“No danger of the latter,” he said. “As for the former, I’ve always been a big fan of long journeys that lead to happy endings. Now, I’m guessing that since you were almost an escort, nudity isn’t on that list? Your nudity, not mine, I mean. It’s not required, but it would make things a lot easier.”
What the hell is my life now, I thought, as my fingers moved to the buttons of my pajama top and began plucking them open, one by one. In a daze, I shrugged out of the shapeless thing, and let it fall to the floor by the bed. His gaze traveled over me, taking in the stretch marks, and the breasts that had suckled a child when I was still a child myself.
“You’re a beautiful woman, Vonnie,” he said quietly. “Never let anyone make you believe otherwise. Now turn over so I can finish that massage. Just so we’re completely clear, I don’t expect or want reciprocity tonight. Also, I promise not to let you out from beneath my aura until morning. You can let your barriers drop until then, and focus on other things. Pleasure and sleep. That’s all you need to worry about for a few hours.”
I looked at the half-naked vampire preparing to give me a sensual massage with—if he was to be believed—a no-strings-attached happy ending. This situation was beyond screwed up... but suddenly, all I could think about was how incredibly scandalized my family would be if they ever found out about this.
Fuck you, Dad, I thought with sudden viciousness. Fuck you, Mom. I might not be consorting with demons—not sexually, at any rate—but of the three most honorable men in my life right now, one’s gay, one sold his soul to Hell, and one’s a vampire who just wants me to be able to get off, so I can relax and have a decent night’s sleep before we go searching for my kidnapped son in the morning. You and your church buddies could not have been more wrong about how the world works—so screw you... and screw your toxic, ridiculous bullshit.
I turned over, stuffing the pillow beneath me to support my neck and chest. The mattress dipped a moment later, and I closed my eyes, releasing my grip on my barriers... trusting my body and mind to a man who’d never let me down yet.
As promised, Leonides returned to the massage from which he’d been so rudely interrupted earlier. There was nothing flammable from Earth on or around the bed—nothing I could accidentally hurt him with. Broad hands stroked up and down my spine, the feeling even more sensual now that it was skin on skin, made slippery by the lotion he’d retrieved.
As plans went, it was a truly diabolical one. It was awfully hard to feel any kind of sexual performance anxiety when you were melting into a puddle on top of the eiderdown mattress. I didn’t try to stifle the noises that were wrenched from my lips whenever he hit a particularly sensitive spot and worked it loose. What would be the point?
Apparently, he also hadn’t been kidding about his unnatural levels of patience. I’d sort of assumed this would be a massage in name only, leading quickly into whatever magic Leonides thought he’d be able to perform on my historically unresponsive lady parts.
I’d been wrong.
When my back was thoroughly de-knotted, he moved to my arms, lightly stretching and kneading each finger individually until the knuckles popped, and working his way up my wrists, forearms, and triceps. Then he repeated the same treatment with my feet and legs.
“Ticklish?” he asked, lifting one foot.
“No,” I muttered into the pillow, wondering if it was possible to become so relaxed that you accidentally smothered yourself in the bedding you were lying on.
A moment later, a thumb pressed into my instep, and unconsciousness due to extreme relaxation was no longer a concern. Electricity shot up my leg to settle at the junction of my thighs, and if there had been anything flammable left in the area, I had a feeling it would have gone up in flames that very second.
“Oh wow,” I said. “Um, what just happened?”
The thumb pressed in again, and I gasped.
“Reflexology,” Leonides said, and I couldn’t even get angry about the hint of amusement coloring his voice. “In some ways, the human body is an extremely strange machine.”
He continued with what he was doing until the tingles had made it all the way up to my scalp, leaving the roots of my hair buzzing. By the time he moved on to the muscles of my calf and thigh, I was squirming—actively disappointed when he ignored my pussy in favor of kneading my butt muscles, still seeking out knots of tension and easing them loose.
“Christ, you’re good at this,” I said.
His tone turned dry. “Making money for people, and pleasuring women. My only two marketable skills in life.”
