This Time Tomorrow

by Tessa Bailey

  Elias opened the passenger side door of the Impala for her, leaving only enough room that she had to squeeze past his hard body, a knowing smile curved his lips.

  She almost bit him.

  No sooner had they settled into the Impala, Elias directly behind her in the backseat, did Tucker fire up the engine and gun the car in reverse, sending them flying down the bumpy forest floor at a breakneck pace. They hit the road in under a minute and he whipped the wheel into a K-turn, flooring the gas pedal with a cry of, “Road trip, motherfuckers!”

  Roksana grimaced at the dress she wore. “We need to stop for clothes. I can’t go to the club dressed like a grandma.”

  Tucker sighed, the tires of the Impala squealing as he turned onto the highway. “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. Women are hell on road trips.”

  “Hush, bloodsucker. I’ll buy you a fancy cigar.”

  He laid on the horn. “Now we’re talking.”

  They’d driven for a while, trying to get some distance in the rearview before looking for a place to stop. A matter of days ago, Roksana had played in an underworld poker game with fae and vampires. Now she was in a mall in suburban Connecticut.

  Life was weird.

  With the shopping center twenty minutes from closing, there were very few customers in the place, but the people who did pass them did a double-take. She could only imagine the picture they made, her in a vintage dress with a bruised face and combat boots, Elias prowling like an amber-eyed lion in his long black coat, daring anyone to get too close to her. And Tucker smoking a lit cigar, his gold chains glinting in the open collar of his white dress shirt.

  Not exactly the typical clientele for Nordstrom, but hey, desperate times called for desperate shopping. Elias followed behind her closely now as she browsed the racks, essentially grabbing everything black and in her size.

  “She’s not even looking at the price tags,” Elias murmured, pretending to scroll through his phone, even though she could feel him staring at her legs. “Must still have my credit card.”

  She made a show of bending over and untucking it from her boot, holding it up and winking at him. “I never leave home without it, vampire.”

  When he only looked gratified, a hot wave of awareness sizzled through her, sensitizing every inch of her skin. His eyes were sending the clear message that he loved providing for her. Initially, she’d stolen his credit card to annoy him, but had it ever really done the trick? Or was he secretly enjoying it the whole time?

  “What about this?” From the other side of the rack, Tucker held up a yellow kimono. “You could jazz it up with a chunky necklace or something.”

  Roksana shook herself free of the Elias-trance with a laugh, but the buzz in her blood remained. Focus on the night ahead, ding dong. But how was she supposed to do that when having him so close put her in a constant state of arousal? She desperately needed to come up with a game plan for when they reached Enders. Sure, she could use the marriage decree to gain entry and secure a meeting with Tilda, but she was banned from the slayer bar months ago for fighting alongside vampires in order to protect Ginny. Tonight could very well turn violent and she was still not at full speed after Moscow.

  “Here,” Elias said, taking the pile of clothes out of her hands. “I’ll start getting these rung up. We need to get back on the road.”

  “Thanks.” Roksana held up a pleated leather mini-dress, cooing at it like a mother to an infant. “I’ll be there in a minute. Just going to go throw this on in the dressing room.”

  Elias eyed the sexy dress with distaste, but wisely chose not to comment, him and Tucker winding their way through the racks to the register. Roksana made quick work of stripping off her borrowed clothes and squeezing into the black leather, feeling so instantly at home in the confining material, she let out a gusty sigh.

  She was still smiling when she walked out of the changing room, Ginny’s dress folded in the crook of her arm. And it stayed frozen on her face when the scene taking place at the register unfolded in front of her.

  The female clerk was flirting with Elias, leaning seductively on one elbow and flipping her long, midnight hair.

  Okay, fine, so he wasn’t giving the clerk the time of day. Some might even say he was outright ignoring her as he scribbled his signature on the credit card receipt. But that didn’t stop tiny explosions going off in Roksana’s ears. If she had fangs, they would already have been out and very likely covered in blood. Her stomach swam with boiling oil and a screech burned in her throat, begging to be released.

