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.
Kris’s eyes lit up. “Oh hey
, Lilly, do you still do that fabulous plus-size modeling? I saw you in a catalogue about five years ago. You looked fierce!”
Lilly grinned at his enthusiasm. “I actually didn’t find much work as a model. I did do a few ads for plus-size bras for Ruben’s lingerie. That’s probably what you saw me in.”
Nick raised an eyebrow and pulled a face. “You pervert, Kris. What were you doing looking at women’s underwear catalogue?”
Kris flipped a hand. “It was junk mail in our mailbox at our Long Island place. You were away on business at the time. I saved it to show you, but I think you must have put it out with the recycling, because I was never able to find it after you came home.” Kris turned to her. “Why don’t you model anymore, angel?”
Lilly grimaced. “I’m twenty-eight. I’m a bit old for plus-size modeling now. And God knows I was never really comfortable with it. Mom kind of bullied me into it, to be honest. Some friend of hers wanted to ‘discover’ me.”
Lilly paused, and Nick noticed her swallowing uncomfortably. “Are you okay?”
“My throat’s a little dry.”
“We’re terrible hosts, Kris,” Nick said. “We’ve offered her nothing to eat or drink. Magic up something for her.”
Kris snapped his fingers and hummed a few high notes. He raised his palm upward, and golden-yellow light shot out of his hand. A bottle of Dom Pérignon suddenly hung above Lilly’s head, and a black lacquered plate full of sushi floated gently into her lap. In the air above her floated a plate of mini toasted baguettes and a little dish of caviar, with a little silver knife for spreading.
Nick rolled his eyes at Kris’s pretentious choice of food, but Lilly seemed to like it. She reached for some sushi eagerly, licking her lips. Her eyes were wide, and she seemed overwhelmed with wonder at Kris’s simple culinary conjuring.
Her enjoyment of the food stirred Nick’s libido. A fierce urge to kiss her seized him. He longed to grab her voluptuous, very real body and never let her go, but he held himself in check. He would not frighten her again.
“Some champagne, Lilly?” Kris asked, reaching for the bottle. “Alcohol doesn’t affect us much, but we do like the taste.”
“Well, maybe that proves I’m not part fae. Alcohol usually affects me.” She took a sip of champagne from the elegant crystal flute Kris had conjured.
“If your fae powers are weak, your resistance to alcohol will be weakened too,” Nick said with a half frown.
Kris took one of the baguettes from the plate and used the little silver knife to spread on some caviar.
Lilly took another sip of champagne. “I remember how much you always loved caviar, Kris.”
Nick grinned. One of the amazing things about Lilly was that she could always remember the tiniest details about people who interested her, even down to their favorite ice-cream flavor. He loved that.
“You remembered!” Kris laughed and, with a point of his finger, shot the plate of baguettes back to her side in a wave of golden light.
“My God, you can conjure up food out of thin air and command a flying sleigh. It’s like you two are all-powerful!” There was a little shudder to her voice.
Kris shook his head. “Oh, sweetie, sylphs are far from all-powerful, especially rogue half sylphs like us with mortal blood running through our veins. We’re good at conjuring objects. That’s about all, really. And we know different ways to fly when we have to.”
“Kris is especially good at conjuring up food and drink,” Nick added.
“Thanks, dear!” Kris smiled at Nick. “Now, as I was saying, please don’t imagine Nick and I are all-powerful. We can’t use magic to defeat other enchanted creatures in battles. And believe me, Nick and I have had to engage in a few violent ones against the dark fae. We’ve chosen to be Warriors of the Light, but we can’t influence water like the Undines, the water fae, can. Or influence fire like the fire fae, and I can’t do scrying to save my life.”
Nick gave a snort. “If either of us could scry, we would have known you were in trouble and found you years ago, Lilly. Count on it.”
She started and looked into his eyes with surprise and slight suspicion. He knew she’d heard the darkness in his voice.
Perhaps now she’ll finally start to understand how much I’ve missed her.
Kris broke into his thoughts. “We also aren’t much good at healing. We’re okay if an injury isn’t too serious, like when Nick fixed your nose, but if the injury involves something as serious as damage to the human heart, the magical energy needed to complete the healing process can completely drain us, cause us to pass out or get very ill.”
Nick gritted his teeth at the memory. “I wish you hadn’t brought that up.” Nick noticed the confused look on Lilly’s face and sighed. He’d tell the sad story rather than leave her bewildered, though it made him feel ill to think about Cat. Nick set down the reins and licked his dry lips. Hell! Before he told this story, he needed a drink. The reindeer were flying on autopilot at this point. They knew this part of the route fairly well. It made Nick a little nervous not to guide them, and he mentally sent out a magic summons for their helper, Bockle. But for now, the reindeer would be all right.