Before I could protest that assessment, a slick thumb trailed down the sensitive skin in the valley between my buttocks. My heart lurched with the unexpectedness of it, but it was there and gone before my body could decide whether to let loose with a gasp or a pathetic, needy groan.
“Turn over,” he ordered, and my pulse quickened as I complied.
He squeezed more lotion onto his fingers, and repeated his sensual assault on my arms and legs, working on the opposing muscle groups this time. When he returned to the soles of my feet, I couldn’t hold in a bit of weak, heartfelt cursing. Again, he avoided the place that was starting to ache and throb for his touch, moving to my torso instead.
Large hands slid back and forth over my stomach, ribcage, and breasts in an easy rhythm. My nipples hardened to tight points under his touch, and I shivered. He was the first man who’d ever treated them as anything other than radio knobs to be pinched and twisted. The last remaining tension bled out of my body, replaced by warm tingles of sensation darting up and down my spine, but always ending up low in my belly, pooling and building.
I threw my head back, my body moving on instinct—opening itself, baring my throat. Distantly, I realized that my legs had fallen open at some point. One of his hands moved higher, trailing over my neck, tracing the angle of my jaw. Fingers brushed across my lips, which parted under the light touch.
Finally... finally, his other hand moved down—cupping my sex, massaging my outer folds with the same sure touch he’d used on the rest of my body. Kneading away the tension hidden in the creases of my thighs.
The lotion had reduced the drag of his fingers against my skin, but here, his touch became completely frictionless. I was soaked, I realized with faint shock. Dripping, in the manner of romance novel heroines everywhere... in a way I’d never before experienced personally in thirty years of living.
His slow massage moved from my outer lips to my inner labia, igniting the heat that had been gathering in my belly, like I’d ignited the fabric of his shirtsleeve earlier. One finger slipped effortlessly in and out of me with each stroke over my flesh... or was it two fingers? After several blissful minutes of this, his thumb began to circle my clit—not rubbing across it roughly and painfully, but teasing at the edges instead. Jolts of pleasure rushed through me with every slow stroke—rippling outward from his touch in slow, hot waves. Something inside me gathered tighter and tighter, like a spring being wound.
I was panting rapidly, little uh-uh-uh noises slipping free with every breath.
The tightly coiled feeling seemed to go on forever, yet I knew instinctively that it couldn’t last. Something else had to happen. Whatever it was, it was getting closer, closer, closer...
Leonides’ other hand combed through my hair, gathering it between his fingers and fisting it with a gentle grip—my secret weakness, exposed in spectacular fashion when I’d nearly set him on fire earlier. The strands tugged against my scalp, drawing my head back to further expose the arch of my throat.
It was too much. Every muscle in my body clenched at once, inside and out. I jerked rhythmically under his hands, euphoria flooding my mind. I could hear someone keening, the sound rising and falling in time with the movements of my body.
It subsided by degrees, until eventually Leonides slid his fingers out of me in favor of cupping my damp sex in his palm. His grip gentled in my hair, slipping free and giving it a slow stroke.
“Oh,” I said f
aintly.
He chuckled. Had I ever heard him laugh before?
“There, now,” he said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? What did I tell you? Shitty bed partners.” His fingers continued to stroke my hair, and his palm rubbed small circles over my pussy, sending tiny jolts through me. “So, do you want to go again, or are you done?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked, aware that my words were slurring a bit around the edges.
He thought I could do that twice? Like, without passing out first?
The low laugh came again. “I think we’ve pretty well established that you’re not, in fact, anorgasmic. One of the benefits of being a woman is that with a bit of patience, you can come as many times as...”
But whatever he was saying, I didn’t really care. His voice was growing far away, like he was standing at the other end of a tunnel. I passed out between one word and the next, sliding into deep, dreamless sleep.
TWENTY-SIX
WHEN I WOKE up, there were monsters lurking under the bed, and Leonides was talking to a cat.
“Wha—?” I mumbled, trying to get my bearings.
