers stroked one of the mink rugs. There was a faraway look in her eyes. “There are still so many things that puzzle me about all this. If you two are fairies, why did you go to college with me? Why did you pose as mortals?”

Nick smiled. “Well, we’re both part mortal. Dad thought we should have a mortal education as well as a fae one. And we loved it; we enjoyed living on campus, we loved the late-night parties and drunken philosophical discussions. We enjoyed buckling down and studying too.” He paused and made eye contact with her. “Most of all, we enjoyed meeting you.”

Nick thought he heard Lilly’s breath hitch, but she shrugged and changed the subject. “So once you left college, what did you two decide to do? Do you have jobs?”

Kris picked up a ruby-red throw rug that sat beside her on the seat and tucked it around her knees. “We run a business. That’s why we’re using the sleigh tonight. We have some deliveries to make.”

She tucked a lock of golden-red hair behind her ear in a gesture he found adorable and suddenly opened her eyes a little wider. “You don’t really live at the North Pole, do you?”

Nick tightened his hands on the reins. “We’ve lived with Santa at the North Pole at times. But now our business takes us all over the world, and we own properties in a few different countries.”

“Wow! You have properties all around the world. I feel so ordinary now.” She gave what sounded like an embarrassed laugh. “I still live with my mother.”

Nick bristled a little at the mention of her mother. He’d always thought of the woman as intensely selfish. In fact, a fight between him and Lilly about her mother’s constant “borrowing” of money had been what ended their relationship the first time, before she’d started hanging out with Kris, before she’d caught the two of them making love.

Knowing she still lived with her mother and that her mother hadn’t intervened somehow to try to stop her from stripping made him even angrier. And he was still confused about it. How in the hell had such a clever woman ended up doing a job like that? He looked over at Kris, but Kris’s focus was on Lilly.

Kris brushed a stray hair away from her face. “You’re anything but ordinary, sugar. You’re gorgeous.”

Lilly gave a snort. “No, I’m not. You heard what that patron said. I’m a beached whale. I’ve always been too fat.”

Nick clenched his fists on the reins, making the sleigh jerk, and Lilly had to grab hold of the handle bar. “Don’t remind me of
that
asshole. I would have loved to punch his lights out. God, Lilly, you’re stunning. Anyone who finds you unattractive would have to be brainwashed by the media. Too many skinny, airbrushed models out there. They look stupid.” He shook the bells on the reins in annoyance, and the reindeer made soft grunting sounds. “What I can’t understand, though, is how someone as clever as you could end up stripping for a living.”

Lilly’s face went red. Nick wasn’t sure if it was anger or embarrassment or both. “Why do you assume because I was stripping that that’s all I’m doing with my life?” She shook her head. “Just because someone works as a stripper doesn’t mean that’s all that defines who they are as a person.”

Oh, it was anger, all right. Her eyes flashed fire. But anger simmered in his own blood and twisted his gut into knots. He’d kept quiet so far about how he felt about her “job”, but it was time to let her know what he thought. “What the hell happened to you? You were always so talented. You were a straight-A student, and the way you played the flute gave us all chills. Why did would you throw your life away like that? What possible reason?”

“I
still
play the flute. I play in an orchestra, and I work for a nonprofit organization that raises money for charities on Long Island. I drive into the city on weekends to work at Venus Girls to make the extra money that Mom and I need, or at least that was the plan.” She looked off in the distance, and he wondered if she felt regret.

Kris slid his hand over Lilly’s shoulder in a gentle caress. “Is life really that hard?”

She nibbled on her lower lip. Finally, she looked at him again. “It’s Marion. She needs the money. She has this weird friend named Mrs. Barrie. The woman must be in her sixties, but she’s always trying to get my mother into some kind of mischief. Mrs. Barrie got her into gambling, and Mom got hooked. She won nine hundred dollars the first night she went to the casino, and she’s been going there and losing money ever since. I
have
to help her. After everything she’s done for me?”

“Who’s Marion?” Kris asked Nick under his breath while Lilly looked out over the lights of New York City below.

“Her adoptive mother, the woman who brought her up. I actually met her once when Lilly invited me to her mother’s townhouse for Thanksgiving.”

“Oh.” Kris frowned. “I don’t think Lilly ever even told me her mother’s name.”

Nick could see jealousy in Kris’s eyes. Kris obviously didn’t like the thought that Lilly had told Nick things she hadn’t shared with him. Nick needed to find the time to talk to him about this later. Everything should be fair and equal between the three of them. It was Kris’s unselfish way to always put others before himself and to subjugate his needs to those of his dominant lover. But Nick needed to make Kris realize how much he meant to both of them, for Nick was sure Lilly desired and cared about Kris too.