Nick hummed and motioned for the champagne to fly back to him. He poured himself a glass.
“It’s like this, Lilly.” He stopped and took a large gulp. The liquid was a cool fire trickling down his throat and warming his insides. When he finished drinking, he spoke again. “We had a lady friend once, half sylph and half mortal like us. Not a girlfriend, just a platonic friend we hung out with. Her name was Caterina. She tried to save her mortal boyfriend when he got in a car crash, but the man had damage to a few vital organs, including his heart. The amount of magical energy it took to try to heal him was too much for her. Other sylphs tried to warn Caterina, but she was too in love and wouldn’t listen. Her boyfriend died, despite her attempts to heal him, and she fell into a coma from which she’s never recovered. She’s still languishing in a mortal hospital. It’s been five years now.”
Lilly’s expression softened. “I’m sorry to hear that. How’s your friend’s family coping?”
Kris frowned. “Oh, she’s like the three of us, another half fae who’s basically an orphan. We have a roster back at the North Pole that makes sure she has visitors every week of the year.”
Half reluctantly, Nick spread a little of the caviar on a baguette and tried it. The intense saltiness assaulted his taste buds. He grabbed for the bottle and wondered if the saltiness of the caviar would lead Lilly to drink a lot. After taking another gulp of champagne, he decided to broach a question he’d wanted to ask for a very long time.
“Speaking of family, baby, I have to wonder why you never wrote to Santa when you were a kid the way Kris and I did, asking for a family. Kris wrote to Santa from the orphanage he lived in, and I wrote to Santa when I was stuck living with my bastard of an uncle. It’s the way most half fae who’ve been abandoned get brought to Santa’s home or back to the Fae Realm.”
Lilly flinched. “Nick, I had a family. I lived with my mom. I still have that family.” She turned her body away from his, her shoulders hunched.
A muscle twitched in Nick’s jaw.
Obviously wanting to diffuse the tension in the air, Kris interrupted. “While we’re catching up, I heard you were living with Cody Nixon, the violinist. Are you still involved with him?”
Nick’s stomach tightened at Kris’s words. He hadn’t heard any such rumors himself.
Lilly finished swallowing a bite of sushi and shook her head. She reached for the caviar and spread some on a mini baguette. “No, we broke up a year ago. He cheated on me, for one thing.” She gave a mirthless laugh. “And when I confronted him, guess who dumped whom? He told me he’d been meaning to break up with me because he’d decided he preferred slimmer women and because my life was too ‘complicated’.” Lilly glanced at Nick and blushed. “He meant my mother’s gambling and everything.”
Nick had to admire her honesty; he�
�d fought with her about her mother enough times, even during the brief period when they were happily dating. Even now, thoughts of her mother’s selfish behavior burned him. He couldn’t tolerate seeing her used by her adoptive mother for the money she could earn. But he’d fought with her enough about that issue. “I’m sorry to hear your ex-boyfriend was such a prick.”
Lilly bit into a baguette, then took another sip of champagne and paused. Nick knew her well enough to recognize she was reluctant to tell him something. Finally, she whispered, “He couldn’t handle anything about my life, to be honest. He couldn’t handle the fact I was being stalked, the constant vandalism of our apartment…”
“What?” Nick felt like someone had knocked the wind out of him. He remembered the damage done to her dorm room twice in college; some asshole stalker and vandal had trashed Lilly’s dorm and left nasty messages calling her a bitch and a whore on the walls. The bastard had never been caught.
“Are you telling me that stalker you had came back?”
She rolled her eyes. “The stalker never left, Nick. I’ve been receiving odd messages from the time I was eight years old. Before that, someone tried to drown me at the lake one Christmas holiday when I was seven. I survived, but they never found out who pulled me under. The police decided it was one of the kids I was playing with, but they couldn’t get a confession out of anyone or any clear witness statements.” Lilly set her champagne flute down on the seat and turned toward him. “This stuff is really not something I want to talk about right now. Seriously. I’m trying to have fun here.”
“At least tell me they finally caught the son of a bitch.”
“No. He’s as slippery as an eel. And to tell the truth, my stalker has ruined every relationship I’ve tried to have. Cody was totally creeped out by him. The stalker even sent us videos he’d made of Cody and me together.”
Rage coiled in Nick’s gut, but he crushed it with his will so as not to scare her. In a moment, he found a calm tone of voice. “Well, who is it? Who’s doing it? Do you think it’s an ex-boyfriend?”
Wicked Wonderland Page 6