We were in Dhuinne. It was light outside the window, but that light did nothing to dispel the howling magic of the Fae realm, lurking all around me beyond the protective boundary of Leonides’ vampire aura. The monsters weren’t just under the bed. For me, they were everywhere.
That didn’t really explain the cat, however.
“Good morning,” Leonides said. “I’m trying to figure out if I’m talking to a genderless, shape-shifting Fae, or someone’s wandering pet. How are you feeling today?”
I ran the words through my mind a couple of times, and decided I wasn’t awake enough yet to deal with the first part. As for the second part...
Stretching cautiously, I tried to take stock. I was stark naked, curled on my side beneath the blanket, with Leonides spooning my back, on top of the blanket. Every joint and muscle ached. But I also felt like I’d been so deeply asleep that I hadn’t so much as twitched for hours, and that was behind at least some of my stiffness. I remembered the wave of scorching euphoria—my first orgasm.
Wow.
Okay, there was a lot to unpack here... but most of it was going to have to stay in the suitcase for now. We were in the Fae realm, allegedly scheduled to argue my case before the Fae Court today. And that trumped any sort of discussion regarding why the hell my vampire boss was so invested in my previously non-existent sex life, in a way that very few other things could have.
Also, there was the cat. It was big and black, except for a diamond-shaped patch of white fur on its chest. The animal stared at me with almond-shaped green eyes from its perch on the foot of the bed, like it was silently judging me with its furry little cat brain.
I licked my lips. “Erm... doing okay, I guess... all things considered. Thanks for, uh, helping me get some decent sleep without losing my mind. Now, what’s this about shape-shifting Fae?”
The cat’s sleek body blurred and morphed. I blinked, and a slender human woman sat cross-legged in its place. I blinked again. No... wait. Definitely not human. And maybe not a woman? I wasn’t quite sure.
“Guess that answers that question,” I said faintly. “Um... hello? Sorry about the whole being naked thing. I don’t think we were expecting visitors yet.”
“Are you the same Fae who visited Zorah at her father’s funeral?” Leonides asked. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”
The androgynous figure rolled forest-green eyes. Short black hair framed elfin features, pointed ears just visible through the thick locks.
“Do try not to be so dense, vampire. Of course I am.” The voice was clear and piping, like a child’s. “We’ve met twice before, and now I am to take you to the Court.”
I looked between them, trying very hard not to focus on the fact that I was nude beneath the blanket. “Is there some subtext going on here that I should know about?”
Leonides sighed. “Our visitor is a cat-sidhe. A Fae shape-shifter, like I said. The same one who showed up when Rans, Zorah and I were hiding out in the Caribbean, after a group of Fae loyal to Caspian came after us. And again, at Zorah’s father’s funeral. Not sure how any of that connects to this visit, though.”
“I’m told the demon Nigellus sent you here,” said the cat-sidhe. “Would you have come otherwise, vampire?”
Leonides’ eyes narrowed cautiously. “Who told you that? And no, probably not.”
“It doesn’t matter. That is why I am here. To take you to the Court, as you have been bid.”
I felt like I was missing some important parts of the conversation, but it was probably just my grogginess preventing brain cells from firing properly.
“Okay, great,” I said. “Could we, um, have a few minutes to get cleaned up and dressed? Sorry we weren’t ready to go when you arrived. It’s been... kind of a rough night.”
Somehow, that adjective didn’t adequately convey the reality of the last several hours, but I wasn’t about to go into more detail with a complete stranger.
The Fae eyed me with clear interest. “Even among the adept, Dhuinne’s nature does not lend itself to safe slumber for humans. You were wise to bring along a vampire.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” I agreed easily. When the Fae showed no signs of moving, I cleared my throat. “So... dressing?”
The cat-sidhe frowned. “Yes? Dressing would be advisable before we leave.”
Leonides saved me. “She’s asking you to leave so we can wash and dress in private.”
Realization dawned on the pixie-like face. “Oh. I see. Human privacy taboos. Yes, I will wait outside. Come get me when you’re ready.”
Another ripple in reality, and the cat hopped down from the bed, trotting through the gap in the bedroom door with its tail held high.
