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.
Chapter Eleven
Elena’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 Her clit was plumped and withdrawn from its hood, already red and swollen from the pull of his lips and the lash of his hungry tongue.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 falling 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 filled her so well. 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 pulled 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.
Chapter Twelve
Grass cushioned their footfalls 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 hill and nightfall 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 hill, 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.
“Elena, you’re here.”
Elena’s head snapped up from where she’d bowed it in defeat and she whirled around. “Mother.”
Her mother swept into the room. “Loren has arrived. He’s in the kitchen with Cook. You should go see to him before your father decides to have him poisoned.” She waved her hand dismissively, as if she didn’t care one way or the other.
Loren. Her very first boyfriend. Her first “love” or at least that’s what she’d considered him back then, despite being promised to Reynolds.
“Where’s Damian?”
Her mother frowned. “Who is Damian, darling? Gods, I hope you haven’t picked up another commoner stray—your father will have an apoplexy.”
“What kind of test is this? It’s so strange.”
“Test, dear?” said her mother, idly arranging the fresh-cut flowers in the vase on a nearby table.
“Test for the hae ilyium,” she mumbled.
Her mother turned. “The hae ilyium! How wonderfully romantic. As for the test that goes with it, I’ve heard it’s always something that looks into your heart, pulls out your greatest fears or failures and then bats you about the head with them.”
Bats you about the head…well, that was for sure.
“I’ll go see to Loren, then.”
“You do that, dear.”
Her feet felt heavy as she picked her way past her brother, still sprawled and whimpering in the hallway. Gods, she hoped she wasn’t stuck here. The thought made her miss a step.
She walked down the stairs to the main floor, and glimpsed workmen in the grand foyer, up on a ladder and adjusting the chandelier.
Wait a minute. She stopped on a stair. She knew what was about to happen because she’d lived this day before. Now she remembered—her brother falling in the hallway, the chandelier…
“Hey, stop guys!” she yelled. “Make sure the piece on the right is holding properly. My…er…intuition is telling me it’s loose.”
One of the workmen took a look. “Yes, you were right. Thanks!”
“Not a problem. All in a day’s work for a faery princess.”
The workman laughed.
Once upon a time the piece had fallen and smashed on the marble flooring. She remembered it vividly because that was the day her father had…
“Oh, no, Daddy!” She hastened down the stairs toward the kitchen.
She burst into the kitchen to find her father bellowing at Loren, who appeared absolutely terrified.
Elena stopped short, remembering how she’d cowered right along with Loren in the face of her father’s wrath, while inwardly seething about her lack of choices.
“I won’t have you courting my daughter!” the king yelled. “You have no royal fae blood! Get out of my house immediately and never return!”
Loren’s green gaze flicked to her and then at the door. “Of course, my king.”
Back then, on the day that Elena remembered, she’d looked on in horror as her father had banished Loren from the house and put an end to all her dating (except those of royal blood) until she’d been an adult. She remembered how sick and helpless she’d felt in the face of her father’s iron-fisted rule.
Elena had acquiesced back then. She’d submitted.
Not today.
Rage erupted from Elena. She clenched her fists and stalked up to her father. She’d changed the fate of the chandelier; maybe she could change her reaction to her father, too. It was past time she found her voice. If she had a chance to relive part of her past, she might as well do it right.
“Daddy, back off!” She marched up to her father and stood in front of him. The king looked at her as if she’d grown another head. “I like Loren and I want to date him. I don’t care that he doesn’t have royal blood! Frankly, every boy I’ve ever met with royal blood has been an egoistical ass—er—jerk who isn’t worth a damn and who never treats me right. What do you care about more, Daddy? The preservation of your precious bloodline or your eldest daughter’s happiness?”
The king sputtered. Loren had pressed himself up against the kitchen wall.
“You know the tradition, El
ena,” her father finally forced out. “You know our need to preserve the ancient bloodlines.”
“On that, I cry bullsh—er—bull hockey! What’s so special about royal blood? As far as I can see, fae is fae. We all have magic, so who cares about bloodline? I know lots of fae with magic stronger than the royal line, anyway. Stop being such a stuck-up elitist.”
The king sucked in a breath of surprise.
“I want to open a pottery business!” she declared. Where the hell had that come from? “And I want to marry who I want!”
The king sputtered again.
“The bottom line is, do you love me, Daddy?”
“Of—of course I do.”
“Then stop smothering me and dictating my life. Allow me and your other children to make their own choices. I guarantee they’ll respect you more for it and they’ll all make you proud.”
Her father remained mute for several moments. “I don’t know what to say, Elena.”
“Say you’ll consider what I said.”
“I will…consider it.”
Elena smiled, feeling more satisfied with herself than she had in a long time. Maybe her father would dismiss her concerns and go back to his old ways, but at least she’d stood up to him and said her piece.
Then she remembered that she was still trapped in the past and she’d already lived all of this. She remembered the test.
Pop.
She dropped to the floor and everything went black.
Damian staggered forward and fell to his knees. When he looked up, his heart skipped a beat.
Cassidy, beautiful, perfect Cassidy Williams—his ex-fiancée—stared down at him. “Are you all right?”
He pushed to his feet and became aware of the tinging and pinging of slot machines around him. Oh, hell, he was back at Gold Diggers. He was even wearing his work uniform. “Cassidy,” he blurted. “Are you all right?”
She lifted a perfectly shaped golden brow. “Yessss, you’re the one who tripped, Damian.”
He glanced around in panic for Elena. What the hell? Was this the test?
What Happens in Vegas…After Dark Page 30