by Lana Sky
“You use sex like it’s a game,” I blurted. “Like the whole damn world knows the rules when only you do. You kiss me when you want to. Leave me when you want to. But I’m the one at fault? Even now… You’re trying to confuse me for a reason,” I decided, shaking my head. “You always throw sex in my face just to manipulate me. You did it at the auction, and in the cathedral, and when you came back.”
Each time he had taunted me with a taste of desire.
Only to yank it back the second it suited him.
Even now.
“You’re saying these things because you know you can turn the tables,” I said.
He didn’t move, his gaze impossible to read. “So what will you do now, Eleanor? Run away. Make me hunt you down. Pretend I was always the monster?”
“No.” My hands fell over his thighs and hesitation paralyzed me for a heartbeat. Until he tensed beneath me, still seated. God, I could almost hear him hissing a dare. Do something, Eleanor. But don’t fool yourself. You lack the nerve.
“I want to prove it to myself once and for all. You’re lying and I’m not afraid to face the truth this time.” Biting my lip, I tugged at the fastenings of his pants to no avail. My hands shook too badly to undo them, but he didn’t laugh and shrug me off. He tugged the zipper down himself, his eyes slits, conveying confusion and a warning.
You’re playing with fire.
But I was too tired to heed it. I lowered my mouth instead, flinching as his fingers latched onto my scalp. He started to tug, but his grip went slack the second my tongue connected with the silken flesh beneath the cotton of his pants.
Such a vulgar act. I had only ever performed it once before in my entire life.
Only ever with him.
Yet nothing could compare to the feel of it. Having him at my mercy. Exploring his body far beyond physical touch. I could taste him, spice and winter. I could feel him, hard and unmoving. Thickening. Thicker.
And I knew in an instant that I had made a horrible miscalculation.
He didn’t shrug me off the way some prudish part of me insisted he would. The smug, confident Dublin Helos would never surrender an argument due to such a base impulse.
And yet, I could hear him growling with every tentative flick of my tongue. Soon, he began to buck into every taste, betraying a lack of restraint that made my breathing hitch in anticipation. When his fingers cinched a fistful of my hair, I nearly sighed in relief. I’d won. His rejection would prove it. I all but hissed in triumph as his opposite hand latched onto the nape of my neck—but the touch wasn’t resisting. His fingers clamped down, restraining, as if to prevent me from pulling away.
And for whatever reason, I didn’t…
My eyelids fluttered as my tongue lapped along the crown of him. His blood was addicting, but this was an even more potent drug. Power, however briefly it lasted. There was something terrible in his taste. A flavor that made a groan catch in my throat and my stomach clench. Something too elusive to name—I could only chase it, gradually taking more and more of him into my mouth.
All I could.
Dazed, I made the mistake of looking up, seeing him stare down on me, his eyes slits, his jaw so tight that it could have been chiseled from stone.
It was like that very first night. Something shot between us, hot like fire. Electric. Suddenly, he flexed his grip, wrenching me upright. Up, onto his lap. Cupping my knee in his opposite hand, he spread my legs apart, forcing me to straddle him completely. There was no mistaking what pressed against my inner thighs now, pulsing against the fabric of my dress.
No pretending that I wasn’t the cause of every inch.
And that knowledge confounded everything I knew about myself—everything I knew I wanted. His nearness made me yearn in ways I barely understood. For his taste. His rage. His need.
Everything.
I shivered as he batted the skirt aside, sliding a thumb beneath my panties. The gusset was no match as he yanked, ripping the thin material right down the middle. Slowly, his thumb burrowed between my folds in its place.
As he applied the slightest hint of pressure, the world ceased to spin.
“This is what you do to me.” He lingered and my entire body trembled, balanced on the pad of his finger. I sucked in a breath, my eyelids fluttering. If revenge was his aim, well he had won. I was unbearably cruel for making him feel even a fraction of this.
A single, lazy flick of his wrist fed tendrils of fire ripping through me like drops of gasoline. There was only one word for it, and groaning, he murmured it, “Insanity…”
Still vengeful, he stroked me again. Slower. Harder.