  This was not a petty feeling. It was a flash flood. It was a firing of synapses in her brain, a short-circuiting of veins and wiring. An air-splitting howl from the pits of a cavern inside her no one had ever visited.

  Obviously sensing her presence, Elias turned his head and locked eyes with Roksana. In a snap, his expression went from bored to a mixture of furious and voracious, gold swimming in his eyes, his tongue tucking into the corner of his mouth.

  “There’s the beautiful girlfriend I mentioned,” he drawled.

  Tucker stuck his head out from behind Elias. “He did mention you. Three times. Witnessed the whole thing.”

  “I think I still want to stab somebody,” Roksana choked out, no longer recognizing her own emotions. Without a command from her brain, she grabbed a hanger off the closest rack and snapped it over her knee, tossing it down at Elias’s feet. “Why are you continuing to stand there?”

  “We’re going to need a minute,” Elias said, striding in her direction and calmly throwing a bristling Roksana over his shoulder. Continuing on without a hitch.

  Her jealousy kept her paralyzed until they were almost to the dressing room, then she started to fight, though she wasn’t sure who or what she was fighting, only that she couldn’t bear the claws digging into her middle.

  “I don’t want to go anywhere with you,” she hissed. “I want to be alone.”

  “Maybe that’s what you want.” Elias walked them into the farthest stall, drawing her forward off his shoulder, pinning her hard to the wall. “But you need my cock.” He rammed his hips up between her thighs and it felt so good, she slapped him across the face. The hard contact from her palm only put a savage smile on his face. “More?”

  Lust blanketing her senses and robbing her of reason, she slung her legs around him, squeezing his hips with her knees. “More.”

  He licked the curve of her throat, his hands busy between their bodies unzipping his jeans. “You want me to make it hurt, baby. Don’t you? You behaved like a brat and now you want to be fucked like one?”

  The walls of her femininity seized so tightly, her eyes crossed. Oh God, what new level of dirty was this? Hadn’t they hit the ceiling of it last night? Or would a ceiling ever exist for them? “Yes. Yes. Just like that.”

  Elias’s mouth stamped down over her gasping one, his hand positioning the wide head of his shaft between the damp lips of her sex, thrusting home in one mighty move, her answering scream muffled by a vicious kiss. His hips pumped once, twice, a third time, then held deep, those amber eyes boring into hers. “Take what you feel right now and imagine living with it all the fucking time. Whether other males are around or not. Doesn’t matter. Just knowing they might happen past you makes me so hard to claim this pussy, Roksana. I want to claim it day and night.” His drives turned rough and punctuated, mean—and she gloried in every single one. “And I’ve been locked in this state for fucking years, so don’t you dare give me a goddamn attitude after feeling it once. Don’t make me laugh.”

  Who knew she liked being chastised so much?

  Liked? No, she lived for it.

  Broken sounds tripped from her mouth, though she could barely hear them over the rattling of the dressed room stall, the entire place shaking with every surge of his hips.

  His lower body was so robust, pressed so tightly between her thighs that she couldn’t even close them enough to squeeze his waist. They were splayed open, parallel to th
e wall, her knees occasionally smacking into the plaster. Bump, rattle, bump, rattle, bump.

  She tossed back her head and revealed her neck, desperate to be fed on.

  Desperate to be salivated over, desperate to satisfy.

  Without warning, Elias crowded closer, flattening her so securely to the wall, she could scarcely draw breath. “My bite is yours alone.” His voice was dangerous against her ear. “My fuck is yours alone. You don’t question that again, are we clear?”

  “Yes,” she gasped, his powerful pulsations inside of her almost enough to make her orgasm. Almost. Almost. “I won’t.”