“Isn’t the door barred?” I asked, bemused.
“Yep,” Leonides agreed. “Probably best not to ask too many questions. We’ve got enough to worry about already. Got your shields up?”
Throughout the entire bizarre encounter, he hadn’t budged from his place at my back. I had to quash a little voice in my head that wished he’d stay there permanently. God help me, the last thing I needed was to get stupid over him just because he’d given me a pity-orgasm last night.
The little voice snorted derisively. Yeah, because your feelings were totally objective and rational before that.
Shut up, I told the voice.
My pendant still hung at my throat, I made sure that my barrier was swirling strongly around me before straightening away from Leonides’ loose embrace. “Yes, I’m good to go.” I swallowed. “And, uh, thanks again... for last night.”
“It was my pleasure, Vonnie,” he said. “Finally, having a life-sucking, undead black hole of an aura is useful for something.”
Apparently, the offhand comment from our Fae guide about the nature of vampires yesterday had really hit a nerve with him.
“I didn’t just mean the aura thing, you know,” I said.
His expression softened almost imperceptibly. “Still my pleasure. Now go on and wash up in the sink—you’re the sweaty one, here. Not me.”
“Ha, ha,” I said flatly, even though he was one hundred percent right about that.
I washed and dressed quickly, grabbing a bite to eat and drink from our supplies while Leonides took his turn washing at the sink and donning clothes. To save time, I once again went straight to the arterial source for my morning vampire blood tonic. Somehow, pressing my lips to the gouge in his wrist didn’t seem quite so awkward today as it had yesterday.
Within twenty minutes, we were leaving the little cottage to rejoin our native guide. I couldn’t help noticing that the door was, in fact, still barred. It bugged me considerably, until I realized in an, ‘Oh, duh’ moment that as a cat, the Fae had probably hopped up on a windowsill, getting in and out that way.
The sidhe—back in humanoid form—eyed the spreading circle of blackening plan
t life around Leonides’ feet with distaste, but said nothing about it... at least, not directly. “People might be alarmed by the presence of a vampire in the heart of the City. I will take you into the Court building through a back entrance.”
I opened my mouth to ask how far away we were from the City, only to snap my jaw shut abruptly. The Fae flipped a careless gesture of one hand toward the path ahead of us, and a fiery oval burned its way into the air. The interior of the unlikely looking manifestation was shrouded in mist. I couldn’t see the rest of the forest through it.
“That will never be anything other than disconcerting as hell,” Leonides muttered.
The Fae scowled at him. “Do not invoke the demon realm to describe my magic, vampire.”
He only raised an eyebrow. “For humans, it’s just an expression, you know.”
“You are not human.”
His lips turned down. “And I of all people should know better. Yeah, yeah. Old habits. But before we leave, I need to ask you something.”
“Then ask.” The sidhe sounded mildly impatient.
“While I’m here, I need to find information about a Fae who might be a prisoner on Dhuinne.”
“I cannot help you with such information,” the shape-shifter said, frowning.
Leonides sighed. “Can you point me to someone who could?”
“Perhaps,” said the sidhe, and I wondered if all Fae were so infuriating to deal with.
I fidgeted impatiently. “Look—are we doing this, or what? Is that thing one of those travel portals Zorah tried to tell me about? We step through, and we’re somewhere else?”
“That is correct, adept. I will take you to the Court, as I have said I would. Come.” The sidhe gestured for us to follow, before stepping through the hole in reality and disappearing.
My gaze slid to meet Leonides’, a question in my expression.
“It’s safe,” he said. “The portal part, at least. There are no guarantees about what we’ll find waiting for us on the other end.”
I nodded and settled my pack more securely across my shoulders. With a deep breath, I stepped through, Leonides following right behind me. It was like a slightly less nauseating version of the gate between Earth and Dhuinne. At least I didn’t feel as if I was going to faint or lose my lunch this time, though I still stumbled when I encountered cobbles beneath my feet instead of grass.
Vampire Bound: Book Two Page 19