“Madness.” A grunt edged his words and a part of me knew why. With every caress of his thumb, my breathing quickened. My hips twitched, chasing the pressure and he felt…
Harder. Thicker. Firmer.
Because of me. My body was reacting to him in a way those romance novels he once taunted me for reading referenced. I looked down, observing the confident way he manipulated my body. He pulled his hand back slightly, taunting me with the evidence that I wanted him just as badly.
Needed him.
Craved.
As if aware of the thoughts, he encircled my throat in his entire fist, forcing me to meet his gaze. I swallowed hard, riveted by the sensation of his fingers. Still stroking. Thrusting.
Like I was an instrument at his mercy, one only he could ever tune.
My back arched at the intrusion, but he held me against him as if daring me to watch. How his pupils constricted when I moaned. How his tongue flicked along his lower lip as if to capture the sound. The way he groaned—truly groaned. As if in pain every time I rocked my hips, chasing the firmness just beyond reach.
Our eyes met again. Then foreheads. Mouths. Frantic, I inhaled him, letting his tongue battle mine even as insecurity threatened to shatter the numbing haze of lust.
This isn’t real.
It isn’t you he wants, Eleanor.
He doesn’t want you.
“I won’t let you play the innocent this time.” Baring his teeth, he positioned me above him, stopping short of lowering me onto him directly. He grasped my hand and lowered it to the tip of his cock. “Take what you want from me. Admit it.”
My fingers curled and I marveled at the feel of him. I flexed my fingers and he hissed. Curled them and he nearly came off the couch. I guided him against me and he bucked upward at the same time. He entered me in one slow, tenuous motion and it was sin. Him inside me was pure, hellish sin. The world slowed. The noise of the plane quieted and the rest of the universe ceased to matter.
Just this.
My hands fell over his shoulders, straining for leverage as he cradled my spine, guiding my movements. Slow. Harder. Deeper. So deep…
I stopped caring if the lust barreling into me was real. I only needed to feel it. My moans were broken. Loud. Shameless. In the back of my mind, I knew his pretty attendant could hear me. The whole damn plane could.
But they could also hear him.
He grunted with every thrust, his hands scrambling for purchase over my waist, gripping me tighter. Tighter…
I gasped as he stood, lifting me in his arms. Pivoting on his heel, he spun me around and then pinned me down so that I was facing him. My back arched against the leather of the chaise as he rocked his hips, thrusting in from a newer angle. One too intimate. Too close.
He nipped my lips as if to steal away any doubt before it could form. In its absence, fire seared through my veins, building until…
Explosion. My body bore down, gripping him so tight that I saw stars. Nails drawn, I clung to him, my fingers laced through his hair as wave after wave of pleasure ripped me apart.
In the aftermath, he went limp, his arms around me. Skimming along my jaw, his mouth found the crook of my shoulder next, his fangs delivering the barest tease of pressure.
Then he stiffened.
“Sir?” a soft voice sweetly called. “We will be experiencing some turbu
lence. The pilot requests that you buckle up for safety.”
He shrugged me off him, maneuvering me onto my side. A strap of leather fell across my waist, easily secured by his quick fingers. Before I could even register the loss of his touch, he resettled beside me, so close that my face rested against his chest.
As reality reasserted its presence, it became almost impossible to swallow down an irrational panic. Prudish shame nibbled at the flesh of my cheeks, reddening them. Moisture slicked my inner thighs. I could still feel traces of him lingering inside me, and my poor, addled brain struggled to process it all without reverting to the instinct that only now I could admit was a defense mechanism—denial.
Dublin’s hand tensed over my lower back as if waiting for just that reaction. God, it was as though he could truly read my mind, anticipate every action.
So I bit my lip and then blurted out the only question I could. “Should I be worried that your attendant doesn’t seem to mind when you have sex in your private airplane?”
He went still. Then he shrugged. “She’s seen worse. Trust me when I say that this may be a welcome change of pace for her.”