  “Listen good, baby. You’re going to walk out of here with me shining up the insides of your thighs.” His fist pounded the wall. “You’re going to wear me all fucking night.”

  She had to grit her teeth through a spasm of pleasure. “You too.”

  His laughter was more like a growl. “Better come then, baby.” He bent his knees and thrust upward, forcefully, covering her mouth with his own to muffle her scream. “Better come hard and put your claim on me. I’m damn well going to put mine inside you. Deep as I can. Every time I get between these gorgeous fucking thighs.”

  A shudder wracked her, jolting her back into an arch. “Oh my God.”

  Elias was an animal from that point on, and she became one, too, digging her claws into his neck, grinding her sex into his merciless thrusts, biting his grunting mouth and pulling his hair. She couldn’t even remember why they’d ended up in the dressing room or why she’d been angry in the first place—and that was his obvious goal. There was only him and the impatient, relentless filling of her body. There was only his tongue and lips sucking at the slopes of her breasts and his biting grip on her ass. They reached the point of no return and Elias looked into her eyes, his own glowing like lit coals, his fangs visibly throbbing in his mouth.

  He tilted his hips, sliding his shaft roughly against her clit. The muscles of her stomach wrenched, melted, wrenched and she started to struggle between her vampire and the wall. Oh no, no, no. The release was going to be too intense, too great. She couldn’t shatter so thoroughly with him looking her in the eye like this, could she? She couldn’t avoid it, either. Her thighs were starting to shake wildly, her core clenching around him and he wouldn’t let up on that illicit stroking of her pleasure source. “Elias!”

  “This is your punishment for being jealous. For doubting me.” He rubbed her clit faster with the thick trunk of his erection, pressing tighter, grinding his hips until she was screaming through her teeth, batting at his shoulders with the heels of her hands. “Bad, bad girl. Questioning your mate’s loyalty when he would kill and steal and die for you. Never do it again. Come hard so I know you’ve learned your lesson.”

  It was already upon her, the glorious pain. She clenched involuntarily until he made a sound of discomfort, sensual excitement slackening his features, then the storm barreled through her, ripping through her head to toe, flexing her muscles until they were unnaturally taut, her throat burning with the need to scream. But she couldn’t. Couldn’t do anything but accept the blow of the all-encompassing climax. It rode roughshod through her, biting her with razor-sharp teeth and leaving marks that would never fade.

  And when Elias buried his fangs in her neck, his hunger propelled her higher. She threw herself into the eye of the storm and let it batter her.

  Elias followed, undergoing his own perfect torment, his desire forming a hot pool inside her body, his hips moving in a broken pattern, his gratified male moans filling her ears. When she became aware of their surroundings again, she was boneless between Elias and the wall, her lungs struggling to fill themselves while he kissed her temple.

  “My love is solid. It doesn’t bend,” he said fervently. “Don’t forget again.”

  Roksana could only manage a nod, her heart doing flips in her chest.

  Dazedly, she let Elias fix her dress with three efficient moves and thread their fingers together, leading her from the dressing room. When they walked past the gaping clerk, she couldn’t even summon an ounce of smugness.

  Jealousy 0.

  Elias 1.

  And in just one round, the competition was forever over.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Elias walked a few paces behind Roksana, satisfaction burning deep in his gut.

  If she didn’t know he was all about her before, she goddamn well knew it now.

  She swaggered down the alleyway like princess of the world, the pleated flap of her skirt swinging with every sway of her hips to slap the tight underside of her ass, her long hair in sexy disarray down the center of her back. Her outward strength had always filled him with an odd sense of pride, but after being witness to so many of her vulnerable moments, he recognized her signature swagger as something more. It was bravery in the face of the unknown. A dare to test her. And the fact that she knew uncertainty and pain only made her confidence more impressive.

  Putting one foot in front of the other was becoming more of a challenge because each moment that passed, his mate, this phenom, introduced him to a new emotion that he had to put on his back and carry. The anguish, regret, jealousy and lust he’d always felt for Roksana had been joined by admiration, understanding, love so thick he couldn’t cut to the middle.