Something told me he wasn’t referring to sex.
And my desperation for any random—safe—topic grew. “Where… Where were you born?”
He stiffened further, but his hand remained, bracing me to his side as the cabin shuddered, buffeted by a sudden tempest.
“Eireann,” he finally said once the motion settled. “Or Ireland—some called it that, even back then.”
A rather obvious realization dawned on me. “Is that why you go by Dublin?”
He shrugged, his fingers fanning out along my spine. “A bit cliché, but it gets the point across.”
I had to admit that it did. But there was more to it. The truth lurking within his name that I’d discovered on a whim what felt like a lifetime ago. How, when unscrambled, the letters composing Dublin Helos formed a morbid phrase—is hell bound.
“Why don’t you live there?”
“Let’s just say…” He trailed off, deep in thought, and a part of me tensed. I’d accidentally triggered something delicate. I held my breath as he withdrew his hand, but a heartbeat later, his fingers brushed my shoulder, teasing the edges of my hair. “I haven’t earned the right to return.”
In my right mind, I might have never pressed him for more. But as the plane jolted again, his arm went around my shoulders, keeping me secured despite the fact that he hadn’t bothered to fasten himself in.
“How long has it been?” I asked if only to distract from his nearness.
“In years?” He tilted his head as if he had never thought back to count the time before. “Centuries?”
“Oh.” I swallowed. Spending even a full year away from Gray Manor seemed too long to fathom. Not out of fondness perhaps—but duty. It was my legacy, the one thing in existence resolutely mine.
I tried to picture how it might look after centuries of absence. Of one day returning to find my family home a husk of its former self. Would I mourn it? Probably.
And the thought made me realize that anything Dublin might have cherished in his homeland was now most certainly dust. He grabbed my hand and I realized I’d been toying with the object on my middle finger—a cheap, plastic ring.
He eyed it wordlessly, raking his thumb across the bead’s dull surface. As he released me, he shifted, pulling me more firmly to his side. The belt fastened around me offered enough slack that I could draw my knees up and rest my head against his shoulder.
“Why did you leave?” he asked, his gaze still on my ring. “When you went to the manor? Let me voice my crude assumption now. François is your lover and you were planning to escape to France and live out your eternity in marital bliss.”
I nearly choked. “That’s a very…specific suspicion.”
“That isn’t a denial,” he pointed out. A muscle in his jaw flexed, stiff with tension.
“Well, you were meeting with Kate,” I pointed out. “I remember her, you do realize? The woman whose contract you managed for Raphael. You must have thoroughly enjoyed her ‘services’ in order to invite her to live with you.”
I loathed the raw emotion that leeched into my tone.
My cheeks flamed as his eyes cut down to mine. “You’re jealous of her.” He phrased it like some momentous revelation.
“And you’re jealous of François,” I countered—though I didn’t truly believe it, even as the words left my mouth.
Not until I saw his face. His mouth flattened as if he had hoarded all emotion behind a mask. It was an expression he only deployed in the rarest of circumstances.
When I’d caught him off guard.
I swallowed hard as he became stone against me. “Do I have reason to be?” he wondered in a dangerous tone.
“No, but do I? If I happened to care that you had a beautiful woman indentured to you for all eternity in your luxurious penthouse—”
“Raphael used her like a pawn, the same way he utilized the others.”
I cringed and my indignation diminished somewhat. Others. Those poor women made to look like me and paraded before him. Why? As part of some sick, twisted game?
Or perhaps something far more sinister…
“By keeping her close, I could negate his attempts to control her,” Dublin explained. “Nothing more.”
“And François is my driver,” I said thickly. “Nothing more.”
He shifted slightly and I wound up leaning against him even more. “So how did you wind up bleeding in his care?”
I sighed too drained to argue. There was no point in lying now. “I was trying to send a message to my sister.”
Did he believe me? I couldn’t tell. His face revealed nothing.
Cautiously, I continued. “I took a cab and slipped a letter in that stupid urn in the simplest chance she might remember she has a sister and come looking for me. I didn’t want her to worry.”
How pathetic, all things considered.
“I was in the crypt when two men came in. Something about them felt off so I hid. When they left, I tried to leave and François found me.”
“Did he hurt you?” I flinched. His voice was too soft. Too low.
“No,” I fervently insisted. “I fell. He helped me. And when I asked, he brought me to you.”
“How long have you known him?” Again, he used that alarmingly soft tone and I wondered just how naïve I’d been all this time not to realize my “driver’s” identity on my own.
“Just a few weeks. I didn’t know he was working for my sister. I swear I didn’t.”
But he had known. He nodded once as if confirming his own dark suspicions. Which of course he didn’t bother to convey out loud.
“Is he dead?” My voice broke in anticipation of the answer.
“No.”
“Good.” I squeezed my eyes shut, too relieved to watch his reaction as I added, “Please don’t hurt him.”
He said nothing for so long that I feared I’d done it—broken this fragile moment. My heart ached at the thought. This time had felt so different from our other brief truces. I could still remember the way he’d looked at me, his eyes burning, his lips hollowed around a groan.
“And the necklace?” he said before true panic could set in. “Where did you get it?”
My belly tightened. His tone was more cautious than ever, laced with something so rare that I marveled at the sound. The same cold, detached note he utilized only around Raphael.
“It was in a tomb,” I confessed. “An empty one. It didn’t have a name on it, just a phrase. Latin, I think.”
“Latin?” Dublin echoed hoarsely. He sat forward, dislodging me from his side. “What did it say?”
“Yes. Um… Memento mori. That was it. Do you know what it means?”
I watched him, startled by his reaction. He was staring off as if seeing something far beyond this space. Far beyond this reality. A wistful tilt to his mouth betrayed his true nature more than ev
er: a creature unmoored by the constraints of time.
“Remember death,” he declared, uttering the phrase with a chilling sense of finality. Slowly, he sat back and his hand hooked around my waist, drawing me against him once more. “It means remember death.”
“That sounds like something a Gray would want on a tombstone,” I admitted, trying to picture the mysterious culprit. “Perhaps they got their necklace at the same sale you got yours?”
A lie of course. The way he fingered the thin chain—always without seeming to realize it—revealed its personal nature. He hadn’t bought it at some thrift shop. No. It held far too much sentiment. A gift?
Though that presented more mystery as to why its twin just so happened to have been hiding within my childhood haunt and family mausoleum. For years, judging from the dust surrounding it, if not decades. Centuries?
“Unless of course,” I added, shrugging away the morbid connotations, “you gave it to some poor ancient Gray woman you seduced.” Though most likely not within an airplane traveling to only God knew where. I could claim that scorecard, at least. “She stole it, because we Grays are nothing if not spiteful, and left it somewhere only one of her poor, bumbling descendants would be able to find it. Was it Agatha?” I wondered, naming one of the members of his thorough list. “You did write her name rather peculiarly—”
“You are a singular creature.” He gripped my chin, tilting it so that I faced him. Lips pursed, a ruthless sweep of his gaze was all he required to decipher me. “To be honest, if there were more than one of you with your abject lack of self-preservation, I’m sure your bloodline wouldn’t have lasted this long. Poor Agatha would have already wandered off a cliff on a whim.”
“Or an evil vampire would have goaded her off,” I croaked. Because he had the gall to profess that he had an interest in her that extended beyond her plain looks and massive fortune. “Poor Agatha—”
“Agatha would have written me a check during our first meeting,” he countered, suddenly serious. “You insisted upon your own terms, no matter how reckless and inane they might be. The first time I offered you an out, you stripped naked and demanded you have your way.” He pulled me closer and his thumb swiped my lower lip as if in punishment. “I told you to make yourself unappealing at the club. So you decided to dance in a way that made me offer up more time to that bastard Raphael just to keep you out of his reach. I turned you away for your own good, yet you came marching back with your chin in the air, daring me to have you again.”