  All of those new components made it difficult to follow her toward potential danger when he wanted to seize her and run, hide her away from every single threat. But that wasn’t an option. His soul belonged to a complicated woman and that meant living with fear that harm might come to her. To stuff her in a safe room and stifle her spirit was tantamount to throwing a sheet over a parakeet’s cage. He’d learned his lesson in making her helpless once. He’d lose her by trying it again—and that wasn’t an option.

  “So do we actually have a plan?” Tucker asked to his right. “Or do we just kick down the door of Enders and start swinging?”

  The slayer shrugged. “The marriage decree could probably get me in the door alone—”

  Elias cut her off with a reflexive growl.

  Roksana sent him a smirk over her shoulder. “Alas, the old ball and chain is opposed. I have a standing plus one now. It’s very annoying.”

  “They think you’re a traitor, Roksana,” Elias said patiently, though the closer they got to the underground slayer club, the less calm he felt. “Walking in there alone is dangerous.”

  “Yes, and there is no way I can disprove that theory by walking in with two vampires.” She stopped in the shadows and crossed her arms. “Unless, I don’t walk in. Perhaps I am dragged?”

  Elias stared. “Already I don’t like this.”

  “My mother told me the slayers are eager to mete out their own punishment for turning on my own kind. Why not give me to them?”

  “Let me get this straight,” Elias started, a storm of denial gathering in his sternum. “You expect us to knock on that door and hand you over, just to buy us a meeting with Tilda?”

  “Yes, but it’s only a bluff.”

  “I still don’t like it.”

  “No one knows I’m in possession of the marriage decree. For all they know you won the poker game. Thanks to your little fire problem, there are no witnesses from that night.” She smoothed the pleats of her dress. “You have come to Enders to trade the decree for Tilda’s game piece. I am a pot sweetener. A show of good faith.”

  “When did you think of this plan?” Tucker asked, putting up his hand for a high five. “There’s twists, there’s turns. It’s dope.”

  Roksana completed the high five. “Thank you.”

  Elias ground his back teeth together. “And once you’ve been handed over? Then what?”

  “Refuse to hand me over to anyone but Tilda. That will get all of us into the famous back office and then…” She cocked a hip. “I’ll just find a way to bargain my way out.”

  “You expect us to play it by ear when it comes to your life?” The contents of a nearby trash can ignited, painting the dark alley in an orange gl
ow. “You have seriously underestimated my instinct to protect you, Roksana.”

  “You are protecting me. Don’t you see?” She settled a hand on his chest and rubbed it in a slow circle, peering up at him through her eyelashes. “This way, I don’t have to go in alone.”

  “Are you trying to flirt me into agreement?”

  “Maybe.” Her blue eyes teased. “You are such a flirt magnet.”

  Even though she joked, the need to claim her tightened his groin. Again. His hunger for his mate was a constant, replenishing fountain and he loved, craved, burned to banish every last remnant of his mate’s doubts about them. They were not welcome. He would surround her in his devotion until she accepted it without question and he’d make her scream with pleasure as many times as it took to convince her. They were each other’s and no one else’s. “Do we need another minute alone, baby?”

  Tucker used a hand to cut the air between them. “Guys. I am literally right here.”

  Roksana stuck her tongue out at Elias and he vowed to make her put it to good use later. “Tucker gets the merit of my plan.”

  “And suddenly I regret reminding you of my presence,” Tucker muttered, before giving Elias an elbow in the side. “Come on, E. Once we’re inside, if you think she’s in actual danger, just burn the joint down, you lovable pyromaniac, you.”

  “You have to be convincing or this won’t work,” Roksana said, scrutinizing him carefully. “I am a means to an end for you. Nothing more than a passing irritation. Can you pull that off?” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Please? I need you.”